Words by: Dennis Cook | Images by: Susan J. Weiand

Phish :: 08.05.09 :: Shoreline Amphitheatre :: Mountain View, CA

src="http://images.jambase.com/bands/phish/090805_weiand/16_1.jpg">Phish :: 08.05 :: Shoreline Amphitheatre

Enthusiasm is much harder to offer than respect. While passingly familiar with the broad strokes of Phish‘s 26-year career, this show was only my third time seeing them in the flesh. Always feeling an outsider to their very codified clubhouse, I just let them be, marveled at what they’d achieved against any “normal” industry standards and patted my many Phish lovin’ friends on the back as they celebrated this band. However, I walked into Shoreline with a real zeal to unlock their zeitgeist, preconceptions left in a jar at home, and discovered a world class quartet with a vibrant, peculiar, fiercely engaging identity. And they were a shitload of fun, too.

Immediately I was struck by how twisty they are, but in such a friendly way. It would be so easy for this music to veer into artiness and highbrow distance but it really never did. Yes, there were a few meandering stretches but Phish 3.0 seems like a band with a mission, and at least from my newbie’s POV, that mission appears to be to shore up every good thing that’s distinct about them. The wandering is to be expected when juggling such primal ooze but they never really dropped the ball and their idiosyncratic internal logic swept one up in a journey, where time was both elastic and stolen, that will take awhile for my brain to untangle. I’m not sure they were trying to craft a cohesive narrative a la Phil & Friends but there was a scale of storytelling and brave, balls out execution that felt, well, epic (and apologies for falling back on that hoary jam-scene cliche but it fits).

src="http://images.jambase.com/bands/phish/090805_weiand/22_1.jpg">Trey Anastasio :: 08.05 :: Shoreline Amphitheatre

By the time they hit the rawk-tastic “Chalk Dust Torture” in set one I was pretty sold by the curious mixture of elements they stir – Frampton-like classic rock moves mingling with African high life, brainy electric jazz, calypso, barbershop harmonizing, dub accents, bar band moxie and way more. It’s so freakin’ illogical that it transcends any simple descriptor, a language separate from rock’s Rosetta Stone that others can play at but only these four dudes can actually converse smoothly in, a lovely chatter that emerges when they drink up the moment and move off the guide rails. To wit, the jam in “Chalk Dust,” which wobbled on the song’s axis, bellowing sea bottom bass and jittery sprinter’s heart drums being clawed at by hungry guitar that teetered between madness and Joe Pass finesse, wound into a flurry of keys unleashed by Page that actually quickened my pulse. There’s SO much going on in their music that it’s a smorgasbord to choose from, each person free to sample bites or just take in the general yumminess.

And there’s the no small matter of the abundant love their incredibly dedicated throng project towards the stage. Looking around during this show all I saw were people lit up from within by what Phish was creating on stage, and it’s not hard to surrender to that affectionate, alive riptide and join them in celebrating life and wholly engaged music making. Regardless of my ignorance, I love hearing the oddball titles of their tunes murmured adoringly on folk’s lips – “Golgi,” “Weekapaug,” “Ya Mar.” It’s a foreign tongue to be sure, and while FAR from fluent I left this gig determined to do a lil’ Berlitz blitz to bring myself up to speed, a surprising commitment given the shortness of time and abundance of music already on my plate. My anxiousness to educate myself speaks volumes about the intensity of what they laid down.

src="http://images.jambase.com/bands/phish/090805_weiand/32_1.jpg">Phish :: 08.05 :: Shoreline Amphitheatre

I can’t rightly say if this was a “great show” or merely a very good one. I simply don’t have the frame of reference to speak with any authority. What I can say is that despite their massive individual talents it was the group dynamic, their collective noise, especially in the second set that floored me. It’s a sound that runs down jubilation and finds the sweet spot between simplistic fare (there’s a goodly amount of pure cock rock to Phish but also a fair bit of nursery rhyme thinking) and stratospheric, highly theoretical muso smarty pants-ed-ness. More simply, Phish is a fucking platypus, fuzzy but laying hard-shelled eggs, a thumb in the eye to those who stuff things into neat genres. And they did all this with such exposed emotion, raggedly baroque eloquence and gee-whiz bravado that my wig was rightfully flipped.

A few other scattershot highlights: The swerving blur of “David Bowie” that closed set one; Page’s Chucho Valdes-esque piano throughout the night and his strong Traffic-era Winwood lead vocal on their tremendous cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Oh Sweet Nothin’;” Trey‘s heartfelt reading of Los Lobos’ “When The Circus Comes,” even if it put the brakes on the momentum they were building at that point; the wacky juxtapositions of mood and tempo; the way Trey occasionally brought to bear a very Derek and the Dominoes blues guitar growl and vocal yearning; the disco-y take on the Talking Heads’ “Cities;” the wicked turns of “Maze;” their unbridled love for people with “a ticket stub in their hand;” Chris Kuroda‘s Dumbledore-ian lighting wizardry; and the vast distances they traveled, often within a single piece, which ranged from the consciously gigantic and involved down to music box delicacy.

Instead of feeling overwhelmed (which their music can EASILY make one feel) I experienced a tiny taste of what’s kept millions on the ride for decades, understanding that while they’re the focal point, the enzyme, Phish is a collaborative effort produced by a combination of these extraordinarily gifted players, a mind-boggling catalog AND the writhing, hands in the air masses that gather around them. The morning after I can honestly say I finally dig Phish. Go figure…

Phish :: 08.05.09 :: Shoreline Amphitheatre :: View Mountain View, CA

Set I: Golgi Apparatus, Halley’s Comet, Chalk Dust Torture, The Divided Sky, When the Circus Comes, Time Turns Elastic, Ya Mar, Stealing Time From The Faulty Plan, Suzy Greenberg, David Bowie

Set II: Backwards Down the Number Line, Down With Disease > Limb By Limb, Oh Sweet Nothin’, Cities > Maze, Mike’s Song > Simple, Weekapaug Groove

E: Let Me Lie, Bold As Love

For more pics of this show go here.

Phish perform again Friday and Saturday night at The Gorge in George, WA. Check back for live Tweets, setlists, pics and full reviews. Complete Phish tour dates available href="http://www.jambase.com/Artists/2698/Phish/Shows">here.

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