Confetti Drop

12/31/95, New York, NY, Madison Square Garden

Poster by Jim Pollock

SET 1: Punch You in the Eye, The Sloth > Reba, The Squirming Coil > Maze, Colonel Forbin's Ascent > Fly Famous Mockingbird > Shine > Fly Famous Mockingbird > Sparkle > Chalk Dust Torture

SET 2: Drowned -> The Lizards, Axilla (Part II) > Runaway Jim, Strange Design, Hello My Baby, Mike's Song -> Digital Delay Loop Jam

SET 3: Auld Lang Syne > Weekapaug Groove > Sea and Sand, You Enjoy Myself, Sanity, Frankenstein

ENCORE: Johnny B. Goode

Listen on phish.in or Spotify or watch it tonight.

What is there left to say about 12/31/95? It’s the reflex answer for the greatest Phish show of all time, the absolute peak of the band’s first act, a triumphant conclusion to one of their most legendary years and tours, a 3.5-hour summary of everything this wonderful band does best. The announcement of the show’s webcast tonight was greeted with unanimous joy, maybe only trailing an all-night marathon of Big Cypress as far as crowd-pleasing choices. It’s a show that practically every Phish fan knows by heart, that has been lauded in every way possible since the last note of Johnny B. Goode faded out 25 years ago. 

You don’t need me to tell you that the Reba/Maze/Drowned/Jim/Mike’s/Weekapaug/YEM were all outstanding versions, that the surprise inclusion of Sea and Sand and Sanity made it all the more special, that the gags of Forbin’s/Mockingbird and the Gamehendge Time Factory killed. You’ve heard it all before, and we’re all gonna watch it together tonight, huddled in our homes instead of mixing germs at MSG once more. So I’ll dial in on the small, sillier stuff, the little pieces of confetti that floated to the floor, supporting the heavy hitters in keeping this particular Phish show as their Platonic ideal for a quarter century. They may sound minor, but even the tiniest details held significance on this momentous date in Phish history.

Selective Coal

In case you needed any more confirmation that Phish was now completely at ease in Madison Square Garden, they not only continue one of their most inside baseball NYE traditions — inviting lyricist Tom Marshall to the stage — but double down on it. In ‘93 and ‘94, Marshall sang some of the first words he ever wrote for a Phish song, the very short stanza for Run Like An Antelope. For the ‘95 edition, Marshall delivered the punchline to Trey’s narration joke about being stuck in 1994 forever, delivering a verse and chorus of Collective Soul’s inescapable alt-rock hit, “Shine.” 

If 1994 Phish had their way, Disease or Sample or another track from Hoist would’ve been that “same song that is playing over and over again” on the radio. If they were serious about crossing over, they’d probably have spent 1995 sharing bills with bands exactly like Collective Soul, playing three-song acoustic sets for radio showcases called the Holiday Bummer. But even their most fervent attempts to sound “normal” can’t compete with the bland MOR of “Shine,” part of the post-grunge generation that shamelessly sanded off everything interesting about college rock, leaving only the most crass commercial appeal. You can practically hear how bored Phish is recreating the song for 72 seconds; Fishman, especially, who sounds like he could play the drum part in his sleep. (I should say that Marshall, being my podcast boss and all, sings it very nicely, aside from his inability to do the grunge yarl “YEAH.”)

Taking a little time out of their big celebration to clown on the song (“whaaaaaat a nightmare!”) is the final nail in the coffin of the band’s attempts at mainstream success. While the next album would make a few half-hearted attempts at producing a radio single, they’ve mostly left that traditional industry path to success behind by this point. They made it to a sold-out NYE MSG just fine without that compromised hit, so why not take a moment to laugh at those who took the easy way up.

The Band Resigns

Which is not to say that Phish is steering into aggressively confrontational music. Way back in September, when they started playing the band vs. audience chess game, I wrote about how it symbolized the overall dynamic of Phish in late 1994 and summer 1995, when they experimented with how much they could push their fans out of their comfort zone and violate the expectations of what “a Phish show” was. The nightly trash talk might have been tongue in cheek, but also signified that the priorities of Phish and their fans might not always be in alignment. 

On New Year’s Eve, Brad Sands announced that the band was resigning the second chess match of the fall tour, leaving the score deadlocked at Band 1, Audience 1 for the next 25 years. Because the game ended so neatly at the end of the year, rumors have always floated that the band, after obliterating the fans the first time around, threw the second game, despite their scripted regrets in the Dinner and a Rematch announcement video. Maybe they were just sick of hanging the chess board every night, or maybe Kuroda didn’t like how it messed with the feng shui of his lights. But at the end of a year of battle, they let the fans have one.

That giving spirit is on display in the music of 12/31/95, which for all its lofty reputation, is not a particularly challenging show. Many people suggest it as a good first taste for the Phish-curious, an approach I’m skeptical of — it’s not Cornell, if only because it’s the length of an NFL game. But it does give almost every type of Phish fan pretty much what they want: some jams, some composition, some rockers, some ballads, some regular favorites, some obscurities, some Gamehendge, some Halloween. 

