No Cry

177 White Plains Road
Tarrytown, New York

Traveling the inverted, incestuous loops of Hartford... seeing a crappy deviation from the norm... hearing a wonderful new establishment of one... the point of ambiguous beauty... solids, liquids, gases... a self-conscious review of terms...

Hartford is an old American city. Unlike the new gleaming metropolises that dot the landscape - neatly ordered and planned by committees of consultants, lawyers, and bankers - it grew organically around its own industry, and consequentially seems to have its own internal architectonic logic that guides its system of highways and bypasses. Somehow, planners managed to find a spot smack dab in the middle of the city for an amphitheater - oddly named "the Meadows" - and worked it into the scheme of roads. All of which is to say: it's pretty fucking twisted and quite ill-equipped to deal with the influx of traffic that a Phish show brings.

Before even getting anywhere close to the city, we waited through about 40 miles of traffic, beginning at the New York/Connecticut border. We drove to the show with my friend Ira, who grew up around Hartford, who said that he'd never seen anything quite so heinous. We exited off of Route 84, onto I-91, and headed towards the venue. After sitting in traffic for an interminable period, we were gradually rerouted to a parking garage... which was situated directly off of the exit on 84 previous to the one we used to get to the amphitheater.

I discovered in transit that - quite miraculously - the official start time for the gig was 8:00, which afforded us a little more leeway than normal. While Hartford might not have been prepared for the heads, they at least dealt them in an okay fashion, parking us (for free) in parking lots in downtown Hartford and providing shuttle buses to the venue. Getting inside was a hassle and a half, as we were herded down several long and narrow passageways, which arched around parking lots and car dealerships (more examples of how the amphitheater was, moreless, built to fit inside and around an existing landscape).

On one hand, that's nice. It gave the venue a certain amount of character and individualism that most stops on the summer tour haven't yet had. On the other hand, it's a butt ugly place, filled with muted browns, cement corners, and general dirtiness. The layout of the shed is also unique, though it seems to provide for less-than-decent traffic patterns. The concourse is actually located behind the stage area, wrapped around it like it is usually wrapped around the lawn. This means that there are only two main entrance points to the concourse from within the venue -- one on either side of the pavilion. Getting around the place was an absolute traffic nightmare.

Somehow, we managed to make it inside and situate ourselves with a few minutes to spare before the band took the stage. Opening with a charred-around-the-edges version of Ha Ha Ha, it seemed to fit my frustrated energy perfectly. Quickly, the band launched into the first AC/DC Bag of the tour -- which featured a ska deconstruction of the groove, before building it back up metal-style into an extremely Piper-like frenzy. It wasn't much in the way of creative improvisation, though it was a cool exercise in the dynamics of the song. As the last notes faded, Fish and Trey entered into a cool palm mute and percussion duet, lasting three or four gorgeous minutes, before Trey began the Tweezer intro.

The second Tweezer of the tour was slow, calling to mind the textural versions of fall 1996. There is a point in Phish's groove explorations where the music becomes so fluid that it ceases to be funky and, instead, just hovers. It is when it moves from a solid to a liquid. In places - when the band gets truly ambient - it can, too, move to a gaseous form. Tonight's Tweezer hovered around the melting point between solid and liquid, skirting either side of it. On the verge of entering that point, the band launched into a major sounding jam which, for a moment, sounded like it was entering Free, took a quick turn and morphed into the Runaway Jim intro.

Both the Jim and the Sneaking Sally were well played, though non-descript. After Sally, and a spirited Ginseng Sullivan, the set took a turn away from improvisation and into energy songs -- not entirely unlike the split second sets in Nashville and the second night of PNC, though without the fun factor that drew those together. Instead, the band focused on big energy songs, working to manipulate the crowd. It's interesting to see how the lessons of the various Halloween albums can be applied to the gestures of the band. Where the funk of the first half of the set can be attributed to the Talking Heads' "Remain In Light", the rock of the second half can be attributed to the Who's "Quadrophenia".

The second set provided a good primer to who Phish are in 2000. The opening triumvirate of Halley's Comet > The Mango Song > Twist delved deep into the various layers of Phish's grooves. The Halley's began with a mainly Page-led baby grand jam before moving towards the liquid form and morphing into the intro to the Mango Song, which was nearly perfect in execution -- gorgeous and sparkling in every way. Likewise, the dynamics of the tune itself carried through to the improvisation in a very natural way, exactly how one would want Mango to jam. A sloppy segue into Twist brought on a slightly less inspired version of the new arrangement than usual. As the band flailed about during the Twist ending, Trey took off his guitar and bolted to the side of the stage to retrieve his acoustic for a rendition of The In-law Josie Wales.

Earlier this week, an interview with Trey and Mike was published on SonicNet where Trey revealed that "all of what [he's been writing] now is all acoustic music. [He] got into it after writing The In-Law Josie Wales. ...[His] idea is to write music that has the rhythmic qualities of African music, like King Sunny Ade, with those cross-rhythms and rhythmic textures of African music, with the sonic textures of bluegrass and stringed-oriented music. The idea is to take that and add the harmonic content of turn-of-the-century French music, like Ravel. A real watery type of music... Classical music in terms of development is as far in elegance as humans have ever gone. African rhythms, with that communal drumming, are as far as the human race has gone in my eyes with rhythm."

Listening to Josie Wales after reading that comment was an interesting experience, and gave me a new way to hear the song, as it revealed complexities compatible with both Phish's more simple groove-oriented music (such as the Back On The Train which followed), and the more composed songs (like Guyute in the first set). In a separate interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Trey also declared that "I find I'm much more interested in [this new direction] than rock song form right now" -- which leads one to wonder how dedicated Trey is to playing the songs he has written in the past two years which are devoted to creating interesting music within the rock form (like Bug and Farmhouse).

Perhaps his subconscious is slipping through. Tonight's rendition of Farmhouse didn't seem particularly uninspired, though it was rather sloppy. Immediately following it was a gorgeously rendered version of Sleeping Monkey... if such a thing is allowed to exist. Monkey seemed to comment on the ballad that proceeded it. Sleeping Monkey began its life as a parody of the traditional rock ballad -- replete with the ultra-generic middle section ripped wholesale out of the Beatles' Let It Be. Played following Farmhouse, which quotes Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry without the musical smirk that betrays Sleeping Monkey's intentions, the song has never been more effective. Phish were, in a large way, making fun of themselves.

And it worked. They played Sleeping Monkey a million times better than they played Farmhouse. In many ways, it was like a return to the dorque-y form that permeated their early years -- a sense of rebelliousness against the rock and roll mainstream. Ironically, Phish has become a part of this mainstream in a very big way -- if not in terms of their music itself being influential, then at least the culture that surrounds them. It's good to be reminded every now and again that they're well aware of this role and are, at heart, the same musicians they were ten years ago.

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