Reliving my days of Phish: Part II

Before reliving the glory that was 12/6/97, I wanted to give a shout out to Sho_nuff for putting together some great Soundboard mixes and sharing them with the community. Really amazing stuff.

1997

12-05-97 Cleveland State University Convocation Center, Cleveland, OH

1: Ghost, Wilson, Funky Bitch, Black-Eyed Katy, Sparkle, Runaway Jim-> My Friend My Friend, Ginseng Sullivan, Limb By Limb, Character Zero

2: Stash, Bouncing Around the Room, Julius, Slave to the Traffic Light, Lizards, Loving Cup, Chalk Dust Torture

E: Bold as Love

As I recall, I went to this show with my boy NB, and PH and JG who we would end up chilling with the next night as well. We also met up with RC who I ended sitting with while NB chilled with another tour staple PS. This show would be my first out of state Phish show. We stayed at a pimp hotel downtown where there also happened to be some Greek formal with some hotties from John Carroll U. So I had some bad seats for this show, Page side, second level and I had to stand next to possibly the worst dancer I had ever seen in RC. He looked like a complete jackass dancing, seriously, probably as bad as Elaine from Seinfeld. To top it off, I had an expensive and cool Fitch sweater that was stolen. Oh well, shit happens.
Musically, I thought the show was good but nothing really stands out. Obviously, Phish was bringing the 97 funk at this show with Ghost, Black Eyed Katy and such. And I got to see the first of way too many Axis: Bold as Love encores. Definitely not a show I would put in my top 25, but eh, we were learning the ropes on tour.
After the show, we walked in the cold for miles like lost children, searching for our hotel.
The show the following night at the Palace of Auburn Hills would affect me deeply in how I relate to Phish.

12-06-97 The Palace, Auburn Hills, MI

Soundcheck: Dog Log, AC/DC Bag, Ginseng Sullivan, Black-Eyed Katy

1: Golgi Apparatus, Run Like an Antelope, Train Song, Bathtub Gin-> Foam, Sample in a Jar, Fee, Maze, Cavern

2: Tweezer* -> Izabella** -> Twist -> Piper -> Sleeping Monkey -> Tweezer Reprise

E: Rocky Top

*Trey teases the music from the the segue that comes out of "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" (Jimi Hendrix). *With the start/stop funk jam that repeatedly surfaced during the Fall Tour (may have oringinated in the 11-28-97 Worcester "Ghost").

First of all, somehow my buddy NB was able to score 5 3^rd row tickets to this show Page side. The day he got the tickets was the same day I took my SATs and also the same day that Michigan beat Michigan State in football where Charles Woodson made the greatest interception in football history. The catch was so amazing that to this day, Michigan State will not allow the release of the film and photos. Michigan would go on to win the National Championship at the Rose that season and I would be admitted to enroll at the U the following fall.
Back to 12/6/97. We sat 5 in the third row, NB, CC, JG, and PH. The Golgi opener would just get the crowd fired up for the funky Antelope that would rock the house next. The first set rounded out solidly with great Phish staples like Sample in a Jar, Fee, and my first Phish song, Maze.
The second set makes my top 5 moments of Phish ever. The intro gets your heart thumping with Fishman’s drawn out beats until the rest of band breaks into the goodness of Tweezer which would rock out for 20 minutes. Tweezer would lead into Isabella, a song which I was unfamiliar with but could tell was a Jimmy Hendrix tune. An amazing Twist would follow and segue into a beautiful Piper that took a lot of time to build. When I hear these songs, I feel like they were so much more refined than later versions. These songs were really entering the Phish repertoire around this time and these are some really great versions. So nearly an hour of jamming fades away into a beautiful Sleeping Monkey and an exhilarating Tweezer Reprise. Looking back, we probably witnessed one of the best Phish sets ever that night, and we were lucky to have been so fortunate to see it that close.
Rocky Top rounded out an amazing night of music. This show and the way it invigorated me would influence the years of ahead of on and off touring with Phish. I recommend everyone have a copy of the second set at the very least, and I would happy to send one to you if you happen to comment on this post. Thanks to PH for taking some good photos of this show and giving me a copy.
I would not see another Phish show until July the next year in Columbus, OH in what would turn out to be a very long and memorable day. Did you know that you can sleep in your car in a Wall Mart parking lot?
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the story of my 4^th and 5^th Phish shows. 12/6/97 was amazing and, even though I didn’t attend, the next night in Dayton is also a legendary performance. Thanks for reading and Jah bless.