Over the course of Fall 95 Phish discovered a way to mine new creative territory for themselves while also keeping the fans happy. Later career peaks would always have their detractors as they remodeled their sound, but you’d be challenged to find any firsthand witnesses in 1995 with the indecency to complain about what was happening in the moment. For the time being, the intellectual combat wasn’t necessary; might as well tip your king.

The Contested Tease

Even if everyone was instantly rapturous over NYE 1995, Phish fans still needed something to argue about. And they found it in the eight seconds from 11:44 to 11:52 of Drowned, as the jam was winding out of the Quadrophenia track and finding its way to The Lizards. Suddenly, the two-chord vamp the band was exploring finds its way into very familiar territory for jamband fans, briefly resembling the Dead’s old reliable, “Fire on the Mountain.” My mind may be poisoned after years of listening for it, but it absolutely sounds like FOTM to me: the drums ease into just the right reggae-ish lope, Trey and Page simultaneously play licks that would fit snugly into a Dead Fire of any era, and Mike is circling the bassline in a very Phil manner. 

For me, the debate is only whether Phish were consciously tipping their cap or it was just serendipity. But the argument has raged for decades, with the tease periodically appearing and disappearing from the phish.net log (it’s currently absent). Curious about the 2020 fanbase stance, I polled it, and found that roughly two-thirds of respondents don’t think it’s “Fire on the Mountain” at all — kids these days.

Like Frank Sinatra, I believe, even if it was just muscle memory producing a beautiful and deeply symbolic moment: a completely pure and non-contrived tribute to Jerry Garcia in the year of his death, an acknowledgement that the baton had truly been passed from the Dead to Phish, and a callback to a song that Phish had covered in their very first show in a UVM cafeteria, closing the parentheses on this long first phase of Phish history.

The Time Factory

Phish also stayed true to their roots in this landmark show by threading it heavily with references to The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, the primordial thesis/rock opera that, for all its geekiness, created the mythology and secret codes that glued the community together. The very first two songs are set in Gamehendge, they do only the third Forbin’s > Mockingbird of the entire year, and The Lizards gets a starring role in the second set. But they also very explicitly brand the New Year’s gag with Gamehendge, even though it could’ve stood as a concept all its own. It may all be baffling to a new listener pointed to this show by their Phish-lovin’ pal, but it’s authentic; dance with the one that brought you, even if it’s an absurd parable about lizard people and magic books and tyrants and possums or something.

But the Time Factory gimmick is another perfect accident, given that this show would go on to become such an eternal classic, a place where all the time streams of Phish past and future meet. Here’s maybe the one stretch of 12/31/95 that has been under-analyzed: the five minutes of music playing while the band futzes around in lab coats between Van de Graaf generators is great. Seriously, if you’re used to skipping right past it to the Weekapaug, give it a listen today before you’re distracted by the visuals tonight. 

On the live release, it’s actually a graceful segue out of the Digital Delay Loop Jam that ends Set 2, opening with an extremely slowed-down synth Auld Lang Syne over creaking sound effects and laughs and evolving into digital sirens and steel drums. I can’t tell if they’re playing it all live or it was pre-recorded — maybe the webcast will shed some light — but the ambient music and samples feels beamed in from the Storage or Drive-In jams 20 years from now, with a bit of Thrilling Chilling Halloween mixed in as well. Or more immediately, it’s a sneak preview of a couple stylistic jumps from this high point, the dark atmospheres of 98/99 and the total deconstruction of Japan 2000. More simply, it’s yet another testament to the brilliance of this show, where even the incidental music disguising Fishman’s costume change is worth revisiting a quarter century later.

Feeling So High With You Here

The return of Drowned felt imminent; it’s a good fit for Phish’s sound and another song for Mike to sing, and they’d soundchecked it before at least two of the holiday run shows. But bringing back Sea and Sand for its only performance between Halloween 95 and Mexico 2020 (oops: forgot there was one in ‘98) was a stranger choice, an unlikely soft landing for the fireworks display of Weekapaug. And it’s maybe the most poignant moment of the entire show for me, a late-night, quiet, deep breath that pauses the celebration of the new year and the past dozen. 

The original song is the most nostalgic of Quadrophenia, directly referencing “I’m The Face,” The Who’s mod first single when they were still called The High Numbers. But The Who’s version of Sea and Sand is mostly very loud and busy, contemplative for about 30 seconds before Keith Moon comes tumbling in. Page’s solo arrangement is much truer to the lyrics: alternately bittersweetly missing the past, discontented about the present, and cautiously optimistic about the future. 12/31/95 is a deserved victory lap, but for just a few minutes after midnight, Phish ponders that they have to wake up in the morning and decide what to do next. It’s not an ending, it’s only intermission.

[The years just keep sliding by. Thanks to everyone who supported this project over the last year, those of you who shared a ticket stub (Greg Schwartz today), a memory, actual music knowledge, research, or just a kind word. I’m touched that these essays brought some of you brief respite from the unrelenting Fear of 2020; I know writing them helped me get through these rough months. I’ll be back in 2021 with a few much less frequent posts until we get back to anniversaries with the one-offs in April and June.]