From The Mars Cheese Castle

I-43 south
Leaving East Troy, Wisconsin; in transit to Bourbannis, Illinois

The amphitheater to nowhere... a pavilion stage the size of Guam (which is big, when it comes to stages)... roller-skating down a mountainside at midnight... rock and ambiguous beauty... twisting and clicking and breaking... big rock...

Why anyone would build an amphitheater - a gigantic amphitheater - smack in the middle of East Troy, Wisconsin is a riddle beyond my feeble mental capacities. It's sort of near Chicago, it's sort of near Milwaukee -- but it's convenient to neither. Taboot, it holds 40,000 people, making it easily the largest venue that Phish is hitting this summer. Why it holds such prestige among Phishheads is also something that I couldn't quite grasp, at least from this visit.

Sure, there've been some dandy shows played there, but - well - the venue is pretty much situated on a goddamn cliff. It hurts to stand on the lawn for more than 15 minutes. For an average Phish show, lasting usually at least three hours, this really sucks. Add to that the simple annoyance of trying to walk laterally across the extremely steep lawn and you get a venue that one can be defiantly angry at by the end of the show, shaking one's fist angrily at the planners who had the bright idea of making people stand on a 45 degree incline during a show.

That said, the amphitheater itself has a good deal of character, seemingly being one of the venues in the country that matches its name. If there's a star-shaped lake near Star Lake, I've never seen it. The lake and woods near Lakewood in Atlanta were completely non-impressive -- looking more like a manmade puddle and some barren woods. Alpine Valley on the other hand, is most definitely a valley -- a deep one. The pavilion is built of a deep, rich wood. At the end, the stage is cavernous. Phish's equipment was huddled at the center of it and it seemed they could've fit four or five of their stage set-ups across the stage.

We drove through miles of nothing, wondering if we were on the right road, and then ran headlong into a several-mile long line of cars waiting to get in. As usual, we got there rather late, and vaulted through the lots to meet up with friends and head the hell inside. We had little time to relax before the band hit the stage. On the way down to our lawn spot, we passed a friend, who told us breathlessly that the band had soundchecked with a 35-minute version of Windora Bug -- a quirky gem of a song debuted on the Trey solo tour in the spring of 1999 but never really adapted to Phish use (though the full band supposedly played it at a private party with Jim Carrey before last year's summer tour).

Either way, it's been a song my friends and I have been pining for since we first heard the Trey band play it. The couple of times I've been up close this summer (the second night at PNC and Toronto), I've held up signs for the song. Each time, they were greeted with confused looks. Perhaps the message got through, though,. The specter of Windora Bug hung over the whole show, giving it a potential energy that was probably both a helping and a hindrance. After last year's crazy setlist at Alpine, just about anything seemed possible.

 I always feel weird not enjoying a set on a musical level, even when it was exceedingly well played. I just didn't find very interesting. The songs themselves were tightly executed. My Soul, for example, was up there with the better versions of the song. The problem is precisely that it was a good version of My Soul, which isn't a very exciting song to begin with.

Likewise, there's a lot to be said for the maturity of the band's detours in Antelope which all resolve back into the main groove. Antelope is an exercise in tension and release. However, the recent versions have been lots of small tensions and releases, as opposed to one long excursion. That said, the little side-trips in tonight's rendition were admirable, but one was left wanting more after each one -- wishing that the band pushed it just a little bit further, a little bit harder, a little bit more... out of control.

The Wolfman's Brother followed the pattern of recent funk jams. It sort of chugged along for a while before petering to a close. In the past, these funk jams were often the entrance points to that ambiguous beauty Phish is so good at. Lately, though, the burden for that has fallen primarily on the band's big rock numbers -- such as the Piper in the second set. Like the Toronto version, it pushed aggressively at its boundaries and entered into an expansive space, punctuated by Fish's incessant woodblock, like the Big Cypress versions of Rock and Roll and Cross Eyed and Painless.

Fish dropped into an almost military-like beat while Trey attacked with the fast Psycho Killer-like rhythm he's been using all tour to kick start jams. As the jam got faster, the tension in it increased. Like a clock about to bust springs all over the table, it seemed like the song could implode at any moment, collapsing inward on itself like the "Slip, Stich, and Pass" segue from Wolfman's into Jesus Just Left Chicago. Eventually, the jam wound its way back into Piper before losing momentum and dropping deftly into a barn-burning version of Rock and Roll which ignited, though didn't really jam (unfortunately).

Tweezer didn't vary too much from the blues-funk groove that it started at and, like the Wolfman's in the first set, was extremely well-played. The band are at a stage where they're reading each other extremely well in deep grooves. While the jam might not necessarily progress very far, there are a million tiny conversational things going on within it that - sadly - only pop out occasionally. This can be attributed to the fact that the band is playing in a large venue where sound is not at its best. These moments come out better on tape than they come across live, and even then they can't be fully appreciated -- not without a soundboard. Pushing on the baby grand, Page led the band - momentarily - out of the blues-funk and into a more rocking jam which, after hinting at Sneaking Sally settled into the James Gang's Walk Away.

The new arrangement of Twist seems to be a direct product of the old one in many ways. The old version was a rock arrangement with hard edges and a driving rhythm, yet - at its best - it produced the same kind of beautiful jams that some of the big rock songs have lately (Rock and Roll in Atlanta, Piper in Toronto, Birds in Holmdel). The new arrangement sounds like a jam that might've come out of the old one -- smooth, almost ambient, and soft -- which leads it into new territory when it comes time for them to jam. Except for the Camden version, the band hasn't quite gotten the grasp of this jam yet. Something still needs to click.

The only real bust-out of the show - the increasingly less-rare Suzy Greenburg - was a treat, featuring a well-rounded Rhodes jam led by Page in the middle. This into a big energy Tweezer reprise encore. More and more Phish sets lately seem to be relying on the power of their big rock songs. On one hand, it seems almost like a cheap stadium rock ploy to ignite crowds. On the other hand, the band is going through a phase where they're playing these songs really well. Shows, then, are a mixed bag. If one is willing to mine the rock for veins of gold, the return can be high.

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