Sunday, February 4, 2024

Phish 1/2/03

 

[Prologue]

After a most satisfactory reunion show, Phish took a day off to recover and travel to Virginia for a very rare post-NYE three show run at the venue perhaps most associated with them, Hampton Coliseum. Indeed, I wonder if some fans and/or the band saw these shows as the “real” reunion. The big pressure was off, the press attention was over (apparently some news outlets really thought Tom Hanks appeared on NYE), and it was time to have the first—for lack of a better term—normal show.

[Set One]

Chalk Dust Torture- You know, this is one of those utilitarian songs in Phish’s catalogue that they use as everything but a ballad: it can open a show or set, it can close a show or set, it can be a jam vehicle, it can be a setup for a great segue, it can help the energy level come up or go down…As it happens on this night, it’s a jam vehicle! Now, this wasn’t the first true jammed out, type II version of ‘Chalk Dust Torture’ but it does give us another dose of Phish finding their footing in group improvisation again. It’s a standard version until about 4:18 when you can start to feel they might be doing something a bit different. After returning to somewhat standard jam fare, around 5:00 there’s a big cheer from the audience—not sure what that’s about. At 5:22 Page starts playing some oblique piano notes, dancing in and out of the rest of the band, and Trey responds at 6:00 with guitar groans and noise as Mike starts to play some warped rhythmic lines. The band again tease going into type II and at 7:22 Trey steps back from the jam almost entirely for a few seconds—probably fiddling with pedals. Ah, yep, there’s the pitch shifter pedal. Mike is playing mostly as texture in the background here; Page jumps on the clavinet. By 9:00 they still haven’t hit upon something that everyone engages with, they start to feel like they’re all going in different directions and not in a fun way. At 9:53 we suddenly get quiet and ambient, as though a fog suddenly settled over the crowd and stage. Trey continues to play with his effects pedals and puts down a couple subtle loops. I think this ‘Chalk Dust Torture’ jam is one of those exemplars of the notion that just because a jam is long doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s also another time you can see them pushing to discover the 2.0 jam style; around 11:57 they almost get somewhere before Trey at 12:18 brings us suddenly back to the standard CDT ‘big rock jam’ ending. All in all it was an interesting jam and show opener but unlike NYE’s ‘Piper’, this one never really gels into something enjoyable and memorable.

Bathtub Gin- Setlists I see online say there’s a > segue into this from ‘CDT’ but that’s a bald-faced lie. Pedantic, I know, but it had to be said. ANYWAY. I guess we aren’t fucking around if they’re following an exploratory ‘CDT’ show opener with ‘Bathtub Gin.’ It’s worth noting that the unfairly derided Hampton ’04 show opens with a ‘CDT’/’Gin’ jammed out one-two punch show opener as well. I’m assuming it has to be intentional and something I never noticed until I listened to this show. ANYWAY! Who doesn’t love ‘Bathtub Gin’? It never disappoints and it’s never not one of the big jams of the night. It’s like when you hear a ‘Tweezer’ or ‘Ghost’ start up, it’s always like, oh fuck yes, here we GO! This ‘Gin’ starts off in typical upbeat, Trey swirling guitar lines-led style. Around 6:00 he steps back briefly as Page hits upon a pretty little filigree melodic lines. At 6:36 we get some funky, chunky sounds from Trey and Mike and Fishman keep the engine powered in the background. Page on funky organ at 7:08ish and it’s starting to feel like ’97 in Hampton Coliseum. 8:05 shows us why Mike is so damn good, with an amazing funky lead line. It starts to feel like they’re maybe jamming on a song or quoting something but I can’t tell what, if anything. Mike is still going strong at 10:00 while the rest of the band continues a fairly standard type I ‘Gin’ jam. Nothing wrong with that, though. It’s about the journey, not the destination, when it comes to ‘Gin’ and actual gin. Around 10:55 Trey plays around with the main ‘Gin’ melody, perhaps leading to an end to the song, but it turns out to be one of those ‘resetting’ revisits of the song’s melody or chorus to get the jam going in another direction. At 12:00 almost exactly, spiraling Trey guitar uplifting lines like he loves to do in the ’bliss’ jams of a ‘Ghost’ or ‘Weekapaug Groove.’ Around 13:00 Trey starts to really catch fire and play slide guitar-sounding lines with a chorus pedal or something going on and off as he jams. We enjoy this vibe for a few minutes until they break back into ‘Gin’ and bring it to a close. All in all, a decent if somewhat standard issue ‘Gin.’ It gets the job done but you wouldn’t serve it to your friends as your best stock.

It's Ice- Trey cracks a joke about the NYE Tom Hanks incident before the song begins. It’s pretty amusing but his clumsy playing of this song’s intro isn’t amusing. One of my unfortunate memories of the 2.0 era is how sometimes it feels like he either just stops playing or only plays the ‘easier’ parts of a song while the rest of the band have to make up for him. And it’s really a shame because I love ‘It’s Ice’—it’s one of those Phish songs that they seem to play just often enough that people know it but still rarely enough that nobody gets sick of it. Well, thankfully, Trey eventually recovers his skills after a few minutes. At 5:00ish we get the spacey/ambient section that is often a bit type II-y around the edges, though I’d have preferred it go on longer and not end with a jarring snare drum hit. A standard, somewhat short ‘It’s Ice’ that wasn’t particularly well played in the first few minutes. Hmmmph.

Back On The Train- Were I a fan going to shows in the ’03 era, I would’ve been looking forward to further performances of this song, since it seems like such a natural jam vehicle but has only occasionally been so. This version starts off with a loose, jammy intro until Trey counts off and they lock in to the groove. Big cheers at the first “took me a long time to get back on the train” lyric, as you might imagine. Trey’s solo around 2:15 is prime 2.0 wonkiness. His guitar tone is muffled and distorted, he seems to stumble at what he’s playing a couple times…it kind of sounds cool and it kind of doesn’t at the same time. Around 4:45 we start to head into a direction that brings to mind the beloved 6/14/00 and 2/28/03 versions, patient and mid-tempo grooves with Trey, Page, and Mike interweaving in a top flight type I jam. At just over 11 minutes this version is definitely a jammy one, though I have to say it’s still bested by the two I mentioned a bit ago. But it’s a case of those being 5s and this one by comparison is more like a 4. All of that said, I’m happy with how jam heavy this first set is so far. Even if none of them are among the best of all time or for the year even, the jams have been flowing steadily.

Round Room- They need to play this song more, god damnit. It’s such a fun song in and of itself, and I’m already going to bring up the fan-fucking-tastic 2/16/03 jammed out version, thankyouverymuch, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do with it in the 3.0/4.0 eras. Also I didn’t think about this until just now, but I think it says a lot that their new album was named after this Mike song. I’m trying to think if any of the others were named after a song by him? Feels like Trey and the guys were being really respectful of him as a fellow artist. Anyway, it’s well played and Page does a pretty good job reproducing the weird keyboard sounds at the end from the album version. Kinda like with ‘Fee’, which sometimes has a bright/calm melodic jam at the end, this one has that feel but with more spacey sounds from Trey and Page. Feels like they’re experimenting with how they want to end this one because Page keeps blasting away with different synth/keyboard sounds until they just all stop. Gotta say, a pretty cool version altogether even if 2/16/03 is my current GOAT.

The Horse- Can I yet again shock you with an opinion? I don’t really understand why this song and ‘Silent In The Morning’ are separated. “But it means they can potentially perform something else in between, or out of order!” you cry. Well, they could still do that, they’ve done it before with single songs. I know, it’s hugely unimportant but it’s always bugged me for some reason. Not much to say here. It’s well played.

Silent In The Morning- It’s well played. Crowd cheers and Page smiles as he sings “just last year!” I have to give the band credit, the vocals are well done. See, not all 2.0 era Phish has off-vocals or badly played composed sections. What I will say, though, is….again, I don’t think Trey’s new guitar tone works super well with the ballads. It’s too raspy and distorted sounding through some of ‘Silent’. Just a personal preference, though.

Stash- ‘Round Room’ through ‘Silent’ was a nicely played comedown after the jams. This takes us back to jam territory. I was a little nervous about hearing a 2.0 ‘Stash’ though I yet again have to give the band credit: I think they mostly nailed this one. Before I get to the jam I have to say, it was around this time in the set I thought “huh this must be the closer, this set is starting to feel a bit long.” Turns out set one of this show is a potent hour and a half, which is longer than any of the NYE sets by at least 20 minutes. And with a band like Phish, whether it’s in a good or bad way for you, dear individual, you really do feel when a set starts to get long. ANYWAY back to the jam. Some excellent type I ‘Stash’ jamming early on; around 6:44 Trey starts an amazing bit of guitar work. I’ll always say for the guy during 2.0, he may slop it up in the composed sections but his improvising abilities rarely wavered. I love how out of control really great ‘Stash’ type I jams can feel, with time and rhythm playing havoc with my ears, and this one adds in a dash of Trey effects pedal goodness. If I pay attention to certain times of the 2.0 era I can clearly hear the Kevin Shields/My Bloody Valentine influence that Trey has talked about. Much like the NYE ‘David Bowie’ this one doesn’t reinvent the wheel but is a satisfying ‘standard’ version. I always hope for a ‘Manteca’ with my ‘Stash’ but this time the crab was firmly not in my shoemouth.

Water In The Sky- Even on the LivePhish app version of this official release, there’s an audible fadeout/fade-in between ‘Stash’ and this song. I don’t really know why unless someone uploaded a 3 CD version of this show or something? ANYWAY I like this song. It’s refreshing and light, like drinking a wheat beer outside on a Summer afternoon.

Character Zero- I don’t know why it is but when I listened to this show for my initial blind listen not looking at the setlist, I thought they had just played this on NYE. But nope, they couldn’t have, they never do repeats. And they certainly wouldn’t repeat the same song also in the same slot, as a set closer. OH WAIT NO THEY FUCKING DID. I don’t even dislike this song but god damn that’s just lazy. Like did they forget they had played it last time, and it was in the same slot? Are they fucked up on drugs or trolling us? Am I overthinking this? I dunno. But I’ll be honest, if I was a fan at the time, I’d have been pissing and moaning about it to everybody at setbreak. It’s so hard to care about this song unless you’re really drunk or you haven’t heard it in awhile. It bores the piss out of me if it’s not a non-standard version. Actually, you know what? I’m putting a “fuck this song” sign up for now and will refuse to talk about this song in future shows with more than a sentence or a shrug. This is my own personal ‘Prince Caspian’ for the foreseeable future.

