Phish C/D

"taste" is my favorite phish song that's not "harry hood"

lol at this lillywhite quote on the wiki

"Phish, for me, are the musical equivalent of watching a flock of birds fly across the sky: They don't scatter every which way, but rather, they move with each other; they dip and dive, they go up and down; but at all times, they seem to have this radar, this instinct, for where the bird in front or in back of them is going. Musically, each member of Phish knows what the other is doing, which then carries over to the whole. The band can play anything, which then raises the question: Well, what should they play? With Billy Breathes, it's the closest they got to making what I would say is a good stoner album. You know what I mean: you put on the CD, you fire up a big one and you just go down that road. There hadn't been a good stoner record since Dark Side Of The Moon. Billy Breathes got close. I keep telling Trey Anastasio we can make a better one."

"taste" is lovely,one of their best. you owe it to yourself to listen to the 7/22/97 walnut creek version, which was released on a dvd at some point

one of my favorite things about trey anastasio is that he can play the drums

Even more reason for you to hear 8/10/97 then! Spoiler tags in case you want to be surprised...

The long, involved Rotation Jam to set up Rock A William started when Page went to the theremin for a solo. Soon after, Trey took up the keys and Mike went to play guitar. Page eventually picked up Mike’s bass. After they jammed a bit longer, Mike went to join Trey on the keys. Trey then joined Fish on the drums. The two of them played on the same drum set and Mike took a piano solo. Trey eventually kicked Fish off the drum stool, and Fish picked up Trey’s guitar.

i have downloaded a copy of that show jvc, thanks for the rec!!! it’ll be a good follow-up to the 11/2/96 “crosseyed and painless” which trey plays a small percussion kit on afaict

my pick for the phish song that is amazing every time it's played even though it never turns into a jam is "the lizards"

Lizards coda, while it doesn't jam, is a jam

11/2/96: was '96 an off-year for phish? starting the first set with "ya mar" and "julius" tells me they're not really in a hurry to go anywhere, so maybe! "stash," which had been flipped upside down and shaken over the past two years, is... just very normal-good here. the "free" jam is very cool though, better than the one a year ago in '95, feels like the song is drowning in its own reverberations

was '96 an off-year for phish? alternate answer: not if you're listening to any minute of the coral sky "crosseyed" > "antelope"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpdAqCjnEvg

"Phish, for me, are the musical equivalent of watching a flock of birds fly across the sky: They don't scatter every which way, but rather, they move with each other; they dip and dive, they go up and down; but at all times, they seem to have this radar, this instinct, for where the bird in front or in back of them is going. Musically, each member of Phish knows what the other is doing, which then carries over to the whole. The band can play anything, which then raises the question: Well, what should they play? With Billy Breathes, it's the closest they got to making what I would say is a good stoner album. You know what I mean: you put on the CD, you fire up a big one and you just go down that road. There hadn't been a good stoner record since Dark Side Of The Moon. Billy Breathes got close. I keep telling Trey Anastasio we can make a better one."
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Tuesday, July 6, 2021 10:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I kind of want to say the same thing to this guy that I always want to say to overenthusiastic deadheads - "You know there's a whole genre of music called jazz, right?"

'96 always felt like a weird transitional year to me. I feel like they were still adjusting to having a whole new level of popularity and interest, along with the bigger arenas and expectations. Part of this was planned and a natural part of their evolution as a group, but toss in the wild and weird expectations in the post Jerry Garcia void and, well, I think they struggled to find their footing. They hadn't yet latched onto the cowfunk sound that would inform the best moments of '97, especially that fall tour, plus they spent some time being an opening act again (for Santana in Europe). But yeah, I always find '96 to be less engaging than either year around it.

Fwiw, Rob Mitchum has a pretty nice substack going where he goes over shows from 25 years ago the day of, right in the middle of that Santana opening run right now - https://phishcrit.substack.com/.

you know that makes a lot of sense

a lot of phish dot net reviews of the 95 shows i listened to were chronicling the loss of garcia and the influx of dead fans in phish audiences

Yeah, I'm sure the crossover was starting before '96, but summer of '96 would have been the first summer without a Dead tour in ages, so I think that's when the influx really hit home. I remember so many magazine articles in '96 about how Phish was the "logical" replacement for the Dead, I have to imagine that fucked with their heads a little bit.

