by Jesse Jarnow

December 4, 1999 In transit:
Cincinnati, Ohio to Oberlin, Ohio

Firstar Arena, Cincinnati, Ohio

We peel ourselves off of surfaces... Kentucky is invaded... the parking lot is carefully considered... we discuss which things can and can't be brought: you can bring Jerry, but you can't bring Ben... you can bring McConnell, but you can't bring Fishman, Anastasio, or Gordon... waves of newness are ridden among seas of safe tranquility... and, finally, an eternal question is posed: if one observes the moon from Ohio, hanging over the hills of Kentucky, is it still the blue moon of Kentucky?

There was no distinct beginning to the morning. I faded in and out of sleep as folks wandered in and out of the room. Most everybody was still somewhat famished from the evening before and a sustenance mission was an immediate necessity. Being in the south, Waffle House was the first, logical, and only choice. "There's one at every exit," Derek promised. He is a veteran of such roads. And so it came that we ventured into Kentucky. It was my first time in the state, and quite possibly the furthest south I've been in some years. The first Waffle House was brimming with heads, too many to get a table. Several exits later, we located one.

After being gawked at considerably by the locals, and having a long and illuminating conversation about the relative merits of Los Angeles, we consumed our breakfast eats. With nothing much to do, we proceeded to the lot. Shakedown was as active I've ever seen it, occupying a small roadway running under a parking garage. The majority of the vendors had their wares displayed under tents and on tables -- very professional looking. The bazaar aspect of Shakedown is still in full effect, though it's become somewhat more reliable in recent years.

One can go into the lot reasonably expecting to be able to locate certain products with some degree of efficiency. Like society as a whole, once primary food and survival sources have been established, the greater community can get on to more evolved tasks. People selling books and magazines of their own design have become increasingly common. Likewise, people vending art and photographs - either of the band or of other subjects - have become things to look out for. On the way into the show, I half-considered buying a couple of books (something by Tom Wolfe and the novelization of "2001: A Space Odyssey") before realizing I had a large pile of unfinished and unstarted ones on my desk.

Rendezvousing with friends at Will Call was surprisingly easy, and we wandered into the venue with plenty of time to spare, for once. As we reclined, waiting for the show to begin, we discovered more dates of significance. December 4th holds another somewhat grim anniversary -- Frank Vincent Zappa's death of prostate cancer in 1993. The song on everybody's lips - and balloons and signs - was Peaches en Regalia, busted out several times during the first leg of the fall tour, though not seen in a bit. Several mentions of Chanakuh were made, often with some degree of surprise that the band hadn't played the Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday the previous night.

There is a mythological significance invested in many dates involving birthdays, anniversaries of legendary shows, events in world history, and other such bits of arcana. Mostly, it reflects the superstitions of the tour culture, a yearning to be able to foretell the unpredictable. In the real world, everybody seems to have an eye on the future, from street corner preachers ranting of fire and brimstone, to market analysts breaking down the ebb and flow of the stock market. As with pundits of all sorts, predicted setlists are written up with dozens of carefully weighed factors, ranging from the utterly ineffable ("they vibe is bouncy in here, they're gonna play Fee, to the utterly scientific ("they haven't played Punch You in four shows, they're damn well due").

Therefore, it was only with moderate surprise that the band busted into Heavy Things to open the first set. They'd played it on opening night in Michigan, though they've been playing it pretty regularly these days. Who's to say, really? It's still the beginning of tour -- tabula rasa, man. Calling songs is an interesting proposition. Perhaps there's an art to it, but it's probably more sheer luck than anything else. What drives people to want to predict things? Songs will be played, music will occur, perhaps there will be magic. There certainly seems to be a formula into which things fall, though -- bluegrass numbers, ballads, big jams, rock covers. Some people tend to be realistic and observe these tendencies. Others fantasize and throw in what they want to hear. But, to be perfectly honest, there is a way to break things down. With few exceptions, most shows these days don't have a hell of a lot of open jamming. There are second sets like Auburn Hills, with a lot of open-ended material. More, though, there are shows with lots of short songs, interspersed occasionally with heavy improvisation. The first set this evening saw a little bit of jamming, in the forms of Simple and Tweezer. Both of the jams were somewhat nondescript, a mix of funk and loud/quiet dynamic play. The real joys of the set were Ya Mar and Dirt. The former featured some extremely interesting calypso-like rhythm work from Trey behind Page's organ solo.

