Very much looking forward to Wolfman’s and ensuing pleasures. I think I almost drove off the road the first time I listened to it.
Clifford Ball day 2! I remember the break between set 1 and 2 being unbearable. But we ate some nice stromboli! The curtain is coming!
winding down the night with 6.23.04, the beginning of set 2.
For some reason this show was special to me. I was within ten rows of the band, but the playing wasn’t particularly inspired. the first half of set 2 was pretty damn cool and memorable though. I think it was because it was my first show of the summer, knowing I was beginning the last tour and it would be over after 8 more shows. (Hampton wasn’t announced yet).
11-02-96 Coral Sky Ampitheatre, West Palm Beach, FL
1: Ya Mar, Julius, Fee, Taste, Cavern, Stash, Lizards, Free, Johnny B. Goode
2: Crosseyed and Painless-> Run Like an Antelope, Waste, Harry Hood, A Day in the Life, Sweet Adeline
E: Funky Bitch*
Karl Perazzo (percussionist from Santana) played the entire show. *With Butch Trucks (Allman Brothers) on drums and Fish on Trey’s mini-kit.
12-30-99 Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation, FL
2: Wilson, The Curtain > Tweezer -> Taste, Meat, Golgi Apparatus, Wolfman’s Brother, Gotta Jiboo, Harry Hood, Good Times Bad Times (1:35)
3: Chalk Dust Torture, The Moma Dance, Run Like an Antelope, The Sloth, When The Circus Comes, Mike’s Song > Simple -> I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove++ (1:20)
E: Boogie On Reggae Woman > Tweezer Reprise (0:10)
^ the first set was nothing to sneeze at even with the Chief:
1: Water in the Sky, Light Up or Leave Me Alone^, Suzie Greenberg, Corrine Corrina, Limb By Limb, +Che Hun Ta Mo*, Big Alligator Song*, Possum, Farmhouse, Ghost, Ya Mar, Character Zero (1:39)
There hasn’t been a BC release yet from LivePhish, right?
I pull this show out at least 3-4 times a year. I love the first set especially. A hard rockin YEM jam with a vocal jam that seques into the Rift that follows. The DWD just carried the energy up to the next level. What a powerful version of this song without the need to be very long at all. Yessiree, great set altogether.
I’m floating back and forth through the two Island Tour shows I saw, 4/3/98 Nassau, and 4/4/98 Providence, and feeling incredibly lucky that I got to hear some of the great playing that occurred throughout these shows.
The Brother from 4/4 is just starting up behind me, flowing out of an improptu little vocal jam that ended the 2001. The jammed out BOAF that started this set was pretty cool as well.
I listened to the Ghost through the Hood yesterday morning because these also were pretty solid, albeit not nearly their best, versions of these songs. Even with some spikes and lulls interspersed throughout, the Island Tour as a whole was characteristically good playing from Phish. There were many performances throughout 98 that were nothing short of brilliant.
No one song epitomizes this as much as the Carini Antelope from 4/3/98, the song I listened to this morning on my drive into work. I also have to hear this song and the following encore at least 4 times a year or more. And the fricken thing about it is that I’m totally amazed by it over and over.
They were so uncannily atuned to one another on stage, picking up and running with jams with the natural precision of a championship team in any sport you can comprehend in this way. They conversed, with their instruments, in sounds, “speaking” to one another at incredible speeds, expressing incredible emotions, taking chances at every turn, barely holding onto a musical thread, but doing it, as easily, and as casually as talking to your friend on the phone about something cool that just happened to you.
And their jamming prowess most always follows good execution of the composition as well. It’s not ever a pre-requisite of a great jam, but so often, when they recognize, at the start of the song, that each of them are really into it, they respond to it. Sometimes they start hitting changes better, the tempos stay strong, and sometimes they begin to play with the composition a little bit, reaching out for little twists here and there.
