From: "Shane O'Reilly"
Subject: Re: 2/18/97 setlist
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 09:43:22 -0600
On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Brian Levine wrote:
> 2/18/97 Bataclan, Paris, France
> I: Mid-Highway Blues, Cavern, Punch You In The Eye, Runaway
> Jim, NICU, Stash, Waste, Walfredo, Character Zero, Slave To The
> Traffic Light
Trey made a quick mention about "one of our good buddies was hit by a car
today" right before they played Slave to the Traffic Light. He was
referring, of course, to Don Wright who has walking across the street
earlier that day and was hit by a car in a hit and run accident. He
happened to make it to the show only minutes before Trey made the
reference to him. I had to leave after the Paris show so I don't know how
Don's surgery went (on his wrist, I believe).
| --
shane
----------------------------------------------
[email protected]
Review of Paris 2/18/97
1st Set:
Mid-Highway Blues: Same song as in Cologne.I love that song.Real bluegrass
song that can only make you happy.
Cavern: Always fun!!!!!!
Punch You In The Eye: Very well played.I really like to hear that song. It
was like all the other PYITE.
Runaway Jim: Didn't expect to hear this one in the middle of a set. Very
good version.Spacey Jam with a the end Trey going up and up.The kind of
Jim you like to hear.
NICU: Seems they love to play Jim and NICU together.(12/28/96 and
2/14/97).Classic but nice to hear as always.
Stash: Very good Stash. The begining of the jam was like the one on
12/31/96.Very slow, very beautiful.After that it became wild like in the
Stash of ALO.It kept going stronger and stronger till Trey made his guitar
scream.One of my favorites Stahs live.
Waste: ...
Walfredo: I really like this new song.Again Trey on keyboards, Page on
drums, Mike on guitar and Fish on bass.
Character Zero: This song rocks and gets better and better.
Slave To the Traffic Light: Dedicated to the head of the tapers section
who had a car accident (nothing serious) before the show.Very good
version.Can be compared to the one of Sugarbush (7/2/95).
Set 1: 1 Hour 15 Minutes.
2nd Set:
Peaches En Regalia: What a nice way to open a set!!!!
Also Sprach Zarathustra: Long intro.Very loose version.Probably one of the
best I have ever heard.
My Soul:Perfect song.You can only like that song.It's too good.
Maze: Solid Maze.Very good work of Page on this one.
Wolman's Brother: This song is getting better everyday.Very FUNKY version.
Reba: SO NICE...
Train Song: What can I say, I love it.
Harry Hood: One of the best I've heard. Nice jam, with perfect ending.The
kind of Hood that almost makes you cry and laugh.
Frankenstein: Perfect set closer.
Encore:
Bold As Love: Trey dedicated this one to Jimmi.I was sure he was planning
to play Fire.But what a great surprise!!!!!!
Set 2 + E: 1 hour 20 min.
If you have any comment , questions please email me at [email protected]
----------------------------------------------------
From: [email protected] (Andrew Shields)
Subject: Paris review (very late)
Date: 1 Apr 1997 14:57:02 GMT
PHISH, Bataclan, Paris, February 18, 1997
Phish's concert in Paris was paradoxical: what makes this band
so good leads to moments which makes them unsatisfying. Their light
touch (even in very heavy rhythms), their patience and dynamic control
when improvising, and the beautiful textures of those improvisations
make it clear that this is a band to take seriously. But they often end
up in a dead-end: the improvisations follow very similar structures,
and the high point of most of their jams ends up sounding pretty much
the same (with the same lighting effects and audience reaction). Phish
takes you a long way with their music, much farther than most rock
bands, but they don't seem to know what to do once they get you there.
The getting there, however, is not bad at all. Phish tends to
play with a fairly heavy basic rhythm; in almost all of their songs,
the backbeat is very present. Such heaviness leads most rock bands to
simplify the overall rhythm (a tendency which also marks the history of
rock music in general, especially since 1980 or so). Some bands even
end up with nothing but a backbeat (techno is the ultimate realization
of this), but Phish does not fall into this trap. Most of the credit
for this goes to drummer Jon Fishman, who always seems to know just
when more variety is called for in his parts. Because of the variety he
and the rest of the band provide, dancing to Phish never gets boring,
especially given the near-continuous presence of that driving backbeat.
It if weren't for the lightness and flexibility of that otherwise heavy
rhythm, they wouldn't be worth bothering with in the first place.
Beyond their rhythmic versatility, Phish also plays with
exceptional patience. They take their time with their jams, as the
Paris versions of "Runaway Jim", "Stash", and "Slave to the Traffic
Light" showed (and that just in the first set alone). In each of these
pieces, a long instrumental section allowed the harmonic, melodic, and
textural possibilities of the songs to develop; within these sections,
the band demonstrated superb dynamic control, starting very quietly
with pretty melodies and working a long crescendo to the piece's end.
