Phish - November 21, 2009

I have been neglecting this blog and will be catching up with some relatively old shows now. It is not that I haven't been thinking about this show a good bit. I have also listened to it often since the show, courtesy of my friend Mike and the live phish soundboard downloads. That does bring up interesting questions regarding live music these days. Back in the old days, a concert happened and afterword you might discuss it with your friends but listening to it later was not an option. For many of the artists I follow, I am able to obtain a live document of the show.

This particular show was quite different from the one the day before. This was evident well before the show began. Outside the venue, there was none of the surreal drug mart street scene. I assume the police from the night before had decided they had been a bit too permissive. This actually seemed like a relatively normal concert. The band got down to business with three songs I consider to be standard Phish crowdpleasers. Wilson with it's always fun shout out; NICU and Wolfman's Brother - all well played and something of a piece. This contrasted well with the previous night with it's constant mood shifts. This show seems to have been about finding a groove and sitting with it awhile.

Ocelot came next with it's shuffling beat and relatively straight forward, long, gradually building guitar work - a generally mellow song. Next came the first breakout of a song off of the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street (their Halloween costume). I had been hoping for a song from Exile, in particular Shine a Light. That was not to be tonight but the song the did pick, Torn and Frayed, has long been a favorite of mine. Trey did a wonderful job of playing the Pedal Steel guitar part on his electric. Another mellow and thoroughly enjoyable performance. More mellowness followed with arguably their most mellow song, Strange Design, short, sweet and quite beautiful. Also short, sweet and mellow though with a quick tempo came a cover of Norman Blake's Ginseng Sullivan, a song I had been hoping for all year. Another mellow cover song followed that I must admit had me stumped. The guy sitting next to me filled me in that it was Neil Young's Albuquerque. The tempo on this song is so slow that it almost falls apart (but not quite).

Things did shift gears from the mellow-fest into an intense Split Open and Melt. This song may always be intense, with it's insistent rhythms and fracture time signature but this one was particularly abstract, synced beautifully with the light show. The contrast with the before and after this song accented it's strange beauty. Mellowness returned briefly with a nice Dirt.

The set closed with intense crowd pleasers, well played though not taken to any great heights - Limb by Limb and Run Like an Antelope.

The Velvet Underground's Rock & Roll opened the second set - a long jam followed the "song" part of the song - well played, building in intensity slowly over the 12 minutes of the jam section. One of the best jams I saw this year from the Vermont boys. This wound down and segued nicely into a fairly intense Story of the Ghost. This was only about a ten minute Ghost but it felt of a piece with the previous song.

A relatively rare If I Could followed - nicely done with a good long well constructed guitar solo. Backwards Down the Number Line is a fun song, well placed here - not stretched out but clicking on all cylinders. Prince Caspian just seemed to have a bit more intensity than usual. Suzy Greenberg illustrates again what can happen at a Phish concert. Not my favorite song but the crowd and band were in such synergy that I became totally wrapped up in the moment. There was now no pretense at clearing the aisles - it was an 18,000 person dance rave at this point. Page McConnell took over the song with a nice concise synth solo, followed later by an unusually long and intense piano solo that Trey joined at the climax. Another segue straight into Also Sprach Zarathustra kept up the intensity - Mike's bass leading the way now. Some young teens working for the venue, making their way along the walkway were so happy (probably had no idea who Phish were before this weekend) getting high fives from Phish fans as they bopped along. I believe to acknowledge what a great show Page had had, Squirming Coil finished the set. Beautifully played, the solo piano finish with other band members leaving the stage was drawn out and a particularly emotional moment.

Perhaps the emotional finish called for a silly encore. Sleeping Monkey was the call and it did seem quite silly - Fishman's falsetto was perfect. Between songs, Trey stated how much they liked being here and that they wished they could stay all week. A long deafening roar came up from the crowd. The last encore was to fulfill the request of a dedicated sign holder up front, a loud, rocking Axilla.

This show seemed to be about finding a groove and letting it play out for awhile. The five of us that saw both shows had an easy consensus that this one was the better show. I particularly liked getting some unusual songs like Torn and Frayed, Albuquerque, If I Could - and the Bipolar mellow/intense thing they had going at this show.

