On The Brink

11/16/97, Denver, CO, McNichols Arena

SET 1: NICU > My Soul, Black-Eyed Katy, Farmhouse, The Old Home Place, Billy Breathes, Cars Trucks Buses, Scent of a Mule, Poor Heart, Taste, Hello My Baby

SET 2: Timber (Jerry the Mule) -> Simple -> Wilson > Harry Hood > Izabella

ENCORE: David Bowie

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If you feel bad about the neglect of Las Vegas and Salt Lake City in the usual Fall 97 narrative, save your tears for Denver night 1. Fans consider the following night the unofficial launch of Phish’s autumn rocket ship, one of their most pivotal shows ever, and one of the most treasured volumes of the LivePhish series. 11/16 has…a lengthy guest appearance from “Dr. Banjo.” It’s a show so disrespected that it was passed over for filler on Live Phish Volume 11, only represented by a digital-only bonus track of the band trying to remember how to play Saw It Again in soundcheck.

No shots at Pete “Dr. Banjo” Wernick, a member of Hot Rize who complements the sit-in by Tim O’Brien back at Red Rocks on 8/7/96 and makes the tour’s only Mule (phew!) tolerable with a “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” jam. But it is, it must be said, a very mid-90s Phish move, and this tour is all about updating that “mid” to “late.” Wernick is the final and solitary guest of the Fall 97 tour, the last until Tom Marshall sings The Proclaimers on New Years Eve Eve. The rapid progress of the next month requires a Band Members Only policy as strict as the backstage practice room.

The rest of the first set, particularly in light of the following night’s, is similarly old-school in approach, despite the presence of two of their freshest songs: Black-Eyed Katy and Farmhouse. Both are received lukewarmly (does nobody watch Conan?), though BEK ignites halfway through and wins the crowd over. The rest of the set is grab-baggy and inconsistent: Billy Breathes has lost some of its mojo from earlier in the year, and a set featuring both My Soul and Mule is insulting to me, personally. Three shows into the tour, they’re still easing into the water; tomorrow night, they’ll remember how fun it is to just do a cannonball straight out of the locker room. 

Dr. Banjo meets Deset patnáct

Then comes another 60-minutes-or-less special, the second second set in a row that’s shorter than the Runaway Jim they’ll play in two weeks. Like the previous attempt in Salt Lake City, it’s a song suite that’s skimpy on the songs – a five-spot tonight – and doesn’t quite nail the structure, veering between quiet textures and hard-rock pyrotechnics. 

The opening Timber sets a dreamy tone, but just as it finds a tearjerker melody that transforms into a pre-tease of Frankie Says, Trey figures out he’s close to the Simple riff and piledrives into a segue. Simple also probes into some space loops before it stumbles into Wilson, and a glacier-sized Hood gets chased with the fireworks display of Izabella. It’s a bit bipolar, and in possibly a make-up move, they play a full Bowie encore instead of the brief cherries-on-top of Palace or Rochester.

But if so, both the band and I are maybe too harsh. Even if they don’t form a perfectly-paced whole, Timber, Hood, and Bowie are all stand-out jams displaying the key 1997 quality of “patient intensity.” Trey caps the Hood off with three furious minutes built on sustained trilling instead of a single Note, Fishman spends the back half of the Bowie jam pummeling his snare like he’s in a hardcore band playing a VFW hall. It’s only contrasted against the bright lights of the following night that this show pales; if this show was played in the middle of Fall 96, I’d have named it a highlight of the year.

 I rarely receive criticism on this project, but when I do, it’s usually about judging other Phish eras by the standards of the late 90s (my usual response is “I was in college from 1997-2001, I can’t help it.”) But as we get closer and closer to my Phish sweet spot, that relativism seems even more asymptotic. For all the pleasures to be found in this show in the moment, they’re about to get topped in a big way – starting in less than 24 hours even. A stronger critic than I might be able to take this show on its own terms, but for me it’s like Phish Christmas Eve – move aside Dr. Banjo, and let’s make with the presents.