The Good Lieutenant

9/18/99, Chula Vista, CA, Coors Amphitheatre

My Bloody Valentrey

SET 1: Tweezer, Roses Are Free > Wilson > Maze, Brian and Robert, Tube > Rocky Top

SET 2: Boogie On Reggae Woman, Meatstick > Free > Bouncing Around the Room, Harry Hood > Frankenstein > Cavern

ENCORE: Contact > Tweezer Reprise

Listen

I’m conscious of the fact that I’ve cast Trey as the villain of 1999, which is easy to do and yet also a little unfair. In fall, the music is still consistently strong, but more and more you can hear the seeds of the hiatus that is just one year away. We can speculate all we want about substances or fatigue or hubris or any other distraction that may have led Phish to that destination. But the musical wobbles starting to appear in 1999 can usually be attributed to the same Trey attributes that fuel their best eras: restlessness, an abundance of ideas, and fearless confidence. 

In 1999 and the years that follow, those qualities are still always present, they’re just sometimes misled by sloppiness, disconnected communication, and distraction. When those storm clouds occasionally clear, as they will continue to do through even the darkest days of 2.0 (or so I’m told), you can see Trey’s vision and its execution through Phish from its best angle. Annoyances turn to revelations, and what seems like ill-advised decisions start to look like they were just distorted by non-musical factors. 

The band’s debut in Chula Vista is one of those moments of clarity, a reputation solidified by its 2018 soundboard release. Like Boise – the other LivePhish selection we’ve covered so far this tour – it’s a show that makes me doubt my quarrels with the other early fall performances; as I said repeatedly this summer, the soundboards really boost 1999 shows more than other eras of Phish. There’s obviously selection bias at play here – Shapiro’s not putting any duds behind the paywall – but with both shows, some of the same features that annoy me on an AUD end up thrilling me with cleaner sonics.

To be more specific, I am absolutely agog over Trey’s guitar sound(s) in this show. I’ve complained a lot about jams losing steam as Trey retreats into his effects pedal man cave over on stage left. But I’m once again paranoid that low-def recordings miss critical nuances, because here he is consistently delivering gloriously weird science in even the most inconspicuous songs. It’s an undiluted look at his ambitious approach to guitar in this era, an aesthetic that is as impressive as it is worlds away from the straightforward tones he started the decade with.

The fun starts long before the chonky Boogie On that gets all the headlines from this show. I’m already drooling in the first set, despite its tight runtime and relatively pedestrian playlist. That’s after a Tweezer opener, which is structured as the kind of one-track slow-burn jam I’ve complained about frequently this year. But I love how Trey uses the “Uncle Ebenezer” breakdown to bank a bed of loops that he can switch back on as soon as the jam starts then patiently sculpt over the next ten minutes, while also dueting with Mike as much as himself. By the end he’s using some kind of echo/Leslie/reverse delay combo that is shedding whooshes all around the mix, an effect that sounds amazing on headphones in balance with the rest of the band instead of dominating the PA system.

The reverse delay features heavily in his brief Wilson solo as well, and it’s once again tweaked so that real Trey and multiple Trey after-images all seem to be playing at once. Maze is exactly what you want to hear while he’s in this shoegaze mood, with chemtrails flying all around the verses and ample time for him to experiment with feedback textures and unusual chords during Page’s solo, before impersonating a jet engine in his own. While he plays the formerly drone-based Brian and Robert with the set’s cleanest tone, loop gang is back for Tube, adding out-of-phase shadow rhythms, with Page getting in on the microfunk fun by playing teeth-chattering clav.

They must have so enjoyed the Nutter Center throwback feel of that jam that it inspired Boogie On’s longest walk ever, a breakdown-filled jam which stays relatively sparse compared to the first set’s dense soundscapes. But things get bloopy again at the end of a long, semi-awkward Meatstick, and Trey’s Free solo expands upon Wilson’s as a one-man Branca symphony, probing the outer limits of how weird you can make electric rock guitar sound all by your lonesome. And while the Hood doesn’t do anything unexpected, it’s a welcome display of Trey’s more classic tone, masterfully controlled and dripping with emotion.

It’s just a jaw-dropping display, a guitarist able to channel Kevin Shields and Bill Frisell one minute, Leo Nocentelli the next, then flip a switch to a note-filled tidal wave of Hendrix and Gilmour tone. Also: Rocky Top and Bouncin’. It’s Trey brimming with versatility, technique, and confidence…but with a skillset so large that it is always on the verge of eclipsing the band around him. Tonight, he corralls it enough to turn in a classic performance; other nights, when he loses hold of the reins, it’s an untamed beast that can smash up a show. In an era when Trey’s strengths and weaknesses were separated by the thinnest of barriers, the frustrating nights sometimes set up the biggest payoffs.