SET 1: Farmhouse, Gotta Jibboo, Heavy Things, First Tube, Dirt, Vultures, Stash
SET 2: Jam > You Enjoy Myself > Prince Caspian > Train Song, Bathtub Gin, Character Zero
ENCORE: Contact > Misty Mountain Hop
Well, you can’t say this tour didn’t end with a fitting finale. The closer in Albany manages to neatly check off nearly all of the factors we’ve discussed as possible sources of frustration over the past month. That first set plays out like a last-minute cram session before they start recording the next album – the first five songs will all end up on Farmhouse, and I’ve been suspicious all tour that Vultures might have been in the running. And don’t get too excited about the 8-minute jam that opens the second set, it’s a rudderless ambient swell that falls on the weak side of the dichotomy I described yesterday. Each set barely clocks an hour, and Trey sounds exhausted in the traditional end-of-tour thank you speech.
It drops the curtain on what has been the most disappointing Phish tour since Fall 96 – a pretty impressive three-year hot streak, but even the best streaks have to end. Every tour from Europe 97 through Summer 99 found the band taking a significant step forward, reimagining how they wrote songs, built sets, and improvised, sometimes multiple times over. It’s a lot to ask of a band to keep pushing that aggressively for years, except for the observable fact that they did, I saw it, it was great. But in Fall 99, that momentum started to noticeably slow, and but for a brief bounce when the band reconvenes in December, it’s a trend line that will continue until the first hiatus.
1996 is an interesting comparison point for 1999, and not just because it was the last time I felt like I was shedding subscribers due to grouchiness*. At the end of that year, I described it as Phish’s “now what?” phase, the time period after they had attained the maximum success they could have imagined as 80’s prog dorks in Vermont. They had sold out Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve, played one of their best shows ever for the occasion, and never really compromised on their original vision, adapting it skillfully to America’s sheds and arenas.
So what could they do for an encore? Phish tried a lot of different strategies: international markets, a (slightly) more commercial album recorded a new way, even bigger shows. It took them a full year to figure out that the only sustainable way to keep growing was to do so internally, reinventing themselves from the ground up. It’s the decision that leveled them up from a successful band to a great one, and it propelled them for the rest of the 90s.
Well, almost the rest. I’ve always theorized that Big Cypress reran this crisis for Phish, as the four-years-later version of MSG ‘95. This time, they literally played the largest millennium eve concert on the planet and once again turned it into a creative milestone, executing their most ambitious concept yet. 2000 always seemed like the hangover from that achievement…but now I suspect the band was running out of steam earlier than I thought. Cypress, and the lead-up to it, didn’t so much start the descent as cover it up for a month.
The funny thing is, they did everything in 1999 that had worked the past two years. There are plenty of new songs, even if most of them are TAB hand-me-downs and The Siket Disc selections are 1) two years old and 2) loosely defined as “songs.” They’ve continued to evolve their jamming style, when fans would have happily let them ride cowfunk for the rest of the decade without complaint. They reshuffled the stage lineup, Mike is still loud as heck in the mix, they’re not falling prey to easy nostalgia. And yet, the returns are still diminishing.
The question then, is why? Maybe it was a lack of commitment to the new material – a hot Siket summer was forgotten by fall, and as tough as I’ve been on the TAB crossovers, they could have pushed them even harder this tour. Sand, after its audacious debut at The Gorge, regressed over the course of the month and was weirdly absent in this final four-show run; letting it stretch in December will make it a centerpiece of that mini-tour. Maybe they were tripped up by the lack of a Halloween show, as getting into the headspace of another band always seems to spark new inspiration. Maybe it was that merciless tour routing, never letting them settle in for too long and focus on the music instead of hoofing it to the next city.
The answer I keep coming back to is the noticeable shift in band dynamics. The dramatic evolution of 1997-98 happened in parallel with a decentralization of Trey, still the unquestioned leader but more willing to step back and let the other members shine. That trend reversed in 1999, and jams that were previously propelled in surprising new directions by Mike, Page, and Fish suddenly became static as Trey recaptured the reins. I don’t believe he made a conscious effort to reassert dominance, but the May solo tour did create some bad habits that carried over to Phish tour, particularly when they started playing some of those same songs. Suddenly, all of the new sounds were coming from Trey’s gear, which now, in another 1996 parallel, included an instrument that was formerly the domain of another band member.
