Show #7: SPAC Night 2 (Saratoga NY)

2004 Year-In-Review (A Journey Through the Dark Side)
Show #7: Saratoga Performing Arts Center #2 (Saratoga NY)
Date: June 20, 2004
Tour: Early Summer

Set I:

1) Rift – after last night’s first show here at SPAC which was heavy with late 90s and new Millennium material, a Rift-era tune is a refreshing appetizer for the coming meal. A sprightly song, it lets the band stretch their fingers and warm-up not only their chops but also their voices. Nothing out of the ordinary to speak of. They head straight into …

2) Julius - maybe the voices aren’t warmed up as no one backs Trey during the first intro verse (maybe the mics weren’t turned up?). The music still has a warm-up feel to it – not fully engaged. 3:00 in and as they head into the “big-band”-style jam it still feels a little “standard.” But, hey, it’s early and the night is young.

2) Julius (cont.) – Almost 6:00 in and while they haven’t broken out of their trot, I can definitely feel the foundations begin to rumble a bit. I love Mike’s down-and-back-up bass line – seems to harken back to an older era of rhythm and blues. Vocals return for the outtro and the song feels like its not going to have anything extra to offer.

Just when they were getting started, Page introduces his father, Jack McConnell, who is coming out to sing a “Father’s Day” song.

3) Bill Bailey, Won’t You Come Home – alright, I’ll take this one song, but I hope he doesn’t pull a “Jay-Z” and tell the crowd he’ll do another one if they scream loud enough. Jack adds the “drunken-stupor” slur, for added effect. Or maybe he really is drunk? Probably not. Hmm, now he’s tap dancing. (“Hey Honey, I went to the Vaudeville Show tonight and a bunch of hippies showed up.”) The band is probably enjoying this little bit of fatherly-love. I’m ready for some Phish though.

Alright, Mr. McConnell is leaving the stage. Nice going Jack!

4) Waves – alright. Finally, they open things up a little bit with one of their best post-hiatus songs. The main guitar riff comes at me again and again, as if in wave form, lapping against the shore. Three and half minutes in and it feels like a Phish show now (a “new-millennium Phish show,” that is), with some light interplay among all-four members, although Trey still leading the ship with a directed melody. Nice thing about Waves is it doesn’t take a long time before the “surf” picks up … you don’t have to wait for it here – this song doesn’t have a jam tacked on – it IS a jam – just one with lyrics added at the very beginning. Case-in-point, the lyrics return at seven and half minutes, but only as a springboard for the jam, which at this point begins to morph out of its Type-I skin. At 10:00 I think I hear teases of Maze, but they’re not coming from Fishman, just Page and Trey. OK, definitely not a segue, just a thematic quote. The ship continues to sail on, with nice upbeat tempo.

4) Waves (cont.) – the jam continues but doesn’t take off anywhere particular – just enough to create a wake. And, with no segue/no transition, the sea calms under the gentle breezes and the song ends.

5) Gumbo – simple and fairly direct, with nothing surprising here. I would have liked to see something build out of waves, but no one’s ever complained that they got a Gumbo, and I’m not doing so here.

6) Water In the Sky – (hmm, is there rain in the forecast tonight? Perhaps it’s raining out on the lawn already?) Like Gumbo, nothing surprising to note.

7) Horn – Feeling as if they are trying to “burn off” certain songs for unknown reasons, we get another Rift-era single-shot. And that’s followed by …

8) Poor Heart – don’t want to sound as if I’m complaining, but the second set better kill.

9) Drowned – alright, it either pouring outside the shed, or it’s about to. No way they play Waves, WITS, and Drowned all three otherwise. Nonetheless, I’m glad as Drowned finally lights a small fire in this joint. A song that never disappoints, they tread across the bridge, and I begin to hope that maybe they’ll extend this set a while. My hopes answered, they break out the heavy dose of full-throttle rock-and-roll, finally. Nine minutes in and the unique segments of improv continue one after another. Twelve minutes in and they find a nice little bass groove to ride for a while. 15:00 – Trey leads the charge, with Mike following very closely on his heels, caravan-style. I almost think I hear a little DEG in this. Could it be? Nah – it’s just “one of those riffs that Trey’s been going back to for years.” Regardless, it pushes the envelope further out, allowing Page to fill the extra space. Mike and Fish are locked in the back pocket and actually push it into a higher gear as it heads towards 19:00 and hits the straightaway at mach 3. As they appear to cross the finish line around 20:00, it turns out to be just a head-fake and they push on for a victory lap, or two. As this jam winds down, I’m reminded that it now is truly set-break. After a stop-n-go start, they finished with gusto. Set II will begin in 15 minutes, so stick around.

