Folks, I Think Phish Did The Marijuana
7/12/96, Amsterdam, NED, Melkweg
SET 1: Wilson > Divided Sky, Horn, Split Open and Melt, Ya Mar > Funky Bitch, Taste, Theme From the Bottom, Tweezer > Llama
SET 2: It's Ice -> Prince Caspian > Mike's Song -> Run Like an Antelope -> Purple Rain > Hold Your Head Up, Jam, NICU -> Slave to the Traffic Light, Suzy Greenberg
SET 3: David Bowie -> Free, Hello My Baby
ENCORE: Bathtub Gin, Johnny B. Goode
Rock music and drugs are inextricably linked. Practically every rock act biography, Phish included, has the obligatory dive into the depths of abuse and addiction, and not always with a happy ending. Yet there’s still a romanticism to how musicians use drugs, a widespread belief that substances are a source of creativity instead of a hindrance. I think there’s a case to be made that drugs influence the sound of musical output, but that effect is usually oversold in a million “they must have been sooooo high when they made this” theories. For many artists, drugs are often a form of self-medication, a means of killing time between shows, getting amped up for the performance, and winding down when it’s over. Actively using while performing can be a very bad idea.
Case in point: this show. We can spend a lot of time, and we probably will, debating the role of drugs in shaping Phish eras to come, but this night in Amsterdam is the ultimate rebuttal to the “they must have been on something!” observation for excellent and/or unusual performances. Because, at least on this night, when we know pretty conclusively that Phish got very, very high and tried to play music, it sucked. Like, really bad. I mean, it’s hilarious and every Phish fan should probably hear it once, but it’s awful, the audio equivalent of the “this edible ain’t shit/10 minutes later:” meme.
Kids today, when recreational marijuana is legal in a third of the United States, may not understand the mythology of Amsterdam in the mid-1990s. At the time, the idea of a place where weed was legal and readily available was about as fantastical as saying you could travel to Rotterdam and ride a unicorn.
As a result, every Phish fan with the means to get to Europe sometime this month circled Amsterdam as their top priority. The opportunity to see the band without the usual extracurricular challenges of scrounging up drugs, sneaking them into a venue, and discreetly using them was too good to pass up. Predictably, it was the first (maybe only?) show of this European swing to have more ticket demand than supply, with many unlucky fans left on the outside of the 700-capacity Melkweg.
What’s amusing is that Phish apparently had the same plan for Amsterdam that their fans did: to get as high as fuckin’ possible in their 24 hours in the city. And while the legend of Oh Kee Pa Ceremonies suggest they were no strangers to performing in an altered state, they were slain by the high-octane bud of Amsterdam just like many an American tourist. All seems well for a few songs, maybe a little flubby and slow as they move through Wilson and Divided Sky and Horn. But Melt and Ya Mar start flashing warning signs; both of them seem pretty fine but just sort of...peter out (or in the latter case, ignore Trey’s insistence on seguing into BBFCFM). By the time they struggle to play Tweezer, of all songs, it’s clear that the show is headed sideways. And that’s just the first set.
Soon, it becomes clear that the main symptom of Phish being over-marijuana-cated is the inability to remember how their own songs end. Like a parody of pot use, the band gets excited about a new idea and starts strong, then slowwwwwly gets distracted until they forget what they were doing, so they start playing something else and the cycle repeats. The show notes on phish.net say it all, with poor “[1] Unfinished” getting a real workout. Seven times! And even that is being generous, in my opinion. It’s possible that they even lost track of what set they were playing, given that this show has an inexplicable third set that lasts all of 25 minutes before someone reminds them they still have to drive to Belgium tonight.
The other side effect of over-imbibing is that Phish loses several gears on their transmission; if Fall 95 was like a supercharged sportscar, this show is a van in neutral rolling down a gentle slope. In the second set, Trey misguidedly calls for uptempo numbers — Mike’s, Antelope, Suzy — only for the jams to meander in no particular direction with none of their usual zest. There are a few flickers of improv inspiration, but they mostly sound like a slowcore Pink Floyd cover band, and they’re inevitably and quickly snuffed out as someone in the band chases another shiny object. Jokes aside, it’s a scientific demonstration of just how critical it is for Phish to maintain a high baseline of energy at this point in their career.
By the back half of the second set, it’s almost sketch comedy. Following Purple Rain — where, in an impressive display of tolerance, Fishman actually remembers all the words — Trey appears to give up on playing any songs at all and just asks audience members to suggest chords and a “groove” (they choose ska...ladies and gentlemen and non-binary readers, the 90s!). Between Slave and Suzy, Trey gets super into the buzzy sound his guitar cord makes when you unplug it and plug it back in. They’re stoned, folks!
Of course, nobody in the venue probably cared, being just as zonked as the band. Reader Josh Tizel, one of the few sober people in attendance, reports “It was clear that the whole band was too stoned to play at their usual level. The crowd didn't seem to mind though. We were delighted with the shenanigans and looseness of the show...The third set was even more of a train wreck musically, but again, everyone in the crowd was having a BLAST and no one cared at the time that things had gone pear-shaped musically.”
There’s not too much insight to glean from this show other than to laugh at it, which I hope the band is able to do too, if they’re not too embarrassed. If nothing else, it shows just how hard it is to do what Phish does; like operating heavy machinery, you should not do it on heavy medication. Of course, they’d eventually figure out how to balance the Betty Ford Clinic backstage with the performance onstage, and even how to effectively utilize some of the same spacey and open-ended (literally) side effects of this show. Structurally and musically, tonight in Amsterdam is only a few clicks off from 6/14/00 in Fukuoka, another small venue show in a foreign land with infinitely better results. While that show was enshrined in the first batch of LivePhish, 7/12/96 is left as a mere footnote and a drug PSA...though whether it’s pro- or anti- is for you to judge.