Retracing My Steps
12/6/97, Auburn Hills, MI, The Palace of Auburn Hills
SET 1: Golgi Apparatus, Run Like an Antelope, Train Song > Bathtub Gin -> Foam, Sample in a Jar, Fee > Maze, Cavern
SET 2: Tweezer -> Izabella -> Twist -> Piper, Sleeping Monkey > Tweezer Reprise
ENCORE: Rocky Top
And so we come to it: my favorite Phish show of all time, my favorite concert of all time, one of my favorite pieces of recorded music period. Hey wife and kids, don’t read this part: it’s one of my favorite all-time experiences, though I won’t risk the therapy hours caused by ranking those in any absolute order. I was already sold on Phish; this was my sixth show, and 8/10/97 had pretty much ensured that I would be their fan forever. But the Palace was a spiritual thunderbolt unlike anything I’ve ever felt since, and continually chasing and trying to understand that feeling turned my relationship with Phish into something much deeper than just a “favorite band.” Exhibit A: this newsletter.
Now that we’re here, the problem – for the purposes of this project – is that I’ve already written down a lot of words about this show. Back in 2012, when Live Phish released the SBD, I reviewed it for the departed Hidden Track vertical of Glide Magazine, talking about how it felt to hear a professional-grade recording after memorizing the audience tape for 15 years. And two days after the show, my review appeared in The Michigan Daily with the unfortunate headline seen below.
Apart from that editor-inflicted groaner, I stand by everything I wrote down in a post-show fever – I was given the assignment on the ride home, and I’m pretty sure I stayed up most of the night typing it out. I declare myself a “Phish snob” in the first sentence and worry about whether I was becoming a jaded old soul (at 18 years old) by paragraph 9, a pretty accurate self-assessment for any point in my Phish-listening career. I ponder the tension between the core eccentricity of Phish and their arena-sized popularity, a thesis I’ve recycled for many an essay these last few years. I was a little rude to the first set and the bros behind me, but I think I captured the second set pretty well given that I was working entirely from memory, with no instant LivePhish download to check facts by.
So if I agree with what I wrote 25 years ago and then reiterated 10 years ago with fewer rock critic cliches, what’s left to say now? This is a show I listen to every year on its anniversary, and I may have thought all the thoughts about it I’m likely to ever have. Except this time around, I’m coming to the show in a new context, having listened to the entire tour preceding it – nay, the entire year leading up to this Saturday night in Auburn Hills. That gives me the opportunity to reflect on a topic I’ve largely avoided: just how special was The Palace show, really? Is it the best show of Fall 97, or just the one that I was lucky enough to attend?
My quick-take frustration about the first set still feels legit, as it doesn’t provide the rocket launch opening of the later November shows (or the shows immediately preceding and following this one). But despite feeling like a more standard opening frame, it dips repeatedly into the magic zone, with Antelope, Gin, and Maze all providing enjoyable explorations of one very solid idea. Antelope gets to frolic at the front of a set for once*, and freed from its responsibilities as set climax, it settles surprisingly well into the 97 loop-funk aesthetic. The spiraling build of Gin shows off how casually they can reach the full-band euphoria it would take an entire A+ show to reach previously, and lands a nifty high-difficulty segue into Foam as a bonus.
And in a very December feeling, these jams all light the fuse on elements that will explode in the subsequent set. It’s not just a warm-up act, it’s introducing us to characters – that Antelope groove, the Gin build, and the tone extremities of Trey’s Maze solo – that will recombine into a more vivid emotional payoff after intermission. It’s maybe reaching for compliments to make an argument for the first set that relies so heavily on the second, but if a show’s not going to be wall-to-wall inspiration, establishing a solid narrative flow early on is a worthy consolation prize.
As for the second set, 1997 Rob certainly thought it was unprecedented, writing that Tweezer “took a completely different direction than had ever been heard.” 1997 Rob hadn’t heard a single note of the fall tour at that point, and could only fantasize about what was happening by scrutinizing rec.music.phish posts. So he couldn’t have known that the structure of this Tweezer is pretty standard for the season: a funk jam, then a rock jam, building to a big peak.
But oh my, how that spare description undersells it. The 12/6 Tweezer might have the same shape as the 11/17 version, but in those three weeks they’ve found the patience to expand it to a much broader canvas, and the sonic depth to make it sound ten times more massive. A better 11/17 comparison is probably that same night’s Ghost, which also pulls off the smoothest of funk > ecstasy transitions, but it sounds downright economical by comparison. If we stipulate that the no-brainer Mt. Rushmore of Fall 97 is Denver Ghost, Hampton Halley’s, tonight’s Tweezabella, and a wild card of your choice, you can then track the progression across the first three jams, with each subsequent jam gaining in sheer volume and refinement.
That second point is another edge Palace has on earlier-tour highlights, and is best heard in how smoothly the second set transitions between the different modes of Fall 97. November 97 is charmingly rough around the edges – the band’s enthusiasm to explore these new sounds can sometimes result in choppy waters. But tonight’s flight is utterly free of turbulence, sliding telepathically from Tweezer to Izabella (even if Trey forgets 90% of the words) and then back without hesitation to the kind of mid-set funk jam that required an abrupt jump-start only three nights earlier in Philly.
It’s also a small miracle that this momentum calmly pulls into its slipstream both Twist and Piper, two still-new songs that hadn’t yet found their natural position on the field. Twist, usually a sharp-elbowed rocker, is here a slightly haunted pause for breath, and it selflessly sacrifices its growing jam potential by yielding the floor to Piper. And what a Piper, the first discovery that the tension built over that endlessly-cycling chord progression could be bottled up, shaken vigorously, and then sprayed over the audience like a podium celebration. The Tweezabella is the Hall of Fame jam, but this Piper is where my brain officially melted that night.
That effect then and now makes me appreciate that the set doesn’t just end after Piper, as it might have in the 4-or-5-songs-max days of November – it’s the rare argument for making sets longer. Losing Monkey and Tweeprise, or moving one or both to the encore, might make this set look more impressive on paper. But the crude levity of Monkey is a much-needed release valve after the intensity of the set to that point, and the Let It Be swipe gets transformed from its original joke into just an earnest moment of triumph, fanned into hysteria** by the Tweeprise, which crucially stays in-set to bring immediate closure to the whole 65-minute suite.
It’s a catharsis point that no other Fall 97 set reaches, I’d argue. Of course, I’d argue that because I was there, and no amount of research and contextualization can restore my objectivity. You might think that exhaustively seeking and documenting the process that led Phish to rearrange my mind on this night 25 years ago would make it less of a mystical experience. But even after spending a quarter-century listening to and writing about this show — and for all the objective evidence that the Palace was neck-and-neck with several other nights on the tour, the result of a slow accumulation of factors and not an unexpected one-night-only breakthrough — it’s still magic to me, in ways both endlessly analyzable and endlessly indescribable.
* - In a case of addition through subtraction, if they had skipped the Golgi and made the Antelope a surprise opener this first set’s reputation would definitely improve 10%.
** - If you’ve only ever heard the SBD, queue up the AUD just for the roar at 2:45, when Kuroda turns on those old spinning, blinding white lights.
Rick from Goose was conceived at this show.
Re-read your review this morning when I saw LivePhish is having a sale. Downloaded at 50% off.