Providential

4/5/98, Providence, RI, Providence Civic Center

SET 1: The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > You Enjoy Myself, Theme From the Bottom > McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters > Bathtub Gin -> Cities > Sparkle > Split Open and Melt

SET 2: Down with Disease, Ya Mar -> Prince Caspian > Maze -> Shafty -> Possum -> Jam -> Cavern

ENCORE: Bold As Love

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It should be clear by now that I am very much an Island Tour fanatic; gun to head, I’d pick it as my personal Phish pinnacle. But it’s not perfect, and unfortunately, they saved the worst for last. Hold your fire – I’m using “worst” in the lightest possible sense, as April 5th is still a top-notch show that I would commit several serious crimes to see then* or now. But after the sustained rally of nights one through three, night four is a step back, a farewell to the previous year instead of a surge into the new one.

That’s not immediately apparent, as for the fourth night running they scoff at the idea of a “warmup set.” I’ve neglected the first sets this week, but the construction for Island Tour opening halves is just about the ideal scenario. Each night leads off with a superstar, culminating in tonight’s delightful (if a bit wobbly) Oh Kee Pa > YEM pairing. There are frequent clutch role-playing appearances from a mid-90s song that’s reaching full maturity, tonight’s glorious Theme joining 4/4’s Taste and Limb By Limb and 4/3’s Billy Breathes. There’s a rarity or two and a deep jam late in the set, with tonight’s roles played by McGrupp and both the fantastic Gin > Cities and the closing, entropic Melt.

I have no quarrel with any of that. But the second set of 4/5 is the first that breaks the spell that started late in 4/2. Where jams were consistently blooming with effortless patience, those in the first half of this set feel forced and dead-ended. Disease unravels all of the genius subversion of the lead guitar role Trey has developed on the Islands, resorting to the ball-hog playing that he had resisted the whole run. Ya Mar, Caspian, and even Maze each dissolve to near silence or isolated soloing, teasing but refusing the Slave that this run never quite got around to. The big breakthrough jams of the previous nights were minimal but richly textured and quietly insistent; tonight’s are wispy and aimless.

It’s possible that Phish also felt frustrated, as Mike aggressively hijacks Maze and the rest of the set with the dread-laden Shafty bassline. For the run’s final non-encore half hour, they’re knee deep in cowfunk, re-debuting the scrapped Olivia’s Pool, then Shaftifying Possum, then settling on a generic funk groove because they “can’t end this whole thing without a little more funk, since that’s kind of been our thing.” Wah pedals, clavs, and stop-start jams ensue, before Cavern emerges from the goopy sludge, original lyrics and all.

But Trey’s past tense and passive voice is notable; funk “has been” our thing, implying that it’s not currently the band’s driving force. While I’m always here for a Phish show that collapses into unfinished songs, surprising segues, legitimate “Jam” setlist entries, and on-the-fly rearrangements, the jam itself feels like a rerun of Fall 97, after so much of the Island Tour has been about continued reinvention. That funk groove between Possum and Cavern is just too easy – fun to dance to, sure, and I definitely would not have been one to “take off,” but at this point, it’s Phish on auto-pilot.

There’s a hot take about the Island Tour that it should be considered an extension of 1997 instead of the kickoff to 1998; I think you can predict I disagree. Tonight’s 4th quarter could be classified as “the encore to 1997,” sure. But there already was a pretty good send-off in the NYE run – 12/30/97’s curfew violation feels like the appropriate Great Went-style ceremonial bonfire for the preceding two months. What’s great about the Island Tour aren’t the places where they recapitulate the previous year’s advances, but where they preview those yet to come.

It’s all good though. When I say that 1998 is my personal “Best Year of Phish,” I’m not claiming that it’s perfect – quite the opposite. There’s an obvious thrill to listening to the band at the absolute top of its powers in late 1997, reveling in the realization of a new sound they had been chasing for years. But I’m even more drawn to the more uncertain times, where they’re still figuring out what works and what doesn’t, leading naturally to inconsistency. 1998 resides in a special zone between the twin peaks of the late 90s, where they can glide on the momentum of 1997 while also experimenting for the future. It just carries the risk of occasionally coasting on past successes when the drive isn’t there to put in the lab work. 

Contrast that with 1994 and 1996, the last two even-year transition periods, which mostly tried too hard to reject the past  – 94 eschewed seguefests in favor of marathon jams, 96 tried to go quiet after arena-rock bombast. 98 is pure Goldilocks zone, and it raises the bar; here, a second set that would have had me hootin’ and hollerin’ in 1996 or even Spring/Summer 97 now feels ever so slightly flat. The frustration created by 4/5/98 is one last, powerful piece of evidence for just how singularly transformative the Island Tour was – music that would have felt revolutionary a year ago, or even four days ago, now feels almost like a cliche. 

* - Suffice to say, I did not make it to the Island Tour, despite many of my new traders@umich buddies making the trip. My Dayton footnote was not yet internalized, alas.