The Comet’s Path

11/11/98, Grand Rapids, MI, Van Andel Arena

SET 1: Punch You in the Eye, Gumbo, If You Need a Fool, Sleep, Tela, Birds of a Feather, Theme From the Bottom, Julius

SET 2: Halley's Comet > Simple > Walk Away > Limb By Limb, When the Circus Comes, Ghost

ENCORE: Contact > Rocky Top > Funky Bitch

Listen on phish.in

A Wednesday night in Grand Rapids has a similar energy to a Monday night in Salt Lake City, just swapping in Midwestern culture for Mormon. Ticket sales were better though; as the only fall show in Michigan, all us college kids were happy to skip out on afternoon classes and drive to the west side of the mitten. I recall the downtown minor league hockey arena being full but still comfortable, with my buddy and I easily establishing camp a few people back from the stage (Page side, of course…that’s my photo up there).

So Phish didn’t have to reward us for showing up with a full album cover, just a truly excellent top-to-bottom show. For years, 11/11/98 was the sleeper pick on my Favorite Shows Attended list, until its obscurity was happily spoiled by Shapiro selecting it for Live Phish induction in 2019. It’s a sneaky one that doesn’t look like anything too spectacular on paper, but the setlist structure, the jamming, and the general atmosphere combine to make the ideal Fall 98 show. 

It’s interesting to think about just how different a top-tier show in Fall 98 feels from one just a year ago. The great Fall 97 shows are relentless and waste no time: the Denver Ghost is the fourth song of a night that opened with a Tweezer, Hampton opens with an 18-minute version of a brand new cover, Dayton is jamming and segueing hard five minutes into the show. And they’re intensely concise, with four- or five-song, under-an-hour sets becoming the norm and enabling a seamless, focused flow that felt like an album being built right before your eyes. 

In contrast, Fall 98 shows ease in much more gradually. We’ve already talked about first set naptime – represented tonight by Sleep and a Tela I was overjoyed to catch – but even the meatier material is in no rush. PYITE is the model student opener for that approach, a song with a coyishly long intro that also interrupts itself twice before its completion. In Grand Rapids, they follow up with a Gumbo that is a perfect appetizer jam, loping through a ‘97 strut and ‘98 eeriness before ending in a dreamy swirl. It’s a warm-up stretch but you can hear all four instrumental voices locking in from the start – always a good sign.

The second set, meanwhile, doesn’t conform to the four-song set format that marked so many of last year’s classics, instead packing in an extravagant six songs. That’s still not a lot, but it is 50 percent more, and it allows a bit more wiggle room for crafting a full emotional arc. The frame is anchored by two mammoth jams in Halley’s and Ghost, but finds time in the middle for more delicate improvisation in Simple and Limb by Limb, the second reappearance of a fan favorite cover, and an exquisitely placed ballad. The more songs Phish adds to a set, the higher chance of spoiling that overall cohesion, but six songs is starting to feel like the sweet spot between a uniform (but often powerfully so) mood and complete narrative bedlam.

Then there’s the encore, a valentine to Mike, with the bassist given a chain of three songs to sing. Where Fall 97 encores often felt like an afterthought after the preceding two sets of intensity, Fall 98 has reserved some energy for postscripts with a message. There was the double dose of arena-rock lunacy in the last show after the house lights fakeout, the bonkers alternative rock covers to cap the 2nd and 8th, and peaceful benedictions to quieter nights in LA and Denver. With better pacing overall, these shows reach their conclusion with the band not entirely spent and still with something to say.

The message in throwing the spotlight on their most bashful member in the Grand Rapids encore may well have been a celebration of band unity. There’s multiple moments in the second set when they split into smaller units – a tender Trey/Mike duet in Simple, an unusual stretch of Limb By Limb that is almost a Page Coil solo with light Trey and Fish accompaniment. But even at full volume their camaraderie enlivens relatively routine songs such as BOAF, Theme, and Julius at the end of the first set. And when the collective alchemy touches the comet fizzing through the center of the show, it’s combustible.

The Van Andel Halley’s is another jam, like the previous show’s Gin, that doesn’t seem to fit into the prevailing improv narrative of Fall ‘98. But it finds the band on far more equal footing than they were while finding space around Trey’s goofy riff. Just listen to how locked in they are at the 11th minute of the Halley’s: Trey is hitting those funk chords, but Fishman keeps driving them hard, Page adds synth sizzles then switches to burbling electric piano, while Mike finds an instant-earworm melody. It’s fertile enough ground that they’ll build on it for the next 15 minutes; instead of gradually falling apart, it’s a jam that throbs, peaking with a Trey “solo” of guttural moans and digital glitchery. It’s so intense that it’s tempting to call it an exception to the ambient trends afoot, but it reminded me of what I said about the Ring of Fire set – that, for Phish, “ambient” doesn’t necessarily mean quiet or minimal. 

The disconnections of the Vegas Wolfman’s feel half a country away, healed by the powers of Midwest Nice. There’s no need to do a cheeky punishment for the fans who didn’t bother with the midweek show in a small market, Phish just calmly lived up to their promise as the best band in the world at the time. And part of their claim to that lofty title is that they kept on changing what Phish excellence meant, instead of resting on the laurels of past success.