Moments in a Box

11/8/98, Chicago, IL, UIC Pavilion

SET 1: Taste, Carini, Love Me, Ride Captain Ride, Fee, Paul and Silas, Roggae, Water in the Sky, Stash, Cavern

SET 2: Chalk Dust Torture, Meat > Rock and Roll > Down with Disease > Piper > Wading in the Velvet Sea, Run Like an Antelope

ENCORE: Been Caught Stealing

Listen on phish.in or watch on YouTube

Since we last visited the UIC Pavilion back in the earliest days of the Substack era of this project, it has become almost literally my home venue. Earlier this year, I took a job at University of Illinois Chicago, and while I’m warming up lunch in my office kitchen, I can look down on the arena just two blocks away. I won’t say that I took the job because I’d seen my favorite band five times on the school’s basketball court, but it definitely played a subtle influence – I realized shortly after my first Zoom job interview that I had a framed poster from the 2011 UIC run hanging above and behind my head. 

When Phish scheduled their inaugural run at the United Center this fall, I was a little bummed that they weren’t coming back to what is now the Some-Kinda-Bank Arena. It made sense; if Phish is only going to play three shows in the Midwest in an entire dang calendar year, they go with the 23,500-capacity NBA arena instead of the Missouri Valley Conference stop less than half its size. But I’d argue that UIC Pavilion is one of the under-the-radar classic Phish venues, and certainly the one best suited for the band within the Chicago city limits.

Yeah, that’s a bit of gerrymandering to eliminate Rosemont Horizon/Allstate Arena, but the neighborhood campus atmosphere on Chicago’s Near West Side is so much better than the scummy airport-and-casino suburb. 3.0 Phish made a habit out of playing Northerly Island, a nice enough lakeside amphitheater if it doesn’t suddenly hurricane and leave an evacuated sold-out crowd a mile from shelter, but outdoor versus indoor isn’t a fair fight. The United Center this fall was better than expected, particularly in the acoustics department, but it’s still cavernous and ringed by a concourse with the exact same feel as an airport terminal.

The UIC Pavilion is in the sweet spot of Phish venues. A minor league hockey team doesn’t play there (one point for Rosemont), but an obscure college basketball program is the next best host for Phish to AirBnB from. There’s a CTA stop one block away, a reasonably sized lot for convening without feeling like you’re in a sea of cars, and plenty of good Italian nearby if you’re more of a sit-down pre-show dinner type. Inside, it densely packs in 9,500 under a low ceiling, sounds good, and stayed general admission longer than most large Chicago venues. It’s essentially a Midwestern Worcester Centrum or Hartford Coliseum, a thoroughly unremarkable and fairly rundown room given a dose of magic by way of Phish history.

I was right then and I’m right now — that’s a distinct “Jam” after Disease.

When I belatedly arrived there on night 2 of the 1998 run, I immediately loved it. After my unexpected absence the previous night, I was determined to get the most out of this show, and the band gave me plenty to chew on even if there was no jam segment as notable as the AC/DC Bag > Ghost. That positive attitude has stuck to this show for me over the quarter century since – even though it’s clearly the weak point of this three-night run, it’s a comfort listen that I’ve thrown on way more often than its objective qualities probably deserve.

I mean, look at that first set, that’s just fun stuff. A Taste opener, the first Carini with the “naked dude” lyric, Mike doing Elvis, Page doing Blues Image, the first U.S. Paul and Silas in over three years, extremely pretty versions of Fee and Roggae, and Stash threaded with the Fikus theme (probably the optimal role for Fikus, in retrospect) – it’s the kind of set you take in with an ear-to-ear grin. Nothing in the second set reaches high altitude, but we still got the first holdover from Loaded in Rock and Roll and chunky versions of several Phish favorites, capped by the second Been Caught Stealing.

I’m aware that if it wasn’t for the homerism, I’d probably be moaning about the lack of flow or deep exploration. But even if you’re skeptical, I will direct your attention to one stretch of the second set, the last four minutes of Down with Disease. The song has already come to its standard conclusion with the riff and chorus vocals returning, but Trey’s final chord rings on and on until the big windmill finish melts into a looped sustain. Eventually, Page and Mike stop waiting for Trey to call the next number and layer in synth and a lovely little high-note bass figure, and at barely audible levels it slowly becomes the intro to Piper.

That’s good scrapbooking, college Rob.

The crowd gets restless as that last Disease chord fails to resolve, but mostly stays hushed and attentive through this segment. It’s an intimacy that still takes my breath away, probably because I was a part of it, but it still sounds like a much cozier room than a basketball arena. And after Piper crests, the band seemingly tries to recapture that tranquility with Velvet Sea; Trey’s solo is particularly delicate, the crowd – aside from a few hooters – is mostly enrapt.

It’s the kind of moment you couldn’t get at the Horizon or the United Center, or the majority of the venues Phish was playing by Fall ‘98. It sounds just about as close as you can get to the European club experience on the west side of the Atlantic, if you weren’t lucky enough to snag a Fillmore ticket or a TV taping invite. And now whenever I’m staring out the Blue Line window on my way into work, I can get a little whiff of that sense memory.