Weirdest Phish Show Ever

Phish Live Shows
#29

This may not look like the weirdest show, but if you’ve ever heard this YEM, you know exactly what I’m talking about…I don’t really know how to explain it…it starts out as YEM, but the jam is something unlike Phish had ever done before…I can’t explain it to you, you just have to hear it.

10-14-95 Austin Music Hall, Austin, TX

Sound Check: Dog Log

1: AC/DC Bag, Cars Trucks Buses, Kung, Free, Sparkle, Stash, Catapult, Sparkle, Acoustic Army, It’s Ice, Tela, Runaway Jim

2: Reba, Rift, You Enjoy Myself*, Hello Ma Baby, Scent Of A Mule, Cavern

E: A Day In the Life

*With Medeski Martin and Wood, and Dominic Falco on trumpet. Trey played both guitar and mini drum set up front. Mike played bass and some kind of horn at the end of the jam. Fish played vaccum and trombone. Billy Martin played Fish’s drums. Medeski and Page played keyboards and Page did vocal jamming at the end. Chris Wood played a bizzare one string stand up bass with a bow.

Also, on 10/17/95 MMW came out after a strange Suzy Greenberg > Keyboard Kalvary and proceeded to jam for a very long time. I don’t know if it was a MMW “song” or what the hell it was, but those two nights are very special in terms of Phish pushing for that jam that just can’t happen every night. Those two shows are vital to anyone who is a fan of experimental phish…it really doesn’t get more experimental except for one other show…which also could be the weirdest…

No one has mentioned 6/22/95 THE FLEEZER?! They went out there and played a whole set of Tweezer (basically)…this hadn’t ever been done before with any song, so I imagine, at the time, people would have thought that it was the weirdest show ever.

#30

I can pretty much agree with that

#31

weirdest Phish show i ever went to…

[color=red][size=133]08-14-97 Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, Darien Center, NY

Soundcheck: Buffalo Bill, The Old Home Place, Funky Bitch

1: Ya Mar, Funky Bitch, Fluffhead, Limb By Limb, Free, Cars Trucks Buses, Tela, Train Song, Billy Breathes, Run Like an Antelope

2: Chalk Dust Torture, Love Me*, Sparkle, Harry Hood, Colonel Forbin’s Ascent > Merry Pranksters’ Bozo Madness#-> Camel Walk, Taste

E: Bouncing Around the Room, Rocky Top

*For Elvis Week. #This segment was dominated by the stage presence of Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters. Colonel Forbin doesn’t meet Icculus this time but rather finds “Ken Uncle Sam Bozo Kesey” (or something near that). At this time Kesey, dressed as Uncle Sam, appears on the stage and accounces that the Bozos have been missing for two years but are on Phish tour now. He calls one by one the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and Frankenstein (Phish breaks into “Frankenstein”) to help him find the Bozos, which soon appear as four white things in costume. After singing about the Bozos which are doing interpretive dance, the Pranksters all leave the stage after Kesey hears the “Bozo Mockingbird”. Trey comments that this is what happens “after you do too much acid 30 years later…” Phish had been playing background music (including McGrupp and Ghost teases) which had developed by this point into a deep funk jam. Trey announces that “we are supposed to start ‘Famous Mockingbird’, but the funk is too deep.” The band continues the funk jam and eventually segues into “Camel Walk.” [/size]

The Bozo Rap was some serious creepy insane shit. It almost was a little much.

#32

Actually if we are talking about setlists arguably the weirdest stuff went on pre- 87

04-01-86 Hunt’s Festival of Fools, Burlington, VT

1: Quinn the Eskimo, Have Mercy-> Harry Hood-> Dave’s Energy Guide, The Pendulum*, Jam#, Icculus, You Enjoy Myself

2: Help on the Way-> Slipknot!-> AC/DC Bag, McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters, Alumni Blues, Dear Mrs. Reagan, Not Fade Away^

*Trey says, “That was the Bob Dylan Band. Don’t ask which one is Bob, though.” #With Zenzile, a poet from South Africa who may have been a student at Goddard College. ^Featured members of The Joneses, with whom Phish alternated sets.

talk to me about weird

#33

Im surprised no on has mentioned the “letter M show” where every song (just about) starts with 'M" i think joh popper comes out at one point. then they say, “tonight show was brought to you by the letter m and the number 420”. not the greatest show, but pretty damn odd. i forget the date.

