What Doesn’t Stay

12/6/96, Las Vegas, NV, Aladdin Theatre

Photo from retrolandusa.

SET 1: Wilson > Peaches en Regalia > Poor Heart > Also Sprach Zarathustra > Llama, You Enjoy Myself, Cars Trucks Buses > Down with Disease > Frankenstein

SET 2: Julius, Sparkle > Mike's Song > Simple > Harry Hood > Weekapaug Groove, Sweet Adeline, Good Times Bad Times

ENCORE: Harpua -> Wildwood Weed -> Harpua -> I Want To Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart -> Harpua -> Suspicious Minds -> Harpua, Suzy Greenberg

The Aladdin Theatre straddles the history of old and new Vegas. Opened in 1976 with a bicentennial five-night stand by Neil Diamond, the venue became the premier rock club on the Las Vegas Strip as that area of town started to steal tourists away from the older downtown casinos. In fact, its original owner, the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, was one of the older properties along Las Vegas Boulevard, opening as the Tallyho in 1962. Two years after this show, it was demolished, but the venue lived on, eventually assimilated into the Planet Hollywood casino and renamed in very 2000s fashion The AXIS and, today, the (sigh) Zappos Theater.

In its current form, the theater hosts multi-year pop star residencies such as Britney Spears: Piece of Me, Backstreet Boys: Larger Than Life, and Gwen Stefani: Just a Girl. As the italics and subtitles suggest, they’re meant to be more than just a concert, closer to a Broadway jukebox musical starring the source material artist themselves. It’s a Vegas tradition that dates back to Elvis playing over 600 shows at The International, glitzing up his act to the point of caricature (and coming out each night to “Also Sprach Zarathustra”). But Vegas loves nothing more than taking things to extremes, and today’s residencies are laden with dancers, special effects and gimmicks, trying to make mere music competitive with the slot machines, bawdy revues, and other endless debaucheries available on The Strip. 

Phish’s first show in Las Vegas charmingly tries to capture this spectacle for One! Night! Only! But it has a very Old Vegas sensibility, casting Elvis impersonators, country singers, and a large, pan-genre cast of special guests for a bonkers encore. There was supposed to be a white tiger and a kick-line of showgirls too, but according to The Phish Book, production manager Hadden Hipsley hired a bunch of escorts instead by accident. As a substitute, Mike wore his sparkliest pants.

It’s 40 minutes of pure chaos. Harpua is played at half speed, with Les Claypool and Larry LaLonde of Primus in tow. Claypool recites the 1974 novelty hit “Wildwood Weed” and a mother-daughter yodeling duo that Mike somehow met earlier in that day adds a song with John McEuen from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on lap steel. Later, Courtney Gains, the actor who played Malachi in Children of the Corn joins in on percussion for a Suzy Greenberg that includes Trey taking a megaphone siren solo and one of the Elvises going rogue and hijacking the entire ensemble into a brief jam on “Suzie Q.” It’s madness, in all the right ways — if Vegas brings out everyone’s true id, Phish’s prankster side is well represented here.

But the real indoor fireworks come earlier in the show, possibly the best two-set offering of the entire fall tour. It has an absolutely ripping opening run, flying through Wilson > Peaches > Poor Heart > 2001 > Llama before dropping another great YEM, so good it even has a memorable vocal jam, built around the relatable theme of “I love donuts.” Then the second set goes deeper, with a nearly hour-long Mike’s > Simple > Hood > Weekapaug that showcases everything great about 1996, with none of its faults, touching upon the year’s hints of the future as well. It’s a world away from the unofficial “tour closer” two nights before; like the Aladdin Theatre itself, it has one foot in the old and one in the new. 

The segment is a quick second take on the Mike’s Groove mood-ring hypothesis of my last essay, with a much more optimistic reading: nothing but heavy hitters, expertly and inventively played. Mike’s and Simple have been two of the year’s best platforms for improvisation, and these two versions live up to the hype. Mike’s is cut a little short by the segue (no second jam), but wastes no time getting pleasingly noisy beforehand, while the Simple feels less choreographed than earlier lengthy outings, with no mini-kit interruption and jams approximating “White Rabbit” and “Blister in the Sun” near the end instead of a big peak. Hood provides the kind of emotional showstopper Celine Dion would die for when she starts her own Vegas run in 6 years, launching the modern Vegas residency model.

And then there’s Weekapaug, which has been mostly perfunctory in 1996, but finally breaks out on the final night of the fall. It’s the most exhilarating jam of the bunch, from the Hood peak loop that trills over the intro, the unhinged jam that stops on a dime twice, and the prolonged diminuendo that blasts back to full volume for a big finish. Even the mini-kit, which finally rears its head for a couple minutes in the middle, can’t derail it.

The Weekapaug, that opening run, and the anarchic encore also carry a more ambiguous quality that feels much more akin to 1997 through 2000 than the year just nearly completed. Phish, in the old days, liked to party in Vegas — this is known. Their debut there is way too tightly-played for them to have partaken in the local delights as much as they did in 2000 (never mind 2004). But the blistering start and escalating delirium of this show feels like Phish is part of the party, not just soundtracking it, a subtle shift that we’ll hear more of in the coming years.

That wasn’t always the case; even earlier this tour, I received secondhand stories of the band having “the tamest backstage ever seen.” Early Phish wasn’t straight edge, by any means, but for its first decade and change, they had high professional standards for their onstage condition…er, Amsterdam aside. Setlists were written out, shows were dissected afterwards, chess was played late night on the bus — the “Betty Ford Clinic” it was not. 

I have no inside intel on what the band’s pharmaceutical state for Vegas ‘96, beyond the reasonable assumption that four young men in Las Vegas for 48 hours weren’t exactly attending church services. But the success of this show in spite of — or even because of — the party atmosphere may have inspired the band to loosen up its pre-show/setbreak/post-show behavior…a development as significant for the rest of the 90s as the Remain in Light show. Everyone knows what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but Phish just might have taken something out of town with them, and it’s going to have major repercussions, both very good, and very bad.