I was not at this show, but this might overtake the first night of the gorge as my favorite show of the year. uncle penn was a nice first set treat, not having been since since deer creek 2000... wow it'd been that long! sanity, foam, walk away, vultures, and a solid melt were are really nice first set scores.

the 2nd set really lights up. this seven below>ghost is without a doubt, the jam of the year. to me, seven below is like light, in that the "song" portion does not do too much for me, but these jams are amazing. i'll be brief, there are other good reviews on this jam here, but they really played as a great collective unit. i saw the 30 minute alpine 04 7 below, but this one has a touch more intensity and focus behind it. after slipping into ghost, they slip back into a jam very similar to the seven below jam. after working through some nice seven below teases and good jamming this one sort of peters out.

after that, they drop another rare treat in Cool it down. the rest of this set works well, but after the monster opening jam, everything else is gravy.

great show from start to finish. this and syracuse might be the gems of the fall tour.

Cant believe there's not a review of this show yet. If I'm not mistaken this became the "Simple" bootleg, at least by '98......

This is my favorite version of Reba ever.......

When I think of the Empire Polo Field, home of the Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival, my mind conjures up images of legions of hipsters patrolling the field, smoking Marlboro reds and trying to decide whether to spend their time yearning for the Cure or lining up a few hundred deep for Daft Punk.

I directly recall the moment I first set foot on the Polo Field’s heavenly green grass in May 2004 — I turned to my longtime tour buddy and said, “This place would be perfect for Phish.”

You see, even though I’m a veteran of five Coachellas (and three Stagecoaches), I’ve also seen Phish 52 times (counting Saturday). That includes three of the band’s previous seven festivals, New Year’s Eve 1998 and, perhaps most importantly, the last time Phish played on Halloween (also in ‘98, when the quartet played the Velvet Underground’s Loaded in its entirety as its “musical costume”).

I honestly never thought I’d actually get to see Phish at the Coachella site; it was mostly just wishful thinking. After braving the elements and withstanding the band’s so-called final festival — the super-sloppy (both weather and music) Coventry, in August 2004 — I was skeptical that Phish would ever throw another multi-day bash, let alone throw one in my proverbial backyard.

But when rumors about a Halloween festival in Indio began circulating towards the end of June, I couldn’t help but get excited. Here was a band on which I’d spent thousands of dollars over the past 13 years, and the possibility that it was going to set up shop some 120 miles from my front door (as opposed to the 2,500 miles I traveled to see Phish’s reunion shows in Hampton, Va., this past March) was simply too good to pass up.

You can imagine my delight when the whole thing eventually came to fruition, and as I strolled onto the same grassy lawn where I saw my second Radiohead show in 2004, I could hardly believe how different the site looked — instead of two main stages and three smaller tents, one big stage stood in the northeast corner of the property (where Coachella’s Outdoor Stage usually resides) and a series of oil-rig light stanchions stood guard a few hundred yards away.

Phish’s Festival 8 — the band’s eighth major festival — kicked off Friday with a delightfully crowd-pleasing pair of sets, highlighting material from the band’s September release, Joy, as well as a bevy of fan favorites. It was an enjoyable way to kick-start the weekend, but the real treat was Saturday: sandwiched between two sets of Phish would be this year’s musical costume, the Rolling Stones’ 1972 classic Exile on Main St.

Joining Phish in tackling Exile were a three-piece horn section and two backup singers, the more notable of whom was Sharon Jones, who performed at Coachella 2008 with her funk/soul outfit, the Dap-Kings. Augmenting Phish’s usual lineup, the extra five members made the band appear not altogether different from guitarist Trey Anastasio’s various solo projects of the past decade, the most notable of which was the nonet with which he recorded his eponymous debut in 2002.

As a precursor to my review of the costume set, it should be noted that Exile on Main St. is undoubtedly my favorite Stones record — influenced greatly by the fact that before Saturday evening, Phish had performed the album’s side-two closer, “Loving Cup,” 80-odd times since 1993. It was “Loving Cup” that led me to Exile, which led me to Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Some Girls — you could say I owe my Stones fandom to Phish.

