Tramps Section
7/16/99, Holmdel, NJ, PNC Bank Arts Center
SET 1: Sample in a Jar, Beauty of My Dreams, Dogs Stole Things, Limb By Limb, Billy Breathes, Vultures, Back on the Train, Maze, Cavern
SET 2: Also Sprach Zarathustra > Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove, Simple > Guyute, Loving Cup > Golgi Apparatus
ENCORE: Born to Run
In a cosmic convergence, the day I’m writing this essay (a week in advance, please clap) about a show where Phish played their first Springsteen cover, I’m also preparing to moderate an event for best bud Steven Hyden’s new Boss book, There Was Nothing You Could Do. I am, of course, very biased, and have nowhere near the clout of Steve’s book jacket quotes (Benny Safdie! Tim Heidecker!) but I’m here to tell you: it’s a great book. It made me think of Springsteen – and particularly his imperial Nebraska/Born in the USA era – in a completely new light. Five stars, check it out.
The event wasn’t the right environment to ask Steve about the connections between Springsteen and Phish, but it’s been on my mind a lot. Trey makes reference both tonight and the previous night to him and Page being “Jersey boys,” and given the fact that they were both 13 the year Darkness on the Edge of Town was released, it’s a given that Springsteen loomed large in their musical puberty. Tonight, they go back one album to cover, with Tom Marshall on vocals, the most iconic 70s Bruce song. But ten years later, when they’re playing with the man himself, they went for two tracks – “Bobby Jean” and “Glory Days” – from Born in the USA, which came out while Phish were still at UVM, playing their first shows.
Thanks to a press pass, I was on the rail for that historic crossover…which was actually pretty awkward. We’ve covered a few shows here recently where Phish was anything but starstruck around their musical heroes, but Bruce broke down that armor, whether due to his blinding rock n’ roll power or Phish’s still-shaky legs after the recent reunion. The performances were pretty stiff, and Bruce clearly only knew or remembered Trey’s name, calling for “Mr. Keyboard Player” to take a solo at a couple points. Even though Phish selected songs about faded friendships and bittersweet nostalgia that resonated in 2009, it was still an uneasy fit*.
Ten years prior, they keep that mismatch hidden behind a heavy cloak of irony. I have no doubt that Trey’s 2009 “boyhood hero” sentiments about Springsteen are sincere. But playing “Born To Run” as a Tom Marshall song – the latest in a sequence that previously featured Collective Soul, Oasis, The Proclaimers, and Chumbawamba – undercuts that notion in the moment. Trey also does one of his favorite gags, the fakeout celebrity introduction, and plays the crowd like a fiddle. We talked a lot last year about the greatest crowd cheers in Phish history, and this one deserves honorable mention as one of the funniest. The ensuing performance is a hoot, but ultimately no less live band karaoke than the sillier songs Tom covered with the band.
Because for all the arena rock chops Phish has built up over the last four years, their music and Springsteen’s remains oil and water. Phish may have cracked dozens of classic rock greats over the years, and do the Stones effortlessly tonight, but they bounce right off Springsteen-style heartland rock. The Boss is just too earnest for Phish, especially in the 90s; the “Born to Run” debut is preceded by a set where the most anthemic songs were about bebaphones and homicidal pigs**, and the most triumphant moment came when Trey mashed up 2001 with Weekapaug.
I did get the chance to ask Steve about why Springsteen and the Dead never crossed paths (and Jerry even talked a little trash) and his answer fits for Phish as well – Bruce was all about crafting the perfect rock-and-roll live experience, down to the scripted and rehearsed banter, the Dead and Phish are all about showing their work as they chase down musical ecstasy. That’s very apparent in this show, which has a Springsteen-like setlist of fan favorites, but performances that lean confrontational instead of comforting.
The centerpiece 2001 > Mike’s Groove sequence features Trey working through many of his favorite and annoying new effects: the keyboard chirps, some octave pedal shrieks, and a fractured music-box loop throwing off the first couple minutes of Hydrogen. Unlike the previous night, these sonic experiments mostly fall flat (the 2001 bit is pretty sweet, I must admit), and they fall back to play it safe for the rest of the night. Bruce might have let the E Street Band get a little loosey-goosey in the 70s, and he knows his way around a synthesizer, but he would never try to reinvent his classics on the fly the way Phish was attempting in ‘99.
I appreciate what Bruce does, and enjoyed the hell out of it the night before his Phish sit-in at Bonnaroo. But it’s also the only time I’ve seen him, and probably the only time I will. His consistency is impressive, but somewhat alienating – it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to fully buy into his schtick when he’s so flawlessly proving it all night, every night. I’m glad that Phish took away the lesson of “exploding with energy for three straight hours” – as Trey described his first Bruce show in 2009 – but left in the Dead’s unpredictability and the potential for failure. Even if you’re born to run, it’s okay to stumble once in a while.
* - The “Thunder Road” they played two years later without Bruce, as tribute to Clarence Clemons passing, is even worse, I’m sad to report.
** - Making Bruce sing “Golgi Apparatus” at Bonnaroo would’ve been very, very funny.