The Verdict:
It's appropriate, I suppose, that in a year where the only real wrong Phish can do is to repeatedly fail to put together a consistent run of shows in one location, they would play both the best and worst show of the tour at the same venue within a day of each other. Yin and Yang. MPP 1 and MPP 2.
It's not that this show is bad, of course, and not even just because It's A Phish Show (TM); there are some worthwhile, compelling moments here. It's that, in the context of this tour, it's hard to hear a show like this and not be disappointed. I've been thinking of shows from this year as falling into one of three categories: 1) Top-tier shows that are legitimate highlights across Phish's career, 2) Very, very good shows that would have been a highlight of most previous 3.0 tours but here fall short of category 1, and 3) Pretty darn good shows that would have been well received during most previous 3.0 tours, but here stand out in their relative shittiness.
When I started reviewing this tour, based on the shows I'd seen live and the chatter about the rest of the tour, I expected it to be an awesome tour. And it has been. But I expected it to be awesome because there would be a significant amount of category 1 shows, when in reality I can count the category 1 shows on one hand. What makes this tour great, really (as I'm coming to realize), is the huge percentage of category 2 shows. And that's interesting.
I've spent more time than most people likely have at this point listening to entire Phish tours. And the thing is, when you listen to any tour, you begin to realize that even the "great" tours aren't consistently mind-blowing. Most shows are pretty darn good, a few are excellent, and then there are some clunkers. This makes sense, because most tours have upwards of twenty or thirty or more shows, and really, even Phish at their peak(s) aren't going to bring a show like 8/15/15 or 11/17/97 a bunch of nights in a row. It's like expecting lightning to strike in the same place ten or twenty times. Even most of the "great" shows from "great" tours feature a few strong jams or interesting moments and then lots of what equates to filler for someone who's heard "Golgi" or "Horn" probably close to a thousand times now. That's part of why I was so excited about 8/15/15; almost every single song of the show had compelling moments. And even in the greatest tour, you're lucky to get 2-3 shows like that.
So, excellence comes from turning in really good, category 2-style shows regularly instead. And that's fine. Over twenty-five shows, if twenty or so of them are category 1 or 2, that's pretty incredible. You aren't going to get much better than that. Having a great tour is about consistency, not about blowing the roof off every night. And I actually never realized this until I was listening to MPP 2 and coming to grips with the fact that such a strong show could strike me as so boring only because by consistently playing great shows this year, Phish made "just" very good seem normal. But I don't think they, or anyone else, will ever consistently play transcendent shows (like 8/15 or, say, Mann 2, or at least the second set of Shoreline) because there are just too many shows to play to keep up that level of quality. I've listened to most of Fall '13, the only recent tour mentioned in the same reverent tones as Summer '15, and honestly I don't find it nearly as good. I think that the only reason it's remembered so well is because there were so fewer shows as compared to most tours. There were less than half of the amount of shows that there are in Summer '15. And as the band has shown from Mann on through Dick's, it's actually capable of maintaining an extremely high level of quality for 12 or so shows...almost. Over twice that many? Not so much.
Anyway, this show is (relatively) a blemish on a great tour, and a weird note to end the "regular season" portion of the tour on. The show starts off in Jukebox Mode, and continues that way for half of the first set, before a series of four straight set-ender songs hit, in "No Men," a minimal and languid "Stash," an extended "David Bowie," and a "Possum" that features some fun Trey/Page interplay. The flow is strange in the second half of this set, the last three songs are all worth a listen.
When it comes to the second set, "Disease" is notable, I guess, for running for twelve minutes and never deviating from the Type I mold. The jam features a nice segue into "Slave," and actually playing "Slave" this early in the set seems to give it an energy that's rare for the song. "Light" goes to a near-atonal place, and is one of those compact-but-fascinating jams that 2015 Phish excels at, there's another great segue into "Twist," and then just as its jam seems to be winding up to something interesting, it suddenly peters out. We spend the rest of the set more or less circling the drain. Even the "YEM" sounds a little worn-out.
So again, this isn't a bad show, and the highlights are legit, it's just an anomaly in the consistently great (but not consistently transcendent) tour of 2015.
The Live Review:
8/16/15: MPP2 right here, right now, folks!
8/16/15: YES! Trey starting up Sleeping Monkey again!
8/16/15: Fish adds the ending harmony vocals that they joked about last night.
8/16/15: Not the full song, just Trey playing the progression through a few more times.
8/16/15: Golgi opener.
