1998-11-20 Hampton, VA

 Playing night 1 of Hampton Comes Alive for the first time right now (seriously doing this "release order" archive shows run )

I've listened to only 2 or 3 Fall '98 shows and mostly have been scared off by the "strange" looking setlists

Very excited to get some more Fall '98 under my belt! I'm aware of the more "party" vibe of these shows and the mass of covers as opposed to them being giant musical signposts. I'm going in with a clean slate hoping to have my face melted.


11/20/98 Hampton

Rock and Roll Part 2 - I know 1998 was "The Year of the Cover", but did anyone see this coming (or friggin' Rhinoceros for that matter?!). Great opener bit to get the crowd pumped!

Tube - Very short and VERY sweet. A good candidate to put on a "non-album songs" fake-album. Too short to really get going enough to make it list-worthy - I mean, it's short. Still great though!

Quinn The Eskimo - Great fun! FIRST SINCE 1987!!! Great to hear it sung by Mike. I can't recall offhand but aren't those 2012 versions I've heard recently sung by Trey? This definitely get the positive vibe going and keeps the PARTY feel from Tube. Pretty awesome! I mean, it's not anything better than your typical 2012 rager version of Loving Cup, but this was a bustout, no? And to get it as song 3 of the show is great.

Funky B - Keeping The Party Going, Vol. 4 Not the overplayed beast it would become in early 3.0 (as awesome as EVERY one of those versions is....), it's nice to hear it "fresh" when they hadn't completely figured out how to make every version sound the same. It's not really anything special OVERALL, but like Quinn, it just has a little extra sauce tonight and again, wasn't this kinda a bustout for the era? So points for that. A merry time was had by all! EDIT: Funky B was absolutely NOT any sort of rarity by this point, but it's still weird for me to hear a 1.0 version after so many 3.0 ones

Guelah Papyrus - Great setlist choice!!! Really nothing special about this version though.

Rift - Good version, but nothing special for the period. Less fire than expected but still expertly performed! Fishman is without a doubt the MVP on it though. He is just annihilating that drum set!

Meat - One of my favorite "deep" cuts (no pun intended ). Always great to hear. For the final minute, the song drifts into ambience, ala your typical 2012 song ending. Good version, not really anything special still.

Stash - YUCK! EW! WORST INTRO BUTCHER EVER! GROSS! PUKETASTIC! YUCK!! Thankfully this seems to have spurred them on and the song portion is terrific. Extremely dynamic playing tonight and this is one of the best performances of the song I can think of as far as little unique fills, enthusiasm and just overall extra oomph! Hard to explain without hearing it. Somewhere around 6:45 or so it sounds like a jam starts to develop with Page and Trey slowly beginning to stray outside the "lines" of the song. Fishman and Gordo get in on the action as well and we are officially doing a slow launch into something deeper. But then at 8 minutes Trey plays around with the Stash theme a bit keeping us firmly in Type I itching to go Type II territory. They are just walking that tightrope but refusing to take the plunge! By 9:20 things have finally begun to PEAK and the real raging commences! Even the crowd picks up on this and they elicit and audible roar!!! By 10:20 all four members of the band are absolutely strangling their instruments, just smashing this Stash into friggin' pieces. How they manage to make listenable NOISE while remaining IN KEY is one the greatest things ever By 12:30 they cap it off and Stash is no more. An absolutely terrific Stash. If I wasn't this tired tonight I'd probably rave about it even more. A great example of a version that COULD have gone into a massive Type II beast easily but didn't need to in the end. Terrific Jamming Restraint on this one. A+ Stash!

Train Song - Perfect cool down!! For real, talk about a good spot after having our faces melted by Stash, haha. Absolutely delicate in the best way. Allllmmmooossstttt list-worthy, but not quite. Train Song is Train Song. Every version is like this. Still great!

Possum - Rages as usual, but Trey does a lot of interesting "pattern"-based playing that makes this notable compared to other Possum's. Worth a listen!

Roggae - Just sublime and gorgeous. Check out Cactus tearing it up!!! A+ Roggae all the way around. Just POWERFUL!

Driver - Ooh, a nice "rarity" again (not really for the time, but overall). But like Train Song, Driver is Drive. Good as always but nothing special.

Split Open and Melt - Around 4:30 the jam begins with Trey allowing some feedback for a few seconds. Fishman keeps the Melt rhythm going but Page, Trey and Gordo all latch onto a new repeating motif on top of it. At 5:30 the dynamics start to occur with Page pounding away on the piano while Trey plays subtly with the wah. By 6 minutes Fishman begins to deviate greatly from the Melt rhythm, keeping the time signature but altering the parts being played. By this point Trey is just politely soloing on top of the "bed" that the other three are putting down. But I mean you could say the exact same three about the other three guys at this point as well. By 7:30 Fishman start throwing in some cymbal accents that signal another "section" of the jam. This jam is evolving slowly, still rooted in the Melt rhythm overall. But by 8 minutes things are slowly beginning to drift a little bit sideways. Pure Type 1.5 Territory. By 9 minutes Trey's soloing is getting a little bolder and hotter with the overall intensity of the jam slowly beginning to ramp up second by second. It's like someone is turning up the oven heat, one degree at a time. It's getting hotter, but it's taking it's damn time! By 10 minutes Trey has begun his psychedelic shredding like we are heading for a 12/6/97-style meltdown again!!!! Crazy delay and backwards guitars abound!!!! The other three guys are just tearing it up, all great in their own way, but Trey is clearly Lead Soloist during this portion. This all goes on for a while and it feels like the jam never truly PEAKS. It gets darn hot but never feels "finished" to me. An odd feeling. But they do bring it to a natural conclusion point so I give points for a "proper" ending. An excellent Melt on the whole, but as with Stash, it really just "bubbles under" rather than reaches Volcanic Eruption status. Very interesting.



