SET 1: Poor Heart > Down with Disease, Guyute, Gumbo, Rift, Free, The Old Home Place, David Bowie, Lawn Boy > Sparkle > Frankenstein
SET 2: La Grange > Runaway Jim -> The Vibration of Life -> Kung -> Catapult, Axilla > Harry Hood > Suzy Greenberg, Amazing Grace
ENCORE: We're an American Band
A lot of how Phish will transform itself for the rest of the decade is about subtraction, not addition. What’s commonly simplified as “cowfunk” is more than just cosplaying a Vermont version of The Meters, it also involves Phish playing slower, with more space, prioritizing texture over notes, letting improvisation unfold naturally instead of forcing the issue with teases and abrupt shifts. 1997 and beyond isn’t all about minimalism — it’s a form of Phish min-maxing, with some skills blown up extra-large while others are reduced — but stripping things down is an essential part of how Phish will reinvent its sound over the next three years.
Tonight in Omaha is an extreme example. For 172 seconds of the Hood jam, Trey plays a single note, an F# that sustains into what sounds like eternity. I don’t know what kind of technical setup or guitar technique it takes to create such a long note, maybe it’s easy with the right pedal or custom-made Languedoc. But as a musical decision, it’s totally ridiculous. Most bands have songs shorter than that single note. Trey waves his free arm around like he’s conducting an orchestra, there’s enough time for the crowd to erupt on four separate occasions. Phish fans quickly dubbed it, simply, The Note. Sure, there already was a “The Note,” and a “The Second Note” in YEM, but this Note makes those Notes look like Notes for ants.
It’s absurd, but it’s also yet another solution to the dilemma Trey’s been trying to crack all year with the mini-kit. While he’s holding that F Sharp, the rest of the band is going absolutely bonkers, high off their guitarist’s audacity. If the purpose of the percussion break is to get the rest of the band involved, Trey renders it superfluous with that one single note — this is an effortless and uncontrived full-band peak, without taking off his guitar, without even, literally, lifting a finger.
The Note isn’t even the first drone of the night in Omaha. Two songs earlier, Trey cuts a lengthy Runaway Jim short to clue the audience in on The Vibration of Life for the penultimate time. For a paltry 68 seconds, nothing but the 7-1/2-beats-per-second sine wave rattles around the Civic Auditorium, before the band recites a benediction of Kung over it, then triple-downs with Catapult over an insane breakbeat percussion jam. It’s one of the weirder Phish sequences ever, which is really saying something, given that this is a band that also decides to scream the names of its light crew over the outro of the very next song. It couldn’t be a more different feel than the euphoria of Hood, but it’s built on the same noise foundation: one, long, stretched-to-the-limit note.
Nobody’s ever going to confuse Phish for La Monte Young or The Velvet Underground, even when they’re covering The Velvet Underground. And as far as I know, the Omaha Hood Note still stands as Trey’s personal record for longest sustain, though he’s made a run at it on a few other occasions (I recall seeing one on 12/29/19). But he found different ways to create a similar effect without taking it to such an outer limit.
The siren-like delay loops of next year, most often heard in Ghost, accomplishes a different kind of drone, one that Trey can set, forget, and then play along to with the rest of the band. By 2000, some jams have 4 or 5 looped Treys all playing at once, fulfilling his destiny as the jamband Kevin Shields. More recently, many of Page’s new synth contributions could be classified as drone-ish, a tonal nudge that has opened up new vistas for the band’s improvisation.
But lest you think Phish is getting too high-brow, Omaha also features a trio of state-fair classic rock covers: Frankenstein, La Grange, and one of only two Phish versions of We’re An American Band (we don’t speak of the other one). There’s also a really excellent Jim that winds down fascinatingly over five minutes from its usual environs to that trio of Phish oddities, a first-set Bowie that rips pretty hard, and a Gumbo with a Maple Leaf Rag outro. It’s all the best parts of Phish in one show — I can’t believe they haven’t released the SBD yet — with the addition of a new trick that finds the magic in doing as little as possible.
There's some folklore behind the energy of this show, particularly the second set. It can be found in a google search but the gist is Leigh Fordham with another member of the crew went out on the ocean when the band was in Florida and happened upon a lost barrel filled with fine contraband, from some shady deal gone wrong probably, and absconded with it. Over the course of the rest of the tour the dust arose so to speak and highjinks ensued. This particular night, the second set especially, is fabled to be a night where the band fueled on said contraband. Hence the shouting at Leigh Fordham and Fishman mentioning Cuba. There's an undeniable kind of dark rock and roll energy to this set, unlike, as you pointed out Mitch, almost any other set they've played on this tour (or maybe ever?) Trey's face during "the note" is notably more coy and sinister than the loving ego less faces he made on this past tour when he held some comparably long notes, moving the rest of the band to shift things around underneath him in a similar way described. Plus, there are few more indulgent substance fueled rock star party tunes than "American Band". Whether or not any of this is true is left to history and the inner circles but it's pretty undeniable watching the video the band isn't sober. Mike dances around with a scarf for god's sake. Just an interesting addendum to your historical monolith. I was wondering what your take on this show would be. Loving this stuff, man.
Here is the phish.net discussion about the supposed ties between this show and the lyrics of 46 Days. https://forum.phish.net/forum/show/1378273886#page=1