Time plays tricks on Phish fans. With the bountiful feast of streamable shows we have instant access to today, it’s easier than ever to lose track of the context around a given show, or to misapply the expectations of another era. My current obsession with the Amsterdam ’97 box set — the most direct possible hit on my Phish target — can’t help but color a quick jaunt back to 1994. But even though only three years separate the two Julys, the band is in a completely different place, in terms of both artistic intentions and career goals.

Combine that with the demanding nature of Phish fandom, and the expectation that the band continues to not just excel, but evolve. It’s possible that this is a 3.0-specific phenomenon, as fans look back on the stylistic ground traveled in the late 90s and hold out hope for similar progression today. But just as it might not be a fair lens to examine the current era, this expectation colors our look back at the earlier days of the band, when building a following was the top priority, and evolution was a side effect that didn’t always support that primary objective.

For reasons that will soon be revealed, I’ve spent time recently back at the start of this tour, revisiting the April 4th opener at the Flynn Theatre in Burlington. The jump from April ’94 to July ’94 is far less jarring than the jump from July ’94 to July ‘97, but it’s still remarkable in some subtle ways. Any lengthy tour is going to show a progression from beginning to end, as the band warms up and loosens up, dipping deeper into the catalog and experimenting to fight off the monotony of the road. But there’s a less obvious advancement on display during this first headlining gig at FLPAC, a show far overshadowed by the surrounding shows in this final leg of the summer.

The show prior to this one, with its insane song hybrids and segues, was a perfect example of this late-tour slap-happiness. On its surface, 7/14 appears to be back to business as usual — there’s really nothing unusual on paper besides an unexpected (and never again repeated) slide from Stash into TMWSIY and the “average song gap” is an unpromising 4.04. If you created an algorithm to find the mean setlist for the the 93–94 era of Phish, this is pretty close to what it would generate: a first set bracketed by Runaway Jim and Antelope, a second set that opens with 2001 and closes with a classic rock cover, Stash as the featured first set jam, YEM for the second, and so on.

Yet despite the formulaic structure, Phish is hardly just coloring by numbers at Finger Lakes. That most unquantifiable of Phishy characteristics, “energy,” is in ample supply, fueling versions of Jim, Fluffhead, Antelope, and Maze that are more heart than head — and thus easy to overlook with a critical eye. Unlike the previous show, the segues are understated, like the arpeggiated bridge between Fluffhead and The Horse (surprisingly only attempted one other time), and the high-degree-of-difficulty Stash -> TMWSIY transition, which slides from demonic atonal patterns to twinkling tranquility with the smooth satisfaction of pulling the right string to untangle a nasty knot.

Were they capable of this back in April? I think the insanity of August 93 provides evidence that they were, even if they decided, for the most part, to largely dial it back for the first half of 1994. But while the manic seguefest spikes of August 93 and the Bomb Factory are exciting glimpses at what a Phish show could be when they toss out the standard operating procedure, it’s also satisfying to see shows like this one, which reveals the slowly-elevating baseline for a “typical” Phish show. With the exception of Scent of a Mule and If I Could, they could have played this setlist any time in 1993, but the results would have been noticeably less confident and subtly adventurous.

In the end, the most atypical occurrence in this show may be the encore, when a rare of breach of Phish fan decorum finds the stage “engulfed by stage-diving, high-fiving fans,” the shownotes report. This surprise invasion of the “white caps,” as one commenter describes them, might well offer a glimpse of that alternate dimension where Hoist landed the mainstream audience it sought, and Phish assimilated the same bro demographic that was starting to flock to DMB shows.

Perhaps there’s a causative relationship between this “safe,” energy-focused show and the chaos of the encore? Perhaps that kind of response may have informed the more confrontational decisions of the fall? After all, who could possibly have the mental energy left to invade the stage after the Bangor Tweezer, the Providence Bowie, or — skipping ahead to the next time they played this venue — the almighty “Fleezer?”

But even if this disruption is the only notable metadata for the show, and even if the shows on either side of it attract far more historical attention, it’s a mistake to treat 7/14 as merely ho-hum. Quietly, steadily, over the last three months, Phish has done the hard work of weaving their pre-existing eccentricities and their expanding improvisational goals into their new commercial ambitions, finding a fairly solid middle ground between accessibility for the new fans and rewards for the veterans. Without that hybridization, the insane arena-sized avant-garde of the late 90s could never have happened — and we wouldn’t have unfair expectations to project backward in time.