It gets easy to tell the difference between Phish playing a song, and actually meaning the song. A great example of this point is the Loving Cup and Carini Antelope. Phish played Loving Cup, but they meant Run Like An Antelope.
Time to get to work. Sorry for the meanderings, but listening to Phish generally makes me meander.
The “lights out” Antelope from 04-03 is one of my most vivid memories from seeing the band.
4-03-1998 II is, and always will be, my favorite set of Phish.
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^yeah. there was something so unbelievably special about that second set. I’ve never come close to a musical memory as strong as that one. Pink Floyd rising out of the stage in a fog of smoke at Radio City Music Hall as they played Obscured By Clouds was pretty close, though.
Damn the Coliseum was a dynamo of energy during that second set, wasn’t it? There was an overpowering sense of magic in the air, people were buzzing, almost glowing with it. So hard to explain.
Agreed.
The encore was so fitting, too.
Especially the Halley’s > Reprise.
After the initial “WTF?” over the Reprise subsided, it just felt appropriate.
If you’ve seen the vids since then, you can visibly see how pumped Trey is playing it.
Now those are the moves from someone that KNOWS that they just tore the roof off!
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^I don’t need to see the videos. The memory of him dancing triumphantly around that stage while building the Tweeprise energy for an absoultely astounded crowd is still as vivid in my head as the night it happened.
And to link the two halves of the Island Tour in that way was a brilliant stroke. He knew it, they knew it, we all knew it and celebrated right along with him. I don’t think there was anyone in Providence the night after who didn’t know Tweezer was going to start the show.
6-22-00 Amsouth Amphitheatre, Antioch, TN
Soundcheck: Jam -> Back on the Train, First Tube, Uncle Pen, Billy Breathes, You Shook Me All Night Long
1: First Tube, Wolfman’s Brother*, Beauty of My Dreams, Golgi Apparatus, Limb by Limb, Bug, Poor Heart, Roggae, Chalkdust Torture
2: Gotta Jibboo, Also Sprach Zarathustra > Sand, Harry Hood -> Dog Faced Boy -> Harry Hood**, I’m Blue I’m Lonesome***, Hold Whatcha Got***#, Uncle Pen***, Freebird##
E: You Enjoy Myself
*With “Inna Gadda Da Vida” ending. **With Ronnie McCoury on mandolin, Rob McCoury on banjo, and Sam Bush on fiddle. ***With the Del McCoury on guitar, Ricky Skaggs on mandolin, Mike Bub on bass, and Jason Carter on fiddle (in addition to those already on stage; thus, the Del McCoury Band plus Sam Bush and Ricky Skaggs). #First time played; Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys cover. ##With Wynonna Judd (who announced that it was the one year anniversary of her divorce settlement, and that she wanted to celebrate) on vocals, Sam Bush on fiddle, and Ronnie McCoury on mandolin; also some guy was dancing while wearing Wynnona’s scarf; full band arrangement (not a cappella).
Very true, I just wasn’t listening to it in that session, so I didn’t add it. It was great how welcoming he was, must have been a blast for them to play in front of so many people.
FWIW, I’m streaming from Sugarmegs and this show just happens to be SBD!
6-25-95 The Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, PA
1: Ya Mar-> AC/DC Bag, Taste, Theme From the Bottom, If I Could-> Sparkle, The Divided Sky, I Didn’t Know, Split Open and Melt
2: Maze, Sample in a Jar, Scent of a Mule, Mike’s Song-> Why Don’t We Do It in the Road-> HYHU-> Jam->Weekapaug Groove, Amazing Grace, Cavern
E: Bouncing Around the Room-> Slave to the Traffic Light
It’s FM sourced, but doesn’t sound too hissy.
Great show all around!
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Hartford 97! Do That Stuff!
I hopped on at Hartford.
'Twas good stuff…
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Arrgh! I ran out of loot after Hampton and had to go back home to recoop funds before Worcester.
The Tweezer opener was a sign of good things to come!
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