The National Anthem
6/22/94, Columbus, OH, Veterans Memorial Auditorium
Every four years, some of the most moving moments in the World Cup come before the games even start, when the teams line up for the playing of their national anthems. Far from the rote pre-game ceremony of American sports, the dueling anthems before a World Cup match bleed with all the emotion necessary for the proxy war of international sports. Beyond the song itself, there’s the players’ performance, belted out triumphantly, wailed with a teary eye, or muttered under breath. It’s a moment that both deepens stereotypes and enriches them, offering more insight into a team (and nation’s) character than the hours and pages of pre-game analysis.
Trying to come up with Phish’s national anthem is some potent message board chum, but with June 1994 and June 2014 swirling together in my brain, it can’t be helped. Many would probably go for a treasured staple such as You Enjoy Myself or Tweezer, songs that stretch across eras and best represent their live approach. Some might choose a grander or more lyrically resonant tune, such as Bug or Free or, if covers count, Loving Cup. But I’m going to go with a dark horse, a song that never appeared on a studio album, didn’t debut until the middle of 1994, and for a long time was completely nestled within another song. It’s Simple, really.
June 1994 was immensely important for the band — all the innovation of August 1993 but with a more immediate impact. The creative peak of fall 1994, and the mountain range of 90's peaks that followed, couldn’t have happened without the simultaneous setlist-scrapping and jam-lengthening that started in the sweaty indoor venues of the Midwest, particularly on the heels of a spring tour that pretended at acting like a “normal” band. Within this important stretch, Simple is brought into public view for the first time, rearing its weird head inside some of the signpost shows of the late Spring/Summer: 5/27 in San Francisco, a show that in retrospect seems like a redeclaration of the band’s inherent strangeness; 6/17 in Milwaukee, as OJ made his slow escape attempt; and 6/22 in Columbus, where the seguefest becomes storytelling.
Especially in its earliest form, Simple is an odd piece of work. For the first two versions, it’s less a song than an incantation, functioning like Catapult or Kung as a nonsensical set of lyrics that they yell-sing over the sonic background of their choice. The Columbus version lands on the familiar, perseverating riff, but also interpolates it with the Allmans’ “Midnight Rider,” just a few notes away. For anyone who wasn’t doing the whole tour, even this third appearance probably didn’t register as an actual “song,” much less an anthem representative of Phish.
At the time, it really wasn’t. A song that sits on one melody for four minutes, barely changing keys and with no real chorus, “Simple” was the antithesis of the fussy early material that defined Phish’s early days. Despite coming from the crooked mind of Mike Gordon, the lyrics are straightforward to the point of idiocy, at least initially: We’ve got it simple/’cause we’ve got a band. No spasm waiters or solar garlic here.
But if late-90s Phish had a crest, the Latin motto wrapped around the logo would be “Eruimus Simplex, Quod Manu Habemus.” The primary factor holding back the spring tour was trying to do too much, pushing for a mainstream breakthrough while still satisfying the older fans, and June 1994 turned an important corner when the band chilled out and started trusting their abilities. We’ve got it simple, ‘cause we’ve got a band, so let’s embrace our inherent talents, ignore the setlist and the clock when the time is right, and let things happen.
That pattern of “back-to-basics” fueled the rest of their decade; except not really “back,” since the basics kept changing. Every time the band started to lose creative momentum in the 90's, they stripped it down, shook up their style like an etch-a-sketch: to arena rock, to funk, to ambient, to heavy groove. Maybe they never actually got around to be-bop, exactly, but the they certainly tried almost everything else.
But the genius of “Simple” is that it doesn’t just stay simple. As the song goes on, it iterates into stranger and stranger territory, the lyrics recombining into nonsense words, delivered with no less conviction and no greater shame. After all, this band can’t stick to the “basics” for long — whatever rules they set for themselves eventually gravitate back to Phish’s inherent weirdness. But each new starting point creates a new hybrid form, with thrillingly unpredictable results. Cymbops and saxscrapers.
Since it extracted itself from Mike’s Song, the jam for Simple has always tended towards the pretty side, all the absurdity of the preceding song giving way to a starstruck sparkle. In 3.0, that’s especially true, as the jam turns almost hymnal in its soft, reflective power. Think the complex 8/6/10 version at the Greek or the moving post-holiday 1/1/11 version, both of which dissolve into gentle, relaxed four-way conversations among old friends.
Simple is four guys, standing in a horizontal line, belting out some silly words like they’re the most serious things in the world, and then sharing a tender moment. All it needs is a flag and a ball and a hand over a heart.