SET 1: The Star-Spangled Banner, Farmhouse, Rift > It's Ice > Bouncing Around the Room, Stash, The Lizards, The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Julius
SET 2: Gotta Jibboo -> Saw It Again -> Magilla > Twist > Slave to the Traffic Light
ENCORE: Lawn Boy, Good Times Bad Times
In a year without a festival, without a Halloween, without a New Year’s Eve, all the Phish holiday pressure in 2000 fell on the 4th of July. And that’s a lot to ask of a celebration that Phish had only observed for the first time last year, after 15 years of avoiding Independence Day. Any anti-American allegations fell flat when the band literally wrapped themselves in the flag in Atlanta, but that code-violating attire – and the expected fireworks and a capella national anthem – were the only things Phish changed from a typical summer show.
The band kept it similarly simple for the follow-up, checking off The Star Spangled Banner early and launching some brief but truly terrifying in-pavilion pyro* as soon as Page finished crooning in the encore. As far as I can tell from the incomplete video, the patriotic outfits were not even reprised – thankfully, in the case of Fish’s stars-and-stripes boxer briefs. Instead, they let the music be the party favors, playing perhaps the summer tour’s finest set** on its highest-profile night.
After a first set full of vintage favorites, it’s what passes for a “new” song in 2000 that anchors the excellent second half. Gotta Jibboo has always been the runt of the TAB litter, still maturing even as Sand became the MVP of Winter 99 and First Tube has found its reliable role as an explosive opener/closer. To remedy this lagging development, Phish has been playing the bejesus out Jibboo in 2000. Counting the radio shows, it’s already racked up 13 performances in this still young year, never going away for more than 3 shows – no wonder they play Saw It Again after it tonight. But all the practice built up to this breakthrough, a nearly half-hour version that still stands as the song’s high water mark.
It’s curious that Jibboo took so long to break out, given all that playtime and the focus since Fall 99 on the TAB crossovers. It’s closer than the others to the classical Phish silliness, with a jovial bounce reinforced by the crowd-favorite “keep on drinking too-ooooo” line. So maybe it was a poor fit for the era’s heavy sound, without a timely gimmick, where Sand was frequently elongated by Trey’s new keys and First Tube offered him a platform to indulge his loop pedal layers. Jibboo, by contrast, is content to just burble along, sometimes stretching into The Zone but not through any dramatic tangents.
Tonight, that’s what it does at the outset, riding a bweeoooo and the rhythm section’s more elastic update on TAB’s original groove. One reason I have a soft spot for Jibboo versus its siblings is that it always leaves more room for Page – the best versions of the song don’t necessarily break Type I, but feature thoughtful dialogue between piano and guitar instead of being The Trey Show. That’s in evidence here, and if it had ended at a more typical 10-15 minutes, nobody would’ve complained.
But it doesn’t settle, and where it might be headed for the closing chords in the 11th minute, it instead throws back to a pre-99 space-cowfunk mode. Fishman gets almost jazzy, Page switches to Rhodes, Mike is freed from his chains, and they’re off, eventually finding a theme that’s reminiscent of the 12/31/99 Melt > Catapult. Later, it sounds a lot like the Jibboo-adjacent jam of the 12/30/99 Light Up or Leave Me Alone, and suddenly I’m feeling a feeling I’d forgot to even hope for in 2000: transporting the unhurried, uninhibited Cypress vibe to a regular U.S. show.
After two excellent deep cuts, the final two-song suite brings the balance to this set that a lot of other top-heavy Summer 2000 sets have lacked. Twist has excelled this year through entropic decay, but an assertive Mike – he’s also the one who musically suggests Saw It Again, two songs earlier – pushes it in an entirely different direction here. It fakes at going into Boogie On in the 7th minute, but then takes a nastier turn, mustering itself into a headbanging second half where Mike lets his Lemmy flag fly. You won’t hear me say this often, but it’s better on the AUD than the SBD, where you can fully bask in some good old fashioned dirtbag American raw.
Lest the show spiral into Woodstock 99 territory, Slave offers a precautionary chillout break, redeeming itself after its previous dud with a sparkling version. It completes a set-long narrative arc that has been far too lacking in this disjointed year, a mood rollercoaster that passes through party time euphoria, a dark night of the soul, and pseudo-religious redemption. Along the way, it captures the elusive essence of festival/holiday Phish on the one night of the 2000 calendar where it was called for.
* - Half of me is saying “that should not be legal” and the other half says “did they intentionally time it to mimic the opening drum fill of GTBT? That is cool as hellllll.”
** - One that you can stitch together a full SBD of from Live Bait 14 (the first three songs) and Live Bait 4 (the last two), FYI.
"...if it had ended at a more typical 10-15 minutes, nobody would’ve complained."
Counterpoint: Phish fans will complain about LITERALLY anything.
Camden '99 was pretty patriotic with Trey in his Mia Hamm jersey after the women won the WC