[This is a very long Phish post. It's aimed at people who aren't necessarily fans, but it's still...a very long Phish post. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.]
The period known to fans as 'Phish 2.0' stretched from the first day of 2003 (the worrisome comeback show at Madison Square Garden) to mid-August 2004 (the catastrophic farewell festival in Vermont). In that time Phish played 63 shows over four relatively short tours and a trio of multi-night stands (Hampton '03, the 20th anniversary run, Vegas '04).
It was a weird, fascinating time for the band, as I've talked about elsewhere. In the mid-90's it was a big event for a Phish tune (other than the long composed suites) to stretch beyond 20 minutes; by summer 2003 one could reasonably expect one or two such monster jams per show. Yet something was a little off; the energy couldn't be sustained, or the music ran its course, and personal problems certainly obtruded; within 18 months of their shaky-but-thrilling reunion and very successful winter 2003 tour, Phish were broken up, this time (it seemed) for good.
They're back together now, more focused and energetic than any time in the last decade, and it makes sense to consider what went on during that wild interregnum, to get a better handle on what they're doing now.
In that spirit, I'd like to present a mix of 2003-04 Phish, with notes on what to listen for, even how to listen, where this music fits in the band's history, what it says about their unique improvisatory methods.
The ideal ordering principle for this mix turned out to be chronology, so here come 30 tracks, from two to sixty minutes in length, in thirteen segments. You can find audience recordings of all of the tracks at sites like phishows.com and phishthoughts.com, or (for a fee, in soundboard format) livephish.com. The [mp3] links below, where present, point to phishows.com.
2/16/03 Disease > Seven Below > Disease > Anything > Piper > Disease > Makisupa (mp3)
This is the most 'conventional' selection of the group in pre-2003 Phish terms; 'Down With Disease' segues into 'Seven Below' on the back of Fishman's drumming, which shifts from the generic driving 4/4 of DWD into the sly beat of the newer tune over the course of a full minute or so, which Trey immediately picks up on to initiate the new song. A very smooth, patient transition - the best Phish segues have this same organic evolutionary quality, and many of the best sets in Phish history (12/6/97 II, 12/31/95 II/III, 2/17/97 II, 11/30/94 II, 7/2/97 II, etc.) string together a series of such attentive transitions.
This set is unusually self-referential as well - Trey brings the band back into DWD not once but twice, in different keys each time, at the climaxes of 'Seven Below' and 'Piper' alike. That kind of bookending is the hallmark of an exceptional set, and when it occurs naturally (rather than as a plan, or interrupting a smooth musical flow with an out-of-place idea) it's always the highlight of the touring week.
Listen especially for the complex four-way groove that emerges seven minutes into 'Seven Below,' the key change that announces the first DWD reprise, and - above all - the unbelievably patient evolutionary groove that constitutes the second half of this maybe-best-of-tour 'Piper,' which climaxes twice: first with Trey's anthemic chording around 16:00, which he plays in ascending inversions each time he takes a solo break, and again, purely for the hell of it, with the DWD invocation in the final two minutes of the jam. This is classic Phish with new '2.0' sonics (Trey's uncompressed tone, Mike's pointed new bass sound, Page's arsenal of electronics, Fishman's fatter drumming and looser snare), easing the crowd and the band from one familiar variety of improvisation into a new era. The smooth modulation into 'Makisupa' is pure gravy, a stoned chillout before the set-closing 'Character Zero.' Hear how giggly Trey is on the 'spliff' keyword - he knows how well-wrought the whole set has been.
2/25/03 Theme > Jim
'Theme from the Bottom' has long been a soaring, well-wrought tune saddled with a problematic jam; Phish's usual approach has been to play a great noisy wall of sound and just wail into the final vocal reprise after eight or ten minutes. This long version is much more clearly articulated than usual, speeding up after the first few minutes and getting funkier-than-normal rhythmic treatment halfway through the track. That's mostly very good. On the one hand, this more spread-out sonic approach flattens some of the differentiation between 'the "Theme" jam' and every other 2003 jam; a certain mid/uptempo 4/4 rock jam was standard fare for Phish that year, moreso than in their more stylistically-varied idea-per-minute past (cf. the second link at the top of this post). Indeed, around 11:30 this 'Theme' jam drops into the sort of loping bluesy-funk jam you'd find in any of a dozen Phish tunes. On the other hand, it liberates this particular performance of the tune: within a half-minute Trey starts chording triumphantly to bring us back to the original 'Theme' chords, and the vocal-closing onset is less sudden than usual, maybe more affecting. A little vocal improvisation, the closing chords...and suddenly Trey and Fishman start up a new dark groove in a slightly faster tempo...