Reliving my days of Phish: Part I

First, a quote:

"I'm looking for a good cowboy."

-George W. Bush (Feb. 21st, 2005) when asked if relations were strong enough that Chirac would be invited to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

This series of threads is an attempt to relive all 66 glorious nights of Phish that I was fortunate enough to witness during my lifetime. I can recall that the first song I ever heard was Maze from some tapes given to my by BW.

My first show:

10-28-95 The Palace, Detriot, MI

1: AC/DC Bag, Mound, Timber (Jerry), Uncle Pen, Sample in a Jar, Lizards, Billy Breathes, Acoustic Army, Prince Caspian, Run Like an Antelope

2: Maze, Theme From the Bottom-> Scent of a Mule, You Enjoy Myself, Strange Design, Frankenstein, Chalk Dust Torture

E: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

The first thing I can recall about this show is not having a ride and having to convince an older friend of my girlfriend at the time to give us a ride out to the Palace. I remember that we were stuck 4 or 5 people in this piece of crap car with by boy CC, my ex, and 2 other people. I really didn't know much about Phish before this, yet this first concert experience would make a lasting impression on my youth and beyond. We had tickets on the floor, about halfway back from the stage, on Fishman's side as it was set up then. I remember hearing the lyrics to Run Like an Antelope and thinking they were saying "Run like an animal" so of course I was the kid singing along with the wrong lyrics. I also remember the ghost-like white lights of the YEM vocal jam which I thought was fitting considering we were only a few days from Halloween. And of course, just to make me happy, I got to hear Maze. I can't recall a whole lot about this show except for most of the people I would tour with for years to come, this would also be their first show and the first of 4 at the Palace.

More than a year would pass before I would go to my 2nd Phish show at the Palace on 11-9-96.

11-09-96 The Palace, Auburn Hills, MI

1: Buried Alive, Poor Heart, The Sloth, The Divided Sky, Horn, Tube, Talk, Split Open and Melt, Lizards, Character Zero

2: David Bowie, A Day in the Life, You Enjoy Myself, Taste, Swept Away-> Steep-> Harry Hood

E: Julius

I can remember a few more things from this show, but still not as much as I would like. I know we had seats on the floor, Page side, about two-thirds back. I remember very little about the music and how it sounded compared to other shows except that Phish played a lot of Bill Breathes which had recently been released. Why I remember this so vividly is because my girlfriend of the time, KW, loved the song Character Zero, so much so that I had to endure the embarrassment of a bunch of rich drunk, J Crew wearing Grosse Pointe girls screaming out the lyrics to this song while dancing around daddy's SUV. It would be hard for me to pin down the other girls there besides KW, but I know CC was there again enduring the same embarrassment I was. So unheady! The song "A day in the Life" by the Beatles stood out most from this show.

2 nights later, I would see Phish again at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, MI but this show would not be my most fond memory of my days of Phish.

11-11-96 Van Andel Arena, Grand Rapids, MI

1: Chalk Dust Torture, Guelah Papyrus, Cars Trucks Buses, AC/DC Bag, Sparkle, Brother, Theme From the Bottom, Axilla, Runaway Jim

2: Timber (Jerry), The Divided Sky, Gumbo, The Curtain, Sample in a Jar, Tweezer, Swept Away-> Steep-> Maze, Contact, Slave to the Traffic Light

E: Waste, Cavern

Well, for starters, I only saw the 2nd set. Before I left for Grand Rapids (a 2.5 hour drive) after school that day, I realized I had lost my Drivers License. This didn't stop me from requesting that I use Mom's car to drive to the show, taking along my good friend NB, JT, and JT's girlfriend of the time, CC. This would be the first time that I would make a significant road trip of more than an hour since attaining my license in April of that year. This night happened to be the first winter storm to hit the region, and I was ill prepared to drive in it. About halfway to Grand Rapids, a car stopped abruptly in front of me. I followed suit, slid on black ice on the roadway, and hit the car in front of me going about 40mph. Luckily, nobody was really hurt in the accident and I was completely sober. The car crashed perfectly. The air bag deployed, the car was totaled, and we were stuck in a snow storm in the middle of nowhere.