i should also say that "crosseyed" is the first appearance of the funk siren in this project so far

they could've put out an album with 11/2/96 "crosseyed" on the a-side and "antelope" on the b-side and it would be the best phish album ever (i have listened to this jam a few times today lol)

a lot of fans date the genesis of the funky '97 sound to their choice to cover Remain in Light for their '96 Halloween costume, and the Coral Sky Crosseyed>Antelope is sort of like that seed poking its head up through the ground for the first time. You can sort of feel that they were learning to play in new ways in order to not thoroughly embarrass themselves doing RiL, and then that show, which is the very next show after Halloween, they're just bursting to integrate those new moves into their jamming

i have to start reading that phish substack, i really enjoyed this piece about the fearlessly ugly 30 minute "tweezer" they put on a live one https://phishcrit.substack.com/p/the-long-game

I saw phish once per year in 1993/94/95/96 at venues that held 1610, 1590, 8023, and 37,000 people respectively. That last year felt much different, huge and druggier and sketchier with lots of people who had obviously migrated over from Dead shows.

I saw them again in 2016 and it felt kind of shiny and wholesome, with lots of old people my age with nice cars, camping with their kids, and discussing their jobs in the cannabis industry.

slip stitch and pass aka 3/1/97 abridged and rearranged: i love this album. it’s quaint sitting next to a live one as their second official live release but that’s why it’s good. it’s the phish live digest, less commitment than a full show and yet a complete-feeling snapshot anyway. the “wolfman’s brother” is perfect, the “mike’s groove” always entertaining if a little self-conscious of where it’s going with all the floyd and doors quotes, and a ripping performance of “taste.” i also love that christgau really liked this record, makes a weird kind of sense to me

did i add this show to my list when i found it on youtube? yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8tHfibTkJ0

profoundly uncool people play music together

i was not impressed with the "ghost" that opened that show but this "bathtub gin" is hot

made me that more excited to hear the legendary winston-salem "bathtub gin" which is coming up :D

and the "wolfman's" > "magilla" > "bowie" was totally worth adding yet another show to my list

Brad, have you heard the 7/29/98 Bathtub Gin? 25-minute show opener, legendary euphoric jam. The rest of the show is really good too, would be a worthy stop for when you hit 98.

i haven’t!!!! hooray

oh yeah this is the famous "gin" included as filler on the unrelated '98 date they used for livephish 17... gonna try to find the whole show

7/10/97: thank you for recommending this show to me jvc. if there were a soundboard available, i would buy it. as it is, the audience recording i found is OK but weirdly cuts out between and sometimes during songs; regardless it's clear enough that you can hear how phenomenal the first set is, particularly the "gin," "down with disease," and ESPECIALLY the "split open and melt" which has grown far crazier since the last time i heard it in '94 or so? and the "split open and melt"s in '94 were bonkers!!!! capped off with yet another beautiful and cosmic "harry hood," if it were possible to rank "harry hood"s it'd probably be one of the best ever

second set is a little less thrilling buts that's because (as you expected jvc) the rotation jam doesn't really translate to an audio recording

it's hard to divide up phish years like dead years (the dead, for one, had lineup changes which make it easy to identify certain eras) even though there's obviously something distinct going on in each of the crucial '90s periods. but i would say the most significant and isolatable shifts in phish's playing and sound occurred in august 93 and over the course of 1997, peaking in the fall. the jams are far more open and less crowded than they used to be, and everyone feels more inclined to ride a groove than to smash a bunch of chords up against each other. if they're not quite playing in the world of infinite possibility that defined '94-'95, it feels like they're headed toward much more mysterious and rich dimensions

Great descriptions again!

Not sure if you're already past this point but I'd also encourage you to listen to the full Hampton/Winston-Salem 1997 box set. At the very least, supplement your 11/23/97 plan with the second set of 11/22 as well. The Halley's Comet is all-time.

7/29/98 Bathtub Gin is a fantastic add as well.