...which Page and Mike pick up (on piano and bass, respectively), and which washes out into 'Runaway Jim' after a moment. This is an exceptionally delicate 'Jim,' a collective choice perhaps meant (unconsciously?) to contrast with the chunky 'Theme' jam and ominous bridging groove. Fantastic rhythm work here under Trey's bold sustains - again, not an unprecedented jam, but Phish had set some decent precedents in the preceding 19 years, so that's alright.
Methodological note: because the 'Jim' jam doesn't peak before the closing guitar figures come around, Trey's semi-written melody signal can serve as a structure for the final improvisation; listen around 9:30 as the intensity rises by steps, the build sounding almost composed in part because the band now knows exactly where it's going and how much longer it has to get there. The gain in precision and clarity trades away a little complexity for the band - and the effect is worth it, this time, because the jam itself has been so pleasant. A less cohesive early improvisation would've made the stepwise closing seem unearned.
2/26/03 Stash (mp3)
After the 9:00 mark: 'Children, this is a little game we like to call "Hunt the Downbeat."' The next three minutes are just a divine, playful improvised pizzicato/staccato quartet, and at 12:00 comes a declaration of intent from Anastasio (in the form of that slower blues figure) that Gordon immediately picks up on (with a gnarly flatted-sixth bass call), which Fishman punctuates with some rolls on the high toms and away we goddamn go. Not the only great 'Stash' of Phish 2.0 (listen to the scorching NYE 2003 version for the heaviest 2.0 take) but still my favourite. The smoothness with which the band raises, lowers, and then climactically raises the music's intensity is a mark of their comfort and empathy on this winter 2003 tour - and while summer would bring billowing rock anthems galore, this sort of prickly, almost mathematical improv-assembly is really made for indoor shows.
Probably the most 'old school' jam in this collection. I was lucky to be present for what might arguably be the best start-to-finish Phish concert of February 2003, though the special Jones Beach show two nights later is the consensus tour heavyweight.
7/9/03 Gin
Here's the schema, folks: Theme > elaboration > clav/woodblock double-time funk groove > guitar-driven rock expansion > eerie/ambient movement > half-time gathering > theme > out. Rearrange or substitute those components and you have a road map to a number of the big post-hiatus Phish jams. Notice how Trey moves from accompanist to lead voice around 14:30, suggesting a i-IV chord framework after the modal funk groove. Page moves to the Hammond organ, and by 15:30 Trey is definitely leading the show again. The rock groove that forms after the funk breakdown is canonical summer '03 stuff, and after 16:00 is busy showing his extraordinary versatility, alternately serving as his own rhythm guitarist and throwing down blues/rock leads. One of his big steps forward after 1999 was to learn how to integrate those two roles in the band, making juicy chordal playing part of his lead-guitar vocabulary.
Just a strong, complex Phish jam, and a great start to summer.
7/17/03 Tweezer > Makisupa
Another representative jam, which through the first ten minutes is just a fun rocking 'Tweezer' - chunky midtempo barroom rock that reaches a peak of sexual energy and stays there. After thirteen minutes, though, it takes a turn into new-but-familiar country, with five full minutes of spacey textures from all four players and a subtle build around 17:00 that wouldn't be out of place at the end of a Pearl Jam album. I include this jam largely because of the organic way the boys come back from the brief ambient excursion, working their way right back to the 'Tweezer' rhythms on the back of Fishman's patient drums around 19:00 on their way to a lightning-quick reprise of the theme and silky-smooth segue into 'Makisupa Policeman,' with Trey playing no more than two bars of upstrokes before the rest of the band is into the reggae with him. This 'Makisupa' includes a stupid/funny 'Dust in the Wind' jam, which cools the crowd out nicely after the studious intensity of 'Tweezer.' A careful, layered version of the band's venerable big-jam vehicle, drawing on the key elements of their '2.0' jamming style without exhausting them.
