Leaked Document

8/8/98, Columbia, MD, Merriweather Post Pavilion

SET 1: The Wedge, NICU, Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley -> Guyute, Fikus, Farmhouse, Possum > Sweet Jane

SET 2: Cavern > Also Sprach Zarathustra > Tela > Piper, Sexual Healing > Hold Your Head Up, Harry Hood

ENCORE: Sabotage

Listen on phish.in

A significant contributor to the reputation of Summer ‘98 might just be the simple fact that you can hear it better than most tours. If you count Europe, 8 shows from this summer have been released by LivePhish, Lemonwheel is available via the FM broadcast, and two shows each from Europe and America circulate in SBD for mysterious reasons. That’s 14 shows out of 32, and if you count the numerous individual ‘98 tracks selected for From The Archives and Live Bait and other bonus releases, almost every show has a representative straight from the house mix.

8/8/98 is a particularly interesting one, as it’s basically the last “regular” show of the pre-LivePhish era to hit the tape-trading circuit in SBD. There are a bunch of others still to come from Fall 1998 through 2000, but these are largely ripped from radio or TV broadcasts, promotional shows, or Japanese festival appearances. Unless I’m missing some back story, Merriweather wasn’t simulcast anywhere, it just leaked out, which usually meant something in the years since Paul stopped letting tapers patch in.

But with 25 years of perspective, it’s hard to see what that special feature was, exactly. It is definitely a better show than the previous night in Walnut Creek, with some unique setlist choices and a couple unpredictable jams. It also has two very fun cover debuts, but neither are anywhere near as momentous as the next night’s stunner. It’s a very short show, one that fit tidily onto two CD-Rs back in the day. But unless Phish had cut an under-the-table deal with a CD burner company, Ad-Rock requested a copy from Dionysian Productions, or the band wanted to seed a very early clue about the Halloween album*, it’s a weird show to fall off the truck.

It may be as simple as 8/8 just being a good median representative of the tour as a whole. It’s not the worst show or the best show, and the setlist is a Goldilocks mix of old stuff, new stuff, covers, and bustouts. It’s got one of the summer’s best jam vehicles in 2001 – even if it’s far from the strongest version they’d play all year – and it captures a couple songs just growing into their jam potential in Sally and Piper. It’s got a few oldies, such as Hood and Possum, played extremely well, and a couple rarities in Tela and Fikus. And there’s all those wildly unexpected covers: a VU classic that Phish was born to play in summer sheds, the Beastie Boys’ rock crossover enabling some LOUD Mike distorted bass, and Bob Weaver’s wobbly second attempt at Sexual Healing.

The Merriweather show also accurately portrays the laid-back and feel-good sound of Summer 1998. There’s the restrained post-funk of Sally and 2001, with the SBD bringing out textures that might be lost on an AUD. The Piper jam, the first to break out since Europe after a series of album-version performances, travels further afield, with a blazing peak followed by an anxious groove and a short, teasing return to 2001-style loopage before Fish and Trey switch places to make Marvin Gaye twirl in his grave. It’s the kind of jam that would sound less impressive without a higher level of fidelity to help appreciate it. But it’s still not quite the revelation of 1999 and 2000 soundboards, when the band’s dense sound was truly best suited for headphones listening.

If nothing on this night sounds that exceptional, well, maybe Phish already had one eye on the future commercial appeal of the recordings they’d been accumulating all summer, and didn’t want to let the best stuff go for free. Fall ‘98 would produce the first shows Phish would release in their entirety via Hampton Comes Alive**, and that would soon be followed by the archival floodgates opening with the LivePhish CD series. Perhaps 8/8/98 was just a safe one to release into the wild, a fun trifle for the fans to swap while the band kept the best stuff in the vault for their retirement plan.

* - I don’t actually remember if it leaked fast enough for this theory to work. Another correspondent suggests it leaked along with the Loaded set, so maybe it was a Velvet Underground-themed data breach.

** - Those upcoming Hampton shows feel a lot like this one, come to think of it: more about quantity than depth of improvisation, with a couple covers you never would’ve thought Phish would ever attempt.