So … my favorite band playing one of my favorite albums in one of the most beautiful concert venues in the United States … you’d be right to assume that my excitement (as well as that of the other tens of thousands of attendees) ran at an all-time high when the band released its Broadway-spoofing Phishbill (announcing that Exile would indeed comprise the second set) as fans entered the venue Saturday.

This wasn’t like 1998, when I walked into UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Arena and read about Loaded, thinking, “I know ‘Sweet Jane,’ but that’s about it.” (I’d come to love Loaded, and Phish would introduce “Rock and Roll” into its repertoire, where it remains a second-set juggernaut to this day).

No, this time I’d know every song, every word, every brassy blast. This was peanut butter and jelly, a perfect musical marriage. Really, the only way Phish could’ve done any better by me would’ve been to play the Clash’s London Calling or Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (both of which were eliminated from the running during the month-long lead-up to Halloween on the band’s site).

But Exile it was meant to be, and as Phish launched into the opener “Rocks Off,” it became clear the band would show due diligence to an album that all four members have repeatedly cited as a major influence. Anastasio and keyboardist Page McConnell shared vocal duties on most of the songs, with bassist Mike Gordon taking over on “Shake Your Hips” and “All Down the Line” and drummer Jon Fishman stepping outside his usual jokester role for genuine readings of “Sweet Virginia” and “Happy.”

While Jones and the horn section lent authenticity (and a great deal more soul) to Phish’s rendering of Exile (most notably their subtle, delicate accents on “Sweet Black Angel” and show-stealing, spine-tingling moments in “I Just Want to See His Face”), it was the Phish-only moments that truly stole the show, or at least the set.

During the few songs unadorned by additional personnel, Phish stayed within its comfort zone but stretched the Stones’ bluesy song structures, making “Casino Boogie” and “Torn and Frayed” sound like songs that the Vermont foursome could have written at any point its 25-year career — they escalated the Stones’ simplicity into shimmering, glorious peaks while maintaining the originals’ feel, which is no small task, especially considering Exile’s notoriety.

Three songs in particular, however, defined the Exile set:

* The aforementioned “Loving Cup,” in which the audience fired thousands of glow-rings in the air and the horn section added a punchy layer to a song that Phish mastered 15 years prior, when McConnell first brought a grand piano on tour. Watching Anastasio’s ear-to-ear grin as he bounced back and forth was a revelation. “What a beautiful buzz” indeed.
* “I Just Want to See His Face,” which segued out of “Ventilator Blues” (as it does on the album) and sounded like it could’ve been the tail end of a drawn-out “Piper” jam, featured Anastasio and Jones in a call-and-response mantra: “Let this music relax your mind.” The gospel-tinged number caused more than one member of the audience to throw his hands up and shout a “hallelujah” to the nearly-full October moon. (Note: this song has never been played live by the Stones, who would do well to give Phish’s reading their full attention.)
* Exile’s penultimate song, the shout-along “Shine a Light,” was nothing less than an exercise in redemptive glory for Phish. “May the good Lord / Shine a light on you / Make every song you sing / Your favorite tune,” the guitarist sang, and we could almost see the exorcism take place, the personal demons plaguing Anastasio (and the band) since before Phish’s 2004 breakup dissipating from his shoulders as he shook off Fishman’s attempt to end the song, uncorking a searing solo that served as a proper exclamation point on a personal and professional triumph.

Did I love Phish’s Halloween reading of Exile on Main St.? You bet. Am I biased? Certainly. While I would’ve been happy to see the band take a stab at David Bowie’s Hunky Dory or Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, I feel incredibly lucky to have had the good fortune to see my musical heroes take on a monumental challenge and conquer it with flying colors.

When I step onto the familiar green grass next April, I won’t recall Bright Eyes or Belle & Sebastian. My memory will undoubtedly harken back to Halloween 2009, when the proverbial stars aligned and every song was indeed my favorite tune.

In many ways the albums Phish has chosen to cover over the years have reflected the band’s mindset and direction at the time. For example …

The White Album is an ambitious (arguably, over-ambitious) mash-up of wildly divergent songwriting styles, much as 1993-1994 Phish was akin to a hyperactive child with a shiny new toy, often jumping back and forth between musical genres in their trademark devil-may-care style that earned them early accolades (and early scorn from critics who couldn’t stand Phish’s attention-deficit swings). The sometimes playful/sometimes serious dichotomy of songs on the Beatles’ self-titled 1968 release fit the wildly divergent idiosyncrasies of a 10-year-old band entering its prime.

