Accumulated Fatigue

6/16/95, Raleigh, NC, Walnut Creek Amphitheater

Is there such a thing as too many long jams? To even ask this question may be Phish blasphemy in certain denominations of the fanbase. But some of the tours with the highest frequency of long jams are also among the most controversial: Summer 95, Winter 99, and Summer 03 all come to mind. While catching a show sporting at least one gaudy track length is a core bragging right for Phish fans, does too much supply overwhelm the demand?

This night in Raleigh brings us the third jam of 25 minutes or longer in the last three shows. If you count the Red Rocks Mike’s Groove as one uninterrupted segment there has been a half-hour centerpiece in the second set of 4 of the last 5 stops. And there are still several more longform versions to come this summer: the Fleezer, a few more heavy Bowies, a 26-minute take on the suddenly-rare Down with Disease, and another lengthy Mike’s.

A quick look at the phish.net 20 Minute Jam chart shows just how anomalous these frequent excursions were at this point in time. Before 1994, there had only been five total jams that topped 20 minutes (or in YEM’s special case, 30) in Phish history, and three of those were covers of “Whipping Post” in the 80s. When the seal was broken in Fall 94, those girthy moments were still pretty spread out — maybe 1 out of 3 shows, from November on, would feature an extended, out-of-the-box improvisation. And they’ll have cooled off by the second tour of ‘95: the summer features 11 20-minute-plus jams in 22 shows, while fall only manages 10 in 54. 

I have nothing but respect for Phish freaking out the summer concert series masses of America with half-hour slabs of freeform and often very dark jamming. But listening to these dense performances one after another is like going out to eat multiple nights in a row; I feel like I’m developing the jamband version of gout. That’s a health risk that’s only now available to us modern-day homebound streamers — those of you who drove the 785 miles in less than 48 hours to get from Memphis to Atlanta to Raleigh along with the band in 1995, bless you. Most likely the majority of people who experienced the Mud Island Tweezer, Lakewood Bowie, and Walnut Creek Jim in real-time quick succession were either in Phish or on their crew (or Drew).

But putting their sheer audacity aside, are these extended experiments musically successful? It’s the height of rookie jamfan behavior to merely equate length with quality. If you’ve read my last two essays, you’ll know that I adored all 50 minutes of 6/14’s Tweezer, but was icier on the 6/15 Bowie, which didn’t accomplish much more in the eight extra minutes it added to the diabolical 6/13 version. Tonight’s entrant is another marathon that I admire more than appreciate. 

The half-hour Runaway Jim that opens set two raises the confrontational stakes even higher. For one, there’s no good-humored lead-in like 2001 > Poor Heart or My Sweet One > Ha Ha Ha tonight, and even the choice of Jim as improv vehicle is a sneaky trick — before this night, no Jim had passed 11 minutes on the clock, and it possessed none of the reputation of Tweezer or Bowie for going deep. When Trey shifts into a darker mode around 7:30, seasoned Phish fans likely expected it to be the usual several bars of dissonance before the triumphant snap back to the jam’s climax. Instead, the song gets nastier and nastier, never really returning to a safe space for the duration. 

I’m all for dark and challenging Phish, and very happy that they’re letting themes play out and evolve in these jams instead of channel-surfing through moods and genres. But there is a point where the unrelenting darkness of this Jim gets tedious, even as its deranged Latin drums and droney leads foreshadow First Tube four years later. When the band starts howling about the titular dog in the last ten minutes, it feels like a less spontaneous rerun of the Providence Bowie. It’s kind of a relief when Free’s hyper-melodic intro crashes in, even if that song’s jam remains kind of a sludgy dirge as well in these early days.

But I think what really keeps me at arms length from tonight’s Jim and yesterday’s Bowie — and even the Mud Island Tweezer, to some extent — is how intentional these improvisations feel. I don’t know that I’d call them “pre-planned” exactly; even if they decided backstage “let’s do a big Jim tonight,” the musical signposts of what that entails are still clearly determined in mid-flight. But walling off part of the second set for a Big Jam is always going to strike me as more head than heart, an experiment instead of an experience. 

And even if they contain an internal narrative, as I argued for the Tweezer, these extended songs don’t really participate in the overall flow of the show; in fact, based on the crowd reactions that made it to tape, they may have brought their set’s momentum to a screeching halt for many in attendance. For instance, on this night, the Jim > Free segue is a powerful pairing, especially since Free finally provides the release after 23 minutes of tension. But then the setlist crowd-panders with Carolina, dives back for another half-hour with YEM (featuring a DMB member we don’t talk about any more), and closes out with Coil. 

That too will change with time. Again, the band has only been playing in this mode for less than three active months: November and December of ‘94, and half of June ‘95. Eventually, the anything-can-happen inventiveness that’s contained within one big jam a night will spill over to the rest of the show, and Phish will find a way to merge the creative song chains of 1993 with the adventurous spirit of late 1994 and early 1995, or let the more occasional Big Jam sprout organically from the energy of its surroundings. Right now, they’re establishing that they can go long whenever they want; eventually, they’ll know when they should.

[Ticket stub from Golgi Project.]