RR: What was the atmosphere like for Phish on that night, December 31, 2002, and why is Madison Square Garden such a special venue for Phish and the fan base?
DS: I wonder how much of that is because they played there in ’95 and ’97. I actually got in a debate on Phantasy Tour the other day. They could have played those two shows in, perhaps, Oklahoma City, and they were so on in ’95 and ’97 that they still probably would have been great shows. The two best New Year’s Eve Runs—excluding Big Cypress, which is its own entity and can’t be fairly compared to any other show—both occurred at Madison Square Garden in ’95 and ‘97. And so there’s always going to be something special about that venue just for that reason. They’ve also played there for more New Year’s Eves than any other place, so there’s always going to be that feeling that it’s home when you go there. And I’m not a big New York City fan—I’ll be honest with you. At the same time, the fact that I’m planning a trip to Worcester and Madison Square Garden for New Year’s Eve just feels very much like how things work in the world. Here’s where I’m going; it’s where I always go. When you walk in there on New Year’s Eve and you see the balloon bags up on the ceiling, it just feels very much like returning home. I’ve never worked out how ’02 felt. I didn’t feel so much like “oh my God, they were gone and they came back,” as much as it just felt natural that it was at Madison Square Garden. Everyone went immediately back to where they were two years ago. It was like that really hadn’t happened. “Oh, yeah, “Piper,” all right—I love “Piper,” and immediately went back into the mold of seeing a Phish show.
Hampton [the March 2009 comeback shows] was a little bit different. At Hampton, the sabbatical was so long that people got out of that mold. It took a little time, even for the band, then to get back into the “oh, hey, we’re Phish, this is what we do.” But at the Madison Square Garden show, they were sloppy during that [‘02/’03] New Year’s Run, but it very much felt like they’d never really left. They had just taken a normal break, a little bit longer than normal, and here they are again. I think coming back at Madison Square Garden was part of that because it is Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve, and it just feels like a very natural place for Phish to be playing.
RR: You had some fond memories for the New Year’s Run in 2003 in somewhat of a familiar environment. Yes, it was in Florida, but this time they hit Miami.
DS: Oh, that was so much fun. (laughs) There’s a lot in that run. I preferred 12/30. 12/30, unfortunately, is one of those “you have to be there” shows. Afterwards, I was stunned at how many people hated it. Then, I realized that if you were there, it always is going to be one of those shows that you’re going to remember forever. There were so many moments there—the silliness of the “L.A. Woman;” it’s sloppy as all get out, don’t get me wrong; but, at that time, you don’t care: “Oh my God, this is so cool.” And “Sand>Shafty” is such a hot combination of songs, and when they started “Wilson” one night and finished it the next—there’s a lot going on there. It was a very playful show is what it was, more than anything. Phish having fun on stage is something I never have too much of.
RR: The band had just come back one year prior, on December 31, 2002, and everyone is in the middle of an exciting New Year’s Run. Did you ever feel like that was it? That Phish was thinking of breaking up within the next six months?
DS: I had no suspicion of that whatsoever. Then I went to Vegas. That first night in Vegas [April 15, 2004] was…there are three Phish shows that I went to that I can actually say were bad: 7/17/92, which fortunately does not circulate on tape, and was not the band’s fault—it was the first Santana opener, and, unfortunately, they couldn’t hear themselves on the monitors, Coventry, for obvious reasons, and 4/15/04.
At Miami, everyone was like “Hey, they’re havin’ fun, there’s some sloppiness, and there weren’t that many jams in that run, but it was the most fun we’ve ever seen Phish play. This is great.” Then, they come back, and they go to Vegas and “What just happened? This is not the band we saw in Miami. What is going on here?”
RR: Phish came back five years later at Hampton in 2009. They took a little while to get going last year, and eventually, played Festival 8 over Halloween weekend. What was your impression of that festival?
DS: My impression of Festival 8, I think, is pretty much the impression that everyone has of Festival 8—the incredibly stunning environment, and a really, really efficient and well-run festival. The second day we fucked up. We were hanging out in the desert, and we thought the show started a half hour later than it did, and we were just hanging out in the desert doing a mini-hike, and I accidentally sat on a cactus, so we had to go because we figured “O.K., that’s usually a good sign that it’s time to go when you have spikes all over your pant’s leg.” We quickly changed and ran to the venue, and it turned out that instead of having an hour before show time, we arrived just at show time, and there were three cars ahead of us waiting to get in. And that was the most traffic we saw any day. That was amazing. It was very well-run. You couldn’t ask for anything more in terms of the incredible beauty of the area.
