Heavy Mileage

9/19/99, Irvine, CA, Irvine Meadows

SET 1: NICU > Funky Bitch, First Tube, Gotta Jibboo, Heavy Things, Farmhouse, Stash, Hello My Baby

SET 2: Twist > Sand, Wading in the Velvet Sea > The Squirming Coil, Loving Cup > Down with Disease

ENCORE: Guyute, Character Zero

Listen

Of the three non-musical factors I cited yesterday as steering Phish towards the 2000 hiatus, the least sexy is plain old fatigue. It’s worth remembering that the band played 926 shows in the 1990s, never mind recording seven albums in between. And Phish’s aversion to the traditional album cycle meant that the pace was pretty steady across the decade; apart from mostly taking springs off starting in 1995, Phish tour was a year-round endeavor, every year. 

It’s not going to make for a juicy segment on Behind The Music, but that kind of grind has got to take a lot out of a band. And even when they reached massive success at the end of the decade, Phish seemed reluctant to ease off the gas. 1999 may have booked the fewest number of total shows since the late 80s, but the late start meant squeezing 64 shows into the last six months, a pace that, extrapolated over a full 12 months, would exceed their busiest year ever of 1994.

Further, the reflexive responsibility to cover the entire country every year meant they filled this half-year with a Family Circus zig-zag around the U.S.: forming a loop around the eastern half of the country in the summer, trekking all the way from the west coast to Long Island in Fall, surging down the East Coast in winter. By 1999, long past their tireless and methodical audience-building days, they really didn’t have to play Idaho and New Mexico and Iowa, much as I’m sure local fans appreciated it. But coloring in the map was what Phish did in the 90’s, they just didn’t know any other way. 

That creates the kind of three-city, four-day weekend they could pull off with ease in their twenties, but which creates new aches and pains in their mid-thirties. Tonight’s date in Irvine might only be 90 miles away from last night’s in Chula Vista, but the Mountain View to Chula Vista drive was a 500-mile overnight monster. California is big, yo! It may be wise to cover the SF and LA markets in most years, but you don’t have to do it in a 96-hour period. Add in the hefty Portland-Boise-San Fran drive at the start of the week, and you can understand why the boys might be dragging on the fourth consecutive night.

And boy howdy are they sleepy in Irvine. We’re talking two sets that each barely inch past the hour mark and tally the same number of songs as the first set of Shoreline’s first night. The second set particularly feels like they can’t wait to get back to the hotel – they start playing wishful thinking set closers 35 minutes into the set. There’s a long encore to make up for it, but within it they pair two of the most overplayed songs of this era: Guyute and Zero. It’s as phoned-in as a Phish show could be at the end of their 90s marathon.

The one interesting detail is that they pack this drowsy evening with new material – the four big TAB crossovers all appear, three of them in succession early in the first set. If I hadn’t already blown my “they’re promoting Farmhouse before they even recorded it” joke last week, this would have been the perfect time for it; they go on to notch the title track and Twist as well. The TAB songs remain works-in-progress; Jibboo is a little more elastic than its debut at the Gorge, Sand is played brisker than usual and in doing so loses some space to breathe, zipping straight to a hard-rock conclusion.

The one song this evening that benefits from the fatigue is Stash, which burbles hypnotically at low volume for several minutes, a fever dream that sneakily reaches nearly 18 minutes. When neither Twist nor Sand recapture that sleep-deprived haze, they activate autopilot and run down the clock for the rest of the show. They deserve their day off, and they’ll need it too as they start a long eastward plunge – they’re due 3,000 miles away in Long Island in 2-½ weeks. At the end of a long decade, there’s still no rest for the weary, and it’s a road that inevitably contributed to next year’s burnout.