SET 1: Cars Trucks Buses, Timber (Jerry the Mule), Poor Heart > Taste, Billy Breathes, Chalk Dust Torture, Guelah Papyrus, Ginseng Sullivan, Reba, Character Zero
SET 2: Also Sprach Zarathustra > Simple -> Swept Away > Steep > Scent of a Mule, Tweezer, Hello My Baby, Tweezer Reprise > Llama
ENCORE: Waste, Johnny B. Goode
*Beeeeeep* Hi, you’ve reached Phish. We’re on tour right now, and unable to answer your call. If you are calling to ask “What Are They Saying in YEM?,” please press 1. Otherwise, stay on the line and leave a message, we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Phish! It’s your favorite A&R guy, Artie Fufkin! Hearing great things about the tour, fellas, great things. Some of my southeast contacts said you played “Gin and Juice” for a half hour the other week? Love the genre crossover, baby! And I also heard a rumor about some unreleased songs you played the other night. Vibration of Life? Smells like a hit!
But guys, let me get serious for a moment. We gotta talk about Billy Breathes. Now you know the whole team at Elektra Records supports the way Phish does things. And despite our focus groups describing the Billy Breathes cover art as “disturbing” and “off-putting at best,” we debuted at #7 with a bullet. No complaints there! But guys, the record’s falling faster than my bank account when I’m in Vegas, y’know? #32 in the second week, #50 the week after, and now…#63. You guys want to do those Crash numbers, don’t you? I don’t want to tell you what to do on the road, that’s not my job, but would it hurt to promo the new album a bit?
Anywho, I gotta give those Ween guys a call…phew, you guys are churchboys by comparison. See you in LA!
11/18/96 is one of those shows where Phish suddenly remembers it has a new album they are theoretically supposed to be supporting. Of the 13 tracks on Billy Breathes, 7 get played tonight, the most since the opener in Lake Placid. What’s more, neither Free nor Theme — the two songs with the strongest pedigree pre-recording — get a turn, so it’s a show extra-focused on the newer album material, and how it has developed live over the past month. So, of course, the highlight is a three-year-old cover of a 19th century tone poem, by way of a Brazilian jazz fusionist.
But first, a status update on the Billy Breathes material. For an album that was meant to be a step towards more democratic songwriting and performance, it’s a little distressing that most songs are evolving into a more Trey-centric arrangement, even if it sometimes suits the material. Not long ago, Taste was a showcase for Page’s piano solo, now Trey bogarts it with a usually much longer (but also awesome) solo of his own at the end. Zero is another song where he stretches his legs a little more each time out, and here it’s starting to assume its final form as a perennial devil-horns send-off into set break.
Cars Trucks Buses, Swept Away/Steep, Billy Breathes, Waste — none of these songs are metamorphosing anytime soon, it’s now just about finding the right time for them to be deployed. The most controversial of these slots might be the Waste encore, but after it sat there conspicuously alone in Lake Placid, it’s now wisely being chased with an up number before the fans pour into the parking lot. The others have become reliable role players; CTB is a good warm-up song, BB for that emotional mid-set breather, Swept Away/Steep when you need a quick mood shift, such as tonight’s switch from Simple to (sigh, again) Mule.
That said, the real breakout star of the night hasn’t changed much either, after kicking around for more than 3 years. Also Sprach Zarathustra, aka 2001, originally debuted almost as more of an excuse to show off some new Kuroda lights than anything else, opening damn near every second set of 1993. Oddly, it’s the rare cover that is shorter than the “original” – Deodato’s Rhodes-ed up 1973 arrangement of the Richard Strauss banger, which runs a luxurious 9 minutes on record. Thus far,Phish has never even gotten close to that length, keeping the song to a tightly-scripted 4 or 5 minutes for almost every performance.
Until tonight, when the drums don’t even come in for nearly that long, and the first peak doesn’t lift off until the 7:20 mark. It’s wild to see the jamband-aid ripped off so dramatically after 75 mostly-similar versions, never mind to witness a song instantly rise to the top tier of Phish improv opportunities. One could argue that the run-up to the first peak is a little wobbly, as if they’re all waiting for Trey to play his string-scrape signal at any moment, but the between-peak jam is fully realized as the 2001 we now know and love.
That’s likely because 2001 turned out to be the perfect fit for all of the prophetic elements I’ve been cataloging this last month. For a piece with classical origins, it’s quite simple: no key changes or even chord changes outside of the main melody. Deodato demonstrated how you can stretch out the spaces between peaks with your preferred permutation of jazz-funk, and Phish folds in their own box of new sonic tricks: a bed of guitar loops, synthesizer, and clavinet, and a more streamlined pocket from Mike and Fish. It’s precisely the platform for four-way jamming they’ve been pursuing, and the mode they’ve found here will soon spread to many other songs in the catalog.
But it doesn’t happen quite yet. The Simple that follows is one of the year’s best in a banner year for the song, but it still wobbles through the usual 1996 mini-kit routine before a rather excellent recovery. Tweezer offers another opportunity to revisit what they’ve discovered earlier in the set, but the visit of Gary Gazaway keeps it in the box. Gazaway bringing back that Jon Hassell processed trumpet from Halloween (my first thought when he shows up in Tweezer was that Page found a really wild synthesizer tone) is a welcome reprise, but El Buho is a historical afterthought in the wake of 2001’s long-awaited breakthrough.
So for any hypothetical A&R guys watching from afar, Phish remains their usual frustrating self, focusing on the future instead of the album that’s only four weeks old. While most of the Billy Breathes material isn’t going on the shelf any time soon, their creative fires are going to be lit elsewhere, either in the very large batch of songs soon to be written or in older material given a fresh coat of paint by the band’s new approach. It’s not the most commercial move, unless you’re weighting ticket sales over album sales, but it’s the best way forward. Sorry, Artie.
I always love reading these write-ups, Rob. They are packed with goodness and history. You put such effort and thought into even the most mediocre of shows.
I have to be honest on this one: I have been waiting all month (year?) to see what you might say about this Simple. Really the whole 2001->Simple, but the Simple. My goodness is this some of the most inspired and deeply moving Trey work you will ever hear, at least to this point in his trajectory.
Just really disappointed that potentially my favorite jam of the entire year literally gets one sentence here and is glossed over. I guess we can agree to disagree on the greatness of this one. I expected to log on today and feel your LOVE for this absolute monster of an opening 30 minutes of this set. This Simple! How can you miss this Simple??? Easily a top 5-10 version ever, and the best of 1996. The definitive version of the best jam vehicle of the year.
Just disappointed this morning. Had to get it out. We can't agree on everything and I love your writing. Just had to express this today with my cup of coffee.