As the band’s audiences grew — in the wake of Jerry Garcia’s August ’95 passing and the subsequent demise of the Grateful Dead — Phish was suddenly playing bigger rooms (even arenas with some regularity), and while the band hadn’t necessarily changed, it sometimes struggled to maintain the club/theater vibe in a huge hockey stadium. The Who’s Quadrophenia, about a young Mod with four distinct personalities, suited Phish’s growth spurt perfectly, as the band wrestled with inheriting the Dead’s longstanding legacy. Ultimately, by December 1995 (quite possibly the best single month of shows in Phish history, leading up to a New Year’s show that Rolling Stone dubbed “one of the greatest concerts of the ’90s”) Phish had grown comfortable wearing the jam band crown.

Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, long cited as a major influence on all four band members, would mark a turning point in Phish’s career, leading it from a 1996 that saw the band grow more comfortable headlining arenas and outdoor amphitheaters to a 1997 characterized by a complete musical renaissance. David Byrne & Co.’s striated, synthesizer-laden work laid the groundwork for the “cow-funk” that would permeate Phish’s ’97 outings, leading to more laid-back, patient grooves from a more grown-up and confident band. Remain in Light’s impact was felt almost immediately, as a third-set “Simple” on Halloween ’96 stretched into undiscovered funky territory, setting the stage for a monstrous 1997.

As in 1996, the band distributed a Broadway-style Phishbill to fans entering the venue. This essentially gave away the second-set surprise and many fans looked at each other quizzically, wondering why Phish chose the Velvet Underground’s Loaded over the heavily-rumored (and heavily-favored) Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon. That gesture defined the band at this time — while some of the playfulness that characterized its early years had dissipated, Phish had grown into a group that favored simplicity, and Loaded fits that bill. No horns, no guests, no quirky compositions, just a classic rock record that perfectly reflected the mature, 15-year-old Phish and introduced a number of jam fans to the genius of Lou Reed. (Also of note: three days later, the band performed Dark Side in its entirety to a half-full arena in Salt Lake City, presumably as a make-up gesture for a brilliant-but-bizarre third set on Halloween.)

At its core, Vermont jam band Phish is a fascinating blend of dichotomies — serious and silly, focused yet erratic, sublime while stumbling — all of which adds to the don’t-you-dare-miss-a-single-show mentality that pervades its fan base. Phish-heads turn out in droves wherever the band schedules dates because they know that somewhere in the midst of those dichotomies will be one (or many) shining moments that will keep them coming back, again and again.

Yet, on Sunday, the final day of the band’s Festival 8 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, all sides of Phish were on display for the estimated 40,000 attendees.

EXHIBIT A: THE ACOUSTIC SET

The day began with Phish’s first all-acoustic set since back-to-back nights at Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit in 1998. While coffee and figure-8-shaped donuts were distributed, the band members took their (unusual) places — on opposite sides of the stage than normal, with a smaller kit for drummer Jon Fishman, a lone grand piano instead of the arsenal of keyboards employed by Page McConnell and a stool apiece for bassist Mike Gordon and guitarist Trey Anastasio.

Early in the 90-minute set, Anastasio suggested the audience sit instead of stand, as the band would be “playing a bunch of mellow songs.” Eager to please their shaggy, bespectacled icon, the majority of fans did just that for the better part of the set. While the gesture was one of respect for the band and its music, it contributed to a chatty crowd; that usually isn’t a problem during an electric Phish performance, but on Sunday morning it proved an unfortunate distraction.

Loquaciousness aside, Phish’s selections walked the line between the safe and standard (“Water in the Sky,” “Driver”) and the more adventurous and rearranged (“The Curtain With,” “McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters”). The latter two shone as examples of what Phish can do when the band members put their noses to the proverbial grindstone and actually practice (another stellar example being the previous night’s front-to-back cover of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St.).