7/25/03 Hood > Bowie (mp3)
This is it, folks: one of the very few must-hear versions of 'Harry Hood' after the beloved 12/30/95, certainly the biggest most far-reaching 'Hood' ever, and probably the 'gotcha!' freakout of the whole summer. The first nine minutes are standard-beautiful I-V-IV stuff, but then Trey starts playing those cascading textural lines, at 9:40 hits an unexpectedly aggressive chord, at 10:15 a surprise blues lick, and then we're off to the races. Minor-blues tonalities creep in after twelve minutes, and though Fishman recurs to the hazy 'Hood' rhythm every couple of measures, Trey is driving the jam in a rock direction, which Page and Mike are happy to roll with. After fourteen minutes or so the jam recalls the middle passage of the 2/26/03 'Stash,' complete with Fishman's hair-raising tom-tom work. Notice how busy the bass is in here - without the low-register bombs grounding the four-man chord there's a sense of the entire performance shifting at once, and Fishman is wise to lock down a rock beat on the kit, which Trey responds to with what I laughably think of as a Naughty by Nature reference somewhere around 16:40.
There's a little vocal texture around 19:00, when the jam has cooled out and the band is regrouping. This is typical of summer 2003 jams: big rock improv brackets restrained passages where the band gathers its strength and focus. Ten years prior these quiet passages would have been unbearably boring to the band, and they'd have (over)compensated by charging headlong into the first idea - or rather, distraction - that came to mind. In 1997 the quartet nailed down its weird brand of long-form funk improv and learned how to let time just...pass, which let them overcome the attention-deficit problem that made its early shows so schizophrenic (and necessitated the coat of defensive comedy-irony).
Anyhow, the jam simmers down to silence before building up ever so slowly to a reprise of the good ol' I-V-IV, led by Trey's hyperactive attempts to play, apparently, every note in existence in the space of eight bars. This 'Hood' is weirdly structured: the traditional build occurs not within the primary jam's chords but indirectly, over the course of the full half-hour, as the jam grows seemingly without bound and band and fans seem to lose sight of the tonal homebase. It's worth noting that the whole 29-minute jam is technically all in the same key - the number of variations the band comes up with is pretty darn impressive, considering.
Not much of a segue into 'Bowie,' but you don't have to be a jerk and complain about it. And it's good to have a 'Bowie' in there. This is a mildly weird version, heading in a couple of different tonal directions before winding up for the big minor-chord splash at the end. But the 'Hood' is the main event.
The whole show is worth hearing, largely on the strength of its obscene second set, complete with 'Kung' chant and a host of genuine → segues. (On further reflection, this might not even be the best 'Hood' of the summer - the 7/31 performance is similar but with a smoother consistency. No such thing as a wrong decision there!)
7/30/03 Twist > Bug (mp3)
'Twist' was a big jam vehicle after the 2000-02 hiatus; the all-time great version is still probably 6/14/00 II (the best set of that uneven year), but 2003-04 saw a host of blown-out 'Type II' versions (leaving behind the song's chord structure). That's not unusual for that time period, when Trey in particular seemed impatient to head out into the musical nether regions every time, often at the cost of sloppy composed playing. But this gnarly version is a pure rhythmic/textural playground - Fishman throws down a whoa-nelly bluegrass beat in the middle there, and if the band never quite figures out how to capitalize on it, everyone sticks with the groove (to their credit) for several minutes, trying new things, cooking up a thick musical stew atop Mike's effects-laden bass. Eventually they just climb the scale, crescendo 'til they're raving, and spread the resulting melted mess all over the crowd in the form of what wants to be a 'Seven Below' segue.
This jam is a precursor to the megalithic '46 Days' that arrived just four days later; its darkness and murk, the weird unsteady relationship between the chordal playing and the rhythm bed, and the eventual escape into an unexpectedly delicate outro all prefigure the masterpiece that was the real climax of summer, indeed of all 2003. It's instructive to hear these elements juuuuuuuuuuuust failing to cohere on this date (which also saw a monstrous half-hour 'Scents and Subtle Sounds'), then falling effortlessly into place after nine hours of exhaustive, exhausting experimentation at the end-of-summer IT festival. After an experiment like this, a cooldown is necessary; the go-to coda in 2003 was 'Bug,' which is perfectly placed here. Probably no one has ever specifically requested this odd little song, but complaints about its climactic, cathartic outro jam are equally unlikely.
Between this 'Twist' and the next few tracks you see the stretch marks start to show - and 2004, I think, saw the band turn away from some of these musical movements specifically. More on that later.
