Unplugged

12/30/96, Boston, MA, Fleet Center

SET 1: Ya Mar, The Sloth, Llama, Gumbo, Reba, Talk, Funky Bitch, Theme From the Bottom > Good Times Bad Times

SET 2: Timber (Jerry the Mule) > Uncle Pen, AC/DC Bag, Guyute, Tweezer -> Lifeboy > Scent of a Mule, Slave to the Traffic Light

ENCORE: Possum

It’s probably a bad sign when the highlight of a show results from a major sound glitch. Three minutes and thirty seconds into Funky Bitch, in the middle of Trey’s solo, the PA at Boston’s shiny new FleetCenter cuts out, and stays out for another 3:30 — probably the longest 210 seconds of Paul Languedoc’s life. With the onstage monitors still live, Phish doesn’t even flinch, continuing to play through Mike’s third verse and Page’s organ solo before indulging in some silent jam theatrics: Trey playing with his teeth and behind his back, rubbing guitars with Mike, and then throwing it to Fish for a drum solo on mute. After receiving an offstage signal that power was back on, they tear back into the song’s closing bars like nothing ever happened.

You wouldn’t know that most of that stuff was happening unless you watched the video below; since you can still faintly hear the band, it’s easy to assume a cord came loose on the taper’s mics or something went wrong with the stream encoding. Certainly, you’d miss out on the theatrics, with only the crowd’s happy roars tipping you off that something exciting but non-auditory is happening. If someone hadn’t snuck a camcorder in, it’d be a moment etched in the memories of 20,000 attendees and hearsay to the rest of us. 

While the 1996 New Year’s Eve Run may be lacking in many qualities fans look for in the year-end tradition, it isn’t short on moments like the above. This particular show has a second instance in the form of comedian Steven Wright’s cameo appearance in Scent of a Mule, where he rings a desk bell three times over the klezmer section. A few weeks later, he’d return the favor by hyping Billy Breathes on Conan, because his manager told him he “had to promote an album” in his TV appearances (good joke).

Earlier in the run, there was Page’s “shredding” in the rotation jam and Tom Marshall’s tiny little sunglasses on 12/29, and 12/28 featured a bit of banter around a Tickle Me Elmo doll thrown onstage — no small donation in the winter of 1996. You can hear all of these moments on the tapes, but they’re missing something without the visual element, which you could also argue for the gospel choir appearance that ends the run. That’s generally the case for 12/31 shows — you can’t really hear the flying hot dog or record-setting balloon drops or elaborate choreography either. But it’s rare for so much of the entire run to be diminished by the audio-only experience. 

Perhaps that says something cynical about how the 1996 run leans too heavy on gimmicks instead of musical fireworks. But it also could speak to why these shows are so lightly valued 25 years later, when the tapes and a few fuzzy videos on YouTube are all we have to judge by. I’m not sure how much actually seeing Steven Wright ringing that damn bell would add to my enjoyment of 12/30/96. But its absence is a reminder that I’m not getting the full story, and it triggers the ever-present mental itch that there may be other unrecorded elements that don’t make the show notes.

It’s something worth pondering in 2021, when these unknowns have been all but eliminated. Nearly every Phish show has something special that doesn’t translate perfectly to audio: a stumble in a tramps routine, a fist-pump from Trey, a particularly thrilling lights sequence, a fan behind the stage doing something ridiculous. Those moments used to be mysteries, witnessed solely by those in the room and distributed (and distorted) by an enormous game of telephone online or on lot afterwards.

Yet for the last several years, we’ve been able to experience those visual moments together, nearly in sync with those in the venue if you’re willing to cough up some scratch. There are still intangibles for sure; it’s hard to catch the true vibes of the venue through your computer screen. But all the details of the New Year’s gag each year, and any hijinks in the shows leading up to it, can be instantly shared around the world. 2021 will bring this phenomenon to its extreme — the only way to observe whatever the band has planned will be by live stream, and any elements that aren’t shown or heard will be the property of Phish, their crew, and nobody else. 

I’m not going to be a grumpy old man and argue that the old un-webcasted days were better; this fully live-streamed year was a blessing for myself and others unwilling to risk in-person attendance, and the NYE stream is a tremendously exciting experiment. But it’s also undeniable that there is a trade-off when every show is available in pro-shot HD for on demand viewing, if you know where to look. The communal experience is larger, but the legends and mysteries get smaller. 1996 may not have the reputation of its NYE Run peers, but at least it has that long-extinct intimacy.