Fully Absorbent
SET 1: Buried Alive > Down with Disease -> Makisupa Policeman, Chalk Dust Torture, Ghost > Divided Sky, Dirt > Taste, The Star Spangled Banner
SET 2: Mike's Song -> Simple -> Dog Faced Boy -> Ya Mar -> Weekapaug Groove, Bouncing Around the Room, Character Zero
ENCORE: Ginseng Sullivan > Sample in a Jar
A strange thing about Phish reinventing their sound in 1997 is that they ended up sounding more like themselves than ever. That’s said with the benefit of hindsight, as Phish has spent 18 performing years since 1997 sounding more like they did in that year than they did in any year before. But the choices made in 1997 led Phish down a path all their own, separating them definitively from the jamband pack and not depositing them anywhere near turf already occupied by other artists. It’s a remarkable feat.
Phish never really fit in with the Wetlands/HORDE crowd that came up contemporaneous to their ascent, but as those groups leaned harder into Americana and adult-alternative radio, Phish’s torrid affair with funk split them off from those fashionable and commercial sounds (though it was a close call, with the acoustic sets and Lillywhiting of 1996). And somehow they avoided sounding like other white guys hyphenating the funk and the rock, most notably the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but also groups like 311, Primus, or the growing tide of nu-metal acts that weren’t afraid of a little slappin’ the bass.
Phish didn’t even really end up sounding like their most oft-cited influences in this era either. According to Trey, the tour bus stereo was a regular rotation of James Brown (album unspecified), Band of Gypsys, and Tribute to Jack Johnson. But apart from the solitary “Them Changes” in Worcester and the ever-present “Super Bad” tease in the tour’s 2001s, there are no direct references onstage. The lore states that the Remain in Light set was the spark that led to the forest fire of Fall 1997, but the band never digs up a complete song from that record (with the exception, again, of the ubiquitous Crosseyed riff), and doesn’t really end up sounding like Talking Heads at all.
All of these reference points were chewed up and assimilated into Phish’s sound instead of replacing it, and the first night in Philly is a prime example. It’s an almost covers-free evening, with only brief visits from Francis Scott Key (reprising their Flyers game appearance* the night before) and Norman Blake, two highly unfunky folks. It gets off to a bit of a slow start, but by the meat of the second set it is dripping with Fall 97 innovations. Despite being built from familiar material, it sounds every bit like a new band, so much so that the straightforward mid-first set Divided Sky – as classic a Phish song as they come – feels like a fossil.
That sound is of course laced with funk, but Phish has shaped it into its own unique entity, infused with their 1995 arena-rock masterclass and unparalleled group telepathy. Funk as a genre is typically lean and mean; even James Brown’s big bands sounded taut, with plenty of space between every note. 1997 Phish can certainly be mean, but they’re hardly ever lean, and that changes the whole palette of funk’s dynamic tricks.
Tonight, in a tidy first-set Ghost, the band uses funk signifiers (the wah, the synth, the popped bass) to create a shoegaze wall of sound, making the abrupt breakdown jam at the end all the more impressive – not just a J.B.’s demonstration of endlessly-rehearsed unity but a sudden freefall into silence or an isolated solo. Mike’s and Weekapaug take the heavy, claustrophobic slabs of sound from Band of Gypsys and Jack Johnson (recorded just three months apart in the fusion-friendly year of 1970) and sculpt them into thrill rides fit for a basketball and hockey arena. It’s overwhelming sonically – even on tape a quarter-century later – but still supple, as only a foursome steering each other’s wheels could be.
The funk flirtations would also seem to finally steer Phish away from the supposed influence that has most often been affixed to them – the good ol’ Grateful Dead. The Dead dug Miles too, and even shared a few bills with his quintet the very same week they recorded Jack Johnson, but they mostly shied away from funk, only stumbling into it sideways through the lens of disco in the late 70s. Some “Tighten Up” jams, “Shakedown Street,” and “Hey Pocky Way” aside, funk is not a prominent ingredient in the Dead’s melting pot.
Meanwhile, Phish claims to not be thinking much about the Dead at all, actually. In Bittersweet Motel, Trey gripes “I’m not the Grateful Dead, I don’t care if the Grateful Dead had that. There’s aspects of the Grateful Dead that I love, there’s aspects of, you know, Boston that I love.” I would think that critics reviewing Fall 97 shows wouldn’t say the G-D-words as often, given the music on display. But ironically, the less people referenced the Dead when talking about Phish, the more they sounded like them, especially in the 3.0 era as they got slower and sappier (and especially especially after Trey’s Fare Thee Well internship).
And despite all those updated influences, tonight’s most fascinating sequence sounds…quite a bit like the Grateful Dead. Simple dissolves beautifully into a free time Trey/Page dialogue, and when Fish and Mike gradually join back in, it bears a strong resemblance to “The Wheel” coalescing out of “Space.” It eventually becomes a rearranged-on-the-fly Dog-Faced Boy, accidentally its best live version ever, a gentle folky makeover with a frisky bassline that could fit into a ballad slot in the Dead’s early 70s first sets.
It’s followed by Ya Mar, forever and always Phish’s “Iko Iko”/”Women Are Smarter” analogue, but particularly loose and Dead-like tonight, building patiently to a Scarlet > Fire interlude frenzy and then a Weekapaug that would’ve killed three-quarters of any Dead lineup. Perhaps it was the lingering ghosts of a venue the Dead played 53 times, or Trey psychologically regressing to his 70s mall-kid childhood next door in New Jersey.
Either way, it’s a weird direction for a Fall 97 show to turn. But a long-buried influence subtly bubbling to the surface fits with how Phish’s more recent musical mentors are settling in: not through rote imitation, but as new mutations that can be introduced to existing material and reshuffled at will. Phish built their unique sound by being a musical sponge, soaking up and recombining every record in arm’s reach. By 1997, that sponge was so saturated that even an abrupt shift and a deconstructive impulse couldn’t totally corrupt their sound, it just made it all the more singular.
* - There was a link here, but it turns out it was for 5/18/97. They sang the anthem at two Flyers games in seven months? Good for them. Thanks to my fact-checking cuzzes.
Great writing. I love a show with no covers, personally. Something about this 12/2 that I just love.
Great post. I really enjoyed/agree with your insight about Phish being so distinct from the HORDE/Wetlands eras of 90s bands.
The James Brown album they had on the bus was In The Jungle Groove. I believe this is mentioned in the Phish book.