November-December Bromance

12/3/97, Philadelphia, PA, The Spectrum

SET 1: Punch You in the Eye > My Soul, Drowned, The Old Home Place, Gumbo > Also Sprach Zarathustra > You Enjoy Myself

SET 2: David Bowie -> Possum > Jam -> Prince Caspian > Frankenstein > Harry Hood

ENCORE: Crossroads

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There’s not much to debate about Fall 97, so sometimes arbitrary sides must be formed. Between the weekend in Worcester and these two subsequent weeknights in Philadelphia, the calendar flipped for the one and only time in this compact tour. That sets up a battle between the forces of Team November and Team December, a 12 vs. 13 (including the holiday run) matchup that pits fan against fan, a community divided.

On paper, it seems like an unfair battle, simply by virtue of the fact that Phish tours tend to get better as they go along. The band’s communication improves, the setlists get weirder, new songs settle in, and the overall narrative of a tour comes into focus. It’s for all these reasons that you most often hear about December 1997 as one of the great Phish months, alongside similarly tour-ending chapters in August 1993, December 1995, and December 1999 – Decembers, in general, get a lot of attention and accolades, with the experiments of a whole year reaping benefits.

But November 1997 makes a damn good case for bucking that trend. Sure, the first three shows take their time warming up, but then you have the twin towers of Denver and Hampton, sleeper midweek shows in Champaign and Hartford, and the Worcester run, which I now know a lot of you like better than I do. November also has the purest claim to the thrill of the new, with the long-gestating reinvention of Phish finally blooming into full flower. And if you prefer dense sets short on songs and long on improvisation, November’s gotta have the edge – 8 of the 12 shows have second sets with either four or five songs, a scarcity they won’t reach again until 12/29*. 

That’s a structural difference, but an important one, and I think you can already hear how it contributes to the different flavor of December in this two-night run at The Spectrum. In one sense, there’s an easing off from the band’s uncompromising approach in the first three weeks of the tour, the delirious hour-long sets (or hour-long jams) with no sympathy for the audience members who would like to hear a recognizable melody every so often. On the other hand, there’s a dialing in on what Phish enjoys most about their new sonic bag of tricks, which produces a new fluidity to entire shows, start to finish.

Less reported that Fishman wore a Flyers jersey on night 2.

Last night sort of got there after a choppy first set, with a set that featured two monoliths of maximalist funk draped with a dreamy, cosmic center. Tonight reaches that destination faster, not through a big opening jam like 11/17, 11/21, or 11/22, but with a throughline of space-funk that runs through PYITE, Drowned, Gumbo, 2001, and YEM. Sure, there are a couple speed bumps in My Soul and The Old Home Place, but otherwise it’s a cohesive stretch of gooey and relaxed improv, gliding over a bed of Space Mountain loops. 

Most remarkably, Drowned – in its first appearance since the Flynn – fits right into this night at the haunted discotheque. The Who’s operatic epic spirals into nine minutes of Talking Heads anxiety-boogie in a merger of Halloweens 95 and 96, and an apt demonstration of Phish’s arena-funk fusion I attempted to describe yesterday. It also doesn’t wear out its welcome, overshooting the magic zone but sticking to one well-developed theme (possibly based on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Couldn’t Stand The Weather,” though I don’t hear it).

Funk strum

Brevity works in Phish’s favor in the other standout segment of the set, a Gumbo > 2001 which appears to ripcord only to merge right into yet another classic Strauss/Deodato session. I definitely would have taken more of the ominous jam out of Gumbo, but shifting to 2001, in practice, just switches up the drumbeat and brings synth and delay pedal to the foreground…and fair enough, I’ll take it. After November shows most commonly used funk as a way station to other, often heavier sounds, it’s a new twist to hear it as both a destination in itself and the glue between songs, without the reflex to dial it up for a big finish every time. 

That role gets less use in the more longform set 2, where Bowie is allowed to stretch its legs in an intro filled with ballpark organ favorites and the long, unreconciled jam. It is not the slightest bit cowfunk, but it’s remarkably patient, Phish-prog with funk’s sideways pacing, in seemingly no hurry to change shape or reach a conclusion until Trey stumbles into the Possum riff. In the outro to Possum, they basically cold-start a spontaneous jam that reprises the first set’s vibes, now with added breakdowns. Would it have been more organic budding out of a song (or not cruelly interrupted by Caspian)? Sure. But even in its set-crashing, it manages to really tie the show together in a second frame that is otherwise funk-free.

That cohesive feeling is very December to me, though one could argue that it’s a quality shared by three quarters of the last show of November, after the band got the Wolfman’s abuse out of its system. In retrospect, maybe I was wrong that the Worcester run was out of sync with Fall 97; it may have been more accurately a hinge for the tour, a turning point between the giddy excesses of November and the final month’s discipline. You can make a case for either approach – the excitement of discovering uncharted territory, and then the fulfilling process of narrowing down its potential. The Civil War of Fall 97 will never be decided, and the impasse is our victory.

* - Though it depends how you count tonight’s show; I think the second set “Jam” is different enough from the preceding Possum to justify its own track.