Can You Still Have Fun?

7/25/99, Noblesville, IN, Deer Creek Music Center

Photo by Aaron Hawley

SET 1: Meat, My Friend, My Friend -> My Left Toe -> Whipping Post > Makisupa Policeman > Happy Birthday to You, Makisupa Policeman, Saw It Again, Boogie On Reggae Woman, Cavern

SET 2: Birds of a Feather -> Walk Away > Run Like an Antelope > Suzy Greenberg > Hold Your Head Up > Purple Rain > Hold Your Head Up, You Enjoy Myself

ENCORE: Loving Cup

Listen

Six songs later, whatever internal tensions were plaguing Phish at Alpine Valley had completely disappeared. Deer Creek ‘99 opens with one of the wildest song suites in Phish history, 40 minutes or so that manage to sum up the totality of the Phish experience without using any of their signature songs. 

There’s the concentrated cowfunk of Meat, complete with cheeky false endings, and the dark prog of MFMF, which slashes its way into the hip new abstract sounds of The Siket Disc. Instead of revisiting the heavenly space of Star Lake, My Left Toe builds up aggression until it erupts into Whipping Post, played straight for the first time in almost nine years. And then they spend ten minutes wishing their light director a rasta-style happy birthday, even giving him a minute to do a silent light solo. 

It’s worth taking a step back and reminding ourselves every once in a while that no other band could pull this off. No band would ever dream of attempting it, never mind in front of 24,000 fans who drove to the middle of Indiana for two nights of music. There is simply no quarter given to any attendee who wasn’t already deeply familiar with the landscape of Phish; if you showed up expecting Bouncin’ or just happy hippie dance music, it would be completely befuddling. It gets dark and intense fast – before the sun even goes down – and just when you think it’s going to be that kind of show, they switch gears and play a fierce, triumphant version of the Allman Brothers classic, after years of poking fun at it as a vacuum song*.

But it’s the Kuroda tribute in Makisupa that really ties the room together. It’d be very hard to come home after this show and explain to somebody how six minutes of reggae jamming on “Happy Birthday to You” could be a show highlight, never mind the light solo. But it’s weirdly compelling and very funny – Fishman’s ad-libs, here and in the second set, are some of his best work. When a voice-of-God Kuroda thanks the band from the board afterwards, it’s genuinely touching, capping off a soundcheck-like sequence that feels like the band is playing purely for themselves and their crew**…and we were all just lucky to observe.

For one night, the vibes are immaculate. And that’s not just a relief after the troublesome show prior, but at the end of a tour that has felt ever so slightly adversarial. Because 1998 was such a natural progression from the big evolutionary leap of 1997, I think we were all lulled into complacency at the time; a corollary to the band’s confident “imperial phase” was that we all felt like their reinvention was complete. But 1999 brought new instability: the side project, the stage reshuffle, an experimental new album clashing against a batch of folksy new songs, a scene that felt increasingly dangerous.

7/25 wasn’t the tour closer; we’ll get to that tomorrow. But it was close enough to feel like a reassuring chapter end, full of little in-jokes and creative setlist calls that assuaged any anxiety about discontent in Phishland. The first set’s wild mood swings and silliness even teed up a fantastic second set that was less manic but much deeper in its improvisation – a BOAF that moves through several themes instead of a single textural tidal wave, an Antelope that takes a timeout from its usual climb for a meditative moment of starry repose, a Suzy that gives Page the space to create the night’s second Stevie Wonder tribute. 

But the set’s indelible moment is another that is singularly Phish – Fishman doing Purple Rain, for the first time in 200-some shows, with apparently no advance notice. Improvising lyrics to fill out a second verse he can’t remember, he happens upon pretzel-phrased wisdom I think about often: “I’m just being honest/as Prince would have me be.” Then he plays his vacuum, runs laps around the stage, and flashes the audience, inspiring the sound of 24,000 people recoiling in horror (it’s at 9:00 on the tape).

“Thank you, you are too…kind,” Fishman concludes in the night’s dozenth drug reference, but the sentiment holds multiple meanings. 7/25/99 is the kind of show where the band is doing whatever the fuck it wants, and the crowd is all too happy to enable them, the energy reflecting back and forth until self-indulgence becomes the sublime. No matter what fissures were starting to form beneath the surface, Phish could still always fall back on being uniquely, utterly themselves.

* - Because my first show featured the final version of that arrangement, this felt like an especially meaningful bookend in my early showgoing career.

** - Reader Eric Tannenbaum reminded me after publication that the band’s Green Crew picked out the songs for the first set, which only deepens this feeling of eavesdropping on the inner circle.