SET 1: Punch You in the Eye > Reba, Albuquerque, Carini, The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > Suzy Greenberg > Jam
SET 2: Drowned > Crosseyed and Painless > Dog Faced Boy, Prince Caspian > Loving Cup
ENCORE: Driver, The Inlaw Josie Wales, Sample in a Jar
When Phish released its first batch of Live Phish CDs in September 2001, Volume 3 bore a heavy burden as the most recent show. If Volume 5 (7/8/00) established their pre-hiatus baseline and Volume 4 (6/14/00) represented the atypical outer limits, Volume 3 covered important middle ground – a “regular” great show with all the bells and whistles. And given the band’s uncertain status at the time, that job carried the additional pressure of making an important case: Phish might be on a break, but they’re not done yet.
It’s a mission well accomplished. This is a standout show, in the dual contexts of the fall 2000 tour in and the Live Phish series. If those CD releases were meant to paint a more complete representation of the show/tape experience, Volume 3 is an excellent representative of a particular kind of treasured performance, one powered by jams in unexpected places and expansive takes on classic rock covers. But as a stop on Phish’s final pre-hiatus tour, it’s almost as much of an anomaly as the show in Japan three months prior, presenting a rose-tinted picture of Phish at the end of their first era.
Important for a show that’s less than 2-½ hours of music, the band gets started early with delicious, oppositely-flavored jams in Reba and Carini; the latter being Trey’s odd reason they selected this show*. But it’s the Suzy where the show achieves liftoff and perhaps justifies one of the possible use cases for the much-maligned Volume 5* – setting the bar low. That show had a Suzy too, and was a bit of a bustout for the fan favorite that became a rarity in the late 90s. But the Alpine version is so perfunctory that they forget a verse, whereas here, they just can’t stop playing it.
It finds its legs in a style that Phish seemed to be consciously avoiding by the year 2000: good ol’ cowfunk. It was always a little ironic that Suzy went largely MIA from 97-99, given that it’s such a good candidate for a stripped down dance-floor makeover. Here, in an extended breakdown between the second and third verses, they finally fulfill that promise – or at least three quarters of the band do, as Trey goes missing on his keys while Page clavs it up and Fish hammers the cowbell like famed producer Bruce Dickinson is in the wings.
Fortunately, at the point where the copyright-gaming “Darien Jam #1” starts, Trey is back on board, hitting those scratchy funk chords he had been denying us. At 2:30, he delivers the bweeoooo that fully completes the throwback, even flirting a bit with a “Superbad” tease for extra veracity. And like those 1997 jams, the funk isn’t the endpoint, it’s a launching pad for a frenzied full-band peak that sounds far more effortless than the prolonged, heavy assaults they preferred in 2000.
If ending the set there feels a bit abrupt**, they happily keep the feeling afloat across set break and a rusty run-through of Drowned. Once we’re back in “Darien Jam” territory, it’s top-notch Phish improv, now freed from the cowfunk protocol but also avoiding the typical 2000 jamming style. The factionalization of two days ago is nowhere to be heard; most of this jam features all four members fully present, listening, communicating, evolving. In the Phish discography, it’s the longest jam released since the A Live One Tweezer, but it’s a far more digestible listen, progressing patiently through new themes instead of abruptly shifting gears.
There are still stumbles, for sure; it sounds a lot like it’s running out of calories 9 minutes in when it collapses to Page’s piano and frantic Trey scratches. But it’s deployed as an opportunity to darken the jam, swimming in dissonance for several minutes. It gives Trey an excuse to reach for his keyboard, but without the rest of the band locked into a repetitive groove – and with the sonic benefits of a SBD mix – it’s a novel usage, a noisy extension of the preceding jam instead of an aggravating cul de sac. When a deranged slot machine loop wraps around Page’s sinister piano and Mike’s charging bassline in the 18th minute, it’s another moment where you can hear what Trey imagined the 99/00 sound to be.
As it starts to drift back into more typical tiresome 2000 territory, they pull out a brief ambient jam then another deep cut cover. Here, the split out into yet another “Darien Jam” is a bit misleading – this is a pretty normal Crosseyed by modern standards. But since it’d be another year and 12 more volumes before the Remain in Light set got an official release, it’s the first officially released demonstration of Phish’s ability to capture and extend that pivotal Heads/Eno sound.
The best shows of a tour are always a bit dishonest, capturing the band at an elevated level that wouldn’t be possible to reach every night. That’s part of the reason for this project, to listen to all the in-between shows that reflect the flawed, fascinating hard work that sets up the all-time classics. But like Fukuoka, Darien 2000 almost feels like a fraud – it’s much closer in structure to a “typical” Phish show, but it also features high-end, democratic jamming that was becoming increasingly hard to find at the time. As a live album, it’s a perfectly fine choice to show where the band landed at the end of a torrid decade. But as a promise for the future, it may have offered false hope that Phish’s present-day health was higher than it actually was.
* - He told Relix: "It’s a complete metal meltdown. It’s the bass and drumming in the background that I really liked. It’s really strange. Nobody’s playing the beat at all. Those guys are playing in quarter time and the guitar and keyboards are just creating this wash of color on top of this heavy booming."
** - In this case, it was due to a storm, not potential bathroom difficulties.
I adore the two big jams of the second set but man does that one guitar string being out of tune throughout Caspian take me out of it, my one big lament of an otherwise great show