PHISH SUMMER 1998 Part II

A week or so after we returned to Detroit from Deer Creek, we set out again to see the last leg of Phish's 1998 Summer Tour. Unlike the first leg, we weren't cruising in a spacious air-conditioned Suburban but rather my royal blue 89 Mazda MX6 (which I have long sold but still see driving around with the Run Like an Antelope sticker still on the bumper). The crew of people with us consisted of longtime tour staples NB and PS for the entire journey and I also recall cruising down to Pittsburgh with others but the only person I can seem to remember is Scalpy (To'R). So we embarked on the drive to Pittsburgh which normally takes no less than 5 hours to get to from Detroit. Unfortunately, there was a huge car accident on the interstate no more than a half mile ahead of us that required helicopters to treat those in need. In the meantime, some trucker in front of us had just gotten his new ride and rig so he showed us that. Pretty lame, huh? What else do you do when it's 90 degrees, you're in the middle of eastern Ohio, your car doesn't have AC, and you can't go anywhere because the road has been shut down?

Anyhow, here is the setlist from Starlake 98.

08-11-98 Star Lake Amphitheatre, Burgettstown, PA

1: Trenchtown Rock* > Julius > Wolfman's Brother, Time Loves A Hero**, Bittersweet Motel, Reba, The Sloth, Ginseng Sullivan, Fee, Maze, Sample In A Jar

2: Runaway Jim#, Meat, Limb By Limb, When The Circus Comes, Down With Disease

E: Wilson, Golgi Apparatus

*First time played (Bob Marley cover). **Little Feat cover. #With "Maria" (from "West Side Story") quote.

My good friends NB and CC are some of the biggest Bob Marley fans I know, seriously. For NB who was at the show, this was a great way to open the show. And that may be one of the only thing I remember about this show was remembering NB with a big smile and a "hey hey" when Trey started singing "One good thing about music....when it hits, you feel no pain." If you look at this show besides the Marley tune, it is about as average of Phish show you were going to get. Of course I had a great time because Phish was still so fresh and new to me, but I was still waiting to hear tunes like 2001 and Mike's Song, some of the great Phish staples and fan favorites.
After the show, about 6 of us (including Scalpy) crammed into a little hotel room somewhere in the Pittsburgh area. And for those of you who don't know Scalpy, you will soon when the guy has his own HBO stand-up comedy special. Scalpy couldn't come with us to the show in New York the next night and instead traveled home to Detroit. He ended up going to Maine for the final shows of the tour, but we never ended up finding him up there. Sorry Scalpy - the days of post it note message boards was a tough era man, but the method will always work better than a Nextel phone.
So the next morning, NB, PS, and myself ventured north toward Syracuse, NY. The actual show was in a town called Vernon. The show was set up on a horse track, so not only were we stepping in mud at points, but there might have been a little dooky in their too. We arrived to show slightly late, but only ended up missing one song. Setlist.
08-12-98 Vernon Downs, Vernon, NY

Soundcheck: Runaway Jim, The Old Home Place, Ginseng Sullivan, Treat Me Like a Fool

1: La Grange, Makisupa Policeman*, Funky Bitch, Possum, Roggae, Character Zero, Ramble On, Slave to the Traffic Light (1:10)

2: Mike's Song > Simple** > Rift, Loving Cup, Sleeping Monkey, Weekapaug Groove, The Squirming Coil

E: Burning Down the House+, You Enjoy Myself++

Apparently this show was close to Fishman's hometown (Syracuse), and they were urging him to sing a song. *Keyword was "Burnin' Down" (see encore). **With "Jesus Just Left Chicago" tease. +First time played (Talking Heads cover, from the album "Speaking in Tongues"); with alternate lyric "Vernon Down the house." ++With "Hold Your Head Up" and "Mission Impossible Theme" teases; alternate lyric "drive me to Vernon."

