Underture
SET 1: Tweezer Reprise, Divided Sky, Prince Caspian, Punch You in the Eye, Simple > Reba, Tela > Sample in a Jar
SET 2: Theme From the Bottom, Julius, The Lizards, Bathtub Gin -> The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, Life on Mars?, Hello My Baby, The Squirming Coil
ENCORE: Loving Cup
And so it begins, the second leg of Fall 95, the Fall 95 that most people are really talking about when they’re talking about Fall 95. It’s a two-month march from Atlanta to New York City, ending at the coronation of Phish on New Year’s Eve as a first-class arena-rock band, forging their own path out of the shadow of the Grateful Dead. So, naturally, this year-ending run begins at...an ornate, mid-sized theater famous for Grateful Dead shows. Huh?
The three-night run at the Fabulous Fox is an outlier for 1995, both a retreat in venue size and the rare extended residency on a tour of one-night stands. But that feels right for Atlanta, a city Phish had worked hard to crack in the early 90s with 14 visits before this run. The Fox run nicely echoes the famous 1993 run at The Roxy, and together the two bookings suggest that Phish at this point had found deep, but not broad, purchase in Georgia — a small (relative to the Midwest and Northeast) but loyal local following that would pony up for multiple nights.
Still, it’s a step back from the sweaty arenas of the Midwest in late October, though maybe a useful midseason training camp after the band’s week off in Vermont. On the first night, at least, they take the opportunity to work on some of their more delicate material in the intimate atmosphere. The first set alone brings long, luxurious versions of Divided Sky and Reba, two songs where the intricacies are always in danger of getting lost in boomy arena acoustics, while the second centers around scripted but sparkling takes on Lizards and TMWSIY. In these quiet moments, you can feel them flexing some of that patience I talked about two weeks/100 years ago. They’re gleefully regal in their pacing and comfortable with a whisper; hear how they languidly stretch out the fluttery section at minute 5 of the Divided Sky, or how quietly they fall back into TMWSIY after Avenu Malkenu.
But on the other hand, the band’s swagger also survived fall break. If you thought opening a show with Tweezer Reprise was a cocky move, what do you think about opening an entire tour leg with it? Trey sprinkles some Zeppelin teases (“The Rover,” this time) around the first set, perhaps a commentary on their new rock-god attitude or their return to the road, perhaps an ironic wink about the rare opportunity to play 3 shows in a row without rovin’. For additional classic rock energy, Phish squeezes in Life on Mars? and the show concludes with Loving Cup, still a rarity, but soon to be one of their great anthemic encore exclamation points.
The place on this night where these two circles overlap is Bathtub Gin, a song that is finally ready for the spotlight after a couple years of infrequent play. Tonight’s Gin is the first to get the vaunted highlight color on the jam chart since the legendary Murat Gin, and the distance between those two theater-heater versions is instructive of how Phish has grown in the last two-plus years.
They share a Rift tease, and that’s about it; Murat is Phish at full-on August 93 sugar high, Fox is taking protein powder and pumping iron. The first half of the jam is Trey in Marc Bolan mode, playing slow, gnarly riffs that build to a devil-horns crescendo without accelerating into the red. Post-peak, Mike and Page take such a big step forward you’d almost think Trey switched to his mini-kit, but he’s still strumming happily in the background, a premature sign that he doesn’t need his percussion crutch to involve the rest of the band. Instead of careening Mr. Toad-style through a series of teases and themes, they stay on Trey’s new rhythm part and build back steadily to a second climax with virtually no soloing — a preview of the shape of late 90s Phish jamming.
Then the spell is broken with that sudden detour into Rift, which nobody seems enthusiastic about until Fish aborts it with a snare and Trey returns to the head. But if that anticlimax is the only first-show-back misfire, that’s a pretty good batting average, and there are plenty of Gins that stick the landing to come. There’s no sign that Phish lost a step on their mid-tour furlough, and no worries that a brief return to the theater circuit will stunt their arena-rock level-up. We’re back on the road...sort of.
[Stub from Golgi Project.]