8/2/03 Rock and Roll > Seven Below > Scents > Spread > Bug (mp3)
I'm biased, as I was there for this extraordinary festival show, but this run of tunes gets my pick for best suite of 2003. Nine minutes in to the 'Rock and Roll' you get a huge eight-bar windup from the full band - echoes of the empathetic, aggressive old days - after which they bring the volume down but not the intensity, with Trey soloing in his lower register as if he's never seen the underside of middle-C before. Fishman teases the 'Seven Below' rhythm for fully five minutes before the full band swings around (via Trey's unexpected open-fourths magic chords and some colourful electronic washes from Page); the band makes merry doubletime/halftime sport of the new tune until Mike insists on the eerie opening to 'Scents and Subtle Sounds'; nine minutes into that tune we get into a spicy hybrid of 'Scents' and 'Seven,' eventually getting back around to the piano-rock vibe of 'Rock and Roll'; the segue into the second-ever airing of 'Spread It Round' is seamless, and that tune erupts into an electric-noise freakout offering a preview of the night's 'Tower Jam' (see below); and again, we get a 'Bug' to take us home.
The set stands comfortably between the distended long-form jams of summer '03 and the more clearly-intentioned narratives of earlier days, and wanders from the playful mock-martial beat of 'Spread It Round' to the electric sludge of...whatever 'Spread It Round' mutates into. The boys knew they'd done right by this third set of the festival: the night's encore was a chatty hangout scene capped by a barn-burning reading of 'Mango Song.'
Listen especially for the way the band layers the natural idioms of each new song atop the palimpsest of the set to that point - 'Spread It Round' collapses under the accumulated weight of the driving cock-rock of 'Rock and Roll,' 'Seven Below''s sprightly movement, the declamatory I-IV dance of 'Scents,' and the loopy songbook punctuation of 'Spread' itself. Bug is the perfect palate cleanser. This is perhaps the natural length for Phish jams - the 'classic' tracks often stretch beyond 20 minutes, but the 12-to-15-minute scale seems to bring out the best in most of their tunes. Any shorter and you're sticking to one strong declarative; longer, and the whole enterprise needs to be mobile and mutable (which is, of course, awfully difficult). I love the 30-minute blowouts, but brainy segues were a bigger part of the band's rep back in the day.
8/2/03 Tower Jam (mp3)
Late, late on the first night of the IT festival, Phish played an hourlong free-improv set from the top of an air traffic control tower at the Air Force base where the show was held. They were accompanied by spectacular lights, billowing smoke, and aerial dancers suspended on ropes halfway down the tower, in a multimedia wee-hours weird-out session. This track - the most unique post-hiatus Phish music - is the result.
The first thing to note is that, compared to even the eeriest material from the 7/30 'Twist' and 7/17 'Tweezer,' much of the Tower Jam is gnarly, confrontational sludge-rock offering little to latch on to thematically. The boys seemed to be directly representing some kind of UFO takeoff maneuver in sound, rather than evoking it through the filter of a traditional musical assembly (though admittedly this kind of free playing is itself part of a particular post-60's jazz tradition). It's instructive to listen to a give segment of the jam to determine which band member is deliberately throwing off any full-fledged rock groove that might start to emerge; the intent is very specific here, and the jam sounds quite like it's supposed to: open eerie sci-fi soundtrack, definitely not a 'song.' Not until around 48:00 does a pure melodic expression emerge in the form of the weekend's most soothing minute of music, a simple major-chord unfolding that briefly recalls the hourlong ambient explorations in Fukuoka on 6/14/00. Of course Fish and Trey smash that feeling of calm with a wash of guitar noise, feedback, and crashing cymbals. On the other side of a noisy explosion Page gives us some celestial-darkness sounds and we're done.
The same basic shape would also emerge in the next night's '46 Days,' our next track, but that jam rides more identifiable rhythmic and tonal ideas; its first half echoes the noise-space of the Tower Jam, but the boys let themselves get somewhere contemplative afterward, which wasn't allowed on the Tower.
One difference between the ambient jams of 1998 and the spacey improvisations of 2003 is the freedom with which the band moves in and out of rhythm in the later shows; the band's initial long-form ambient experiments seemed to pull at the fabric of their baseline improvisations, whereas the post-hiatus band simply spread the music out into a rhythmless wash and cohered again, treating time as something wholly elastic (hmm), fully integrating the big rock'n'roll vibe of their dance jams with wide-open textural playing. A number of people have pointed to likely chemical sources for this style; I won't comment other than to say that the music hadn't yet fallen apart in 2003, was stretched beyond the comfortable scale of Phish's best years (1997 to arguably 1999) into something less shapely but still exciting and undeniably beautiful. As I've said, many 2003 Phish jams include segments where the band seems to gather itself, letting the music extend and empty briefly without losing the groove so as to allow new dynamics to emerge. That willingness to explore (and leave behind!) local maxima and minima in the course of a given jam is one of the key strengths of later Phish, which the triumphant first tour of 2009 hasn't yet displayed.
