Another day off, another change of city, and we’re in
Rosemont, Illinois. As we enter the halfway point of this tour, it’s clear that
the band, while not as spit-polish clean in the composed sections, has finally
found their footing in terms of jamming. We still have most of the 2.0
juggernauts to go but this show, even more than any before, has the deepest
jams I’ve seen in this project to date. Yet…do deep jams always equal great
jams? Let’s find out. Sorry, that was low energy. LET’S find OUT!
Set One
Rift > Rock and Roll to get us off to a high energy
rocking start! A shame Rift has Oxy Trey in full effect, though, with some
sloppy joe playing that leads him to redeem himself with the solo and with his
performance during Rock and Roll. I’ve gotta be honest, this cover is ok but
it’s not one I would’ve picked for them to keep in the rotation after the Loaded
Halloween set. Now that I’m not an alcoholic sadboi Loaded is actually
my favorite Velvet Underground album, though I’d have pinned ‘Train Round The
Bend’ or ‘Lonesome Cowboy Bill’ as the Phishiest feeling to keep in rotation. But
I digress. This Rock and Roll has valiant efforts from Mike and Page to keep up
but Trey is determined to steal the show, pulling out his usual bag of Machine
Gun Trey tricks. Not saying they aren’t effective…simply that if you’re looking
for the jam chart Rock and Roll’s, this ain’t it, chief. “It was alright”,
indeed.
Guyute is…look, you read what I said the last time. I’ll
just add here that I’ve never seen a Guyute get segued into or out of; it’s a
lead weight that brings a set to a crashing halt each time, for good or ill.
Driver is a fun not quite ballad, the lyrics give me a They Might Be Giants
feeling, maybe that’s just me? Waves. Ok, now we’re starting to open up the jam
jar. Out of the crop of new songs off Round Room, this and Seven Below
had the most obvious jam potential to my newbie Phish ears back when I started
listening in earnest in late 2003/early 2004. Anyway, this version is shorter
than the debut from 2/15/03 but I actually like this one more. Page and Mike,
as they have been this whole tour, are playing their asses off, and the times
during jams tonight when Trey lets go of the reins lead to some incredible jamming.
Anyhow! This Waves doesn’t deviate from the studio version but has the energy
and interplay that can only come from a live version; hell they should’ve
waited a year and put out Round Room Live on the anniversary of Round
Room’s release date with all live versions. But I digress. As would become
standard, Waves is brought back around and finished up with another run through
the chorus, and then some eerie/calm vocal refrains over some spacey ambience
that will either lead into a jam or a segue into another song. This one doesn’t
leave us hanging too long as Trey emerges from the interstellar muck with the
Simple riff.
Now, OK, I think someone screwed up the lyrics at one point.
But this Simple has to go down as an all timer. And by that I mean, version
of the song and as a jam in general. While it has those dark/spacey
Trey-trying-to-replicate-My-Bloody-Valentine moments we associate with 2.0 type
II jams, it also feels a bit like some of the best 3.0/4.0 style jams that move
between different sections and styles almost as if the band is composing a
multi-part song in real time. I will never forget hearing/seeing the 10/11/23
Ruby Waves aka Dayton Ruby Waves in person, and at some point wondering if they
had segued into another song I didn’t know. But I digress yet again! This
Simple, though starting off like most modern non-jammed Simple’s with a slowing
down/quieting down mellow jam, starts to hint at its true attentions around
6:45 when Fishman starts up a new drum groove and Page and Mike keep pulling
Trey further and further away from ending the jam. By 8:00 it’s clear we’re in
for it, lifting up to the heavens on a beautiful, soaring jam that reminds me
of a less serene, more melodic version of the Flatbed Jam from The Clifford
Ball. 9:15 finds Trey using his pitch shifter to play in the upper register as
he’s wont to do during spacey jams. Page gets nasty on the clavinet around 9:40
while Mike and Fishman boom and rumble in the background. Trey has all but
disappeared into loop territory by now as Page can’t decide between piano or
clav. Lovely little melody from Trey around 11:20 that’ll get stuck in your
head. Mike starts using his super reverb bass domination effects pedal around
11:50; Page jumps on a synth and does droning, rising sounds. We’re in full on
space jam territory now boys, almost as deep as 6/14/00. Right as I say this,
Trey-trying-to-replicate-My-Bloody-Valentine starts up in full effect. At first
the rest of the band doesn’t know quite what to make of it, so Mike doubles
down on his bass effect and gets reverb sucked into the vortex being made by
Trey and Page. I fear for the people in person who were tripping when this
switched from a pleasant ‘99/’00 ambient jam into a hellacious shoegaze portal.
