Getaway Day
11/4/94, Syracuse, NY, Onondaga War Memorial Auditorium
A confession: since I rebooted this project a couple weeks ago, I haven’t listened to every minute of every show I’ve written about. I mean, I’ve listened to them all from front-to-back at least once, it’s just that in some cases, that session actually happened a couple-three years ago, when I was still live-tweeting my listens.
[A digression to the confession: If you weren’t aware, I started this project way back in — my god — 2009, with the intention of tweeting my way through every show from the beginning of 1993 to the present day. Over that decade, the project has rode the trends of online media: I migrated the live-tweeting to a Phish-only alt account, started archiving them on a Tumblr page (which no longer exists), started writing essays on Medium (which is now a paywalled tech-bro wasteland) and now I’m here on Substack, hello.]
When the looming 25th anniversaries motivated me to get the essays going again, I had a backlog of shows that I had listened to and tweeted but not essayed. For a lot of these shows, I went back and looked at what I had tweeted, listened to some of the highlights I had pointed out back then, brainstormed an angle, listened again (and again) to the relevant bits of the show, and wrote down my thoughts.
But that preloading ended with 11/3/94, which I listened to in December 2017. This night in Syracuse is my first completely unheard 1994 show since that one, and I went back to my usual method: don’t peek at the setlist, listen as continuously as possible, try to go in with an open mind — or at least without any preconceptions other than what’s lingered from the shows that came before it.
Going back to basics helped me appreciate a show that on paper, is pretty standard for Fall 94. But in this case, the tape itself also played a part; the band sounds great, and the crowd does too, 8,000 people ready to throw down in an upstate New York venue better known for Dead shows. The atmosphere is a real eye-opener after grappling through the last run of shows with whether Phish were truly rock stars at this point, or just pretending to be. The answer, in Syracuse at least, is clearly the former.
From the very beginning, the crowd is Eating. It. Up. They go nuts for the Sample opener. They go nuts for Bouncin’, twice — once at the start, and once when Trey’s full spiraling guitar part kicks in over the outro. They clap along to Bowie, and there’s a random cheer in the middle of the (very good, duh) jam, either because something cool happened with the lights or because everyone just decided at that point how glad they were to be there.
The band, as they are wont to do, reflects this energy back at the audience. Everything’s played up tempo or with some extra oomph. Even The Vibration of Life is kind of rowdy, with Trey hyping up the frequency’s healing powers like a snake-oil salesman, while Fishman yells “Testify!” and “Can you feel it!?!” from the back. One set closer isn’t even enough, they have to double up with back-to-back Suzy and Chalkdust.
The second set hops right back in the car and floors it, threatening to fly off the cliff at any moment. It doesn’t always go right; here’s a clear example of Simple interrupting the Mike’s jam just as it was building up steam, though it does return to Mike’s afterwards, summer-style, for a rip-roaring 76 seconds before the soothing breeze of Tela calms things down. Afterwards, an intense Weekapaug flutters madly at various volume levels, deploying the premium “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” ending, and telegraphing that it’s heading there for several minutes beforehand (you can hear the light bulb above Trey’s head as early as 6:45).
With the pace so high, Ya Mar is a cheeky piece of contrarianism, centered by an insanely quiet jam burbling along under the hysterical screams of the crowd. Golgi and Slave bring the set to an early close — at 58 minutes, it burns bright and fast like the concise but fulfilling sets of Fall 97. A Loving Cup bustout (first in 69 shows, nice) and Rocky Top provide yet another windmilling rock and roll finish to a show that’s well stocked with them.
Energy shows don’t often get the credit of the brainier performances — they’re better experienced in person than on tape. But with the propellent of being over the Halloween hump and on the eve of a week off, 11/4 rides a giddy wave of crowd enthusiasm that’s infectious even from a quarter-century distance. Sometimes, even in the midst of their most ambitious tour to date, Phish just liked to play hard and fast and send an already adoring crowd into convulsions. Can you feel it, indeed.
[Stub from Golgi Project.]