SET 1: Funky Bitch > Wilson, Limb By Limb, Drowned -> Rock and Roll
SET 2: Birds of a Feather -> Catapult > Heavy Things > Sand, Meatstick > Cities -> Walk Away > Run Like an Antelope > Frankenstein, Wading in the Velvet Sea
ENCORE: Character Zero
Phish saw my concern over a six-song, 59-minute first set yesterday and doubled down today with…a five-song, 53-minute first set. Once again, I am forced to meditate on the potential bathroom struggles of the band, but I’ll spare you an entire essay on that theme. Instead, these abbreviated opening frames at the Garden State Arts Center have me pondering the purpose, in the year 2000, of a format we all take for granted: the two-set show.
It’s widely assumed, and probably correct, that Phish swiped this structure from the Grateful Dead. And why wouldn’t they – playing two sets and an encore every night proved to be a durable agenda for the Dead across most of their three-decade career. So for another band that likes to play for a long time without an opening act, it provides a practical intermission for both the musicians and the fans to tend to their business, bathroom and otherwise.
But the Dead’s two-act structure enabled them to present two pretty different versions of themselves every night. By the late 70’s, the first set was often shorter and songier, featuring the Americana Dead via Bobby’s blues and country segments and Jerry’s folkier material. Set two was for the Psychedelic Dead, where the majority of the jams happened and the Drums/Space segment offered each evening’s most experimental adventures. It was a formula, but it worked, reliably showcasing the multiple personalities of a Sybilesque band.
Phish is just as uncategorizable, but their two-set format never sorted as cleanly. Even in the audience-building days of the early 90s, their two sets didn’t really differentiate themselves, usually running around the same duration and with a similar overall (frenzied) energy. There was an overarching structure to early Phish shows, with jam vehicles usually placed in the middle of the first set and the beginning of the second, but if anything it got sillier as it went, with the usual Fish song/Big Ball Jam/bluegrass mini-set/Acoustic Army hijinks popping up in most fourth quarters.
There may have been some songs that Phish tended to call for earlier versus later, but there wasn’t a clear demarcation between those categories. It’s not like Phish eased in casual audiences with less challenging material, they were just as, if not more, likely to drop a Fluffhead or a Divided Sky into the first set instead of relying on a string of accessible Sparkles and Bouncin’s to not scare off the noobs. And after they became big enough to not worry about those beginners, the boundaries between sets got even cloudier, with first sets sometimes veering songier, but still throwing in a big jam whenever fans got too comfortable showing up late.
That’s been the case so far with first sets this summer, with some nights feeling like the band opening for themselves, and others throwing down a 26-minute Tweezer before the sun has set. The sub-hour shortness of the PNC first sets is an anomaly, as by the following week they’ll be playing a 90-minute opener in Camden and one in Toronto that’s more than twice as long as tonight’s. But that extreme variance just reflects the indecision swirling around the band at this moment – is the first half of the show a warm-up act, or a segment with equal stature to its after-dark counterpart?
Tonight, in only 53 minutes, it somehow acts as both. Funky Bitch and Wilson are classic slow-roll openers, Limb By Limb is a reliable improvisational stretching routine. And then they suddenly go extremely hard with a Drowned > Rock and Roll pairing that is basically the Gen X version of the Dead’s old Mama Tried > Big River cover duo. The Who number has no trouble reaching extended arena-rock liftoff, and the segue into the VU half is exquisite. And then, just like that, they’re bowing and they’re gone, like George Constanza leaving on a high note.
Would the set have been improved by a Farmhouse, Julius to get it up to a more typical 70 minutes? Definitely not. But it’s still the kind of move that leaves a weird taste in the crowd’s mouth. At a time when the set breaks were getting longer and longer, you can’t help but take it personally, like the band would rather spend time with the party backstage than marshal the proceedings onstage. And unlike the still-satisfying short sets of Fall ‘97 (think Denver or Auburn Hills), there’s no sense that a narrative arc has just arrived at the gate ahead of time; here, it was merely a half-hour serving of Phish being the world’s greatest classic-rock cover band.
To their credit, they do try to make it up with an extra-long and very inside-jokey second set. It’s the first American show to explicitly reference Japan, including a banter-heavy Meatstick with the translated lyrics and a Drum Logos reprise of Cities and Walk Away. But it’s telling that those rare-ish covers are the references they choose instead of playing a Fukuoka-style jam, or even a weird, slow Gumbo or Twist. The deeper lessons of the Japanese run have fallen by the wayside, they’re back to the familiar turf of long, repetitive Sands and Carini jokes.
The lopsided sets don’t really cause that problem, they just elevate the sense of unease around this tour. In a way, it’s surprising that Phish didn’t lean into a more song-based, perhaps even partially acoustic opening set at this stage in their career – Farmhouse sent at least some signals suggesting a rootsy, “Workingman’s Beauty” phase for the band, and even if it would’ve pissed off a lot of fans, doing a Bridge School thing for an hour every night would at least be an ethos, dude. Instead, Phish’s essential unpredictability is starting to feel a bit like uncertainty.
I think Mike discussed the bathroom issue in the Shvice.