Ghosts of Yet to Come

5/22/00, New York City, NY, Radio City Music Hall

SET 1: My Soul, Chalk Dust Torture, Billy Breathes, Heavy Things, Back on the Train, Split Open and Melt, Sparkle > Horn, Bathtub Gin

SET 2: Bouncing Around the Room > David Bowie, Sand, The Mango Song, Ghost > Rock and Roll

ENCORE: Bug > Golgi Apparatus

Listen

I’ve enjoyed the recent run of Phish prestige magazine profiles, even if they were not written for people like me (and, most likely, you). Both GQ and the New Yorker mostly followed the same beats, with a skeptical-at-first writer* slowly won over by fan devotion, band earnestness, and the endless storytelling depths of Phish’s lore and longevity. And both were written for an audience that had likely heard of this weird hippie band, but hadn’t really investigated why they were still around and even knocking on the door of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…respectability?

For that Phish-curious crowd, I thought they were excellent primers on what makes Phish such a special band, and can anecdotally report that it got a few of my hater friends to give them another shot (results pending). And they both contained just enough nuggets to keep us sickos happy. Like the fact that Kevin Shapiro is just sitting on some transferred tapes of Big Cypress, or that the Mondegreen secret set (and maybe others?) had planned out key changes and “energy levels,” or that Trey was inspired by seeing Fugazi in 1989.

But for me, the most exciting parts are when the band (well, usually Trey) talks about specific jams. It was very gratifying that Trey selected the 7/10/99 Chalk Dust as a guide to the magic of Phish improvisation, since that was my pick for similar purposes. The singling out of the Tahoe Tweezer and the Alpine Ruby Waves as pivotal moments in the band’s modern era also tracks nicely with online discourse and my own personal ears.

Phish doesn’t usually get so specific when they talk about their live performances, which is smart – you don’t really want the magician to reveal their tricks. That goes for full shows too; apart from the final four LivePhish CD releases selected by Mike, they’ve fully delegated the curated trickle from their archives to Shapiro. I assume that also goes for the recent “LP on LP” series of highlight jams released on vinyl**, but given that the very first installment was that same Alpine Ruby Waves…maybe there’s some band input?

I bring it up now because, of those first four jams pressed to wax, the only 1.0 representative is tonight’s Ghost. This was not a huge upset, as the Radio City Ghost has long had its banner hung in the fan-favorite hall of fame. But the official endorsement still means something, particularly as the only selection to date that wasn’t from an already-released show and in a series with such a heavy recency bias.

Because the context of that younger company recasts the role that the Radio City Ghost plays in Phish’s long timeline. I’ve always thought it was a very good jam – no contrarian hot takes here – but it never really struck me as an era-defining one. Perhaps due to the truncated nature of post-Cypress Phish, it took a long time for this version’s influence to spread as compared to the immediate impact of its Denver ‘97 forefather.

It’s enlightening to listen to those two bookends back-to-back. The Denver Ghost crackles with the raw, zooming energy of discovering a new jamming style, and it will set the template for the next couple years, with the funk sections forming a tight coil that explodes in hard-rock geysers. The Radio City Ghost, by contrast, is a smoothly polished stone, restrained and fluid. Some of the moves they were giddily exploring in Fall ‘97 are now second nature, and you can hear how far they’ve developed and how much more potential there still is to mine, even if it took several years to pay off.

As we discussed a lot in 1997, the real killer app of cowfunk was that it unleashed Phish democracy, the genre providing a way for Trey to step back on rhythm and let the others contribute ideas without resorting to gimmicks like the mini percussion kit. The 1999 style, oddly, slid back into that strategy with Trey’s synthesizer, a gambit that paid off occasionally but mostly walled Trey off in an isolation booth of effects while the other three were abandoned to vamp among themselves.

In tonight’s Ghost, he again turns to the keys, but they successfully avoid that improvisational dead end. The bulk of the credit goes to Mike, whose bass is essentially the lead instrument for the majority of the jam. He’s got practice; there’s an interesting Bowie intro at the top of the set where Mike undercuts a bweeoooo-fest with a long, bluegrassy solo. Here, the bassist is absolutely locked in with Fish, which helps keep the momentum up as Trey starts to fiddle with his knobs.

Then at 7:00, in a surprising swerve, Trey partially yields the synth floor to his pal on the other side of the stage, shifting to quiet funk chords while Page unfurls spaceship buzzes and whirs. And shockingly, the guy who gets paid to play keyboards immediately does a better job of it than the guy who is mostly there to play guitar; Page’s synth fantasia is so much fuller and more expressive than Trey’s favorite chintzy presets, pushing the jam forward instead of sending it around a cul de sac. The ensuing groove is shrink-wrap tight but icy and discreet; they’re no longer dorks throwing a dance party, they’re almost cool.

After a brief return to the main Ghost theme at 13:45, you’d expect this jam to either fizzle out or explode into hard-rock fireworks. But the back half is almost melancholy, the band arriving at a minor-key chord progression that contrasts against the still danceable beat. Once again it’s Mike in the captain’s chair, soloing for large chunks of it while Trey stabs away at that heartbreaking theme and Page embellishes on piano. Eventually, Trey switches to arpeggios but they cling to the bittersweet mood for much longer than you’d expect, feinting at a breakout at 23:00 but instead shrinking down even further to a coda filled with melodic miniatures.

It’s a rightly revered jam, and a singular one – its sound is not at all like what comes to mind when I think of 2000, the next couple weeks of international travel aside. But revisiting it today, it feels more familiar; in fact, it feels a lot like the other jams selected for the LP on LP series. The atmospheric, unhurried pace echoes the Bethel Waves soundcheck, the fluid movements between bespoke themes recalls the Alpine Ruby Waves, the role of Page’s synthesizer in shaping the mood aligns with the Deer Creek Simple.

More broadly, it doesn’t so much feel like breaking new ground as a refinement, an execution of what Phish does best that sounds effortless but is built on an astonishing framework and history of practice – the defining sound of 3.0/4.0/whatever point-oh we’re currently in. The Radio City Ghost feels like a modern era Phish jam, over a decade ahead of its time, a keystone fit for a vinyl series or a magazine profile.

* - To my delight, both former Pitchfork colleagues

** - Which I gotta say, I don’t really see the point of? Who wants to have to flip a record in the middle of a 30-minute jam? Vinyl is just not a jamband medium, man.