The acoustic set was far, far better than anything anyone could have wished for. We were all terrified of that thing, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of the year. The Exile on Main St. set—I’m not a huge Rolling Stones fan, but they really played it incredibly well, and helped me discover some songs that I had not heard that I now love. And the rest of the run was kind of mediocre. I think that’s pretty much a consensus. I don’t think my opinion is different from the consensus—two really great sets, a beautiful environment, very well-run, and the entire rest of the festival is kind of forgettable.
RR: And then they ended up in Miami again for the 2009 New Year’s Run.
DS: As much as Madison Square Garden feels like home, right now I have to admit that I prefer Miami in many ways. It’s warm—not last year—but it is warm. Because it is a little more of a hassle to get to for Northeasterners, tickets are a lot easier to come by.
There’s a lot less ticket-stress. And they seem to like the place.
Part of the 2010 silliness started to come into play then. The “Hey, let’s play this song; hey, let’s play that song”—they just suddenly started pulling out random songs out of their back catalogue out of nowhere. The whole way they setup the stunt where they made a big deal out of the last vacuum solo of the decade, and two nights later, they did a misdirect where they had Rich come on stage because Fishman couldn’t lie. So it put the expectation in everybody’s head: “Oh, wait a second, people can come on stage and play for Fishman.” The next night, people were saying, “I guess they did it last night, so I guess they can have this girl come on stage and drum.” I think that was the best stunt they pulled off since the hot dog in terms of both over-the-top effect and, also, something that people talked about. People were genuinely confused as to what was going on. I didn’t have a great seat, but I was looking at the drummer and saying, “No, no, that’s Fishman in a wig; that’s got to be Fishman in a wig.” They swapped out before the bow, and so we could see her up close: “No, that isn’t Fishman.” And so I was thinking that I was 98% convinced that wasn’t Sarah playing…I think. So, it was a very well-pulled off stunt. Even now, months later, there are people that think that they actually had some random woman come up on stage and play for the entire third set like she was a drummer from another band or something. That was a great stunt, and they get a lot of props.
RR: And you feel in 2010, Phish carried that spirit over from that New Year’s Run? I don’t mean to make you summarize the whole year, but what is your opinion of Phish’s playing in 2010, and how does it compare with any other era?
DS: I wrote a column a couple of months ago where, basically, what they’re doing right now is that they’re really, really into their songs right now, more than any era, except probably their early days. They’re into songs, but they’re using them as a spring point for their jams, not to spring them straightforward, but they’re into playing with their songs, both in terms of playing whatever comes to mind, even if it’s some songs that they’ve played three times in their career—I think they’ve played “Fuck Your Face” four times; once, in some unknown date in the 80s, and three times this year—but, also, singing other songs in the middle of songs, and teasing other songs in the middle of songs. They have this thing now where they’re really enjoying being Phish—not just playing, and not just playing with each other, but saying, “Hey, we’re in this band, and we’ve written all these wonderful songs. Let’s enjoy that fact, let’s explore that fact, and say, ‘Hey, this is a great song, we wrote it, let’s see what else we can do that we didn’t know we could do’.” They’ll be into “[Prince] Caspian,” and suddenly, they’ll have these random jams like at Telluride. “Caspian” was one of the highlights of Telluride, which no one would ever say before. They got rid of the big, big jams of 2.0; instead, they’re hitting these little, small jams where you don’t expect it, and really keeping me on my toes. You can’t ever relax and think, “O.K., this song, I know exactly what this song is going to do, and I can kind of zone out for a few minutes”…because it might not.
RR: Yeah, my problem is that they’ll go into an interesting area, and then stop. I do agree they are having fun playing their songs again. It is amazing to me that you have been a fan for over 20 years, and you are now in a position where you can’t predict the direction of a song. Would you have thought that a while back? I speak with musicians all the time. That’s what I do. I am always asking what they do to keep fresh. What about from a fan’s perspective? You’ve invested all this time and effort into Phish. How do you keep fresh? How do you keep your ears focused?
DS: Well, one thing is you can’t always. There’ll just be nights where you’ll go, “I want to hear this, and if I don’t get it, I’m going to be annoyed.” Even with some of the jams—the jam will be going, and then they’ll go into another song: “Why did you do that, Trey? I was enjoying that. Why did you do that?” There’s always going to be those moments. But one thing about being a Phish fan is that it has constantly changed. I think there’s a lot of people who jumped on board from ‘98 to 2003, and that’s probably the most self-similar period in Phish’s history in many ways. ’89 was one kind of Phish, ’92 was a different kind of Phish, ’94 and ’95 was a different kind of Phish from that, ’97 was this funk band, ’98 was the jukebox band and the ambient jams, 2003 were these long weird jams, and, suddenly, now they’re doing these song-based things. It seems like every three to four years, Phish is thinking something different, and that, more than anything else, is what keeps it fresh. They’re not really the same band ever. They play the same songs, but they’re not doing the same things ever. For all I know, next year, Fish might start playing the tuba.
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