Towards the end of the acoustic set, Anastasio chopped out the four-note intro to “Wilson,” and as the audience chanted back, he and Gordon leapt to their feet (with the crowd following instantly thereafter) — and the sit-down portion of the show was officially over. Anastasio even apologized mid-song for asking everyone to take a seat, confessing that his own attention-deficit personality makes it hard for him to sit still. If that doesn’t scream dichotomy, nothing does.

EXHIBIT B: THE SECOND SET

After a nearly three-hour break, Phish returned to the stage for an 80-minute electric set marked by a number of its more challenging songs, ones with odd time signatures, stop-on-a-dime changes and complicated arrangements. With the exception of a relatively rare Fishman flub halfway through the rigid-then-relaxed “Reba,” Phish mostly nailed the rickety twists and turns of “Rift” and the swinging, fugue-like portions of “Guelah Papyrus” (all songs written in the first decade of the band’s existence).

How do these examples fit the binary nature of the band?

Well, to be fair, they’re not the most complicated songs Phish has written — “Divided Sky” and “Fluffhead” both made well-executed appearances on Saturday — but they’re excellent examples of tunes that the band shied away from in its “post-hiatus” years of 2002-04, avoided mostly because the daily practice-practice-practice mentality that earned Phish its stripes early on seemed to fall by the wayside during those years.

Ever since Phish’s return to touring this past March, there’s a distinct focus on nailing many of these difficult compositions, as though the band members fully understand that they indeed have something to prove. This take-no-prisoners approach is vastly different (at least on the surface) than the happy-go-lucky young guns who rose to the jam band promontory in the ’90s.

EXHIBIT C: THE FINAL SET

Beginning with the syncopated throaty funk of “Tweezer” and finishing with the ascendant peak of “Slave to the Traffic Light,” Phish fired on nearly all cylinders during its concluding set. Here, the dichotomy lay in the vastly differing styles of songs that comprised the nearly two-hour finale, as the band moved from the aquatic, slip-sliding “Free” through the oddly timed polyrhythms of “Sugar Shack” and “Limb by Limb” to the disco-tinged delight of their cover of Deodato’s “2001” theme.

The highlight of the set (perhaps the day, perhaps the whole weekend) was the late-set arrival of “Light,” a cathartic epistle in which the band claims “the light is growing brighter now” and begs to “guide us to our goal / purify our souls.” On the recently released Joy, “Light” begins with 80 seconds of plush ambience before storming through another three-minutes-plus of straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll. On Sunday night, Phish reversed the formula: Anastasio strummed the opening chords to “Light” as the closing cacophony of “2001” died out; here, the space opened up after the main thrust of the song ended.

As McConnell moved from piano to organ to synthesizer, and the jam out of “Light” grew heavier and spacier, a towering wall of diode-carrying balloons arose from the side of the stage, fluttering in flashy hues of blue, orange and pink. Eventually, the jam folded in upon itself just as fluidly as the balloon structure eventually sank back to earth, accompanied by washes of synthesizer, beating toms and volume swells.

This bizarre blend of scintillating arena-rock and gutsy atmospheric turbulence serves as a pronounced example of the new Phish, its latent dichotomous nature, and how the band best serves its two halves just as those halves serve the band. Like the set-closing “Slave to the Traffic Light,” it’s a ponderous lesson in group dynamics. Hearing loud and rowdy give way to gentle and delicate (or the other way around), seeing all smiles even when someone flubs a particularly difficult change, or feeling the way through a kinda-first-time outing on acoustic instruments, it’s all what makes Phish’s shining moments easier to find than miss.

Phish’s first day of its weekend-long Festival 8 was perfect for those who were either new to the band’s material or seeing Phish for the first time. The night’s two sets together played like a combination primer and greatest-hits package, as the quartet sprinkled liberal doses of its trademark quirky humor (“I Didn’t Know,” “Poor Heart”) with material from its solid new album Joy (“Ocelot,” “Time Turns Elastic”) and heavy-hitting, tried-and-true jam vehicles (“Piper,” “David Bowie”).

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t plenty for the tour-heads and 100-show veterans to enjoy. But Friday wasn’t the optimal experience for the longtime fan chasing that rare song that has eluded him since seeing the band in the early ’90s. It was simply a marvelous introduction, with no apologies for the lack of rarities or super-extended jams.