Phish - November 20 , 2009 - Cincinnati, Ohio

I have been thinking about how to write about a two show run with Phish. Do I pick apart every song, hit the highs and lows, do a sociological analysis of the entire phenomenon? So many choices. I'll probably just mix it up a bit. Cincinnati is a town of my youth with strong memories of Cincinnati Reds games, Rock n Roll concerts and nights of heavy drinking with my old college roommate. Things there have changed quite a bit, Riverfront Stadium is no more, newer buildings have risen. This creates a weird jumble in my brain as I walk to the show.

I arrive at the Millennium Hotel to meet up with my friends and it is awash in Phish fans. I can see why recession hit cities must love Phish coming through as there are lots of out-of-towners who come to spend their cash. As we walk to the elegantly named U.S Bank Arena, I realize that downtown Cinci has been overtaken as well. While there was a fun aspect of this (finding a good veggie burrito on the way for instance) it was a bit freaky seeing throngs of people buying Nitrous Oxide balloons on the street a few hundred yards from the venue. My first thought was that the economic hard times must have hit Cinci so hard that the powers that be do not what to alienate Phish from coming here. Perhaps the police were just clueless.

It is strange being here also because it brings back memories of seeing shows in this place as a teenager. Probably my favorite Rock'N'Roll concert from the Seventies was seeing the Who here in December, 1975. The Who was one of the three biggest bands of that time (along with Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones). This was the era of "Festival" seating, meaning that you were fighting for your best spot. With popular acts, this got quite scary. At the Who show in 1975, a high school friend, Karen Blake, who did not ride to the show with us was hanging out with me and my bunch. She was a lovely and petite lass, who I would have asked out if I had not been so painfully shy at that time. When the few doors opened, there was a mad push for the doors and it got seriously scary, especially for this 5'2", 110 pound girl surrounded by mostly drug and alcohol addled guys. We did survive and saw a rock show for the ages, complete with ringing ears for the next two days. And yes, this is the same venue where 11 Who fans were crushed to death in 1979. I was not at that show but knew folks that were. Ghostly memories aside, I was thankful that Phish Phans are a decidedly more agreeable bunch than Who fans from the 70's.

The first set on Friday really encapsulates what is great about Phish. 1. Rock'n'Roll (Chalkdust Torture), 2. Dance Trance (The Moma Dance), 3. Beautiful Art Rock (The Divided Sky), 4. Shuffling Roots Rock (Alaska), 5. Upbeat Country Rock (Water in the Sky), 6. Ballad (Fast Enough for You), 7. New aged tinged art rock (Time Turns Elastic), 8. Funky nonsense (Gotta Jibboo), 9. Prog rock anthem (Fluffhead). The band seemed to be saying to us, yes we can do all of these things, and well. I do want to comment about how the set finished. This was the third time I have heard Time Turns Elastic. It's a long song (17 minutes) and starts slowly and quietly. After the ballad, the crowd seemed quite restless for the beginning (bathroom break, beer run song). I was determined to give it a close listen as I was still unsure about how much I liked it. By the end, they had built to a big climax, winning over me and engaging the crowd. Gotta Jibboo kept up the intensity with some killer bass work by Mike Gordon. Fluffhead maintained that intensity through it's fifteen minutes and had the crowd on it's feet shouting Fluffhead with all it's might.

The second set continued the variety-fest. Punch You In The Eye is not always played to open a set though, by chance, it has been in the three of four times I have seen it. For me, it is the quintessential opener, short, intense, and in itself encapsulating the variety that Phish brings - thumping, visceral bass opening, piano fueled rumba dance in the middle, Santana-esque clean concise electric guitar solos. Tweezer is as monolithic as songs come for Phish, thumping bass and rhythm guitar and piano as a percussion instrument. Light as the name implies is as light as Tweezer is heavy. Light is well played and uplifting. Back on the Train is a straight forward up tempo rock song. Possum, country rock with the expectation of big guitar climaxes at the end of a linear progression delivered well. Slave to the Traffic Light, is a 180 shift yet again, broad, slow, delicate. You Enjoy Myself is a generous set closer. What can you say about this unique musical invention? Fiendishly difficult composed opening, visceral build to an enigmatic climax, nonsense lyrics, synchronized trampoline jumping over a keyboard solo and an improvised vocal jam to close the set.

The encore underscores my theme of variety being the spice of life. Joy is a wistful ballad, Golgi Apparatus a rousing crowd pleaser complete with Flamenco guitar climax and Tweezer reprise with it's visceral build to a big stomping crescendo.

Overall excellent if not transcendent (but you can't experience that all the time or it would not be thus).