Cosmic Treadmill
12/4/96, San Diego, CA, San Diego Sports Arena
SET 1: My Friend, My Friend, Chalk Dust Torture, Horn, Uncle Pen, Timber (Jerry the Mule) > Sample in a Jar, Train Song, Guyute, Character Zero, The Lizards, David Bowie
SET 2: Ha Ha Ha > Mike's Song > Prince Caspian > Sparkle > Punch You in the Eye, Life on Mars?, Reba, Lawn Boy, Weekapaug Groove
ENCORE: Jesus Just Left Chicago
Mike’s Groove is Phish’s mood ring. What they choose to fill in the space between Mike’s Song and Weekapaug Groove reveals almost everything you need to know about different eras of the band. For most of its first decade, it was almost always wrapped around I Am Hydrogen, as the band focused on impressing new audiences with its sharpest material. In 1993, that rule began to slip, as the band tried out other songs in the middle slot and grew more adventurous elsewhere. By 1995, they even tried soldering Mike’s and Weekapaug directly together, a tell for the confidence and nonconformity the band boasted by the end of that year.
The 1996 reading on the Mike’s Groove mood ring has been, naturally, indecisive. Not so much in the actual playing of the songs — Mike’s Song enjoyed an excellent year, Weekapaug not so much — but in the stuffing. In Europe, after two versions that failed to Groove its Mike’s, Phish brought back Hydrogen from near-retirement (only played twice in 1995), and later restored Simple to its interloping role for a couple more outings. They briefly tried out Swept Away > Steep as an updated middle act, and auditioned some ballads: Lifeboy, Horse > Silent, and Sleeping Monkey among them. Once, they even tried the dang national anthem.
And if you apply the mood-ring method to the nearly set-long 12/4/96 Mike’s Groove, the aura you get is yet more confused — there’s even a song with a question mark in it. There are a lot of songs altogether: Caspian > Sparkle > PYITE, Life on Mars?, Reba, and a Lawn Boy dedicated to the band’s caterers, before finally reaching the other bookend. So that’s a newish song, a tempo gimmick, a Gamehendge prequel, a Bowie cover, a regal jam vehicle, and goofy cocktail jazz. It’s a very Phish-y grab-bag of genres and song types, one that — a couple 1995 debuts aside — they could’ve played any time in their career thus far. But maybe that’s a problem?
Look, if it’s not clear by now, my Phish-listening bias isn’t so much jam-seeking as narrative-seeking. I love jams that tell stories, sets that tell stories, shows, runs, tours, years that have dramatic arcs. Phish is better than any other band I can think of at this form of musical storytelling, at crafting endlessly unique segments of minutes, hours, days, or months that take you from point A to point B. It’s why a lunatic project like this one works best chronologically; I’m telling a story about a story, about many stories, and it wouldn’t be nearly as effective if I scrambled up the timeline.
So forget all my minor beefs about 1996 — the mini-kit, the step back in Europe, the shortened song rotation, the endless freaking Mules — my main complaint about this tour and this year is the lack of a satisfying plot. Tonight’s show has major end-of-the-tour vibes; Trey mentions Vegas a couple times as though it’s a bonus show, and talks about how their tours often end on the west coast. But the Phish in San Diego isn’t meaningfully different from the Phish in Lake Placid, or even Jazz Fest 8 months earlier. There have been plenty of clues to the future, but they’ve remained on the margins, or in the practice room. The evolution, at least publicly, has slowed to the point of looking like a stall.
I’ll emphasize that this is a very entitled perspective, one that is somewhat detached from the objective quality of the music on display. The second set of this show is very well-played; there’s another strong Mike’s Song, featuring some of those clues mentioned above, and I’ll never sneeze at Life On Mars? or Reba in this era. The reputation of the year for tight playing is on display, apart from a Guyute that’s clearly under-rehearsed. Phish, in 1996, is very good at what they do. But that meta, transportive level I look for in Phish is lacking, both on the scale of this individual show and the tour overall.
The great Phish tours are page-turners. Look no further than Fall 2021, a run where the end of each show felt satisfying, but also left us dying to find out where they would go next, refreshing the setlist or coughing up the dough to watch the webcast each night. Did Fall 1996 have that quality? It’s easy to say no from afar, and I was definitely up every morning that autumn firing up the 28.8k modem to see what they played the previous night. But in the light of all that came after, the absence of momentum is palpable. The mood ring is saying “reply hazy, try again,” and I’m growing impatient.