I started up the first night of the Randall's run this morning wondering if it was going to be able to top the excellent SPAC run from earlier in July, and so far I'd say it's off to a great start. S1 would be a standard run through heavily rock-oriented greatest hits that closes with a "Stash" that manages to blend bliss and tension jamming in an interesting way...were it not for the "Gin" sitting in the middle of it all. A 15-minute monster, this thing achieves Tahoe Tweezer-style transcendence for the last few minutes, with the whole band just blowing through the jam's typical structure and replacing it with a driving, melodic masterpiece. This might be my favorite 4-5 minutes of Phish yet this year, and that's saying a lot, considering how many highlights there have been so far.
Just in case that "Gin" wasn't enough by itself, S2 features a wonderful pairing of "Steam" > "Disease." The "Steam" is short and features a lot of lyrical flubs, but it also does that thing where all of a sudden, about 7 or 8 minutes in, you have no idea what song this is or how the band is making these sounds, but you know it's amazing. I actually fell asleep in the middle of S1 last night and when I woke up, this was playing and I thought that my playlist had played through the whole show and moved on to another artist. It's that weird. And that good. The "Disease" that follows moves from standard Type I soloing to a fun-but-plain blues jam that eats up most of the track's time, but in the last three or so minutes, Page pushes things into a weird, ethereal space, reminiscent of some of the better "Simple" jams. There's a great segue into "Golden Age," but the rest of the set is pretty standard-great. With a consistently well-played show, though, and three marquee jams, this is one of the strongest entries in the summer so far.
The Live Review:
7/11/14: Getting on my good side early with a Moma opener.
7/11/14: Great Ya Mar in the three-spot. 'Cactus' takes 'Leo''s usual solo spot, to great effect.
7/11/14: Oh, and there was a KDF in there somewhere, but whatever.
7/11/14: This Gin is in danger of getting weird. Trey is stretching and squishing the main melody early on in the jam.
7/11/14: Big-time peak at 9:00. Nice.
7/11/14: And right when the song would normally end, we take a huge left turn. Loop time!
7/11/14: Trey dropping another one of those awesome leads. This is happening in the fourth song of the show, people.
7/11/14: This has that unstoppably rolling, Tahoe-Tweezer feel to it. Probably the single best jam bit I've heard since then.
7/11/14: Talking about from 11:00-15:00 or so. Other jams since then I've probably liked better overall.
7/11/14: Great, sudden end w/ return to opening riff.
7/11/14: End set one. #lolz
7/11/14: Aaaand we're back with 555 after that brain-numbing Gin.
7/11/14: Fiery 555 heads directly into a fast-paced and well-played (!) Rift.
7/11/14: Rift > Sample. This is turning into a hits set, but at like double the usual tempo. And after that Gin, it's hard to complain.
7/11/14: This Waiting All Night is way the hell better than the last version that they played.
RT @drewphish: This is a great groove! We should collectively clap just barely after 2 and 4 to make it even better!
7/11/14: Looks like Stash to close S1.
7/11/14: Can you have a bliss jam and a tension jam at the same time? Because that's what they seem to be doing right now.
7/11/14: Loop/bliss/tension jam lifting off NOW.
7/11/14: Kind of a rough landing back in the climax of the song there, but definitely an interesting version.
7/11/14: S2 starts off with Steam! Trey's having some trouble with the lyrics, but it's great to hear this song anyway.
7/11/14: They just did that thing where they perfectly drop into an unexpected jam space with no hesitation. At 6:30.
7/11/14: This is about as cool as it seemed yesterday when I woke up in the middle of it and thought it was the weirdest Phish jam ever.
7/11/14: It's not, really, but there's a lot of driving, dark, almost-funk in the middle that's pretty wild.
7/11/14: Jam sort of sputters and Trey restarts the main riff, but for a few minutes that was amazing.
7/11/14: DwD is next. So far, a pretty hot Type I jam, with a little bit reminiscent of the Steam jam thrown in for good measure.
7/11/14: Seamless move to a jazzy space at around 8:00.
7/11/14: This has turned into a pretty straightforward but really fun blues jam.
7/11/14: Oh no, there's wooing! That means this jam will now be hated by people who hate fun! #phish
7/11/14: Page just pushed things into an ethereal-sounding space toward the end (16:00).
7/11/14: The last few minutes of that jam really made it for me. Also, a great -> into Golden Age.
7/11/14: Trey's having serious lyrics issues tonight.
7/11/14: The end of the Golden Age jam is headed in the same direction as the end of the DwD, but with Page on electric piano.
7/11/14: Now turning sinister...and > Limb. Now *that* might not-unfairly be called a ripcord. Sounded like it was going somewhere great.
7/11/14: Vocal flub leads to a pretty great goofy-mouth-sounds moment from (I think) Trey.
7/11/14: Otherwise, standard Limb > Fuego.
7/11/14: Nice piano-heavy outro jam on Fuego.
7/11/14: Electric piano jam over the Bowie intro!
7/11/14: Not my favorite Bowie of the modern era, but moved from each of the usual spaces into the next really well, which many don't do.
7/11/14: And Cavern, for the old-school S2 finish!
7/11/14: Zero'd.
7/11/14: I guess the good news is that there can't be a Zero closer for either of the next two nights, right? Right?!
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