Overtime
SET 1: Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley -> Taste, Water in the Sky > Punch You in the Eye > Stash, Chalk Dust Torture, A Day in the Life
SET 2: AC/DC Bag > McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters, Harpua > I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) > Harpua > Izabella > Harry Hood -> My Soul > Sleeping Monkey > Guyute
ENCORE: Carini -> Black-Eyed Katy -> Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley > Frankenstein
Spare a moment’s thought for the MSG staff. They’ve spent the last six hours checking stubs and chasing hippies out of the aisles and their one consolation is that it’ll all be over by midnight. Then they can head home, sleep in, and get ready to do it all over again for holiday pay on the 31st. Yep, nobody ever plays past midnight, the curfew fines are far too steep, it just wouldn’t be a sound financial decision. Surely these guys will just play a quick encore and…wait. Didn’t they already play this song? Is that a vacuum cleaner? Good god, is this ever going to end?
The ushers’ nightmare is the fans’ delight. Phish drop-kicking the clock, ignoring the side-stage glares of Brad Sands and John Paluska, and just playing until they have nothing left in the tank is the ultimate dream, venue logistics be damned. It’s the logical next step after Phish asserted its dominance over MSG the previous night, and a thumb in the eye of any folks just planning to show up for NYE. For those people, their 27% ticket price markup purchased them…9 extra minutes, compared to the quasi-three-setter of 12/30.
The marathon is necessary because 12/30/97, better than any other show at the end of any Phish year, provides a full recap of what the band has been up to over the past 12 months. And they’ve been up to a lot – anything under three hours wasn’t going to cut it. It plays like the “last season on” montage at the start of a prestige TV dramedy, covering all the developments in the clubs of Europe, the sheds and arenas of the USA, and the farmhouses of New England. If ever there was a year where Phish deserved a victory lap, it was 1997 – for one or two or three nights, evolution could wait.
Ironically, it’s (nearly) bookended by a song that they hadn’t played the entire year, or in the seven before it for that matter. Sneakin’ Sally completes the triumvirate of December 97 debuts/revivals that immediately felt like they’d been present the whole time. The song’s groove – written by Allen Toussaint, originated by Lee Dorsey, refined by The Meters and Lowell George and Robert Palmer – is the exact kind of funk transfiguration Phish has been chasing and perfecting and making their own all year. It’s no wonder that, once they excavated it from their 80’s songbook, they just had to play it twice, and that it’s already a fan favorite by the second time around.
The rest of the first set celebrates the steady hands that filled out many a 1997 setlist, with Taste, Stash, and Chalk Dust all punching out for the year with excellent inside-the-box versions. None of this trio fits the leaner, meaner, and funkier narratives of 1997, but they represent how the rest of the catalog experienced beneficial side effects from Phish’s main focus all the same. Trey deservedly gets accolades for this Taste solo, but lord, listen to Page and Mike comp him in real time, and how Fish gradually layers up by playing everything but the snare, until his guitarist erupts.
Despite the recap theme, there’s no Wolfman’s, Ghost, or Tweezer – the three seasonal MVPs of the year – to anchor the second set. But the centerpiece jam of the night and the overall MSG run is still one of the year’s finest, an AC/DC Bag that demonstrates the amount of restraint now woven into Phish’s improvisation after 80 shows and who knows how many private practices. The big Fall 97 jams were loud, overwhelming, and headstrong as much as they were minimal, textured, and democratic, but this one falls firmly in the latter camp, a four-headed monster fluidly sharing roles, a sibling to the Dayton Bag but allowed to unfurl without the manic segues.
There’s rarely a moment where you can easily identify who is lead and who is support – even the rhythm section responsibilities float across the stage without dropping the beat. Trey only briefly switches into Guitar Hero mode twice, in the 16th and 20th minutes; for the most part he’s content to share the spotlight by playing repeated staccato lines and chords. It balances on the fulcrum of free and groove for 25 minutes, a sound that few musical ensembles have ever mastered, never mind in front of 20,000 paying customers.
Harpua is the one segment of the night that isn’t obviously of 1997 vintage. Yet for all the serious business of 1997, Phish made it through their transformation with their sense of humor intact, and those hijinks must be represented in this State of Phish Address. The year’s only full version still draws upon the era’s overall vibe of unsettling fun: there’s no Poster Nutbag at all, just a creepypasta about getting subliminal messages from Lost in Space and building a pentagram of scavenged lunch items and udder balls. It feels more like a Halloween narration than an NYE story, completed by Trey and Tom sneaking “Hannibal Lecter” into the syllabic call and response at the end of “500 Miles.” “It happened in Trey’s head the same way a lot of things happen there,” Ernie Anastasio says in The Phish Book. “Which is to say every element of the story was true except one: We never ate steak.”
Then there’s Hood, the equivalent of the previous night’s Disease > Bowie, just a massive, ostentatious jam that’s not breaking any new ground but feels like it could go for an hour without repeating itself. In a year where Phish no longer had a larger venue circuit to jump to, they embiggened their sound instead, and this kind of tidal wave Hood is the result. Even My Soul crashing the party feels apropos for 1997; it’s Mike’s fault, he introduces the barroom blues around 17:50, but they really just have so much built-up energy by this point in the set they don’t know where else to put it (maybe Izabella could have been saved for here). And at the very least, the odd decision extends the set by another 6 minutes, putting the curfew-flaunting in play.
For that illicit encore, they shrink Madison Square Garden to the size of the Paradiso or the Markthalle, finally importing the chaotic, grimy quality of the best European shows to home shores. The first Carini since March verifies it as a “real song,” and melting it into the theme song of the Fall connects the continuity threads across the entire year and both sides of the Atlantic. Reprising Sally in full brings the recap fully up to date – like, to literally a few hours ago – and letting Frankenstein space out and suck in for several extra minutes with the overage fees mounting doubles down on the 12/29 swagger: “we can do whatever we want here now…go ahead and fine us.”
Spontaneously pulling off this kind of retrospective survey without it sounding like reruns is a triumph. It’s no wonder that this night achieves consensus as the 2nd-highest-rated of all time on phish.net – everyone might have a different favorite Fall 97 show, but if you need a three-hour primer on all the greatness that occurred in 1997, without sacrificing any depth or variety, this is absolutely the tape you should reach for. Looking back isn’t something Phish likes to do often, and that’s as it should be. But the penultimate night of 1997 is a well-earned and -executed indulgence, and hopefully the MSG employees didn’t mind the overtime pay.
[Photos from Mark Halpert, thanks Mark!]
Definitely contends for most played tape in my deck back in the day.
I also fondly recall in fall 1999 listening to the first two songs with a very open-minded, fun fella from Compton while getting high in my car on morning break during a lousy temp gig assembling an auto parts store in rural western Washington and the dude immediately raving about Trey’s “amazing guitar tone” and how music (and weed) can bring people together in the strangest-yet-most-mundane of circumstances. For that memory alone, I’ll always cherish this show.
Anyway, as usual, great write-up, Rob! Love that you are doing these!
That’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a Phish show, including 12/31/95, other NYE shows and festivals. When my friends and I left the show, we thought it was a “you had to be there” performance that wouldn’t hold up as well on tape (now streaming). We were wrong on that assumption…but still, it was an absolute blast to experience in person.
Rob, I went to an absurd number of shows from 1994-1998. Thank you so much for your chronicling of these shows. It’s so amazing to read your recaps of this era of Phish.