Set one of this show is sure something. It’s long, front-loaded with mostly jams. It has some flubby/bad playing at times. It ends with a repeat song from NYE, a song that sucks for me for now. But, overally, in pure musical terms this set was the best so far in 2.0. Some great playing and promising potential jams on the horizon, if it’s anything to go by.

[Setbreak]

I was struggling to think of what to write about for this one because I haven’t been focused on too much other than random YouTube content and Phish. Furthermore, a couple of the movies I watched for the first time were so excellent I want to possibly write a longform piece about them, someday, instead of the short blurbs I usually do for the setbreaks. Lucky for me a song randomly popped into my head on the drive to work today and I was reminded of an album I haven’t listened to in what feels like a decade, Casino Vs. Japan’s Go Hawaii. This record was introduced to me by someone I’m no longer friends with (long story, but aren’t they always?) based on my obsession with the first two Boards Of Canada albums. It’s totally in that wheelhouse, down to the oddly unnerving child vocal samples. Still, it’s a great little ambient-ish IDM album in the BoC style, and the opening track ‘Theme’ is a banger.

 

[Set Two]

46 Days- I was excited they played this song so early in the 2.0 run. It’s one of the songs that both band and audience really connect with, and when they do jam it out, it goes some interesting places. But it’s also the kind of song that can just be 7 to 9 minutes and serve as a rocking type I jam that Trey can go nuts on. Imagine my surprise when the very first version played goes for it! Jam starts in earnest around 8:12. Bit of a preview of the 2.0 ambient jamming style for a few seconds until Trey starts playing some twirling leads and the band is poised to go with him. For a few minutes we float in place, a spacey psychedelic jam complete with gooey Page keyboard sounds and Mike’s deep but foggy bass bubbling up and down in the background. Trey noodles around with some repetitive guitar phrases, unsure of what he really wants to do At 12:55 Fishman becomes more active and spurs the band forward, the tempo increasing a bit at a time. By 13:30 we’re cooking back into a rock jam, with Page taking lead on organ as Trey comps along on guitar. Mike is the secret weapon, keeping on the beat with Fishman but responding subtly to Page and Trey, too. Around 14:26 I start to think we’re about to segue into ‘Birds Of A Feather’ though instead Phish continue to hasten the pace and Trey coats his guitar in dirty, raw effects sounds. We keep chugging along on this distorted funky rock jam with Mike and Page taking the reins as Trey’s guitar continues to self-destruct. Round about 19:00 it starts to become clear we’re headed somewhere, whether it’s a segue into another song or the band bringing up the energy to finish the song. Around 19:47 excellent Fishman and Page interplay. Soon Trey is playing some big obvious chords as if trying to signal something to the band. They must sense what I’m not getting because the sort-of-segue into the next song, where everyone else stops playing and Trey starts up ‘Simple’, doesn’t sound as clumsy as I probably just made it out to be.

Simple- This song just gets better with time in terms of jamming vehicle. This performance though…Well, there’s a roughness to this performance that feels more like “we haven’t practiced this much recently” than it does the usual 2.0 sloppiness. Around 2:55 Page fucks up the lyrics, or maybe they all do, I can’t tell. It’s a mess. But at least musically they performed the song well! Around 7:10 we start to realize we may be getting a jam and not just the usual ending. Well, I guess it's more like an extended coda to ‘Simple’ than true jam. I hesitate to even label it a type I jam since it’s just a longer version of the 90s endings to this song. The crowd cheers for some reason around 9:09, not really sure why because it’s a pretty mundane ending to a ‘Simple’. Around 9:35 Mike starts to get spacey with his bass and Trey has laid down a few guitar loops. Well, maybe we are getting a jam after all! Just as I’m starting to get excited for a space/ambient jam Trey breaks into the next song. It’s a full -> segue but it’s just on this side of the line.

My Friend, My Friend- Of all the songs I thought I’d like hearing best in 2.0 with Trey’s new guitar tone, this song was high up on the list. Couldn’t you just hear a long 2.0 style jam on this song, dark and a bit abstract and psychedelic? Anyway, it’s a well-played standard version of ‘My Friend, My Friend.’ Until Trey flubs around 2:28, that is. Eh, that’s ok, it’s otherwise well played. I will say it feels as though this version is short compared to others I’ve heard. Maybe it’s just because the last one I would’ve heard was the jammed out one from a show on the Summer or Fall ’23 tours. Well, we got a MIFE ending at least!

Limb By Limb- Another obvious fadeout/fade-in between the last track and this one. ‘Limb By Limb’ I mostly like but eh…it reminds me of ‘Taste’ where it feels like a song the band really labored over to get it right, and I appreciate the rhythmic complexity of it and all…but much like ‘Taste’, at least in my listening experience with Phish, it never turned out to be the jam vehicle it felt intended/destined to become. Both songs rarely segue into or out of other songs, so on top of also not being jam vehicles they always feel a bit isolated from the rest of the set. That said, they play this just infrequently enough that if I heard it live I’d be digging the hell out of it. Hell, I’ll even say it: this song is like a better ‘Taste’ in some ways. Anyway, they actually do a great job playing it, and while the jam section is nothing to write home about, it’s still a fun time. Trey has a ball playing out-of-time with the rest of the band during the early part of the jam, and Mike and Page continue to give you plenty to love if your attention goes their way during any part of the jam. Reminds me a bit of the first set’s ‘Back On The Train’: a solid performance even if it is mostly unremarkable.

Thunderhead- I love how loose and noodly this debut performance is. The playing is a little rough here or there in the composed part but nothing as noticeable as some of the earlier ones. I’ve always wondered why they don’t play this song that often, it looks like they’ve only played it once since 2003. So another song that really defines the 2.0 era when you hear it.

Run Like An Antelope- Something about Trey felt way off during this song. It takes him awhile to really get cooking during the jam portion, too. But when he does finally catch fire it’s quality Machine Gun Trey with 2.0 guitar tones.

Cavern- I was dreading this one given 2.0 Trey’s penchant for forgetting lyrics. And of course he flubs several lines and laughs it off. OK, haha, it’s funny once in awhile but by this point of 2.0 this has already happened too many times. All I ask is some kind of jam to make it up to us but of course this isn’t that kind of show so we get a standard ‘Cavern’ ending.

Mexican Cousin- While I can still enjoy this song ironically, it’s kind of always been cringey otherwise. Looks like they resisted temptation and have only played it once in Mexico. Given Trey’s drug and alcohol addictions this song hasn’t aged well. And playing this throwaway as an encore really sucked the air out of the room. Especially as a one song encore. I get that set one went long so they probably were up against the venue’s curfew or something but eh…why not save ‘Cavern’ as part of the encore? ‘Antelope’ would’ve been a fine set closer.

Set two and the encore….hmm, well the encore sucked, let’s get that out of the way since we just talked about it anyway. As for set two, I thought it was mostly good to great—there was some shaky playing and flubbed lyrics, but there was mostly a feeling of fun and the band pushing themselves to play new songs and go down some exploratory jam moments. 2.0 still hasn’t had its first thoroughly great set or overall show but the post-NYE buzz is growing.

 

[Final Verdict]

When I look at the setlist and the length of some of the jams, I want to give this show a 4 out of 5. Yet in my heart of hearts I know this show is a 3 out of 5 because it’s a textbook case of “the setlist and song lengths don’t tell the full story.” While there were more and deeper jams than the NYE show largely featured, I found this show less satisfying overall because the 2.0 jamming was still being developed and it seems obvious to these ears that they’re learning how to improvise as a group again.

[Highlights]

Set One: A few decent jams, ‘Round Room’ debut

Set Two: A couple decent jams, ‘Thunderhead’ debut

Monday, January 29, 2024

Phish 12/31/02

 

[Prologue]

 

Given that Phish always referred to their plan as being on an indefinite hiatus, and not a break or even a break from touring, I wonder what fans were thinking during the short period between 10/7/00 and the band announcing on 8/14/02 that they were back for a ‘reunion’ show to take place on 12/31/02. That’s well over a year, and most of the band were busy with sideprojects/solo stuff so it seemed conceivable the hiatus may be a few years or more. Once the announcement was made it soon felt like Phish were back to life for good, and that hiatus wasn’t so bad after all, was it? They quickly recorded the Round Room album in October; December 10th it was released. That’s already a hell of a lot of Phish activity to feed on already. Less than a week later they would be on Saturday Night Live (12/14/02) and a bit later appear on The Late Show With David Letterman (12/19/02). By then it was less than two weeks until the band were back on stage at Madison Square Garden, their perennial New Year’s Eve home. (Well..not always…)

Few could have predicted that this reunited band would last less time than they had just been gone, to the tune of 593 days of the post-hiatus/2.0 era vs 815 days of the hiatus itself. Maybe it was the jinx of not appearing at MSG for New Year’s Eve ’03? Who knows. It’s really wild to think that fans had more time to grieve the band’s absence the first time they were gone than they did to enjoy their presence the second time around before another, much (much) longer break-up.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s briefly talk about the Round Room album and jump into the show.

 

[Round Room Digression]

 

I know the production/mastering doesn’t hold up the best, since these were originally not intended to be fully finished studio tracks but rather sort of preliminary recordings to help rehearse for the NYE run of shows. So, yeah, the album does have a strangely artificial/digital and low-bitrate texture to it that’s hard to describe. The closest I can approximate is the weird instrument bleed and harsh cut-off at 4:42 on ‘Pebbles and Marbles’: hear how Fishman’s cymbals seem to bleed over into Trey’s vocals and then as soon as Trey’s vocal is faded down the cymbal-wash-bleedover abruptly stops and it sounds choppy and unfinished? There’s a few other times on the album issues like this crop up.

