Early Birds

7/2/97, Amsterdam, NED, Paradiso

SET 1: Mike's Song > Simple -> Maze, Strange Design, Ginseng Sullivan, Vultures, Water in the Sky > Weekapaug Groove

SET 2: Stash -> Llama -> Wormtown Jam -> Wading in the Velvet Sea

ENCORE: Free

ENCORE 2: David Bowie

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On the first of July, Phish’s multi-year process of deconstructing and reconstructing their sound was finally, officially complete. The new structures, sounds, and possibilities of their improvisational approach were now established and ready to be explored over the next several months. But a healthy Phish never stops working. On the second of July, they set their sights on the next level of reinvention: the structure of the show itself. 

Phish inherited the two-set format from the Grateful Dead. By the 80s, when members of Phish were seeing their Dead shows, those two sets were anything but equal halves, with the first set serving as a shorter, more mellow appetizer for band and audience alike. Phish wasn’t so strict about this partition; their two sets were typically equal in length and intensity, and in their first decade there was usually a featured space for improv in both halves. But for whatever reason – the band warming up, the late night vibes, or a conscious decision to reward those who stuck around until the end – the second sets were usually where the true action resided, be they deeper jams, seguefests, or other assorted weirdness.

Yet every so often in Phish history, the band appears to stop and ask…why wait? If they’re feeling it from the moment they hit the stage, why not dive deep right away and make those people who partied on the lot too long regret their tardiness? August 1993 felt like the first time Phish tossed out the compulsion to ease folks in, and that urgency has come and gone ever since…all the way up through 2021/2022, when bum-rush first sets are definitely back in style.

In the uncompromising atmosphere of Summer Europe ‘97, it was only a matter of time before adventurous opening sets resurfaced. Last night’s 20-minute Ghost opener was a warning shot, and tonight takes it one step further. The last time Mike’s Song opened a show? 11/6/90, at a venue called, I shit you not, The Cabooze in Minneapolis. The last time Mike’s opened any set and Weekapaug closed it? That would be never. Sure there’s some first-settiness in the Mike’s Groove filling, but there’s also four serious jammers, including an absolutely red-hot Maze. Notice has been served: show up on time, or regret it.

The second set posts another warning about Phish show structure for the rest of the year; namely, that quantity is about to get its ass kicked by quality. That’s true by two measures. On the box set, 7/2/97 Set II is given four tracks, but there are really only three songs, depending how you classify a loose rewrite of a Steve Miller Band track. The only other threeish*-song second set in Phish history to this point was the Fleezer, a divisive experiment in playing as few actual songs as possible. Tonight’s trio also only sums up to 51 minutes of playtime — 11 minutes less than 6/22/95 II, and around a half hour short of what Phish fans would normally expect for their 30 Dutch guilders. As if to make up for the brevity, Phish plays a rare double encore, each containing a meaty song. 

It’s a nice gesture, but unnecessary. Where the Fleezer felt like the slightly contrived endpoint of the lengthy experiments in Summer 95, Stash > Llama > Wormtown > Velvet Sea is a masterful sequence, with an organic narrative arc. Tacking on one or two or three songs to the end just to run the clock out would have cheapened the drama, like a solid idea for a movie stretched out to a 10-episode streaming arc. 

This isn’t the first Stash to crack wide open, lest we forget Orlando ‘95. But where that one used Manteca and Dog Faced Boy as established basecamps to extend its borders, this one is a full leap into the unknown, starting from the three-minute ambient wash that precedes its intro riff. The song that, on A Live One, best exemplified the structured tension-release dynamics of Phish improv now collapses into the episodic jamming style of 1997 — no funk, but patient segments of riff-rock, TMWSIY-ish discordance, an emotional release, and a slow-gathering drone that crests into Llama.

The aggression of Llama is the perfect powder keg to chase the heady half-hour that preceded, and even surprisingly brings the only cowfunky segment of the set when Page chooses synth over organ for his solo. Then, of all things, they transform “Swingtown” — a truly stupid song by one of the all-time worst classic rock bands — into a nightmarish theme song for the Amsterdam run’s worm-back banter. And finally, they win over even this Velvet Sea hater with a version that is perversely slow, a twin to the previous show’s Cities, featuring a Trey siren loop perpetually ringing deep in the mix. It’s a pillow-soft landing to a very intense suite of music, told in a continuous breath from start to finish.

Would it have been improved by a Character Zero or Cavern or Hood, just to get it up to more typical Phish set length and maybe give a few audience members that song they were hoping to hear? I personally think not. Even adding the strong encore performances of Free or Bowie to this set would’ve somewhat diminished its effect as a spontaneously composed rock operetta. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a set is cut it short, and the best thing you can do for a show is to get down to business right away. After all, you know what the early bird gets.

* - The math is also contentious in Finger Lakes, depending on whether you count the mid-Tweezer “My Generation” as a separate track.

[Photos from Larry James, thanks Larry!]