S2 Notes:
Stash fully enveloped my brain. Page unveils the spacecraft disco sound that we all know and love, that dark, wide open funk that sometimes evolves into true space cruising and orbiting, the cow-abduction-funk (sorry). Eventually, this Stash reaches a deep space object, wispy but dark, massive, and slightly foreboding, a gas giant without a star. I have a sense of inverse peaking, with all the intensity of a high energy peak but in the opposite, inward collapse vs. outward explosion way. And it’s finished, which you love to see after a swing that wide. PYITE is next, and here I am reminded of two moods I tend to be in regarding what follows the first big jam of the second set. Some nights its spacewalker, where I want to drop right back into another big jam. Other nights, its energy rider, and my emotions are a tied to the energy of the show, and can get a little fragile if hung over the edge for too long, and need structure and upbeat energy for a little bit to come back and re-center. I know, moving forward through the tour, that Phish will certainly not always provide that landing pad so early. Tonight, I was in a spacewalker mood, but this call works well for an energy rider mood, and that makes total sense, and is a great call if that’s what you need. I warmed up to Caspian, Trey’s solo felt like a cleanse, washing as waves. I have to say, I actually like the old rock ending. Bouncin’, I felt alright, it was happy, nice, like a nice walk around your own neighborhood on a sunny day. Very pleasant, easy, but familiar. Honestly, though, it felt like the set was winding down into a jukebox kind of set. Until, of course, Mike’s Groove hits. This felt like a revival for me. I could not stop head-bobbing, moving, grooving as I put things away and cleaned, headphones in. At this point, I realized that I should put out a small PSA in this time of lung-health concerns: Dry herb vaping. If you have never tried it, it’s a little different, but very familiar, and it is economical and way healthier than combustion. Google it. PSA over. This Mike’s went into a second jam, a style of jamming that I know exists throughout this tour, but what I am going to call a soma-jam for identification purposes. This was just happy, floaty, comfy, and felt colorfully wispy, like a pleasant fantastical dream. Revisited Brave New World last week (not Brave New World: Revisited), fresh on the mind, check it out if you are bored and on this website. Hydrogen fit perfectly here. “Of course,”, you say, “that’s the standard Mike’s Groove”. Yeah, but there are also other sandwiches, and this one needed the straight Hydrogen after that second jam, you know? Weekapaug was just straight rocking, and that is what I needed at that point. It built to a really great peak. This was the peak of the song and, in terms of energy, the set. (Yes, Stash was MVP) This is something that is characteristic of many Fall ’97 sets, especially second sets, this idea that the set itself flows like a jam, building to this high peaking moment, the apogee in the waveform. Loving Cup was a great upbeat encore, and it was probably the right call. It was a great tour opener, a great sign of things to come, they didn’t owe anything more than a rocker encore like that, and it’s a fun one. The Rolling Stones reference in Las Vegas seems fitting to me in some sense.