Yet in spite of this problem I have to say I’ve always loved how raw and ‘live in the studio’ the album does sound and feel; it’s almost like they’re being picked up by a couple room microphones, giving the music a true sense of space and natural room reverb. If I recall correctly, too, outside of ‘Union Federal’, a bonus ‘live’ track from Junta, this is the first studio album with full-on jams included—‘Seven Below’ and ’46 Days’ may not break the ten minute mark but they ‘feel’ like live Phish instead of studio Phish, if that makes sense. And ‘Waves’ is such a satisfying and epic journey of a closer, almost like ‘Piper’ and ‘Prince Caspian’ had a baby. I was tickled to see it got released on vinyl for the first time recently, I bet some of the digital/not-intended-for-release-initially audio quality issues would be masked by that format’s legendary/cliched “warm” sound.

 

[Set One]

Piper- I certainly wouldn’t have predicted this to be the song they’d end the hiatus with but here we are. The hype and energy in the building must’ve been insane there in person; it really comes across on the recording how continuously excited and surprised the crowd was. This ‘Piper’ ends up being a lengthy one, as if they were trying to prove a point—"we can still play, don’t worry!” On first listen this jam really surprised me and gave me flashes of the high energy Trey-led shredding of the post-‘Suzy’ jam from 9/14/00. While I think taken in isolation it’s a really good type I jam it’s never going to be in my top ten versions for this reason. It’s more the momentousness of the band choosing this as the first song back and jamming it out so long that makes it a potential for others’ lists. Still, easily one of the show’s highlights, in terms of what they played and what it represented.

Guyute- I think I’m in the minority on this one but I would treat this song as a piss break song if I ever caught it live. It’s just always been my least favorite of the proggy compositional songs and I feel like it shows up on an oddly high percentage of official live releases. Anyway, my grumbling aside, they mostly play this well. It isn’t as sharp as late 90s versions but it’s tighter than some of the future 2.0 versions I recall being painful. I’m happy it seems to have become a true rarity in modern times.

NICU- Perfect placement as a light comedown from the dense ‘Guyute.’ Trey sure enjoys yelling for Leo!

Horn- Good ballad placement for the most part. I’ve always felt like this song and ‘Sample In A Jar’ are the sort of songs I see on a setlist and I’m a little bummed but then when I experience them in the flow of a set/show, they always get me. ‘Horn’ is underrated!

Wilson- Some shenanigans involving Page’s brother and clips from the movie Castaway during this version. In person this was probably funny and perplexing; at home if you only have the audio it’s just perplexing unless you read the show notes. A fun version otherwise. Trey REALLY belts out “can you still have fun?!” part like a madman.

Mound- The older I get the more I appreciate Mike as a musician and a writer. It used to be I could take or leave ‘Mound’ but I was surprised how much I popped when it showed up in this show. (I do a blind listen of each show to start out). Not a perfectly tight version of ‘Mound’ but Mike is on point here and throughout the show. Apparently it hadn’t been played since 1996 so a huge bustout…but the biggest bustout of the year was yet to come, just not until February. Wink wink, nudge nudge, touch nose.

The Squirming Coil- It’s so very Phish that on the studio album this song is the first track but in most concert appearances it’s a set closer. I love how it’s sort of a mix of prog rock song and a ballad. As ever, Page is one of the most reliable soloists you’ll ever hear. No exaggeration, he nails this solo every version I’ve ever heard.

David Bowie- This ‘Bowie’ starts off pretty quiet during the spacey loop intro and it’s a bit abrupt compared to some ‘Bowie’ intros but eh, what’re you gunna do? Given the reputation of 2.0 I was on high alert to detect any flubs and I think they executed it pretty well. I have to grant that they were on hiatus and as such can be given a reset on repeats but, like…they just played ‘Bowie’ at the last show, 10/7/00. That said I think this one is better overall….so I retract my complaint. Around 6:45 it sounds like Trey is teasing ‘Dave’s Energy Guide’ though I see nobody else mention this online so maybe I’m hearing things. Around 8:30 another big tease of it, I could swear. They really crush the ending of this ‘Bowie’, too—you can tell they really missed playing together. No stage banter after the song, just straight into setbreak.

As the first set back after the hiatus, expectations were likely very high and very flexible depending on how rusty the band turned out to be after a couple songs. Trying to put myself in the shoes of a fan at the time, I think this set would’ve mostly delivered, giving us a bit of everything we love about the band other than segues or truly deep jams. Certain songs you could tell were rehearsed better than others but overall I think it was a decent opener for a three set show. Featuring no new songs, set one played to pleasing the hardcore fans and giving us a bit of improv goodness in the ‘Piper’ opener and ‘Bowie’ closer. It would be nice to get another couple jams, or even one big type II experience, though I’m expecting not to see much of that until the Winter tour proper in February ’03. NYE shows are generally more about the spectacle and celebrating the previous year, and in this case we’re also celebrating the return of the band, so it makes sense if that ends up being the focus of all the New Year’s run of shows.

 

[Setbreak One]

I’ve been casting about trying out a couple games recently but neither one truly hooked me. Figured I’d share my quick thoughts for both of these setbreaks just in case it interests anyone.

Cosmic Star Heroine looks and feels like someone put Phantasy Star IV and Chrono Trigger into a blender but for me the results are nowhere near as good as that formula suggests. I really wanted to love this game because I’ve been a fan of the Penny Arcade games the developer worked on in the past, and I think the writing/dialogue is better than the average retro-inspired RPG, yet I can’t shake the feeling that the gameplay depth comes purely from if you play on the harder difficulty and get really fiddly tinkery with the party build, equipment/skills, etc. In some games I enjoy this but in Cosmic Star Heroine I feel it’s not fun, like at all. The aesthetics don’t help the game’s case; the music is either ‘pretty good’ or ‘irritating and too ambient’, and the overall design style of the characters, the world, and the color palette choices mean it’s not only kind of ugly to look at but on the world map and dungeon areas it can be hard to see where you can and can’t go. Your mileage may vary. I gave it about seven hours and I was out.

 

[Set Two]

Waves- Ah, so here comes the new songs. I’m excited to hear another jammed out set opener even if it does stick to the type I template of the studio version until the final minute or two. This is the sort of performance of a song that if you see it in person you really enjoy it and immediately forget about it because just as the jam is entering type II territory it goes into the next song instead. However, this mini-type II jam provides a glimpse into Phish finding its new jam style. The use of effects and instruments and the overall ‘feel’ of this jam is halfway between the ‘99/’00 loop heavy ambient-groove style and what would come in ‘03/’04 with the dark, spacey, abstract jams. This 2.0 jam style feels as nascent as could be here, as if they’re throwing a lot of sounds at the wall and seeing what works together before Trey kills it and begins the next song. Still…you can sense some attempt to push into new territory and find a new way. Or ways.

Divided Sky- This is where I have to address Trey’s 2.0 guitar tone. Forgive me if I’ve said this before but I’m of mixed opinions, since I think it sounds great with the new material of 2003 and 2004, studio and otherwise, but with the older material which sometimes had more delicate/quiet sections, it sounds too raw and with too much distortion and ‘attack’ to it. By contrast Mike’s bass is also different yet just as good as the beloved ’97 to ’00 era; his tone still sounds full and bright and clear, with a fat bottom end, but this time it’s also got more of a bounce and borderline-vocal quality to it. Eh, maybe that’s all just me, though. Trey’s tone doesn’t really ruin these kind of songs with pretty composed elements, just not my preferred of his tones for them. The two minute pause is interesting both for its duration and the sounds I vaguely hear—is it just me or does anyone else hear what sounds like Page holding down an organ note for awhile in there with a softened sound that is swallowed up in the crowd roar? At any rate, I think this version is a good example of the ups and downs of 2.0 Phish. There’s a few obvious flubs by Trey in the post-pause section that take me out of it, but in-person I’d have to imagine the ending jam/solo section brought the house down because it is absolutely demolished by all four men.

Lawn Boy- Perfect placement for this song! Felt for a second like Page wasn’t sure if Mike was going to take the solo or not but he was definitely feeling it when he got going. Modern fans will always think of the Baker’s Dozen “is this still Lawn Boy?” jammed out version but for me I’ll always think of the Slip, Stitch and Pass version.

Carini- Now here’s an older song that sounds better with Trey’s new guitar tone…This is another of those songs that used to bug me because I found it too nonsense/in-jokey and predictable but I’ve come around to it. It helps that nowadays it’s graduated into a regular jam vehicle instead of a rare one. Around 4:00 Mike gets a bit active leading the jam. Trey throws on all kinds of swampy guitar effects as he and Page fill the foreground. Page in particular seems to be trying out some of his new gear during this jam, and simultaneously I’m noticing how Trey’s dominant “throw down some delay loops at the start of every jam” phase from ’98 to ’00 has started to come to a definitive end with this show. Around 7:15 Page starts to really cook on piano—hard to pick out in the mix however—while Fishman starts to hit those splash cymbals that to me always feel like he’s trying to get the attention of the rest of the band to either change tempo or get back to the main ‘body’ of a song. Like the ‘Piper’ and ‘Waves’ jams this didn’t go far out though I will say I enjoyed it more on subsequent listens than I did my first blind listen.

Rift- Hoo boy this was a rough one. It sounds like at least one or two guys are half a beat too early or late, and the vocals are top flight speak-sing Trey. Say what you will about Trey doing professional vocal training the last few years, I prefer the new approach over the sometimes half-hearted stuff of 2.0. Anyway, Page plays a lovely solo like usual and they get more in-sync as the song goes on but that ending is once again quite rough. Trey sounds like he’s playing in the wrong key or something, and Fishman or someone is rushing them a bit. They didn’t sound too rusty up til now so maybe they just hadn’t practiced this one much if at all and someone called this in the moment without consulting with the others.

Harry Hood- Another set, another two-in-a-row of songs that usually end sets. Regardless, how can you complain about this song no matter where it shows up? Phish obviously love it as much as we do and this version gets a lively, active intro/reggae sequence including some gnarly new-sounding guitar loops from Trey. It’s a minority opinion but I’ll address it now: I love audiences singing “Hood!” back to the band. I know that’s not how the original is “supposed” to sound but it’s weird to me when I hear early versions without the call-and-response. At 5:00 Mike turns on a new synth-bass effect that we’ll be hearing more of in the shows to come, and I will always love it. Otherwise, yeah, what else to say? It’s a good ‘Hood.’ Everytime I hear one I’m like “holy shit this version is fire!” and then the next one I get to I’m like “holy shit, this version is amazing!” and then the next one…you get the idea. It’s a never-fail song.

