SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Live Phish Downloads 7.6.98 Lucerna Theatre, Prague, Czech (2007).
After finishing recording “The Story of the Ghost” in Vermont and Bearsville in upstate New York, Phish embarked on June 27th for a short European tour.
What’s interesting is that the official comments about this show talk about hoe legendary it was, and my takeaway was just how often someone (usually Trey) messes up.
“Buried Alive” is a surprising opening track. It rocks and segues into a choppy “AC/DC Bag.” The song ends with a funky section that segues into a 15 minute “Ghost.” “Ghost has a fast and scorching middle jam section.” I’m going to include some of the online notes here:
They deconstructed Bag’s concise jam into a perfect segue to the centerpiece of the show – a fast, funky and furious “Ghost.” You can clearly hear the sonic flourishes layered over a driving groove with confident vocals that seethed energy. The dynamic feel of “Ghost” lent deep drama to the lyrics, highlighted the loops and effects and provided an ideal platform for some hairy soloing. Page migrated from piano to synthesizer, Clavinet to Rhodes in a floating conversation with the band. Eventually “Ghost” took on an electronic tinge that hinted at the deepest post-hiatus improvisation. This was fueled by Trey’s Hendrix-esque leads with bent tone and pitch into a series of shifting polyrhythmic counterpoints. Expanding until it seemed the room would explode, the music evolved into a funky groove with starts and stops punctuated by the now-roaring crowd.
“Ghost” segues into Talking Heads’ “Cities” which has a really sharp (weird) drum sound. There a lengthy intro before the song starts properly. The choruses are really slow (and someone plays a wrong chord). But the song end with a really groovy solo that encourages people to clap along.
“Cities” started in double-time and shifted effortlessly into normal rhythm for the first chorus and the rest of the song. With the lyrics “a lot of ghosts in a lot of houses”, “Cities” continued the eerie theme of this already-historic performance, blending a smooth, creative vibe with an aggressive, rocking attack. Seemingly on cue, the band dropped out of “Cities” and left Trey to end the song alone with the clapping crowd. The momentary pause after Cities was the first time the band stopped at all, having linked Buried > Bag > Ghost > Cities into a powerful opening sequence for the ages.
“Limb By Limb” is mellow with Trey on guitars.
“Limb By Limb” followed. Written by Trey on a sequencer with a drum part intended to stump Fish, Limb is always a feat of execution. This performance exhibited an added sense of dynamics no doubt spurred on by the intimate setting, highlighting restrained melodic dialogue among the whole band. While sometimes this jam breathed fire, this groovy interlude danced intricate circles around the glowing embers, leaving space for Fish to lay down some outrageous fills and cymbal work. Trey’s final solo culminated in repeated guitar fanning, which brought the song to a cathartic close.
Then comes “Train Song” and “Roggae” which gets more mellow by the end.
“Train Song” provided a moment of tranquil reflection in the middle of the set. The second-ever live “Roggae” followed, giving a chance to show off more new material in a new country as the band fashioned a coda with so much inherent space that the notes hung slightly suspended between phrases.
The 12 minute “Maze” perks everyone up. There’s a lengthy keyboard solo followed by a nice solo from Trey. During Maze the band stopped on a dime to thank the audience (and appreciate the architecture) , then finished the song. It’s amazing how tight that was.
“Maze” blossomed into an electric improvisation starting with Page’s lively organ solo followed by a cacophonous solo from Trey who shredded unabashedly until the whole band telepathically stopped on a dime for him to say “We hope you’re all having a good time tonight…we just want to say that we really appreciate your support and how much we enjoy playing in Prague here.” Page interjected “We love the architecture” while Trey continued “I don’t think we got a chance to thank you last night so we just thought we’d take this moment to thank you very much.” After a quick countdown, the band re-entered the song in the exact shred-space they’d occupied before the acrobatic stop. After Maze, they closed the first set with Golgi Apparatus that had a rave-up ending with Trey shouting, in an apparent nod to the World Cup Soccer quarterfinals, “Jon Fishman, Jon Fishman, Hey, Ho, Hey, Ho”.
I noticed that “Golgi Apparatus” has a whole series of mess ups—someone is in the wrong key and can’t get free.
Set Two opens with the fast verses of “Julius” and then the slow staccato “Meat.”
Set two began with a swinging “Julius” that got everyone moving and Fishman passionately testifying at the highest peaks. “Julius” led into “Meat,” a new song. “Meat” returned the show to its initial ghoulish theme, confounding the audience with its multiple stops and starts. Immediately after Meat came a soaring, adventurous “Piper.”