All this said, the Tower Jam doesn't reward close headphones listening the way the other big jams on this mix do, but between the Tower and the next night's '46 Days' you can hear most of what made summer 2003 a giddy, slightly unnerving time for Phish fans (and, one suspects, the band as well).
8/3/03 46 Days (mp3)
I've written about this one elsewhere so I'll just say a couple of things here.
'46 Days' is pure drunken strutting cock-rock; this version illustrates the band's post-hiatus tendency to get beyond the basic mood of each song with great speed - maybe impatience? - and dive back into what seems like an ongoing conversation within the band. Trey solos for less than two minutes here before he's laid down a haze of guitar noise, and the next half-hour is unusually patient free improv, with clear chords emerging only sporadically before about the 25:00 mark. It's not quite right to call the music 'languorous,' though it's wonderful accompaniment to idly strolling through a city at night. Rather, it's focused but unhurried, attentive yet spacious, with each player contributing constantly to a subtly-changing bed of rhythm and tone without forcing the jam to say any one thing in particular.
In 1996 the band recorded a half-hour weird-noise experiment at Bearsville Studios, called 'The Blob,' in which each musician could add or take away a phrase in a slowly-evolving group improvisation/composition. (Part of this musical mass survives on the Billy Breathes album track 'Steep.') The point? Learning to let go, to speak freely and deliberately at once, to listen in new ways for the possibilities in an evolving composition. The languid segment of '46 Days' following the noisy washout around 22:00 evokes this spirit of generous co-creation, demonstrating just how far the band came as improvisors in seven years.
(Rock years and jazz years pass at quite different rates. In seven years Radiohead went from their by-the-numbers debut Pablo Honey to the best-of-decade Kid A; it's the difference between the Beatles' first album and Sgt Pepper's. By comparison, John Coltrane recorded every one of his Impulse! albums in seven years - that amount of time could include Kind of Blue on one end and Ascension on the other. And Miles Davis went from his first album with Wayne Shorter, through Silent Way and Jack Johnson and Bitches Brew, to On the Corner in seven goddamn years.
No real point to this exercise, I confess. And in any case Shakespeare tops them all - he went from Twelfth Night to Hamlet in a single year, and cranked out Othello, Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra between 1604 and 1607. We're all lazy slobs.)
2004 Headphones Jam
This is an in-studio jam from the Undermind sessions - what would be Phish's last recordings before their five-year separation, Trey's painkiller addiction and rehabilitation, and the 2009 reunion shows and return to steady work. The band was recording at Trey's barn in Vermont, they started jamming as the engineer set up his equipment, and Bob's your uncle.
Start here for a sense of the tune. Yeah, there are hints of 'Spooky' in there, but mostly it's Mike playing eccentric basslines and refusing to settle the groove into old-fashioned tonalities, Page being his usual tastefully charming self over on the keys, Fishman sounding loose as a goose on the drums, and Trey...this is the most casually observant, freewheeling Trey in the whole mix. Listen at the 28:00 mark to Trey's soundtrack-anthem melodies - the rock show doesn't usually leave space for that kind of statement, but Trey's dedicated to a particular sound here and it frees him up to play in a deceptively sloppy way. The last five minutes feel like a dance remix of the Tower Jam's closing, and point toward the lightning-quick dance-rock that would fill so many minutes of the 6/04 tour.
This band sounds subtly different from the group that produced the Tower Jam and IT '46 Days,' and not just in terms of electrical tones. There's an unself-conscious messiness to the Headphones Jam, a border between the adventurous summer '03 jams and the less varied (though still exciting) 6/04 and depressing 8/04 material. There are stretch marks on this band; the music never quite took its old shape again. Five years would have to pass before Phish could return to its roots as expert performers and extrapolators of complex songs, rather than slumming party-rock experts. There's some great stuff in 2004, but this is the last you'll hear of 2003's complexity and focus.
6/19/04 Ocean > Piper > Jibboo > Limb (mp3)
Another seventy minutes of gratifying segues and big open-air anthems. Summer music. I was at this show too, and came away thinking it was the perfect sendoff for the band: after a stormy 'Song I Heard the Ocean Sing' the second set seems to consist entirely of big joyous climaxes, from a thunderous 'Tweezer Reprise' jam in 'Piper' to a big I-IV-VIIb-IV rockout session to close 'Limb By Limb,' with a breezy trip through the feelgood 'Jibboo' for dance flavour. My next two shows were the August Great Woods dates, one of them fun but underwhelming and the other flat-out terrible, so maybe I should've stayed home after this scorcher. But the SPAC show also hints at the limitations of Phish's 2004 jamming model: after Fishman's midstick-cymbal drumming kicks off the 'Ocean' jam in appropriate watery style, Trey takes over with busy lead lines atop accompaniment that never quite coheres, and the second half of the track settles into a big, pleasant, wholly undistinguished midtempo 4/4 groove. It's cool to hear Page producing such a dense keyboard sound, and the end of the jam has some of the bombast of a good mid-90's 'Tweezer,' but it doesn't really go anywhere, and it's a long track. It feels long.