By 14:24 Trey has returned to the pitch shifted loops but it’s all being
swallowed up in a maelstrom of sound, texture, and noise that can only be
described accurately as psychedelic as all fuck. I can see how hearing this in
person, with imperfect acoustics, could just sound like a mess of incoherent
noise, like some contemporary reviews were saying. That said…listen to this
fucking thing! The last two minutes alone is more interesting than the best of
the jams during the NYE run, shades of the 4/2/98 Twist and the 9/29/99 2001.
After that space/time matter/anti-matter explosion, you’d be
forgiven for assuming they were going to give us a short Gotta Jibboo; maybe 10ish
minutes total, bit of a jam, get in get out, that kind of thing. But nope, whatever
was powering Phish tonight had only had its first of many fission flashes. I
know a lot of 1.0 fans prefer the old ‘99/’00 Jibboo’s which mostly kept the
same funky groove and had Trey loops and Mike pounding it out front and center
for 8 to 15 minutes, and while this one is largely following those blueprints for
a couple minutes it eventually turns into more of a rocking Trey led
masterclass in type I Hose. Think the 6/14/00 Back On The Train in terms of
everyone locking into a groove and responding to each other and playing their
asses off, but making it sound effortless. Was it Bruce Lee who said, “be like
water”? Anyway, around 7:40 Trey starts playing a super high energy, uplifting
guitar melody that reminds me of the 7/6/98 Ghost, and round 9:30 it’s
reminiscent of the post-Suzy Greenberg jam on 9/14/00. At this point Machine
Gun Trey takes over and absolutely scorches Rosemont to ashes; you can barely
hear Mike and Fishman trying to keep the groove going so Trey doesn’t fly off
into the stratosphere.
At 12:00 Page starts trying to take over on piano, and Trey
responds by stepping down a bit and playing more raw guitar tones in lower
registers. Page jumps on the funky, funky clav for some fun wailing as Trey
keeps a lockstep groove bubbling with Mike and Fishman. Thanks to Page we get
increasingly funky albeit with a Hendrix-ian distorted, raw texture instead of
typical ’97 wah-wah action. By 15:00 Page is back on piano and Mike tries to
bring us back to the Jibboo bassline and melody as Trey resists and croaks out
guttural guitar lines. So by this point in set one we’ve gotten a full
space/ambient jam, a dark/evil 2.0 jam, a kick ass Trey-led Hose jam, and a
funky grooving jam, what else can they do? Jibboo just keeps going and
going…until it doesn’t. Perhaps sensing they need to save something for
set two, Trey eventually gets back on the Jibboo bus and we bring the song to a
normal ending, albeit a huge peaking one and a triumphant capper to an
astounding 38ish minutes of music (counting Simple, duh) to end the first set.
Set Two/Encore
As if to leave no doubt the kind of mood they were in
tonight, Phish open the second set with a dependable workhouse: Tweezer. While
the general pace of the composed section is classic late 90s, they waste no
time in establishing that we’re in 2.0 now with the ranges this jam goes. (No,
it’s not as good as the forthcoming one, shut up, we’ll get there!) Trey is
busy fucking with his pitch shifter loops so Page and Mike pounce on the jam
around 5:35. Other than some faint loops, Trey must be adjusting something
because he doesn’t play anything until 6:00ish. Around 8:00 Page is on the clav
and organ in turn, while Trey is steering them further into a somewhat standard
type I Tweezer jam like you might hear in 1996…until just after 9:00 when Trey
starts to add some extra grit to his tone. Mike goes deep to get just below him.
