2017-07-26 Baker's Dozen V (Powdered)

The Verdict
My reservations about the Jam-Filled night aside, 7/26 stands in a pretty tall shadow. Fortunately, this is a really interesting show with a lot to like, and though I won't necessarily argue that it's better than 7/25, it would be possible to make that case if you wanted to.

There are no 30+ minute jams in this first set, but it's a well put-together set in the vein of a lot of the better '16 first sets: strong organization, solid playing, and a jam or two to whet your appetite for the second frame.

"White Winter Hymnal" is the opening a capella number, nodding at the night's flavor in satisfactory fashion before the band picks up their instruments to start in on "Cars Trucks Buses." Though it doesn't do anything special, the one-two punch of "CTB" and "My Soul" lands well. "Roses" is a great follow-up.

Things start to get a little weird when the band stretches out "The Very Long Fuse" into a jazzy space, and then takes "Gumbo" on a synth-and-blues journey before bringing it back to the main theme in lockstep. The "Yarmouth Road," "Pebbles," "Farmhouse" section of the set is a little bit of a head-scratcher, but the band ends the set in dazzling style with "Tube," which builds into one of my favorite jams of the run so far before dropping with pinpoint accuracy back into the song proper.

"Carini" opens the second set with an exploratory version that patiently explores a few different spaces without ever fully committing to any of them. This isn't a bad thing, as the band finds some interesting musical corners to dig into, but it certainly doesn't have the momentum of, say, the first set's "Tube" jam. Fish sets up a perfect segue to "Mr. Completely" near the end of the tune, but Trey badly botches the transition, making the first bit of the set's second jam a little rough. Once everyone gets back into place, the jam takes an interesting, carnival-sounding tone for a few minutes before moving to a more basic bliss space. It's not the most interesting jam they've played during this run, but it's not "Ocelot," either.

"1999" is next, and if the bustout factor isn't enough here, the band rides Page's synth riff straight into another blissy jam space at the end of the song and hangs out there for a few minutes before dumping us off in "Steam." And, yes, "Steam" also jams...

It's at this point that I'm realizing that there are so many jams per show this year that it's getting hard to describe them each in unique ways. I can't even imagine how the band plays them uniquely each time. Anyway...

"Steam" is perhaps the most interesting jam of the set, moving through some angry space funk before breaking down into good old distorted noise. After a few minutes in the muck, the band navigates, like some eight-limbed octopus, back into "Steam" proper to wrap things up and then use another spacey transition to start up "No Quarter." Admittedly, this set doesn't engage me the way some of the jamming earlier in the run has, but at this point the amount of creativity and improvisation poured into this set just becomes sort of embarrassing it's so much.

So, when the band throws a "Martian Monster"-style interlude into the middle of the set-closing "Zero," you just sort of have to laugh and say to yourself "These guys have been playing music together for 34 years and what the fuck?!"

That they close the show with a pitch-perfect, first-ever version of "Powderfinger" is another thing I should probably mention.

