SET 1: Gumbo, Tube > Down with Disease, Guyute, Albuquerque, Foam, The Moma Dance, Split Open and Melt
SET 2: Julius, Wolfman's Brother > Timber (Jerry the Mule) > Loving Cup > Scent of a Mule, Prince Caspian > Crossroads, Tweezer, Cavern
ENCORE: Sample in a Jar > Tweezer Reprise
Listen on phish.in or watch on YouTube
The middle show of Worcester ‘98 is the runt of the litter, a show that barely seems to exist. 11/28/98? Sounds like a fake date to me. Tonight lacks the headline-making sequences of the show before and after it, has a couple weird setlist decisions, and favors languid improvisation that drifts away instead of explodes. And after last night’s debauched revelry, it’s understandable that they might want to play a show that’s the equivalent of sacking out on the couch.
It’s all there in the opening Gumbo, a song that’s even named for a popular hangover remedy. The tempo feels even more swampy than the typical late-90s standard, and Trey perks up for a blues solo but quickly recedes to crunchy chords and crisp funk licks, yielding the melodic floor to Mike. At 7:20, they all sync to the two-note pattern that usually signals a bliss jam approacheth, but it quickly sinks back into the cushions. At 8:30, Trey unfurls a bweeoooo, suggesting a space jam as an alternative, but it deflates peacefully. They try again with Tube, but the pattern repeats itself, scratching for a couple minutes without finding the itch.
I know that description sounds negative, but I don’t mind it; it’s a breath of fresh air amidst the hysteria of Fall 98’s final week. Listening through the whole tour made me realize that it was structured like a series of tentpole events, kicking off with Vegas Halloween, stopping for destination runs in Chicago and Hampton, and finishing up with the Thanksgiving finale in Worcester. There’s room for “normal” shows in between – and inevitably, those produced some of the most memorable performances – but the overall structure set up continuous holiday-level expectations that I’m sure the band tried its best to meet.
Contrast that with Fall 97, a month of shows that built up its rolling-boulder energy organically. There was no shiny Halloween distraction at the start, no grand finale – those Albany shows feel like an appetizer to New Year’s, if anything – and their traditional New England Thanksgiving fell in the middle of the itinerary, an axis for the tour instead of a destination. The two-night stops in Denver and Hampton look like Major Events from today’s perspective, but the 97 shows in those venues were the ones that put them on the Phish map as can’t-miss dates, not the triumphant returns.
You can see how the Fall 98 schedule could have been designed to try to replicate that month-long party. But it’s hard to pre-plan that kind of experience without it feeling forced. Some of the small annoyances of this last week – the avalanche of rarities in Hampton, Trey’s bigfooting in New Haven – may have been symptomatic of that pressure, even as it also led to historic and quickly released shows in Hampton and Worcester as well.
But even the successes create a problem, especially when they play the kind of delirious masterpiece they dropped on Night 1 of this run. It’s a common Phish pickle from the point when they started playing multiple-night residencies: in front of a crowd that’s mostly the same faces, how do you keep topping yourself? The obvious answer, in Worcester, would be to play a different kind of great show, a quieter one, and I think that’s the path they’re trying here.
The closest they come to that goal is an excellent Wolfman’s > Timber segment, which taps back into the entropy jamming they mostly abandoned after the first half of the tour. Wolfman’s follows the Gumbo script again but does it even better, taking standard cowfunk and dissecting it piece by piece until it’s nothing but loops, clav, monotonous bass rumble, and an implied breakbeat. It slides friction-free into Timber, which is always great for getting the song part out of the way and diving back into eerie jamming.
Yet from this point on it’s strange decisions and missed opportunities that a fully-present Phish wouldn’t normally whiff on. Why put Loving Cup between Timber and Scent of a Mule, denying a historic Double Mule? Who asked for a bass vs. drums Mule Duel? Why call for the tour’s final Tweezer so late in the show, where it barely has time to spread its wings before the curfew cops start tapping their watch? An especially ponderous Caspian into an incongruous Crossroads? What does one even do with that?
But unless Saturday night was your one Worcester show of the run, it’s forgivable. Never mind the band, the knees and backs of the audience members also needed a breather after the first night’s blowout, and if 11/28 doesn’t measure up, at least it does so in a more mellow fashion. Take a nap on the couch, eat some leftovers, and get ready for the big finale.