Island Time Travel
12/12/95, Providence, RI, Providence Civic Center
SET 1: Ya Mar, Sample in a Jar > Divided Sky, Lifeboy, Punch You in the Eye, The Horse > Silent in the Morning, Run Like an Antelope, I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome, The Squirming Coil
SET 2: Free, Sparkle > Down with Disease -> The Lizards > Simple, Runaway Jim
ENCORE: Fire
If there’s one thing we know about Phish, it’s that they love donuts. And even long before it was renamed for a popular purveyor of round, sugary bread, the Providence Civic Center really put a glaze on Phish whenever they came through. Their debut in the Rhode Island hockey arena merely produced one of their finest jams ever, they’d spend half of their best 4-night run of all time in the venue, and its corporate name put it into consideration for the greatest gag of 3.0, even if they went with the more glamorous location.
The 1995 stop in Providence might be a tier below these achievements, but it still yielded a second 30-minute jam in as many years — that’s two half-hour voyages at a point when they’d only cleared that barrier a...baker’s dozen times. The Providence Disease is only 2-½ minutes shorter than the Albany YEM, with much less composed prelude and no vocal or silent jamming. It’s only real peer on the Fall 95 tour is the Landover Free, which felt less like a moment of inspiration than a vendetta between the guitarist and the drummer.
But for a 31-minute jam, tonight’s Down with Disease feels strangely inconsequential in Phish lore; even typing out the words “Providence Disease” doesn’t feel deep with resonance the way Albany YEM or New Haven Tweezer or Providence Bowie immediately calls to mind specific landmarks. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it — I’d choose it in a second over that long Free, and it fills its half-hour without ever flagging, an impressive lack of lulls that’s testimony to a band that has lived in each other’s heads for three straight months. Yet it’s also a slippery piece of improv; something about it feels out of sync with the rest of December 1995, leaving it just outside the narrative.
Maybe it’s merely that Disease, with only five total performances all year, doesn’t feel like a 1995 song, even if two of those five performances went historically deep. In 1994, they ran the song’s legs off; in the following year, they mostly forgot about it, even though its major chords and fist-pumping closing riff would seemingly make it a prime vehicle for conquering arenas. As Hershey’s opening pairing with Buried Alive amply demonstrated, even Type I Diseases would have fit snugly into the tour’s M.O.; and both 11/12/94 and 6/26/95 proved that the song was ready for the call-up to the jam vehicle major leagues.
But right after I had myself convinced that the December 95 style was jams that focused relentlessly on one key and one theme, this one is a whole dang Whitman’s sampler of ideas. The jam stamps its passport through a Balkanized map of different segments after it starts going astray at 6:30: a stretch that sounds like Os Mutantes, the obligatory-for-Fall-95 Who pastiche and aggressive wah-pedaling, a Mike bass feature to spotlight the Bootsy basslines he’s throwing down, a tidy little motif with Fishman playing rim-clicks, a hint of Manteca mixed with Bathtub Gin, a galloping symphony of shrieking Trey loops, insect fear space, and a noisy wash that could fit into The Siket Disc. Somewhere around the bass solo it loses hope of ever fluidly circling back to the standard ending, instead it just melts away into Lizards.
Some important sonic fingerprints aside, that’s a structure that much more resembles a 97 and later jam, or even a 3.0 approach — the Tahoe Tweezer and Alpine Ruby Waves are similarly fickle, although even farther-ranging in their modulation. It’s a temporal anomaly further suggested by the late-90s feel of the entire second set: only six songs, no ballad breathers or gimmick breaks, and just missing full segue continuity with a couple miniscule gaps near the beginning and end.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m usually thrilled to identify hints of future eras of Phish in these older years. But this Disease is almost too much, like suddenly realizing the full existential terror of messing with the space-time continuum. Put it in a 1999 show and I’d probably be drooling all over myself, but I’m so immersed in 1995 right now, I feel like an ape-man scratching at the obelisk — a similar sensation to whenever I duck out of this project into a Dinner and a Movie or an anniversary listen from a later year.
Perhaps I’m overthinking it, and I’m in too deep on the year of 1995 and the story it tells. Maybe I’m struggling with end-of-tour fatigue, a condition to which Phish themselves appear to have been immune in this fabled year. For normal people listening to Phish normally, I’d highly recommend this Disease, another feather in the cap on the home court of the Friars. As for myself...I’ll revisit it in a month, when I’m off tour and back living in the present day.
[Ticket stub from Golgi Project.]