Character Zero- This song still has its haters but the era of it feeling like it ended every other set for years in a row has long been over. For me it’ll always be a mood dependent song. If I heard it live I’d probably get into it in the moment. On Billy Breathes it always works well for me. Listening to a show at home…eh, it depends. In this case it’s a little of a softened blow because it feels like a bit of a bonus song after the preceding ‘Hood.’ It sounds like Trey is playing the intro in the wrong key or something, something is definitely off and it feels like nobody is acknowledging it or correcting it. So maybe it’s just me? I dunno something weird going on. Some of the vocals seem a bit off and mistimed. Perhaps like ‘Rift’ another case of not practicing it or not practicing it enough?

Overall set two is more up and down than the first. I did appreciate the ‘Waves’ and ‘Carini’ jams, and most of the songs were played with passion and fire, but there were some obvious flubs and some awkward vocals sprinkled throughout to bring it down a notch or two. All that said, it’s still overall an enjoyable set even if it does have a touch of “set one part two” instead of the usual big moments/jams that we tend to associate with set two. NYE shows are a different beast, being three sets, so we’ll see what awaits later.

 

[Setbreak Two]

The other game I tried out was Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. This was an experience that, for the first hour or two, I was convinced I was going to love the game. It has just the right mixture of ideas from other games and yet makes them all its own, and the janky-fun to janky-aggravating scale was firmly toward the former than the latter. But about five to seven hours in I began to experience more janky-aggravating things, and I wasn’t loving how combat “felt”—and no, I wasn’t expecting it to be like Dark Souls! Anyway, I got far enough to see what others were able to love about it, but nowadays I just don’t have the patience to give a game more than 10 hours of my time if I’m not feeling at least a little hooked.

 

[Set Three]

Sample In A Jar- What a weird choice for a set opener! The only thing I can think is somebody REALLY wanted to play it or they knew the timing for the NYE Countdown gag was going to be off so they had to play something short-ish to stall.

Seven Below- Another debut; happy to see right out of the gate they were mixing in new material in logical places. After spending the first two sets largely revisiting the past it was a good decision from a ‘shows as a storytelling device’ to do the NYE gag with this song. You can read about this gag online, but you’d have no clue anything was going on just from the audio—other than some of the ‘dancers’ who were on stage continually popping balloons through the next song or two. Anyway, this very first ‘Seven Below’ is a pretty good type I jam. Perhaps playing it a bit safe here, this song would definitely go on to be a jam vehicle in the not-too-distant future. It’s always kind of been an unpopular opinion of mine that having these NYE gags during songs kind of ruins the musical moment. In this instance it’s pretty clear if they didn’t need to suddenly do the countdown they’d have kept the jam going.

Auld Lang Syne- You know, they should play this just once at a non-NYE show just to fuck with people. Nothing else to say. Just as ‘Seven Below’ abruptly did a non-full-segue into this song, it in turn does an abrupt segue into…

Runaway Jim- I will preface this by saying I’m not too familiar with other big jam versions of this song, but this was probably my surprise of the night, beyond the jammed out ‘Piper’ show opener. Trey is clearly amused by the ‘dancers’ popping balloons since he drops a few lyrics here or there and chuckles audibly into the mic. Mike comes out strong early in this version, and yet again demonstrates that, I’d argue, more than any other member of the band his musicianship and overall confidence have taken another step forward with post-hiatus/2.0 Phish. As Trey messes around with some drones and his pedals Mike does this cool bubbling bassline that nobody else seems to pick up on, but I dug. It almost feels as if Trey is trying to do something along the lines of My Bloody Valentine with noisy guitar loops over each other. It starts to suffocate the jam and Mike keeps trying to hold down the forward movement and give us some kind of a melody to follow. Around 5:25 Trey finally relents and the clouds clear; Fishman starts to vary the beat and we head into type II weird jam territory for a bit. Fishman continues to play a lot of busy fills and tumbles in the background as Page doggedly stays on piano to try to center the jam. Around 7:30 Mike begins to insert himself again, adding a bouncey groove to the somewhat aimless Trey and Page textures. The latter finally switches to the clavinet or other keyboard around 8:20 and we get a bit funkier. Around 8:53 Trey puts down a few classic ‘99/’00 guitar delay loops and plays in the upper register with the pitch shifter pedal. Though this jam has more active and melodic presence from Mike, it really starts to sound like a classic ’00 space/ambient jam a la 6/14/00 at times. You can tell they’re still getting a feel for a new jam style as the jam winds down and we slowly do a full-on segue into…

Time Loves A Hero- This segment of Runaway Jim -> Time Loves A Hero is a clear highlight of the set, and the show as a whole. No, it’s not the tightest cover that Phish has done, but in the spirit of the moment and the band doing a classic Phish-style “big jam into unexpected cover” moment, it’s a fantastic, fun exemplar of the type. Some cool keyboard sounds from Page at the end. There’s dead air for a minute or two; you can faintly hear the band talking to each other on the LivePhish official tapes but I can’t make anything out.

Taste- Given how long it took the band to figure out the lyrics and arrangement for this song, I feel bad in saying that it’s one of those songs that I love on the album but live it never sounds quite precise enough and musically I find it sounds…labored over. This first 2.0 performance is a bit loose in places though it does come across that the band are excited to play this material for the first time in two years or more. I’m happy to be proven wrong about this next notion, but some of my blah attitude toward ‘Taste’ is that, on the surface it sounds and feels like a big jam vehicle, but I’ve never known it to be. At least all the 90s versions I’ve heard are the same thing over and over, like ‘Theme From The Bottom’ but with polyrhythms. 2.0 represents a unique time for Phish in that they were starting fresh in some ways, so they sometimes would take non-jam songs out for a ride. This ‘Taste’ isn’t really that, though in a couple moments it flirts with voyaging a bit out-there. Around the 8:30 mark is the sort of Phish jamming that I’d be digging if I was there seeing it live, dancing and going nuts with the crowd, but on tape it gets boring by the time you’ve heard it once during a show already, and will probably hear at least once more.

Strange Design- How can you not love a Page-sung ballad? Dude is just the most consistent member of Phish in so many ways. Pretty good set placement too. Give us a bit of a breather before a big rager of a set closer.

Walls Of The Cave- Just planting this here: my first show, 10/11/23, had a set one closer of this song and I could swear I heard a clear ‘Dave’s Energy Guide’ quote from Trey at one point but I don’t see anyone else saying this online. Want to make sure I remember when the time comes. Anyway! Another new song debut. I’ve always liked this song though on Round Room I feel its thunder is stolen by ‘Waves’ as the album closer. This song is absolutely one that helps define the 2.0 era—you can tell the crowd is digging it when they start clapping along in the intro. Despite what people seemed to say online at the time, crowds responded well to the new material, at least if the audience cheers and interaction from this show are anything to go by. Not necessarily musically but this song fills the same spots songs like ‘Harry Hood’ or ‘Slave To The Traffic Light’ do, often as set closers or close-to-set-closers, non-ballads but with some pretty parts in the composed intro sections. ‘Walls Of The Cave’ winds through a few sections before catapulting itself into a big guitar rock jam, and we get the first of many versions that stick to this template. Well, mostly this sticks to it. There is flirting with a type II, non-standard version of this song from 10:00 to 16:30 but during this jam section they either never fully commit to one idea for too long or they’re all kind of pulling in different directions. Feels like the ‘Waves’ jam from earlier, one of those “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, switch between different keyboards and effects pedals and textures/rhythms arbitrarily” jams that doesn’t ever show up on lists of best versions. Anyway, they bring it back around and close out the song with a reprise of the chorus. Another good initial version that like the ‘Runaway Jim’ and ‘Seven Below’ jams hints at potential but didn’t deliver all of the goods.

Wading In The Velvet Sea- Certainly wasn’t expecting this for the encore and show closer. Really thought they’d play at least two songs, and no serious ballad songs at the very least. Someone—Trey?—comes in too early on vocals but quickly corrects himself. That said, hey, it’s another Page-sung ballad. And even though Coventry has always cast a shadow over this song, I will say that this performance was really well done and I won’t let Coventry psyche me out so early in this process.

Set three and the encore, while not lighting the world on fire, were quite enjoyable and mostly well played. During some of the jams there are clear hints of what was to come in the future, even if the jam style wasn’t quite formed yet. The Runaway Jim -> Time Loves A Hero is an early 2.0 highlight, and the ‘Walls Of The Cave’ debut surely hints at its potential in the future, as both a set closer/show closer and a possible jam vehicle—we’ll have to see on the latter, because at least in my memory it never is one. But I digress.

 

[Final Verdict]

Though I had some criticisms here or there over the course of the epic three set show, I mostly walked away from this show feeling good, like I had a good time. It feels like a very NYE show, focusing on the moment and having fun but not getting too deep into jams or rarities and whatnot. I think NYE ’02 has a little bit of everything that people love about Phish, and it is without question a historic show. For my final score, I’m going with a 4 out of 5. To tip the scale I feel I needed either one of the jams to truly have gone type II and gotten somewhere new or at least deep, or for there to have been a few more segments like the Runaway Jim -> Time Loves A Hero. All of that said, if I were a fan at the time, I’d have walked out of this show feeling intensely optimistic about the future. Overall it’s a better show than 10/7/00, I’ll say that much. If I was there in person as a fan after waiting more than two years for Phish, I’m sure it’d be a 5 out of 5.

[Highlights]

Set One: ‘Piper’ jammed out opener, rare bustout ‘Mound’, ‘David Bowie’ set closer

Set Two: ‘Waves’ had a promising debut, pretty good ‘Carini’

Set Three: ‘Seven Below’ had good jam until cutoff by NYE gag, Runaway Jim -> Time Loves A Hero is an early 2.0 highlight, ‘Walls Of The Cave’ had promising debut.

