Such Small Portions

8/8/97, Tinley Park, IL, New World Music Theatre

SET 1: Cars Trucks Buses, Gumbo > The Lizards, Dirt > It's Ice > Water in the Sky, Character Zero

SET 2: Wolfman's Brother -> Free, Limb By Limb, Loving Cup > Prince Caspian > Chalk Dust Torture

ENCORE: Hoochie Coochie Man, Messin' with The Kid

Listen on phish.in

And so it’s come to this: the worst Phish show I’ve ever attended. According to phish.net ratings, I have been to a handful of shows judged more harshly by the masses*. But non-musical context matters. The “World” is by far the lousiest venue I’ve ever experienced, and that’s despite the nostalgia advantage of it being my hometown shed, the site of the first concert I dragged my parents to instead of vice versa (Aerosmith/Megadeth on the Get a Grip tour!) and one of the formative music experiences of my life (Lollapalooza ‘95). The acoustics are awful, the ambiance even worse – gravel parking lots, no tailgating, and awful traffic in and out. 

In this less than ideal setting, Phish played a 58-minute set followed by a…62-minute set. Jams were few and isolated. There was a blues guest encore; okay, the guest was a legend in Sugar Blue, but blues guest encores are as much a Chicago cliche as ketchup-less hot dogs and Da Bears. But most galling of all was the fact that this lame show happened in the middle of 1997 – one of the great years in Phish history, and I got…that? (Spoiler: my year got better)

I’m not sure I recognized that we were at a special moment in Phish History when I was attending this show. I definitely had some tapes from the winter European tour, if not June/July, and I was religiously following the setlists and reviews on rec.music.phish each morning. By August, it was pretty clear that change was afoot, and the band I was going to see in Tinley Park was not the same one I previously saw in Champaign the past November. What I didn’t expect is for them to be worse. 

Now with 25 years of perspective and having heard every single note Phish played in the year leading up to this show, I can say: this one’s still a relative dud, but not a disaster. The sound quality on the tape is better than my in-person memory; perhaps I was sitting in a dead spot, but if so, The World was more dead spots than live ones. The Gumbo in the second slot picks right up where the song’s Desert Sky breakthrough left off, a lithe Trey/Mike dialogue that finds some darker territory in the last five minutes. In the back half, the Wolfman’s is a strong cowfunk status report – I like how it segues into Free by teasing Free’s jam first. 

But weirdly, I think this jam is also where Phish loses the crowd. The clap-along at the end of the Wolfman’s jam is an unusual thing to hear at a Phish show, where the fans are usually too busy dancing and/or deep listening to engage in participatory percussion. I recall being disappointed in my fellow Chicagolanders (I was a real fun hang, you can probably tell). The discontent lingered; Sugar Blue’s sit-in is competent blues and sort of charming – I enjoy how he refers to them as “The Phish” – but I’m sure I’m not the only audience member who didn’t come to see Muddy Waters and Junior Wells covers.

Billy Breathes may have slightly improved matters.

But it’s hard to find grief with any of the individual performances in this show, it’s just the way they’re doled out. Both Gumbo and Wolfman’s come early in their respective sets, and make big promises that go unrealized. After that, it’s a songy shuffle twice over, and the phish.net “>” notations up top are too generous (as you can see, I was much stingier). The first set provides the summer’s only Lizards and It’s Ice, which, setlist-hound that I was back then, I appreciated. But the second half ending with Loving Cup, Caspian, and Chalkdust is just brutal, an entire half of a set built out of set closers and a turbulent lack of flow.

Most crushing of all though, was the brevity. I remember my heart sinking both times Trey went into his end-of-set banter, feeling almost cheated. As I’ve said before, the trend towards shorter sets in 1997 wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, particularly when the narrative of the set felt satisfyingly complete around the one-hour mark. But whether due to an earlier-than-expected curfew, an accommodation for their encore guest, or just plain bad vibes, the two halves of Tinley Park felt abridged and cheap, like unfinished sentences. You’ve got to earn that short set.

My seats were better.

However, there’s a weird silver lining to seeing a poor Phish show. It’s a jamband truism that the musicians have to risk disaster to achieve transcendence, and a similar trade-off goes for audience members – catching the occasional stinker makes the triumphant shows all the sweeter. I had pretty good show luck with my first two shows, and even one off night didn’t hurt my average too badly. Would I have been more sour and potentially less of a lifelong fan if Tinley Park was the only show I was seeing that summer? Yeah, for sure. But I had tickets to Deer Creek, and faith that the next show had nowhere to go but up. 

* - Among my 1.0 shows, only 12/4/99 is rated lower, and that night’s Melt (available on Live Bait 7) alone puts it above Tinley.