SET 1: Punch You in the Eye > My Soul, Roggae, AC/DC Bag > Lifeboy, David Bowie, Sleep, Driver, Good Times Bad Times
SET 2: Also Sprach Zarathustra > Golgi Apparatus, Drowned -> Prince Caspian > Piper, You Enjoy Myself, Been Caught Stealing > Llama
ENCORE: Something > Guyute, Free Bird
Since the Cincinnati post, I have been informed that the mysterious “Skanksgiving” billboard refers to the night before the holiday, when people go out to bars, reconnect with old friends, and presumably “hook up,” or whatever you young, unmarried people call it nowadays. I still don’t know what that has to do with chili dogs – or maybe I don’t want to know – but the first two parts are a tradition I’m familiar with: the weird nostalgia of drinking with people you met long before such activities were legal. There’s a surface display of “we’re grown up now!” posturing, usually papering over a creeping suspicion that adulthood means you probably shouldn’t be stuck in the same place with the same people doing the same things…but drunker.
In 1997 and 1998, Phish performed their own version of this ritual as they briefly tried to make a Thanksgiving weekend in Worcester into a traditional fall tour stop. Those three-night runs rode the wave of post-holiday relief, producing some very interesting shows that we’ve grappled with before and will get to soon. But it also positioned Phish in their Northeastern U.S. homebase for the week before Thanksgiving, putting them in familiar venues like the Hartford Civic Center and The Knick on Turkey Day Eve.
Hartford ‘97 is a quiet ripper in the middle of Phish’s most famous tour, one of the few shows from that epochal month that hasn’t been touched by Shapiro’s benevolent hand yet. But Albany ‘98 feels like a reflection of that uneasy nostalgia I associate with this calendar date. It’s a show that is very focused on the past, with only two Story of the Ghost songs – remember when this tour was about new album promotion, like three weeks ago? – and the centerpiece jams coming in Bowie and YEM, two golden oldies.
There’s also a feeling of stasis in the improvisation, amidst a tour that felt in its first half like it was continuing to push Phish’s evolution forward. I like the Bowie, which is patient if not particularly inventive, cranking down the Trey bigfooting of the night prior to allow much more room for active participation from the others, particularly Mike. But playing YEM in Albany is particularly fraught, and a short jam anchored by Trey doing the “Super Bad” tease is a poor demonstration of how far the band has traveled since the pivotal 1995 version in the same room.
But in other corners of the show lie some clues to the future. Ironically, they come from a “backwards” effect: a Trey pedal that somehow mimics the sound of the reversed tape loops popular in late 60s rock. Someone in the comments will have to explain what it is exactly; I’m not a gearhead that’s up to the task. In his 2021 rig tour, Trey describes it as his “reverse” pedal, and fan discussions declare it a “reverse delay” – I’ll take their word for it.
What I do know is that the effect will be a signature sound for 1999 (think the First Tube solo), and that it’s all over this show. It’s subtly there in the Bowie, the surprisingly vivid GTBT*, and parts of the 2001 jam, and especially present in Drowned, Caspian, and Llama. I’m sure there are earlier examples of the effect in other Fall 98 shows – it’s particularly notable in the space jam out of Lonesome Cowboy Bill on Halloween – but Albany is the show where it moves into the inner circle of Trey’s favorite pedals.
In a way, it’s the perfect effect to resolve the conflict we talked about yesterday, allowing Trey to play a lot of notes while also adding a disorienting texture to the mix. It’s a psychedelic sound that literally seems to bend time – I’m not entirely clear on how you can get a backwards-loop sound without playing the notes forward first – and it has classic rock bonafides back to Hendrix**. For Phish, the reverse delay will be something of a junior bweeoooo, an effect that help define an era of jamming and one that is appropriately perplexing, going forward and backwards simultaneously.
* - Love the dude on the AUD who yells “TURN IT UP PHISH!” as Trey retunes his Languedoc after the acoustic sidebar.
** - I think it might also be what Peter Buck uses for the “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” solo, which makes it *the* go-to pedal for weird 80’s college bands who found themselves playing arenas in the 90’s.
"I’m not entirely clear on how you can get a backwards-loop sound without playing the notes forward first"
Delay pedals let you mix together how much of the "dry" signal (your normal guitar sound) and the "wet" signal (the guitar sound with delay applied) you want. On the reverse delay setting, by turning the mix to 100% wet, the phrase you play will be completely silent and then it will begin echoing backwards.
Hope that makes sense.
The owners of Substack have decided that they’re OK with monetizing Nazi content. They won’t allow sexual content but they will allow Nazis, so clearly there’s a line one can cross with them, and they’re ok with Nazis. I came here to suggest you might want to find another platform. I’ll be leaving Substack. I hear good things about Ghost and Wordpress, including simple tutorials to migrate your subscribers.