Velvet Revolution
6/20/97, Prague, CZE, Divaldo Archa
SET 1: Taste > Jam -> Cities > Horn -> Ain't Love Funny -> Limb By Limb -> I Don't Care > Run Like an Antelope
SET 2: David Bowie, Ghost, Bye Bye Foot > Ginseng Sullivan > Cavern > Twist, Bouncing Around the Room > Julius
ENCORE: When the Circus Comes > Rocky Top
Historically, European revolutions are a double-edged sword. The reduced pressure of performing for 1000 people instead of 20,000 and the reassurance that most of the fans in attendance were dedicated (and wealthy) enough to travel to Europe gives Phish a hall pass to be as weird as they want to be. But that can backfire, if you’re not careful.
A little less than a year ago, Phish played possibly the messiest show of their career to date in Amsterdam, It’s well documented that what went down in the Melkweg was the result of a little too much tokey-tokey, but it was also Phish relaxation run amok, to the point that they didn’t bother finishing songs and started taking chord and genre suggestions from the audience. On paper, that’s the kind of freeform experimentation every veteran Phish fan dreams of witnessing. It’s just that, in Amsterdam, the method used by the band to reach that looseness was also the ingredient that sabotaged its execution.
Fast forward a year, and this storefront experimental theater in Prague is the first of many deeply odd shows on the Summer European Tour. I can’t speak to the quality of cannabis in the Czech capital, but for whatever reason Phish immediately leaves the gate in a weird mood on this Friday night. The first set up there lays it out: a continuous suite that goes straight into open jamming in the second slot, a seldom-played cover, the (public) debut of a new cover, the last performance of a new song, the first cracked-open unfinished performance of a different new song, and a rare (for Summer ‘97) Antelope closer.
As strange as the setlist looks, the music is even stranger. That “Jam” is legit open improv, coming hot on the tail of a torrid Taste. Trey switches on his harmonizer for a discordant riff reminiscent of DDL Jams past, Mike deploys the synth bass effect we discussed yesterday alongside Page’s synth blurts, and Fishman plays a frantic, Foam-like drum pattern. It’s creepy, wholly unexpected, and great.
An effervescent funk jam at the end of Cities gets cut short for Horn of all things, but both the Rift track and the first Ain’t Love Funny get soupy ambient codas. The latter is particularly exciting, three minutes hinting at the Siket Disc sessions of the spring and the spacier direction of the next couple years before pulling off the high-difficulty segue into Limb By Limb. LxL then shows that it’s assimilating into the big-league roster by fluidly departing its structure in the middle of Trey’s solo, ramping up the aggression into the final I Don’t Care, which gets its own dark, noisy outro. Antelope is the appropriate release for a set that has oozed menace, even as the most standard version of any song played in the opening frame.
The second set isn’t as bonkers as the first, but the relaxed vibe carries over. First, there’s a Bowie that is totally content jamming sideways, patiently slithering past the 20-minute mark. Then Ghost and Twist each get their first double-digit performances, already showing their jam potential at only a week old. All the interstitial experiments and unhurried pace in the first set gets moved back within the song borders; witness the patient funk-rock build in Ghost, or the incredible bassline Mike finds at 7:54 of Twist and the subdued jamming that follows. Even Bye Bye Foot gets a gentle, extended reading, sounding like a Billy Breathes b-side.
For all of its quirks, 6/20/97 isn’t a transcendent show; the music is strong, but most of its pleasures are in the new ways it breaks the Phish rulebook. On the continuum of shows with the WTF factor, it’s somewhere between that infamous night in Amsterdam and legends like Fukuoka 2000 and The Bomb Factory. But after a year where Phish came frustratingly close to going through the motions, the mere presence of these kinds of anything-goes nights is a win, no matter the final execution.