This show was unf*ckingbelievale. Great weather, cool location, general admission stage (so we got close), and a spectacular setlist. I downloaded this show months ago and really relived how great it truly was. I use a lot of the songs from the first set when I put together mixes for people. Everything about this show was unbelievable and I finally got to hear my Mike's Groove. The covers were great, especially that Ramble On in the first set.
We took our time after the show not knowing if we were going to get a hotel or start heading toward Maine. It's too bad that we didn't get to pre party before the show because the scene was very cool at Vernon Downs.
We got back on the road and started heading directly north from Syracuse toward the Canadian border. Now, I don't want to be cocky, but we were all decently smart kids even though this was our first real road trip unsupervised, and we were only 18. We know that when you go into a foreign country, you best go across as a law abiding citizen. Well, the mounties found something that had the remnants of something that they tested and determined was something...long story short, we spent over 2 hours at the Canadian border AND we were strip searched. Of course, we had absolutely nothing to hide so they eventually let us on our way.
At this point, it was 5:30 in the morning. I had been driving and I needed to get some sleep which I did while someone else drove up the St. Lawrence River, into Quebec, heading for the top of Maine. I woke abruptly to realize I was in Montreal, we were in the middle of morning rush hour on a weekday, people were driving on our ass at 75 mph, and when you want to change highways, you have to cross about 10 lanes in 10 seconds to do it. You Quebeecs drive like a$$holes! (sorry, had to say it). It was a beautiful morning of driving up the St. Lawrence River, a part of the world I had never really seen. Canada is definitely our chill neighbor to the North.
We arrived in Limestone, Maine around 1:30 in the afternoon and again our car was searched going into the U.S. The advantage of taking Canada to Maine was to avoid traffic coming up from the South, and the route itself is somewhat more direct than taking the U.S. After crossing the border, we found a small hotel, got some pizza, and crashed hard. I am almost positive that that day, which started in Pittsburgh 30 hours earlier, was the longest day of my life to that point. We got a good night of sleep in before heading into the campgrounds at Loring Air Force Base the next morning.
We got into the campgrounds and set up our spot midday on the 15th. We geared up and headed toward the gates to make a dash toward the front of the stage. Since I was the chubby kid with my 2 skinny buddies, my job was to carry our gear in while NB and PS made the run. Well, PS made it in pretty close but nearly passed out when he got there. NB ended up hurling half way to the front, but made it there soon after. We would get extremely close for all 6 sets of the 2 night tour finale which made the experience that much more memorable. Here's the setlists for these shows.
08-15-98 Loring Air Force Base, Limestone, ME

1: Mike's Song > Simple, Beauty of My Dreams, Roggae, Split Open and Melt*, Poor Heart, The Moma Dance, The Divided Sky, Water in the Sky, Funky Bitch > Cities** > Weekapaug Groove (1:51)

2: The Wedge > Reba, Gumbo^ > Sanity, Tweezer > The Horse > Silent In The Morning, Chalkdust Torture, Slave to the Traffic Light^^ (1:25)

3: NICU > David Bowie, Strange Design, Limb by Limb > Brian and Robert, Loving Cup

E: Halley's Comet > Cavern, Tweezer Reprise (3/E 1:20)

4: Ambient Jam+ (0:55)

Lemonwheel Day One. *"By request, for a little boy named Sam." **Third verse was about "The Garden of Infinite Pleasantries," instead of the normal verse about Memphis; with "Sneakin' Sally" teases. ^Jam out of which sounded very much like "Tweezer Reprise." ^^With glowstick war. +After Tweezer Reprise, Trey explained that the band wanted to do something to combine ideas from The Clifford Ball and The Great Went, going into detail about the band/fan artwork from last year, and announced that the band would do a free-form ambient jam (lyric-less; nearly an hour long; "in the Brian Eno style of ambient music"), surrounded by candles that were made by the audience throughout the day. There were no other lights used during the jam (the band used only the light from the candles), which Trey explained is similar to the idea of what happens during a glow-stick war, with the light for the band coming from the fans. Because candles were placed throughout the stage, Trey explained that they were in fact playing in a "temple of fire" (as advertisements for summer tour shows had announced). After finishing the jam, the band picked up tiki torches, lit them using the candles, and lit a small stone (?) temple (which was left burning overnight and throughout the band's performance on Sunday).

