last weekend, i finally listened to the tapes of the phish gorge shows that i saw this summer, and since i never got around to doing an "official" review at the time, i thought i'd merge a review of the live experience and the recording re-listen. you know. for the hell of it. because i'm not buried under tons of writing for work. oh, wait. yes i am.
anyway, here goes.
night one started off with "down with disease", which was, a bit ironically, one of my least favorite phish songs. imagine my wry amusement when, after seeing phish walk out on stage live for the first time after waiting for 8 years and through a long hiatus, they start playing one of the few songs in their repertoire that i actively dislike. two minutes later, though, i was converted. it was that immediately that i knew that their "reunion" tour was less a gimmick and more a serious attempt to extend the band's legacy. the whole band was pitch-perfect throughout the song, and my first experience with the phish crowd jumping around and dancing joyously will now always be punctuated by trey's guitar riff during the song's first interlude. i remember being dimly aware that i bounced up and down that i was grinning like a giddy idiot already and that i had approximately 6 more hours of phish to go. clearly, i'm a bit biased towards this particular performance of this particular song, but on the recording, it also sounded great.
next up was "ocelot" and "pebbles and marbles". i'm pretty neutral when it comes to "ocelot". it was a solid performance, but whatever. "pebbles and marbles", on the other hand, is one of my favorite phish tunes, and it was the first of a few moments during the show that i was concerned that the boys might have bitten off more than they could chew by choosing such an ambitious setlist. it was great to hear the tune live, but it was a little rough, and on recording, without the crowd's ambiance and excitement, it's downright painful. the band had a lot of trouble with this one.
"possum", as usual, was energetic and a good, solid, simple jamming song to get things back on track, but then it was followed by "sleep". now, i have nothing against "sleep", it's a great, neat little song. but why play it for thousands of people at an amphitheatre? we had made it pretty clear we were there to rock, and yet we get a lead out of the blistering solo at the end of "possum" into "sleep"?
next was "destiny unbound", which i didn't really know (apparently this makes me not a real phish fan). not much to say about this one. "stash" was great, and included a pretty extended, unique jam. unfortunately, its main riff is so distinct that when the notes get flubbed a bit, it really sort of hurts the song for me (it's sort of like trey biffing the arpeggios at the beginning of "YEM"; it's just sort of naturally wince-evoking). yeah, so that happened. and on tape the band's sort-of struggling with parts of the song is even more obvious. fortunately, next up was "sneakin' sally > cavern", which was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. great vocal jam at the end of "sally", straight into the almost-pop of "cavern". live, at the end of the first set i was still absolutely pumped and ready to hear 10-15 more songs i'd never heard in person. on tape, i'm not remembering the show quite as fondly as i maybe once did. a few great moments, but also a few slip-ups at important points in important songs = pretty mediocre first phish set.
set two started with "moma dance > light > taste", a really great start that alleviated most of my discomfort over certain parts of the first set. "moma dance" was a great way to ease into the second set, getting the crowd grooving and letting the band stretch its jamming legs without taking on anything too orchestrated or convoluted. i love "light", especially when it gets the extended intro treatment like it got on this night, and "taste" is pretty much always great.
we had a few seconds to recover from this run of songs before "fluffhead", which is the one song i really wanted to hear and never expected to get to. the band ripped through this one wonderfully, and it's one of the major highlights for me to have on tape and to be able to listen to over and over again. "joy" was next. this was my first time hearing the song, and it's a cute, schmaltzy phish-pop song. not bad, not wonderful. just a good, solid song.
the closing run of the second set was a long "bathtub gin" and "harry hood", followed by a "slave to the traffic light" encore. by itself, this might not have been anything special, but following on the heels of a set that already featured "fluffhead" and extended takes on "moma" and "light", this basically meant a set two/encore run that added up to a handful of songs and about 2 hours of music. phish brought the jam during this part of the show, and hit all the right notes during the composed bits of "fluffhead", "harry", and "slave". neither of those last two have ever really been my favorite phish songs either, but i was converted, especially to "harry", on this particular night. the second set ending with the band climaxing their "harry" jam by belting out the "you can feel good! good! good about hood!" was a pretty epic, great-concert-memory moment.
the band's intensity and their artistry shows through a lot more on the second set recording than on the first, and at the very least i'll be playing the crap out of the back half of this show for a long time.
i'll do a review of the second night as a separate entry, so as not to prolong the typing madness.
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