Over Their Skis

7/24/99, East Troy, WI, Alpine Valley Music Theatre

Trey wipes out at the end of Chalk Dust

SET 1: Guyute, Fluffhead > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday -> Jam -> The Wedge, Character Zero

SET 2: Tweezer -> Catapult -> Tweezer > The Mango Song -> Jam > The Happy Whip and Dung Song, Waste > Chalk Dust Torture

ENCORE: Glide, Camel Walk, Alumni Blues > Tweezer Reprise

Listen

I’ve somehow succeeded in not pissing anyone off this tour – or at least I think I haven’t. The only mild critical feedback I’ve received is that I slightly over- or underrated a show here or there, which I can handle; your mileage may vary, and all that. I don’t think that’s due to new diplomatic skills on my part, but rather the fact that Summer 1999 – most of the year, really – doesn’t have too many sacred cow shows where it would be blasphemous to find faults. As we’ve discussed, there are a lot of individual highlight moments, but not too many start-to-finish classic shows where a contrarian stance would ruffle feathers. 

But I’ll likely break my streak with this show, where my stance on its historic jam is definitely against consensus. I’m talking, of course, about the 33-minute Fluffhead, until recently the only time that the iconic Phish song was taken out for an improvisational stroll. When it received the Live Bait SBD treatment a couple years ago, there was general rejoicing, and its legendary status was seemingly acknowledged by the band itself with the 1999 > Fluffhead > Saw It Again sequence from Alpine that summer*. 

And yet, in a weird case of reverse attendance bias, I would argue that this Fluffhead…ain’t so hot? Beyond the wow factor of “woah, they’re jamming Fluffhead!” I think it carries the fingerprints of all the things that didn’t work about the band’s 1999 sound, a disconnected jam that only swells to its startling length by trying – and mostly failing – to work through it. And that take echoes my broader low opinion of this show, which on paper looks like a song-chaser’s dream, but which in person struck me as the first troubling sign that not all was well with Phish at the end of the 90s.

But let’s deal with the Fluffhead first. It’s a pretty gutsy early show call – particularly on the heels of another composition-heavy opener in Guyute – and Trey’s already getting playful in the introduction. When it hits the jam, it’s standard procedure until he starts playing funk chords that break the structure of the song, putting everyone on thrillingly unsafe footing. Yet after he shoves the band into this unknown, Trey has shockingly little to contribute. The meat of the Type II section is essentially a YEM bass-and-drums jam driven by an admittedly filthy Mike disco line, but like other YEMs this summer, Trey is largely lost in his pedals. Eventually, he moves to keys and the other three try in vain to build something constructive around those annoying bird chirps before it dissolves into TMWSIY.

It’s not terrible, but there are echoes of that frustrating dynamic throughout the rest of the show, and matters only get worse in the second set. Tweezer finds itself in the same Trey effects cul-de-sac, which they attempt to paper over with the second Catapult in a week. The Mango Song is a wretched performance, Trey is off from the beginning and never finds it – they attempt to make up for it with a second unorthodox jam and the premiere (and finale) of The Happy Whip and Dung Song. Chalk Dust starts to get interesting and then drops its transmission; the band is playing at four entirely different tempos on the way out of the solo, and Trey is just happy to do his new guitar waving trick for the second time in two sets after literally falling over.

They’re offstage after less than 54 minutes, even shorter than the weather-shortened set in Antioch. In light of that mess, the increasingly obscure bustout trio of the encore feels like an apology. Those are pretty sloppy too, but it’s hard to notice when you’re crossing songs you never thought you’d see off your bucket list. 

And hell, I wasn’t immune to bribery myself – frickin’ Alumni Blues! But the show left a weird aftertaste in my mouth that has never faded. I wouldn’t normally read too much into body language, but this was the show where the new stage setup seemed to create a real divide in the band. All night, Trey was, for reasons I won’t speculate about, On One – moving around more than usual, seemingly having a blast despite the very audible miscues that riddled the show. Meanwhile, the rest of the band seemed like they were clinging to their leader’s manic mood for dear life, and unlike pretty much every Phish show I’d seen or heard before, they frequently lost their grip. 

Unfortunately, this show proved to be foreshadowing; my wild thesis is that this strange night in Alpine is the first show of the 2.0 era, or at least an early sneak preview. Longtime followers know my militant stance on the Phish years of 2002-2004; I sat them out entirely, and have barely listened to them since I came back to the band in 2009**. But I’m familiar with the sad lore of those years, and all of its most notorious faults – sloppy playing, disconnected jamming, bustouts and surprising type II moments used as diversions – are painfully present right here in this show. 

* - Given Trey’s hilariously spotty memory, I don’t think this reference signified any deeper meaning beyond somebody telling him “hey, remember when you jammed out Fluffhead here in 1999?” before the show.

** - I’ve softened a little bit and dabbled here and there, but I decided at some point it would be a good gimmick to wait on a deep dive until I get to those years in this project. So mark your calendars for a fun(?) ride in 2027-2029!