All in all, set 1 was very enjoyable!! It played out about as I expected. I'd say Stash, Roggae and Melt are THE main highlights to grab. The set flowed way better than I expected though!!! Played right through like an assembled playlist. I know Trey abandoned setlists by this point, but does anyone know if he "constructed" these 2 shows? Seriously, the set flow was perfect!

Great first set! Definitely go in with no expectations and ride the Vibe Train.  

Set 2

Bathtub Gin - Lots of VERY different piano playing from Page during the verses!! Never heard a Gin with piano fills like this!!! Sick! Bring it on, Leo! Somewhere around 6 minutes or so the Type I begins. Love how audible Mike is on this recording. Every live Phish release should have a mix like this. It's PERFECT. Like listening to a Rush album or something. Back to Gin, some awesome Page soloing around 7:15 and Trey is still showing restraint. Fishman is slowly amping up the energy with each passing minute. Cactus is absolutely tearing it up - seriously, he's just going all John Entwistle on this sucker at points. AND I CAN HEAR HIM FOR ONCE! Something changes around 8:45. There is a some "switch" that gets flicked, so to speak, and the jam just begins to liftoff seriously. Page is still going absolutely bonkers as well as Mike and Fishman. Really, Trey is the one laying back the MOST on this Gin!!! Ah yea, Cactus, hit those bass effects around 10 minutes! AND THE INTENSITY KEEPS BUILDING!!! Seriously, Fishman keeps amping it up more and more and more and MORE!!!! Around 10:30 the boys hit a massive raging peak and I swear I can hear the crowd cheering way in the background. This Gin is SUPER TENSE in a great way! Feels like when I'm hopped up on Adderall and Caffeine! By 11 minutes Trey is focusing on repeating motifs and licks and everyone else is just POUNDING away on their respective instruments. Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if Page broke a few keys on this Gin, holy crap. For the last minute or 2, the guys slowly begin to de-escalate from the volcanic-eruption peak they just tackled. The ending of this Gin is like the slow relaxing exhale after a long day at work when you get home, kick off your shoes, and just go "AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" FRIGGIN A+ WORLD-DESTROYING GIN!!!! Doesn't go super out-there, but it DEMOLISHES everything in it's path. Best performance of the show so far!!!

Piper - And it's 1998, so of course we have to go from the quiet outro into a Piper because what else? Not complaining! Love me a good slow-build Piper (the best kind!). This one rises quietly from the ashes of that titanic Gin. Like a monster waking up slowly, cracking one eye open at a time, stretching out and relaxing before getting up to kill. Golly, the acceleration and gradual intensity increase on this Piper is SO perfect. The first vocals don't even occur until 3:45!!! As with most Pipers of this vintage, it proceeds to do exactly as you expect it to and overall isn't super special, it's just done SO perfectly well!! Great little "sleeper" Piper! Love the "come down" for the last 30 seconds before launching into....

Axilla - Is Axilla. Is good. Isn't even super hot, really. Just ok!

Roses are Free - For some reason I had low expectations but was rewarded with an excellent version!!! Definitely list-worthy, imo. Just a terrific straightforward reading.

Farmhouse - Works surprisingly good coming out of the chill down of Roses. A nice slow "decline" in intensity over several songs instead of going from a rager straight into this. A great "little" version. Love the effects on Trey's soloing (Leslie?). Really great!!!

Gettin' Jiggy With It - WITH A VACUUM CLEANER BEATBOX! Absolutely terrible in the best way, the way that only Phish can do. Almost as terrible as Trey's Las Vegas 2004 dance routine! You never you never needed to hear Fishman rap until hearing this. Must've been a blast in person though. So much fun, haha.

Harry Hood - Magical! @Harry Hood , any thoughts on this one? Just beautiful!!!!!!! On another night I'd write a big thing about this one but it was seriously fantastic. A+

Character Zero - Is CZ. Rages

Cavern - Is Cavern.Well, not really. It's got Carl from the Great Country Horns!



Maybe this is just the vibe of fall 1998 that I'm not aware of due to listening to this show "out of context", but a lot of the songs felt like they didn't reach full potential. Not that the performances were poor or "ripcorded". But there was a definite vibe of "there is more in the tank than they are letting out" and I don't know if I'm crazy for thinking that or not. Things like Tube and Roses and that Stash....Great stuff but it was like they just did not care to make a musical statement tonight (even though there were a lot of them! ). An odd show in a way! Highly enjoyable and an absolutely FUN listen, as we all know. Just interesting to compare it to other shows is all!!! It was definitely a good show and I can see me giving it a listen again down the line some time!

The Gin, Stash, Roggae and Harry Hood are the definite highlights if you were to press me