Well, Piper is 60% longer, so gird yourself for battle, but I say it gets a pass for its sheer cock-rock excess and the surprise left turn around thirteen minutes in. At 13:50 Fishman starts in with some half-time rimshots under busy bass and spare, eerie guitars; at 15:00 we're into another 'Tweezer' jam, which goes on for more than five minutes without quite taking off. And somewhere in the 22nd minute everyone latches onto the obvious impulse and starts playing 'Tweezer Reprise' in all but name - makes sense given that half the set has been variations on a 'Tweezer' groove. Ask yourself: is that what you want to hear? If you like techno the answer might well be 'yes,' but it's more complicated for those who assume songs are meant to sound like themselves rather than that one midtempo bar-band Phish tune. The 'Tweeprise' jam is exactly as thrilling as all the fans say, pretty much the definitive 'We'll never play this song again after summer' version of 'Piper,' and it goes on for something like seven minutes.
That's the challenge here: are you interested in hearing noisy elaborations on a pounding rock groove for the entire length of the song 'November Rain'? Bear in mind, this isn't some purely repetitious 'She's So Heavy' trance; every 8 or 16 bars you get a new solo idea, and that keeps up for a damn long time. It's impressive in a way. But until the half-hour mark the jam is basically one fun idea taken to illogical, ecstatic extremes. At 31:00 Fishman does a neat trick with his hi-hat and the dance party is on. Question: after pumping your fist in the air in honour of the rock gods for a half-hour, do you want a dance party? What kind of mood does that imply among band and fans? Who plays what feels like a continuous 70-minute crescendo?
The segue into 'Jibboo' takes five full minutes to materialize; you know it's coming the whole time (if you know the song) but the band is in no hurry. Its admirable, and would be moreso if everyone were sober and this were a scrupulously constructed party set instead of relaxed intuition. And yet isn't musical 'intuition' something you develop over the years? And didn't Phish take a long time to get so relaxed? So what the hell am I complaining about? And yet, and yet...
...and yet it's the best 'Limb By Limb' ever by some standards. Not as delicate as 6/16/00 or 8/16/97 or 11/2/98, though that's not the point - this is a knotty improvisation that circles excitedly before seemingly topping out with Big Rock Chords after seven and a half minutes. Trey seems to burst through clouds at the 8:00 mark and just starts wailing away, tossing in one more chord and trying a series of variations before settling, after 30 seconds, on a huge I-VI-VIIb-VI progression. Mike agrees to it a full 30 seconds later, freeing Trey to start soloing over the new progression, breaking away after a couple of minutes to fan his upper strings and play melodies instead of those obviously satisfying rock chords. Fishman plays a figure at 10:30 like he's ready to bring it home, but Trey has other ideas, and the drummer responds by demolishing his kit as the Hammond organ cries out and Trey hits his highest notes of the jam.
If it's not the best 'Limb' ever, it feels like it might as well be the last. The whole set feels that way - like they're playing the climax to every jam they've ever played, all at once.
But, again, is that risky musical business? You know how the crowd will react to soaring major chords: same as they have since you formed the band in 1983. Only now those chords aren't serving as a respite from maddening fugal counterpoint and onstage math-rock exercises, they're the whole set. Which is why some people think this is the most fun Phish ever provided onstage, some people find it soporific, and I go back and forth day to day. Listening advice: point your speakers out the window, get some friends together, and dance in the sun. That's what this music was made for, and its purity of purpose is its own recommendation. It's ecstatic art and I fervently hope you can find joy in it.
What's left is farewell.
8/15/04 Wading in the Velvet Sea (mp3)
In spite of it all, this is my favourite 'Wading in the Velvet Sea,' though it excels mainly in its desperation and hesitancy. It's hard to say it's good, exactly. It's heartbreaking.
