Westdeutscher Rundfunk

2/16/97, Cologne, GER, Alter Wartesaal

SET 1: Beauty of My Dreams, Split Open and Melt, Bouncing Around the Room, Crosseyed and Painless > Guelah Papyrus, Ginseng Sullivan > Tweezer, Waste > Cavern > Chalk Dust Torture

SET 2: Sample in a Jar > Cars Trucks Buses, Free, Sparkle > Simple -> When the Circus Comes, Swept Away > Steep -> David Bowie, Loving Cup > Tweezer Reprise

ENCORE: Theme From the Bottom > Johnny B. Goode

Listen on phish.in

It’s a happy coincidence that one of the most revered years of Phish is also one of the most well-documented. I’m already 2-for-2 on quoting Richard Gehr’s The Phish Book, an excellent oral history that structures its narrative between New Year’s Eves 1996 and 1997. Later in the year, director Todd Phillips and crew will follow the band around for some pivotal 1997 (and 1998) dates, including The Great Went and shows in December. And if SBDs are your thing, no year of the 90s is better represented, with 16-1/2 shows officially released and a smattering more in circulation. 

Tonight’s show, only the third of the year, is both the first of those SBDs and the earliest pro-shot non-festival full Phish concert I’m aware of. This traditional two-setter in an old Köln train station was filmed for the perennial German music TV show Rockpalast on Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), which has seemingly captured live footage of every musical artist to pass through Deutschland from 1974 to the present day. That gives us the kind of up-close perspective we’re spoiled with in the modern webcast era, instead of the shaky stealth recordings from the cheap seats one normally finds for 90s Phish – a true blessing.

The video establishes that, as small as these shows sound on tape, they were even smaller than I imagined. The venue is supposedly 1,000 capacity, but it looks tinier than rooms where I’ve seen indie bands that notched one 7.3 on Pitchfork and disappeared forever. Phish are crammed into a tiny stage, with Trey and Mike standing almost shoulder to shoulder and threatening their neighbors with impalement by headstock. I think the crew had to assemble Page’s rig around him.

My second impression is, hey, the boys are looking pretty snazzy! It seemed like Trey owned precisely two different shirts for the last three years of Phish: an XXXL black t-shirt and a fuzzy gold velour number. But here in Cologne is our first sighting of the Marvin the Martian shirt, a charter member of the Trey t-shirt canon. Meanwhile, Page’s button-down is looking a little less blousey, and Mike isn’t dressed like a human highlighter. But most shocking of all is Fishman, who for the first time in Phish history (apart from one night in a g-string) has traded his dress for the exotic choice of a shirt, and pants. 

I never tire of taking cheap shots at Phish couture, but these glow-ups actually feel significant. For most of the 90s, the band dressed the same every night, almost in their own individual uniforms — Trey’s baggy busker, Page’s Gap wardrobe, and Mike’s neon were no less of a costume than Fish’s dress. Now they’re dressing somewhat more normally, no longer like 8-year-olds that chose their own clothes but more like…13-year-olds dressing up to walk around the mall. It’s a little bit of growing up, and a subtle bit of mold-breaking in a year notable for reinvention.

Musically, the footage has less to offer. It’s the most 1996 show of 1997 so far, down to the setlist: lots of Billy Breathes, the shorter and poppier part of the catalog, brief jams in Tweezer and Simple. The video confirms that some of that precious stage real estate is still occupied by Trey’s mini-kit, which he turns to a handful of times after mostly ignoring it on the first two nights of the tour. And in front of a national television audience, Phish resists the urge to play Walfredo and Rock A William, denying German home viewers their rotational splendor.

The one big risk in front of the camera crew is also the show’s highlight. Early in the first set, they dust off Crosseyed & Painless for its first performance sans Karl Perazzo, and it is Not Ready for Rockpalast — Fish stumbles over the lyrics, Trey rushes the backing vocals, and for the first couple minutes it feels somewhat insulting to a song that you can hear its originators perform far superiorly on the very same TV show 17 years prior. Then they hit the jam, Trey galivants traditionally for a while over the song’s polyrhythms, fusses with some pedals and, BAM, it’s another “holy shit, we’re in 1997” moment, a tornado of whistling guitar loops, a sound we’ve never heard before. Then, he breaks the spell by moving to his mini-kit. Whatever, it’s history, happening for one night before our eyes instead of just our ears.