Saturday, December 2, 2023

Phish 10/7/00

 

[Prologue]

 

In early 2000, Phish seemed to be at the apex of their career. We don’t need to say anything further other than Big Cypress and we can move on. This achievement seemed to leave the band with a sense they had nothing else to prove. Intentionally or not, their ascent during the course of the 1990s seemed to peak here, as 12/31/99 changed into 1/1/00. Though the band would release a new studio album and embark on a few successful-as-ever tours during the new year, something put it in Phish’s heads that it was time to take a break. No, a hiatus—don’t worry, they weren’t breaking up!

Or maybe they were?

Maybe they should have been. Seeing the zombie-like way the band looks in the Live In Vegas DVD (filmed 9/30/00) it makes a lot of sense when you learn the band said for the last week or so of the Fall 2000 tour leading to the hiatus they weren’t sleeping much and (likely, but speculation) doing a lot of drugs to help them through. Not every show on this Fall tour is as bad as you might expect from that, though overall this tour is generally mixed. Even given that standard, picking night one of their Vegas shows from this tour was an odd choice; outside of playing some rarities and the narration explaining the hiatus during Colonel Forbin’s Ascent > Fly Famous Mockingbird, there isn’t much compelling unless you really like mid-tier versions of ‘Timber’ and ‘Twist.’ I guess I’d rather have it than the other Vegas show, which has the loathsome Kid Rock taking up a chunk of the second set and encore. But really any other show on the Fall ’00 looks more appetizing on paper, including the show preceding the one we’re about to get to—10/6/00 saw Bob Weir sitting in on the encore, which is inarguably a better idea than Kid Rock. Anyway!

Looking at the setlist for 10/7/00, it’s striking how there’s no show notes whatsoever beyond “this was Phish’s last show until 12/31/02.” For what could possibly have been their last show, it’s almost admirable they just went out there and played the best show they could as if it was any other night on any other tour. Nothing on the setlist has an air of special-ness to it, and there’s no mention of the hiatus (though there was some non-verbal acknowledgement: the pre-show music concluded with the Rolling Stones song ‘The Last Time’ and the post-show music started with ‘Let It Be’ by the Beatles). While the setlist does have a bit of a “greatest hits” feel to it, at the same time it isn’t so out-of-place for the shows they had been playing for the past couple years. Hell, nothing screams ‘99/’00 era Phish so much as having ‘First Tube’ as show opener and ‘Meatstick’ deep in set two!

But still! Look at the big picture. Were one to attempt a list of most iconic Phish songs, you’d absolutely have to include things like Mike’s Groove, ‘You Enjoy Myself’, ‘Tweezer’, ‘Bathtub Gin’, ‘David Bowie’, and ‘2001.’ Naturally no Phish show could include every fan favorite/staple song, unless you want a show with two sets that have no jams at all. But I digress. There had to be some palpable sense within the band that, like the Stones song says, “this could be our last time.” Why else would they save ‘You Enjoy Myself’ for the encore here? It’s such an obvious choice that, like when they returned in ’09 with ‘Fluffhead’, it feels downright mandatory.

 

[Digression/Prologue Continued]

I find myself thinking of Freaks & Geeks and Firefly when I think of 10/7/00. And I find myself thinking of ‘what if?’ timelines. In some alternate timeline Phish did permanently end in 2000, just as in our timeline both of those beloved shows ended after one season. Now, obviously Phish weren’t only around for one season, errr year, so there’s no question of their musical legacy even if they had ended in 2000. Yet like those TV shows I think fans would have continued to beg for a reunion. In some sense Firefly fans got a taste of this with the Serenity movie but it can’t help but feel like a tease with the way it abruptly had to provide both a further story for the characters and bring the story threads introduced in the sole season to a conclusion. Also, Joss Whedon will always be a fucker for killing off Wash, but that’s neither here nor there.

Freaks & Geeks and Firefly will always have the feeling of unfinished journeys, and similarly I suppose Phish would have if they ended in 2000. 2.0 may be the most controversial era in Phish’s history but in terms of the finances, they were as successful as ever—the hunger for more Phish was still there. In terms of the music, some would argue the legacy was a bit tarnished by the way the band came to an end, so keep that in mind next time you wonder what season two of either of those shows would’ve been—who knows, they may have been terrible or a mixed bag that made you wish the shows had ended after one near-perfect season. So, anyhow, I find myself thinking about those TV shows when I listen to this show, because while the episodes of those shows we did get were anywhere from good to great, you had to believe they had so many more, and possibly better, episodes in them. Had Phish ended in 2000, you wouldn’t see anyone doubting their legacy, true—but you also know they had, and would continue to have, better shows in them.

And in that regard, 10/7/00 feels like the last episodes of both those TV shows: enjoyable but far from the best, leaving you wanting more.

 

[Set One]

 

First Tube- Certain songs just sound right to me from certain eras, and ‘First Tube’ will always be associated with the loop heavy ‘99/’00 era of the band. Much like spiritual predecessor ‘Buried Alive’, it’s a great set opener every time out—unlike that song, it’s also great as a set closer or encore song. Trey in particular seems to love playing this song these days, and it’s kind of fun that one of the songs I really liked from the Austin City Limits performance opens their last show before hiatus. Not much else to say here—this song always kills it.

Mike’s Song- Breaking out the heavy artillery early. One of those “yeah I guess so” > style segues in from First Tube. Immediate Trey loops during the early Mike-led jam. I’ve definitely heard some great Mike’s but for some reason I always associate this song with having good type I jams but never close to being the jam of the night let alone the tour/year. I’d for sure be more hyped in person than I am when it comes up in shows listening at home. Around 7:45 it goes into a rocking Trey-led jam with Page going bonkers on organ to back him up. Nothing else to note. Again, like normal with Mike’s for me—it’s not a bad jam but it doesn’t really go anywhere. We head into space after another run-through of the main riff and almost immediately go into I Am Hydrogen.

I Am Hydrogen- I do like the standard Mike’s Groove, always kind of felt like an inverted Help On The Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower with the middle song being chill and gentle instead of chaotic and intense like Slipknot!. Very standard version of this song.

Weekapaug Groove- How can you really go wrong with this song? Page gets active around the 3:00 mark on piano leading into a quieted down, more rhythmic jam section. Mike starts throwing around some bass bombs as Trey sounds a bit like he’s whipping the band along. I don’t know what it is with Weekapaug’s from the late 90s era but they always seem to go back into the main riff part of the song just as they’re threatening to go out there into type II territory. Even by the standards of other sub ten minute Weekapaug’s this one is satisfying but forgettable, lacking any meat on its bones.

Lots of crowd chatter between songs here on the official release. Fishman hits a couple things as the band seem to chat for a minute or two.

Fee- Hey, it’s Fee! Always a fun song. I think I prefer the ones where Trey uses the megaphone but it’s not a deal breaker. This song will always make me think of my very first girlfriend, who wasn’t a huge fan but had dated a guy who was and had a left-behind copy of Junta as a result. I think this and ‘Contact’ were the only songs she liked outside of the funky ones. But I digress. The end of this one is jammed out a bit, kind of reminds me of the Flatbed Jam from the Clifford Ball or the amazing, underrated ‘Round Room’ from 2/16/03. Like a lot of jams over the course of the show, I wish it had gone on longer and continued to go deeper out there though it is definitely up there for jam of the night as it stands.

Bathtub Gin- Another classic banger. Page always wakes me up with his entrance when I’m listening on headphones stoned and starting to drift off to sleep. Standard until the jam segment—Mike seems to be leading melodically, and man I always forget how perfected his bass tone was at this time. It’s so buoyant and loud/centered in the mix, I love it. (I got some new headphones to help me properly appreciate the music for this series and this jam is making me so glad I upgraded beyond cheap earbuds) Page and Mike start listening to each other as Trey mainly stays in the background playing simple accompaniment. Around 6:20 Page hits upon a cool melody that drives the jam forward with Fishman getting harder on his cymbals. Trey soon starts to work his way toward playing some responses/leads, getting us into a classic spiraling, arpeggio-ish line from him. Man, has there ever been a bad Gin? The band continues to coalesce around a typical but enjoyable bright/melodic jam led by Trey. Around 10:20 Trey plays a few bits that combined with the overall feel of the jam almost sound like he’s searching for a way back into Weekapaug. Things start to quiet down and the band just kind of peter off and I’m left with that “satisfied but not necessarily impressed” feeling of a jam that never fully achieves liftoff. Like Weekapaug somewhat of a safe, short version.

Glide- It’s Glide! A song that is perfectly mid-tier; I neither love nor hate it. Always felt like a half-measure between the heavily composed/musically complex songs and simpler/wackier songs like ‘Contact’ or ‘Wilson.’ A little bit of fumbly-bumbly playing from Trey in the intro, a sad portent of things to come in a couple years.

My Soul- This for me is one of those songs that gets you hyped as fuck when you are there in person yet I have to confess I find it boring and rote when heard multiple times on the same tour when listening through at home. It’s not the song’s fault it’s basically the same thing every time out; I simply can’t get too jazzed about it on tape.

Set One as a whole was good. A solid first set by the standards of its era, some jams and stacked with classics but nothing that I’ll remember a week from now other than the short jam at the end of ‘Fee.’ At just over an hour I’ll say it felt longer than it actually was.

 

[Setbreak]

For this section I’m going to very briefly write about something else I’ve been enjoying outside of Phish, and not necessarily just music outside of Phish. However this time I am going to go with music! After Thanksgiving weekend at my in-laws I was driving home Saturday night and felt like listening to some dark, atmospheric music and after a revisit of Interpol’s Turn On The Bright Lights I was struck with a taste for Disintegration. True it’s perhaps better as a headphones album but I’ll be damned if it didn’t hold up in the car, too. A perfect combination of emotive, gothic post-punk and dreamy psychedelic effects. Trey Parker and Matt Stone said it best: Disintegration is the best album ever! (Not really but it’s fantastic)

The Cure- Disintegration (1989)


 

[Set Two]

 

Twist- After hearing the recent archival release of 11/14/97, it’s hard not to compare this version to that unsung gem. In general I’m most familiar with 2.0 and later versions of this song, so hearing these more languid jammy/bluesy intros to the song is still fresh to me. (Sidenote: bring back the long ‘Piper’ intros!) Anyway, the jam never really goes anywhere beyond a typical type I, kind of like the equally “meh” version from 9/30/00. As the song ends we go into some 2000-era Phish spaciness, with cool reverb effects on Mike’s bass. Just as I’m starting to think we might be going into a 6/4/00 lengthy ambient ‘Twist’ jam with plenty of meat on it they > into 2001.