Mike's recent inclinations to play consistently articulated parts in the upper registers have added a very distinct new twist to the band's sound. This was apparent, too, in Dirt, which featured the arrangement the band showcased during the first half of the fall. It's nice. The band has finally learned how to play the song - hell, it features a statement of the melody by Mike, surprise, above the twelfth fret - and I really hope they choose to get it down, if only for posterity's sake, for inclusion on the new album.

The single item of distinction in the second set was, without a doubt, Split Open and Melt. Moving into the jam, the band quickly dropped the tell-tale measure of 9/8 that distinguishes the song's identity. The improvisation retained the dark vibe of the song, though moved incrementally away from the rhythmic and melodic constrains of it. I once read a post on rec.music.phish which suggested that Melt might be a musical tribute to Zappa. I never quite saw what the poster did, but in the context of the evening's performance, it may well be true. The band didn't really need to pay tribute to Frank -- they do that every night simply by existing. The jam out of Melt, rife with experimentation, odd time changes, was an inherited nod to Zappa's fearlessness. Superstition and rationalization. It also featured one of the most interesting uses yet by Trey of his still relatively new keyboard setup. Normally, Trey's keyboard playing consists of blurps, bleeps, and electronic chirping sounds. Tonight, in the Melt jam, he encroached on Page's territory with his application of a synthesized acoustic piano sound. Bashing the keys, he set a strange-sounding loop into action, sounding not entirely unlike a Raymond Scott sample as programmed by Soul Coughing's Mark de Gli Antoni. It introduces the idea of freshly made samples into Phish's music. The complaint of many about the use of samples is that it's somehow "cheating" -- using someone else's musical base as one's own. With this idea, it's not quite the same: calling up one's own previously stated ideas as part of an arsenal of sound. The next step is to build up a collection of sounds over the course of an evening, so parts played in the first set can be recalled during a jam in the second, and so forth.

After Melt, there was a sudden commotion, as several dudes - possibly, though not necessarily naked - ran across the stage, dashing from the rear of the stage, around the front, in between Mike's bass stack and Page's baby grand, before being apprehended by security. Whether or not they're to blame in specific, the band seemed to be thrown off for most of the reset of the set. During the Moma Dance, Fish and Trey couldn't quite hook ups for the breakdown between the intro and the chorus. Likewise, the entire band seemed to be just plain off for the instrumental preludes of the Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, though the Chanakuh rendition of Avenu Malkenu was admirably tight. The band recovered their momentum by the time David Bowie rolled around. The hi-hat intro featured some sparse feedback which didn't seem to amount to much. The jam itself built precisely, not really hitting any new territory, but still managing to sound fresh and exciting (which is a feat after playing the song for 13 years).

The show, as always, made me happy. Was my head pried open and clamped there for two and a half hours? No, not nearly. Is it necessary to have one's pried open and clamped? Of course, there's no definite answer for that one. Plenty of people go to see Phish for the sheer party of it, and that doesn't, contrary to popular belief, mean going to Phish solely to get trashed. Some people go to dance, participate in ritual, and pure enjoyment. As Hunter wrote, "some come to laugh their past away." Is that, in itself, a reason to drive four hours to go see Phish? Why not? If that's the only place where one can find what he needs.

Others go for other reasons. What are the conditions by which they are satisfied? As near as I can tell, there are no set things to fulfill each time -- just broad outlines. That's good, because Phish could never do everything at once anyway. On some nights, they can be a big jam band. On others, they could be a stadium rock band. People's expectations parallel these in obtuse ways, if only because it's nigh impossible for the band to be any one thing at once. Tonight, I wasn't satisfied. But that doesn't mean that I won't be tomorrow.

I'm tired now. Thankfully, I'm not driving... yet. We use various devices to keep us awake -- including, but not limited to, "Remain In Light", riddles, caffeine, and Pop-Tarts. We're just north of Columbus right now, heading back in the direction of home. We're almost at the northern most edge of Waffle House territory. I'm almost sure I will have one more opportunity to say "hey, let's stop there," before we're out of range.