The Verdict:
So I read somewhere recently that even with the "Storage Jam" fourth set included, 7/2 is one of the longest shows Phish has ever played. Listening back, it sure felt like it.
The first three sets of this show are an ode to the last two summers of boilerplate, no-jams-here Phish. There are a lot of songs, and by looking at the setlist for the show you can imagine how pretty much all of it sounds. S1 ends with a standout cover of "Monkey Man" with Page on vocals.
There's a Simpson's signal after a hot "Birds" early in the second set, and a solid take on "Stash." If you want to hear a rare "Scents" basically morph into a "Hood" jam near the end (which is actually pretty cool), you can.
S3 comes the closest of all the Super Ball IX sets to being an actual Phish set, with a "Golden Age" > "Caspian" > "Piper" > "Tweezer" sequence before the band falls back into Jukebox Mode. "Golden Age" actually gets way out there, as a sort of prelude to the Storage Jam, "Caspian" gets an interesting breakdown near the end, setting up a solid segue into "Piper," and "Piper"'s "Maze"-style chording jam moves into a "Tweezer" that's all about harmonics and the wah pedal. It's a really cool sequence, and not even "just for 2011."
Obviously, the real story during this show is the Storage Jam, but nonetheless even I was surprised by how underwhelming the rest of it was. Getting that first half of S3 felt like being thrown a bone, but that's about it. For Phish to play the central show of a three-day fest as a five-and-a-half-hour show with maybe forty-five minutes of meat to it (if I'm being generous) just feels weird.
But hey, if all the negativity is getting you down, just watch the Storage Jam! It's fucking awesome!
The Live Review:
7/2/11: Tube opener.
7/2/11: Just got back from Kill Devil Falls / Hearing that riff is like getting kicked in the balls
7/2/11: KDF had a nice little organ solo from Page. Ocelot is next.
7/2/11: So far, so 2011 first set. Ocelot, Lawn Boy, DSky.
7/2/11: Super-long pause in DSky.
7/2/11: Strong take on Boogie On. Going almost-plinko near the end.
7/2/11: Camel Walk, and now a nice, laid-back Cities.
7/2/11: Suskind Hotel! Fish is playing a different beat than Mike's band uses for this song. Makes it a bit more rock-and-roll.
7/2/11: Hearing Suskind was pretty sweet. A particularly soulful Circus follows.
7/2/11: Trey shredding Timber now. Loving the attention that Timber is getting on this tour.
7/2/11: Extremely short BOTT > and extremely energetic Suzy.
7/2/11: Monkey Man! Give me a standard-ass S1 with Monkey Man in it and I can't complain.
7/2/11: Page is having some serious fun with these vocals.
7/2/11: End set.
7/2/11: Jim starts off the second set.
7/2/11: S1 was a good mix of tunes, but nothing to get excited about except for Monkey Man. Maybe Suskind, too, if you dig that song.
7/2/11: The most interesting part of that Jim was when Trey introduced the winners of the 5K.
7/2/11: The > McGrupp helps, though.
7/2/11: Trey struggles a bit with McGrupp, but they Page takes over with a great piano solo.
7/2/11: Axilla I.
7/2/11: Trey forgets the chords and the lyrics to Axilla at the exact same time.
7/2/11: Maybe jamming more is a good idea just so Trey doesn't have to remember 25 songs a night?
7/2/11: At this rate, they're probably going to play 50 songs tonight.
7/2/11: Trey going to town on Birds in a weird scale. It's mostly working.
7/2/11: Simpsons signal after Birds. Now *that's* old school.
7/2/11: Now Stash.
7/2/11: Trey and Fish working together on a particularly tension-filled Stash jam.
7/2/11: Bam! Huge peak after the jam. Usually not big into Stash, but this is a solid version.
7/2/11: > Sample.
7/2/11: Heavy Things.
7/2/11: Nice piano solo in this Heavy Things.
7/2/11: The hits just keep on coming. Horn.
7/2/11: And thus Super Ball IX continues to be the epitome of 2010-2011 Phish.
7/2/11: If you wanted to have the best chance of safely playing 2 hours of Phish on pop radio, these two sets would be the way to go.
7/2/11: Really liking the It's Ice > Mango Song duo, even if it's all Type I stuff.
7/2/11: Trey takes an extended break after turning The Mango Song into The Mangled Song. Yuk yuk.
7/2/11: Mango > Rift.
7/2/11: The end of Rift gets slammed directly into the Scents intro. Now that's cool.
7/2/11: Hood-like noodling starting off the Scents jam proper.
7/2/11: That was basically a Hood jam, just over a different progression. Not that I'm complaining.
7/2/11: Antelope to close the second set.
7/2/11: If you really like Type I Antelopes, that one was pretty damn wild.
7/2/11: End S2.
7/2/11: S3 starts with Golden Age.
7/2/11: Golden Age heading into a funk jam almost right away.
7/2/11: Plinko time!
7/2/11: Trey adding some pitch-shifted soloing to the mix.
7/2/11: Is almost an evolution of the plinko sound. Busier.
7/2/11: Totally abstract now. No beat. Maybe warmup for S4?
7/2/11: > Caspian.
7/2/11: Caspian is pretty standard but has a really nice breakdown near the end.
