Ju-Ju Eyeball

12/8/95, Cleveland, OH, CSU Convocation Center

SET 1: Sample in a Jar, Poor Heart > Simple > Runaway Jim, Fluffhead, It's Ice, Acoustic Army, Prince Caspian, Good Times Bad Times

SET 2: Also Sprach Zarathustra > Tweezer -> Kung -> Tweezer, Love You > Hold Your Head Up, The Squirming Coil, Tweezer Reprise > Run Like an Antelope

ENCORE: Come Together > A Day in the Life

Listen on phish.in

I sometimes worry that I’m judging 1995 Phish by modern standards. It’s not really something I can help; re-examining these shows through the filter of the quarter-century that has passed since is even part of the point. And if I’m being honest, my criteria for Quality Phish is probably not fully a 2020 bias, but stuck somewhere in the late 90s, applied both backward and forwards in time from the era where I saw the most shows in person. 

But I was also a Phish fan in Fall 95, even if I hadn’t seen them yet, and I was already fervently collecting the December tapes that looked good based on rec.music phish setlists and fan reviews. I don’t have those tapes at hand — they’re either collecting dust in my parents’ attic or a landfill — but I’m pretty sure I had 12/1, 12/2, 12/4, 12/5, 12/8, 12/9, 12/11, and the New Year’s run at the very least, all begged for through Prodigy Online B&P trades and received several weeks later in padded envelopes. 

I don’t know why I went after these particular shows. Probably most of them were just whatever I could get from a friendly tape partner as quickly as possible. Some of them I likely picked because the newsgroup discourse had already certified their featured jams as instant must-haves for any respectable Phish collector; the New Haven Tweezer and Albany YEM were pretty much immediately canonized, as I recall. 

But I absolutely chose this particular show for the normiest of reasons: not the 26-minute Tweezer > Kung > Tweezer, but the double Beatles encore, played in tribute to John Lennon on the 15th anniversary of his death. For years after, the tape’s date and homage would help me remember the birthday of a friend whose father, distraught over the news of Lennon’s shooting, left her mother in the hospital to give birth alone (dark!). I was probably even sold a bit by reports of Trey’s banter acknowledging Jimmy Page’s dragon pants and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame before Good Times Bad Times; I’d make time to visit the museum myself on a Phish tour off-day in Summer 99. 

In 1995, 16-year-old Rob was still all in on the dream of classic 70s rock, even with the temptations of alternative and indie rattling those beliefs. And Phish was the dream band for that period in my taste, with a deep roster of covers straight from the playlist of WCKG, doubled down by their choice of one of my favorite albums, Quadrophenia, just weeks after I received my first tapes from the cute hippie in social studies. So a show with an encore that looked like a decent Two-for-Tuesday Beatles pairing? That was absolutely my jam, way more than the actual...jams. I have zero memory of listening to the Tweezer on my old tape deck, but I nearly burned out the side with the end of the show.

It’s not far-fetched to hypothesize that hearing familiar songs played well was the main appeal for many Phish attendees in the mid-90s, and may still be to this day. Going to see Phish is not the same thing as seeing a Beatles or Zeppelin cover band, of course, but it could give you a close facsimile of those 70s sensations in the 90s, in the type of venue that suits loud rock music, for the very reasonable price of 20 bones. If they play some actual songs by those bands, all the better, and catching a brand-new Beatles cover might be more thrilling than catching a 20-minute jam.

Happily for those fans, they don’t have to choose on this Friday night in Cleveland. The Tweezer, for all its length, is very accessible until it gets all Kungy, a pastiche of riffs that references the Iron Butterfly of the previous night, tomorrow night’s YEM jam, and the Zeppelin that has hovered over this entire leg of the tour. It lands in some Syd Barrett for the advanced classic rock aficionados out there, and after an odd mid-set Coil, Tweeprise > Antelope is further demonstration of Phish’s pyrotechnic abilities.

As for Come Together, well it’s merely fine full band karaoke, but they could’ve gone the easier route and played just the Beatles cover they’d been playing all year, or one of a dozen or so John songs they learned last year for The White Album. It feels like a genuine tribute, complete with an awkward intro from Trey; even as the most obvious possible influence on a guitar-rock band, The Beatles have been important role models for Phish through the growing pains of the last couple years, and they will be again for the studio album soon to be recorded. For all of the boundary-pushing of Phish in 1995, sometimes it’s just nice to appreciate The dang Beatles, whether you’re onstage, in the crowd, or listening along at home. 

[Ticket stub from Golgi Project.]