Bench Contributions

10/17/96, Bryce Jordan Center, State College, PA

SET 1: Also Sprach Zarathustra > Funky Bitch, Sparkle > Tweezer > Theme From the Bottom, Talk, Punch You in the Eye, Character Zero, A Day in the Life, Tweezer Reprise

SET 2: Ya Mar, Chalk Dust Torture, Bathtub Gin, Scent of a Mule, Free, The Lizards, The Star Spangled Banner[1], David Bowie

ENCORE: Golgi Apparatus

One of the curiosities of 1996 is that, for much of Phish’s pantheon of jam vehicles, it was an off year. Peruse the jam charts of heavy hitters such as David Bowie, Tweezer, and You Enjoy Myself, and you’ll find a smattering of 1996 dates, but also a big gap of highlighted “notable” performances between 1995 and 1997. Meanwhile, the next-in-waiting new songs, such as Free and Theme, took a step back in 1996, coloring more inside the lines after their studio makeovers. For a brief spell, there was a power vacuum where previously undistinguished songs could make the jump up to a spot on every fan’s must-see list.

At the tour opener in Lake Placid, Simple was the first song to take advantage of this opportunity, unspooling a 16-minute jam that was it’s longest since the anomalous half-hour monster in Ann Arbor ‘94. While it takes what will become an all-too-familiar path of jamming into and out of a Trey mini-kit interlude, it still plants a flag for what will become one of the unexpected MVPs of the tour to come, with all but two of its ten appearances getting well past the ten-minute mark. 1996 was when Simple completed the leap from Hoist reject and Mike’s Song parasite to the consistent show (or in 2021, tour) highlight that it is today. 

On night 2 of Fall 1996, a second promotion candidate first rears its head. Bathtub Gin is a much older song than Simple, dating all the way back to 1989 and Lawn Boy, but it had a long and tortured adolescence, briefly serving as fruitful soil for manic teasefest jams in August 1993 before becoming a semi-rarity in 1994 and 1995. By the end of the latter year, it had finally started showing its improvisational teeth — everyone knows The Real Gin, but there’s also exploratory versions in Atlanta and Amherst that stretch the borders of the song’s potential.

But then with only three versions all summer, it looked like Gin might be drifting off into the background again. So it’s good to hear it early in the fall, as the mild stand-out of a show that, while peppier than the night before, is pretty underwhelming. The first indoor, non-stoned version since Worcester is no Real Gin, but it has a crunchy, off-kilter solo from Trey that bridges the gap between Geek Phish and Arena Rock God Phish, a tension that remains unresolved even after the juggernaut of 1995. It gradually nudges the song out of its comfort zone, promising a 12/5/95-style extension, when it is abruptly cut off…for Scent of a Mule. So it goes, it will be back.

The night also features a third song that will make the leap to the A-list this tour: 2001, which opens an American show for the first time since its rookie season of Summer ‘93. From the crowd hysterics, I’m guessing there were some fancy new lights on display, but there is still, frustratingly, not yet any sign that the song has room to grow beyond a mere recital. This too will change, in about a month’s time. 

From a modern vantage point, it feels like Simple, Gin, and 2001 have always been reliable and satisfying jammers. But it often takes times of turmoil for Phish songs to make the transition from humble role player to featured star, and 1996, for all its flaws, was one such environment. The temporary songlist slimming of 1997 would bring even more songs into play as open-ended possibilities, buttressed by a new jamming style that offered a nearly one-size-fits-all method for stretching any source material. But the calls to the bench were already underway the year before, when Phish found that old wells of inspiration were starting to dry up.