The Live Review:
7/26/17: With school finally back in full swing, I'm in for two reviews a week again. Today, it's Powdered night from BD.  
7/26/17: Love the White Winter Hymnal opener. One of my favorite FF songs.  
7/26/17: Phish gave it a little barbershop feel (of course), but still great.  
7/26/17: Cars Trucks Buses!  
7/26/17: Trey taking a long solo here.  
7/26/17: Great version, despite missing a Page solo. My Soul is next and features an organ solo, so I guess that's okay.   
7/26/17: CTB > My Soul is a really nice pairing.
7/26/17: Trey taking over again here with a great blues solo.  
7/26/17: Roses! No huge surprises here since the opener, but loving the song selection.  
7/26/17: The Very Long Fuse! Setlist flow A++ here.  
7/26/17: Fuse getting a little funkier than it usually does. Nice chording from Trey.  
7/26/17: Great, jazzy, extended take on this tune. Loving Page's piano work.  
7/26/17: Whole band does a great job of bringing the tune back to a cohesive end. > Gumbo.
7/26/17: Gumbo is going a little bit afield now, too. Trey is going bluesy while Page lays down some synth. Interesting direction.  
7/26/17: Trey brings it back to Gumbo with a fiery guitar solo. Now Yarmouth Road.  
7/26/17: Yarmouth started out rough, but ended with a nice, mellow outro jam.  
7/26/17: Pebbles and Marbles!  
7/26/17: Outro jam of Pebbles is turning pretty serious.  
7/26/17: Farmhouse is a weird call after that, but okay.  
7/26/17: First set keeps rolling with Tube.  
7/26/17: Excited to hear the BD version of Tube. Tube jam was one of my favorite parts of 9/1/17.  
7/26/17: Jam going in the echo-chording direction early on.  
7/26/17: Page's synth propels the band out of funk mode.  
7/26/17: Oh man. I'm gonna like this.  
7/26/17: Gorgeous, galloping space jam just out of nowhere. Man.  
7/26/17: This is fantastic. Big build now, with Trey sliding around on the fretboard with heavy distortion.  
7/26/17: Right at the peak of the build, perfect landing back into the blues section of Tube. Wow.  
7/26/17: End set.  
7/26/17: That was an exceptionally well-arranged set that satisfyingly extended a few songs slightly but held no real surprises.  
7/26/17: Until that huge friggin' Tube, that is.  
7/26/17: Carini set two opener.  
7/26/17: Typical Carini outro jam so far. Band sounding locked in. Feels like a huge transition is just looming.  
7/26/17: Neat riff from Trey now. Band building on it.  
7/26/17: Neat, spacey, pitch-shifted jam now.  
7/26/17: Jam picking the pace up again on the back of a particularly weird Trey riff.  
7/26/17: Page playing ethereal electric piano while Trey bangs out angry, distorted chords.  
7/26/17: I should mention that Fish is playing the Mr. Completely beat.  
7/26/17: Oh, man. Fish set up that -> *perfectly* and Trey just completely failed the opening riff. That hurt me.  
7/26/17: WHAT THE HELL MAN  
7/26/17: Carini jam was great, botched transition aside.  
7/26/17: I love that Phish is playing Mr. Completely, but do they have to play it while sounding like they're all underwater?  
7/26/17: ROCK THAT SHIT  
7/26/17: Mr. Completely jam turning into a sort of carnival-sounding thing with Page on organ.  
7/26/17: They really smoothly built that carnival jam into a loop-based space jam and then into a full-on rock-bliss thing. In five minutes.  
7/26/17: > 1999
7/26/17: Synth progression from 1999 spinning off into a dark jam.  
7/26/17: This jam is heading in a blissy direction now as well.  
7/26/17: Really buoyant jam leads directly into Steam.  
7/26/17: Ultra-spacey tone from Trey as Steam, too, grows into a legit jam. Sort of like angry space funk.  
7/26/17: That was some profoundly unsettling noise.  
7/26/17: Brief return to Steam before fading back out into more ambient noise.  
7/26/17: Page electric piano outro transitions perfectly into No Quarter.   
7/26/17: Trey nails the No Quarter solo. Zero next.  
7/26/17: Zero is getting extended a bit. There's a section in the middle that sounds a bit like Martian Monster.  
7/26/17: Trey and Mike duel, now!  
7/26/17: End set 2.  
7/26/17: Single encore song: Powderfinger. For what it's worth, Trey does a good Neil Young vocal impression.  

2017-07-25 Baker's Dozen IV (Jam-Filled)

The Verdict:
A few times a year there's a Phish show that I don't attend, or couch tour, or stream, but nonetheless stay glued to my phone and Twitter throughout, watching the updates pour in. Whether it's the "FUCK YOUR FACE" show, the JEMP Truck show, or the Chilling, Thrilling... Halloween show, certain shows grab my attention so firmly that watching tweets roll in is almost as exciting as being there live. Almost.

7/25/17 was one of those shows. From the jammed-out "Sample" opener through to the "End of Session" bust-out, Phish Twitter was exploding and I was having a blast sitting there watching it even though I was missing the show proper. Thus, The Jam-Filled show was the one I was looking the most forward to reviewing. So I'm surprised to say that even with only four donuts under my belt, there are already Baker's Dozen shows I like better than this one (7/22 for sure and maybe 7/23).

Yeah, okay, so Phish laid down a show with two 30+ minute jams and one of them is "Lawn Boy." On one level that absolutely needs to be recognized. This is an incredibly unique show, an incredible show, and quite possibly the one show of the thirteen BD shows that best captures the spirit of the entire run in two sets.

On the other hand, this show reminds me of why it's best to let Phish jam when they're feeling it and encourage them to avoid artificially inflating songs when they're not clicking in the moment just for the sake of track length. 

