Mud Love Buddy

11/13/98, Cleveland, OH, CSU Convocation Center

SET 1: Chalk Dust Torture, Wolfman's Brother -> Mind Left Body Jam -> Wolfman's Brother, Roggae, Ginseng Sullivan, It's Ice > Cars Trucks Buses, Farmhouse, Water in the Sky, The Sloth, Run Like an Antelope

SET 2: Down with Disease > Sample in a Jar, Dirt, Birds of a Feather, Meat > Harry Hood

ENCORE: Good Times Bad Times

Listen on phish.in

If some sicko was doing an exhaustive 25th-anniversary jamband project back in 1998 – presumably by fax machine or Usenet newsgroup – they would also be in the middle of a propitious run: the Dead’s fall tour of 1973. And a main character of that coverage would almost certainly be one of the great Dead mysteries, the Mind Left Body Jam. Everything about this descending melody is so argued over that it’s hard to even pin down how many times the Dead actually played it, but Deadstats calculates at least seven full appearances, with five of them coming within six weeks of 1973 that almost exactly track Phish’s fall itinerary a quarter century later.

Look, I hesitate to make the rookie move of comparing Phish to the Dead, or to make too many presumptions about the former band paying tribute to the latter, and I got most of it out of my system back in August. But if the phish.net scribes and streaming services are to be believed, that’s a real, genuine MLB right in the middle of this show’s early Wolfman’s. It definitely went over my head in Section 123 that night, but on tape it does sound intentional. So let’s stipulate that it’s real, and explore what that means.

When Phish covered “Terrapin Station,” I said it was the “absolute best choice” to break their Dead fast, with its proggy build-up and emotional jam release. But in a funny way, Mind Left Body Jam is an even more appropriate nod, which might explain why it’s far and away the Dead song* they’ve played the most. The fog surrounding the theme – to the point where thousands of hippie arguments have raged over whether it appeared or not in a given show – is similar in its slippery nature to Phish’s own Dave’s Energy Guide. It’s the exact kind of trivia tidbit that Phish packed their catalog with to give the veterans something to lord over the outsiders. Bro, you didn’t hear that tease? Crack a 6/18/94 Bowie once in a while, why don’t you?

Most importantly, Mind Left Body Jam is a good fit for Phish’s thematic jamming style. They may not pull from a regular roster of motifs like the Dead did with MLB, Feelin’ Groovy, Spanish Jam, and so forth; instead, Phish prefers to come up with fresh themes on the spot. But the episodic nature of a Type II Phish jam is an easy format to stumble – knowingly or accidentally – into the descending chords of Mind Left Body Jam, just like a hundred other classic rock riffs nested so deep in their DNA that they reflexively emerge without requiring any precognition.

Proof that I missed it.

That’s likely what happened in Cleveland, as I’m fairly confident there’s no notable event in Dead history on November 13th that they felt the need to acknowledge. Until the 9-minute mark, this Wolfman’s is in its fairly standard post-97 mode, with the notable exception of Trey doing something unusual with his loops. Instead of a bweeoooo gliding in and out of phase with the band’s rhythm**, Trey actually inputs a brief, syncopated cowfunk lick, and then switches it on and off for the rest of the jam. Instead of the usual smeary after-image haunting the jam, it’s a digital twin, a Rhythm Guitarist Trey for Lead Trey to noodle around, kept in-sync by a cooperative Fish holding the tempo steady.

That would be cool enough, but at 9:15 the jam suddenly changes flavor. I’m pretty sure I hear Mike suggest the MLB progression first, but Trey joins in after just one time around and Fishman double-times his cymbals a split second later to confirm a new chapter has started. But in a brilliant move, Trey decides to keep using his looped lick in this new context, an earthy foundation as he spirals out over the new motif. It’s great.

That neat trick does a little bit of work towards making Phish sound more like the Dead than usual. The largest difference between the two bands instrumentally is, of course, the two-guitar dynamic of Bob and Jerry, with the former using an endless supply of weird chords and tidy riffs to bring the best out of the latter. In Phish, Trey is often forced to switch between Bob mode and Jerry mode, and it usually works out fine. But here, through the magic of digital delay, he gets to do both simultaneously, and I’ll be damned if his little funky lick doesn’t sound like something Bob would play beneath Jerry in a Music Never Stopped or Shakedown Street.

And while there may be no specific reference afoot, it’s cosmic serendipity that this little nod happens smack dab in the middle of the Silver Anniversary of ‘73 Dead. There are a lot of parallels between that era of the Grateful Dead and ‘98 Phish, with both bands exploring entropic improvisation and the Dead dabbling in what would be called “ambient” music…if the term had been invented yet. The biggest difference is that, once the 73/74 Dead got into this mode, they could comfortably simmer in near-silence for much longer than Phish. But still, it’s a bit eerie that both bands reached their most deconstructed state shortly before a hiatus. 

Again, that’s a lot to read into an unconfirmed, possibly accidental cover of a fragment – not even a full song – that its originators would sometimes deny even existed. But as they say, history doesn’t repeat, it rhymes. There’s a certain romance to the Dead and Phish plucking a similar musical theme out of the ether, 25 years apart, finding inspiration on the verge of collapse.

* - Hold your corrections, I know it’s really a theme based on a song by a Jefferson Airplane spin-off group, but I don’t want to litigate that here.

** - There’s plenty of that in this night’s Meat, another fun listen.