2009-10-31 Festival 8 II

So, after thoroughly enjoying 10/30's "Wolfman's" > "Piper," and finding the rest of the show a pretty lukewarm affair, I sat down today and mainlined the rest of Festival 8. What I found was, largely, a continuation of 10/30's less-interesting bits, made mostly palatable and at times even exhilarating by the fact that while Phish doesn't jam much (read: "at all") over the course of this festival, they sure as hell play a lot of music, much of which is interesting in ways other than the usual "OMG 25+ MINUTE OXY JAMZ, BRAH" ways. Basically, what I'm saying is "Come for Exile, stay for the acoustic set, then probably listen to anything from Summer Leg Two if you need some jams."

10/31 starts off with two Summer '09 early-first-set standards, both played very straight. "Lawn Boy" is a great curveball early in the set, and "KDF" has a little extra fire to it, thanks to some hot Page action. From this glimpse of life, though, we fall back into a long and whale-filled "Gin" that just kills the momentum, followed by a surprisingly rough "Coil." Page gets an especially nice outro solo on this version, but it's too little to carry what is easily one of my least favorite first sets in a long time. The "Jim" > "Possum" combo shows a bit of energy again, but then the "Antelope," usually a 3.0 fists-of-lightning-blasting staple, falls flat. I usually try to put a YouTube clip of a first set highlight here before the next paragraph, but honestly, I can't really think of anything worth posting.

Exile on Main Street is one of my favorite albums of all time, so it's weird to me that I've never listened to Phish's cover before. Maybe I was afraid that they wouldn't do it justice? Well, they do. Certainly, part of Exile's charm (for me, at least) is the fact that the album is so rough and raucous and just screaming with energy; in that regard, it might have been better to have the band covering it in, say, the mid-90s than in 2009. But otherwise, this is a great take on an incredible album, and that's really what Halloween is all about, right? It's just weird to realize that Phish's live take on a studio album is actually slow, cleaner, and neater than the original work.

Anyway, the first half of the album cover is (pleasantly) paint-by-numbers. The addition of the horns and guest vocals is a nice touch, too, though I feel like there are lots of horn lines from the original album that are just missing in the cover. I'll have to give the album a relisten and see. It was great to hear Phish play "Tumbling Dice," one of my favorite songs off the album, and "Torn and Frayed" gets a neat little outro jam. Two of my other favorites, "Sweet Virginia" and "Sweet Black Angel," get really interesting, almost minimalist readings and are two of the brief moments when it sounds like Phish is making this album their own rather than just trying to repeat what the Stones have already done.

Perhaps expectedly, things really get rolling with "Loving Cup" (performed with horns and the whole shebang!). Fishman gets a vocal turn on "Happy," and there's some mini-space-jamming in the middle of the "Ventilator Blues" -> "I Just Want To See His Face" > "Let It Loose" sandwich. "Let  It Loose" is a great outing for Page vocals-wise, though the "Shine a Light" that comes after is easily the sloppiest version the band has played, and it sort of smudges what would otherwise be a triumphant ending to a great album cover. All in all, though, Phish's version of Exile is very true to the original and it makes for an excellent set, even if the boys' readings of the Stones' songs are generally pretty straightforward.

Someone's kindly uploaded a decent video of the whole set, if you want to check it out:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the third set is much like the first in terms of improvisation: there isn't any. However, the playing's a bit more consistent and the energy's a bit higher. A 12-minute "Number Line" nonetheless stays within the lines for its entire runtime, then segues nicely into "Fluffhead," which in turn has a herky-jerky segue into "Ghost." Having thought "Number Line" would be the jam vehicle of the night, I next expected "Ghost" to go deep instead. No such luck. It turns from standard type 1 soloing to a bit of full-band bliss jamming in the last few minutes, but it's nothing to write home about. In all honesty, the "YEM" is probably the improvisational highlight of the night. The composed section is very well-played, then there's a brief by excellent plinko-y segment before the whole thing breaks down into an especially scream-y vocal jam that ends a very by-the-numbers show on a wacky note.

The "Suzy" encore brings the Exile musicians back out to sign backup and play some horns, which spurs Trey on to new heights of encore-level shredding, and it's a great close to a long show that is of course notable for an excellent album cover but that also succeeds at being fun despite not having any jams by just having so much goddamn music that there's going to be something for everyone.