Page is on what almost sounds like a Fender Rhodes around the 10:30 mark but I
think it’s just a keyboard/synth. Soon Trey starts to do these patient, spaced-out-by-a-few-seconds
single note growl/moan sounds. This section stagnates with not too much
development as Page tries out some different textures indecisively. It’s during
some of these 2.0 jams where I can’t tell if Trey is just in his own world or
he wants to just play in the background with guitar noises. Mike and Fishman
try to add some momentum and by 15:00 we’re finally hitting on something
interesting, with Trey making these weird slide guitar-ish sounds as Page
follows him into the tornado. Still not finding their purchase, they gear up
into a rocking jam that Trey takes center stage for. We get a fun and well done
yet standard big rock Tweezer reprise feeling ending (but not Tweezer Reprise
feeling) that feels to me like it should’ve been in the first set’s Rock and
Roll to give that more meat but eh, whaddya gunna do? After a final run through
of the Tweezer riff they do a slow down, slowly falling apart sounding ending
which I vaguely remember being how early Tweezers ended.
Out of the feedback of the Tweezer ending, we > plop into
Punch You In The Eye. Huh, another strange setlist placement on this tour.
Anyway, it’s PYITE! It rules. Next! I’ll give them a quick, half-earned >
segue into Fast Enough For You, which is the perfect cool off placement after
the god damn jam gauntlet they just threw down between the end of the first set
and now. Good vocals tonight, great Trey solo—but isn’t it always? I call
malarkey on the notion there’s a > into Seven Below, they definitely fully
end the song and then Trey takes half a measure or so to start the riff. Sorry,
not having it. Right out of the gate during the jam, Mike and Page jump out
front as Trey muddles around in the background. Page again can’t seem to decide
between piano or the clav. Around 4:45 I feel like the tempo has increased and
Trey is coming to life as well. Man, pay attention to Page around 5:30, dude
starts fucking killing it on piano. That’s really one thing I notice more often
in these 2.0 shows, the other band members seem to really assert themselves a
lot more. Page on the clav soon with Mike wandering all over the place in the background,
half melod/ half whirling dervish. Around 7:30 it almost sounds like everybody
but Fishman is soloing at the same time yet somehow playing together too, it’s
crazy. Page throws organ darts across the room around 8:15 and goes back to
piano. We continue our way into what feels like a super high energy Bathtub Gin
jam, and Page going absolutely apeshit on piano sure aids this feeling. Trey
drops back to some funky rhythmic comping around 10:55 as Fishman brings the
Seven Below drum beat back around. Mike seems to be splitting the difference
between the original bassline and just jamming.
Before we’re know it, we’re in a funky jam that reminds me
of the segue between Piper and Gotta Jibboo from 6/19/04. (Oh, we’ll get there!)
Well, I have to say, I certainly wasn’t expecting a 2.0 spin on a type III aka porno-funk/cow-funk
jam, but here we are! There’s a huge building crowd cheer around the 13:00
mark, I assume either a new cool lighting effect or the crowd settling into how
insane this show has continued to be. By 13:42 we’re so far into blissful Hose
funk jam territory I’m amazed more people don’t talk about this jam! It’s up
there with the aforementioned 7/6/98 Ghost for “you have to hear it to truly
get it.” We just keep grooving along on the Rosemont funk express. Actual Trey
’97 style wah-wah at 15:00! Man, not that the 2/16/03 version was remotely bad,
but this version sets such a ridiculously high bar I’ll be curious to see if future
versions top it. I can’t imagine what a dance party it must’ve been; by the
16:00 mark of this jam I would’ve been exhausted. We’ve slowly entered into a more abstract,
spacey jam by 17:15. Mike’s got his super reverb bass effect going for a while.