Trey Anastasio's guitar is the focal point of these jams, but his sound
did not dominate them in Paris. Rather, he used a thick, dark tone
which kept his lines close to the sound of Mike Gordon's bass even when
he moved into the guitar's higher range. In general, the sound mix was
excellent: the instruments clearly defined, with none dominating any of
the others, the emphasis being on the group's sound rather than on the
individual players. Because the guitar tone did not dominate the
improvisations, one could get a real sense of the band as a whole
improvising together.
Thus, instead of hearing long guitar solos with static
accompaniment, the Paris audience heard a band whose textures grew more
complex and challenging as the evening went on. In the second set,
Anastasio moved away from melody lines into color and distortion, long
sustained bent notes and fragments of chords moving around and through
Page McConnell's swirling piano on "Maze" and "Reba". Again, Anastasio
attracted the most attention, but as part of the group and not as a
soloist.
But, like the songs from the first set which I mentioned,
"Maze" also fell prey to Phish's uncertainty about how to end a jam.
Most of the time, when the band built up a complex wall of sound, they
hit a point where they all played a clear "one," returning to the
basic chords of the song while Anastasio demonstrated his technical
facility with a whirling flurry of notes which effaced, rather than
reinforced, his melodies ("his" because he composes most of Phish's
tunes). The sound mix reinforced this effect: at these moments,
Anastasio's ton became much brighter and moved up in the mix,
overwhelming the other instruments and effacing not only the melodies
but also the sense of the group *as a group*. At the same time, the
lights went up from dark, swirling flashing to bright white covering
the whole band, and the audience cried out with release. This was quite
impressive the first time they did it, closing out "Runaway Jim," but
when it happened for the fifth or sixth time, in "Harry Hood" near the
end of the second set, the effect was lost.
Nonetheless, the band did show that they have some ideas that
could move them beyond this impasse. After opening the second set with
a snappy version of Frank Zappa's "Peaches en Regalia," the band moved
right into a tight rhythm reminiscent of a jazz organ trio playing a
very funky groove. Anastasio focused on playing chords, allowing
Fishman and McConnell to develop and elaborate a wide variety of colors
over the course of several minutes. The Phish fans knew the tune, but I
didn't recognize it as the opening theme from Richard Strauss's "Also
Sprach Zarathustra" until the climax of the jam. Instead of an
explosion centered on Anastasio's technical skills, this climax simply
brought in the long-deferred melody, played first by McConnell on
synthesizer and then, later in the famous phrase, with Anastasio on
guitar as well. The band then slipped back into their organ groove and
built up another round of textures even more striking and startling
than the first part of the piece; they then closed with another run
through the melody. Here, the climax of the piece was the melody and
not a blur of guitar-playing -- a much more satisfying conclusion to
the jamming.
But Phish also showed that they can do more interesting things
with their own compositions. The one exception to the rule of "pretty
melodies then crescendoing textures then Anastasio conclusion" was
"Reba": here, after developing a long, complex jam, the band simply
stopped about at the point where they would otherwise have had a
bombastic climax. This in itself would not be an entirely satisfying
conclusion, but the contrast to the other pieces was striking. Here, no
flurry of technique effaced the memory of the beautiful textures and
group playing which had come before.
In any case, my criticisms of Phish's playing should not be
taken to mean that I did not like this concert. On the contrary, this
is a band with many wonderful ideas and beautiful compositions.
"Waste," a tune from their new album "Billy Breathes," deserves special
mention for simply being a beautiful song: "Come waste your time with
me." Their music goes to many interesting places other bands do not
seem to have the patience or the skill to discover, and their playing
as a group is superb. If I find them at all dissatisfying musically, it
is only a sign of how good I think this band really can be. If they
developed a broader palette for concluding their always colorful,
always lively jams, then wasting time with them would be pure pleasure.
As it is, the time was well spent, and the pleasure was great -- but
not entirely pure. ********
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 09:31:09 +0200
From: [email protected]
Subject: Phish in Paris Review
Andrew Shields
[email protected]
PHISH, Bataclan, Paris, February 18, 1997
Phish's concert in Paris was paradoxical: what makes this
band so good leads to moments which makes them unsatisfying.
Their light touch (even in very heavy rhythms), their patience
and dynamic control when improvising, and the beautiful textures
of those improvisations make it clear that this is a band to
take seriously. But they often end up in a dead-end: the
improvisations follow very similar structures, and the high
point of most of their jams ends up sounding pretty much the
same (with the same lighting effects and audience reaction).
Phish takes you a long way with their music, much farther than
most rock bands, but they don't seem to know what to do once
they get you there.