7/2/11: Caspian is unfinished. > Piper.
7/2/11: Trey chording in Piper jam. Almost Maze-like jam.
7/2/11: Now becoming a more straightforward Type I jam.
7/2/11: Literally as I tweeted that, they switched to space funk. Page on organ.
7/2/11: Heavy wall-of-noise guitar comes in and pulls of a sort-of -> Tweezer.
7/2/11: People losing MINDS
7/2/11: Trey using harmonics like crazy in this jam.
7/2/11: Now he's on the wah like crazy. Really interesting Tweezer jam so far.
7/2/11: Not technically Type II, but still interesting.
7/2/11: Breakdown featuring Trey, then a breakdown featuring Mike.
7/2/11: Plinko bit and now a big rock ending.
7/2/11: Forced > Julius.
7/2/11: I know I joke about this a lot, but this show *actually* feels like they're under orders to play as many songs as possible.
7/2/11: Which is difficult, because to me at least that's the total opposite of the purpose of Phish.
7/2/11: Julius crashes into Number Line.
7/2/11: Pretty standard Number Line, though there was a little of the 2015-style chording jamming going on.
7/2/11: Twist.
7/2/11: Very slow tempo. Maybe it'll lead to a good jam.
7/2/11: Mellow blues soloing from Trey. Page on electric piano.
7/2/11: Fish bringing back 'What?!' yell during mellow electric piano breakdown.
7/2/11: Interesting build happening now.
7/2/11: Wind-down ending > 2001
7/2/11: Short 2001 > Hood.
7/2/11: Neat soloing from Trey during this Hood build.
7/2/11: > Cavern.
7/2/11: Thought that would be end set for sure, but they cram in yet another song. Golgi.
7/2/11: Nope, more songs. Golgi ends on a Page piano solo and > Day In The Life.
7/2/11: Finally end set.
7/2/11: Loving Cup > Tweeprise encore.
7/2/11: End show.
7/2/11: S4 coming up in a bit. As for the first three sets...meh.
7/2/11: I'd hoped maybe the festival setting would tease out more of the Phish we saw briefly at the beginning of this tour, but no.
7/2/11: This was pure, standard 2010-2011, by-the-books Phish, for an incredible amount of time.
7/2/11: They played 46 songs over three sets. Almost five and a half hours of music.
7/2/11: In that time, there was one jam (Golden Age), and maybe three songs (Stash, Tweezer, and Twist) worth a relisten.
7/2/11: That leaves nearly four hours and forty-five minutes of jukebox Phish in one show. Which is way more than too much for me.
7/2/11: I'm excited to listen to the Storage Jam, but man, reviewing these shows is getting rough.
7/2/11: Alright, it's Storage Jam time.
7/2/11: Distorted, echo-y guitar and bass to start. Very Floyd.
7/2/11: Echoing and loopy weirdness continuing for about five minutes at this point. Seems mostly Trey and Mike playing.
7/2/11: Fish comes in with a shuffling sort of beat, then reach a peak and then fade out again.
7/2/11: Now whispering vocals from the band.
7/2/11: Sort of like a YEM vocal jam but with instruments.
7/2/11: Now this is sort of like Floyd but with numerous bass meatballs.
7/2/11: Siren-y tynths now coming from Page (I assume).
7/2/11: I'm so glad I'm not high while I'm listening to this.
7/2/11: Super creepy, very little rhythm.
7/2/11: Really weird, haunted-house synth noises now and lots of screaming. What sounds like hand drums from Fish?
7/2/11: Something that sounds like a whistle now. Maybe Page using samples pre-Haunted House Set?
7/2/11: More ambient groaning now. Mike mumbling something.
7/2/11: I totally get where the Gorge Rock and Roll came from now.
7/2/11: At the time, I'd never heard anything like it.
7/2/11: At about 31:00, Mike starts playing the closest thing to a melody I've heard yet. Fish joins in on drums.
7/2/11: Okay, this part is friggin' awesome.
7/2/11: This sounds like a lost No Quarter jam from the 70s.
7/2/11: The tone/effects Trey has on his guitar are just perfect.
7/2/11: Clock-like ticking wearing down this part of the jam.
7/2/11: Incidentally, that was the best five minutes of Phish I've heard in a really, really long time.
7/2/11: Some 80s-sounding beats from Fish while the rest of the band returns to the more amorphous, synth-driven sound.
7/2/11: Page laying down some synth beats. Now that's weird to hear from a Phish jam.
7/2/11: This is probably the closest Phish will ever get to playing NES game music.
7/2/11: Jam fades out again and then Trey comes back in with a progression that sounds sort of like Albuquerque or Sleeping Monkey.
7/2/11: Oh shit, that's because it's Sleeping Monkey.
7/2/11: Trey singing lyrics. The rest of the band keeping up the Storage Jam sound.
7/2/11: Chorus of 'What?!'s from the band during the outro jam. Lots of synth and distortion.
7/2/11: Back into another ambient space after Sleeping Monkey. Winding down.
7/2/11: That was one of the weirdest Phish shows I've listened to so far. Nearly five hours of rote, jukebox-style playing...
7/2/11: ...followed by an hour of absolutely weird, Floyd-then-Zep-then-chiptune-style jamming and a Sleeping Monkey to cap it off.
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