In the fall of 1997 I was 18 years old and in full-on all-Phish-all-the-time mode. I’d seen the band three times over the previous two summers and folded most of my high school friends into the jamband world. As a first-semester freshman at Ithaca College, anyone who had Phish tapes on my floor became a source for knowledge. When I asked one dude if I could take his entire collection of some 50+ tapes, he hemmed and hawed before telling me I could take a couple, and if those came back OK, I could have a few more and copy those.The guy with the Clifford Ball poster at the end of the hallway had a handful of tapes that I copied the first day of classes. I was surprised by songs I’d never even heard of before until I consulted Andy Gadiel’s Phish page for setlists and realized that what he’d hastily scribbled as “Weekapang Grane” was actually “Weekapaug Groove” and “Coyote” was actually “Guyute.”
I spun those tapes–and yes, they were tapes, Maxell XL IIs–relentlessly, devouring them while developing film in the darkroom, on walks to and from class, and my weekly stints at the school newspaper’s front desk. I devoured my copy of The Pharmer’s Almanac so thoroughly that the pages were held in with scotch tape (when they were held in at all). My freshman year roommate--a high school friend who’d become a longtime tour buddy in the years to come--borrowed the book only to watch its dog-eared pages flutter to the floor. I underlined and highlighted the Almanac far more intently than I did in any of the books I was supposed to be reading for my minor in English.
AND I AM TAKEN FAR AWAY...
Phish’s 1997 fall tour was announced in early August, so it reasons that by the time classes began I would’ve had plans for at least the Rochester show on December 11th. The problem was that I didn’t have a car, and neither did anyone else I knew. Thankfully, a guy in my Intro to Film Aesthetics & Analysis class had a roommate who was going and secured me a ride. The driver, Justin, had a ubiquitous rainbow-striped Volkswagen Jetta that I’d previously seen on campus. It was like Gatsby’s car--everyone had seen it.
When I met up with Justin and three other half-bearded dudes I thought, “Yeah, these look like guys who would go to Phish shows.” It turns out they were as green as I was in terms of seeing the band live, but were phans-in-good-standing, and as I’d later learned, this was the show that most Ithacans saw that tour, as the War Memorial (now BlueCross Arena) was only about 90 miles away from campus.
We crammed into the Jetta and drove to Rochester through a literal blizzard. I perched in the middle of the back seat--the spot where there’s no headrest obscuring the view of the whiteout—and marveled at the fact that Justin navigated the highway with zero visibility. I silently repeated Hail Marys that we’d arrive at the venue in one piece.
Jeff (“Weekapang Grane” guy) also arranged for a ride to Rochester, but unfortunately got left high and dry. We’d argue about this for years, as he missed this, my favorite show, and I missed his (10.30.98) because of a similar-but-different travel mishap. If I recall correctly, some time after both shows we even got in a shoving match about it. (I repeat: I was in full-on all-Phish-all-the-time mode.) However, the day after Rochester Jeff and I caught a ride to Albany with a middle-aged woman who’d posted on rec.music.phish that she was driving from Buffalo and had room for riders. She picked us up on Ithaca’s campus, then picked up two more guys from Cornell. It felt sufficiently weird, but not weird enough to pass on a ride. We caught the December 12th show—the first of nearly 40 shows we’ve seen together—and then rode Greyhound back to Ithaca on Sunday.
A TINY SPACE TO MOVE AND BREATHE
I don’t remember if the Rochester show was general admission or reserved, but my group wound up about halfway up the arena on what-was-then-Fish-side. I wore my People for a Louder Mike shirt (it read “When I catch Phish… I like big bass”); I’d give anything to know where that particular shirt wound up in my flurry of post-college moves.
We got to our spot just as the lights went down and the first thing I noticed was the camera crew, especially the boom that swung in front of the stage. I was only four shows into my Phish-going career, so I didn’t think much of the cameras, and besides, my previous three shows had all been outdoors at Alpine Valley and Starlake, so I figured that this was par for the course for indoor Phish. When Bittersweet Motel was announced a few years later, the pieces fell into place, and to this day I hope against hope that all that raw footage will find its way onto a DVD or Blu-ray release. (There were no cameras in Albany the next night, but given that Jeff and I were in the very last row, as far from the stage as possible, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to see them anyway.)