8/16/15: Golgi gets butt-slammed into Undermind.
8/16/15: Undermind is the typically short, ooey-gooey version of the song the guys have been playing this year.
8/16/15: In short: awesome.
8/16/15: Okay, so I still feel the same as I always do about Julius, but I AM surprised to hear it in a first set.
8/16/15: Slanky version of 555 coming up after Julius.
8/16/15: Solid playing so far, but the most interesting part was that Sleeping Monkey 'opener.'
8/16/15: Not comparing favorably with last night's strong S1.
8/16/15: Nothing is a nice surprise. Definitely should show its head in S1s more often.
8/16/15: No Men! That should pick the energy level up a bit.
8/15/16: Clav-driven jam gets rolling, much to the delight of the crowd.
8/15/16: Short take on No Men's leads into Stash.
8/15/16: Stash went a little more muted in the jam, similar to the 8/12 version.
8/15/16: Sounds like we might get a Bowie set closer. Spooky ambient noise building under Fish's drumming.
8/15/16: This is probably as close as we've gotten to a legitimate Bowie opening since...2004? I don't know.
8/15/16: Okay, so that Bowie was longer than the usual these days, but it still pretty much followed the template.
8/15/16: Except for the spooky intro :)
8/15/16: Not end set. Possum.
8/16/15: So this has been a weird set. The first half was pretty rote, the second half is just a pile of set-closer songs in a row.
8/16/15: Also, ignore all the tweets I began with '8/15/16.' IT IS NOT THE FUTURE.
8/16/15: Neat back-and-forth between Trey and Page in this Possum jam.
8/16/15: Weird, sort-of-Frankenstein set finally ends.
8/16/15: S2 opens with Disease.
8/16/15: Trey having trouble with the opening chords to Disease, changes lyric to be about the demons 'Dancing in Mike's head.'
8/16/15: Super-extended Type I soloing from Trey in this version. It's really good, but definitely stays in the box. Weird way to open S2.
8/16/15: 2009-style wind-down now.
8/16/15: Trey makes a pretty natural segue into Slave. Weird placement for this guy!
8/16/15: I don't know if it's just because it's earlier in the set, but this Slave seems particularly jaunty to me.
8/16/15: Slave > Light.
8/16/15: Some wild pitch-shifted soloing from Trey here, backed by calypso piano from Page. Really weird.
8/16/15: Mike taking over now. This has the potential for some serious evil.
8/16/15: Evil Space Loops descending!
8/16/15: Page is on the electric piano and trying to move to a bliss space, but Trey is blaring over him.
8/16/15: Nice -> Twist. Great assist by Fishman.
8/16/15: More neat loops worming into this Twist jam.
8/16/15: Oops. It sort of fell apart right after that.
8/16/15: Shine a Light!
8/16/15: This is a decent 2015 Phish show so far, and that last jam was awesome...
8/16/15: ...but I have to say that this is probably the worst I've heard Trey ever play over the course of 2 or so hours.
8/16/15: He's not playing at all about 20% of the time, and when he does play, he's hitting bad chords/notes like crazy.
8/16/15: He's completely biffed on Shine a Light many times already, and it's basically a four chord song.
8/16/15: This is one of those cases where the bum notes are actually making it harder to enjoy the show because there are so many of them.
8/16/15: Fuego!
8/16/15: The entire Fuego jam was basically just Trey holding a single note for sixty seconds.
8/16/15: Drone fades into Sneakin' Sally.
8/16/15: Trey is unleashing the echo-funk on Sally.
8/16/15: Echo funk winds down, but instead of a breakdown, > YEM.
8/16/15: In the year of unearned YEMs, this might be the least-deserved one.
8/16/15: I'm pretty sure Trey just yelled 'MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTHER FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKER' at the beginning the YEM vocals.
8/16/15: If so, hilarious.
8/16/15: So the YEM is pretty pedestrian, but, and this won't surprise you, the funk jam has a little extra spice in it.
8/16/15: Sigh-based vocal jam turns into screaming, turns into Sleeping Monkey vocal teases.
8/16/15: Number Line encore.
8/16/15: Typically strong 2015 Number Line, with the high-velocity Trey chording and whatnot.
8/16/15: That was a totally weird show, especially considering it was technically the tour-closer.
8/16/15: Gotta say, I don't feel too good about it.
8/16/15: However, 8/15 might have been my favorite show of the year. So there's that.
8/16/15: More thoughts in the long-form reviews coming hopefully tomorrow.
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