Trey’s not an idiot, and his headstrong approach worked at times – in Chula Vista and Memphis and many other isolated moments throughout the fall. But the highlights of the tour closer in Albany mostly happen when they revert back to the equal playing field of the past two years. Stash hinges on a thrilling, fluid key change – a full band maneuver we take for granted these days, but one that has been mostly absent this tour as Trey focuses on layering instead of progressing jams. A long YEM with no vocal jam goes several extra laps by not charging headlong through its usual structure and letting Mike steer instead of just solo at the end. Bathtub Gin could have been a victory lap for the hard-driving style I’ve praised this fall, but Fish nudges it into fresh territory with a Latin-tinged rhythm that makes it shorter but more inventive than other versions this tour.
In the end, the image I’m left with from this tour is the one that stuck with me from Rosemont: Trey waving his guitar around in the air, making pseudo-theremin noises with his whammy pedal. What started in the summer as a funny bit sending up grandiose, phallic guitar hero moves edged closer and closer to uncomfortable sincerity with every repetition – and there was a lot of repetition in Fall 99. It ends up symbolizing how Trey isolated himself within the band; after all, there’s not much for the other three to do while Trey plays Languedoc lightsaber. But it’s also a trick that has survived into the happier vibes of the present day, now used more judiciously and warmly received even by curmudgeons like me**. Which goes to show that it wasn’t the ideas of Fall 99 that fell flat, it was merely the execution.
* - Subscriber numbers really flatlined this tour, which usually doesn’t happen – I can’t decide if it’s my fault or Phish’s. Readership has been higher though, go figure.
** - I’ve got a photo on my office wall of Trey doing it at the Sphere and controlling the size of the big swirly black hole behind him, which was sick as hell.
I think writing critically about Phish in the 90s is always going to get you into trouble and can explain the flatlined subscription numbers. A lot of fans just don't wanna hear it. And I get it because they were just *so damn good* in the 90s even when the shows were a little flat.
But yeah, I think you're maybe a little too easy on Big Red overall here — which is fair because it's really just conjecture. But was he getting a little high on his own rock star status as phish continued to explode? Yes. Was his family life kind of falling apart? Also yes. Were his bandmates kinda pissed he started another band and wanted them to play parts written by the members of his other band? Also likely yes. Was alcohol consumption among the 4 of them becoming less about the party and more about the habit? Also yes. Was a real love/hate relationship between the band and their traveling circus becoming more hate? I think possibly yes.
There's also just SO little humor on this tour compared to fall '98. Even that Memphis show, despite the epic 2001, the Mike's Groove feels kind of contrived and forced. And even the "surprises" this tour feel so much less phish-y. Playing one of the most cliche Zeppelin songs THREE times??
But yeah the simpler answer of tour exhaustion is also possible...'99 was their lightest touring year since '88...feels deliberate on their part that they wanted fewer shows/were sick of the road. And all the hot shows besides a brief pick-up around Memphis being at the beginning of the tour speaks to that.
This is about the point in the band's history where my view seems like it's going to start diverging from yours. I know that the consistency wavers from '99-'04, and that there are sets that don't work and full shows that don't work. But the highs from this period rank among some of my favorite music ever produced by the band. I am more forgiving of some of the flaws that creep in because the peaks are so high.
You say there are "isolated moments that work in the fall," but those moments include the Chula Vista show and the Boise Bag and the Memphis show, and that feels like a lot more than isolated moments to me. It feels like a band figuring out their next direction in fits and starts, often in ways that are unsuccessful and more inconsistent than previous iterations, but when they do work, they are absolutely mind blowing. I'm more than OK with that.
Dec. '99 through July 4th of 2000 is one of my favorite periods in Phish history. I've always seen Fall '99 as a spotty tour that attempts to reach new heights, and succeeds in the best jams. The resulting run -- early December through the first part of summer 2000 -- pays this off big time.