The roar of the crowd when the band launches into the "Sample" jam and everyone realizes that we really are going to experience a jam-filled show is spine-tingling. The jam that follows, though? Not so much. It's the same with "Lawn Boy": the gimmick here is strong, but the jam doesn't follow through on the potential. It feels like one of those old 2.0 long jams, the band jumping out into space and seeing if they land on something. Back then, sometimes they did, and it was awesome...and sometimes they didn't and the result was a pretty intolerable 10-15 minutes of music. "Lawn Boy" is a bit of both of these. At times, there are musical moments to dig into, at other times, the jam's only real takeaway is "Hahaha, they're jamming 'Lawn Boy'!" The last twelve minutes or so are definitely mega-highlight 3.0 Phish, but it takes them a relatively uninteresting 18 minutes to get there. YMMV, I guess:

For my money, things really pick up after "Lawn Boy." The unexpected jam out of "MFMF" is legit, with all kinds of weird sounds that make it one of those jams that sounds like the band discovering new territory rather than just revisiting old haunts. "Stash" doesn't get really weird, but the loop-filled peak is a slight twist on a classic and keeps the momentum rolling into "Gin," which is yet another 2015/2016-style blissed-out take on the tune to end the set.

Obviously, there's a lot of improv here and it's a freaking five-song first set, but if you're looking for top-tier jamming like we heard already during the first three BD shows, there's really only the back half of "Lawn Boy" and the "MFMF" outro.

In the second set, "Fuego" goes the "Lawn Boy" route in the sense that the first fourteen minutes or so is pretty standard "Fuego"-outro-style jamming, but then Mike gets out his drill and it seems to rip a hole in spacetime, causing the entire band to start cranking out musical brilliance. This doesn't last nearly long enough, and the creaky take on "Thread" afterward puts us on weird footing again, but luckily "Crosseyed" is here to save the day.

This second 30+ minute jam is the real star of the show, as the band gel much more thoroughly here than during "Lawn Boy." There are a ton of great ideas thrown out from everyone during this jam, and the movement between them is smooth. There's a momentum here that's often lacking in longer jams and that makes me think of jams like the Tahoe Tweezer, the Miami Disease, and the Dick's Simple. It's really good, and you should check it out.

From here, oddly enough, we enter the dreaded "weak fourth quarter." Minus the "End of Session" bustout (admittedly a huge bustout) and a bit of spacey jamming after "Makisupa" to set up said bustout, the last bit of this show is surprisingly jukeboxy, including an absolutely ugly version of "Tuesday." "Lawn Boy Reprise" brings a smile during the encore, but for such a legendary show it ends on a pretty bum note.
 
