SET 1: Punch You in the Eye, Farmhouse, Water in the Sky > Bathtub Gin, Back on the Train, If You Need a Fool, I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome, Beauty of My Dreams, The Moma Dance > Reba, Chalk Dust Torture
SET 2: Runaway Jim -> Free > Meatstick, Guyute, Axilla > Llama
SET 3: My Soul > Piper -> Prince Caspian > Wilson -> Catapult -> Icculus -> Smoke on the Water Jam > Icculus, Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) > Fluffhead
ENCORE: Harry Hood
There are a lot of disagreements among Phish fans about Summer 1999, but there’s one consensus point everyone can agree on: it was hot as hell. At ticket time, half of the twenty American shows were still north of 85 degrees, and seven dates took place on days where the high temperature spiked above 90*. Both categories hit those marks on five of the last eight shows – which happens to be the ones I attended. Never have I sweated more over a ten-day period.
This show, by virtue of being a three-setter with an early start, was the most exposed to the steamy climate. While it just missed hitting 90 degrees on the 18th after peaking at 93 the day before, I’ll tell you that wasn’t much relief when the show started with the sun still high in the sky and the runway pavement fully heated. For those of us who spent the night in tents that were too hot for sleeping by 6 a.m., it was a long day of heatstroke before the band hit the stage for 4 hours and 40 minutes of music.
And judging by the music played at the end of the night, the members of Phish had spent some time getting sun-drunk themselves. Night two of Oswego ticks more boxes than night one for what Phish fans had come to expect from a festival show: all-you-can-eat set lengths with regal track times for songs like Gin, Reba and Hood and two heavy-duty jams in Jim and Piper. But it also ends up in one of the silliest sequences of the tour, a swirl of bustouts and in-jokes that brought a paradoxical intimacy to the second-largest shows of the year.
A brief play-by-play, for those who can’t listen: the Wilson solo breaks down to chugging along on a single E chord, and Mike decides to sing Catapult over it. Afterwards, Trey starts talking and talking and talking, first celebrating the Guinness world record attempt while tragically ignorant of its failure, then talking about another book (cue nerd cheers) but diverting into a rant against cable television and heavy metal music. Then he says they’re going to set another world record: “The longest vamp on one chord ever by a band…it’ll take 3 or 4 hours, so everybody relax.”
This soon becomes a demonstration on how “Smoke on the Water” and “Cat Scratch Fever” are the same song, before referencing Barnes & Noble and the Stones’ “Miss You.” Once they finally stop edging and deliver the Icculus hook, Trey spends several more minutes making radio DJ announcements of how that was played “by request” and introducing the band. It’s a solid 17 minutes of hijinks, slightly longer than the Fluffhead they play two songs later.
And of course, standing in my pool of sweat 100 feet or so from the stage, I ate that shit up. Though I was 16 shows in by this point, I had never heard a narration of any sort, due to ramping up my showgoing habits just as Trey was ramping down his rambles. Finally catching one here in Oswego was extra unexpected, as they had kept things narration-free at festivals past, aside from the weird Harpua split between Clifford Ball and Great Went. It’s hard to reconcile tonight’s Chatty Trey with the Trey that gave his band a setbreak scolding just two years earlier. Whether due to accumulated experience or the Oswego’s strange mid-season placement, the festival pressure was sharply lower, and Phish felt comfortable goofing off like they were back at Nectar’s in front of one thousand times the crowd.
Or maybe it was just the heat. Oswego is the point where the weather on tour went from “what do you expect, it’s July” to “holy shit, we are in literal hell,” with only a brief respite north of the border until the end of the run. By Deer Creek, my tour buddies and I were spending afternoons in a local Wal-Mart just for the air conditioning. Coincidentally or not, the band also got weirder and weirder in this final week, with two shows in the near future particularly slap-happy and unhinged.
But you could argue that the weather was an influence from the very start. Much of the sonic changes I’ve chronicled these first three weeks could plausibly result as much from oppressive heat as creative strategy. The slower tempos, the focus on hazy Siket Disc sound textures, the widening dichotomy between playing more ballads (it’s too hot to rock) and throwing down even harder on the loud stuff (it’s hot, let’s rock!). Even if these developments weren’t caused by the heat, they probably suited the moment and matched the mood of a well-cooked crowd.
After a gentle, McCoury-assisted evening set and before the late-night lunacy, Oswego2 takes the louder/faster side of that split, with a fierce, relentless second set, a dense Jim with the fastest “Superbad” teases ever, an all-time rager of a slow build Piper, and no Siket Disc songs in sight (though the prolonged Caspian intro captures some of the vibe). It’s the 4th of July show I expected two weeks late, right down to the fireworks display over Hood. But with the heat wave showing no signs of letting up, the early-tour subtlety is giving way to silliness.
* - According to Weather Underground historical data, which I have some suspicions about. For example, it doesn’t show any rain in Columbus on the night of 7/23.
I was in college at Oswego at the time and this concert was a dream... until the HEAT. Holy hell that was something. I recall the water trucks drenching the sweltering people. But man these were fun shows. It was also here where a guard told us that they were playing the millennium concert in Florida.