This is from the final show, the Coventry festival at which the band finally collapsed and shattered and said what was to have been goodbye. The quartet that returned in 2009 was something else - Trey Anastasio is off drugs now, the band members now bring their families along on tour, and they've recommitted to practicing hard and restoring their mid-90's rep as jam-geek perfectionists. The band that covered Dark Side of the Moon on a couple days' notice is probably gone, replaced by middle-aged men less interested in proving their immortality than in playing honourably and honestly, earning respect one show at a time.
Coventry was a disaster. I wanted to go but couldn't, and don't regret it at all. I haven't listened to the whole show - can't bear it.
The spotlight comes up on Page at the keys, he leans in to sing, and he breaks down weeping. Trey tries to pick up the vocals, can barely squawk out his harmony line. It really is an unbearably sad song despite its silly title - 'Someone else will set your clocks / I took a moment from my day' - it's a lovely little image set to Phish's most out-and-out sentimental pop melody. The revised 1998 arrangement calls for extra vocal lines from the band between the two-chord guitar bridge and the solo; the boys gather their strength, sing strong, and nail the final words. It's an interesting tune in some ways - no chorus as such, just a lilting chant in two- and three-part harmony under the other composed parts.
Trey's solo is pure catharsis. He can hardly play at this point - between the drugs and the overpowering sadness of the occasion the band couldn't quite sync up for most of the June shows, and the music suffered in terms of precision. But Anastasio's awesome melodic imagination shines through, the wrenching sound of the guitar captures the meaning of that difficult weekend, and the full band rallies with him, taking the song to unbearable level of melancholy intensity. This performance leaves me drained.
Afterward, Trey gave a teary speech about Phish's history, and declared at the end, 'We need to blow off some fucking steam...because I just keep looking at the clock...' The band followed with a deadly half-hour 'Split Open and Melt' that seemed to banish all four men's demons; the final set of the weekend was a goof-off session complete with onstage improvised songwriting, tributes to the crew, and laughter all around.
I like to think that they never lost sight of the ordering principle that kept them together for more than twenty years (even during the hiatus it felt like they were together): four friends walking onstage together, trusting one another completely, sharing their joy at one another's company and creativity. That joy and trust shines through every note they ever played, no matter what else weighs on the music, no matter what form or style the art itself takes. That I can share in their fellowship through music and the experience of traveling to their concerts has been one of the joys of my own life, and I wish - in my limited way - to share it with you.
See you when the lights go down.
Your last paragraph articulates something that I always suspected, but never knew how to say. When Trey yells "Play it Leo!!", Page plays equally to the audience and his bandmate's delight. I love the idea we can share in their fellowship, which is perhaps why it was so brutal in 99-00 and 04 to see the addictions take hold.
Posted by: Matso | 26 June 2009 at 05:05 AM
I agree with that 100 percent!
Posted by: The Wagger | 27 June 2009 at 04:54 AM
For another one of Fishman's perfect segments, another segment in which he makes all the difference, in which he takes a segment and makes it more than just Trey-solos-above-bandmates, in which he takes a relatively mundane structure and carries it elsewhere, check out the "Jesus Left Chicago" from 7-21-03.
Posted by: b23 | 29 June 2009 at 11:20 PM
Or is that 7-13-03? I'm too lazy to check. It's in July, in any case.
Posted by: b23 | 29 June 2009 at 11:21 PM
Heavy. Drippy. Great reading though...you are an assett to the community. Very enjoyable.
Posted by: Mr Misty | 30 June 2009 at 04:18 PM
^if that's the gorge wolfmans->jesus left chicago, i'm right there with ya.
of only a handful of shows i saw of them in '03, that one moment was probably tops. fish sliced that chunky rhythm PERFECTLY on the downbeat and literally started interweaving the slower, straight up blues of that zz top song. he would play that rhythm for a few measures, and then BOOM! right back into the funk for an equal number of bars.
a few of us started to pick up on the count so you could totally blow lesser dancer's minds with precision :)
Posted by: kevin are hollo | 30 June 2009 at 04:30 PM
wolfmans -> Jesus. Yep, that's the one.
Posted by: b23 | 30 June 2009 at 04:42 PM
HUGE KUDOS, wax, for opening up some ears to what's probably the most maligned era of phish.
props, too, for taking the time to provide elaborate listening notes (something I think is completely warranted and even necessary given song lengths, probably why i always loved c. dirksen even if he's afraid of evil trey).
and big ups....for telling the band how to style their title ;)
Posted by: kevin are hollo | 30 June 2009 at 04:52 PM
taking in the stash...
a manteca-like passage develops (10:00) but quickly fades. why is that one so hard to hold on to? (cf. best piper i witnessed, target center '99)
i love page's washes on clav, so perfect and greatly enhance the sense of DREAD (both of the rasta and more literal variety).
this kind of poly rhythmic playing is really remiscent of mid-90s (think '94 tweezers), albeit a little sloppier, but i could listen to those chugging train-off-the-tracks beats all day. everyone's listening and de-railing together.
i've written elsewhere about the QUIET or SILENCE that to my mind seems necessary for these kind of deviations, and sure enough, this great session starts with a moment of near quiet before things erupt.
