10-12-94 Orpheum Theatre, Memphis, TN

Wednesday, 10/12/1994 Orpheum Theatre, Memphis, TN

Set 1: My Friend, My Friend, Reba, The Sloth, Poor Heart, Split Open and Melt, The Lizards, Guelah Papyrus, Julius, Sweet Adeline

Set 2: Peaches en Regalia, David Bowie, Bouncing Around the Room, Scent of a Mule, You Enjoy Myself, Nellie Kane[1], Foreplay/Long Time, Harry Hood, Sample in a Jar

Encore: Good Times Bad Times

[1] Acoustic.

Notes: Nellie Kane was performed acoustic.

This is one of those shows that I think is probably not flaunted more because there were never sbds floating around, because this show is amazing. One of the better shows I’ve heard from start to finish. I love a My Friend opener and they follow it with a great Reba. Fish turns his snares off for a portion of the jam and it adds a cool effect to what they’re doing. The Melt is an absolute scorcher and I love the Melt/Lizards juxtaposition. It goes from dark scary intensity immediately to serene calypso. Very nice. The Trey solo in Julius is also bitchin.

Peaches to open set 2 is fucking awesome and they start up Bowie straight away. This Bowie…oh this Bowie. Okay, maybe I’m partial because Bowie is probably my favorite Phish tune, but everybody should hear this. It clocks in at about 17 min and it does not have an extended hi-hat intro, but just tons of dark and nasty jamming in the middle. Trey and Page hook up on this really serene melody right at the beginning of the jam and it somehow winds it’s way into this sinister sounding madness and it culminates quite nicely with Fish doing these really big tom-roll crescendos before they all bust into the ending Bowie riffs simultaneously. Oh yeah then there’s the rest of set 2. The YEM is the bees-knees, I miss how they used to bring everything to such a low volume while Trey would play these awesome runs. Very cool version. It’s always a bummer that you can sometimes not hear the un-amped acoustic stuff but oh well. The Hood is also very nice and they bring it way down before bringing it back up to the climax. Even the guitar solo at the end of Sample has tons of energy. Then GTBT encore back when Trey’s chops would make you go :astonished:

This is one of my favorite shows from 1994 that I’ve listened to as I go through the year. And that’s saying a lot, because summer 94 has lots of great shows/jams.