Stuck in Jello

8/7/98, Raleigh, NC, Walnut Creek Amphitheater

SET 1: Water in the Sky, Drowned, Frankie Says, Stash, Brian and Robert, Foam, Bittersweet Motel, Ghost, Colonel Forbin's Ascent > Fly Famous Mockingbird

SET 2: Chalk Dust Torture > Mike's Song > Simple > Albuquerque > Limb By Limb, Wading in the Velvet Sea, Weekapaug Groove

Listen on phish.in

Well, we were due for a dud, and the Research Triangle drew the short end of the stick. That’s an enticing setlist up there, but don’t be fooled – 8/7/98 is the lowest-rated Summer 98 show aside from 7/26, and I’d flip those two around if only for Dallas’ excellent YEM. It’s got flubs a-plenty, none worse than them completely forgetting how to end Mockingbird, which made me feel physically ill. But the more distressing part is the audible lack of communication and cohesion, just two shows after a jam that exemplifies the optimal case of each quality. And this year in Raleigh, there’s no thunderstorm to resuscitate the proceedings.

My tendency is to focus on the positive in this project, listening closely to achievements such as 7/17 Set II or the 8/1 Tweezer or the 8/3 Gumbo to open up the casing and figure out what made them tick. It’s harder to figure out the opposite, what makes a show like this one fall so flat; doing so often gets into a lot of guesswork and assumptions about the band’s frame of mind on a particular night.

But this show does offer a potent symbolic narrative to explain its own shortcomings, in a lengthy Col. Forbin’s where the title character suffers a series of misdirections and tortures. At one point, Trey brings up the concept of lucid dreaming – “Mike here has pulled me in on it” – where the dreamer realizes they’re in a dream and gains the ability to control it. But every time Col. Forbin tries to change the scene or his circumstances, it gets worse, until he eventually ends up impaled on a “sensory spit” and fed until he turns into a giant, bouncy ball that flies into space and eclipses the moon. You know, normal rock concert stuff.

Mike isn’t just the expert on lucid dreaming, he’s also the member most likely to compare improvisation to dreaming. For example, in a 2011 interview, he connects the interstitial experience of consciously dreaming to his state of mind on stage: “Ideally, I’m standing up there and I’m just kind of a conduit. I’ve forgotten to swallow, forgotten everything, forgotten to try to take control of the music because it has taken control,” Gordon told McClain Johnson.

To my ears, the misfiring jams of 8/7/98 are the opposite of that goal, lucid dreaming gone wrong. Instead of going with the flow, it feels like the band is pushing very hard to make something happen – they play a whole bunch of jam vehicles, after all – but finding only frustration. Ghost is probably the best example, starting out wrong-footed with Mike and Fish out of sync and wrestling over tempo, then struggling through a jam where Trey finds himself trapped in a circular pattern that he force-feeds the band for several minutes. Repetition has been the skeleton key for many great moments this summer, but this theme is so aggressive and all-elbows it doesn’t leave any room for participation or development – it’s a cul-de-sac.

There’s a similar dynamic at play earlier in Drowned and later in Mike’s and Simple, all of which make a genuine effort but end up petering out over a restless crowd in a way that hasn’t been heard often this summer. In light of that, the decision to stuff the rest of Mike’s Groove with a bunch of down-tempo material seems like a concession, but also a wise one – I even found myself enjoying the Velvet Sea here, which works well with the rust of not being played for over a year. But for the only time in this Southeastern stretch, there’s no new, jaw-dropping cover in the encore, just the Son Seals song whose name I don’t like to type out – yet another limp ending.

So it’s not a fun show to listen to or write about. But as I say often, Phish needs the occasional bad show to make the good-to-excellent shows possible, as there’s nothing more creatively stifling than consistency. It’s a noble mistake, trying too hard to bend a show to your will instead of letting it develop naturally, and it will only really become a problem when Phish, or certain members thereof, don’t realize that the heavy-handed approach isn’t working. Lucid dreaming may sound nice, but it’s usually better to just let your subconscious instincts take the wheel.