The Human Clue

10/29/96, Tallahassee, FL, Leon County Civic Center

SET 1: Chalk Dust Torture, Guelah Papyrus, Cars Trucks Buses, Taste, Bouncing Around the Room, Stash, Train Song, Billy Breathes, Poor Heart > David Bowie

SET 2: Rift > Mike's Song > The Horse > Silent in the Morning, Weekapaug Groove, The Wedge, Character Zero, Suspicious Minds > Hold Your Head Up, Slave to the Traffic Light, Hello My Baby

ENCORE: Good Times Bad Times

Since 1994, Phish has relished sending messages in the run-up to their Halloween show, planting both clues and misdirection for their costume choice. The first year, they feinted with Thriller on the road to Glens Falls, while 1995 had the conspicuous jam on Pink Floyd’s “Breathe”, but also a lot of Who-ish playing that was only revealed as a hint in retrospect. Even recent fall tours leading up to Halloween sets of original material instead of an album cover had plenty of “pre-teases” foreshadowing the debuts to come. 

But 1996, to my knowledge, is the only year where the band’s clue was an actual Human Man. That Human Man is Karl Perazzo, the percussionist they befriended during their original run opening for Santana back in 1992. On the fantastically convoluted band member timeline for Santana, Perazzo has one of the longest bars, having played with Carlos from 1991 to the present day. But he also has a deep resumé that few can rival, recording or touring with a wildly diverse set of luminaries including Prince, Dizzy Gillespie, John Lee Hooker, Mariah Carey, and Tito Puente.

And for three shows in Fall 1996, Perazzo was a member of Phish. As Trey says between Taste and Bouncin’, “He’s going to be playing with us for the next couple of nights, and we’re happy that you guys can be the first people to check out the five-piece structure.” 

That’s a dead giveaway that the percussionist was brought in for Halloween duty, but even that tip doesn’t exactly narrow down the possibilities of what the cover costume would be. The guesses on rec.music.phish ranged from Allman Brothers (two drummers, and the show was in Georgia), REM (Georgia again), The Violent Femmes (another band Phish served as opener for), the usual Floyd, Zappa, and Zeppelin wishes, and long-term prophetically, Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. However, there is a suspicious amount of speculation that it would be the Talking Heads and even Remain in Light, inferred from interview hints that it was an American quartet with one female member and one member not born in the US, and an 80s album with one hit. 

But it’s not Halloween yet, and two nights before the pagan celebration, there’s just a regular show in Florida full of Phish music, with one additional member squeezed between Mike and Fish. Perazzo sits in for the entire show, and as with Bob Gullotti before him, Phish doesn’t go easy on the rookie. Ten minutes in, they’re flying through The Asse Festival section of Guelah Papyrus, daring Perazzo to keep up. Given the Remain in Light rehearsals, I can’t imagine the band had much time to run through these songs with their temp worker, so he’s likely just playing along by pure instinct.

And goddamn, does he nail it. That cross-genre list of collaborators a few paragraphs back prepared Perazzo for the broad stylistic range of a typical Phish show, and he handles fast songs, slow songs, complicated songs, and some of the longest, most satisfying jams of the tour so far like he’s always been in the band. It’s no surprise that he kills Taste, having already played on it back in July in Italy. But he also adds extra depth and vigor to songs like Cars Trucks Buses, Rift, and Chalk Dust, or even Billy Breathes, Suspicious Minds and Hello My Baby*, providing the tuchus kick this tour desperately needed.

Here’s where I disclose that percussionists, particularly in jambands, are a particular pet peeve of mine. All too often, they are gimmicky and distracting, playing instruments that look like Dr. Seuss inventions and intrusively adding those awful wind chimes and the relentless tappa-tappa of bongos and congas. As I discussed for Gullotti’s Hartford sit-in, a second percussionist also pushes bands away from the nimbleness a single drummer provides, prioritizing rhythmic depth over agility. When your single drummer is Jon Fishman, an added percussionist has to be at the top of his game to enhance instead of diminish.

Perazzo passes this test within the first few songs of the first set, but it’s the Mike’s Song — the finest performance of the tour so far — where he puts himself at the top of the class. His contributions in the composed section are a little overripe, but once they dip into the jam, the new guy is clearly raising the entire band to a new level. For 15 minutes, Phish tips their pitch openly that Remain in Light is the Halloween secret, without referencing any specific song explicitly enough to earn a shownote. 

But even more than a preview of 48 hours in the future, it’s the clearest glimpse of 1997 Phish since the Albany YEM. Trey’s Adrian Belew guitar torture in the first jam morphs into a benevolent wah in the second, while Mike steps forward melodically and Page works his clavinet hard. It’s an intense jam, but there’s a patience, content to cradle inside the two-drummer groove, that flags this improv as different from the busier styles of 1994 and 1995 and more akin to later years. If Halloween 96 is known as the show that changed everything, this Mike’s provides a powerful prelude, a clue to much more than just the imminent holiday tradition.

* - During which Perazzo shakes a tambourine, making it the only non-acapella version to date.