A favorite pastime of Phish fans is arguing about the period which
exemplifies the band's heyday. This thread has gone so far as to grace
the pages of this fine publication over the past couple of months, and
it's obviously familiar grist for the mill at rec.music.phish. As with
any subjective obsession, the right to declare who's right can be claimed
by any and all who venture into the argument.
So I'll tell you now that Phish's finest period was 1993. This was the
year the band broadened the definition of the Jam from extended Type I to
Type II. It was the year that brought us the Roxy melange on 2/20, the
Gunnison YEM on 3/14, and the 3/22 Gamehenge in Sacramento. The entire
summer tour was brilliant. 1993 brought us August - the best single month
of Phish ever, the summer heat combining with the band's first real foray
into the amphitheatres and sheds. During August we received the Tinley
Antelope, the Portland Jesus Left Chicago, the first Red Rocks show with
the Divided Sky opener as the thunderclouds moved out over the plains of
Denver, and what I consider to be one of the finest 20 minutes of Phish
ever, the Murat Bathtub Gin > Ya Mar on 8/13. 1993 saw the Peaches En
Regalia opener in DC, the first show after Frank Zappa's death, and the
second set at the CCCC on 12/30.
I saw 12 shows that year. I had gotten into Phish in 1990, when the
band was playing weekday shows in dives in San Francisco, and in the
intervening years I saw them rise not only as a musical phenomenon, but
also as a cultural icon. When rec.music.phish was being considered as an
entity, there were only three other rec.music bands - the Beatles, the
Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan (every other band was in the alt.fan area of
Usenet). The Powers That Were asked, "Why should we allow this rinky-dink
band that we've never heard of to take a seat at the table with these
other legends?" The vote was apparently close, but rmp did come into
being, and the Phish Digest morphed into one of Usenet's most popular
sites. I began to see patterns emerging in rmp, patterns that coincided
with the annual migration of college students. Every September and
October we would be besieged with the same set of questions, so much so
that I coined the acronym WATSIYEM?: What Are They Saying In You
Enjoy Myself? (And hats off to Charlie Dirksen for the other enduring
term from that period, Lamehenge.) The influx of new posters to
the Digest provided a wealth of material for my acerbic tongue and
fingers; was it Einstein or Zappa who observed that the only substance
more common than hydrogen in the Universe is stupidity? There were tapes
to be spun for newbies, rare hoarded soundboards to be liberated for the
masses, lyrics to be transcribed and chords to be figured out. There was
time to be timed and there were shows to be seen. It was an exciting time
to be part of the burgeoning Phish scene.
Considering the fact that in 1993 most of my entertainment dollar was
spent on Phish, all of my vacations were to locales where Phish was
playing, and I was a pseudo-prominent fixture in the online world of Phish
appreciation, is it fair of me to say that 1993 was Phish's best year? Of
course it is! I readily admit that my opinion is colored heavily by those
non-musical factors. But that doesn't change the fact that the music,
which after all is the whole point to this argument, reached its apex
seven years ago. Don't believe me? Check the tapes; look at your own
collection, pull out your top ten, and see how many of them fall into that
magical year. What's that you say? You don't have any shows from before
1998? That can be remedied, if you're willing to follow some simple directions.
But I've been seeing a lot of posting that smacks of sour grapes. For
those who are fable-challenged, the term denotes something that that
another person has that you want, and your creation of an explanation that
makes that something less desirable. "I don't want those grapes; I bet
they're sour." "I wasn't around in 1993 to experience Phish, but I bet it
sucked anyway compared to the last tour." Well, my friend, that just
ain't the case; trust my opinion and my experience, because I was there
and I know. You can gripe about the fact that you were only twelve in
1993, and your mom wouldn't let you go to the show with your older
brother. Or you can claim that you were busy following the Grateful Dead,
and that you weren't going to be suckered into a band of
vacuum-cleaner-sucking poseurs. Whatever. 1993 was da bomb, that's all
there was to it.
And how do I know that there wasn't a better year than 1993? Well,
while they were writing some very creative music in the 80s, there isn't
really a year in that decade where the live show took off like it did in
the 90s. 1990 and 1991 were the years of Machine Gun Trey, high-energy
and straight-ahead jamming, but pretty conventional by the high standards
the band has since defined. 1992 saw many new songs and foreshadowed the
free-wheeling Type II jamming that was to come later. 1994 introduced the
concept of the Golden Hose, chiefly through the incredible Tweezers at the
Bomb Factory (5/7), Bangor (11/2), and Bozeman (11/28).
1995 was a fine year, though the decline was beginning with Trey's
reliance on what my friend Dave calls "goop": the use of guitar effects to
substitute for substance (like a nice jam). 1996 began the
decline: hippie trance music. Not coincidentally, my own engagement with
all things Phish began to weaken in 1996, and by the end of that year, I
could have given a rat's heinie about what the band was up to. I saw a
show or two in 1997, and was underwhelmed. I saw the Phillmore show in
1998, followed by the Halloween shows, and throughout them I remember
thinking, "I sure am glad I saw these guys when they could jam." The 1999
Shoreline shows restored my faith that they had returned to more familiar
pastures (those that appealed to me more, anyway), and as the year 2000
chugs on, I find myself thinking about what it would take to see those
shows in Japan...
And so what do you have? One guy and his opinions. A guy who was part
of a scene in 1993, who says that 1993 was the best year. A guy who
dropped out of that scene in 1996, and who dismisses that Phish could have
made any good music in the past four years. The lesson? It's all
subjective, and you can pick any year you like as your favorite.
Of course, you'll be mistaken if you pick any year other than 1993, but
that's your choice.
DM
DownerMan also met several of his best friends in
1993, as a result of Phish, and would like to give a shout out to his
homies jtr and vogtm.
