I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: June 29, 2018] Phish

I was very excited to see Phish again this summer.  I bought tickets for all three shows at the BB&T Pavillion.

But then my week had turned very busy with shows and other commitments.  When I heard Cate Le Bon was playing at Boot & Saddle on the Friday night, I decided to sell Friday’s ticket.  I mean, let’s be honest, BB&T is a pain in the ass to get to (and parking is insane and expensive).   (I wound up not even going to Cate Le Bon either, boo).   I also decided to sell Sunday’s ticket because Saturday was a long night and I had had enough of the late nights for a time.

But for the Saturday show I had originally bought two tickets so that S. could go to her first Phish show.  I was bummed that they were lawn seats, although I think she felt this added to the experience because she got to see all of the people dancing and milling about.  We were supposed to meet my friend Armando, which would have made the whole night really fun, but he had car trouble and wound up not making it.  (boo).

So it was just S. and I.  Traffic sucked, parking sucked and the weather was questionable.   We arrived literally as “Mike’s Song” started.  So we found a somewhat unused spot on the lawn and settled in.  Phish fans are very friendly but for some reason the group around us wasn’t very inclusive.  In what has to be a first, no one offered either of us a joint the whole night!  They must have thought we were narcs.

“Mike’s Song” is one of my favorites, so I was happy to hear it.  But one of my continuing quests (as most Phish fans know) is to hear as many different songs as possible.  Most people have a bucket list with a really rare song, but my list of “want to hears” includes some of their more popular songs (and I have seen quite a few especially rare songs already!)

My list of songs that I can’t believe I haven’t heard in seven shows is below.  And when I looked at the shows I missed on Friday and Sunday, I see that I could have really checked some off had I gone

Chalk Dust Torture [SUNDAY]
Sample in a Jar [saw Trey play it at Newport which sorta counts] [SUNDAY]
Divided Sky [got played at my show]
Golgi Apparatus
NICU [got played at my show]
Punch You in the Eye [SUNDAY]
Run Like an Antelope [!] [FRIDAY]
Stash
My Friend, My Friend [FRIDAY]
Wolfman’s Brother [FRIDAY]
Squirming Coil
Bathtub Gin [!]
Harry Hood
The Lizards
Axilla
Maze
and anything from the Colonel Forbin/Mockingbird saga

I have low expectations for these, but it would of course be fun to see a
Sleeping Monkey [FRIDAY]
Kung
Farmhouse [saw Trey play it at Newport which sorta counts]
The Curtain With [SUNDAY]
Pebbles and Marbles [SUNDAY]
Big Black Furry Creatures From Mars [SUNDAY]

Obviously I should have gone on Sunday!  And obviously the key is to go to all three nights of a series if you want to hear a lot of different songs.

But I can’t complain about our show because even though I only knocked off two songs from my most wanted list, I got 11 songs that I hadn’t heard before (which is pretty impressive for the 7th time seeing a band).

“Mike’s” segued into “I am Hydrogen” (sounded beautiful, with a flub or two) and then “Weekapaug Groove.”  I think S. liked this part of the night best.  “Groove” got everyone moving and it was still light out so she wandered around watching everyone dancing (and taking some short videos).   I didn’t realize that some people never get the “Mike’s Hydrogen Groove” trilogy but this was actually my second time through all three.

I tend not to take too many pictures anymore at Phish lawn shows.  You can’t see much beyond the lights.  But occasionally they put up a good shot of one of the guys up on the big screen.

I was thrilled to get a “Divided Sky,” a song I love and hadn’t heard live yet.  Trey held the silence before starting the solo for what felt like two minutes.  S. was cracking up at the reaction of both the fans and Trey while he held everyone at bay.

Interestingly, even though there are a lot of songs I’ve never heard, I have heard “Everything’s Right” four times (the most of any song)–and it’s not even a Phish song, it’s a Trey solo song.  Funny enough he didn’t play it at his solo show at Newport Folk Festival.  But it’s uplifting and fun and I enjoy hearing it.

Then they busted out a popular song but one I thought I’d never hear “Guelah Papyrus.”  That was pretty great.  Having never seen it, I didn’t know there would be choreographed dance moves.

The first set ended with three songs I’ve heard a few times, “Sparkle,” “Roggae” and “46 Days.”  They’re all satisfying set enders, and we enjoyed jamming out.  “46 Days” has an extended solo which Trey took dark and then really bright.  I was glad S. got to experience that even if the lights hadn’t really started to do their job yet.

We weren’t really sure what to do during the set break.  We didn’t want to lose our place, although it might have been fun to check out the vantage from another place.  So we sat and relaxed and waited for set two.

I have come to really enjoy “Blaze On” (Trey played it at Newport too).  It’s fun and uplifting with some great lyrics.   But I went out of my mind when it segued into “NICU” a song that I love and had never heard before.