Phish fittingly kicked off its 8th festival with the funky, jubilant “Party Time” before tearing into one of its trademark set openers, the anthemic “Chalk Dust Torture,” whose jam portion grew discordant before rising to a fierce, fiery peak. It was a perfect example of Phish’s dichotomous nature: the band can launch from dissonant to dazzling in the span of a few bars, proving the importance of patience and communication between its members.

After “Moma Dance” and “NICU,” the band trotted out the jazzy “Stash” — and as hundreds of fan-brought balloons bounced above the crowd, drummer Jon Fishman and bassist Mike Gordon orchestrated a bouncy groove. Over that, keyboardist Page McConnell and guitarist Trey Anastasio followed each other from a dark, minor-key vamp to a bright, major-key lilt, turning the “Stash” jam on its proverbial ear.

Once again, they’re proving that whatever die-hard Phish fans might expect from a particular song on a particular night, predictability has never been the band’s strong suit.

While Phish’s first set was a crowd-pleasing mix of new and old, short and long, easy and difficult, it was the second set — of eight scheduled for the weekend, including a “musical costume” set tonight, during which the band will cover another artist’s album in its entirety — that truly affirmed the group’s dedication to proving worthy of having fans travel from far and wide to its first festival in five years.

Beginning with the calypso-funk of “Punch You in the Eye” and segueing into a superb “Down with Disease,” Phish’s second set showcased a fan-fed glow-ring throw-a-thon, as Anastasio chomped on meaty chords, Gordon thumped, Fishman splashed and McConnell moved from dusky organ chords to choppy clavinet slaps, breathing consistent life into the 16-year-old composition.

After a stellar run through “Prince Caspian,” Gordon gouged out slaphappy, effect-drenched bass runs in “Wolfman’s Brother,” leading Phish from a triumphant, sunny crescendo into atmospheric Radiohead-esque weirdness — perhaps hinting that Kid A will be the Halloween cover? From there, Anastasio guided the band into the steady build of “Piper,” featuring the night’s most beautiful, euphonic playing.

As Phish transitioned into one of its oldest (and most muscular) compositions — the twisty, turny “David Bowie”— Anastasio hinted that the song might be “a hint about the Halloween album.” (One of the eight festival campgrounds is named after Bowie’s Hunky Dory, fueling the rumor that Bowie may join the ranks of the Beatles, the Who, Talking Heads and the Velvet Underground as bands whose albums Phish has covered in the past.) Gordon again drove the group through the “Bowie” jam, feeding the bottom end while spurring Anastasio on to more ecstatic heights.

Never a group to disappoint when all eyes are watching, Phish displayed its penchant for showmanship during the set-closing “Harry Hood,” launching a giant collection of helium-filled balloons packed with lights and sensors. The balloons’ colors changed and pulsated with the rise and fall of “Hood,” climaxing as the band yelled “You can feel good!”

Judging from the reaction of the 30,000-plus devotees who made the trek to the Coachella site’s first one-off, single-band performance in 16 years, the balloons’ iridescence, the site’s beauty and the band’s exuberance truly made them feel as good as the band felt, if not better. The fans don’t have to worry about pulling off a major feat like playing an entire album’s worth of someone else’s songs (Exile on Main St., anyone?) as well as two sets of its own material on Saturday.

If anyone’s up to the self-imposed challenge, though, it’s Phish, a band that for decades has prided itself on taking everyone’s expectations — those of its fans, the media, even its own members — and surpassing them with flying colors.

By the way, a lovely SBD/AUD matrix recording of this show circulates freely - do yourself a favour and seek it out.

Lots to remember about this, my first Phish show. Since there aren't any reviews of this yet, I'll go ahead and jot down what I can remember from the experience and various recordings. First, the energy and speed on a lot of the songs kept things upbeat. Cavern was over the top to my ears - coming at the end of the first set. Jams on DWD and Scent of a Mule were excellent for me. And even though the jam on Reba started way mellower than what I could have expected, the band seemed like they were buzzing. Reba was my favorite jam back then so I was gone. First show. First Reba. Come on. Again, I'd maybe heard like one or two live Phish recordings up to this point in my life, so I was getting deeper into them than ever.

The choice of cover songs surprised me too. A Day in the Life just about shocked me. Whipping Post kept the energy push on.