Set II:

House lights go down and the opening notes reveal

1) Seven Below – Likes Waves, this song debuted the night that Phish returned from hiatus at MSG, and, like Waves, was last seen/heard from on 4/16 in Vegas.

1) Seven Below (cont.) – of all the Round Room-era material, -7 has taken me a while to get used to. It was very un-Phish-like at first listen. However, the early going does yield some nice tag-teaming by Trey and Page, in psychedelic fashion, before returning back to the core groove of the song. The comparisons to Waves continue, as Seven Below is not a song with a jam tacked on to the end … the song itself is a jam. At the 5:00 minute mark, they are already at That Place that years ago would have taken 10 minutes to get to. Post-hiatus Phish seems to be about jams with lyrics, rather than traditionally-styled compositions. It’s a different beast that yields amazing results when laid down correctly. Here at SPAC on night #2, as they cross the 7:00 mark, they’re laying it down like poker players at a high stakes game in Vegas. The groove is locked and loaded and they can get to just about anywhere from here. Almost ten minutes in and a primordial soup is emanating from the stage, with only the slightest form to it, ebbing, flowing, and then reforming itself again. A couple minutes later, things settle down, but the organic nature of what’s happening cannot be denied. The structure is loose but thick. The groove is there, but can’t be easily defined. You can hear the texture. There’s a tease/quote I recognize but can’t identify as they cross 14:00. They build on this down the runway and take flight. Passing the sixteen minute mark, the band is connected eight ways with Trey leading the charge again. These post-hiatus jams are shy on the peaks, but the energy is delivered in massive waves, whose troughs and peaks aren’t easily discerned. 18:00 and Trey is still at the helm. This Seven Below is probably the best jam of 2004 to this point. The tone turns down a bit, opening the door to …

2) Ghost – very slow, open, and space-funky, the tempo feels like its dragging but does allow a few small nuggets to get laced underneath the verses. At 2:30 the synth-funk appears, but only briefly, before they head through the choruses. 4:00 in and this is ghoul doesn’t seem to want to get going. Displacing the usual funky dance rhythms are ambient, mellifluous patterns that, while interesting, are bringing the pace of the show below the sustainability line.

3) Twist – starting with the same drag that Ghost left behind, Twist finally finds its form and offers some of the best stand-alone jams of 2004. It seems like they are on a track running circles, and every time they pass “Go” they start a new jam. At times, I can feel Fishman trying to push forward and faster, but Trey simply won’t follow. Thus, although there’s some unique improvisation going on, it feels slightly repetitive.

4) You Enjoy Myself – Trey’s fat fingers show up again during the intro but once they drop into the Nirvana section, we get as full a dose of true ambient psychedelia as Phish can create. Heading through the Boy/Man/God/Shit, we get a rather typical “tramps jam followed by some really nice build/peaks between 13:00 and 16:00, during which Trey finds his happy place and shreds a few fibers of my soul. Passing the baton after 16:00,
Goreaux takes center-stage for a high-register solo, and then we’re into the vocal jam, which doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. And that’s the second set.

E) Good Times Bad Times – Trey rips the opening riff of this rock classic and then hits it hard with some Page-esque solos. Page does his best Robert Plan emulation, and then Trey takes off Big Red-style for a few minutes. The Zeppelin tune returns to form for final assault on the crowd. GTBT fits into the same category as Loving Cup for stand-alone encores. Nothing else more to say.

Final thoughts – first set left me wanting more, although Drowned is about as good as it gets; second set is good, but not great, mostly because Ghost let the air out of the balloon. Taken as a double dose, with night 1, SPAC tops the previous tour stops of ‘04. Let’s hope Phish continues the ascent through the coming mid-west shows.