Dawn of the Mothership
10/25/96, Hampton, VA, Hampton Coliseum
SET 1: Ha Ha Ha > Taste, Makisupa Policeman -> Maze, Billy Breathes, Mound, Guelah Papyrus, I Didn't Know, Stash, The Squirming Coil
SET 2: Tube > Prince Caspian, Timber (Jerry the Mule) > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, NICU > Free, Strange Design, Harry Hood > Cavern, The Star Spangled Banner
ENCORE: Johnny B. Goode
When, precisely, did the Hampton Coliseum become one of the holiest cathedrals on the Phish map? The 1998 shows released as Hampton Comes Alive — in Grammy-nominated box set packaging that celebrated the venue’s architecture, no less — would be the obvious choice, or perhaps the 1997 shows, which were also given the official blessing in 2011. It’s probably not the Thanksgiving weekend debut at the venue in 1995, when Phish played Poor Heart three times and a 15-minute rotation jam.
But 1996, the band’s first sellout in Hampton, might secretly be the year that Phish laid claim to the Coliseum as their own turf, and not just stolen jamband valor from the legendary Grateful Dead runs in the same room. It’s no Hampton Halley’s or Tubthumpin’/Jiggy jukeboxes, but graded on the curve of Fall 96 so far, it’s a very good show, with a couple memorable jams on old chestnuts and an interesting setlist of many mild rarities. If last year was pressing the weirdness a bit too hard on their maiden Hampton voyage, the follow-up sounds more comfortable in the (Southern) round room they’d come to call home.
Don’t take it from me, take it from Trey, who says tonight before Stash:
“Sometimes people ask me what the best rooms that we play are, and this is pretty much it for me, just so you know, to answer it politely. Good sound, everybody gets to go wherever they want on the floor. Couldn’t beat it!”
Later, around the release of Hampton Comes Alive in 1999, he told Rolling Stone:
"It has the best sound of any arena we've played in. The beat-up old arenas have so much more of a vibe than the new ones with all their luxury boxes."
They grow up so fast. Fall 96 is the first Phish tour that takes place entirely within arenas (with the exception of West Palm Beach and Vegas); even Fall 95 had a sprinkling of theatre dates. But Phish is already making the transition from beggars to choosers. It’s not selfish, though — note that all the advantages of Hampton that Trey cites are things that matter as much, if not more, to the paying customers: sound, atmosphere, and the freedom to sit or stand wherever you want.
It’s a corollary to the effect I talked about a few days ago with Madison Square Garden. After years of striving to grow their audience and the venues that they play, Phish has bumped up against a ceiling where there’s no higher tier that doesn’t require a complete reengineering of the Phish live experience. Even sitting at this current level risks compromise; most of the arenas Phish now inhabits were designed for sports first, and if they also work well for music, it’s accidental.
So yet another challenge the band faced in 1996 was making these cold, corporate rooms feel as intimate as the venues that Phish has outgrown. The acoustics and GA policy of Hampton Coliseum do some of the work for them, and slowly, future tour itineraries will tilt towards multi-night runs at the arena and others that provide a similar level of comfort for the band and its fans.
But Phish can contribute to that effect musically as well. Counterintuitively, one way they can manufacture intimacy is by growing less hospitable to new fans, playing sets that reward experienced listeners at the risk of alienating the uninitiated. If you came to Hampton on this night excited to hear songs from Phish’s new album, you only got three of them, mixed in with a bunch of songs that you can’t find on any album. You’d be better prepared if you bought a ticket on the endorsement of A Live One — the show’s centerpieces are strong, if not quite ALO-matching, versions of Stash and Hood — but still potentially befuddled by the Jewish prayer, the Chuck Berry cover, the earnest singing of the national anthem, and the many non-album tracks.
Not every venue can be Hampton, so in the next year, Phish will double down on that intimacy-through-experimentation approach. 1997, and subsequent years, risked even alienating some of their old fans by playing fewer songs, newer songs, stretched out in an unfamiliar style. Phish in 1996 isn’t quite ready to attempt that night in and night out, another contributor to the unsatisfying middle-ness of the entire year. The trick will be not just waiting for venues such as Hampton to unlock that possibility, but to bring that Hampton feeling on the road with them.
[Thank you @WolfGuitar for the stub! As I said on Twitter, I’m missing many Fall 96 stubs, so please send me any shows I haven’t covered yet, if you’ve got ‘em.]