When The Rain Comes

39 Nancy Lane
Turnersville, New Jersey

Lazing about by a pool in suburban New Jersey at three in the morning... in the basement later on, the warm hum of pinball and foozeball... water, water, water... Runaway Jim as an archetypal 2000 Phish jam... ballads, lyrics, delivery, and all that fun stuff...

One enters into a parallel understanding of time while on Phish tour. Days of the week mean nothing. Days of the month exist, but only relative to the venues where one is seeing the band. While at home yesterday, I talked to my aunt briefly on the phone. She made fun of me for being completely aloof to what day it was. As far as I was concerned, it wasn't Sunday -- it was the day between Hartford and Camden. Likewise, I was also completely oblivious to the fact that the fourth of July was rapidly approaching. The traffic going into Hartford on Friday surprised me. The traffic heading to Philadelphia certainly shocked the bejeezus out of me. Leaving Long Island at two gave us just enough time to get our asses through the gates for the show.

The evening was dangerously humid. From the lawn, one could see Philadelphia just across the river, blanketed in a foggy haze. A crackling wetness hung in the air. As the set began, small gusts of wind blew about, tossing the sound in all directions and turning the mix on the lawn into a muddy mess. Instruments appeared indistinct in the spectrum. As highest mixed band member, it was even impossible to discern specifically what Trey was playing. The Down With Disease opener, from what I could tell, was a typical run through, without much deviation from the big energy jam that has been standard in the jam segment for the past few years.

Somewhere in there, the rain started. At first, it was a steady drizzle. It soon became apparent that there would be more as the Philadelphia skyline disappeared into the mist. It came down more heavily. It was wonderfully cleansing. By the time Foam started, it was coming down hard. Those with severely sensitive electronics and volumes of papers with delicate ink, to which rain would be fatal, fled to the pavilion. Unfortunately, I spent my first Foam in many moons coordinating efforts to get under a roof. By the time I had settled under the pavilion, the band was midway through a complex Bathtub Gin jam which, through several climaxes, slowly moved further from the main theme of the tune.

Through the rest of the set, the band seemed to be running on automatic. I'm almost upset I didn't hang out on the lawn during the storm. Periodically, huge cheers rose from the back, as lightning bolts illuminated the sky. Every time, I'd instinctively turn around, trying to catch the light as it faded, but to - obviously - no avail. The first Fluffhead of the tour went off okay, though there were a few stumbles. When The Circus Comes continued in the long line of strong ballads this tour. Every so often, I'd turn around to check on the rain, and watch it cut through the light beams being shot out of a room at the back of the venue, projecting an image of the band on the outside wall of the pavilion.

Somebody once described the unshakable feeling at the original Woodstock festival of being able to sense the presence of time travelers, come back to witness the event. In the present, that premonition is quite spooky as one watches a gorgeously remastered DVD edition of the film. Likewise, during the second set opening Runaway Jim, one could sense the presence of dorquey-ass Phish scholars from the future, come back to listen to a perfect example of what Phish were like in the summer of 2000.

The jam was experimental for Phish in 2000 in the same way the big Tweezers were experimental for Phish in 1995. As a whole, the improvisation ran through several sections, which ranged from quiet, nearly ambient grooves to cow funk to wanking arena rock. Each section ranged from electrically exciting to hideously boring. The first part of the jam was, for the most part, led by (and dominated by) Fish. Trey seemed to hang on Fish's wonderfully melodic drum parts. As Fish built rhythms on top of each other, slowly constructing one over the deconstruction of the last, Trey neatly mimicked these changes while adding a harmonic content to the top.

Sadly absent from the proceedings in this jam (as well as much of the serious improvisation outside of Sand this summer) was Page. On the way to the show, we listened to the Jones Beach Tweezer from 6/28/95. "Ah," friend Bill sighed. "Remember back when Page was in the band?" Page has been nearly absent from the house mix for much of summer tour, leading one to hope for the formation of a web page in his honor. Optimistically, the mix probably does not represent what the band is probably hearing on stage and, theoretically, Page is playing just as much a part in the jamming as ever. Perhaps that's why some of the jams don't make sense.

