Slap Shot
12/15/95, Philadelphia, PA, The Spectrum
SET 1: Chalk Dust Torture > Harry Hood > Wilson > Maze > Ha Ha Ha > Suspicious Minds > Hold Your Head Up > Cars Trucks Buses, Bouncing Around the Room, Free > Possum
SET 2: Tweezer Reprise > Runaway Jim > It's Ice > Bathtub Gin -> Rotation Jam -> Mallory > Also Sprach Zarathustra > David Bowie, Sweet Adeline
ENCORE: Good Times Bad Times -> Tweezer Reprise
Of all the famous venues where Phish made their debut in 1995, you just know that Trey was most excited for this one. Trey’s Flyers fandom runs deep — he’s worn their jersey on stage, played for them in a celebrity game, and raved about the Broad Street Bullies era for the team’s pregame show. Growing up just an hour from Philly, he also saw his first arena concert at The Spectrum, though the story changes: it’s either Jethro Tull, as he says in this show, or Pink Floyd playing Dark Side of the Moon, which seems less likely since he would’ve been 8 years old. And the now-demolished building is, of course, where “Eric Clapton crooned in orange and black.”
So this show roars out of the gate like no other on this tour, which is really saying something given the last month. Trey front-loads all the big anthems like he’s afraid the venue might pull the plug on them, playing Chalk Dust, an exceptionally early and yet still very solid Hood, Wilson, and Maze before the show is a half-hour old. His solos in CDT and Wilson sound he’s being electrocuted, and his segment in Maze sounds like engineers testing a jet engine — the dude is jazzed! So much so that they almost sheepishly play Ha Ha Ha after that blistering opening run.
Yet the entire show pivots on the laughing song. From there, they call Fish to the front for his Elvis act (again, are they worried they’re going to get the hook, vaudeville-style?) and ease off the gas, apart from a Possum that deploys practically every secret language cue in its intro. The second set opens with the missing Tweeprise from Binghamton and just gets weirder from there, culminating inside of Bathtub Gin in the tour’s second rotation jam and the sole appearance of Fishman’s seemingly impromptu piano ballad Mallory. By the time they get to a 2001 > Bowie and a rerun of the killer GTBT -> Tweeprise move from 10/21, they’ve probably lost more than a few curious onlookers to the Flyers bars outside.
It’s Phish in a nutshell. Last night, they played a top-to-bottom perfectly-paced, thrilling but accessible show for 7,000 or so fans in a minor-league hockey arena that looks like a tile outlet. Tonight, at a sold-out NHL shrine that holds nearly 19,000, they goof off like they’re in their practice space. It’s Hampton all over again; in a room thick with rock and roll history, they just can’t help falling back on irreverence, swapping instruments, repeating songs, and letting their drummer croon lyrics such as “She was ignoble, irritable and oddly constructed.”
I was a bit critical of the approach in Hampton, but for the rerun I’m almost impressed at how perverse and confrontational this night’s second set is. All the way back on 9/30 I talked about how the tour’s chess match was a good metaphor for the bait-and-switch Phish has always played with their audience, and even here, in one of their most revered months, the game remains afoot. It’s further evidence that even at the apex of their initial musical development, they’re constantly looking for the next move. It’s just that...tonight ain’t it.
I mean, this Rotation Jam...it makes Hampton’s Rotation Jam sound like “Clair de lune.” It’s a little bit shorter than the previous attempt (unless you count Mallory), but it’s far less cohesive, if the word even applies here — it basically sounds like each member of the band taking a turn on an unfamiliar instrument, be it Page’s poor keyboards or one of the Acoustic Army guitars, until Fishman does a vacuum solo and ends up at the piano for his solo tune. There’s really only a couple minutes of everyone rotated and playing what sounds like a School of Rock attempt at “Us and Them.” Overall, it’s hard to tell what’s happening on stage, and there’s certainly plenty of cheering, but on tape it’s not a novelty, it’s just boring.
It’s a truly bizarre way to spend a quarter of a set in a room where Young Trey once imagined himself in the shoes of his rock heroes, or at least in the skates of his hockey idols. The strong start and finish redeem it in a way that Hampton never quite reached, but that still results in a strangely inconsistent and sloppy show in one of their most consistent months ever. If 12/14 captured a Phish that had absolutely weaponized their sound for maximum impact, 12/15 captures their willingness to whack it in the legs with a hockey stick, just to see what happens next.
[Ticket stub from Golgi Project.]