Beyond The Infinite

12/29/98, New York, NY, Madison Square Garden

SET 1: Rock and Roll > Funky Bitch > Punch You in the Eye > Horn, Ginseng Sullivan, Split Open and Melt, Brian and Robert, Guyute, My Soul, Free Bird

SET 2: Free > Limb By Limb > Also Sprach Zarathustra > Boogie On Reggae Woman, You Enjoy Myself

ENCORE: Divided Sky

Listen on phish.in

I made a lot of bold claims going into 1998, confident in my knowledge about a year I experienced firsthand eightfold and through a steady flow of fresh tapes from my newfound college trading circle. But as happens each year of this project, obsessively listening to every single second reveals a whole bunch of nuance and misconceptions. I’ve got two more essays to reassess all the shots I called back in April, but here I want to focus on one minor realization with major implications: 2001 didn’t dominate 1998 like I assumed.

It’s a classic case of the highlights distorting the full story. 2001 contributed a trilogy of monumental versions that spanned 1998, from the Island Tour to The Gorge to The Garden. These three performances are pretty darn close to my platonic ideal of Phish: astonishingly patient and collaborative, chock full of ideas, deep with texture that rewards close listening but eminently danceable and inviting on the surface. Even without seeing the kick-ass light show that assuredly accompanied each version, these hold up as some of the year’s best moments.

Those headlines would suggest a wealth of 2001s across the year, but it turns out Phish was surprisingly sparing with the Strauss. It only got played 11 times across 70 shows, and as the ambient sound of 1998 developed, it saw less action instead of more – played only 3 times in fall with two whopping 10-show stretches on the bench. And while the song reached double digits almost every time out, I didn’t find another gem in the ballpark of the Big Three. It’s never not interesting, but 2001’s open world setting also makes it very sensitive to the band’s mood at the time, for sometimes better and sometimes worse.

Fortunately for us, the vibes at the 1998 NYE run were immaculate. Tonight’s 2001 isn’t the longest of the year or the most groundbreaking, but it’s a purposeful three-part improvisation that doesn’t waste a second of its 17:24. Propelled into orbit by a solid Free > Limb By Limb, 2001 drifts out of the latter and takes its damn time getting started, floating in the Enosphere for more than five minutes before Fishman makes the song official. It’s the Ring of Fire, Reader’s Digest edition.

But as soon as that drumbeat kicks in, Trey chooses violence. Putting on a fierce tone, he sears through this second section, eventually landing on a Crosseyed & Painless tease that the advanced-level crowd greets like they’re playing a hit single. Where similar moments in late fall could tip into Trey squeezing out his companions, this one stays in exquisite balance, perhaps assisted by the matrix source on phish.in/relisten – possibly one of the best-sounding Phish tapes ever.

After the first peak – which doesn’t interrupt the groove one bit – the band spends its third jam segment in what could be considered standard funk mode. But the definition of that standard has changed dramatically in twelve months. Compare/contrast with the funk jams of 12/30/97, which sound positively skeletal compared to this performance. Some of the surface characteristics, including a Mike-forward balance and a bweeoooo, are still the same, but the sound is so much fuller, with the accumulated sonic debris of the first two segments still whizzing around the mix and Trey introducing his reverse-delay as a late ingredient to take it deeper into the wormhole.

It may have been unreasonable to have expected 2001 to reach this heightened level every time out in 1998, but its inconsistency between the tentpoles speaks to the transitions under the surface of this very confident year. I declared that the 98-00 Phish jamming style emerged fully formed in the middle of the 4/3 Roses – a jam that sounds a lot like the mid-peak segment of this 2001 – but it was never going to be that simple. It seems like Phish had a good sense of what they wanted to sound like from the jump, they just struggled all year to find the best songs to contain it. While 2001 might be the right kind of open space that could facilitate this sonically-dense minimalism, it still has the occasional composed marks to hit*. 

In 1999, they’d address this issue by introducing Siket Disc songs and Trey’s endless-groove solo material, both providing blank canvases that made it easier to recreate Lemonwheel’s late-night set or freeform nights in Bearsville. And 2001 would remain just a tick behind songs like My Left Toe or Sand, with several more all-time classics still to come in the final year of the millennium. In an echo of its old almost-nightly set opener role, the epic 2001s of 1998, right down to the final version of the year, set the table for the next era of Phish.

* - Not coincidental that the 4/4/98 2001 never even bothers to play the second peak.