Straight Face

9/22/99, Las Cruces, NM, Pan American Center

SET 1: Also Sprach Zarathustra > Chalk Dust Torture, Guelah Papyrus, Axilla, My Mind's Got a Mind of its Own, Beauty of My Dreams, Bathtub Gin, Mozambique, Sand, Waste

SET 2: Gotta Jibboo, Ghost > Taste, Brian and Robert, Mike's Song > Simple > Train Song, Weekapaug Groove

ENCORE: La Grange

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It feels good to come upon a show that is mostly known for its soundcheck, a phenomenon much more associated with Phish’s early 90s. That’s partly an issue of availability, as leaks of the band screwing around before doors opened dropped off in frequency as the venues got larger and unofficial SBDs grew scarce. But this one got out just a few months after it happened when Kevin Shapiro played it during a Big Cypress episode of From the Archives, introducing the fanbase to the legendary “Dickie Scotland Song” five years before its poorly-timed in-show debut. 

A reference to the band’s longtime (still active!) accountant and manager Richard Glasgow – get it? – The Dickie Scotland Song is a more laidback recycling of the chords from Chalkdust Torture Reprise, another exceptionally rare nugget. In their warm-up at the basketball arena of the New Mexico State Aggies, the band uses the song to riff on per diems, NMSU alumni Glasgow and ZZYZX (fka “The Timer”), their religious affiliations, and the possibly problematic micro-genre of “Jewgrass.” It’s pretty funny, more catchy than it has any right to be, and a welcome throwback to the goof-off soundchecks of the past – foolishness that would often infuse into the show to follow.

It’d be great if that happened here in Las Cruces. But aside from the surprises of a 2001 opener and a La Grange encore (cruelly played just before the tour reaches Texas), it seems like they got the antics out of their system before the fans got in. Not that it’s a bad show, mind you – it features standout, if pretty on-rails, versions of 2001, Gin, and Ghost and further steps forward in the early evolution of Sand and Jibboo. It’s just that the mood is similar to a lot of shows this tour and year: serious, intense and aside from some wacky lyrics of yore, pretty humorless. 

In fact, we haven’t really had a slap-happy show since 7/25/99 – a night, I was reminded after essay publication, where the unusually loose setlist was chosen by members of the Green Crew. Phish tours always tend to start uptight and gradually unwind as they go, with bustouts, in-jokes, and general chicanery on the rise as road-trip madness seeps in. So it might be unfair to hope for silly season to start only two weeks into this one. On the other hand, with that short layover between summer and fall, one might have expected some of the mischief of late July to carry over. 

Instead, the vibes of fall 99 are pretty consistently intense and menacing. I’m going to point the finger at the TAB songs yet again; the relentless pummeling groove of First Tube/Sand/Jibboo is deadly grim, even if Jibboo is, I’m pretty sure, about needing to poop. As that style infects older songs too – Gin, Ghost, and Mike’s tonight are especially TABified – it creates a monotonous atmosphere that is very atypical for Phish’s usual eclecticism. Perhaps due to being back indoors or the table-setting of that early 2001, the show stays on an aggressive tilt from front to back, aside from a couple ballads and moments of gentile-grass. 

Now I’m a big fan of dark Phish, it is known. And neither do I want to return to the days of mandatory Big Ball Jams and Fish vacuum songs. But I do expect something of an emotional arc from Phish, and it adds to the thrill of unpredictability when you don’t know if they’ll make you guffaw or cower in terror. Keeping the show at this fever pitch flattens out those dynamics, and even when the band isn’t tired – this show is notably peppier than the last couple – the audience might be by the end.

So hearing the band having fun at Dickie Scotland’s expense before the show instead of within it is a little frustrating. Summer 99 had some good bits between the nicknames, the fake Springsteen, and the Meatstick record book saga. Fall, so far, has just left us with the Meatstick, a segment that’s getting so predictable I can usually recite Trey’s canned banter (“sweeping the nation”/”the new Macarena”/”can’t do the Meatstick with only dudes”) along with him. Humor has been and will always be central to the Phish experience – losing it, even temporarily, feels like an amputation.