Alternative Nation Invasion

7/13/96, Dour, BEL, Dour Festival

SET 1: Sample in a Jar > Runaway Jim, Cavern > Reba, Poor Heart, Split Open and Melt, Fire, Funky Bitch, Chalk Dust Torture, You Enjoy Myself

Listen

Phish worked off their Amsterdam hangover as part of a multi-night, multi-band bill in the bleakly-named Belgium town of Dour, which has hosted an annual festival from 1989 to the present-day. The band played blues and jazz festivals in Pistoia and Nice with Santana this month, but this was their only solo festival booking, and the company was...a little different. It’s hard to tell which specific acts shared the stage with Phish on this exact date, but other bands at Dour ‘96 included Beck, Frank Black, No Doubt, Stereolab, Sugar Ray, and The Jesus Lizard — an assemblage that is more Lollapalooza than HORDE Fest. 

Possibly, the bookers just figured it was a bunch of young American bands, so how different can they be? But for all the tension I’ve picked up on in shows opening for Santana this month, slotting Phish into this lineup is an even weirder fit. Santana fans might at least be swayed by a Chalk Dust or a Zero or, at the very least, a Hendrix or Zeppelin cover. But what would someone who showed up to hear “Just A Girl” or “Where It’s At” think of YEM? 

1996 was a weird time in modern rock music, as alternative rock had continued to splinter post-grunge into a multitude of sub-sub-genres. Huge late 1995 albums by Oasis (Morning Glory) and Smashing Pumpkins (Mellon Collie) continued to dominate, sprawling records that wouldn’t feel too out of place on classic rock stations. Rootsier sounds from Jewel, Tracy Bonham, and Phish’s friendly rivals DMB continued to do well, and pop-friendly versions of punk and ska were on the rise with Green Day, Rancid, and No Doubt crossing over.

Sugar Ray’s appearance at Dour is probably most ominous, as the rise of rap-rock is just around the corner, with 311, Sublime, and the Butthole Surfers’ Beck-ish oddity “Pepper” all charting. Lollapalooza ‘96 probably best expresses the confusion of the time, choosing decidedly not-underground band Metallica to headline and filling out the rest of the lineup with loud and mean instead of strange and unusual (The Jesus Lizard are probably the best example of this branch at Dour, though I saw them at Lolla ‘95. I wonder if Fishman and David Yow got along?).

It’s hard to see where Phish would have gained a foothold into this commercial world, if they still desired it. Following DMB through that rootsy backdoor is the most obvious course of action, but Phish was never that interested in folk-rock; even if a new, originals-focused form of the acoustic mini-set will debut next month, it’s not exactly filled with radio-friendly songs. As for rap-rock, well, there will be some unfortunate crossover there in a few years, but for now its backwards-hat energy is about as far from Phish as possible. 

oh no

Phish’s best hope is to appeal to young European rock fans in the epic, throwback-y comfort food manner of Oasis, who — commercially at least — had easily won the Brit-Pop wars by this point. But Sample or Cavern are never going to cut it for fans used to “Champagne Supernova,” and I would love to hear how a Gallagher brother would react to the YEM vocal jam. Half of the Phish set at Dour chooses songs that would likely be just too much for most alt-rock fans, Reba and Melt and YEM appealing to a Zappa-prog sensibility that could not be more out of fashion, if it ever was in the 90s. 

When they’re not tormenting the kids waiting for No Doubt with strange time signatures and fugues, they’re playing a grab bag of genres that aren’t particularly timely either. Poor Heart and Funky Bitch would be straight-up parent’s music to an American crowd, and possibly just befuddling to young Europeans. The only other act on this bill dabbling in country or blues tropes would be Beck, but while he’s just struck creative and commercial oil in mixing those sounds with hip-hop on Odelay, Phish plays them straight and would likely be judged (rightly?) as terminally corny by any sensible Cool Teen.

[The closest thing I could find to 1996 Dour Festival footage]

Then again, I’m not sure if Phish even cares by this point. They’d done the radio-pandering thing with Hoist in 1994, found it unsatisfying and unsuccessful fairly quickly, and leaned harder into their cult-band status in 1995. By staying true to themselves, they got their first hit album, A Live One, and sold out Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve. The desire to cross over still haunts Billy Breathes a bit, c.f. the decision to bring in DMB and U2 hitmaker Steve Lillywhite to clean up the more experimental beginnings of the project. But apart from Free and Waste, there’s not really a serious attempt to make that elusive breakthrough single, and the fact that neither turn up in this show suggests they’re not too confident about even those candidates. 

As a result, this appearance might stand as the last example of Phish trying to mix it up with the mainstream until the 2010s, when they’d dabble in some multi-genre festivals such as Outside Lands, Austin City Limits, and the less-jammy late-stage Bonnaroo. The tape is pretty much unlistenable, sped up about 25 percent to the point that it sounds like The Phishmunks (thanks AJP), and it’s the first show in a while without some Phish fan sneaking a camcorder in. All that’s left is to imagine how discordant a 1996 Phish set would be in this company, and the ever-widening distance between them and their musical contemporaries.