Highest Efficiency
7/10/99, Camden, NJ, E Centre
SET 1: Wilson > Chalk Dust Torture -> Roggae, Water in the Sky > Back at the Chicken Shack, Sparkle > Bathtub Gin, Golgi Apparatus
SET 2: Tweezer > Mountains in the Mist, Birds of a Feather > When the Circus Comes, Fluffhead
ENCORE: While My Guitar Gently Weeps > Tweezer Reprise
In early 2021, I was one of the first guests asked to be on a new Spotify podcast called Bandsplain. The concept was straightforward: each episode would feature host Yasi Salek talking to a super-fan of a musical artist often considered inscrutable by the general public, offering expert guidance on how to appreciate said artist. The recording was much different than what I’m accustomed to – we spoke for a few hours over two different sessions, and the conversation was cut down to under 90 minutes*.
Yasi was also a more skeptical interviewer than I expected, but it was fun to make my case for Phish, even as I realized in real time that all the talk of vacuum solos and fake Halloween albums sounded completely ridiculous. Another challenge was that Spotify was experimenting with a form of podcast that interspersed our discussion with tracks from their streaming catalog. So once they gave me the final edit, I had to pick a handful of songs that helped illustrate the points I made in each heavily-edited segment.
A few of these were straightforward. In talking about the band’s attempts to cross over to the mainstream, I chose the A Live One Bouncin’ and the studio Free – still my choice for the best Phish single. We talked, to Yasi’s great confusion and amusement, about Kasvot Vaxt, so I tossed in Turtle in the Clouds; to demonstrate their cover band prowess, I picked a Frankenstein. But by far the hardest decision was to pick just one track from the pool of official releases that captured Phish improvisation at its best, without alienating listeners who weren’t going to dedicate a half hour of their day to the Amsterdam Stash or the Providence Bowie.
What I settled on was a performance that I’m not even sure I had previously rated as an all-time Phish moment. The Camden Chalkdust wasn’t an instant classic after it was played in 1999, and while it may have gained some esteem upon its release on Live Phish 08 in 2002, that edition felt like a fairly minor release in the series on the heels of Worcester 98 and an August 93 show. At “only” 14 minutes, big jam hunters tended to overlook it; someone scanning this show without context would likely go for the 16-minute Gin or the 20-minute Tweezer first. Thanks to the Bakers Dozen highlights and 12/30/15, it’s not even close to the longest Chalkdust on Spotify.
But like I said, I didn’t want to scare off anyone with a short attention span, even if we strategically planned to put it at the end of the episode. I was also looking for a jam that succinctly illustrated the difference between Type I and Type II improvisation, capturing the moment when Phish is roaring down the rails and then suddenly breaks off on a spur track that had never existed before. That’s the type of thing that’s easy to hear after thousands of hours of listening to live tapes, but very difficult to demonstrate to a beginner.
So in the end I selected this Chalkdust, and I remain happy with the choice. Unlike a lot of jams that gradually move from familiar territory to the thrilling unknown, this Chalkdust essentially flips that switch in under five seconds, somewhere between 8:50 and 8:55 if you’re following along at home. Up to that point, it’s a standard but excellent Chalkdust – if Trey had played the jam-closing theme right there, it would sit in the middle of the song’s historical bell curve. But the three minutes after that are simply Phish at their most sublime and telepathic, jaw-dropping music that seemingly forms out of nowhere.
Of course, it didn’t, and it’s been fun to see this idea come together over the last couple shows, most notably in the Virginia Beach BOAF and the MPP Weekapaug. The trick is fairly simple, essentially just Trey dropping into half-speed while the rest of the band barrels ahead. But with the right rhythm and melody, it’s magic. Here, Mike, Fish and Page play what sounds like a hardcore band’s take on Joe Jackson’s maniacal “Steppin’ Out” backing track while Trey goes full Allman, using his whammy pedal to simulate slide and stretching those high notes out like taffy. That they all arrive at this extremely improbable mix of styles separately and then immediately recognize they should stick with it — over chord changes! — is pure wizardry, the fruit of 16 years experience playing together. Even the comedown, where the pressure hisses off and Trey gently introduces Roggae over a still-frantic Mike bassline, is virtuosic.