#34

What about the set from I believe the Lemonwheel where every song was in the Key of D

#35

my bad

09-29-99 Pyramid Arena, Memphis, TN

1: Runaway Jim > Free, Driver, Taste, Dirt, Nellie Kane, Stash*, Theme from the Bottom, Tweezer Reprise

2: Gotta Jiboo, Also Sprach Zarathustra > Down with Disease, Billy Breathes, Get Back on the Train, Mike’s Song -> Catapult -> Mike’s Song -> Kung -> Mike’s Song > I Didn’t Know** > Weekapaug Groove

E: Cities***

The crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to Trey prior to the show. *With “Can’t Turn You Loose” tease to end the song. Then Trey announced a contest for 4 tickets and backstage passes to a show (and, jokingly, a date with Fish). The question was other than “Driver,” what do all the songs played in the first set (including the last two) have in common? The answer was they’re all in the key of D, and the winner was announced on the PA at setbreak. “Happy Birthday” to Trey was sung by some fans down front, prompting a short “Happy Birthday” tease by the band. **With Fish on vacuum. ***Alternate lyric: “Memphis, Home of Elvis and the Rendevous Bar-B-Que.”

#36

1-1-00 big cypress…wtf is w/ the crowd cahtning cheesecake???

[/scarcasm]

#37

similar situation (maybe) with dave chapelle. where everyone around him never said anything bad or critiqued his show/performances, they always said it was funny. leading him to not know who to trust in his inner-circle, leading to a breakdown of the whole thing…

needing to tear the whole thing down, and start with fresh support and objective point-of-views. perhaps something phish needs…

sorry to get off the subject:
Weirdest Show
my vote goes for 2/20/93. if i was there, i wouldn’t have survived.

#38

I would agree that the Farm Aid is the weirdest I’ve seen. They just seemed a bit out of sorts. Much of the crowd was disgusted with them, and it made for a very “unbreezy” vibe around us. There were only 3 of us jammin out, and getting very odd looks from the older folk around us.

#39
#40

cheers! here here!

#41

^^ Brett, any show you attend is weird! :wink: Here is another Weird one. Fillmore 98. probably the weirdest ticket sale ever anyway. so i call my brother one day in Late Aug or early Sep.
I tell him Mr.X called me and told me about a show Phish would be doing before the Bridgeschool shows. this show would be a the Fillmore in San Francisco. So i get a call from him a time later and he tells me that the local radio station will be announcing a special ticket sale location tomorrow morning at 10 am. Then the tickets would go on sale at 11 am. So my brother camps out somewhere in SF and waits for the announcement. It comes and they tell everyone to get to a specific pier at the Wharf. So my bro starts haulin ass to get there. He’s passin up old VW busse’s with sticker’s on em and speedin and shit. Anyhow he get’s there and get’s ticket’s for us. They were not really tix but special voucher’s good for 2 admissions to the show. What a mess he said it was but everyone kept there cool west coast style and he and i were rewarded.
Now the show was damn cool and in a place that small with all that history did not hurt either. There were a bunch of Elektra suits up in that bitch which made it a very segregated crowd. It was a strange experience but with a lil molly it all got nice quick!

#42

Bonner Springs in what…99?? Rained to the high heavens… They opened with a great BathTub Gin…

Wow…

#43

10/31/94 . Being 19, on a tab of LSD , with all the costumes( I remember Mound,The Wedge,Sparkle and Lawnboy as some of my favorites), The White album, the music ,the lights…Madness I tell you. Complete madness.

In the end, it all caught up to me. Young,dumb and out of control, I wound up puking my brains out and spent the 2nd half of the enitre show in the mens room

#44

mound, wedge and lawn boy??? damn those mushrooms i ate really were powerful!!! :o

#45

^Not the songs…but the costumes…but then again they coulda just been regular folk and what I was on was even more potent than I thought.

#46

Other than Cypress, this show might be the answer to the question "If I could choose 1 show to go back in time (while having an ample supply of pot, beer, and whatever drugs I might need) and see Phish perform, which would it be? HUGE Beatles fan, although I really enjoy the VU set as well.

#47

i liked the lawn boy costume the best…i’m surprised he didn’t win!

#48

8-10-97 had a very bizzarre second set.