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.
