Found on the old rec.music.phish

by Patricia Chern

Whew! Great show at the Cabaret Metro last night! Aquarian Rescue
Unit opened, and that was the first time I'd heard them. They were
smokin'!! Definitely an appropriate band to play with Phish.
Runaway Jim
Colonel Forbin's Ascent-Icculus-Fly Famous Mockingbird
Sparkle
Reba

Maze (What a tune!!)
Bouncing
Stash
Squirming Coil
Llama

Glide
Wicked Witch-David Bowie
Foam
Tela
YEM
Chalkdust
Cracklin' Rose
Cavern
e: Home on the Train?
Big Fat Furry CFM

So now, on to the show: Very hot, great audience, lots of highlights.
During Col. Forb, when Trey went into narration, he set us on a very
long, detailed, extremely descriptive, extremely effective (I swear,
we really left the planet . . . )journey through space, "Far away
from all the rioting going on..." far away from this universe, and
finally, after this wonderful journey, we all came down to Gamehendge
at last where we spotted Col. Forbin climbing the mountain. I really
hope someone taped the show cuz this narration could put anyone into
another realm. He then did an extensive intro to Icculus, screaming
that we all had to read the HPB etc. etc. "We gave the HPB to the
Aquarian Rescue Unit, and they read it . . " The whole thing was
beautiful. This was the perfect thing for Trey to do so early in the
show, because I think everyone had a little bit of "something else"
on their minds when they came in, be it LA, finals, cars blowing up**
. . . but leave it to Trey to take care of that.

The jam after the structured instrumental part of Reba was the best
I've ever heard. The audience was visibly blown away, and even those
who knew the of whistling to come just went wild with appreciation
after it. You just had to. Everyone around me was just looking at
each other going "My God!" That was a pretty consistent thing for all
jams that followed throughout the night. Smoking. Everything.

Trey made another reference to the LAPD trial during Stash, though I
couldn't make out the words- did someone else hear exactly what he
said? He did the "Smegma" line, then "Police . . . " and changed the
words to what I assume applied, with everyone in the band looking at
him surprised, then sang "Laugh when they beat you, say please don't
do that"

Before David Bowie, they did this hilarious Wicked Witch of the West
thing. They'd break into that melody, when the Wicked Witch rides
her broom by Dorothy's window, you know "Ne nene ne Nah Nah, Ne nene
ne Nah Nah, over and over, falling down, playing 10 second jams, and
being generally Phishy whacky in between, always coming back to it.
It went on for quite some time (!) and the audience was REALLY into
it. The audience was really great last night and very responsive to
their clowning around on stage. And they did a lot of it.

The trampolines came out during YEM, and Mike pulled out a video
camera and taped while bouncing, holding it out to his right while
doing the spin around thing. Then he stopped and taped Trey bouncing,
then put it down and bounced while Trey videoed. Mike later picked
it up again later and taped Trey and Page during the climax of the
vocal jam. They were definitely having a lot of fun out there.

Tela sure has been modified since the live at Nectar's days,eh?

Have they done this Home the Train song before? I don't recall
reading about it. It was very bizarre, very Phish. A slow folk
ballad of sorts with wierd lyrics about sleeping monkeys, eventually
taken over acapella by Fish while Trey and Mike stood in homage to
him, hand over heart. Then it swung into jam with the same
slow-ballad chord progression. What is this song? They took it very
seriously, which was really funny because the lyrics were really
whacked.

During BFFCFM, the band just went wild, which wasn't surprising
considering how they'd been all night. They really got into the
strobes, as did the audidence. I think Mike might have been filming
then, too. Mike really extended all his "Why am I" stuff, going on
and on for a long time like that Spy Story he wrote a million
newsletters back, saying the same thing a zillion different ways.
"Why am I running? Why do I seem like I'm running? Why do I smell
like I'm running away?" and so on and so on. Mike was definitely at
his finest last night. He had an INCREDIBLE bass solo during YEM -
Trey put down his guitar and just stopped and watched in awe, as did
the rest of us while he went crazy. It was definitely something I
wish you all could hear.

Overall, this show was incredible because they were as whacky as I've
ever seen them live, but as tight musically as well. It seems in the
past when they get silly they lose their musicianship but that didn't
happen ANYWHERE last night. Everything was right on throughout the
night. I've become so impressed with Chris's light show that I think
he should be considered the 5th member of the band. he plays lights.
Fish! He got a voice! The crowd totally ate up Cracklin Rose.
ANYWAY, Overall, great venue, great show. No exceptions.

** At last, a sad but very lucky story: we had three carloads coming
from ND and one of them blew up on the toll road. Literally.
Completely. It was still completely in flames an hour later, with
smoke to be seen a mile away. God with them, they'd just pulled over
and they all got out minutes before, and everyone was perfectly fine,
just a little shaken. BUT, all the tickets were in the car!! Our
cars all left at different times, so two stayed back and sent the
rest to pile into one of our other cars when it passed. My car had
gotten there first and we wondered where the hell everyone was for
quite sometime but thought maybe they just skipped ARU to get
something to eat and couldn't get close to the stage once the show
started. I finally spotted them and heard the news at intermission.
Everyone was joking that the worst part of it all was the tickets
burning, paid for and useless. One must put things in perspective,
of course . . . they couldn't all find tickets outside once they
arrived so close to showtime, but there were plenty of places nearby
to hang out as it was a nice area.

And Ahhhh, a clear mind for finals . . .

Peace,
Patti