2001- As with the ‘Bathtub Gin’ from the first set, this version is satisfying but unimpressive. It doesn’t do anything more or less than the standard late 90s style 2001’s. I’m not really feeling the set placement either—usually this song is better as an opener or a closer. Otherwise it can kind of act like a mood on-ramp or off-ramp, allowing the flow of a set to pick up steam and get more fiery or to gearshift down into something more slow, funky, and potentially spacey/jammy. Again, this one isn’t bad, it’s simply nothing interesting: like usual for this time, Trey uses lots of little keyboard and guitar loops throughout that are easier to pick out on headphones, and Mike sort of leads the jam section around the 7:30 to 8:00 mark. There’s some nice band interplay for a minute or two but again…nothing special. Loopy, somewhat clunky > into ‘Tweezer.’

Tweezer- There seems to be this perception among certain fans that, after a stellar run from 1994 to 1998, ‘Tweezer’ could be a bit more spotty as a top jam vehicle in 1999-2000. I can’t speak with total authority on this so I’ll instead speculate that I wonder if it’s more that people don’t always like the jam style of this era. With my limited authority I will say the two Tweezer’s I’m familiar with from this era—this show’s and 7/10/99—lead me to agree with this assessment, however. When things really get cooking you got incredible type II jams on other songs like the 9/14/99 ‘AC/DC Bag’ or the 9/14/00 ‘Drowned.’ Other times you got the “we did a lot of jams like this during this time” jams that straddle the line between type I and II like this ‘Tweezer’ that occasionally have great moments but are mostly non-starters. For myself, though, I enjoy the sound of even some of the more aimless jams from ‘99/’00 so I generally like this ‘Tweezer.’ The jam starts with a very typical type I jam on the ‘Tweezer’ melody and feel, a funk-rock solo fest from Trey with booming bass slaps from Mike. Page steps up around 8:30 and spurs Trey onward with his accompaniment. At 9:40 Trey plays a repetitive train-chug like part that quiets the band down, Fishman adding some great drum fills as Page continues to play something, anything, on his piano a bit aimlessly. Loops from Trey around 11:10 signal we might actually be taking this jam out for a proper adventure. Mike and Page soon join in on the abstract improvisation, with gooey synth-bass and strange, eerie synthesizer/keyboard sounds. Page or Trey starts playing something that sounds like a plane coming in for a crash landing and we’ve entered true type II territory. Something about this last part of the jam, between Trey’s grinding, slightly dissonant guitar chording and Fishman’s “trying to play a sensible rhythm to something abstract” drumming makes me think of ’94 Tweezer’s as well as being a bit of a prototype for 2.0 jams. It’s just too bad that right as things get into a darker, textural direction the band just sort of…slows to a stop. A bummer of an ending to what could’ve been a noteworthy jam if they had pushed.

Wading In The Velvet Sea- You have to love a Page ballad. A nicely done version, and though I feel like some people would say it’s a bit of a bummer comedown after the underwhelming ‘Tweezer’ but oddly I think it helps reset my emotions and prepare me for the left-turn of ‘Meatstick’ next.

Meatstick- Controversial opinion time: I’ve never liked this song. I think you had to be a certain kind of fan who was on tour during its peak era to really love it. I will say it’s the exemplar of a song I’d love to see live as a rare treat to awkwardly dance along with the crowd, but on tape it’s usually a skip for me unless I’m really in the mood or it’s supposed to be an especially good version (there’s probably a jammed out version, right?). I’ll be generous and say they do a full -> segue into the spacey opening of ‘David Bowie’; I certainly wasn’t expecting it the first time I listened to this show.

David Bowie- Another classic Phish song addition to the setlist. With this song it’s all about the execution of the composed section, and since I’ve heard too much 2.0 in my time, I was actually prepared for the couple of flubs from Trey here or there. Somehow I always enjoy this song even though with rare exceptions it’s the same god damn jam every time. They gradually build and build and get intense and do the usual tension/release Antelope-style jam and then jump headlong into the ending segment. A good but inessential version.

Tweezer Reprise- It’s Tweeprise. Pronounce it however you want and enjoy. I’m personally of the opinion that they should only play this song when either the Tweezer jam or the show as a whole warrants celebrating like this, and in this case I think it’s a bit obligatory. I’m glad it wasn’t the encore, sort of an oddly fast ending to the set.

You Enjoy Myself- Of course they had to encore with this. I don’t think it’s just the context of it being the last song they’d play together for awhile but this version feels a little off at the beginning, like someone is quieter than they should be or maybe Trey isn’t playing some of the notes, perhaps the momentousness of the song hitting. The ambient/pause section weighs heavy in the air and lasts, or seems to last, longer than usual. For a moment or two around the 4:00 mark I almost wondered if they were going to go into a slow build ‘99/’00 Piper. Anyway, the rest of the composed section proceeds as normal. As we get to the post-lyrics section Mike begins to really lay it on with bass bombs, and as a whole the jam gets off to a very funky start, to the point you could almost mistake this for a ’97 version. Thick, gooey Mike bass for the trampolines. Page is comping along rhythmically on organs and then piano as Trey begins a quiet, mellow solo climb around 12:00. This YEM takes on a bit of a dance party vibe from here, Fishman adding some cowbell hits every few beats to spur the band on towards a stronger groove. Trey starts to add some choppy playing as Mike continues to lead the jam, Page sort of directionless in the background. While Trey seems determined to lower the energy and peter out, Mike fights for the life of the jam. Around 15:42 we out of the blue end up with a weird reggae, slow motion funk jam for a few measures until the jam heats up again. So far this YEM has been enjoyable if a little unfocused. Mike takes a solo around 16:35 and absolutely crushes it; he’s largely to thank for this version being anything other than average. Fishman solo at 17:25; we really are going for an “end of tour” feel, all we need are band and crew introductions. But, eh, nope, vocal jam. I think I’m more generally positive on vocal jams than even most other fans are, they’re definitely better than vacuum solos at any rate, right? This YEM vocal jam is sadly a disappointment, though; mostly a lot of vocal drones that don’t feel neither joyful nor melancholic enough to match the feel of the moment.

Set two and the encore I unfortunately have to say were a bit underwhelming given my expectations of the setlist, especially as it developed when I did my initial listen without looking at the setlist. Going by the timings it looks like the set has some meat on it but it kept feeling like the jams either didn’t fully takeoff or they were standard and enjoyable but nothing all that special. The ‘Tweezer’ and ‘YEM’ are the clear highlights and even they weren’t consistently great. The segue between ‘Meatstick’ and ‘David Bowie’ was well done, too.

 

[Final Verdict]

I really struggled with rating this show. Off the bat we can eliminate the top and bottom scores since it’s neither of those. After my first listen I was almost leaning towards giving it a 2 since I never felt anything was wholly mind blowing or noteworthy, but I think upon a couple more listens it’s improved to a solid 3. Set one was well played and paced though other than the interesting short post-‘Fee’ jam nothing rises above average. Set two is the sort of set that on paper looks like it may have some jammy goodness, and I’m sure was enjoyable in person, but ultimately never quite gels into either a coherent set of segues or a couple deep excellent jams. The ‘You Enjoy Myself’ encore, though obvious, is mostly average but Mike’s playing makes it worth hearing.

So, overall, this show is a decent one. It’s a historical show with a setlist that looks better than it actually is, yet that’s not the full story, either. I simply can’t bring myself to give it anything above a 3 since I think I finally found the answer to one of my questions about this show going into it; namely, why don’t you really hear anything about this show? Well, the answer turned out to be, it’s an enjoyable tour closer with a great-looking setlist but nothing unique or above average. When the best jam of the night turned out to be a short one post-‘Fee’, you know you aren’t dealing with a 4. As an era closing show it’s surprisingly subdued and forgettable.

[Highlights]

Set One: Post-‘Fee’ jam, average but enjoyable ‘Bathtub Gin’

Set Two/Encore: Solid ‘99/’00-style ‘Tweezer’, Mike-dominated ‘You Enjoy Myself’

Saturday, November 18, 2023

The Phish Project Preamble

Having finally seen Phish live, the experience caused me to reflect on a lot of things in my life, both musically and otherwise. In some meta-ouroboros-like way, it’s had me reflecting on the history of my Phish fandom over the years—from the early days only really listening to a couple studio albums; to (kind of almost) seeing them live in 2004; to the depths of my obsession (2006 to 2009) when I was posting on a message board I came across devoted to Phish (the Oh Kee Pa) during which I did reviews of every show on the Fall ’97 and Summer ’98 tours; to the period after they reunited in 2009 when I finally moved out of my parents’ house and began a deep dive into all kinds of other music and didn’t even think about Phish and sold all my formerly-treasured Phish books and LivePhish CDs (oh the regrets!); to a period circa 2012 when I fell in love with the Grateful Dead and thought maybe I had lost interest in Phish for good (no idea why I thought this in retrospect); to the modern era where they’ve become one of my all-time favorite bands but not one I feel I’m “obsessed” with.

In spite of feeling I’m not obsessed like I was circa 2006 to 2009, I can’t shake the spark of an idea to do some kind of writing project about them again. Having finished a deep dive into the discography of Oh Sees in 2022, this must be a sickness of mine.

“Inspiration you mean?”—nah, sickness.

So what better idea to do than listening to every show available on their LivePhish app?!

…Well, actually, a better idea is to only do all of the shows from the birth of my interest in the band at the turn of the millennium through the end of the tour I finally saw them live on (Fall ’23). Otherwise, I’ll never get caught up and I’ll be doing this in perpetuity.

So, in order to do so, we’d have to establish the beginning of my interest. I first intentionally listened to Phish when coming across them on the Austin City Limits TV show sometime in 2000 or possibly 2001. I was a huge fan of this show at the time and discovered some great bands through it, including Wilco and Pat Metheny (both of whom I’d heard of but hadn’t heard). I really can’t recall if I knew much about them beyond the usual “they’re like the Grateful Dead!” comparison.