Realizing the car was totaled, we proceeded to walk off an exit ramp to a gas station in the middle of this snowstorm. Quick thinking by someone in the group helped us get hold of AK's dad (thank God he had a cell phone in 1996) who was driving AK and another player from the hockey team (BW?) to the show after practice. They managed to pick us up, drive us to the show and home, but we missed the entire first set. However, the second set of the show was absolutely rockin - great Timber and a funky/spacey/ Tweezer. We would have good seats on the floor too. I would listen to this tape non stop for months.

But that isn't the end of the story. Because I had lost my license before I left for the show, NB had taken the rap for me, something his parents got really, really, really, really pissed about because of the ticket and points that ensued. So we had to go back to city of the accident a few weeks later and straighten everything out. I was faced with a ton of points and potentially losing my driver's license, but the officer took pity on me because of a letter written by my mother and dropped some points. Thank you Mom, sweet move, you rule.

We all make mistakes, even George W.

So that's a wrap up of my first 3 nights of Phish during 95-96. Everything was new to me in these shows, so all the music sounded amazing to me at the time. The story gets better and better as we go on, especially when we hit 12-6-97. These first few shows would be a buildup to 12-6-97 when Phish went from a once a year hobby to a much bigger obsession.

Friends who read this, please feel free to comment on the other PG and PG-13 related details of these experiences.

So I saw the band moe. for the first time last night....

Well I was going to make my second post about Phish, because it is both in the title of this blog as of this date and because it is the band that no longer exists yet I frequent a message board dedicated to their cause. But instead, I am going to be posting about the moe. concert that I went to last night in Ann Arbor.

So my original gameplan this weekend was to visit some good friends in Chicago (sorry guys), but my mind took a little detour in Ann Arbor on the way and I ended up staying in Ann Arbor with my fellow alum. Now, Phish was the ultimate jamband, at least of my era. I know that moe. has always been there, and was really bass heavy, and had the potential to get repetetive which it did some. I am a bit of a Phish snob, and coming from someone with inate musical abilities, I am very open to other music, it just takes a kick in the ass sometimes. I will never follow a band ever again like Phish (until the BUMP Worldwide tour 2007), but I have been too burned out and reluctant to discover newer music to fill it's void. Having seen Widespread Panic, String Cheese, Umphrey's, Particle, Brother's Past, and a host of other small jambands, I have to say that moe. was quite an impressive experience.

Well, actually, I did see moe. at Bonnaroo in 2003, but at an unappreciative distance.

So we get to Ann Arbor, I grab a few Arcadia beers, we chill at a place around the Michigan theatre, then make our way down to the 5th row at the show. I remember both set openers and closers rocking hard, and the encore as well, and I only counted about one time that they went into one of those Umphrey's-like tangents. The bass was heavy, but I was very impressed by the grooves that moe. could create. I think that is what made Phish a great band; they were able to create such anticipations and moods in the music that it made the show an emotional experience. Yes, I know this sounds ridiculously flowery and cheesy, but good bands create that kind of emotion. I am not saying that other jambands can't do this either, I just seem to admire those that do so more. That is what moe. did and what String Cheese and Widespread Panic failed to do. Maybe I just saw bad nights, or maybe I just saw a really good night of moe.

By the way, I bought Widespread tickets this morning for a show in Detoit. They are getting a second listen for a close friend.

So, like I was saying, moe. created grooves, anticipation in their music, no bordem the whole time. moe. is a band worth seeing for sure. I will never follow a band like this or get really deep into collecting their music, but moe. is worth seeing if they're coming to your town to help you party down. Here's the setlist.

2/18/05 Michigan Theater - Ann Arbor, MI
1:	Bullet, Brent Black, Opium, Seat of My Pants, Lost Along the Way
2:	Head > 32 Things, Disembodied Head, McBain > Down Boy, Hi and Lo > Timmy Tucker
E:	Godzilla