Oh, my friend, Andy, actually saw Mike biking through the Alpine Valley crowd. Funny.

This was a better show than a lot of the other live recordings I've heard lately. I wouldn't say it's my favorite live era for them, but this definitely outdoes what I heard in '98, any of the '00's shows, and '09. I don't know, for some fans that's probably not even saying that much.

ah good 'ol cincy! this was many heads first show back, so as mentioned in my review for the 2nd night, the u.s. bank arena crowd was buck wild. the phand weren't fucking around, and when phish came out, we quickly realized they weren't either. wilson is my favorite of the "predictable openers," especially for indoor shows. out of the back end of wilson, they slammed into frankenstein. i had never seen this out of the closer/encore slot, so i was really digging the creative and rocking song selection. page, as always, killed this one. down with disease was another first set surprise. this was a pretty solid version, one of the better first set versions that you will get. life boy fit well, and it gave people a chance to breathe. boogie on got everyone bobbing again before going into a straight forward but still rocking antelope. i thought that would close a relatively short set, but they dropped a bonus i didn't know on us before taking a break.

after grabbing a beer and a bowl, i was ready to rock again. once again, phish came out of the gate blazing. they stretched this mikes song out after exploring some funky realms. they then hit an ambient/spacey jam before hitting the big "free chord." no, there would be no hydrogen tonight. a good funky free gave way to a mellow waste which worked its way into a nicely developed 2001. kuroda was particularly hot here. page was nice and funky while trey worked in some cool stash teases. this very good 2001 bounced right into harry hood. there was some slop sprinkled through here, but since i hadn't seen this song since deer creek 2000.... yippeee!! all of these dreams, like friday, can just go away, but hey, i love me a good possum! this one rocked and started to work into a nice little rock/funk groove that somewhat sloppily worked into cavern. this one closed it down appropriately, but some flubs scattered here and there. velvet sea... blah

overall:

i like the 2nd night better, but this was a definitely an excellent first night

highlights:
1
wilson>frank, dwd
2
mike's>free, 2001>hood

i had caught a couple of nights of hampton, but for many Phans, this was their first show back since the hiatus. needless to say, the crowd was buck wild.

The sloth really got the place jumping. great opener! dog stole things was solid, but the early show piper gave them a chance to cut loose. one of my buddies was bummed to have the weekapaugh'less mike's groove last night, so he got what he wanted out of piper. it was a very good seque and a very rocking weekapaugh,especially for being the 4th song in the show. dirt was a nice slow down tune before driving into scent of a mule. this was big on my list of songs that i wanted to hear this weekend, and they played a good solid version here. it's no alpine '97 or any number of your wilder mules, but it's a good solid first set version. we finally got our first dip into the "new stuff" with walls of the cave. this was a pretty solid version. not my favorite song, but they tacked a nifty little jam on the end to make it worth the while. the set sort of petered out from there.

now, like almost everyone else, i did not think that phish 2.0 ever reached anything near the peaks they were hitting prehiatus, especially 95-98, but one song that i thought they played better in 03-04 than any other era was tube. I saw this version and the deer creek 04, and they were both killer. the deer creek one was tighter than this one, but this was a good intro to the posthiatus tube. gordon and fishman bumped out the funk with some nice playing by page and trey before bringing back to blues town before cracking back into tube. good version. as mentioned, not as good as deercreek 04, but a good listen all the same. then came my personal favorite phish tune, bathtub gin! this one was a doozy, and it ranks up there with the best. they covered a lot of ground here. they moved from the bathtub theme to rock to funk to ambience and they moved between these genres for 30 minutes. this is the best post hiatus version but i'll still take worcester 95, murat 93, and winstom salem 97 over this one. i saw friday at hampton and hated it...this one did nothing to change my mind but after a killer 30 minute gin, who's complaining?! they did work friday into bowie quite nicely. the bowie did not cover as much ground as the gin, but it was still a nice explorative version. as i have mentioned in other reviews, i absolutely dispice but, and in this spot, it just killed me. i figured they would not close with but, but alas, they did.... big time bummer. suzy ended this show and run appropriately.

overall:
the fist half of the first set is excellent, and the same can be said for the 2nd set. man, that bug in the 2nd set just kills me...