My thinking was that even a Spotify listener hearing their first proper Phish jam could sense that something special and unprecedented was happening**. Certainly Phish themselves confirmed that it was a landmark moment, not only by releasing this show but also by including the jam’s climax in their 30th anniversary montage. Charmingly, Trey then tried to recreate it in that night’s Light, only managing to prove how singular the original moment was.
In fact, the band tries to recapture the Camden Chalkdust magic later in this very show, moving into similar territory around the 7th minute of another very good BOAF. And the rest of the show is good too, despite what Wikipedia tells me is “fairly average” after the early highlight. There’s a nifty Gin with a prolonged instrumental “I’m A Man” segment, and a Tweezer that starts out concerningly with the molasses tempos of the night before but gets rescued by a massive jam-initiating bweeoooo.
It tees up the most prolonged segment of cowfunk we’ve heard all tour so far – given extra raunch by the slo-mo pace – and it gives way to a quiet stretch with all the texture Merriweather was lacking (or maybe it’s just the unfair SBD advantage). A lovely, multi-faceted jam, that would be the highlight of most Phish dates, unfortunate enough to share a slipdisc with the highlight of most Phish years.
That said, I wouldn’t want every Phish jam to be like the Camden Chalkdust. It’s not that long jams are inherently superior to short ones, but I like the messy parts, the tension/release of hearing the band search for The Big Idea and eventually finding it. That kind of improvisation is a fascinating window into the creative process, whereas a jam like this one almost feels too easy, as breathtaking as that ease can be. But for the curious music lover convinced by some bandsplaining jagoff to give the band a quarter-hour audition, it just about perfectly condenses what Phish does best into a reasonably sized portion.
* - It amuses me that Bandsplain episodes now occasionally run multiple hours; if ever there was a band that justified that longer runtime, it was Phish.
** - Was I right? I’ll never know, unless one of you somehow got into Phish and reading this newsletter via Bandsplain, in which case please speak now.
I always have put this on any spotify playlists where I'm giving someone a sampling of Phish. It's the perfect combo of a pretty basic rock and roll song that is Phish-y, combined with some of their wildest jamming that gets there relatively quickly. So I agree with your pick for the podcast.
Also, an additional band tidbit on this jam — Fishman from a summer '21 interview on Sirius (who actually remembers the venue and year):
"Every one of our tunes has been my favorite song at one point or another. All you gotta do is have a really peak experience with any one of them. And then you’re like, “oh, OK.” What actually is a funny story — for the longest time “Chalk Dust Torture” was the song I had a hard time wrapping my head around. And Trey used to always say, “you know, that’s like our best song.”
I was like, “I don’t know, man …” It was funny because back when you’re younger and you’re making that album and we were almost like the anti-hit band, you had that thing.
And then the record company is like, “well, now go out and play that a million times.” So whenever there was pressure like that, we always kind of would just pull away from that. And then my ex-wife, when she was in labor with our first child, she goes, “I want to hear the Camden 99 “Chalk Dust.” I was just like, really?
And we put it on and it blew my head off — that jam, it reaches this place where — and I remembered it happening, and I had forgotten about it, until that moment. It was at that gig where I remember coming off stage and feeling like, OK “Chalk Dust” is my favorite song now.
And now it’s the kind of thing, if I was going to try to turn someone on to Phish, I’d be like, “here, this is all you need to know about us, this is some of our best work.”
Great article, as always, Rob. Here's a quote from Trey's Rolling Stone interview of 6/14/15:
Do you have a memory where you hit a peak that you never found again?
There was a jam after "Chalk Dust Torture" at PNC Bank Center that was so unhinged. I can't remember what year it was, but it's probably findable. I think Mike put those videos together for the 30th anniversary.