At Hartford, the setlists looked comically over-the-top like someone else, some great fan, or group of phans, or the Green Team wrote an All-Star Setlist. Thankfully, after seeing each song pop up on the Internet as the show progressed and salivating and hoping that the show was as incredible as it looked on paper (remember rule #1: for the most part, setlists don’t mean shit on the improv circuit), the tapes offered the proof: Punk Rock Phish was back, if only for a fleeting moment on August 14, 2009.
Hartford is the only Phish show since Hampton that I have listened to more than once. There is a profound sense of rule-breaking, excellent group mind playing, communion with the audience, and just plain fun going on here from the first set’s ridiculous one-two-three jab-right cross-uppercut sequence of “PYITE,” “AC/DC Bag,” and “NICU,” to the following “Colonel Forbin’s>Mockingbird” sequence without narration that was quickly ratified when Trey playfully lectured the audience in the second set. Elsewhere, a triumphantly weird (is that description of the combo possible?) “Stash” serves as a bridge between “Lawn Boy” and “I Didn’t Know” reminding one and all that a) the band is cheesy, and b) they can all sing pretty well, too. (I’ll throw you a melodic bone, Fish.)
However, the second set, when one was following the show on-line as the songs would be posted on the screen, looked even better. Indeed, the setlist looked completely fake. Or, Phish had decided to play another “If the World Ended Tomorrow, Could We End it on a High & Mighty Note?” gig that is critical for a band to remember. A band, at any level, needs to hit the stage like no one knows who they are and they have something to prove. The crowd needs to be critical and opinions should be based on the music currently being played, and not any past notions of what Phish once did from ’85-‘04.
At Hartford, Phish had been coming off two rather lackadaisical shows, and perhaps they knew that. Doesn’t matter much. They play one night; they play another; ever onwards. Perhaps, they finally had something to prove again. Doesn’t matter much. What matters is that Phish played one of their greatest versions of “Slave to the Traffic Light” in the middle of an epic second set in August of 2009. Later, Phish concucted that magical bit of wacky weirdness and sense of glorious wonder that had been missing in 2009 with a Pong-game theme that ran from “Piper” through “Icculus” and fed into a fine yet unpredictably off-balance run through “YEM,” their crown jewel.
To wrap up all of this madness with a thematically-taut thesis conclusion, I once read an interview with Jimmy Page (influencer of said Phish; influencee of the late Les Paul) in 1979 where he stated that the punk rock movement was filled with passion and rock needed a good kick in the nuts in the late 70s to shake complacency from its foundation. But what got the Zeppelin leader perplexed was that with every revolution, one needed to see where those who would be in power would be going. What was their agenda? If you ain’t got a plan, then who are you to destroy the Emperor?
I liked the Hartford show because, for the first time in 2009, I could see where Phish was going after the revolution: they want to take chances, but they also don’t want to lose the audience’s interest while they are experimenting with tearing down the 4th wall. It’ll be interesting to see if Phish can continue to do that without having a noticeable generation gap between the artists on stage, who have already painfully and through countless experiences, mastered the art of transition from peasant to prince to king to wretched self-abuse to redeemed soul, and back to the throne, more cautious and aware of their inevitable mortal fate, and the audience, some of whom have never faced failure or The End in their lives, or use Phish tour as an excuse to avoid their myriad of problems.
What makes Phish great is that when they’ve played truly transcendent “storm- the-palace-gates” shows, they’ve done so by not having an agenda, by not seeing the forest through the trees, by not having a place to go after the revolution is over which Mr. Page had requested. Phish still encompasses the Great Mystery by finding new ways to play a memorable gig, by communicating with the audience, by breaking a hell of a lot of rules, and by…oddly enough…being a punk rock band, and sometimes that’s all there is—history is yesterday; today is for fighting complacency; tomorrow is another show.
See you at Indio. I’ll be the one carrying the writer’s head filled with Organized Chaos.
_- Randy Ray stores much of his work at www.rmrcompany.blogspot.com
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