SET 1: Poor Heart > AC/DC Bag > All Things Reconsidered, Bouncing Around the Room > Reba, Character Zero, Strange Design > Taste, I Didn't Know, Sample in a Jar, Run Like an Antelope
SET 2: Also Sprach Zarathustra > Sparkle > David Bowie, A Day in the Life > You Enjoy Myself, Loving Cup > Suzy Greenberg
ENCORE: Ginseng Sullivan > Cavern
A few people have asked me whether it’s been difficult to write about 1996, as a relatively unloved year between the legends of 1995 and 1997. The short answer is no. The low profile of 1996 has given me a little more freedom to write about shows that aren’t as well-trod as Falls 95 and 97, most of which are brand new to my ears. It’s also not as fun as you’d think covering the fan favorite tours, as there’s only so many ways to say “this is freaking great!” without it getting stale. I haven’t discovered a contrarian argument that 1996 is underappreciated — I think it’s pretty fairly rated — but digging into why things aren’t working is maybe even more interesting than trying to describe the peak eras where everything clicks.
But then there’s shows like this one, which I’ve listened through twice and…I’ve got nothing. It’s not that it’s a bad show, it’s perfectly fine. It’s just that it doesn’t do anything that I haven’t already written about this year. The most ear-catching moment is the 5-minute roar of noise that starts the second set, a long, drum-less 2001 intro reassuring that the Memphis version wasn’t a flash in the pan. The deepest bustout is Billy Breathes leftover Strange Design at 19 shows, there’s another fine (very fast) Reba and YEM. Trey introduces Fish as Morton Charlton Heston for the 50th time and references The Beatles’ “Because” for some secret reason. It’s a Phish show.
The troubling thing is that it’s merely a Phish show this late in the tour. We’re in the final two weeks of Fall ‘96, roughly the equivalent of Albany ‘95 and The Spectrum shows in ‘97. Almost always, the band warms up as tours go on, and shows benefit from the sum of playing three hours together for weeks plus dipping deeper into the songbook plus a general late-tour slap-happiness. After some promising signs in the midwest, none of these factors really show up on the west coast run at the end of this tour, apart from the wackiness at the closer in Vegas.
Because I’m me, I have a theory about why. Take a look at the 1996 Fall Tour itinerary and let me know if you see anything unusual, I’ll wait.
…
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…
…
That’s right! Apart from the two-night stand at MSG at the end of the tour’s first week, Phish played in a different city every night of the Fall 96 tour, 34 venues in 35 dates. The band might be road dogs from way back, and there were obviously some off days built in, but that’s still a tiring schedule of playing a show and getting on the bus for seven weeks, border crossing or no border crossing.
The migratory pattern stems from another phenomenon I’ve mentioned a couple of times, the fact that Fall 96 is the first all-arena tour for Phish. By exclusively playing venues that held five figures of fans, it didn’t make sense to stay in one place — as the box office numbers showed, they weren’t really capable of selling out even one night in many markets. It also likely had something to do with the lighter than normal summer tour, covering just six cities and leaving a whole lot of regional gaps around the country. In order to fill those gaps, they had to keep moving.
That’s a noble cause, but it may have hurt the band in the long run. Multi-night stands have many benefits: the band and crew get a night and day without travel before the show, setlists get more creative to reward repeat attendees, and there’s the opportunity for multi-show narratives to emerge over four or six or eight sets. When the band keeps moving, it’s starting from scratch in each new location; great for the people showing up for just that night, less ideal for those following the entire tour, either in person or via tape. Under those circumstances, the fact that this show — 2001 jam aside — could’ve been played anywhere and anytime on this tour doesn’t seem so strange.
Circumstantially, I don’t think the band was into this kind of itinerary either. They’ll never play another tour like this one again; 1997 starts the trend of two- or three-night stands at places such as The Gorge, the Worcester Centrum, and Hampton — regular stops forevermore. It’s the beginning of Phish’s long transition into a destination band, asking fans from various regions to gather at a handful of favorite spots rather than trying to blanket the U.S. (and dabble in Canada). Commercially, squeezing the map down to a handful of favorite venues might not be the best move; it’s hard to pick up casual fans if long-distance travel is a prerequisite for most of the country. But creatively, it works to everyone’s benefit. A rested band is a happy band, and a happy band means happy fans.
This was my first show back after not seeing the band since Cincinnati (Bogarts) in the spring of 92 and several times in the fall of 91 (Keen, Cubby Bear, Madison).
My fifth show overall and first in a four show run (PDX, STL, SCO, LA).
This show was ok to do back to and see that giant transition from clubs to arena in the wake of the flood of the Grateful Dead’s emotional mourning.
Actually I argue it was a great recap of the past with a few hints of what was to come when I would go all in on Europe summer 97.
But I was not yet really on the train. This was just a curiosity to me as a veteran deadhead and I couldn’t yet see it as anything separate from my experiences there.