The Essay-Proof Show

10/14/94, New Orleans, LA, McAlister Auditorium, Tulane University

I haven’t written a Phish essay here in nearly a year. Don’t worry, I didn’t stop liking Phish — in fact, I somehow managed to see 7 shows in 5 different states in 2016, the last of which I was honored to review for Phish.net. But even as I kept up with the band’s ongoing output, dutifully listening to each show within 24 hours of its playing, my semi-regular march through their past stalled out at this point.

I don’t want to blame this show but…I blame this show, with a little bit of responsibility left over for myself, and my misguided commitment to write an essay about every show before moving on to the next. On at least three occasions since I tweeted this show in March 2016, I’ve gathered the initiative to re-listen in hope of finding an interesting angle that can get me back on the road through Fall ’94. And each time I was thwarted, failing to find the spark that would fuel at least a handful of paragraphs. But, the world being what it is right now, I would very much like to have the occasional 3-hour distraction of live-tweeting a Phish show. So let’s get this over with.

Here’s the angle, such as it is: why is this a show that defies analysis? On paper, it’s very respectable, with a Gin, a Tweezer, a Forbin’s > Mockingbird, two of the band’s best set openers, an acoustic mini-set, and an encore with not one, but two regular guest trumpeters. On playback, it’s certainly not an obvious off night, delivering most of what people wanted to see from Phish in 1994. I’d consider the improvisation within Gin and Tweezer to be on the weak side, trapped uncomfortably between the linear structure of years past and the lengthy experiments right around the corner, but not in a particularly interesting way. They both just kind of worm their way into a dead end of discordance that the band isn’t yet nimble or courageous enough to escape.

It also feels like, aside from a couple anachronisms, this show could have taken place anywhere in the 150-some shows I’ve covered since 2/2/93. It could be that it checks off too many boxes, attempting to please so many different parts of their audience that there’s nothing really at stake, no tension or drama. It’s a paradox I’ve written about before — when Phish tries too hard to be everything for everybody, they often end up less than the sum of their many diverse parts.

Was the band equally unmoved by the routine nature of this night? Well, no spoilers, but I know from A Live One that November gets weird, and fast — the Bangor Tweezer is only a couple weeks away (not to mention the ALO Hood in nine days), and a good chunk of the post-Hoist setlist formula established over the summer is about to get tossed out the tour bus window. Here in New Orleans, we’re only six shows into fall tour, and the band is presumably working hard to learn 30 Beatles songs for that little show in Glen Falls coming up at the end of the month. So the context calls for patience, even if it makes life hard for compulsive essayists 23 years later. And with that — there, it’s done, let’s keep moving, there’s so much to hear.