In to work late today at 1030 so Im at the ""morning hype has subsided now im chilling" part of my day
The "1998" section of my day, if you will 
So, skipping out of order from my "OG Live Phish Vol. 1-20" series of
reviews I got distracted from 2 years ago, we jump ahead to Volume
17....
This review will be short it's hard to say anything noteworthy
about a lot of songs in 1.0 shows considering the base level of
excellence of most of them. It's like "well that was great and that was
great too and that was also great!!!" By modern Phish standards
everything would be highlight worthy.....
7/15/98 Portland
Set 1
Fresh off the summer euro tour, the band slowly glides into a lovely
Wolfman to start the show. Very laid back, though it gets COOKIN in the
back half. Nothing special, but know it's excellent.
Water In the Sky is next and I swear it just feels perfectly placed! Youll go "oh crap, that WORKS!" Great stuff.
I'm sure this review will be shorter than most - considering this
is 1.0, even average readings of songs are still excellent on the whole,
so differentiating between an average excellent version and a true must
hear rendition is a little trickier than with modern shows, make
sense??
After the excellent Water, comes a terrific 10 minute Moma. Basically
Wolfmans counterpart, its nothing that special but is just overall
REALLY NICE in the smoothest way. Good stuff. Hell, the vocals dont even
come in until after the 5 minute mark!!
Guyuute is flawless. What is there to say? Horn is a nice little
surprise. Horn is Horn, but out of it comes maybe the first must hear
piece of the night. The song ends and they slowly morph into this really
beautiful kind of hazey, atmospheric bliss jam. Total late night,
starry sky ambience....just beautiful.... Slow building, growing from
quiet peace up into a powerful kind of climax. This kind of stuff is why we Phish. Awesome.
And then Trey "ruins" the mood and rips us into a burning 9 minute
Chalkdust. Typically killer reading, it kinda sticks out in this
otherwise chill set. Still excellent though!!
Following lovely readings of Beauty and Brian and Robert we get the next
must hear of the night. Cars, Trucks, Buses is loaded with extra rocket
sauce. Check out Page's piano soloing - it's extra jazzy in a way that I
have never heard out of this song. And then slowly it gets harder
rocking until Trey is eventually on the wall pedal ripping it up. I'm
calling this a genuine must here it's pretty dang sick.
Roggae is gorgeous as ever, this one sounding almost hypnotic. Nothing much to say, it's great. 
Following Roggae, Trey gives a lengthy little speech regarding all the
new songs that are playing and how they just recorded a new album prior
to the recent European tour. "F-ck it, we'll play some new songs!" Lol
And indeed they do, moving the set onward with a killer version of Birds
of a Feather. It's so cool to hear the song played very similarly to
the album rendition, with lots of dynamics in the playing, as opposed to
the straight up rager versions of later years. Great stuff.
The set concludes with a really excellent, and borderline must here in
my opinion, version of Loving Cup. Hot but laid back at the same time.
It rips as usual but has such a subtly groovy kind of....flow to it.
Wonderful.
All in all, I generally really enjoyed this set from start to
finish. No covers like this summer tour would be known for in the
future, plenty of new material, a wide VARIETY of material....As expected from 1998, the set is chill as hell but, but more in that
perfectly laid-back kind of way rather than a sleepy way. Plenty of
heat, counter balanced out with groovy flowing vibes.
Id say the Horn outro jam, Cars and Loving Cup are must hear, but
Wolfman, Moma, Chalkdust and Birds are all worth checking out as well.
Set 2
Really interesting and unique choice of a 13 minute Limb By Limb to open
the second set! It's a genuinely terrific type 1 reading, good enough
that I'm going to call it must hear. Just gooey and hot and flowing and
powerful. Really killer reading.
After a brief minute or so of outro ambience it moves awkwardly into an
excellent as well type 1 Simple. Really great stuff working as a perfect
one to punch with Limb.
Great start to the set! And it only gets better from here, when we launch into a 17 minute Tweezer! And its obviously fantastic as expected. Following
the typically unhinged 90s reading of the song, it immediately drops
into a spacey, quasi ambient groove. Gordo and Fishman holding down the
fort while Trey and Page layer synths and loopers and whale sirens atop.
Very sick. After a groovy long while it gets a head of steam and slowly
moves into a more rocking direction for a bit before winding up in the
super funky stew kinda jam you expect from the song. Its hard to
describe - its like a subtle 3 act play kind of jam. The kind you just
sink into like a comfy sofa and let wash over you. Killer.
In a really awesome/awful ripcord/trainwreck moment, Trey actually
picked up on a cool moment with which to make a transition out of the
jam, leading into Free. It was actually a really creative and unseen
kind of transition that would have worked amazingly. Unfortunately,
Fishman seems totally startled and completely drops the ball, dropping
out and ruining the segue entirely, lol.
Free, as a result, takes a long time to settle in, completely nerve racked by that horrendous disaster of a transition, lol.
Fear not though, as the song goes on to deliver a STELLAR performance!
Utterly kick ass, the usual Free wah abuse soloing is 10/10 and blazing
hot. Eventually it somehow starts to get more rhythmic and groovy - when the cowbell comes out its game on!!! The
jam gets funky but also kinda... tropical? Beachy? Either way its
absolutely SICK and must hear regardless. A freaking COOL version!!!
The set then continues with the slowest, goopiest Meat Ive ever heard. No, seriously. Meat is a slow song and this version is almost at half speed, lol. Meat is merely a little interlude however with the set concluding with Harry Hood.
Must hear. A terrific slow burn version in line with the rest of the
show, the extra relaxed nature of this version adds a whole nother level
of magic to it, just flowing like butter and with a wonderful peak.
Hell yes. Grab this sucker!
Slightly disappointing encore of Circus into Tweeprize.
All in all this is a fantastic show. I'd probably rate it like a
4.3 or something. For set two, Limb, Tweezer, Free and Hood are all must
hear.
Classic show is classic, enough said. Nothing else really needs to be said!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment