Tainted Treats

11/13/97, Las Vegas, NV, Thomas & Mack Center

SET 1: Chalk Dust Torture, Black-Eyed Katy, Theme From the Bottom, Train Song, Split Open and Melt, Beauty of My Dreams, My Soul, You Enjoy Myself, Character Zero

SET 2: Stash, Punch You in the Eye > Prince Caspian > Bouncing Around the Room, Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove

ENCORE: Loving Cup

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History never lines up perfectly with the calendar. If you were around for my summer posts*, you probably sensed my frustration with how that tour unfolded musically. For the first week of the U.S. tour, Phish appeared to tee up the oncoming fall exquisitely, importing the new-song focus, funk experiments, and loosey-goosey setlists from Europe back to the homeland. But somewhere around The Gorge they took their eye off the ball, falling back on shelved songs and a more aggressive, confusing sound. Only in the summer’s penultimate set did they stumble back into the breathtakingly new and democratic jamming that would come to define the next season.

The 1997 progression turned out to be a rough echo of the band’s previous high water mark year: 1995, when the zigzagging, discordant jams of summer felt disconnected from the streamlined, razor-sharp arena-rock of the fall. But say what you will about the aggressively long explorations of Summer ‘95, at least it was an ethos. As Europe shrunk in the rearview mirror, Summer ‘97 got less and less decisive, with sets lacking flow, mood swings between dark shows and crowd-pleasers, and less of the funk-inspired fireworks that provided thrills in June and July. 

Between The Great Went and Las Vegas, Phish had three more months in the lab to regain that focus. Most notably, they went back to Bearsville; picking up the thread from March and recording more studio improvisations that would later be carved into The Siket Disc and The Story of the Ghost. Unlike the similar “Blob” experiment for Billy Breathes, the method seemed to really click this time around, producing more full-band compositions than ever before (8 of the 14 tracks on Ghost, all of Siket) and, on the evidence of Fall 1997, immediately influencing their live sound as well.

But that immediacy is on the scale of tours, not individual shows. The beginning of the “real” Fall 97, in the minds of most Phish fans, is still a few days away in Denver, leaving the opening two nights in Vegas and Salt Lake City as an oft-forgotten prelude. In the context of the month to come, they don’t entirely fit in. But as a postscript to the summer and the still-unheard Ghost/Siket sessions, they find their narrative role and introduce an often overlooked ingredient into the “Phish Destroys America” stew.

The Poster has arrived.

If you heard me on the Undermine “Road to Fall 97” series two days ago talking about 8/10/97, I described the featured show as an outlier on that route. But I’ll contradict myself immediately: if there’s a summer show that 11/13/97 most closely resembles, it’s that spooky night in central Indiana. In early foreshadowing of Vegas’ future role as Phish’s Halloween residence, this tour opener celebrates the holiday two weeks late – no costume, but plenty of creepy atmospherics and strobe-light intensity.

There’s no 12/29/94-level Evil Phish here – the scariest moment might be how badly they mangle Hydrogen – but the night’s proceedings carry a sinister vibe. Perhaps it’s the move from the Aladdin to the Thomas & Mack Center, drifting from the glitz of The Strip to the shadier side streets. At the Aladdin last year, Phish created their own version of an old-time Vegas revue, complete with Elvis impersonators, celebrity cameos, and (rejected) showgirls. From here on out, their Vegas stops will feel more like Lost Weekends, debauched nights and regretful mornings.

That sleaziness sprouts from the debut of Black Eyed Katy – the band’s year of funk experiments preserved in amber – and carries through the first set closer YEM and second set closing Mike’s Groove. The latter officially features a heavy “Born on the Bayou” tease, but it’s equally reminiscent of “Mama Told Me Not To Come,” the paranoid Randy Newman via Three Dog Night novelty used for ominous scenes in both Boogie Nights (released a month before this show) and Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas adaptation. On the other end of the Groove, Weekapaug accelerates to a tweaked-out frenzy, a dangerously high heart rate at the end of a long night of irresponsibility. 

Trey telling a spooky story about…MUHMUHMUHMUHMUHMUHMUHSOUL

Yet the night’s centerpiece is a 21-minute Stash, an arena-sized return to Wormtown. It’s an unlikely set opener for a party city and tour opener for a party tour, all the more so for being a particularly introspective version.  In the tenth minute it flips major, building over a burbling synth line from Page not unlike the Phish of 20 years later. But it can only sustain that effervescence for a couple minutes before disintegrating into a disquieting ambience, an unlikely import of those eremitic Bearsville jams into the insomniac neon lights of Las Vegas. 

These moments of delicate dread are not what Fall 97 is generally known for; it’s a tour that is sometimes diminutized into one big jolly, funky dance party. Jambands that can play endless wah-pedal grooves are a dime a dozen, while Phish’s late 90s genius was lacing that candy with dark chemicals and a shark-like intensity. It’s a pre-millenium anxiety that would fuel the band for the next three years, sparking dancing plagues from coast to coast. Before they added the sugar coating in Colorado, Phish pulled from the darker shelves of Summer 97 and stirred up the subliminally-disturbing filling in Sin City.

* - if you weren’t, welcome! Good time to hop aboard, to say the least.