Destiny

4/3/98, Uniondale, NY, Nassau Coliseum

SET 1: Mike's Song -> The Old Home Place > Weekapaug Groove, Train Song > Billy Breathes, Beauty of My Dreams, Dogs Stole Things > Reba, My Soul

SET 2: Roses Are Free > Piper > Loving Cup > Run Like an Antelope

ENCORE: Carini > Halley's Comet > Tweezer Reprise

Listen on phish.in or Spotify

Whenever this project lapses into evolutionary biology, I’m usually trying to emphasize one key point: evolution is slow. Despite what Pokémon would have you believe, new species don’t just appear instantly, they’re the result of a glacially slow accumulation of genetic variants selected for in a slow-motion cycle of reproduction and death. Phish, The Most Evolutionary Rock Band of All Time©, embodies this gradualism, with new sounds and approaches popping in throughout the timeline but often taking multiple years and hundreds of shows to settle in as dominant themes. Think about how the 5/7/94 Tweezerfest defines the spontaneity of future setlists, or the Albany YEM’s early prophecy of the cowfunk era…it’s a long tail.

That said, the Island Tour is the ol’ exception that proves the rule. While the sound of Fall 97 spent more than a year slowly taking shape, the sound of Phish in 1998 and 1999 appears as sudden as a lightning bolt in these four shows. I have even argued before that you can hear the precise transition from 1997 to 1998 in one single jam: tonight’s Roses are Free. If we want to get really nuts about it, I’d pinpoint 14:32 of “Nassau Jam 1” as the exact moment when the Phish calendar flips and a new epoch begins.

That’s an oversimplification, of course, and just yesterday I was arguing that the first night’s Stash and Twist were important transitional preludes. But the journalism rule is that it takes three to make a trend piece, and Roses Are Free takes those promising developments and delivers simply one of the most treasured Phish jams ever. By the end of its 27 minutes, it really does feel like everything is different, a notion thickly underlined by the rest of the absolutely flawless set that follows. 

But crucially, it establishes continuity with Fall 97 at the outset. Roses was one of that legendary tour’s big instant-success debuts, and the jam starts out in November/December’s signature style, a call and response between Trey’s wah chords and Mike’s melodic basslines over a bed of clavinet and Fishman doing Clyde Stubblefield with more cymbals. It almost resembles a reprise of a very specific Fall 97 highlight: the Hampton Emotional Rescue, right down to Fishman happily coo-ing over the top. 

Yet where the Emotional Rescue jam swells until it pops, the Nassau Roses frays and contracts. There’s a long stretch built around Trey’s staccato lead and a stop-start sequence, but it all has a new undertone of unease and melancholy, souring the dance party punch. In the 12th minute, entropy threatens to win out; you can hear the indecision creeping in after Fishman drops the breakbeats. The tension and the challenge, as Phish starts to explore more abstract territory in its improvisations, is how to add texture while keeping the momentum and energy afloat – there’s a reason why the band defaults to rock or funk when the path forward isn’t clear, or simply calls for another song.

It’s here that all that 1997 investment spent jamming in the studio for John Siket, exploring new frontiers instead of working on actual songs, pays out. My precise timestamp above is where you can hear Phish grabbing back control of the jam and finding a third way, a sparkling, deep pool of sound that doesn’t resort to pure volume or party tricks. Like the Twist the night before, it has the feel of ambient music, but blown up to arena size – patron saint Eno didn’t just make Music For Airports, he also produced “Heroes” and The Joshua Tree, after all. It’s the full realization of what comes after the funk, the minimalism and democracy they inherited from that genre applied to a much broader canvas.

The sound of Phish’s future has little flecks of the past, as it should. The final segment of the jam, starting at roughly the 16th minute, has a hint of TMWSIY to it, or the related dreamy instrumentals that Mike, Page, and Fish would compose on the fly while their guitarist rambled through lengthy narrations in the early 90s. It builds to the kind of frenzied Trey runs that marked many Fall 95 or 97 peaks, but they’re constructive instead of outspoken, in harmony with the rest of the band. Alongside all of its other qualities, the Island Tour might have my favorite sonic mix Phish ever achieved; in both the immediately circulating AUDs (Burris mesh-hat FOBs, in my collection’s case) and the 2005 soundboards, the band is in exquisite balance, which is part Paul at the board, part Phish groupmind at its absolute peak.

Piper is the exact right call to double down on this rebirth, and the back half proves that this new sound isn’t a fluke. After 8 minutes of slow build up to a raging inferno, there’s 8 minutes of smoldering menace, a doomer Mike bassline slowly traced over by Trey and Page and protected from collapse by Fishman’s Nick Mason-style drum action. The Loving Cup and Antelope are reassurances that this new Phish was still a tent big enough to hold the big arena-rock windmills and bar-band hijinks of old, mad dashes, stop-starts, stage-crashing jokes and all. For the second time in four shows, a Carini encore notarizes a Hall of Fame show, and pushes the needle so far into the red that preprising Tweezer is the only logical climax.

Squeezing all of that into a pretty concise package – the second set is only 65 minutes – is part of why I often recommend the Island Tour, and this show in particular, to Phish-curious folks. It’s Maximum Phish, capturing everything that’s great about this band from its sense of humor, diverse repertory*, and high-speed chops to its sonic depth, captivating patience, and constant improvisational innovation (and we didn’t even talk about the first set!). It’s closest competition in the Too Good To Be True single-show category are the NYEs of 95 and 99, but those feel more like culminations of the past, without the significant breakthrough to the future that 4/3/98 provides. That a single show (and run) can be both a calling card for everything Phish does best and a pivotal moment in their evolution is special stuff, the kind of lightning-in-a-bottle event that my entire critical frame wants to reject. But in this one case, I’m happy for the falsification.

* - Easy to forget how rare it is that a band can cover The Dillards, Del McCoury, Clifton Chenier, Ween, and the Rolling Stones in one evening.