That song was followed by a cover of TV on the Radio’s “Golden Age.”  I didn’t exactly recognize the song, although I know and like the original.  It was just so different from Phish that I never realized what it was.

Trey had recently come out with a new project, Ghosts of the Forest, and the band played one of those songs “Ruby Waves” next.  I hadn’t heard it before, so it was nice to have a fully new song.  It’s amazing to me that Phish learns all of the other guys’s solo songs to jam with Phish as well.

I had explained to S. that the second set was full of much longer songs, and that proved to be true, although not as long as I might have expected.  The jamming from “Waves” (about 14 minutes) was the longest.  .At one point she did ask if it was still the same song.  And there were lots of peaks, with appropriate light explosions.  The jam segued into the Kasvot Växt tune “Death Don’t Hurt Very Long,”  I don’t really expect to get many from Kasvot Växt (no idea why I think that), but I have heard 3 of the ten songs already.

There were only two songs I’d seen before in Set Two.  In addition to “Blaze On,” I’ve heard “Rift” a few times, and it’s always great to hear–especially when they play it this well.

We got another Ghosts of the Forest song, “Beneath a Sea of Stars” (although we only got part 1 of the three parts).  Mike pulled out his drill for this song which was pretty awesome (and I actually saw it this time on the big screen).

The final three songs of the set were all new for me and each one was better than the next.

I really like “Waiting All Night,” it’s probably my favorite slow Phish song and I was delighted to get this mellow song as a respite before a fantastic “Ghost” (which was actually a little short in terms of jams).  They ended with the, already classic Kasvot Växt song “Say it to Me S.A.N.T.O.S.”  It was even more fun live than I thought it would be with the whole audience singing along and “hi ho hi ho hi hoing.”

I was hoping that S. would get to experience “Wilson” to see all of the glowsticks flying around.  There were certainly a few moments of glowstick throwing but there weren’t quite a many “obvious” moments for it.

The band left (without saying a word the whole night) and I told S. that there would be a short encore and then we’d go home.  But they totally surprised me.  When they started playing the openig notes of “You Enjoy Myself,” the whole audience erupted, including me–S.joked about my excited reaction.  Not bad on your first show to get a YEM [I actually got a YEM on my first show too].  She knew about the trampolines from a video I had sown her but it was still great to see her reaction once they started bouncing.

I don’t know if she fully appreciated the 19 minute song but I think she enjoyed the vocal jam at the end.

I was sure that was the end, until the guys came up to the front and gave me a huge surprise with an acapella “Grind“–what a great way to showcase everything you can do in a 20 plus minute encore.  This “Grind” was also amusing because they ech sang how many days they had revolved around the sun, culminating in a combined 80,000+ days lived on this Earth.

I don’t know if S. would go to another show, but I think she enjoyed it.  She felt it mostly lived up to her imagination, although again, we were surprised that there wasn’t as much pot as we imagined.  A guy in front of us was chain smoking cigarettes (and didn’t have a lighter) and the guys behind us were drinking a lot of beers (and were as obnoxious as drunk Phish fans can be).  I guess we didn’t get into the super friendly area of the lawn. Or maybe that’s just what a Saturday night crowd is like.

Next time they come around, I might try to go to all three shows.  Especially if they go to PNC Center in Holmdel [hint hint, that’s where you should play next time].

 

Camden, June 29, 2019	December 30, 2018 Madison Square Garden
SET ONE	SET ONE
Mike’s Song (3)	Alumni Blues
I Am Hydrogen (2)	Letter to Jimmy Page
Weekapaug Groove (2)	Mike’s Song (2)
Divided Sky	Glide II (first since 1995)
Everything’s Right [Trey song] (4)	Alumni
Guelah Papyrus	Crosseyed and Painless
Sparkle (3)	Bliss
Roggae (3)	Billy Breathes (2)
46 Days (2)	No Men in No Man’s Land (3)
SET TWO	Tube
Blaze On (2)	More
NICU	SET TWO
Golden Age	Cool Amber and Mercury [Kasvot Växt]
Ruby Waves [Ghosts of the Forest]	Everything’s Right [Trey song] (3)
Death Don’t Hurt Very Long [Kasvot Växt]	Plasma
Rift (3)	Light (2)
Beneath a Sea of Stars Part 1 [Ghosts of the Forest] [debut]	Wading in the Velvet Sea
Waiting All Night	Split Open and Melt (3)
Ghost	ENCORE
Say It to Me S.A.N.T.O.S [Kasvot Växt]	Funky Bitch (2)
ENCORE	Wilson (3)
You Enjoy Myself (3)	Rocky Top
Grind (a capella)	Cavern