... no real comment necessary here

i just listened to 2/26/03 on a whim last night after it popped up in my youtube recommendations, and my god this is quite a show. i've listened to 2/28 for many years but never the shows around it, and after listening to this i might have to.

you enjoy myself opens, and if that version doesn't reel you in to keep listening, i do not know what will. the roggae, moma dance, maze, and stash are fantastic. ghost morphs into low rider. and even the loving cup gets a real nice extended outing in the encore. i do not know a few of the songs in the first set - looks like they are all solo project tunes that never got played again by the full band - but they do not bring the quality of this show down in any way.

highly recommend giving this one a go.

https://phish.in/2003-02-26

PHISH SPRING + SUMMER 2022 TOURDATES

5/27 The Wharf Amphitheater, Orange Beach, AL
5/28 The Wharf Amphitheater, Orange Beach, AL
5/29 The Wharf Amphitheater, Orange Beach, AL
5/31 Credit One Stadium, Charleston, SC
6/1 Credit One Stadium, Charleston, SC
6/3 Ruoff Music Center, Noblesville, IN
6/4 Ruoff Music Center, Noblesville, IN
6/5 Ruoff Music Center, Noblesville, IN
7/14 Xfinity Center, Mansfield, MA
7/15 Xfinity Center, Mansfield, MA
7/16 Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor, ME
7/19 TD Pavilion at the Mann, Philadelphia, PA
7/20 TD Pavilion at the Mann, Philadelphia, PA
7/22 Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Bethel, NY
7/23 Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Bethel, NY
7/24 Xfinity Theatre, Hartford, CT
7/26 Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, NY
7/27 Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, NY
7/29 Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek, Raleigh, NC
7/30 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD
7/31 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD
8/2 Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, OH
8/3 Pine Knob Music Theatre, Clarkston, MI
8/5 Atlantic City Beach, Atlantic City, NJ
8/6 Atlantic City Beach, Atlantic City, NJ
8/7 Atlantic City Beach, Atlantic City, NJ
8/10 Budweiser Stage, Toronto, ON
8/12 Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI
8/13 Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI
8/14 Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI
9/1 Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO
9/2 Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO
9/3 Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO
9/4 Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO

They gotta slow down, I haven't finished listening to last year's boots!

Currently listening through the digital release of The Clifford Ball - set 2 so far. I forget how much I enjoy these guys. I need to figure out a run that doesn’t take years for them, or maybe split into multiple parts.

Yeah, I listened to those sets when they put out the digital remasters a few months ago, and they really are classics.

I didn't order the LPs--just out of my price range--but heard some stories about warped records.

The Baker's Dozen run is really something else. I'm also partial to post-second hiatus Phish, for what it's worth.

I feel like studio Phish never gets much love, so I am starting there. I have heard the White Tape, and I am not going to get into that other than note that it’s very demo-like. Also sounds very little like where they go in their subsequent growth (from memory at least). So I will stick to studio only for now, with the express intention of coming back and tackling live releases (there’s frankly so many that it would be overwhelming to take it all on together).

So we’ll start with Junta…

Junta

The first commercially released album of theirs immediately feels like all that is Phish, for good or bad. Save for some lines here or there, the focus is much less on lyrics than what the instruments are saying. In that vein, there are lots of big moments here, where songs like You Enjoy Myself, The Divided Sky, and David Bowie explode into huge opuses(?). Here, the jams feel less like jams and more like prog rock exercises to get to the pay off. Mostly, those payoffs are really great, though you have to be willing to take the risk that some long slogs will indeed pay off. The risk presents itself in the live bonus tracks which largely lead nowhere, and when they do reach a climax, it’s largely sloppy and screamy. But the highs on the album are worth the investment. The codas to both The Divided Sky and David Bowie are epic, and the jazzy You Enjoy Myself, along with the freeing nature of Fee remind you why this is a great band to begin with.

Lawn Boy

On this one, Phish go a long way to expanding their sound, pairing jazz, prog rock, and jams with bluegrass and country sounds in spots. Most of the songs here are more concise, but it’s the real builders into full band freakouts that win the day. Reba transforms from what seems like almost a children’s song in its cadence into full blown mayhem and an epic jam only to abruptly stop and start over, while I hear a bit of funk thrown into Split Open and Melt. Run Like An Antelope similar builds up and explodes. The album closer, Bouncing Round the Room, is a real highlight despite its more standard song length, and manages to capture the band’s hypnotic layering of rhythm and beats without needing double digit minutes to accomplish the task. I’d give Junta the slight edge but both are worth settling into for a bit.

I don't really dig Phish but I really love "The Divided Sky." Such beautiful guitar work.

A Picture of Nectar

On this album, you can start to hear Phish improving their songwriting a bit, still a bit silly, but it feels like they have a more solid identity, even if they are hopping from lounge jazz to blistering rock to reggae without skipping a beat. Llama, Stash, The Landlady, Tweezer (and reprise), and Chalkdust Torture all provide though massive highs that Phish live and breathe on, though I was also pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Cavern. When this band is on, there as good as anyone, but as with the case with them, you just kind of have to wait for it. If you are not in the mood for that, then they are tough to listen to. Glad I’m in the right frame of mind right now.

Rift

This is the first of their albums that has a sort of cohesive feel to it. The genre jumping is a bit more subtle and they seem to settle into a groove here that’s maybe closer to the center of what you would expect from them. Rift, Maze, Horn, My Friend My Friend, Mound, and It’s Ice all provide high points on this album, which I think is consistently good front to back. I wouldn’t go so far as to say dark, but there’s a more serious vibe to this one. Solid listen!

