Turning Japanese

6/9/00, Tokyo, JPN, On Air East

Photo via Mr. Miner

SET 1: Axilla > Taste, Billy Breathes, Poor Heart > Golgi Apparatus > Funky Bitch, The Moma Dance > First Tube > Chalk Dust Torture

SET 2: Tweezer, Bouncing Around the Room, The Mango Song, The Squirming Coil > Gotta Jibboo > Meatstick > Tweezer Reprise

ENCORE: You Enjoy Myself

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As a solution to the puzzle of “what do we do after Big Cypress?,” the best solution was probably this one: get just about as far away from the United States as possible and turn back the clock to Phish’s young-and-hungry club era. The strategy already worked once before, when Phish followed up their NYE 1995 triumph at Madison Square Garden by humbling themselves as Santana’s opening act in Europe. Maybe that self-imposed reversion didn’t immediately pay dividends, but in subsequent years the smaller venues and lower pressure of Europe proved a fruitful incubator.

Phish first dipped its toe into Japan in Summer 1999 and found it to their liking. The Fuji Rock Festival gave them a very hospitable welcome, booking the band for three full two-set shows in their own special stage area away from the rap-metal and electronica of the headliners. While they kept things pretty entry-level for their first shows in a foreign land, the experience left an impression on both the band and their faraway fans, who showed up for this return visit; unlike European trips of the past, it wasn’t all American tourists buying up the tickets.

And Japan wasn’t really equivalent to Europe in plenty of other ways. The venues on this tour didn’t have the heavy historical baggage of Europe’s; in fact, most of them look like they’re embedded in malls. For a band chasing a new sound, it’s probably harder to imagine the future when you’re playing in the Royal Albert Hall than it is after spending your day in the neon forest of Shibuya. And instead of the big, rural multi-band festivals and underwhelming one-set appearances of Europe, Phish stuck to themselves and the country’s largest cities, playing three nights around the sprawl of Tokyo and two more in Osaka.

All those ingredients added up to one of the most interesting experiments of the entire Phish saga, putting a band close to its peak powers and success into a wholly foreign environment that went way past language barriers. And it’s immediately audible on tape. Despite the stereotype of Japanese politeness, the crowds are not church-silent; there’s plenty of hoots and hollers throughout a song like First Tube, which is engineered to elicit reflexive whoops, and a bro served too many Sapporos decides to show off his tourist-guide Japanese during the quiet parts of YEM. But the usual ambient chomper hum is noticeably absent, and even the crowd requests between songs are impressively informed. At one point, a man with a thick accent – not Japanese, but certainly international – demands the Weekapaug they forgot to play in NYC.

The pleasure of this show is observing the band slowly recognize these unfamiliar circumstances in real time. There’s an early hint of it in Taste, when Trey sets up a drone and approaches his solo from an unusual angle. But the rest of the first set mostly picks up where Roseland left off – a little keyed up and heavy on band-alignment songs like Funky Bitch and Moma Dance. They wash their hands of Farmhouse promo – only 2 songs tonight – but they’re still shaking off arena mode. That high-octane First Tube > Chalkdust set closer ends, predictably, with Trey doing his guitar-wave trick, or maybe the “brain-floss theremin” version he debut on Hard Rock Live.

But you hear the difference right after setbreak, when they quickly log a 31-minute lap of Tweezer. Now, this isn’t the greatest half-hour Tweezer you’ll ever hear; other than some “Funk #49” between the verses – a genuine club-era Phish throwback – the first 18 minutes of it deliver fairly standard 99/00 Wall of Sound jamming. The key is that in any other setting, it would have likely stopped there; Tweezer spent most of 1999 finishing up in the mid-teens, and hadn’t hit 30 minutes in close to five years.

Instead, they keep the jam afloat with a quiet, effects-heavy segment. Yes, it begins with Trey on his keyboard, but the rest of the band feels more prepared to respond this time, with Mike quickly stepping back into the leading role he embraced on the Radio City Ghost. Without having to push against a restless large-venue crowd, the familiar ‘99 sounds have time to bloom, with Trey using the Space Invaders preset in less predictable ways. Maybe it’s as simple as the band being able to hear each other better, or a smaller stage than usual pushing them into unusual proximity, but it sounds much closer to what Trey likely envisioned when he added the Yamaha to his rig.

It rebuilds to another Tweezer climb that’s much more interesting than the first, and it puts the rest of the set in an adventurous mood. Bouncin’ comes as close to Type II as it ever will, with Trey free-soloing over the end instead of playing his usual arpeggios. Coil flirts with a full band jam before eventually yielding the floor to Page, and Jibboo/Meatstick – the latter featuring the debut of the song’s Japanese verse – both provide electro-jams that match the futuristic neighborhood.

Even the encore YEM, after the Ugly American shuts up, takes its sweet time, codifying the relaxed pace and spacious sound that the band would reside in for the rest of the week. Over the course of just one show, Phish has transformed from ingratiating promo mode to their usual relaxed and experimental travel attire. They’re ready at last to start searching for the next chapter after Farmhouse, Big Cypress, and a very busy decade, and all it took was getting to the other side of the globe.