Saw It Again
8/6/97, Maryland Heights, MO, Riverport Amphitheatre
SET 1: NICU > Stash, Beauty of My Dreams, Twist -> Also Sprach Zarathustra > AC/DC Bag, Ya Mar, You Enjoy Myself
SET 2: Runaway Jim -> My Soul, Ghost, Prince Caspian > Cars Trucks Buses > Sample in a Jar, Run Like an Antelope
ENCORE: Julius
Last time around, I wrote “I’d rather hear the newer stuff rapidly mature every other night than get a deeper songlist for novelty’s sake.” And through some timey-wimey mechanism, 1997 Phish heard me and immediately called my bluff. In suburban St. Louis (city of bluhs), the band plays a show stuffed with deja vu, from the back-to-back plays of Twist and Julius, the repeat of the YEM/Jim setbreak wrapper from Shoreline, and only one song we didn’t hear in the past week on the west coast.
This rapid churn is well within their rights, given the 2,000-mile drive from George, WA to Maryland Heights, MO. Surely there were no fans, however dedicated, that would’ve been crazy enough to attend both The Gorge run and this show (editor’s note: there definitely were). St. Louis is also over 500 miles away from Atlanta, the nearest show thus far on the U.S. Summer Tour. In Europe, the band played several different nations with vastly different languages and cultures inside the range between these shows. This country’s big, man; they can repeat some songs.
In general, I don’t mind, even if the juxtaposition mostly doesn’t flatter Riverport. The YEM and Jim don’t pop like they did in Mountain View; the YEM is about as standard as they come in Summer ‘97, the Jim spins its wheels until Blueshammering the last couple minutes and dropping, appropriately, into My Soul. The Ghost is a pleasantly percolating 18 minutes, solidly middle tier for its debut season, but it’s cruelly chased with a Caspian/CTB/Sample trio that does the set no favors. After that run, even a rip-roaring Antelope with a Makisupa jam and a theremin solo in the final third can’t reclaim the momentum.
The most interesting segment of the night comes from a pairing at the opposite sides of this song rotation spectrum: a song that was played in the previous show, and a song making its long-awaited domestic debut for the year. Despite getting the back-to-back call here, and eventually becoming one of the most-played songs from the Class of ‘97, Twist has been oddly absent on the American leg, only showing up in 3 shows. In fact, it didn’t really gain traction for another two years, only appearing three times in the coming fall tour and twice in 1998, despite killing it at the Island Tour.
If the song isn’t clicking in 1997, it isn’t for lack of trying. Every American version gets stretched out into double digits – compare that to its sibling Piper, which is still only clocking 4-5 minute laps. It carves a unique sonic path with its lightly-Latin rhythm and languid pacing, while still representing the ‘97 sound; it’s not funky at all, but it’s plenty slow and menacing, with some sci-fi tones from Trey and Page. If there’s a weakness, it might just be in the arrangement – the composed part still feels undercooked and there’s not really an ending yet, which might account for its immediate jamminess.
Tonight, it solves the lack of resolution by dissolving into a song with a much longer pedigree: 2001. Speaking of repeats, the jazz-funk arrangement of Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra was opening practically every second set back near the start of this listening project, and it stayed in heavy rotation through 95 and 96. But it wasn’t until 11/18/96 that Phish’s live version of the song outlasted Deodato’s studio version, finally revealing its potential as a jam vehicle instead of just a showcase for Kuroda’s fanciest light rig moves.
It seemed to reach that stage with exquisite timing for Phish’s transformation in 1997 – thanks to the proto-disco of Eumir Deodato, it’s a song with cowfunk already built in. And yet the band was stingy with it, playing only a handful of versions in Europe, none of which built on the late ‘96 advances until 7/10 in Marseilles. Then it took another dozen shows for it to show up here, at Riverport, in what may have still been daylight…so much for the lights demo.
It’s worth the wait, even if I’m mad at them for waiting so long. A theme of the summer is how the ‘97 sound isn’t just cowfunk, it’s jamming “sideways,” not falling into the usual jamband route of building to a big peak or Phish’s mid-90s ADD, but just riding a groove or a melodic pattern for as long as possible, subtly modifying it along the way. This 2001 is a perfect example, with Fishman staying on the same drum pattern with subtle variations, Trey weaving in “Superbad” teases, and Page layering on neon synthesizer drones. They could go for much longer than 10 minutes in this fashion, and they soon will, but it’s already a fascinating sonic treadmill; no chord changes in sight, just living in the moment.
2001 will make two more appearances this summer, including an all-timer at The Great Went. Twist will disappear until the second show of fall. Yet the pairing here doesn’t sound like two songs going in opposite directions, but two sides of the same coin – the oozing, cosmic style that will take another step up when Phish moves back indoors. Without all the repetition, and the judicious introduction of songs complementary to the current sound instead of bustout free-for-alls, that leap may not have been possible so quickly. Be thankful for the reruns.