SET 1: The Star Spangled Banner, Sample in a Jar, Cars Trucks Buses, The Sloth, Divided Sky, Character Zero, Ginseng Sullivan, Stash, Waste, Possum
SET 2: Wilson, Chalk Dust Torture, Wolfman's Brother, Reba, Train Song, Maze, Life on Mars?, Simple -> The Horse > Silent in the Morning, David Bowie
ENCORE: Funky Bitch
Here’s another reason for why Fall 96 just generally feels off. The feng shui of playing MSG early in the tour — on a Monday and Tuesday night, no less — is all wrong. Since 1995, Madison Square Garden has been the exclamation point on a Year of Phish, a celebratory summary of everything they accomplished in the previous 12 months and (ideally) a preview of the next. You can’t do that in mid-October*.
There’s also an argument to be made that fall tours that travel West-to-East outperform East-to-West schedules. Phish naturally warms up as tours go on, and the mixture of a red-hot band rolling into their New England homeland at the end of the itinerary is always combustible. 1996, like 1994, goes the other direction, and in that former year, the band was cooking in the Midwest in November and then trailed off when they got back to warm weather. Swinging through East Coast strongholds such as MSG, Hartford, Hampton, and Charleston before they’ve found their sea legs is suboptimal.
Those factors set up a Phish show tonight that is wholly unremarkable, which for an MSG show, is especially disappointing. The energy level of the crowd still achieves typical MSG levels, despite the school night scheduling. But the band mostly goes through the motions, its sole inspiration the debut of some Billy Breathes material they hadn’t yet tried out in the big round room. The second night has hijinks to spare, but this one’s just kind of a yawner.
Laying an egg in MSG suggests another potential reason for the malaise of 1996: the absence of one of Phish’s main creative fuels up to this point. From their inauspicious debut in 1983 up through 1995, the band grew at a patient and methodical pace, playing virtually every venue in the country on their way up the commercial ladder. But they also weren’t afraid to punch above their weight now and then, booking a larger room than their stature at the time could support and challenging their fanbase to show up and expand.
The period from 1993 through 1995 was full of these moments: the sheds in July/August 1993, the band’s debut at MSG on 12/30/94, the circuit of classic rock shrines such as the Capital Centre and the Spectrum in Fall 95. On most of these dates, Phish rose to the occasion, playing like they deserved to be there, while their sound grew organically to reach the high rafters and spread out lawns. The giddy “look Ma, we made it!” energy surely helped, as both the band and their fans fed off the buzz of bringing their idiosyncratic scene to rock’s biggest stages with hardly any artistic compromise.
But that buzz couldn’t last forever. In terms of venues, there were no longer any higher tiers for Phish to conquer, unless they decided to follow the Dead into stadiums. Wisely, they created their own upper tier instead with the Clifford Ball, but the logistics of that kind of event limited it to once a year. So here they’re playing MSG for the fourth time, which can’t help but be something of a letdown after the high of their rookie appearance, or of filling it on New Year’s Eve.
I’m not alleging that Phish took MSG for granted in 1996, but it’s reasonable to assume that some of the special glow had faded. They’d recapture it by making it their traditional NYE site, and eventually their home court, a venue where they’re as comfortable as they once were at Nectar’s. But there’s something more. Back in ‘96, they may have started to realize that just staying true to themselves on the most famous U.S. stages wasn’t enough inspiration on its own. To feel that dangerous excitement again, they had to invert the relationship of small band just happy to be in a big room, transforming those legendary venues into the laboratories for their own reinvention.
* - Though you can pull it off in mid-summer, if you merely play 13 shows in a row with no repeats.