In a somewhat concurrent thread, it was likely around this time of my life I admitted to myself I really enjoyed the Dave Matthews Band but publicly bashed them to keep the peace with my music snob friends. It was one of these friends who told me Phish “has some OK songs” so maybe this was what got me to give them a chance. I didn’t know the songs at the time but something about the ones I made note of, ‘The Inlaw Josie Wales’ and ‘First Tube’, stuck in my head and soon saw me borrowing Farmhouse from the library the next time I went.

Looking up the episode now, it looks like it was taped just after the band’s Summer ’00 tour had ended and was first broadcast on October 14th, 2000, which was exactly a week after the band had played the last show on their Fall ’00 tour, October 7th. As this was the last show before the hiatus that lasted a bit over two years, it’s odd how my two previous dives into the band happened when they were pseudo-broken up and then “no for reals this time” broken up. Maybe I was destined to be an archaeologist or paleontologist since I want to examine things only once they’re frozen in time, as it were.

Anyway.

While I am effectively going to focus on Phish from 2.0 aka post-hiatus through the as-of-this-writing-just-concluded Fall ’23 tour, I actually do want to start my journey with this Fall ’00 tour-concluding show. Mostly because thanks to the October broadcast date of the Austin City Limits episode, it’s close to the start of me being a Phish fan. Partly it’s because for whatever reason I’ve never gotten around to listening to it and it’s a historic show. Partly, too, it’s because the setlist has always looked like a bit of a dream “final” Phish show to me, and also also partly because I’m curious why you never really see anybody talk about this show outside of its historical importance and as an inflection point of their career. With the changes in some of their instruments and gear with the 2.0/post-hiatus era, Phish would never sound like this again.

It's for all these reasons I’m curious to listen to this show and sort of swish it around in my mouth, considering it from two different angles.

The first angle: the band reportedly didn’t say much of anything before, during, or after the show to indicate it could’ve been a last show ever, so other than the “greatest hits” vibe of the show setlist, it was sort of played and intended as “just another tour ender on a mostly well-regarded tour.” So I’ll examine it from this perspective and not weigh it down with the lofty expectations of “if this was the last show Phish ever played, would it be satisfying as such?”

The second angle: “Weigh it down, weigh it down I say! Weigh it the fuck down with the lofty expectations of it being the last show Phish ever played!” A bit of a thought experiment; expect possible digressions into topics like “the difference between a TV show knowing its last episode ever will be its last episode ever versus a show not knowing that” and “can one concert or episode truly encapsulate something with a long history?” More appropriately I’ll be tackling things like “if known ahead of time, what would/could/should the last Phish show ever be?” and “what would I/other people think of this show if it had been their last ever.”

But!

Before I get into any of all THAT, let’s talk about a Phish show.

Outside of special occasions (festivals, Halloween shows, New Year’s Eve shows, performances on TV/radio/at other festivals) and unfortunate rare shows that had to be called off before or during due to weather, you’ve usually got two sets and an encore to work with. With this framework in mind, let’s try to establish some kind of vague guidelines for doing the swishing around in the mouth I talked about earlier to determine the relative merits of each show. What makes a good Phish show? A bad? For that matter, an average? Because let’s not kid ourselves, despite what Internet hyperbolics would have you believe, there’s a lot of average Phish shows—and just to clarify this immediately, average does not mean bad or nothing of note was played or happened during it! It simply means average in the mathematical sense of the word, if you want to think of it that way—a 3 out of 5 doesn’t mean a bad grade as it would in American schools 70% terms, it just means it sits comfortably in the middle between bad and good.

A bit more preamble and then we can get to the actual reviews!

I haven’t used a grade or scoring system for reviews in years but I want to bring it back for this series, so for now let’s take a look at the things that can be a factor in determining the grade, and then we can get into the grading system itself.

Yay? Yay!

At the highest possible meta-level of talking about Phish shows, the simplest essence I can boil my feeling down to is, “do I want to listen to this show again?” This immediately starts to put me on the path to some conclusion, since if my feeling is “eh, maybe” instead of “yeah! That [insert song here] jam was amazing, and the first set was arguably better than the second, etc.”, then it’s already falling toward one of the end points on the scale. So, speaking somewhat subjectively based on the things I love about some of my current favorite Phish shows, and somewhat objectively based on what other fans have said/written about their favorite shows, here are the factors:

--The jams. I mean, they’re called a jam band for a reason. It may not be the primary attraction for everyone but I think the people like me who feel the need to listen to as much as possible and geek out over lists of overrated/underrated versions of songs and best jams of the tour and so forth are into Phish for this reason above all others. As I’ll say often, though, just because a show has jams doesn’t mean it’s automatically great, or even good. We’ve all seen those setlists that look mouthwatering on paper yet turn to ash in the mouth, with sets anchored by 20 minute versions of ‘Seven Below’ or ‘Weekapaug Groove’ that feel sluggish and uninspired. On the flipside, there’s shows with what seem like very song-heavy sets and shorter jams that have two to four minutes of greatness that I want to spotlight.

--The segues. This is another big attraction for fans, though shows with more than a couple good >s or ->s are much rarer than a lot of people realize, especially when you actually listen to a lot of shows and realize many people are a lot more generous with segue notes on setlists than they should be. Anyhow, segues can be good, and sometimes they can be clumsy.

--The setlist, in terms of “feel” and “flow.” I should establish now that I’m going to use “setlist” as a term to mean the song selection for the show as a whole, as well as talking about one specific set. Anyway, I’m not as obsessive with this topic as some fans yet even I have to admit there are just some shows where the setlist really does tell the tale. Examples of poor setlists include sets or even whole shows where there seems to be too many slow/low energy songs in a row, or the band frontloaded a show with the great jams and moments, or the end of the second set and the encore left a bad taste in your mouth. For a great example of a setlist “feeling” great and “flowing” extraordinarily well, see the 12/31/95 show which showcases this throughout the three sets and encore.

--The setlist, in terms of song selection. This is something that varies a lot for me. Sometimes I really care about things like rarities, bustouts after lengthy gaps, first time Phish originals are played, how frequently a song has been played on this tour/previous tours, etc. Sometimes I don’t really care, especially if the playing is good enough. But I know from getting a couple dream songs at my very first show how great it must feel to have seen them dozens of times and finally get that ‘McGrupp’ or ‘Meat.’ Song selection is an aspect of Phish shows I tend to notice more in the negative sense because when listening to whole tours linear-fashion instead of isolated shows here or there, the band sometimes plays the same songs multiple times a tour, often with the same results, and it gets kind of boring. I know in the past ‘Prince Caspian’ was this way.

--The overall playing outside of jams. This one is maybe a bit vague so I’ll explain by using the era I’m most familiar with, ’94 to ’04, and those years as the bookends. I haven’t heard a lot of earlier Phish but all of the 1994 I’ve heard has been a combination of the band being incredibly high energy and on-their-shit, nailing even the more complex composed songs and with every performance of every song it feels like the band is “giving it socks” as the Irish say. Pick out any random ’94 show and Trey and the other members seem to give a shit about every solo and every go-through of the same song they’ve played five times already on the tour. By comparison, while I do love my 2.0 Phish jams, the parts of shows that weren’t jams could sometimes kindly be said to have shaky vocals and muddled band interplay. In listening to 2.0 Phish I often have the feeling of, if Trey doesn’t give enough of a shit to practice and put energy into anything before the jamming starts, why not just jam the entire show? But I digress. When you listen to enough shows, you can start to practically feel when the band is in a good mood and ‘came to play’ that night. This isn’t always about the jams, naturally, so I’d call attention to something like 10/29/94 which has fun inspired playing throughout even if it’s not a show known for big jams.

--The X factors. This is the catchall for anything else that can factor into a show’s rating. I’ll provide some examples. Were the band especially chatty at that show? Were there things about the show that felt like they were from a different era in terms of the setlist or jams? Did the show somehow have great versions of a number of your favorites? Did the show have vocal/audio problems for the band or audience? Was there something happening outside of the Phish world that was referenced at the show, i.e. the 6/22/94 show having sports score updates and OJ Simpson Bronco chase references?

Ok then. Now that we’ve established some guidelines for judging shows, the why’s and how’s if you will, it only makes sense to conclude with the what: what is the grading scale?

As this is all my opinion and inherently subjective, please understand this whole thing is just for the fun of it. If I piss all over a show you love, hey, I’m glad you see something in it I can’t enjoy! I’ll also say that I’m not going to put any limits on my grades, so every tour in theory will look different in how many of each rating it gets. In other words, some tours may get a lot of 4s and 5s, others may get a lot of 2s and 3s. As well, keep in mind that attendance bias is indeed a thing, and as I’ve only been to one Phish show as of this writing, I’ll be going purely on what’s recorded rather than my memories.

It’s my firm belief that the five star rating system is the only one that makes sense because ones and fives should be exceedingly rare, and thus a majority of threes and fours will be seen and hopefully draw people away from debating the scores and focus on the text that accompanies and explains them.

1 out of 5—The way I look at a show earning a 1 is that—well, quite honestly, I’ve yet to hear a 1 out of 5 Phish show. But! Earning a 1 star rating would in theory require a show that is not just average, not just boring, not just bad by Phish standards, but objectively bad—by any standard. The band would have to flub several songs, play absolutely no jams at all, possibly have some natural disaster occur...A Phish show with absolutely nothing going for it and multiple things against it. I’ve genuinely never in my years of being a fan heard a show that’s a 1. It may not even exist other than on personal levels—I firmly believe that no amount of great music could’ve made up for the nightmare some people endured at Coventry so I’m sure for some those shows are a 1 even with re-listens at home. I’ll have to see how I feel when I get there!

2 out of 5—This is the lowest I’ve ever actually felt with Phish shows. To me this is the level of a bad show by their standards. Whether memorably or forgettably bad, it’s a Phish show that has at most one or two bright spots, perhaps flirting with the level of “ok” or “meh” but not fully reaching three star status. With a three star show, it’s a good Phish show with a couple highs at most. With a two star show, it’s a bad Phish show with a couple highs—you hope. These are shows I’ll try to call out said highs because otherwise I emphatically think 2s are not worth listening to even for the hardcore.