They're terrible.

But we were at a friends out a few weeks ago and they put on the live second set on of those mexico shows, I was surprised at how much I didn't hate it.

I have never thought they were terrible, just that you can’t approach them from the same kind of agenda you would with other bands. You’d be rightly disappointed if you went in looking for epic songwriting, or took any of their passages too seriously - I always thought of their vocals as the filler for further exploration. If you need solid lyrics and for the vocals to be the focal point of a song, it’s just not the case with them. Also, if you are more of a rock enthusiast that’s immediately ready for a band to tear shit up, akin to an Allman Brothers or even Marcus King, you’d also be disappointed because they also tend to sort of meander until something catches fire, which is thrilling when it happens, but if you are not in a patient mood can be tortuous to wade through. Frankly, even the Grateful Dead were highly focused in comparison because their explorations worked off the main thesis of the song, and Phish tends to remove any limitation to their explorations.

So then there’s two more points I’d make on this. If you make it to the moment of impact for them (think when Trey finally catches fire on Divided Sky), there’s nothing like them. Same when you catch them in moments where they are more focused. I find when I am in the right headspace, I don’t mind the wandering as much - it takes away a sense of hurry or even having my mind look ahead too much - just to sort of allow that strange sense of hypnosis to take over and exist in the moment. But if I’m even a hair off that vibe, Phish wouldn’t do it for me that day.

Phish and their festival jam band contemporaries were utterly omnipresent in my life from about 1999-2002, late high school and early college; I seemed to have a knack for making friends with people who were all in on all this stuff (Phish, SCI, Moe, Keller Williams, Widespread Panic, Yonder Mountain String Band, etc.), and as a result I listened to more albums and live shows and attended more concerts (though never Phish, as luck would have it, as they were on hiatus for much of this time) than I ever would have on my own volition. I enjoyed the music well enough in that social environment and appreciated the individual skills of many of the musicians, but most of it I never connected with personally, so I ended up walking away from that time period feeling like I'd had enough of it to last a lifetime.

There are a handful of Phish songs I'd revisit anytime with pleasure ("Divided Sky," "Esther," a number of songs on Rift), but I can only take a couple at a time before the dippiness and overall vibe begins to grate, and Trey was never a guitarist like Frisell, Garcia, Nels Cline, etc., whose phrasing and style I just enjoyed hearing for its own sake. Not really sure why, as he's clearly he's a talented and versatile player; it just never flipped the right switches. But I'm always up for a liebzz journey, and there is a lot post-2000 that I've never heard (I did really like the song "Connection," which was a staple on the satellite channel that got played in one of my workplaces about 12-15 years go). Happy trails!

Ha thanks. With the jam bands, I sort of exist in it and out of it in waves. I have seen a number of the bands in different intervals (imagine this - one day full day show that was Umphree’s McGee —> Keller Williams —-> Michael Franti & Spearhead —> String Cheese Incident maybe in 2006?). It mostly started in college with a North Country area New York band I saw at local bars called Ominous Seapods who were really talented and got me into some bands in that era. I often drop off and then come back when I band I appreciate in that vein comes through my orbit. It also starts to come back when I see a more jamming southern rock band, in this instance Marcus King Band, and remember that I like long songs with large instrumental sections. I tend to gravitate closer most times to southern rock but listening to Marcus King begat Allmans begat Grateful Dead begat Phish, and so this journey comes from that place.

Of note, I have never seen Phish live, but have seen Oysterhead when they toured back in 2001/2002 in Utica, NY. The lineup was Trey Anastasio, Les Claypool and Stewart Copeland - they were a helluva supergroup.

Oh man, I'll see you this and raise you a full weekend at the inaugural Bonnaroo in 2002, which -- you'd never guess from the more eclectic festival it became -- started as a patchouli-drenched jam band showcase. Get a load of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bonn ... val#Lineup
(side note: I do not recall Norah Jones being there AT ALL, let alone in one of the side tents -- I'm guessing that was before she really achieved liftoff commercially)

I also live less than 15 minutes from Chillicothe, IL, home of the Summer Camp Music Festival, another annual jam band destination vacation. Never been myself (Bonnaroo pretty much killed any desire I ever had to attend another music festival), but it definitely looms large 'round these parts.

Also, I totally forgot about Oysterhead -- I remember it being weird that they didn't play at that Bonnaroo, since it was right at that time and both Anastasio and Claypool were there. Maybe Copeland couldn't be bothered.

I have the CD and DVD doc of that festival I think 2002-2004 each. I never wanted to go because of the camping. It’s what kept me from going to the Peach Festival in Montage Mountain in Upstate NY despite it being VERY jammy (2022 boasts Trey Anastasio Band, The Black Crowes, Billy Strings, Goose, JRAD, The Revivalists, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, an Allmans cover band, The Word (Robert Randolph, John Medeski, Luther and Cody Dickinson), Keller Williams, G Love & Special Sauce, The Motet, and a slew of others.

Hoist

If Rift seems a bit subdued, the music off Hoist is immediately bright and big. Julius opens complete with a big band and horn section, followed by the easily digestible Down With Disease. Axilla Pt. 2 is big fat rock, Sample in a Jar about as mainstream Phish as you’re gonna get, Wolfman’s Brother has some funk going on, Scent of a Mule that country/bluegrass note, and the big jam in Demand - a wholly representative album from these guys, seemingly playing at ease in each format but outsized sounding at the same time. A really fun listen and a moment where Phish mostly kept things within reason on at least the song lengths.