The band took the stage and Trey scratched out the intro to “Punch You in the Eye,” which was my favorite Phish song at the time (along with the nascent “Piper,” which had its longest and weirdest outing to date the following night in Albany). My first “Punch” had come at Alpine earlier that summer as I wondered aloud: “Huh--’Punch You in the Eye’ into ‘The Landlady’ and back into ‘Punch’? I must be witnessing history!” By December, however, I knew.
“Punch” bubbled into Mike’s intro to “Down with Disease,” and after the jam’s initial peak ended with a full-band thrust, major chords led to a spacy section with Trey soloing in a higher register before settling into a sinuous, relaxed jam. To me, this is the sound of Fall 1997: mid-tempo Mike-led grooves, Page synths, Fish shuffle fills, and start/stop jams.
“Disease” remained unfinished (for now), and slid smoothly into “Maze,” which featured its typical build as Trey comped under Page’s organ solo, before his typical machine-gun shredding. It’s weird to say that this doesn’t feel like a 15-minute version of “Maze,” but it was, making for one hell of an opening 45-minute trifecta.
I knew the two newish songs--the sublime “Dirt” and the wiggly “Limb by Limb”--from some tapes that had already been circulating of the previous summer tour, both in Europe and the States. (Did I just use “already” when discussing shows that happened four, five months prior? I did indeed. Remember that, kids, when you complain that tonight’s soundboard recording isn’t on the LivePhish app until an hour after the show ends.)
At this point they’d been on for about an hour, and “Loving Cup” felt like a very logical closer, especially in 1997. But after its conclusion, Trey counted off “Rocky Top” and capped off a 70-minute first set. “We’re gonna take a break,” Trey announced. “We’re having a great time–thank you!”
A setbreak tangent: I think fans tend to forget that most of the four-, five-, and/or six-song sets that are so revered in hindsight were much shorter than the band’s usual 80- to 90-minute sets, and that this was the subject of some hallway beer-line grumbling at the time. To me, one of the reasons that Fall ‘97 is held in such high regard is because the band seemed to trim the proverbial fat, excising songs deemed “filler” and/or the 3.0 trend of piling one set closer on top of another (specifically in second sets—Trey’s “jukebox sets” or “Saturday night specials”).
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL BUZZ
As the second set began, I felt rewarded for my obsessive tape-scouring, as I knew the “Drowned” opener from my newly-acquired copy of 12.31.95 (I admit that I was at that time unfamiliar with Quadrophenia, although I knew the song’s pedigree). As with “Disease” in the first set, this jam featured sparkling Page piano fills and Trey chord-builds until about the 10:30 mark, which lead into a downtempo section with plenty of Fish hesitations and lots of space for Mike fills. Trey expanded the jam with the sirens/loops that mark much of 1997’s sound and the band found a deep ambient space (reminiscent of the style that would hallmark 1998).
Bittersweet Motel viewers know all about the transition into Phish’s debut of Ween’s “Roses Are Free”--Todd Phillips cuts from the band rehearsing the song backstage into its full-blown explosion during the actual show. I had only heard of Ween at this point, so this one was completely unknown to me, as I’d surmise it was for at least 90% of the crowd. Smartphones were still a decade away, so we couldn’t simply check Twitter or phish.net to see what the song was called or who wrote it. Because of its quintessentially Phishy lyrics (“Throw the pumpkin at the tree / Unless you think that pumpkin holds your destiny”) I assumed it was an Anastasio/Marshall original.
Up until this point in the show it was a fairly “serious” Phish performance—there had been no madcap antics, no vacuum solos, no instrument switching. And then came “Big Black Furry Creature from Mars.” The faux-metal riffs and threats of murder led to Trey running laps around the stage, lots of syncopated vamping, and a tease of Black Sabbath’s “Electric Funeral.” (This sound would rear its head again during the so-called “heavy metal Wilsons” of the late-1.0 era.) “BBFCM” eventually slowed to sludgy tension before more spacey ambience carried the band on a dime into 1997’s Rookie of the Year, “Ghost.”