“Piper” is 19 minutes long with a scorching solo in the middle.
“Piper” stretched nearly twenty minutes and bumped up against the boundaries already shattered by “Ghost.” Piper sped into a ferocious jam characterized by intense guitar runs … before it settled into hard rock with plenty of room for the whole band to explore. Like the experimental “Ghost” in set one, “Piper” was fearless, building to massive peaks before floating off into a slower, more minimal section accented by loops from Trey and Mike atop Page’s piano and Fish’s cymbal rolls. This part of “Piper” hinted at “Fikus,” part three of the “Ghost” trilogy, becoming slow and funky before locking neatly into the rowdy reggae of “Makisupa Policeman.”
“Makisupa Policeman” is a little goofy and fun. “Petrov” (Page) sings lead vocals. During this song there’s a drum solo and Trey tells the audience that if the solo is long and boring they should just whistle to make him stop.
As he scatted around the lyrics of “Makisupa Policeman,” Trey uttered the key phrase, “stink-kind”, adding a touch of home with “policeman came to Vermont!” He handed things off to Page for a piano solo (calling him “Petrof” after the logo visible on the rented piano) during which Page developed a ska feel. Trey announced a drum solo next, saying if Fish soloed too long the crowd should start whistling, as the band did when he talked too much. Fish played along, rendering a minimal solo of high hat, kick drum and rim shots, returning to the song in the nick of time. After some dancehall-style dub effects, the band finished Makisupa and dove into David Bowie.
The 13 minute “David Bowie” has lengthy washes of guitars and some noisy parts.
A thematic jam hinted subtly at Santana before riding a dissonant wave into the ending changes of the second and final Bowie of the European tour. With scarcely a pause, Page hammered out the opening notes of Loving Cup, cementing the status of this magical night. it segues into Loving cup a loose jam
“Loving Cup” is a loose, fun version running almost 10 minutes. There is much cheering at the “I know I play a bad guitar” line.
The encore is “Possum.” It’s kind of slow and loping but fun.
The band returned for an encore and repaid the rowdy crowd’s enthusiasm with Possum. The audience clapped along for a bit eventually leaving the band to a textbook performance that was at once conscious and passionate, restrained yet explosive. Trey dropped a quick tease of “Stash” as he propelled “Possum” through machine-gun fans entwined with soft, dynamic sections that made this a perfect encore for such an intimate show. As the crowd filtered into the streets of Prague it was clear that this had been an unforgettable night that could only have happened when and where it did.
So there’s two takes on the show. You can read all of Kevin’s essay here. and I’m going to re-listen to this show to hear the magic foe myself.
[READ: March 6, 2017] The Serpent’s Curse
This is the second full-sized book in the Copernicus series. After reading the Copernicus Archives book I noted that the event of that book are not referenced in this book, but I was wrong. There are several mentions to San Francisco. It’s not a huge gap and you wouldn’t be lost without reading it, but it is odd that he would reference a book that apparently some people don’t read.
This book is pretty large–480 pages. And I feel like it was kind of slow. Or perhaps they just spent way too much time in Russia. Or, and this is most likely the case–they spent the whole book looking for one relic. And 500 pages is a lot of traveling for one item.
I’m bummed that I felt this way at the end because in the beginning I thought it was really exciting. And Abbott filled in some things that a nitpicky reader might nitpick about with some interesting new developments. One of the things that one has to wonder about is how this normal family will be able to jet set around the world. Well, that comes with the assistance of a best-selling author with millions of dollars at his disposal. Convenient? Sure. But it’s a nice development. The author, Terence Akroyd writes exciting thrillers (so of course he is interested in the plot) and he has a personal vendetta against the bad guys, so he’s happy to help out with money and resources, like his jets and technology. [That author is presumably not based on reality].
Terence also has a son, Julian, who is apparently pretty hot. But he’s a few years older than our protagonists so presumably nothing will come from that. Despite all of the potential romance between Wade and Becca in the first book and parts of this one, nothing is progressing on that front. (more…)
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I really didn’t like the second volume of this series. But this third volume is back to form. Nearly everything on this record is great. There’s a few songs where they have chosen to take all of the joy out of the Christmas song. This is a valid choice, sure, but it doesn’t work when a collection mixes it up with happy Christmas songs.
SOUNDTRACK: MOSES SUMNEY-Tiny Desk Concert #678 (November 29, 2017).
I Just Read About That... 