Piper Twist

10/20/95, Cedar Rapids, IA, Five Seasons Center

SET 1: My Friend, My Friend, Ya Mar, Ha Ha Ha > Divided Sky, Fee > Rift > Free, Hello My Baby, Amazing Grace, Amazing Grace Jam

SET 2: Timber (Jerry The Mule) > Scent of a Mule > Simple > Maze, Gumbo, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, My Long Journey Home, I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome, Bouncing Around the Room > Run Like an Antelope

ENCORE: Sleeping Monkey, Rocky Top

Listen on phish.in

So of course, the day after I write about Phish embracing their inner Classic Rockness, they bring out a guest on...electric bagpipes. And no, not the guitarist from Big Country, which might’ve been kinda cool. It’s this guy, Johnny “Bagpipes” Johnston, who not only specializes in the traditional Scottish instrument but also “clean comedy.” According to Johnston’s website, “His comedy-music show is the fulcrum where rock & roll meets bagpipes and leaves you doubled-over by his sincere, clever wit.” 

Despite their escalating brawniness, 1995 Phish themselves still often sit at the comedy-music intersection, as this guest appearance and show demonstrates. I can find no explanation online for why Johnston played his pipes with Phish on the first instrumental Amazing Grace since the famous 5/8/93 version, and he is given no introduction by the band during the show. It’s just one of those moments of mid-tour weirdness, sparked by an inside joke on the tour bus or a chance pre-show encounter on the wild streets of Cedar Rapids. Maybe it would’ve been less of a novelty if Johnston had added his pipes to a song that wasn’t a kilt-wearer’s standard, but hearing it over some silky Page Rhodes on a rare Amazing Grace Jam is perfectly fine too.

Whatever the reason, comedy is on their mind in the Five Seasons Center. They open the show with the evil laugh-shrieks of My Friend My Friend, and get to the song literally called Ha Ha Ha two songs later. After setbreak, they mock the audience chess move (and give the fans a mulligan), then play the first ever Double Mule: Timber (aka Jerry The Mule) into Scent of a Mule, with its now full-fledged duel making it the night’s second-longest performance. Later, they encore with Sleeping Monkey, one of their funniest songs...if you’re into dick jokes.

The goofiness is really the only distinguishing feature of this show, which doesn’t move the tour’s ball forward very much; hey, the Midwest magic doesn’t work every time. When they’re not being clever little stinkers, they play through solid versions of Free (getting longer), Maze (getting more evil), and Antelope (getting...a Mule tease). This year’s Halloween prep gets a nod through last year’s album cover standout, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which has quietly entered every-five-show rotation on this tour. 

Unfortunately, the whiplash between the show’s heavier and lighter moments is pretty severe; whatever the opposite of flow is, this show’s got it. Phish’s sense of humor is a dealbreaker for a lot of the uninitiated, and while I’m as snobby as they come with the rest of my tastes, I generally have no quarrel with it (I wouldn’t be doing this if I did). But sometimes those goofball elements co-exist uneasily with the rest of the repertoire. I’m someone who prefers an emotional arc to a random shuffle, and throwing the antics in with the intense theatrics willy-nilly can make for an unsatisfying ride. 

Now that the marathon jams of summer have disappeared, Phish doesn’t have an obvious way to maintain a consistent mood for long stretches of sets, and they’re reverting back to some of the genre hopscotch habits of their older days: Maze followed by Gumbo, WMGGW followed by acoustic bluegrass, etc. And despite this tour’s legendary status, this isn’t a flaw that’s going to resolve itself anytime soon — the consensus highlights of Fall 95 are typically individual tracks or segments of two or three songs, not entire sets or shows. Musically, they’re reaching a peak; organizationally, they’re still in a transitional period, looking to Johnny Bagpipes to find that delicate balance between sincere and clever.

[Ticket stub from Golgi Project.]