The Notes You Don’t Play
9/9/00, Albany, NY, Knickerbocker Arena
SET 1: Possum, My Friend, My Friend -> Jam > Gumbo -> Maze, Boogie On Reggae Woman, Roggae, Guyute, Run Like an Antelope
SET 2: Gotta Jibboo > The Curtain > Sand, Makisupa Policeman > Cars Trucks Buses > Funky Bitch > Cavern
ENCORE: Harry Hood
Night two picks up all the promising threads from the previous show, providing a first set crackling with dark, indoor energy. Just two songs in, there’s a short but satisfyingly haunted ambient jam out of MFMF, an anxious Gumbo and intense Maze, and an especially lovely Roggae to take the edge off. Tom Marshall does the Antelope lines, as custom decrees, and all feels settled in Phish world as they head into their final run of confirmed dates for the time being.
Then, in the first of three loaded Fall 2000 guest appearances, it all goes off the rails.
Michael Ray has an unimpeachable track record, featuring decades-long, simultaneous runs with both Kool & The Gang and the Sun Ra Arkestra, two significant – and wildly different – institutions of American Black music. In the 90s, he rode the jamband wave with his own Cosmic Krewe and found himself frequently intersecting with Phish, playing in the Cosmic Country Horns and Trey’s Surrender to the Air troupe. But tonight is his last of seven appearances with the band, and it’s not hard to see and hear why.
Things are already a little unstable even before Ray comes out; Jibboo is a little too hopped up, The Curtain is sloppy and reverts back to its Without form for the last time for a decade. Sand starts out in double time – or maybe it’s supposed to be a First Tube tease, as phish.net claims – and doesn’t quite crank down to its normal prowling speed before the vocals come in (watch Trey tell Fish to chill out at 18:33). I don’t know if it was always the plan to bring Ray out during Sand, but it takes 14 minutes for it to happen, and in the interim the band is mostly spinning its wheels with Trey at the keyboard; like all the most frustrating 1.0 Sands, everyone is waiting for something to happen.
And unfortunately, Ray isn’t up for providing the spark they’re chasing, at least not musically. He plays a pretty sick solo in Sand, enhanced by some pedal effects, but it’s also less than two minutes, and he spends the rest of the song dancing around the stage, leading the crowd in clap-alongs* as the band resumes its locked groove. It’s like they’re getting a cameo from Bez instead of an R&B/jazz legend – all told, Ray plays his instrument for maybe 10 minutes out of the 45 he’s onstage.
Makisupa was a good call for Ray’s dubby trumpet tone, but it’s again played very briskly, and Ray doesn’t deign to offer more than the occasional toot. Cars Trucks Buses reprises Ray’s guest turn with Phish at Jazz Fest, and it inspires his most extended stretch of playing, but his memory of the song’s head is spotty. They attempt to simplify things with a 12-bar blues that produces a decent Trey/Ray skronk battle by the end, but when they start up Cavern, Phish’s most trumpet-friendly original, he just sort of…wanders off? It’s weird to long for the solid professionalism of Carl “Gears” Gearhard with a Sun Ra sideman on stage, but it’s the awkward hand we are dealt in this show.
Yet when the band returns for the encore, Ray is still there, kicking balloons and sitting on the drum riser for the complicated bits of Harry Hood, then pulling fans onstage when he gets bored during the quiet part of the jam. It’s a needless distraction, and the band is demonstrably affected across the entire (eventually, literal) sit-in; there’s many moments where Trey, Mike, and Fish are all looking at Ray instead of attending to their own business, and Trey spends a big chunk in the middle of some songs whispering in his ear. At the end, Trey thanks the crowd members for hanging with Ray “when he couldn’t find his horn,” and I’m sure he’s joking, but it’s got a little sting to it.
As just one third of one show, the chaos isn’t a big deal, and it’s not even the most embarrassing guest appearance at a Phish show this month. But coming early in such an important tour, after three sets where the band sounded pretty dialed in, it’s a foreboding sign. If the tension of the past year was between the revels backstage and the quality onstage, Ray bringing more party than performance sets a bad example for a band that was struggling to focus. Space would’ve been an ideal place to end the band’s first era, but instead, it spaces out.
* - I’ve put a lot of work into being less of a curmudgeon at shows, but I’m forever annoyed by crowd clap-alongs, particularly for bands that improvise.
Strange night for sure. Lest us forget they finish Hood before the ending coda which was wholly unsatisfying.
One more non-sequitur: Your title reminded me of a classis Simpsons line. When Lisa is starting to join the underground jazz scene, and is watching the band from the audience, one of the audience members says out loud "this is terrible!" Then Lisa is like "It's not about the notes you hear, but about the notes you DON'T hear," which then he responds: "I can do that at home," and leaves. That line still sticks with me today.