Posted by: kevin are hollo | 01 July 2009 at 10:37 AM
now the hood...
it's the same thing! love it!
so fucking playful and mature, but also chock full of that brooding dark energy that is the hallmark of great phish.
phish's start/stop beat could be a hallmark as well, that push-pull that forces everyone to force angularities into their playing, it's very much an ATTACK thing, yeah?
massive attack
around 14:00, trey starts hitting the metal riffs that once upon a time signaled a charge into chaos-mode. so controlled now, though, and he still wants to play manteca (16:50). it's almost as if the better moments from this tour were perfect encapsulations of historic techniques that somehow resurfaced in light of heavy opiate/narcotic use.
Posted by: kevin are hollo | 01 July 2009 at 11:02 AM
"i've written elsewhere about the QUIET or SILENCE that to my mind seems necessary for these kind of deviations, and sure enough, this great session starts with a moment of near quiet before things erupt."
kev - agreed. I am slowly making my way through June 09 and finally got to DC Set II this morning on the train. This set seems to have the best - and amongst the only - true examples of Type II playing from this tour. Is it, therefore, any surprise that in the case of the SIHTOS, this begins with a Johnny B Fishman Perfect Segment that forces some Quiet, and in the case of Drowned (once the lesson has been re-learned), it also emerges out of some more Quiet?
Posted by: Matso | 02 July 2009 at 05:39 AM
Hello all -
b23 - Damn, I hadn't ever listened to that Wolfman's > Jesus, I guess - a fantastic transition. The boys often make good use of segues into 'Jesus Left,' which are so simple to signal and involve the band bringing everything waaaay back in volume and (usually) tempo. Fits with kev/Matso's observation about the best jams starting from quiet/reflection. That's what I mean about portions of jams when the band seems to 'gather' itself - just letting the groove carry everyone along for a moment, cooling out a little, making room for something wholly new.
The ALO Hood is my favourite example of that phenomenon, where it doesn't quiet down exactly but does reach a plateau (a local minimum?) and makes no bold statements for a minute or two. Like an invitation for the band to inhale deeply before proceeding.
The best '09 stuff has generally involved cooling out, laying low, letting pressure build slowly. Which has always been true, but the usual Hood/Reba/Slave low→loud model hasn't predominated in this loud anthemic-rock year, so there's more of a contrast when the boys actually find a landing point to rest. The last couple shows of tour certainly hit those high points...
(It's too early in the morning for me to have interesting thoughts, alas!)
Posted by: Wax Banks | 02 July 2009 at 10:21 AM
^i'm loving Quiet with a capital Q.
::enter feelings::
after the fox, i was resigned to letting go a little bit, of not getting swept up in the potentiality of everything. it was not unexpected, but there's a huge part of me that would rather phish be a historical entity, something to be studied, analyzed, celebrated, the subject of scholarship and debate. the other pole? a band that is dedicated to sweating it out, warts and all, playing good honest music for an increasingly humanitarian/hedonist crowd (no news flash there) but in all likelihood never quite reaching the irations of years past.
there's some sadness with a statement like that, some defeat. the ethos of this band rests on forward progress, yeah? and if it's all playing catch up and fumbly fingers and occassional glimpses into that netherworld? what promise?
and yet....
i'm still intrigued by the three-day halloween bash. :)
Posted by: kevin are hollo | 02 July 2009 at 10:25 AM
on the 02/16/03 piper...
@12:20, listen to trey turn down the volume!
tings FINALLY get interesting.
Posted by: kevin are hollo | 02 July 2009 at 10:46 AM
WOW!
@16:40, the breakdown is complete and gives trey the space to consummate that new progression!!!
this is by far the coolest bit i've heard from any piper. a whole new song develops, something that could be extracted and made into its own organ.
for the best of this, cf. split open & melt, 6.21.94
Posted by: kevin are hollo | 02 July 2009 at 10:50 AM
Ugh, the 'Limb by Limb' should say I-IV-VIIb-IV for that final progression. I can't type, apparently.
Posted by: Wax Banks | 20 September 2009 at 11:04 PM