The Live Review:
7/25/17: Sample opener.  
7/25/17: I absolutely love the crowd roar when Sample starts to jam. THEY KNOW  
7/25/17: You know you're in a weird place when the audience blows up at the beginning of Lawn Boy.  
7/25/17: Page taking a keytar solo now.  
7/25/17: Page stays on keytar as we segue into a legit jam.  
7/25/17: Page is back at his rig (I think) playing synth now. Trey playing echo-chords.  
7/25/17: Some great soloing from Trey now as the jam starts to pick up the pace. Mike joining in, too.  
7/25/17: Serious momentum now. Trey deploying loops.  
7/25/17: Trey on pitch-shifter and Page on clav creates and interesting almost-plinko effect. Breaking things down now.  
7/25/17: Trey doing an admirable job of driving this jam melodically, but everyone else is listening in and making great contributions.  
7/25/17: Long, held note from Trey at the 19:00 mark. Everyone else in a holding pattern.  
7/25/17: Fast, bluesy riff from Trey and we're off again.  
7/25/17: Fade into a more abstract space now. Lots of synth and looping. Fish's beat keeps it from being ominous.  
7/25/17: Getting close to Blossom Number Line jamming here. My absolute favorite.  
7/25/17: Sinister build.  
7/25/17: Okay, so minutes 0-5: dicking around with Lawn Boy, minutes 5-15, sort of dicking around in general...  
7/25/17: They start finding their footing around minute 15 and from that held note on, they're all really dialed in.  
7/25/17: It'd be an exaggeration to say that this is a thoroughly engaging 30-minute jam, but:  
7/25/17: a) it's a 30 minute jam, and b) the last 12 minutes or so are fantastic.  
7/25/17: Some swaggery echo-chord jamming post-peak. We're still going.  
7/25/17: Really like this outro jam. Shame it's so short. They sound totally locked-in now.  
7/25/17: -> MFMF
7/25/17: Can I complain about Trey ripcording a thirty minute jam? Probably not, huh?  
7/25/17: DONUST  
7/25/17: MFMF proper is pretty rusty. Somewhere between 'Oops!' and 'Somewhat unlistenable.'  
7/25/17: Slinky jam coming out of the outro of MFMF.  
7/25/17: Really like what Mike is doing on this.  
7/25/17: Really interesting jam. Totally different than anything they played during Lawn Boy.  
7/25/17: 'Jam-filled' is a great gimmick, but the jam in Sample and the first half or so of Lawn Boy *did feel* like a gimmick.  
7/25/17: Everything since has been legitimately fascinating jamming.  
7/25/17: Great fadeout with Page on synth again. > Stash.
7/25/17: Loop-filled peak to Stash is pretty compelling. Making the jam way more frentic than usual.  
7/25/17: Drawing out the tension now.  
7/25/17: > Gin.
7/25/17: Gin jam moving in the same direction that most Gin jams do these days, but at a more languorous pace than usual.  
7/25/17: Fishman putting on a show as we head for another loop-inflected peak.  
7/25/17: End set.  
7/25/17: Fuego opens S2.   
7/25/17: Fuego jam building naturally out of Trey's usual 'riff-on-the-riff' outro soloing.  
7/25/17: Standard Fuego outro jam fading out at 14:00. Mike jamming the screwdriver.  
7/25/17: Great work from Page on piano and synth as the jam builds back up.  
7/25/17: -> Thread.
7/25/17: I think once I can wrap my brain around what Thread is doing, I'm going to like it a lot.  
7/25/17: Reminds me a bit of Mercury before they really ironed it out good.  
7/25/17: Definitely appreciate that they're still making complicated songs these days. Petrichor, Mercury, and (maybe) Thread are all great.  
7/25/17: The roar when they dropped into C+P was huge even on the soundboard.  
7/25/17: Crosseyed jam starts off pretty standard, though I'm liking Page moving early to the electric piano.  
7/25/17: Trey relaxing back into some funk chording. Mike stepping up.  
7/25/17: Trey to pitch-shifter, Mike still driving.  
7/25/17: Really great spacey soup happening now.  
7/25/17: Jam feels a lot more fluid than the Lawn Boy one so far.  
7/25/17: This jam is staying surprisingly low-key for a surprisingly long time. How is Trey holding himself back?!  
7/25/17: Ah, here we go. This build seems like it could bust into the Dick's '15 Disease at any moment.  
7/25/17: Big peak, and now a slowdown.  
7/25/17: Super-eerie, ambient synth happening now.  
7/25/17: This is about as minimal as you can go before you just hit 'no music.'  
7/25/17: Ambient section done. Trey strumming now. Everyone else coming back in.  
7/25/17: The Who-sounding rock section happening now.  
7/25/17: Pretty sure Mike just reprised the Crosseyed riff there briefly.  
7/25/17: Band playing a deconstructed version of the tune now. 'Still waiting' lyrics. Slowly morphing back into the song proper.  
7/25/17: Weird Trey loop makes the end of a huge version of Crosseyed. Loop continues into Makisupa Policeman.  
7/25/17: Makisupa gets a very brief, spacey jam before > End of Session. This is/was pretty much the best bustout ever.  
7/25/17: I often wonder if more than one hundred people in MSG even recognized this w/o looking at their phones first. I wouldn't have.  
7/25/17: > Tuesday was a bit jarring.
7/25/17: Wow, that was an ugly version of Tuesday, including a complete miscue at the end of the song.  
7/25/17: Trey is trying to redeem it with a huge solo, but he's playing in the wrong key.  
7/25/17: That was so ridiculously bad in the context of this great run that I actually laughed out loud.  
7/25/17: I'm not complaining, but just find it sort of funny that minus the End of Session bustout, the jam-filled show, with...  
7/25/17: ...two thirty-minute jams, is also definitely a 'weak fourth quarter' show.  
7/25/17: Makisupa > EoS > Tuesday, Cavern. E: Julius, Lawn Boy Reprise.  
7/25/17: The Lawn Boy reprise is a nice touch, though :)