SET 1: Julius, Cars Trucks Buses, Wolfman's Brother, Reba, Train Song, Character Zero, It's Ice, Theme From the Bottom, Sample in a Jar
SET 2: Down with Disease > You Enjoy Myself, Sparkle > Simple -> McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters, Waste, Run Like an Antelope
ENCORE: Fire
I haven’t been very kind to Fall 1996 so far, despite my best efforts to avoid repeating the tired old criticisms of the year and keep it optimistic. But I’ve been surprised at how little pushback I’ve received, even given the low status of this tour in the consensus Phish opinion. The defenses that I have seen so far can be roughly grouped into three categories:
Yeah, but, Halloween! (I agree, meet you back here in five days)
There aren’t many great, complete shows, but there are some excellent individual jams…that you haven’t gotten to yet.
There might not be much improv, but the band is very tight.
It’s that last point that I’m most paranoid about neglecting. The tightness of a performance is not really high on my judging scorecard, it’s something I only really notice when it’s alarmingly absent; see parts of 2.0, or the (understandably) rusty Arkansas show that opened the summer of 2021. My #1 reason for listening to Phish is the potential, often rewarded, to hear something I’ve never heard before. So whether they hit all the changes in YEM is not going to sway me one way or the other.
But there’s also territory in between playing the song as it’s written on paper and wide-open improv: soloing. People who hear I like Phish and the Dead often assume that means I’m a fan of long guitar solos, which isn’t exactly true. I can dig a “Maggot Brain” or a “Kid Charlemagne” like anyone, but what I’m usually chasing is full-band communication, not the cliché of the featured soloist wailing away while their backing band vamps. Phish doesn’t usually fall into the latter category — even when one member is soloing, the other three are generally doing something interesting — yet there are many songs and shows where the bulk of the improv is closer to a “solo” than wide-open four-way exploration.
1996 is full of these shows, and this Charlotte date is one of them. The only song that even hints at breaking out of its typical structure is Simple, and even that 16-minute version is riding on some familiar rails for this tour. My instinct then is to pan it, or at least to yawn and try to find an angle about the Charlotte Coliseum’s architecture or what happened to Fishman’s contest-winning, Hendrix-loving cousin or how often they play Julius on Saturdays.
But instead, I’m going to go against my biases and focus on the solos, of which there are many fine examples. Julius, for example, is an absolute clinic in blues guitar, the kind of playing that many Bonamassian musicians would build an entire career around; for Trey, it’s a warmup. Cars Trucks Buses, a pleasant but somewhat slight song turning up very frequently this tour, is basically just a rare excuse for Page to audition for his future part-time role with The Meter Men. His piano feature here doesn’t disappoint, and the completely different but equally excellent sparse and gloomy solo much later in McGrupp exhibits his quietly impressive range on the instrument.
The best of all this show’s steadfast Type 1-ness comes in the second set opening Disease, a song that has taken a step back jam-wise from the summer, but nevertheless remains a standout. Tonight, Trey resists the allure of his percussion kit (for now), and stays alternating between rhythm and lead for the song’s final 6-½ minutes. It’s a “solo” that shows why Trey is a special guitarist; instead of a demonstration of technical firepower or a straightforward execution of tension/release dynamics, he’s generating one melodic idea after another, smoothly iterating and constantly pushing the ball forward. There’s a fantastic, organic climax around the ten-minute mark, which he gracefully steers into the Disease riff to close it out. He’s a master storyteller, even in guitar hero mode.
Page, god bless him, isn’t quite there yet when he’s outside of his predetermined solo opportunities. As I mentioned earlier, the Simple does what a 1996 Simple does, but moreso — Trey hops over to the mini-kit at 5:40, and never really comes back. That leaves Page in the spotlight, and you can tell how awkward it is for him by how often he switches keyboards: piano (5:40) to clavinet (7:45) to piano again (8:20) to clavinet again (9:15) to synthesizer (10:15; the best stretch, almost Meastick-y) to organ (12:10) and back to piano (12:45). Page always changes tones a lot in a given jam, but that’s usually because he’s providing various shades of color, not the lead voice, and he’s too restless in that role — there’s no throughline, as with Trey’s longform Disease aria.
Despite the musical transformation just around the corner, the solos aren’t going anywhere. Some will get longer; tonight’s Zero is a weakling compared to next year’s versions, and Trey going full Band of Gypsys Hendrix will provide some of 1997’s most thrilling moments. Some will get shorter; the mini-solos within the recurring stop-start funk jams will put Page back in his comfort zone, and give Mike some non-YEM lead bass opportunities as well. And…I’m back to disrespecting 1996 again. Which is not to say that the tightness and solos of 1996 aren’t worth commending. It’s just that, as with most things Phish, there’s always room for improvement.
[Thanks to @WolfGuitar again for the stub!]