3 out of 5—This tier is at once the easiest and most difficult to explain in any sort of objective way, because I feel out of them all it’s the one most caught up in being relative to the other ratings. A 3 is an average Phish show, and at least in theory, most of the shows I review should get this score unless a tour is particularly hot and we see a lot of 4s. A 3 can be a Phish show you attended and have a lot of fondness for but can admit wasn’t one of the best ever/on that tour/that year. A 3 can be a show that has at least two highlights, or at least no real lulls/downsides, but doesn’t make a lasting impression otherwise. The best comparison I can think of is when you really want to order from a specific restaurant while stoned on a Friday night, and it turns out your pick is closed for some reason. So you end up ordering from your second choice. It still tastes good and satisfies your hunger, sure…but it wasn’t quite what you had in mind.

And yes, now that I’ve seen them live after decades of seeing all kinds of other bands in concert as a basis for comparison, I can affirm the opinion that an average Phish show blows away any show by other bands. Let me put it this way: the difference between a Phish show and another band’s show is like the difference between really great weed and pretty good acid. If you know, you know.

4 out of 5—If I wanted to keep this simple for myself and kiss the band’s ass, I’d say this is the true average Phish show. Assuming the band is in good spirits and playing well, most of their shows should be a 4. No real slumps or downsides to be found. At least one truly great thing—a tour highlight if you will—and goodness throughout in terms of setlist, flow/feel, jams, segues, etc. Can be among the best shows of the tour; could be among the best of the year. To give a personal example, my first show, 10/11/23, would be one I’d rate a 4 currently. Attendance bias would tell me that I should feel this is a 5 but I know this is just that—attendance bias. The Down With Disease > Ruby Waves segment and the insane ‘I Am The Walrus’ set closer alone make this show a 4 for me, and I suspect that ‘Ruby Waves’ will be talked about for years in terms of best versions of that song. Yet compared to the other 3.0/4.0 shows I’ve sampled in the lead-up to my first show I don’t think it fully hits as a 5.

5 out of 5—Giving something a 5 means it has to be one of the best shows of year, certainly in the top two or three shows of that tour. These are the kind of shows when you see them in person it can be a life-changing experience. These are the kind of shows when you hear them at home you set them in your memory to blab about online when there’s questions of “best shows” (or even “underrated shows” if your feeling doesn’t seem to match the consensus). These shows in my estimation are the kind that have several of the best examples of what makes Phish show great from the guidelines above; shows with multiple discussion-worthy jams, multiple fluid/well-executed segues, multiple rarities and/or other of the X-factors. Some may argue a 5 out of 5 should be reserved for all-time shows, and in a sense that’s true, because for me 5 out of 5 shows are always in contention. In that spirit…

S out of 5: Will this be confusing since a capital S looks like a 5? Well, I wanted to have a top of the top rare tier for shows that to me are instant classics, those shows that have—even outside of my estimation—achieved legendary status. Not on the level of Big Cypress, because c’mon, but on the level of shows like 11/17/97 or 2/28/03 or 5/7/94, all-timers that in some cases even the band has acknowledged with official releases or discussion in interviews.

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Gong Splat- Gong Splat

 

Despite finally releasing a new studio album in 2022 after an almost two year gap filled with live albums, a remix album, and various improv sideprojects, this year turned out to be a relatively quiet one for Osees. Outside of extensive touring and somewhat under-the-radar releases of a couple live performances by the improv sideprojects, there simply wasn't a lot to discuss this year. We keep expecting a surprise EP or something, as previous years have been capped off with, to no avail. Maybe this means 2023 will be bursting at the seams? Maybe we'll finally get the badly needed Singles Collection Volume 4? Regardless, the year has also turned out to be a bit of a wash as far as my life is concerned. This time last year, as I started to listen to Gong Splat and had recently begun a new job, things were looking up and the next year felt full of promise. Instead I'm ending 2022 in a real rut, unemployed and rudderless, with the same amount of debt as I started with...though I am more frequently sober than I have been in years, which is something! Anyway, my apologies that it's taken way longer to finish this run of reviews than I had anticipated.

Gong Splat was released on December 17th, 2021, the last in the slate of improv sideprojects “recorded in the peak of dope smoke lock down” according to John Dwyer. While this one doesn't stray too far from the rest in terms of overall sound, it's quite unique in the line-up, which is stripped down and for once doesn't include Tomas Dolas:

John Dwyer- guitars, etc.

Ryan Sawyer- drums

Greg Coates- bass

Wilder Zoby- synths/Mellotron (on tracks 2, 4, & 9 only)

Andres Renteria- misc. percussion (on tracks 1, 3, & 5 only)

From this you may have noticed that a full third of the songs only feature the trio of Dwyer, Sawyer, and Coates, while Zoby and Renteria never appear on a track together. Speaking of Zoby, he's the wildcard here as we haven't heard him on an improv record yet. Gazing at his discography reveals he's worked with El-P and Run The Jewels as well as production work and various appearances with bands I won't even pretend I've heard of (Chin Chin, Lanoiraude) and some I have heard of but haven't listened to (Cass McCombs, Blockhead). At least on Gong Splat his style of playing tends toward the abstract/atmospheric and is used as a background rather than a foreground element. To put it another way, I'd describe him primarily as a synthesizer player and not a traditional keyboardist.

Given its smaller pool of musicians, I would definitely put Gong Splat more on the Witch Egg side of the equation than the Bent Arcana/Moon-Drenched side. Which is to say it's more jazzy, spacious, and atmospheric, though lacking saxophones and a traditional keyboardist/pianist. Ryan Sawyer on drums means it certainly has more of a krautrock and groove-oriented vibe as well. With less cooks in the kitchen, Gong Splat showcases more of a small-group interplay that allows ideas to happen and develop with more immediate focus in a more rapid fashion. It's quite telling that the three tracks that only feature Dwyer, Sawyer, and Coates are the shortest on the album, and among the shortest in the entire improv sideproject run. Judging from the plays on Spotify, I get the sense most people start off strong on Gong Splat and their enthusiasm kind of wanes as it goes. I can understand that. This album doesn't do anything terribly surprising and different than the records that had come before, so despite the fact it's probably some people's favorite in the run and has some excellent material, some fatigue has no doubt set in among fans.

With the bookend of Gong Splat it was now easy to differentiate these releases as if one is going into an options menu in a videogame and tweaking the settings here and there. “What if Witch Egg but no sax, more guitar, different drummer...”, you get the idea. Anyway, we were talking about the album starting off strong, yes? The opening title track is certainly one of the strongest harvests from the entire improv run, with its deep bass stabs, blurting synthesizers, noodling guitar teleporting in and out of the mix, and a typically addictive Sawyer kraut-groove that could go on for days if they'd let it. 'Cultivated Graves' yet again demonstrates how effective using an acoustic bass with this kind of music can be, doubly so if it's mixed in a way that it isn't overcome by the rest of the instruments. The song builds to a frenetic and loud peak before letting out the breath and ending with a reverberating crescendo. 'Toagut' is a showcase for percussion and drums, though Dwyer's expansive, effects-coated guitar solos burn straight through to the Earth's core before we suddenly shoot off into deep space and the remaining minute is given over to peaceful keyboard sounds that flutter in-and-out across the stereo sides. As for 'Anther Dust', which my spellcheck and I both keep desperately wanting to be titled 'Another Dust'...well, it's a bit of a non-starter. There's a huge mess of sounds going on but I'm not sure the abstraction of it all ever adds up to anything interesting other than a bunch of people making a lot of formless racket.

Side B opens with 'Yuggoth Travel Agency', a title which promises more of a spirited and motorik-beat infused good time than what we actually get. But I'm fine with that; not every long song on a Dwyer project needs to be interstellar overdrive, as it were. The sleighbells are certainly a nice touch, as is the skipping/skittering beat machinations of Sawyer. For those curious, “Yuggoth” derives from Lovecraft mythology and is a planet you probably wouldn't want to visit unless you like freaky fungus/crab creatures and impossibly old ancient godlike beings who couldn't care less about your existence. But I digress. 'Hypogeum' has lots of layers of keyboard/synth sounds from Dwyer, including wind-like whooshes and twinkle-twankles, and suddenly is cut off just as the groove is getting going. 'Oneironaut' brings the energy level up a couple notches, with a loping bass-and-drums led stride that...um, also is suddenly cut off just as the groove is really getting going. Huh. The even shorter 'Minor Protocides' tries to see what would happen if you mixed Endless Garbage with Moon-Drenched, and the result is every bit as calamitous as that sounds. Frankly all it does for me is hurt my ears and make me wish I was listening to either of those albums. I'm happy to report, then, that the Dune-referencing 'Giedi Prime' completes the album with more a more graceful and eerie version of what Side A's ending 'Anther Dust' was trying to do. Just as I would say Gong Splat's album cover is mirrored by its opening title track, 'Giedi Prime' sounds like what happens when you travel all the way down that dark road into the 2001 rings of psychedelic color and come out the other side, no road or drums/percussion to ground you. Coates's masterful use of bowed bass on this track finally makes me concede that, if Sawyer is the obvious MVP of the improv records, then Coates is the most underrated player.

My general takeaway from Gong Splat is that it makes for an uneven capstone to the improv sideproject run. It simultaneously always leaves me wanting more and yet wishing a couple tracks had been cut. It should be more consistently interesting and fresh than it is, especially coming after the four albums that preceded it and did more to differentiate themselves. I suppose in some ways you can posit Gong Splat as a sampler for what the improv sideprojects have to offer, but this kind of implies that it's not the inherently satisfying and coherent feeling record that should be, too. It's especially weird for me because for most of the last year, it was unquestionably my favorite of the improv records. But in revisiting it more closely for this review, I've been continuously left underwhelmed by it. I dunno, I'm having a hard time coming to grips with my take on this one. Just as 2022 in my personal life ended up being a confused and confusing mixed-bag of feelings and events (both minor and major), this record similarly doesn't settle out into something I can easily explain and summarize. Thankfully I don't do scores for albums anymore, because this one would be a tough nut to crack. All of that said, in my opinion it's the weakest of the improv sideprojects in the sense that it sits as the least unique and the most imbalanced record in the lot, with some obvious highlights (in particular the title track) and some forgettable filler. It's essential if you like the other improv records, or even music in this vein in general—just be ready to chew and swallow the gong with the splat. Err, I mean, the wheat with the chaff.