More With Less
SET 1: Maze, Theme From the Bottom > NICU > The Sloth > Rift, Bouncing Around the Room, Free, Billy Breathes, Dog Faced Boy, Chalk Dust Torture
SET 2: Timber (Jerry The Mule), Wilson > Gumbo, You Enjoy Myself, Lawn Boy, Slave to the Traffic Light > Crossroads, Sweet Adeline
ENCORE: Loving Cup
Here’s a question for the Phish final exam: Is December 1995 so great because it summarizes to perfection everything that came before it, or because it predicts the future of Phish...or both? State your argument as a thesis statement and support it in the form of a five-paragraph essay. Of course, any savvy student knows that when a question offers you the “all of the above” option, you probably want to go with that. But no matter which answer you choose to argue, you’re probably going to have to touch upon Albany in your supporting evidence.
I am, of course, referring to how the use of the Beavis and Butthead keychain predicted Page’s incorporation of samples into the Thrilling Chilling Sounds of the Haunted House and Kasvot Vaxt material.
OK, not really. Tonight’s You Enjoy Myself is indisputably one of the most important jams in Phish history; you can question whether it’s one of the best and whether it is over/under/properly-rated, but not its significance in the overall evolution of the band. Played in the middle of one career peak, it somehow predicts the next, bending time and space to straddle both 95 and 97 in one 34-minute slice. There’s also a silent jam and sound effects, because Phish.
The most blatant time-traveling part of the Albany YEM is, of course, the “Theme from Shaft” bit that foreshadows every cowfunk-with-solo-breakdowns jam of Phish Destroying America in Fall 97. But as freakily predictive as that segment is, it’s only a few short minutes of a very long YEM jam, which stretches its legs to nearly Rosemont length. It’s the minutes before that moment that really feels like the improvisational breakthrough here.
I’m struck again by Kevin Shapiro’s unusually detailed show note about the 12/7 soundcheck: “The repeated Including Your Own ‘Hey’ exercises and Run Like An Antelope Jams from the soundcheck were listening exercises focused on adding ‘more space’ into the music and were replete with ‘space is the place’ comments.” It’s a curious thing for Phish to work on very late in a tour that, by all accounts, was firing at all cylinders as the band returned to its home region of New England.
But for all the well-regarded moments in 12/1, 12/2, and 12/5, it’s possible that Phish wasn’t satisfied with the direction they were heading. In particular, the New Haven Tweezer is the absolute extreme of the arena-rock juggernaut they built over the course of this fall tour, and while thrilling, there’s both a ceiling and a diminishing returns effect for playing as fast and hard as humanly possible. Furthermore, that jam was very much the Trey and Fish Show, working against the more collective approach that features such as the percussion kit, the instrument switching, and the new songs were meant to encourage.
So the workshopping in Niagara Falls very well could have been an attempt to return to those priorities, which paid off right away in that fantastic show and its multiple breathtaking jams. Or consider the 12/8 Tweezer in comparison to its 12/2 predecessor, the former a much more relaxed, if still heavy, stroll through a number of different hard rock riffs instead of just the escalation of one idea to its breaking point. The throttle is definitely back from the first weekend of the month, allowing more room for improvisation to breathe and for all four members to contribute to the overall fabric.
That culminates in the Albany YEM, a jam which, to be honest, saves a show that is a little lackluster otherwise. A huge snowstorm made outside conditions frightful — everyone I know who was at this show has a story about nearly totaling their car on the way to the Knick — and Phish was likely looking at a pretty empty arena when they hit the stage. So the first set is fun and loud but none too deep, and the second also takes a little time to build up speed, passing through another solid Timber and the aforementioned B&B hijinks.
But the YEM is so towering it eradicates all other memories of the night. And yet, to me at least, it’s always shocking how linear a jam it is, at least until it gets to the Shaft and Silent Jam portions. Shortly after hopping off the trampolines, Phish focuses on a single, simple two-chord progression and a riff that any advanced-level fan can call to memory instantaneously. Then they spend eleven minutes on it, basically from 12:15 to 23:18 on the SBD, all four members participating in an exhaustive dissection of the theme with a patience and restraint that owes more to the future than the present.
There’s something very Dead-y about it, it has to be said, akin to the ecstatic Feelin’ Groovy jams frequently stuck between China and Rider in 73 and 74. All the more because it’s a riff/progression they’ve explored throughout this tour, with the 10/22 Tweezer being the most obvious example. But whatever this theme’s provenance, it’s more important how they all take part in weaving it and improving it, Trey playing a lot of rhythm guitar while Mike freestyles merry basslines over the top, Page switching from organ to Rhodes to piano to synth as he colors in all the gaps, Fishman staying rock steady and resisting the urge to engage in any tempo battles with his red-headed rival.
It’s not minimalist by any stretch, but it’s so solid and so focused that the smallest little changes feel huge; the little lick Trey plays at 17:12 sounds immense after he has played with such subtlety for the preceding five minutes, as does the darting pattern he fires up 30 seconds later and gradually embellishes until he moves to his kit at 20:30. It’s already so democratic that the guitar break isn’t really necessary, but the groove has so much momentum by that point that the instrument switch doesn’t even rattle it, you just get unfiltered Mike and Page until Trey hops off his drums and right back into the central riff; he’ll do it again after the silent jam, tying the whole improvisation together nicely.
On 12/5, I talked about how surprisingly straightforward Fall 95 jams are, rarely modulating off the typical key for a song’s jam and staying within those bounds even as it fluctuates in intensity or tempo or dissonance. What’s remarkable about the Albany YEM is that it holds all of those variables constant, just letting the funk-rock percolate and find its own path, without forcing it in any direction. That restraint, not Trey on his wah pedal, is what makes it sounds so prophetic for what Phish will do over the next five years, a dedication — not always successful! — to letting the music play them instead of the other way around. So like I hinted at in the beginning, the Albany YEM is all of the above: the natural culmination of the full-band interaction in the great Fall YEMs that preceded it, and a secret experiment for the future of the band.
[Ticket stub from Golgi Project.]
I lied. The 12/29 Gin - Real Me - Gin would be 2nd behind this YEM. But still.
Thanks.
Fucking brilliant, as always.
I never thought about it until now, but you tie together here my 2 favorite non-NYE winter 95 jams: this YEM and the 10/22 tweezer.
The Albany YEM. Never grows old.