Six Weeks to #60: Episode II

As my 60th Phish show approaches on in Charleston on Friday, 10/15/10, I decided to take a look back at the five other “milestone” shows I’ve seen over the last 14 years. Some were stellar, others were lacking, but they’re all a part of my history with the band.

Every Friday for the next six weeks, I’ll post an essay/review of shows #10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. This is the second entry, from Summer 1999.

#20: 7/24/99 Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI

Anyone who was there will tell you: while on paper this show looks like a steaming pile of (Happy Whip and) Dung, it had a few redeeming moments—not many of them, but it did have them.

After the great deluge that fell during the encores the previous night in Columbus, my two touring companions and I stuffed our soggy clothes in the cooler and began the all-night drive to Wisconsin. Having seen my first and second shows (in 1996 and ’97, respectively) at Alpine, I was extremely excited to return, having missed Phish’s stop there in ’98.


11 years later the details are hazy, but I distinctly remember sitting in dead-stop traffic on the Chicago Skyway sometime that Saturday afternoon, baking in my ’89 Chevy Celebrity. Since the car had no air conditioning, we tried to drive at night to avoid the mid-July Midwest swelter, but for some reason, there we were—windows rolled down, Matt handing out the remaining ice cubes from the cooler, heat rising off the asphalt in waves—it was torture.

I recall making it to Alpine just barely in time, and as we negotiated our way down the sloping lawn toward the pavilion, there were rumors circulating that Phish had been stuck in the same snarling Chicago traffic that had ensnared us hours earlier. Someone in the seats near us claimed that the stage crew soundchecked in place of the band. With such a weird vibe hanging in the air, logic dictated that a completely unbalanced show would follow.

After a well-received “Guyute” opener, Phish unreeled the longest “Fluffhead” ever played, a 33-minute odyssey that featured 15 minutes of jamming after the song’s traditional structure. (Keep in mind that this show was before the band’s first hiatus, when “Fluffhead” still appeared roughly once a week in the summer of ’99.)

After leaving behind “Fluffhead” proper, the jam thrashed around for a bit, then settled into a loopy, Mike Gordon-led groove. As Trey Anastasio began soloing in a higher register, Page McConnell moved to the clavinet and the jam changed gears, from a major-key “Boogie On” jam to a darker, “Sand”-esque sound. Anastasio squiggled on his keyboard, then experimented with some backwards-sounding guitar effects before finding a repeating phrase (copied by Gordon) that pushed the jam to its peak.

The remainder of the set is painfully standard and woefully sloppy, unfortunately foreshadowing an even messier second set. “Fluffhead” slid awkwardly into my first “The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday” (which I wouldn’t see again for another 30 shows, remarkably back at Alpine) and was followed by “The Wedge” and “Character Zero”, neither of which were remarkable nor memorable.

Highlights of the second set are unfortunately few. What should’ve been a special treat (the quirky “Catapult”, which was part of an erratic-yet-ecstatic third set at Camp Oswego a week earlier) was disastrously sung over top of “Tweezer”. “The Happy Whip and Dung Song”, a portion of a studio jam from The Siket Disc, combined with the ballad “Waste” (which I usually love), dragged the set’s momentum to a sludgy halt. Phish attempted to recover its fire during “Chalkdust Torture”, during which Anastasio attempted ridiculous rock-star backwards somersaults and theatrics (around the 8:00 mark of the video below), but it wasn’t quite enough to savlage an ailing show.



By the encore break, many people were already shuffling towards the exits, preparing for the daring climb up the second-steepest lawn in the United States (I felt like I needed ski poles and crampons to negotiate the mini-lawn at Berkeley's Greek Theater this past August). Thinking about the 250-mile drive to Deer Creek and the mediocre-at-best show we’d just witnessed, my friends and I seriously contemplated bolting; instead, we braced ourselves for what (we hoped) would be a redeeming encore.

The four songs Phish would play as encores that night confirmed why I’ve devoted so many hours and dollars to seeing their shows, buying their albums and merchandise, and generally being a hardcore fan.



Beginning with “Glide” (which was being played about once a year in the late ‘90s) and continuing through “Camel Walk” (played for only the fifth time since its 1997 revival), the super-rare “Alumni Blues” (last played in 1994, with 426 shows since its last appearance... you can hear the appropriate roar of applause during the first 10 seconds of the video above) and “Tweezer Reprise”, the four-pack of encores felt as though the band was saying, “Hey guys, we’re sorry we blew this one. Here are some kick-ass songs that we don’t play very often. Thanks for sticking with us!”

It was an affirmation, pure and simple, and I’m damn glad I stayed. Did the encores make up for what was otherwise a lackluster show? Perhaps. Before sitting down to write this piece, those four songs (and the “Fluffhead” jam) were all I remembered from this night; I haven’t gone back to re-listen since the show. Honestly, I probably won’t listen to it again, but the memories are there.

Oh, and that 250-mile drive to Indiana that we undertook that night? It ended roughly 30 miles from Alpine in Janesville, Wisconsin. Not five minutes after leaving the venue, my brakes cut out and my Celebrity jumped the median; we drove the wrong way on the highway for nearly a mile, then somehow found our way to the Farm & Fleet, where we slept on (not in) the car and got the brakes fixed the following afternoon, just in time for a beat-the-clock race to Deer Creek for what turned out to be the show of the summer (perhaps the entire year), the polar opposite of Alpine’s Jekyll-and-Hyde session.


Setlist:

I: Guyute, Fluffhead > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > The Wedge, Character Zero

II: Tweezer > Catapult > Tweezer, The Mango Song, The Happy Whip and Dung Song, Waste, Chalkdust Torture

E: Glide, Camel Walk, Alumni Blues, Tweezer Reprise


Next week: the White Whale (Reprise) in an Indiana cornfield