Evolving In Clumps

Dome of Sir Richard Steele
Raleigh, North Carolina

Signal got lost in the ride-up to the plunge-down... heady cage dances in post-modern columns... a rolling expansive lawn... first set: uncreative, tight... second set: creative, sloppy...

Once again, sleep didn't arrive until long after the sun rose -- this time on the couch of a strange house filled with curiosities somewhere just across the North Carolina border. I peeled myself off of the leather, feeling the skin rip off my back, and rolled off, bouncing off of an air mattress and - moreless - to my feet. We raided the fridge, cooked up a hearty breakfast of pancakes and bacon, checked email, showered, and explored the place -- confused over a Zebra rug in the living room, odd gargoyles in the bathroom, a dancing young Ben Kenobi figurine, and other strange remnants of culture.

Except for a long traffic delay in Greensboro, the drive was massively uneventful. We lost contact with the other car and kept waiting for a burst of static from the walkie-talkie to signify the return of the other car to our communication range. Somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the venue, we happened upon a few people on the same channel, who happened not only to be friends of ours, but also just a handful of cars in front of us. A bountiful Shakedown gave way to a dense crowd outside of the venue entrance.

The Altel Pavilion is a gorgeous venue, so far as summer sheds go. A wide expanse of a lawn gives way to a simple pavilion, which is ornamented with several nice touches. The roof is held up by several highly post-modern columns, like something out of an exaggerated self-referential Robert Venturi structure, which are broken up into cubes which are, in turn, filled with mirrored Cs -- a kind of )( thing. The columns are hollow inside, which allowed heads to climb inside and execute a kind of heady cage dance. The areas immediately around the columns are empty, providing for easy dancing room. For the most part, security was relaxed and friendly, which allowed plenty of people to flow smoothly around the grounds.

The first set of the gig, as a friend said, featured solid playing, marred by an uncreative song selection. Of note, was a washboard sounding jam during an extended intro to Punch You In The Eye and a sparkling guitar solo in Water In The Sky (during which "filter out the Everglades" received a hearty cheer). Far and away the high point of the set was a gorgeous Split Open and Melt. The jam quickly shed the pesky bar of 9/8 that for years has held them in check within the tune and promptly moved on to sublimely beautiful territory, watery and flowing -- the territory of the best Melt jams of '99 (12/4 and 12/31, for example). Gradually, in a manner similar to the Big Cypress Cross Eyed and Painless, the jam segued back into Melt.

I spent the first set on the lawn, alternating between dancing and sitting. I always feel a sense of guilt when I sit down a during a show, especially on the lawn at a summer venue. Likewise, I always feel guilty watching the band on the monitors -- it has something to do with watching the band on television when they are standing in the flesh a couple hundred yards away from me. I'm not sure why these things get to me.

The second set, like the second night at Lakewood, was pleasantly schizophrenic -- providing a kind of inverse of the first set: mixing a good song selection and lackluster playing. The Gotta Jibboo never quite launched into the beautiful space it has so effortlessly of late. Likewise, the Fast Enough For You, while nice to hear, was non-descript and too vague to be committal. Scent Of A Mule was another killer song choice, but it was a shame that the band chose this version to be likely the only rendition of the summer tour.

The dual in the middle featured a tedious effort by Trey, during which he meddled aimlessly with the same octave pedal he generally reserves for his mental floss shenanigans. There was none of the joyous spontaneous Hebrew melodies that have permeated the best recent ones (12/11 at the Spectrum). It was a textbook case of the band taking a chance and failing -- something definitely necessary, though not always satisfactory.

Meat and Maze featured some darkly funky playing, that seemed to pull inward on itself. One of the more depressing things about batches of tunes introduced since, say, 1997 (or even before) is that they have entered into a repertoire so large that they rarely have time to develop fully, even over the course of several years. Maze, and other songs from the "Rift" period, can work successfully because the band honed them nearly every night soon after their introduction. The band still does that, to an extent, with new songs -- but doesn't allow them the same kind of leeway. They'll play them every few nights for a tour or two, but soon they'll fade into the background.

Meat was never given time to mature into what it could still be. When the band dusts it off every now and again, it picks up slightly on what they did last time, rarely regressing, though never really making the leaps and bounds that it should. By contrast, Maze was allowed time to develop and change. Page's half of the solo sections was standard (which is to say great), while Trey's half began with an emphasis on the full band's playing. A brief jam ensued before Trey took over and it segued smoothly into a traditional Maze.

Likewise, What's The Use has evolved from it's straight-forward readings of last summer, which concentrated on fairly faithful reproductions of the 12-minute opus from "the Siket Disc". Tonight's rendition dropped into a quiet space, out of which the band segued sloppily into in a shoddy rendition of Slave To The Traffic Light, which featured three botched attempts at pulling off the peak of the jam, before coming to a sputtering finish. When the song ended, Trey bowed half-heartedly and moved to bolt from the stage before the rest of the band realized the set was over.

The second Uncle Pen in four shows has marked the song's official return to rotation. Always one of the nicer bluegrass tunes, unashamedly adapted to Phish's persona, it's quite wonderful to have around. It features one of the band's most creative arrangements of another artist's material, perhaps the only one where the band has essentially added their own composed section into the middle of it (the medley of Soldier's Joy, Boston Boy, and Jenny Lynn. If Phish were any other band, the juxtaposition of Bill Monroe's Uncle Pen with Jimi Hendrix's Bold As Love might say something worth noting in this day in age. But it doesn't. Bold As Love featured sloppy solos and miscues and ended the southern run on something of a down note.

Over all, the band seemed to split the series, two for two -- the first two being winners, the second two having moments of glory for the highlight film but ultimately not winning ballgames.

Jesse Jarnow can be reached at jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu or by his homepage.