highlights:
1
the sloth, piper>weekapaugh, scent of a mule
2
tube, bathtub gin

My first Phish show. I tried to make it to shows in early 90's but this was the one. At the time I was living near the University of Utah with some friends from my hometown who had been to Phish shows before, we scored tickets that day at the beloved Graywhale CD store just off campus. This Phish ticket is still my fav, cool artwork limited printing for a tiny ass venue. We walked the 30 blocks down to the show, right across the street from the former Delta Center, this "ampitheatre" was located behind some historical building. Tiny I mean small - maybe 700 people??? Definitly a treat looking back, check out the setlist and listen to the AUD recording, the band is on it, really locked in all night. Out the gate with Llama - I always giggle this was my first live Phish tune, love the Llllllama. Guelah and Rift are standard, then I get the first of 15 DWD I have seen live. I was hung up on Hoist at the time (still am, love the album)next is It's Ice is rare in my rotation, great version. If I Could is sweet too..Maze, Fee and Suzy were strong - I had the disctinct feeling at setbreak I was at home...SOAM terrific set opener, hot - Trey killing it..Glide! Another rarity in my rotation and then Julius bright springy. Halleys>Scent is the highlight of the night for me - Page & Trey, some Ginseng and them the classic Mike's>H2O>Weekapaug sandwich with kudos to Gordo - it doesn;t come thru on the AUD so well but he was killing it...Golgi wraps it and lights down. Love the HWY2Hell closer, we were treated to a one off show in a small ass venue where the boys played really tight. I am so lucky to have gotten this as my first!

Expanding on (and stepping back a bit from) my earlier comment:

The first set of this show is awesome and weeeeeird. A 20-minute DwD in the #2 slot? Yeah! Then a delicately creepy segue into Maze, which builds with unusual deliberateness from deep quiet to Trey's sci-fi roar (an engrossing pair of atmospheric solos from Page and Trey here). Trey was apparently in a ruminative mood this first set: check out the texturally-rich downtempo LxL batting fifth. No idea what Rocky Top was doing creeping in there, especially after a first-set Loving Cup. Oh well. Some nights just weave away from the straightline path, and it paid off here.

Actually there's a bit of an early/mid-2003 vibe to this show: lots of odd textures, opioid playing from Trey, quickstep tempos alternating with plodding oddities, a dark dark darkness creeping in around the edges. And of course the powerful stupidity of Roses Are Free, which Phish would later turn into a huge jam vehicle (4/3/98, 12/31/99) but which functions here as a goofy pick-me-up after the bedraggled ambience of Drowned. (Check out how little recognition it gets from the crowd, though! Funny).

The show is indeed outstanding, but not in a *purely* desirable way: the atmospherics are pervasive and strange and the first set must've blown minds on that night, but there's none of the feverish intensity and focus of 12/6, nor the partyfunk vibe of 12/7. The Ghost > DWD quote > Johnny sequence is fine, but Ghost is a straightforward, monotonic version with a solo from Trey that's either bravely restrained or sublimely boring depending on your tastes. Waste is Waste.

Definitely seek out this show - it's a treat to hear SBDs of Fall '97 no matter what the vibe is like. But I'm gonna revise my earlier enthusiasm to a cautious endorsement: this is one of the tour's weirder and (yeah) weaker shows. Its highlights are lovely, but a one-month stretch containing 11/21-11/23, 12/6, the three huge Worcester shows, and those wild Denver outings doesn't require this night to be a classic.

I really kind of "accidently" went to this alpine run. i lost my cell phone at deer creek, which in turned caused me to lose my ride. well, the only people i knew that could take me home were going to alpine first, and so it was...

traffic was a bitch so we missed the opener all together, and only heard the first set up to glide in the parking lot. julius may have been a little nod to the usually tough alpine security. roses are free was a nice treat, but even from the parking lot, some flubs were evident. ac/dc bag was pretty straight forward. i loved glide here, especially since we were just walking in the door, but anything but me after was somewhat of a let down. a relatively quick bowie picked things up before a nice bluesy/funky wolfman's. trey really started to pick up steam on the back section of this wolfman's jam. golgi was sort of a blah closer.

