I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: July 21, 2017] Phish

I really enjoyed the Phish concert I saw last summer.  I knew I wanted to see the guys again, and I was really surprised to hear that they were doing a 13 night residency at Madison Square Garden.  I briefly thought…could I do all 13?…and then reality came crashing down on me.  I took a chance on 4 shows in the Phish lottery and amazingly I got all 4.  But I decided to sell 2 and just go to the first and last nights (making that two shows three weeks apart).

One of my tickets was being delivered to a buyer before the show and I was running late, so I had to hasten to MSG and managed to get to my seat by 7:25 for the promised 7:30 start.  Well, I was kind of annoyed that they didn’t start until 8.  I mean, start at 8, that’s fine, but don’t say you’ll start at 7:30, especially given how stressed you made me.

At any rate, I knew the theme of the show was coconuts, but since it was the first night, I didn’t really know what that meant.  It turned out that they were going to play a few songs that had a coconut theme (and have continued that for each night so far).

   I didn’t know the first song (a Junior Senior cover).  I also didn’t know the second song “Martian Monster” which is a song they played at a Halloween show a few years ago and gets played once in a while.  The lights were amazing, the crowd was into it, the band sounded great, but I hadn’t recognized anything yet.

And then they played “Timber.”  “Timber” is a really fun cover and fans really get into it–the ho-oh! section is lots of fun.

There is talk that Phish might not repeat any songs during the 13 nights.  And that’s pretty awesome.  I really like “Timber (Ho!),” but I was slightly bummed that it as a song I’d heard at my only other show (not during this tour, obviously).

I really like when people other than Trey song (nothing against Trey, it’s just fun to mix it up).  So I was pretty happy to hear “555” a Mike song from Fuego that I really like.

After a long pause–there seemed to be a number of long pauses between songs–Fish started a drum beat, but he abruptly stopped.  Trey shouted “Mr. Jon Fishman” and Fish stood up and took a bow joking “that might be our greatest composition yet.”

They played “Pigtail” (a song I heard when I saw Trey solo–quite different with the band).  Then there was another song from Fuego “Halfway to the Moon.”  It seemed odd that I was getting so many shows from the album they toured when I saw them.

But then they made me very happy by playing “Reba,” one of my favorite early songs and one of the 5 star songs on my list of Phish songs to hear.  It was mildly disappointing that they didn’t do the whistle at the end, but since they shifted gears and played David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” that oversight was quickly forgotten.

So, I like Bowie and I’m bummed that he died, but I feel like there’s been so much Bowie love that every show I go to I hear a song by him.  I’m a little over it, but I hadn’t heard anyone else play this one and they did a fantastic job with it–it sounded great (although I would have preferred their song “David Bowie” instead..

They ended set one with “Walls of the Cave.”  As soon as the song started I was really psyched, but for some reason, the people next to me all sat down (kids can’t handle it).  Not sure why, but I was really psyched to hear the slow intro and then feel it build and build  to the wild ending.

And then Set one was done.

I assumed that the intermission would be 15 minutes but they stretched it out a pretty long time (long enough for food drink and merch as well as some phone searching).

They came back and made me really happy by playing “Tweezer.”  This was one of the top 5 songs I’d wanted to hear them do (You Enjoy Myself was another one and I’d gotten to see that at the Mann Center. They jammed it for about 16 minutes and then segued into “Seven Below” a song I’d kind of forgotten about but which I really like (it got a great riff and a great solo).  The jam in this song centered around some of Page’s great keyboard work.  He played all kinds of different sounds and showed off all of his gear.  It was very cool.

They slowed things down with a mellow, pretty “Billy Breathes,” but brought things right back up with a romping “Sparkle.”  I’d always wanted to watch the “fallllll apart” section live, so that was a nice treat.”

They played another Trey song (one that Trey didn’t play when I saw him).  And then they played two more songs that I saw at the Mann Center.  But I won’t complain about either one because “Slave to the Traffic Light” is a ton of fun.  And then they played “Suzy Greenberg.”  I never really liked this song all that much until I saw it live last summer.  It was when I realized just how great it actually is.  So even if it was  repeat for me, it was a good repeat.

I was sure that was the end of the set but the guys came up front an prepped for an acapella song (something they’ve been doing a lot of at these shows I’ve noticed).  This was the “put the lime in the coconut” song and they had a lot of fun with it–and so did everyone else.

I remembered being a little disappointed with the encore last time, so I wasn’t expecting all that much.  I certainly wasn’t expecting to get a great rollicking version of “Mango Song,” which was awesome.  And I certainly wasn’t expecting a second encore song, this time “Good Times Bad Times.”  I don’t really love covers in my shows, but Phish knocked this one out of the park and it was a great climax to the show.

Speaking of lights.  I really enjoyed last summer’s lighting set up–cool LED screens and lots of flowing images.  Since this run included people behind the stage, they couldn’t do that, so instead they used an incredible lighting rig that rotated all around over the band–big banks of lights that went in different directions and shape shifted high on the sky to send colored beams all over the arena.  They even had lights that followed the beats of songs.  And, most interestingly, they had lights that lit up all around the stadium–sending spotlights to various sections and creating interesting yellow or pink or whatever arcs all around the room.

After “555” Trey asked (one of the only times he spoke) “we tired yet?”  The answer was an emphatic “hell no!”  I don’t know how tired they’ll be on night 13, but I have very high hopes for some awesomeness.  I’ll be keeping an eye on sets to see what songs I won’t be hearing–I assume there will be no repeats but then maybe night 13 will just be repeat of all the best songs.  We’ll see.