Reflections on My First Phish Show in a Decade

The last time I attended a Phish concert, Bill Clinton was president.

The date was August 8, 1998, which I recovered from oblivion after about six seconds of research on the Internet, where Phish’s every move is obsessively archived. The show took place in Baltimore at Merriweather Post Pavilion, which I recall as a fairly anonymous facility, certainly not the sort of place deserving of an album-title homage.

Anyway, this performance more or less ended a period of mild obsession with the band, not because they did anything wrong—looking back over the setlist now, it seems decent enough—but mostly because I moved on to other bands. And also, I remember taking a friend to this show, a musician whose opinion I really respected, and when he left the gig without full conversion to the cause, I maybe for the first time felt a little deflated about these four zany, extremely talented, occasionally maddening improvisers from Vermont.

In any case, two years later Phish went on hiatus. Then they reformed. Then they broke up. Then they got back together. And all the while, I’ve kept them in the back of my mind. When I realized recently that they were playing near Atlanta on July 4, I figured I’d go. I guess nostalgia played some role in the decision, but the truth is that I was excited to hear them again. A music-biz colleague, an industry veteran with great ears who’d followed Phish more closely than I had during these last few years, texted me before showtime: “Last show of the tour I am expecting a monster.”

A monster is exactly what we got. Though purists may flag the July 2 date in Charlotte (featuring, for reportedly the first time since April 29, 1987, a song called “Fuck Your Face”) as the more exceptional outing, and though the list of celebrated Phish concerts is ludicrously long (including the famous hot-dog show 12-31-1994 at the Boston Garden, the seven-hour 12-31-99 Big Cypress marathon and many others), 07-04-2010 at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Alpharetta, Ga goes down in my mind as a spectacular Phish show, surpassing even my cherished 08-13-1996 at Deer Creek.

Since this is the List of the Day blog, my thoughts on the show will follow list form. So, then:

1) I had wondered going into the night how Phish would acknowledge the July 4 holiday, and they answered the question before even picking up an instrument, starting the show with an a capella “Star Spangled Banner,” sung barbershop-quartet style, just as they did “Hello My Baby” back in my day. I can’t think of too many other rock bands that would bother learning how to do this.

2) I also can’t name a lot of other bands that, in concert, have all four members sing lead. Phish did that on the 4th, with keyboardist Page McConnell stepping out like Dean Martin to croon a loungey “Lawn Boy,” bassist Mike Gordon leading his eponymous “Mike’s Song” and frontman/guitarist Trey Anastasio singing almost everything else, with the exception of one particular song—to be discussed in a moment—sung by drummer Jon Fishman, who I was delighted to see wearing a dress for the show. Just like old times!

3) I had forgotten the great extent to which Phish fans are part of the experience, for better and for worse. In the men’s room before the show, one dude bellowed to the collected urinators: “Have a good show,” a wonderful phrase suggesting that we, the audience, were about to do more than witness the performance. We were going to participate.

Methods of participation vary, and a number would please neither drug-enforcement authorities nor public-hygiene sticklers. (A gentleman in front of me, apparently not interested in men’s room pep rallies, whizzed right there in the seats.) And yet, in my experience, most Phish fans do mean well. Strangers strike up conversations, just being friendly, and the overall vibe is akin to that of a stoned class reunion.

There is a lot of sharing in the Phish audience. A guy standing near me calculated that, at a Phish show, the music is “40 percent” of the experience. The remainder of the experience, according to this philosophy, is based around the light show and the people in the crowd. The light show is indeed top class. And when this same fellow spilled beer on my shoulder during “Down With Disease,” then apologetically offered me a drink of what was left in his cup, his calculus proved accurate indeed, perhaps more so than I wished.

4) Beloved though they are, the Gamehenge songs at this point sound pretty juvenile, especially compared with the many better — in some cases much better — songs Phish has composed in the years since Anastasio wrote those whimsical Gamehenge tunes back in school. I guess I should’ve been happy that I got a “Tela” or, especially, “Colonel Forbin’s Ascent → Fly Famous Mockingbird,” which, according to the immensely useful Phish.net, had not been played in 40 shows. But I was happier to hear the funky “Camel Walk” and “Gotta Jibboo,” the ecstatic “Heavy Things” and “Julius” and the beer-soaked “Down With Disease,” which lasted well over 11 minutes and featured searing guitarwork by Anastasio.

5) I knew that the band had a history of playing adventurous cover songs. These are, after all, the guys who over the years covered The Beatles’ White Album, The Who’s Quadrophenia, Talking Heads’ Remain In Light and The Velvet Underground’s Loaded in their entireties, as Halloween “costumes.” At the Baltimore show I saw in ‘98, they tackled the Velvets’ “Sweet Jane,” plus Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and, as an encore, the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” But nothing quite prepared me, on July 4, for hearing the band rip into Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name,” sung by drummer Fishman. (Click here to see it for yourself, courtesy of YouTube user “dougcurling.” The song starts at 4:40.) The Internet tells me that this cover was a Phish debut, and it was nothing short of sensational.

6) Speaking of the Internet, it is impossible to overstate how much technology enhances the Phish experience. The band has long allowed fans to tape and trade audio from concerts, but when I first started caring about this practice, the coin of the realm was actual tapes — preferably grey-and-gold Maxell XLII 90-minute blank cassettes, which you would mail (in the actual mail!) to a taper and then wait anxiously for him or her to dub the show and mail the tapes back. Well. Things are much easier now. On July 4, I could check setlist updates in real time on my cellphone. And when I woke up the next morning, I logged onto LivePhish.com and found the entire show available for download in high-quality ALAC files for only $12.95. I’m listening to it this very moment. I could’ve gone with the cheaper MP3 format for $9.99, but I wanted the show to sound good. And I could’ve probably found it for free somewhere online, but I was so appreciative of the band’s set that I didn’t mind paying the 13 bucks. To quote the Baltimore philosopher Snoop Pearson, they “earned that bump like a motherfucker.”