In several places, the jam petered out to nothingness, to the point where it sounded like the band was in between songs, waiting for Trey to talk to Page through the coffee cup or count something off. In each place, Trey held back, letting someone else pick up the slack. In each case, it was Fish who came to the rescue, letting loose with a fill which would send the jam spiraling off in its next direction. At some point towards the latter part, Trey visibly took over, strumming a series of Psycho Killer/Purple Haze like chord changes and pulling the band into his groove. Once there, he stepped in front of the monitors - out of hearing range of the rest the band - and wanked. From there, he jumped into the ending of the song, as the band followed suit, putting an unfortunately wankful end to an otherwise patient and worthwhile reading of Jim.

Glide was absolutely marvelous to hear. For one, it's a wonderful song that the band doesn't play nearly as often as it should. Second, on a personal level, it was my first time hearing it, after five years of seeing shows. That said, it wasn't a great version by any stretch of the imagination. That seems to be the case with many of Phish's rarer songs. It's wonderful when they bring them out, but they unfortunately rarely live up to expectations due to miscues, brain farts, and general neglect. The pause before the end of Glide was augmented by the welcome return of the "all fall down" signal... for which almost nobody seemed to fall down.

There are songs Phish's repertoire that seem tailor made for certain phases. Antelope, for example, was a perfect vehicle for the schizophrenic galloping the band perfected in 1993 and 1994. Likewise, Tweezer and Ghost were both ideal vessels for the deep funk of 1997 and 1998. It would seem on the surface that Theme From The Bottom would provide a fitting container for the watery soundscapes that the band has focused on heavily for the past few years. Indeed, reports from Japan seemed to indicate that the band had caught on to this. From tonight's version, that didn't seem too evident. The jam hovered aimlessly in the depths for a while.

The jam inside of Sand has moved in several directions this summer. The first, in Nashville, harkened to the expansive version from Big Cypress as it changed from Sand into something else entirely. The second, in Holmdel, provided an outlet for dark keyboard exploration. The Camden version acted as a sort of middle ground between the two. Somewhere during the jam, Fish began riding the open hi-hat, giving the jam a swing somewhat akin to the Spatula City ad in Al Yankovic's maligned masterpiece "UHF" (1989). Gradually, the jam made way to a start-stop groove, practically lifted straight of the PNC Mike's Song. On the final stop, the band dropped like a paratrooper into the Meat intro.

It says a lot about Phish's confidence as a band that they've been closing sets with ballads (see If I Could and Wading In The Velvet Sea, both in Holmdel, though on different nights). Indeed, with Phish as they are in 2000, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to get away with closing a show with a quiet, more introspective song. They've become masters at delivering them, providing just exactly the right dynamic for the songs. Bittersweet Motel tonight was particularly poignant. The Waste encore was slightly less well executed, though still cool.

The success of these songs, in many ways, rests on the lyrics as well -- an odd condition in a Phish song, to say the least. That's not to discredit Tom Marshall's previous contribution to Phish's work, but - with a combination of more song-oriented composition and their increasing vocal powers - the lyrics have taken on a new significance in recent in years. In the process, Marshall has succeeded in carving out a cozy little lyrical niche for himself: providing haunting images that build towards a fresh idea. Unfortunately, in many places, he usually fails to make a smooth leap to that final idea.

This was particularly evident in both Motel and Waste. Motel, for example, doesn't have many lyrics. It has exactly two verses:

When the only tool you have is a hammer
Everything looks like a nail
And you're living at the Bittersweet Motel.

Halfway between Erie and Pittsburgh
You're putting me through hell
On the highway to the Bittersweet Motel.

In each verse, the first two lines are nearly perfect, creating a stirring mood with a potentially huge back-story bubbling just below the surface. There's a real tension between the narrator and another character (a lover, presumably). There's also a particularly potent setting (the narrator, alone in motel room). The problem - if one wants to call it that - is the final word choice. "Bittersweet", in my opinion, rides just a little too much on cliché -- especially in combination with the object it's describing. There certainly must be a more potent phrase that one could fit into the same rhyme scheme and amount of space. It's a brilliant story with a stunted ending.

The same holds true for Waste. The ideas stated in the verses are powerful and strong. However, when the chorus rolls around - and one expects a unifying idea to tie all of the observations together - one is let down. "Come waste your time with me..." doesn't fit the bill. It's profound, in a way, but almost too much so. It's not big enough. The one place where, in my opinion, Marshall has brought both elements together into a poem with a strongly matching beginning and ending (albeit not in the linear sense) is Sleep, where everything plays out in just exactly the perfect manner. Either way, Phish played Bittersweet Motel and Waste and delivered them well, continuing to develop a kind of song unique to Phish.

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