Abridged Edition
SET 1: Funky Bitch -> Chalk Dust Torture, AC/DC Bag, You Enjoy Myself > Scent of a Mule, David Bowie
ENCORE: Sweet Adeline
The band’s return to opening act status in 1996 presented an interesting conundrum: how could Phish represent themselves on the much smaller canvas of a single 45-minute set? This was a dilemma they hadn’t really faced since 1992 — while there had been various one-set appearances since (including the one just a few months earlier), these had largely been friendly-audience festival stops such as HORDE or Laguna Seca Daze where the band was given at least 90 minutes to work with. As the lower band on the bill on an unfamiliar continent, Phish was forced to sell themselves again, in a fraction of their usual format.
Up through at least mid-1994, Phish typically made their case in new or unconquered markets by providing crowds with an all-you-can-eat buffet of their catalog. Here are a dozen genres we’ve mastered, a handful of covers, some trampolines and vacuum solos, a lengthy jam or two, some barbershop, and one segment where you get to control us by batting some big inflatable balls around. It was a good strategy: if one or two pellets from that shotgun blast landed with a newbie, that cracked the door for a full-on obsession.
But it was also a strategy that needed lots of time. As a headliner, Phish had its audience captive for nearly 3 hours. In Europe, they’d have to provide that musical Whitman’s sampler in less than a third of the time, for a crowd that would mostly like them to get off the stage ASAP so Mr. Santana could get going. What’s a band used to luxuriously stretching out to do with these economy-class conditions?
Back in 1992, Phish stayed proudly weird, even within those austere limitations. In 34 one-setters opening for Santana and The Violent Femmes or playing multi-band lineups, Phish kept their grab bag deep, playing 45 different songs. The top line was (relatively) straight-ahead rockers such as Jim, Llama, and Chalk Dust, but just beneath that were costume changes such as Sweet Adeline (12 performances), Foam (11), Uncle Pen (7), and The Landlady (6). There were shows with Zeppelin covers and NPR theme variations, Fishman songs and cameos, and a plethora of material from Rift, which was still 7 months away from release. Fans that showed up early got a relatively accurate microdose of Phish.
The opening gigs of 1996, befitting the year’s reputation, was a bit less courageous. On a shorter schedule of one-setters (13, not counting the two-setters mixed into the Europe swing), the band stuck to its least potentially off-putting material: Chalk Dust, Poor Heart, Sample, Bouncin’, and Cavern getting the most roll-outs, with YEM as the token weirdo in heavy rotation. More complicated songs such as Rift and Guelah were no-shows, Fishman never strayed from his drum kit (which sometimes sat center-stage instead of his usual stage left), and the freshly-completed Billy Breathes was mostly absent, with no songs from it receiving more than two plays. The album’s forthcoming single, Free, wasn’t played at all in these abridged appearances.
Europe Stop #2 is no exception. In another throwback to earlier times, the one circulating source of this show is incomplete, joining the band in media res halfway through Chalk Dust (Shapiro notes that Funky Bitch was the band’s soundcheck, but someone opened the doors early). But we don’t really miss much, as the first half of tonight’s opening set looks like what you’d expect from a warm-up band: a little Chicago blues, then two rockers. All three songs are warhorses, two of them dating back to the 80s and the other getting hundreds of plays since its 1991 debut.
It’s the back half of this opening set that looks more Phish-y on paper, between the proggy epics of YEM and Bowie, the sci-fi hoedown of Mule, and an acapella (unamplified!) finale. But the performances are edited-for-television. YEM is only 11:34, with no drums/bass and a vocal jam of precisely 35 seconds (though the mention of “Firenze” draws some cheers from the Italians). The Mule has an abridged Duel — perhaps a feature not a bug — just a Page solo and a brief noisy Trey swell. Bowie has only 1:11 of intro, which would put it second-to-last in the 1995 distribution, and just as they’re approaching the white-hot core of a normal Phish show in the jam, they run out of time.
There is, however, a final chance for Phish audacity, with the band deciding to do an “encore” of Sweet Adeline, without microphones, in Italy’s second-largest stadium. I’m willing to bet there were significantly fewer than the venue’s full capacity of 70,000 in attendance for Santana and Phish, but it’s still a silly move that no other opening act would ever consider. The Italians don’t know when the song is actually over either, or maybe they just don’t care.
It’s hard to be too tough on the band’s setlist construction with such heavy constraints, but I would argue they handled the challenge better in 1992 than 1996. While the later tour of opening act duty managed to play almost as many songs (44) in one third of the shows, the rotation feels sampled from the safest corner of the catalog. A setlist like tonight still showcases Phish’s versatility, but less of their mischievous and confrontational streak. Without the risk of looking ridiculous, they instead risk forgettability.
[Photo by Evan Wolfe.]