The getting there, however, is not bad at all. Phish tends to
play with a fairly heavy basic rhythm; in almost all of their
songs, the backbeat is very present. Such heaviness leads most
rock bands to simplify the overall rhythm (a tendency which also
marks the history of rock music in general, especially since
1980 or so). Some bands even end up with nothing but a backbeat
(techno is the ultimate realization of this), but Phish does not
fall into this trap. Most of the credit for this goes to drummer
Jon Fishman, who always seems to know just when more variety is
called for in his parts. Because of the variety he and the rest
of the band provide, dancing to Phish never gets boring,
especially given the near-continuous presence of that driving
backbeat. It if weren't for the lightness and flexibility of
that otherwise heavy rhythm, they wouldn't be worth bothering
with in the first place.
Beyond their rhythmic versatility, Phish also plays with
exceptional patience. They take their time with their jams, as
the Paris versions of "Runaway Jim", "Stash", and "Slave to the
Traffic Light" showed (and that just in the first set alone). In
each of these pieces, a long instrumental section allowed the
harmonic, melodic, and textural possibilities of the songs to
develop; within these sections, the band demonstrated superb
dynamic control, starting very quietly with pretty melodies and
working a long crescendo to the piece's end. Trey Anastasio's
guitar is the focal point of these jams, but his sound did not
dominate them in Paris. Rather, he used a thick, dark tone which
kept his lines close to the sound of Mike Gordon's bass even
when he moved into the guitar's higher range. In general, the
sound mix was excellent: the instruments clearly defined, with
none dominating any of the others, the emphasis being on the
group's sound rather than on the individual players. Because the
guitar tone did not dominate the improvisations, one could get a
real sense of the band as a whole improvising together.
Thus, instead of hearing long guitar solos with static
accompaniment, the Paris audience heard a band whose textures
grew more complex and challenging as the evening went on. In the
second set, Anastasio moved away from melody lines into color
and distortion, long sustained bent notes and fragments of
chords moving around and through Page McConnell's swirling piano
on "Maze" and "Reba". Again, Anastasio attracted the most
attention, but as part of the group and not as a soloist.
But, like the songs from the first set which I mentioned,
"Maze" also fell prey to Phish's uncertainty about how to end a
jam. Most of the time, when the band built up a complex wall of
sound, they hit a point where they all played a clear "one,"
returning to the basic chords of the song while Anastasio
demonstrated his technical facility with a whirling flurry of
notes which effaced, rather than reinforced, his melodies ("his"
because he composes most of Phish's tunes). The sound mix
reinforced this effect: at these moments, Anastasio's ton became
much brighter and moved up in the mix, overwhelming the other
instruments and effacing not only the melodies but also the
sense of the group *as a group*. At the same time, the lights
went up from dark, swirling flashing to bright white covering
the whole band, and the audience cried out with release. This
was quite impressive the first time they did it, closing out
"Runaway Jim," but when it happened for the fifth or sixth time,
in "Harry Hood" near the end of the second set, the effect was
lost.
Nonetheless, the band did show that they have some ideas that
could move them beyond this impasse. After opening the second
set with a snappy version of Frank Zappa's "Peaches en Regalia,"
the band moved right into a tight rhythm reminiscent of a jazz
organ trio playing a very funky groove. Anastasio focused on
playing chords, allowing Fishman and McConnell to develop and
elaborate a wide variety of colors over the course of several
minutes. The Phish fans knew the tune, but I didn't recognize it
as the opening theme from Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach
Zarathustra" until the climax of the jam. Instead of an
explosion centered on Anastasio's technical skills, this climax
simply brought in the long-deferred melody, played first by
McConnell on synthesizer and then, later in the famous phrase,
with Anastasio on guitar as well. The band then slipped back
into their organ groove and built up another round of textures
even more striking and startling than the first part of the
piece; they then closed with another run through the melody.
Here, the climax of the piece was the melody and not a blur of
guitar-playing -- a much more satisfying conclusion to the
jamming.
But Phish also showed that they can do more interesting
things with their own compositions. The one exception to the
rule of "pretty melodies then crescendoing textures then
Anastasio conclusion" was "Reba": here, after developing a long,
complex jam, the band simply stopped about at the point where
they would otherwise have had a bombastic climax. This in itself
would not be an entirely satisfying conclusion, but the contrast
to the other pieces was striking. Here, no flurry of technique
effaced the memory of the beautiful textures and group playing
which had come before.
In any case, my criticisms of Phish's playing should not be
taken to mean that I did not like this concert. On the contrary,
this is a band with many wonderful ideas and beautiful
compositions. "Waste," a tune from their new album "Billy
Breathes," deserves special mention for simply being a beautiful
song: "Come waste your time with me." Their music goes to many
interesting places other bands do not seem to have the patience
or the skill to discover, and their playing as a group is
superb. If I find them at all dissatisfying musically, it is
only a sign of how good I think this band really can be. If they
developed a broader palette for concluding their always
colorful, always lively jams, then wasting time with them would
be pure pleasure. As it is, the time was well spent, and the
pleasure was great -- but not entirely pure.
*******