Ha Ha, The Muse

Command Center, Residence Inn
Fishers, Indiana

A post from the Command Center... nestled deep in the fertile valley of Fishers, Indiana... we lie in waiting, ready to spring... shrieking banshees, vicious tapers... the band expands, ready to swallow Tokyo... the shifting currents of Sand drifting and washing ashore... schooling at Rock and Roll 101... and letting go again.

I've always suspected that one of the coolest things about doing Dead tour was the fact they did multiple night stands in almost every city. People were allowed time to camp out. In the more exotic locales, this meant that people could exploit every tourist trap the city had to offer. In the less interesting places - such as Noblesville, Indiana, for example - it gave peeps time to chill out. It's the same way on Phish tour. Multiple night stands in cities give heads the opportunity to establish some semblance of a normal life, a routine. They can wake up, go about whatever daily business needed to be attended to, and - in the evening - head to the show.

This morning, we woke up - peeled ourselves off the ice-cold floors of the Fairfield Inn - and headed up a couple of exits on I-69 to scenic Fishers, where we set up shop at a Residence Inn. We have a two-room suite, with a full kitchen, bathroom, living room, and a whole host of other amenities, including several esoteric gadgets plugged into high-voltage sockets on the wall whose precise usage is still unclear. I intend to try my hand at several of them later. Hopefully they're as harmless as they appear. At one side of the room is the Command Center -- a geek's heaven on the road. E-mu and I have phonelines, power, light sources, and plenty of room to spread out books, notes, snacks, candles, and other stuff. For the next three days, we will live here, pretending we're just hard-working All-American traveling businessfolks.

After securing modem connections, and going through a minor freak-out when an unnamed touring buddy's ticket disappeared, we hopped in the car for our commute to "work" -- a short drive to the entrance of Deer Creek. Outside, it was perversely hot. I sweat like a running man in a steamy room, twisting uncomfortably in my clothes. Sweat trickled down my face and body, burning an imprint like a tattooed snake wrapping its way languidly around my body, drying and constricting. The constriction turned to a pressure. In a sense, that's precisely what it was: humidity in the air, condensed heat, pushing on all sides like water at the bottom of a pool; an atmospheric shift. I felt it pushing at the bridge of my nose, trying to work its way into my sinuses. It was elsewhere.

It gave me a small headache. By the time I settled into my seat on the perimeter of the tapers' section for the first set, a small gaggle of girls sat down behind me. When the first song started - a rousing rendition of Cars, Trucks, Buses - they shrieked. When the first song continued, they shrieked. They pretty much didn't stop until the issue of singing along was brought before them. Starting with following tune, a pumpin' Wilson, they did so. Occasionally with words and/or melodies that had little to do with the song being played. The pitch of the voices attacked the back of my neck like an evil spirit and worked their way up into my sinuses, where they worked in tandem with the heat. By midway through the set, I had a splitting headache.

It's Ice was, again, great to hear. The jam in the middle was essentially a Page/Mike duet -- wonderful, though way too short. As a beachball flew overhead and in the general direction of the mic stands, the stereotypical taper in front of me gestured frantically at comrades a few rows up to prevent it from entering the orbit of the Scheops. Veins on his neck began to bulge as somebody began to spray the crowd with cooling water, about ready to vault over the seats - save for his bulk - and tear out the innocent sprayer's jugular with his teeth, adept and sharpened from years of popping Maxell tabs with his fangs. Soon, he calmed down. Sedated, his blood pressure dropped. He danced slightly, glancing serenely over at the mics every now and again, as if he could actually see the music getting sucked whole into their electronic innards and digested.

The Bathtub Gin was utterly huge, throbbing and pulsing into a deep rock groove ala Drowned -- easily the best version of tour so far. It built dynamically, upwards and upwards, swirling through levels of filters, before settling to something that easily could've moved into the ending of the unfinished Rock and Roll in Atlanta. The remainder of the first set was extremely solid -- marked by a bust-out of the rare Buffalo Bill (albeit a too-short version) and a powerful Split Open and Melt, entirely unlike the ambient versions the band has favored of late. Both Sparkle and David Bowie were wonderfully played.

Gotta Jibboo was succulent. It moved far out in a graceful way and got to the point where, with a swift change, it could've headed off into the stratosphere. On July 4th, Jibboo won its independence. Since Camden, Phish has been playing Jibboo with a quiet confidence; happy in that they can get the song right to the brink of infinity. At that moment tonight, they pulled back. It was profoundly satisfying. The Sand that followed was sparse and gorgeous. With the exception of the drumbeat, it flowed into dark, dank space reminiscent of Lake Trout. For much of the time, Trey and Page played shimmering textural loops that can be traced to the band's cover of the Talking Heads' "Remain In Light".

The end of the jam highlighted a problem the band still seems to encounter, even after years of trying to rectify the issue: falling into the habit of letting Trey lead the jam. At one point in the jam, the band fell back into a singular tensionless groove, sort of waiting for Trey to do something. Trey decided to end the song, and they fell to a silence. I'm sort of souring on the new arrangement of Twist, at least when it is placed in a stand alone position in the set. I think, like Piper, the front end of the song has to be braced by something in order to make some sort emotional impact. It needs some kind of forward momentum to tumble it to start. By the time the band was starting to regain the lost momentum, they were just about ready to end the jam. Too bad.

The all-too rare Fee (the first, and probably only, of this tour) was capped by a gorgeous harmonic loop jam, which bubbled quietly in the background while the band decided on the next song. Somewhat logically, they fell headfirst into a glorious reading of "the Siket Disc"'s centerpiece, What's The Use?. The mood of the song was highlighted be a deep section with one-handed Fish drum rolls at the center, which in turn would roll back into the "verse" of the tune, like a series of waves crashing to shore with Fish riding on top. Trey's trill notes died in a bevy of feedback, like the introduction to Train Round The Bend on the Velvet Underground's Loaded -- another way Phish has assimilated the lessons of bands they have assimilated into their arsenal.

The Limb By Limb was languid and smooth, with a trancey beauty at the peak, with some wonderful fanning by Trey. The Antelope that capped the show was big, but not huge, with the band venturing a little more into space than they ordinarily do. The commute home was smooth. Now, we're happy in the hotel room, hyper and geeking, and listening to the absolutely perfect Radio City Ghost. This is one version of paradise.

Jesse Jarnow can be reached at jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu or by his homepage. Previous tour journals are located here.