so last week i tacitly suggested that maybe '94 phish was not nearly as good as it gets credit for. then i listened to this show the next day and it slapped me across the mouth for my impertinence.
good god. there are bands who can be more technically proficient live than '94 phish, there are bands that can improvise better than '94 phish. but there is no band i've ever heard in my life that can do both at the same time so well as this era of this band. i'd forgotten, and was immediately reminded why people have complained about phish live for 15 years. because they never have been and never will be as flat-out good as they were then. does that mean that they're not worth listening to now? of course not. this summer '94 tour was like catching lightning in a bottle; it's so good you feel like there must be some sort of mystical, ghostly force that decided to infuse the band's instruments with the power to play the music of the cosmos.
no, seriously, it's so good it's driving me to a fucking histrionic breakdown.
anyway, here's the set.
to avoid just bellowing superlatives for ten paragraphs, i'll just hit the really, really high points:
- "rift". this version of "rift" is amazing, and amazingly fast.
- this "AC/DC bag" was so exciting that i broke into spontaneous horn-jamming:
- the entire second half of the first set has no particular standout, but is pretty much the epitome of the improv/technical brilliance i was ranting about above. every song boomerangs out into places you don't expect, with everyone still hitting every note, and then when the do wrap back around to the typical parts of the songs, they do so with a speed and a skill that's rare even for phish.
- maybe my favorite part of this show is the opening of the second set. i very keys-heavy "peaches en regalia", followed by a "bowie" that takes about six minutes to even get started due to three distinct but equally brilliant improv jams the band breaks out in sequence. then, when "bowie" finally hits in earnest, it's one of the best versions i've heard yet, with a groove in the middle that needs to be heard to be believed.
- the other highlight of the second set is "you enjoy myself". for a phish song i've probably heard a few hundred times by now, this version did a great job of throwing in some curves that i still didn't expect, and made a great closing case for this being one of the best shows i've ever heard.
- the encore is simple, short, and perfect in terms of song selection. what else would you end a show like this with besides "tweeprise"?
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