we left our friends in the lawn and moved down to our pavillion seats for the second set. i was not very excited for the seven below set opener, but they found a groove, and kept riding it and riding it and riding it. this is a very cool jam. there are no crazy peaks here, but there is some lovely exploration. it takes a quick dip into buffalo bill, which while a rarity, i had managed to catch in 2000, '03, and now '04. good stuff. page was very interactive during lawn boy, which got the crowd rolling. mike's was good, but the straight mike's groove is just not popping like it did in'95. they still heat the same peak, but there is very little going on aside from that. this is something that i miss badly. even in '09, mike's song has not been all that impressive. you enjoy myself was relatively flub free, but this yem>2001>yem is not really as cool as it looks on paper. where they would normally have the "improv" jam in yem, they just popped a mediocre version of 2001 in there. then they slipped right into the vocal jam. unusual but not all that great.

all in all, a mediocre, show. i liked the next night and the deer creek shows better, but the seven below is must hear.

Anytime Punch starts a show it's going to be on. Jim is good, Ya Mar was funny and tight, "Mike's grandpa". Antelope was really good, the best of the early summer no doubt. Maze was a highlight, with a nice glowstick party on the ski-hill lawn. Lizards was a treat as was Fire. YEM > NICU was another highlight. Good opener to a two-night stand.

First a quick setlist note: that 2001 > Magilla > 2001 looks more complicated than it is. The 2001 reprise lasts just a few seconds before Trey starts playing Tweezer. You won't mind.

...

Ramble On received canonical treatment eight shows later (and you shouldn't hesitate to seek out that performance) and is pretty much by-the-book here, but the delicate complexity of the song creeps into a wonderfully nimble Mike's Song. By this point Phish's uptempo rock tunes were benefitting greatly from the yearlong ongoing experiment in minimalist funk polyrhythms; the Mike's jam blends wah/clav funk noise and rock'n'roll anger in equal measures. It's not an era-defining jam or anything, just another quarter-hour of balls-out sophisticated jamming from a band drunk on its own power. The rest of Set One proceeds along similar lines, featuring dance jams of almost pornographic virtuosity.

Standard Piper to open the second set, a little restrained in comparison to its current form. I don't know why Wilson turns up in so many second sets; it doesn't usually keep the improvisatory momentum going (not to my tastes anyway). This version features a short metal-riff jam that holds some interest, I suppose. Then it's 2001 > Magilla > teeeeeease > Tweezer, and it's as fun as it looks on the page. This is a *really* frisky 2001! The band brings things down in a skillful decrescendo. Trey gets the idea to dive into Magilla, Fishman's with him, things are a little rickety, Page hops gladly into the fray, Fishman's skittering around on spider legs, Mike takes a brief solo - pure 'why the fuck not?' goofiness at a high level of casual expertise. (Do folks realize what a talented jazz drummer Jon Fishman is?)

During Phish's mid-90's solidification, Tweezer was one of the band's great outstretched blank canvases for experimentation, and the gorgeous 8/1/98 version recalls the song's old pre-funk variety while maintaining all the emotional depth and patience that characterize the band's music since the watershed Fall '97 tour. This is a divine Tweezer: understated, precise late-nite music that ends with dark dissolution rather than climax precisely because all four band members are prepared to follow even half-formed impulses. It's 'ambient' jamming of a sort and (unsurprisingly) wouldn't be out of place in the Lemonwheel 'Ring of Fire' set, but the darkness of the closing few minutes prefigures the evil ambience of 12/28/98. Fluffhead is the perfect tonic after this complex exploration. What a set! (There are four more songs after Fluff's Travels, but by this point the set is past peak intensity and interest.)

Get this show. Get this show.

The second-set opener is a unique Stash that dissolves into one of Fall Tour's most stunning ambient passages - not just a transitional 'noise space' (cf. summer '09) but a brief, fully-integrated meterless jam in the *middle* of the jam. Stash has always brought the best out of Phish, and 1997 was a fine year for the tune (check out 11/23, 11/30, and *especially* 7/2), so when I say that this is one of the best Stashes of 1997 and could slip into the Top Ten Ever, you've gotta take my full meaning.

Oh hey, and Phish played a whole concert that night! Whaddaya know? :)