The One That Got Away

11/7/98, Chicago, IL, UIC Pavilion

SET 1: My Soul, Mike's Song, Driver, Brian and Robert, The Wedge, Limb By Limb, Fikus, Billy Breathes, Beauty of My Dreams, Weekapaug Groove

SET 2: AC/DC Bag -> Ghost, Reba, Farmhouse

ENCORE: Guyute, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Listen on phish.in or watch on YouTube

After the trauma of missing out on Dayton ‘97, I made a rule for myself: If Phish came anywhere within a five-hour drive, I would go. In Fall ‘98, the band called my bluff and scheduled 6 shows in 8 nights within that radius around Ann Arbor, and I dutifully sent in a large postal money order for my most ambitious tour yet. It laid out all too perfectly – I could start at home in Chicago, get back to campus for a few classes before a quick trip over to Grand Rapids and back, then do a reasonable circuit around Ohio for the second weekend. 

It was too good to be true; you may have noticed yesterday that I very carefully worded my participation in this week of shows. The day that the UIC run started, my girlfriend’s grandfather died, and even to my dumb 19-year-old self it was clear that I should skip the show and comfort her. It was one thing to ditch a few college classes, but insisting to my partner that I couldn’t miss one of the six shows I was scheduled to see that week seemed like a real bad idea. Reader, it was the right call, as she’s now my beloved wife. But oh, what a price to pay!

The next morning, I vividly remember the emotional roller coaster of checking the setlist between the cracks of my fingers. My Soul opener? Phew, I guess the boys were sympathetic to my absence. Mike’s Song in the two-slot? Not fair, but the Mike’s Groove filling is a run of ‘98 regulars (including a chillout zone) that I was very likely to catch in the days to come. Now let’s take a big sip of coffee and scroll down to the second set…uh-oh. No. Noooooooo.

That lingering trauma has mostly made me avoid this show for the last 25 years – I gave the Bag > Ghost a few spins when it came out on Live Bait 9, but I mostly just tried to pretend that they only played two shows at UIC that year. It really didn’t help that 11/7 was anchored by a mammoth AC/DC Bag, a big part of the fun I had missed at the Nutter Center and one of my favorite Phish songs at the time*. Not to mention the four-song set, and an encore of my favorite Beatles song to stick the knife in deeper. Argh, it still hurts!

Forcing myself to listen today doesn’t really dull the pain. That first set is a bit soggy in the middle, though the formidable Mike’s and Weekapaug bookends more than make up for it. The AC/DC Bag > Ghost is tremendous though (particularly in SBD) and headlines a four-song set to make this show really feel like a throwback to Fall ‘97 with a few layers of ‘98 texture on top.

It has been striking how little cowfunk this tour has had so far, apart from where it has been sequestered in Moma Dance and Meat. But the first section of the Bag jam fully indulges in last year’s improvisational model, even feinting a bit towards the “Psycho Killer” drop at the Nutter – a reprise that would have either made me quit Phish forever or quit life and follow Phish for the rest of my days, had I missed it again. 

But where the ‘97 game plan would be to build from that tightly-wound funk base to a loud rock catharsis, this Bag follows the ‘98 style of gently dissolving. Both the audience and the band from a year ago would be startled at how quiet it gets in the 13th minute, shrinking a college basketball arena down to the size of a Bearsville studio. Instead of the usual Hendrix peak, it goes for Frippertronics, with Trey using his backwards effect and Page playing long sustained synth and organ chords. In some ways, it’s a week-later mulligan on the Halloween Wolfman’s, one where the band feels much more in sync and far less amped-up on trick-or-treat candy and Vegas and…whatever else.

Ghost is a more explicit do-over from that mysterious set, and far more coherent than they were seemingly capable of at the end of that long holiday night. This time, there’s hardly a whiff of the cowfunk after some opening bweeoooos, though it swaggers hard for most of the jam, finding a blues vein that’s more authentically Phish than any version of My Soul could ever be. Reba and Farmhouse is an oddly mopey way to end a four-song set, but getting progressively more chill is just the overall set structure following the arc of the year’s jams with satisfying multi-scale symmetry. 

Move Guyute to the end of Set II instead of the start of the encore, and you’ve got pretty much the ideal set I would have asked for at the time. The only very light criticism is that it’s a backwards-facing ideal, the kind of set construction that would’ve recapitulated the highlights of 1997 instead of establishing a new late 1998 standard. But – I’m splitting hairs, desperate to find a reason to write off what would’ve settled for a long time in the top tiers of my personal shows if I had only made it through the doors. Even 25 years later, making the right decision doesn’t revoke my right to be a sore loser. 

* - My high school band, Hypersonic, even covered it. I sang lead vocals!