Discovering Columbus

77 East Lorain Street
Oberlin, Ohio

Tired, sleepy, and in my own damn room... warm hums to absorb... cold numbers to crunch... entertainment, entrainment, entertrancement... giving Trey the keys to his parents car and letting him run amok in the neighborhood of banjo grease and ocean fires... reggae grooves... prettiness, phoniness, stoniness... more sleep...

Rain, cascading in a white rush at a little bit before four in the morning in the worn out command center in northeastern Ohio, the warm hum of electronics buzzing soothingly around me, a couple of candles going, a big comfortable desk chair, and other wonderful amenities. Home. Tour is over. I will make an attempt not to engage in platitudinous summaries of the past three and a half weeks... at least not yet. Those will come tomorrow. Though, after however many twisted nights in strange hotels I've been through in the past month, it'll be hard not to try to look for some kind of conclusion in the musical events of this evening.

The day was spent in a sort of mellow shock, as we went about the daily business of tour: packing cars, finding ATMs, and making sure nobody got into too much trouble. As the day wore on, the remnants of the evening before faded gently to the past, sucking with them much of the current day. By the time we got to the venue, I was utterly exhausted; perhaps the first time this tour that I've felt like going home and sleeping for a long time. I managed to pull my weary bones to our seats and sort of stared numbly at the stage for a while, reflecting on things.

Phishheads have a very interesting relationship to the venues they see the band in -- at least, a very different relationship than the average concert goer has with the venue. To heads, a venue is little more than a host to a show. Going to a civilian gig, one is expected to sit in his assigned seat, interact very little with his neighbors, purchase concessions sold at the venue, and generally be entertained. Phish shows are quite different. They're less about entertainment and more about experience. A big part of that is rooted in the music, of course, but a lot of it has to do with the order of social interactions that surround it. It's hard to miss the fact that, at a Phish show, one is part of something infinitely more fluid than a simple passive form of entertainment.

After a while, pretty much all of the venues started to look the same and it didn't really matter where I was seeing Phish. An odd byproduct of the corporatization of America has standardized the layout and general vibe of summer amphitheaters while simultaneously making them easier to ritualize and use in a vaguely spiritual manner. With all other factors the same, it becomes easier to hone in on the music. The pavilion at Polaris itself is a slightly miniaturized version of Deer Creek, which made things all the stranger. It wasn't just standardization I was dealing with, it was a slightly altered version of a reality I had made my home at for four days before that.

During an otherwise unremarkable first set, I found myself going in and out of a trance-like state, somewhere in the vicinity of some timeless bliss found at shows. It was part of an obtuse perception of Phish's music that has begun to set in of late. It didn't so much matter whether or not what they were playing was ground-breaking (it wasn't) or even very good (it was), but just the fact that it existed. I've become more in tune with the flow of energy through a set. Wolfman's Brother dropped into a very typical funk groove which, in itself, didn't progress very far. However, it was a base-level wonderful.

The set, as a whole, though was wholly disappointing. The music was well executed, but it left little impact. As the band left the stage after Julius, I glanced down at my notebook to check and see if I had really just seen a complete set. Setbreak was a little depressing as I counted down the hours I had left on tour. I hoped that the band would at least go out with a little bit of a band -- moreso than the first set, anyway.

The beginning of the set opening Down With Disease wasn't too promising. All tour, Page, Fish, and Mike seem to have been doing battle with Trey within the Down With Disease jam. Trey would tear into a solo and, before he could get to far, the band would up themselves to be playing at the same forefrontal intensity as him until he calmed down and the jam turned a new corner or calmed down entirely. Tonight seemed like a test of sorts -- like parents giving a kid the keys to the car. At first, Trey seemed to fail utterly, not looking in his mirrors, signaling when changing lanes, or even watching the road.

After five or so minutes of staying safely out of his way, the rest of the band upped the ante and charged full throttle into traffic with Trey, who relented and started into the Psycho Killer theme prevalent at the beginning of so many big jams from this tour. Soon, Fish settled into a happy little dance groove while Mike and Page played around in the upper registers. Trey let loose with a series of Sonic Youth-y feedback loops, which put a nice finish on the other three parts. On top of the loops, Trey's part mutated into a bright, upbeat, ska rhythm -- like something out of a Boogie On jam. Gradually, Fish increased the tempo until it looked like the band had their controls set on the peak of Bowie.

Page began to sprinkle the darkness with some aggressively Bruce Hornsby-like arpeggios, twinkling down like Bruce's fills on early '90s renditions of songs like Eyes Of The World and Let It Grow. With a twist, the entire band pulled back into what easily could've turned into a generic blues jam, excepted for the fact that each band member was playing parts just slightly more demented than improvisation in that genre would allow, just slightly twisted and creased. As the jam got less blues based and moved farther out, it hinted at the four-chord descent of the Mind Left Body Jam.

Meticulously, the chord changes morphed, stepping closer and closer to familiarity until Trey started singing the first line of George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps. From there, the band delivered what might be their most elegiac, perfect reading of the song to date. They took their sweet time, turning in a version done almost but not quite at ballad pace. It was beautiful. I've been somewhat sick of the song lately, but with the seemingly backdoor segue and the care with which the band played the song, I was completely satisfied. Likewise, the Disease easily rose the ranks into the highlights of the tour. The Makisupa Policeman which followed was light and airy, at times almost taking on an effervescence similar to some of the better Fee jams.

One of the things that has been so satisfying about the Pipers of this tour is the return of actual jamming to the song -- not only that, but jamming in the three places of the song that require it: before the verse, between verses, and after the verses. Most of the versions from the past few years have stated the theme without an intro jam, spent some time whipping the theme into a frenzy via repetition, and - after the closing verse - pretty much ending the song. Each of the versions from the latter half of this tour has reinstated one of the sections: 7/6 brought back the middle jam, 7/8 and 7/15 brought back the outro jam, and tonight brought back the intro (albeit in rudimentary form).

Trey played the opening chords, signaling the beginning of Piper, just before the jam veered quickly in another direction, like the chords run through an Irish filter. The filter faded and we were left in a flickering space, purple light shining through Venetian blinds at a 45 degree angle -- like an acid trip mutation of film noir and Ed Wood. This jam exploded into the song, which then built into a blood-curdling froth, which was augmented by some of Chris's best light work of the tour. It was as if the band picked up the jam from a '93 Antelope and dumped it whole into the show.

After the band tore through the second verse, they pulled back on the reigns and gradually floated into the Mango Song. The jam after Mango was definitely the most developed and focused I've heard a jam out of Mango be. The band locked in tight and twisted the chord changes into something utterly new, descending incredibly smoothly into the beginning of what was undoubtedly Have Mercy. Then, something happened. Mike shook off Trey. Or Trey shook off Mike. Or something. Either way, the band stopped, just kinda petered out. Five minutes of negotiations ensued, Mike walking back and forth between Page and Trey, Fish kinda slouched disinterestedly on his drum stool. Then, Bug. Wahoo.

The set-closing You Enjoy Myself featured a hearty disco jam, with a healthy amount of octave scratching from Trey, which gave the aural illusion of a DJ being nestled somewhere in the mix. Other than that, I found the groove tight, but the improvisation unremarkable. Fish continued drumming far into the syrupy vocal jam. For the last encore of tour, all I wanted the band to do was surprise me, do something that would sum up the tour in the most Zen way possible.

Instead, they played Loving Cup.

I suppose this is good. If Loving Cup summed up the tour, we'd be in trouble. Thankfully, though, it didn't. It was a standard run through of the song, and not anything I'm gonna wanna remember Phish by for the next two months until the next shows.

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