https://forum.phish.net/forum/permalink/1378244863

"Ten years ago, the last thing I wanted was a home base. I loved living completely on the hoof and found the idea of home limiting. Now I'm experiencing the opposite. Living my life that way was actually becoming more of an energy sink than an energy source. When I go on tour now, after recharging my battery at home, I have a lot more juice than I used to." - John Fishman, from The Phish Book, p. 119

Traveling can be tiring, whether for a show, a vacation, or to visit loved ones, but at least it's one trip; going on tour for 3-4 months at a time like Phish did in 1990 can be a disorienting experience that causes one to become emotionally and physically exhausted. As Fish mentions above, being able to enjoy the comforts of home can be a healing balm for much of that exhaustion. The band had been using family homes as temporary bases of operations for playing gigs for a few years at this point, and on this night Trey and Page were finally able to play a show in their home state of New Jersey.

The recording is a clean AUD (despite some bad feedback during set 2) from a period where not that many AUDs survive. On Tom Marshall's Under The Scales podcast from 9/3/2017, @Big_Phil Muller talks about having taped this show and how it was a special show for the band, despite being performed for a minuscule audience. The setlist features a nice cross-section of the band's repertoire at this time, along with a couple of bang-bang song transitions like Buried Alive > BATR and Golgi > GTBT that were typical of this era. I also like this early Tweezer with snatches of "Will It Go 'Round In Circles" from Page and "Don't Get Me Wrong" from Trey, and a bonus travelogue from Trey during the last chorus of Contact. This is a goofy, casual, entertaining show, summed up by Trey's banter at the beginning of the recording: "How's everybody feeling tonight?"