My other highest priority recommendation to add to your project is to supplement 4/4/98 with (at least) the 2nd set of 4/3/98. I was at 4/4 and love it but the Roses Are Free -> Piper is must hear. As is the Twist from 4/2, actually...

i've heard every island tour show! it was my gateway, and 4/4/98 is my (first) favorite phish show of all time largely because the "tweezer" > "taste" is a perfect half hour of music and the second set is fucking relentless. i really rate the "roses are free" > "piper" from 4/3 though

i'm revisiting 4/4/98 because i wanna see how it stacks up now that i've heard so much more phish lol. also a video of it seems to have surfaced on youtube in the past two months

i've also heard most of the hampton/winston-salem box, i've been saving the last show for reasons unknown to me other than it's hard to listen to a box set of three very long shows with any kind of discipline

ah, I get that.

xp I love that 4/3/98 Roses Are Free so much because it has the unbounded creativity you accurately associated with '94-'95 above, but with the restraint of '97-'98. And then the Piper is all about restraint - find a menacingly slinky groove and just build it for like 10 minutes, at least that's how I remember it. Anyway, glad you already know those shows. Many days I'd say they're the pinnacle of Phish.

xpost - Glad you liked it, I think it's a great show even if it's not available at the highest sound quality. I wore a tape of that show out back in grad school and I guess I'd hoped maybe a better source had popped up in recent years, but not really. Anyway, yeah, that first set is so bonkers and I'm not surprised the rotation jam doesn't really hold up, though I still have vivid images of Page playing the theremin and the absolutely huge goofy grins the dudes all had as they goofed around.

I found CDs of the full Island Tour at Reckless about five or six years ago and snagged them all for about $35 total - that was a happy day.

"piper" is so simple that it is barely a song and yet it's like the best phish song ever

oh yeah

it's even less of a song nowadays - starting in '99 or '00 or thereabouts they stopped doing the "slow build," to the chagrin of many or most fans, and just get right to it and launch the jam.

Thinking about "Piper" and the lyrics reminded me of another must hear '97 show, the 7/2/97 show from Amsterdam with the legendary, creepy "Back of the Worm" jam and narration. (really the whole Amsterdam '97 box is killer, but this show is particularly deep in weird and unsettling Phish. In Trey's words:

"I usually don't talk about my drug use, because I feel it's a private thing, but, whatever, I'll tell you this one story. When we were in Amsterdam, me and a friend took a couple of hits of acid and a hit of Ecstasy later on that night. We were walking around and I started imagining I was riding on this giant sandworm, because the roads kind of go up and down. I was picturing these huge sandworms, diving up out of the canals. That's where that phrase, "Back of the Worm," came from. The next night in the middle of this crazy jam--one of these jams that get out of control and you feel like you're not really playing, it's just playing for you--I think I was yelling that and people started saying, "Back of the worm!" Then I read about it on a T-shirt six months later and I'm laughing 'cause I was with my friend who was with me that night in Amsterdam. We were just laughing that some guy was wearing a T-shirt with "Back of the Worm" on it."

also forgot to say the “cities” jam in the second set of the 97 deer creek show is very very good, prime jazz fusion phish

Yes! Meant to ask about that "Cities"!

i ended up going back to it a few times, really phenomenal, especially after hearing so many straight "cities" covers without a jam portion. the "bowie" from that show was also like.... really weird. nine minutes of space noises before the head even appeared

really loved that show, even when it didn't work at all, thanks again jvc, my kingdom for a soundboard

eh fuck it i'm listening to the whole hampton/winston-salem box

i fucking LOVE “punch you in the eye”

hot take all the gamehenge songs are great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pSY7JXlc9c

well this is well-timed (i love the lost in vegas dudes)

i bet they don't like it!!!

11/21/97: well this show is just fucking amazing idk what to tell you. fall 1997 phish is the best band in the world. first set underrated, the "emotional rescue" groove is hypnotizing and the "punch you in the eye" gains so much from that extended dwelling on the funky opening riff; "chalk dust" gets weird and "prince caspian" gradually decays into delay pedal echoes. second set is basically everything i love about phish, and i don't even think "ac/dc bag" is a great song (i know what i said earlier about gamehenge) ("ac/dc bag" IS a great riff on "life during wartime") (i love that phish just love the talking heads so much). the "ghost" jam is quiet and unassuming and then very... emotional? not really used to this song going there but it's way more inner space than outer space. the "bag" is a psychedelic experience that bleeds right into a gorgeous like... pointillist "slave to the traffic light"? right into "loving cup," which they play really well bc they're fucking feeling it. 10/10. the show after this is somehow better

Love reading Brad enthusing over Phish <3 <3

This reminds me that it has been way too long since I pulled out that H/W-S box.

seconded on both counts!