Circular Economy
10/4/00, Chula Vista, CA, Coors Amphitheatre
SET 1: The Moma Dance > It’s Ice > Bouncing Around the Room > Funky Bitch, Reba, Dog Faced Boy, Run Like an Antelope
SET 2: Rock and Roll > Also Sprach Zarathustra > Sample in a Jar, Gotta Jibboo, Bug > Harry Hood > Cavern
ENCORE: Loving Cup
After a weekend of urgent desperation in Las Vegas and Phoenix, the start of Phish’s first “final” run doesn’t sound like a band headed for a break at all. It actually kicked off a day before this show, at a taping of the Jay Leno Tonight Show where they turned in a completely pedestrian version of “Twist” to try to squeeze a few more units out of the five-month-old Farmhouse. They look pretty dang ragged, and Trey later told Rolling Stone why:
“It was a real emotional time, but in a positive way,” Anastasio said. “I mean, the last week of Phish I honestly don’t think any of us slept at all. We just stayed up all night for, like, a week, as evidenced by our raspy version of “Twist” on Leno. But it was amazing, because no one was sleeping [because] we didn’t want it to end.”
That all-nighter (all-weeker?) daze is also audible the next night in Chula Vista, a barely two-hour show the band sleepwalks through, despite two days (mostly) off. Instead of the bustouts and inside jokes of the previous weekend, it’s a very vanilla setlist. There’s no hint of “is this the last time we play this song?” urgency either, everything is as standard as the International Prototype Kilogram. Pleasantly mellow saunters through Reba and Jibboo work fine, but the fatigue takes the edge of songs like Antelope and 2001.
It all suggests that sleep deprivation was maybe not the best strategy for going out with a bang. But they were also handicapped by where circumstances found them at the end of their first era. California has never been Phish’s strongest territory, maybe because the Dead’s shadow is a little darker there – more on that in 48 hours – or maybe just due to the geographic reality of putting the west coast at the start or end of most tours. As such, it’s an awkward place for Phish to play such momentous shows, and further evidence that they didn’t officially decide on the hiatus until very late in the game*.
It’s in Southern California where these factors seem to really weigh on them, and that LA-SD sprawl is where they’re spending forgettable evenings tonight and tomorrow. My guess is that it has something to do with the proximity to the power centers of the American entertainment industry; Phish wasn’t ever a band that had to impress the suits, but all the hobknobbing with A&R dudes and celebs probably rubs off. It leaves Chula Vista feeling a lot like the safe version of themselves they put forward doing programs like The Mark and Brian Show and Hard Rock Live back in May.
That’s a year-long full circle the band probably isn’t proud of, going from biting their tongue and following the new album promo playbook back around to…doing the same thing by cheating on their buddies Conan and Dave with their archrival. There may only be two Farmhouse songs in Chula Vista’s setlist, but the rest of it plays like a “don’t scare the normies” sampler, a Phish live album you could buy with your pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. It’s an unfortunate consequence of the abrupt hiatus decision; if a break wasn’t so urgently needed, surely they would have held on to celebrate their legacy on friendly turf, instead of compromising it in a region and industry they never cared to crack.
* - Sometime during this final week, phish.com finally posted: “Phish has completed their touring for this year. There will be no additional shows in November or December, or immediately thereafter. Additional information will be posted when the band refines their plans for the future.”