08-16-98 Loring Air Force Base, Limestone, ME

Soundcheck: Jam, Ginseng Sullivan, Back At The Chicken Shack, Jam, She Caught The Katy, Dog Log, Blues Jam/Instrumental, I Gave My Love A Cherry, Please Send Me Someone to Love

1: Ginseng Sullivan, Bathtub Gin > Rift, Punch You in the Eye, Lawn Boy, Ya Mar > AC/DC Bag, Frankie Says, Birds of a Feather, Guyute, Possum (1:38)

2: Down With Disease -> Piper -> Ghost* > Fluffhead, When the Circus Comes, Wading in the Velvet Sea, Hold Your Head Up+ > Sexual Healing++ > Hold Your Head Up, Run Like an Antelope# (1:41)

3: Sabotage > Also Sprach Zarathustra, Wilson, The Mango Song, Character Zero, Bittersweet Motel, While My Guitar Gently Weeps (0:55)

E: Harry Hood*, The Baby Elephant Walk^ (0:25)

Lemonwheel Day Two. *With glowstick war. +Long and drawn out; Fish introduces "his band": Trey Anastasio on drums, Mike "Cactus" Gordon on bass, "Chairman of the Boards" Page McConnell, and himself as "Bob Weaver." Fish introduces the next song as "a love song about a turtle" (which would have been "Terrapin"), but instead he performed Sexual Healing ("a much better song anyway") after "his band" finally ended "Hold Your Head Up." ++Includes "Sounds of Love" vacuum solo. #With "Sexual Healing" teases in the intro. ^Henry Mancini cover; see 12-01-92. Trey lit a tiki-torch (that looked like a "giant fake doobie") and used it to light a fuse which ran up Page's side of the stage, across the backdrop, down Fish's side of the stage, along the fence to a giant elephant-shaped structure near the stage, which came to life as fireworks went off both above it and from behind the stage. Fish made elephant noises with a trombone. Then, as they played the song, the elephant blew water out of its trunk (while smoke came from underneath it) and led the crowd towards the campground.

The Lemonwheel was quite an experience. It is kinda funny how you can fall into your own little world with 70,000 people around you jamming out to the music. I was really impressed with the sound quality of putting on a show that big. There are so many great highlights to the shows including the Mike's opener, meaning there was a Mike's Groove in back to back sets. The Gumbo on the first night was superb, and the glowstick war during Slave was unbelievable. We were so close and in the center - we were literally showered with glowsticks. And to witness the Ambient jam with the stage lit in candles to cap off a great night of music...I truly felt part of something special. I know this too sounds quite cheesy, but I felt community with the experience of Phish and I realized these would be some of my fondest memories for the rest of my life.
The second night of Lemonwheel was energizing, especially with the Sabotage opener in the third set and my first 2001. I think this version of 2001 has some really cool movements, perhaps the best 2001 I personally witnessed.
To top of the night, Phish lit a fuse and blew up this huge elephant (like an elephant you might see at a parade) that led us out the gates of the concert venue toward our car for the long drive home. The festival was a great time spent with great people, listening to great music. The whole Summer Tour in 98 was such a novel experience for me in my life. We saw parts of the country I had yet to see, I got to see my first outdoor shows of Phish, we camped, and I learned more about traveling to foreign countries.
The drive home was fast. Of course we had our car searched AGAIN going into Canada, and then I was forced to drive in the most dense fog I had ever seen. We were literally driving 25 mph on the interstate because of this fog. 6 years later when I would make the same trip home from IT, we would drive in the same fog. We did not get searched coming into Detroit (because they are cool) and we got home safely.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my Summer 98 tour experience. I would see Phish again in the fall during my first of many trips to Chicago. Peace yall.