Fishman is kicking up some fun new grooves in the background and Mike responds
in kind around 17:50 as we head into proper fucking space funk territory. 18:45
stop start jamming for a few bars and then a building spacey jam that resolves
itself like a cloud passing back into the sunshine and you blink and you’re
back in Seven Below and they close it off. If I were in person by this point of
the show I’d probably be beyond words and just grinning ear to ear and dancing.
Pebbles and Marbles follows after a minute’s brief respite. OK,
now they’re just trying to kill us! I’m almost praying for it to turn into a
super mellow ambient jam instead of the set ending rampager it usually is. Trey
seems to be enjoying playing really loud and noisy around the 6:50 mark, nearly
drowning out Mike and Page entirely. Page again switches between clav and piano
as if he can’t decide what to do. Meanwhile Trey himself can’t decide between
actually jamming or just holding sustained noisy sounds. Around 9:40 it sounds
kind of like what I assume O Sees playing this song would have their jam sound
like. Trey’s attempts to reproduce Loveless on his own give this jam a
very claustrophobic, grindy, noisy quality you’re either going to dig or hate. Mike
is very active starting around 11:25 as if he, Page, and Fishman are trying to
push the jam somewhere further. Trey keeps dropping what sounds like crashing
stars or meteors from the sky for a few seconds before he snaps out of it and
goes back to shoegaze guitar. In fact, yeah, call this the Rosemont Shoegazer Pebbles
and Marbles, it’s intense as any other dark, deep type II 2.0 jam. Right around
13:50, through the wall of noise I can hear Trey starting to play the main
melody and the band soon gets back into step with him as the walls of sound
dissipate.
You know the part in Pulp Fiction where Mia Wallace does the
bump of cocaine in the bathroom of the 50s diner and she pops up into frame and
mutters “god damn, I said shit, god damn!” or something like that? That’s how I
feel after this set. There can’t have been anything left of the crowd after
this jam, just a simmering pile of goo.
Encore is 3 songs, fuck yeah! Golgi Apparatus, always
welcome, and I don’t think Trey really flubbed up once. Eh but after these sets
I wouldn’t count the flubs in this encore anyway! A pretty, well played but
shortish Anything But Me soon gives way into, what else, Tweezer Reprise!
(There’s no > between them like setlists say, nope, not even close) Sheesh,
how was anyone left alive, audience, band, or crew, after this show? Mike’s bass
bomb during the opening of this had to have destroyed someone’s pacemaker and caused
another person to be cured of arthritis. Huge big noise ending with tons of
loops and effects and insanity at the end. I think I just developed and then
was cured of arthritis listening to that.
Overall
Looking at the setlist for this show, you might think it’s a
pretty average one for the era. But there are fully five songs with long,
intense jams to the point that Tweezer, motherfucking Tweezer, is not in
the running for the top two jams of the show. What this show lacks in excellent
fluid segues and rarities/covers it delivers in the jamming. For 2.0 this show
is an embarrassment of riches the likes of which we hadn’t seen in 2.0 thus
far.
I’m really switching back and forth between giving this show
a 5 or a S out of 5. The sticking point for me is that this show lacks some ingredient
to truly make me comfortable giving it the highest tier. If the Tweezer had
been an A instead of a B, if the first set hadn’t come to a flow/pacing halt
with Guyute and Driver, if there had
been some rarity or new cover, if the playing/lyrics during the composed
sections had had less mistakes, if there had been some other X factor to
contribute to the total score, I’d give it a S and not look back. As a show for
beings who only love Phish for the deep jams, type II or otherwise, this show
is an easy S for ya’ll. For everyone else…It’s with a heavy heart (well, not
really, I don’t this stuff that seriously) I have to be somewhat
objective and say it’s a 5 out of 5. I will say I think it’s a bit better than
2/16/03, for what that’s worth!
[Highlights]
Set One: Waves > SIMPLE, GOTTA JIBBOO
Set Two/Encore: Tweezer, SEVEN BELOW, Shoegazer Pebbles and
Marbles, 3 song encore including a dynamite Tweezer Reprise
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