Four Sticks
10/23/96, Hartford, CT, Hartford Civic Center
SET 1: Punch You in the Eye, Poor Heart, AC/DC Bag, Foam, Hello My Baby, Character Zero, Rift, Theme From the Bottom > Run Like an Antelope
SET 2: Brother, Ya Mar, Tweezer > The Lizards, Llama, Suzy Greenberg > Slave to the Traffic Light, Julius
ENCORE: Chalk Dust Torture
If the modern era of Phish has made anything clear, it’s that Jon Fishman is the key element that holds the whole band together. Trey may be the leader, Page and Mike the invaluable role players that bring out the best in everyone, but Fishman is the foundation, equal parts steady timekeeper and mad scientist. At 56 years old, he still drums like he’s 26, and any speed he may have lost with age is made up for many times over by advances in skill and inventiveness.
Fishman’s improbable longevity is the #1 reason Phish still sounds so vital 38 years (!) into their career, long after similar bands started slowing down (cough, the Dead, cough cough). But Fish’s singular talent has long given Phish an advantage over their multiple-percussionist jamband peers — with only one drummer, they can be much more nimble between and within songs, more easily attaining the mind-meld necessary for the most thrilling improvisation. At his best — and he’s often there — Fish sounds like two drummers but behaves like one, facilitating a band dynamic few can match.
So it’s always weird, and somewhat risky, when another drummer joins him on stage, as Bob Gullotti does here for the entire second set and encore. Fish and Gullotti had played together before on the Surrender to the Air project, both the recording and the New York City shows in April. But while that was a free-jazz group of equals, Gullotti’s presence here is definitely an imposition; even his drumset is kind of awkwardly squeezed in between Fish’s kit and the front of the stage. It’s a delicate balance that the second guest drummer in two nights threatens to topple.
Yet it works more often than not in Hartford, so much so that Phish would ask Gullotti back for two more extended sit-ins in 1997. The band makes no compromises for their guest, playing as varied a set as usual, throwing everything at him: the fluctuating time signatures of Brother, the calypso of Ya Mar, the composed intricacies of Lizards, and the soaring ballad Slave. Gullotti was best known for playing and teaching jazz, but he’s game for any genre in Hartford, and, if anything, adds more power to the set than nuance.
That extra thrust works out great for Brother (one of its finest versions, a teaser of Remain in Light not just in the layers of rhythm but also Trey’s Belew-esque solo), Llama, and Chalk Dust, but occasionally makes songs such as Ya Mar and Slave overly fussy. The set’s centerpiece Tweezer is arguably both, fueled by an aggressive double-drum attack that suggests The Boredoms or Thee Oh Sees. Trey predictably responds with some finger in the electric socket playing, and the jam starts to approach the realm of last year’s famous Tweezer in Connecticut…but it doesn’t quite get there, in part due to Trey’s insistence on adding a third set of percussion to the mix for a spell.
Actually, comparing the New Haven Tweezer and this Hartford Tweezer is instructive for how more drummers can be less, in Phish’s case. The former makes my hair stand on end every time, the latter teeters between thrilling and migraine-inducing. 12/2/95 is propelled by Trey and Fish jousting in a way that only two people who have spent years playing together can pull off; 10/23/96 has the novelty of a fresh element, but that can only push the improv so far. Even a musician as talented as Bob Gullotti ends up just proving the point that Jon Fishman is a special drummer, and that he doesn’t need any help.