25 years later, I still consider this “Ghost” the pinnacle of my show-going career. If I ever stood before some jamband Judge Judy who demanded I demonstrate the finest 20 minutes of Phish, I’d dial this up in a heartbeat. In later years (most notably the 3.0/4.0 years), “Ghost” became known for its angular, strong-armed rock versions that (almost always) veered into blissful territory. This one gets wild, too, but in different ways—its slinky, minimalist funk was the sound of 1997, the love child of Halloween 1996’s Remain in Light hangover and Mike’s move to a Modulus bass in February. People for a louder Mike, indeed.
The “Ghost” jam picked up steam with Page leading the way on clavinet (also a major part of 1997’s sonic awakening) before switching to synth washes as Trey soloed quietly over a cool, mid-tempo groove. Eventually Page moved to piano and Trey found a delightfully repetitive lick that he pushed into higher registers before the band achieved liftoff 12 minutes in. Fish signaled a faster tempo shift a few minutes later and by that point Trey had activated bounteous Band of Gypsies Hendrix mode. It was almost a “Disease” jam now, and it kept building and building and building.
I’ve heard it said that you know the band is really feeling it when Fishman yells. You guessed it—the band was really feeling it here. Around 16 minutes, the drummer shouted “NEW YORK!” (or something to that effect… even on the soundboard recording it’s unclear). A minute later it felt almost like they were headed back into “BBFCM” for a heartbeat, and a minute after that Trey led them back into the main lick of “Disease” and the whole place Just. Went. Nuts. The actual reprise was a very brief, run-through-at-best before the whole thing collapsed and eventually tumbled into “Johnny B. Goode,” but there’s no denying this is a band at the absolute peak of its powers.
Trey got about half of the words to “Johnny B. Goode” right, but who cares at this point? This was the icing on the proverbial cake. The second set was barely over an hour long, but it doesn’t matter—Phish put on an absolute clinic, from breathtaking peaks to mellow smoothness to head-scratching zaniness. It’s all there.
There’s a phish.net review of this show that simply reads “‘Waste’ of an encore,” but I respectfully disagree. While I understand that it’s not everyone’s favorite song (or even favorite ballad), I found the placement perfect. Had this preceded or followed “Ghost” it would’ve flummoxed the flow of a flawless set. Here, “Waste” stood firmly on its own, delivering the pathos largely absent from the previous two hours of music.
THIS WAS MY BIG SECRET
In the following weeks, months, and years I extolled the virtues of this show to anyone who would listen, but in the midst of an absolute monster tour, it often got lost in the shuffle. The fact that the band and its archivist Kevin Shapiro later officially released other sterling fall shows like Denver, Dayton, Auburn Hills, and Hampton further relegated Rochester to the afterthought bin (although being in the afterthought bin for Fall 1997 is akin to warming the bench for the 1992 Dream Team).
Three years later, when Bittersweet Motel finally hit theaters (and its bonus footage appeared on the subsequent DVD release), this show finally started getting its due. Then, sometime in the late 2000s a soundboard recording appeared/leaked (no doubt tied to Bittersweet’s audio recording and synching needs) and minds changed even more. These days it’s the 17th highest-rated show on phish.net, behind Denver and Hampton but ahead of Dayton and Auburn Hills.
A week after Rochester I took my first exams and finished my first college semester. I headed home with five Phish shows under my belt, no longer a neophyte but far from a veteran. I don’t remember when I finally obtained the tape of this show, but I guarantee that it played endlessly for the immediate future. 1998 was the year I went all-in on seeing shows, as it brought my first Phish festival, Halloween, and New Year’s Eve experiences, and 25 years later I’ve seen the band nearly 150 times.
Whenever anyone asks about my favorite Phish shows I usually provide a Greatest Hits list, with 7.25.99, 7.11.00, 7.29.03, 6.17.11, and 8.22.15 all rotating through, but my absolute favorite? The desert island show? The One Show to Rule Them All? It’s still always Rochester—Thursday, December 11th, 1997.
