Keep You Feelin’ Bad

7/26/98, Dallas, TX, Starplex Amphitheatre

SET 1: Birds of a Feather, You Better Believe It Baby, David Bowie, Frankie Says > Reba, Funky Bitch, Good Times Bad Times

SET 2: La Grange, You Enjoy Myself, Albuquerque > Simple > Bold As Love, Sample in a Jar

ENCORE: Punch You in the Eye > Bittersweet Motel

Listen on phish.in

The jukebox tour has been a little slow getting started. Unless you count the brief skirmish with “California Love” in the opener and the deep bustout of “She Caught The Katy,” the one-off covers that Summer 98 is known for haven’t started appearing; it’s more of a late-tour phenomenon than I previously realized. But tonight in Dallas, on the third night of their Texas swing, Phish drop two new remakes that start to stretch the elastic band on their typical cover zone. 

The first of these, Joe Tex’s “You Better Believe It Baby,” provides a classic fable of what setlisting was like in the days before smartphones and Napster and social media. Phillip Zerbo tells the story well on phish.net; the short version is that the song was mislabeled and misattributed for 11 years before someone finally figured out the true source. With hindsight, it’s a pretty obvious connection – playing a guy named Joe Tex in…Texas* – but I remember what we initially called “Too Much of Anything” being the subject of much lot speculation when they subsequently soundchecked it at Deer Creek.

Part of that discussion was over whether it was even a cover or a new original, but in retrospect, it was pretty far out of line with what Phish was writing from 97-99. Instead, You Better Believe It Baby would’ve fit right in with the cover-heavy debuts in the winter of 1997 – and could’ve offered some blessed respite from My Soul in the following years – when it briefly seemed like Phish was moving in a more rootsy direction. The fact that it only got one more play (plus a couple of tease cameos) reflects this late arrival, but it was still a promising sign that they were looking beyond their usual 70s classic rock sweet spot for new influences. 

Speaking of that era, the second cover debut of the night comes from one of its figureheads, the great Neil Young, a figure that will loom large later in the year. But instead of choosing another greatest hit like last year’s Cinnamon Girl, this time Phish chose a deep cut off Tonight’s the Night, a masterpiece but certainly not one of Neil’s most mainstream releases. Today, Tonight’s the Night is one of my favorite albums of all time, but when Young Rob caught the follow-up performance of Albuquerque in person six days later, all he knew was “this riff sounds like Neil Young, must be that new cover I saw online.” It also sounded like they might be singing “Al the Turkey.” Hey, there’s a lot of animals with improbable names in Phish songs.

It’s notable that Phish didn’t just choose a Neil deep cut, they also chose a Neil downer. Albuquerque is from the popular rock genre of Songs about The Road, and its most frequented sub-category, I’m Tired of It. That’s not a mood Phish served too often before 1998, unless you count the gentle fan-scolding of Disease and BOAF. “I’ve been starvin’ to be alone” is not something we’re used to hearing from the gregarious Trey, particularly in his Bittersweet Motel era.

But it’s a lovely song for Phish to play, and like When The Circus Comes, it borrows someone else’s gravitas to patch their own late-90s struggles with more “mature” songwriting. Consider the song Bittersweet Motel, which makes its second appearance tonight – “halfway between Erie and Pittsburgh” doesn’t possess a fraction of the poignancy of Santa Fe being less than ninety miles away, and eating fried eggs and country ham beats the old hammer-and-nail cliche for melancholic imagery. Trey is also wise to stick closely to the script of Neil’s original guitar part, and does a great job of replicating the singular tone of Old Black on the Languedoc while the others nail the ragged Santa Monica Flyers harmonies. 

Put ‘em together and it’s kind of a bleak duo: a song about the dangers of excess and a song about being tired of people. I promise that the rest of the covers summer won’t be such a bummer – we’ve got Van Halen, Jane’s Addiction, and the Beastie Boys on the horizon, after all. But Joe Tex and Neil Young at least limber up Phish’s “hey let’s learn that song and play it tonight” muscles and instincts, and start to push the band and their audience beyond familiar territory, both musically and emotionally. The jukebox is plugged in and ready for quarters.

* - See also: a very long La Grange. Gotta play a little ZZ in TX.