My eighth and final Phish show of 2022 was the night where I entered the arena with the least expectations. The previous night (posted here) had been such an outstanding performance, that I felt like this show was basically a “bonus”. But man, did Phish disagree. 12/30/22 is currently at the top of the yearly statistics as the highest rated show, and for good reason. This show smoked from the opening notes of crowd favorite opener “Down With Disease”, and continued throughout the first set including a tight “Reba”. But the highlights of this show for me weren’t the “hits”, but rather the two songs that opened the first forty minutes of the second set. “No Man’s > Golden Age” were so well jammed and veered off into such interesting territory that I lost track of what tune what actually being played. But it didn’t matter. This was Phish 4.0 at its best, and like all three of the New Year’s week shows I attended, I felt lucky to be there to see it.
I recorded this set as I had the 12/29 set, with the Neumann hypers from an advantageous position in the first row of the taper’s section, and the sound quality is superb. Enjoy!
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 1:26:41] 01 Down with Disease 02 The Moma Dance 03 Pebbles and Marbles 04 Theme From the Bottom 05 Reba 06 The Howling 07 Foam 08 Run Like an Antelope
Set 2 [Total Time 1:27:53] 09 No Men In No Man’s Land 10 Golden Age 11 Sand 12 If I Could 13 I Always Wanted It This Way 14 [encore break] 15 Chalk Dust Torture
Of the eight Phish shows I attended and recorded this year, the second night of this week’s New Year’s run was my favorite. The first night (coming soon) was very solid and raised expectations that these four shows could be ragers, and this second night confirmed that. From the opening 22-minute “Fluffhead”, Phish were locked in and delivering the jams. There are at least four highlight segments in this show where the band just let go, stepped out, and peaked. Phish 4.0 is renowned for choosing the unexpected songs to stretch out and on this night it was an exceptional “Ruby Waves” where the band allowed the music to create the moment. This recording is one that I’m going to come back to often, and it is nights like this that keep me coming back.
I recorded this set with the Neumann hyper cards from a head-high stand in front of the lighting booth. The advantageous position and mic choice combine for a really bright and clear recording and we repeated this combo the following night based on the superb results. Enjoy!
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 1:16:12] 01 Fluffhead 02 Your Pet Cat 03 Bathtub Gin 04 hey stranger 05 Tube 06 Slave to the Traffic Light 07 Blaze On
Set 2 [Total Time 1:49:37] 08 David Bowie 09 Everything’s Right 10 You Enjoy Myself 11 Ruby Waves 12 Lonely Trip 13 Back on the Train 14 Character Zero 15 [encore break] 16 Guyute 17 Possum
With the onset tonight of the four-night Phish New Year’s run at Madison Square Garden (I will be attending the first three nights). I was reminded of the last time I saw three consecutive Phish shows, during the tour last July. The first of these three July experiences began in the beautiful Bethel Woods venue, on the site of the original Woodstock.
This was the second night of a two-show stand in Bethel, and while reports of the first night were so-so, this show started out with some nice energy that built up throughout the first set, capped by a nicely executed “Divided Sky” and a set-ending relaxed and well jammed “Ghost”. But it was the second set Caspian/Crosseyed “sandwich” where this show really leapt into the stratosphere. We enjoyed the entire second set as the band was locked into some juicy jams. The extended encore segment was great for the smiles, and ended this super show in true Phish fashion — with a nice Hendrix/Woodstock tribute.
I recorded this show with the outdoor-friendly large diaphragm Neumann mics from the first row of the taper’s section and the sound quality is superb. Enjoy!
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 1:14:56] 01 Evening Song 02 Turtle in the Clouds 03 Vultures 04 My Sweet One 05 Undermind 06 Fast Enough for You 07 Divided Sky 08 Suzy Greenberg 09 Ghost
Set 2 [Total Time 1:33:35] 10 Prince Caspian 11 Crosseyed and Painless 12 Miss You 13 Set Your Soul Free 14 Crosseyed Reprise 15 Prince Caspian Reprise 16 Twist 17 Carini 18 [encore break] 19 The Horse 20 Silent in the Morning 21 Fuck Your Face 22 Buffalo Bill 23 Fire
When the Phish New Year’s run at Madison Square Garden was postponed, it was quite a large disappointment and a great inconvenience for tens of thousands of fans. The rescheduled dates corresponding to “4/20” was cute, sure, but the real gift was the ability to experience this special holiday week in April. For us, that meant we’d be attending and recording the first two nights, and frankly I couldn’t have been happier.
The Wednesday night show was recorded and we’ll post it later this week, but honesty this Thursday night show was so far superior that it earned the right to jump the line. This was, not hyperbolically speaking, a top five Phish experience for me personally.
The night began with a “Suzy” dedicated to the song’s main character who attended her first Phish show on this night. And what a version — energetic and fun, it propelled this first set to a nice momentum, with “Wolfman’s” and “Ghost” as the highlights. But the very best was yet to come.
Any show that packs Chalkdust, Tweezer, 2001, Maze, Hood, and Zero into a single set is naturally going to be a winner, but it was more than that. This was just top notch playing, crisp and inspired. The band locked into a glorious melodic jam that lasted for the final nine minutes of Tweezer and was such a peak that I hoped they’d never transition to another track. The Phish scholars can correct me, but I believe that this was just a spontaneous first-time creation by the band on the fly and represented for me the beautiful possibilities of any Phish performance. At this point, less than halfway through the set, the balance of the night was just gravy. And the band kept piling it on, as one highlight followed the next. I was certain that Hood was the set closer and would have been more than satisfied, but Phish was not letting up on this night and crashed into a crazy “Character Zero” that celebrated the magic of this special evening.
I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards from inside of the Taper’s Section, elevated behind the soundboard. The mix was dialed in for this show, and I’m really pleased with this recording. Enjoy!
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 1:11:28] 01 Suzy Greenberg 02 46 Days 03 Plasma 04 The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday 05 Avenu Malkenu 06 The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday 07 Wolfman’s Brother 08 Esther 09 Ghost
Set 2 [Total Time 1:40:44] 10 Chalk Dust Torture 11 Tweezer 12 Also Sprach Zarathustra 13 Maze 14 About to Run 15 The Mango Song 16 Harry Hood 17 Character Zero 18 Tweezer Jam 19 Character Zero Reprise 20 [encore break] 21 A Life Beyond The Dream 22 Tweezer Reprise
The bright sunlight of a crystal clear Saturday morning reflected off the Atlantic Ocean and offered some hope of redemption from the negative energy of Friday night’s gaseous debauchery. Overnight, the unfortunate souls tasked with cleaning the boardwalk had removed nearly all evidence of the previous evening’s wreckage and with the arrival of weekend vacationers, Atlantic City seemed to breath fresh again.
We had the pleasure of spending a little time in the Phan Art exhibition on Saturday afternoon and those gentle vibes reinvigorated me and gave us a sense that maybe the positive elements of the scene could rise above the darkness that still lurked in the shadows. The threats of rain having dissipated, we entered the beach with a sense that this night could be special.
Perhaps Phish got wind of the negative energy, as they closed the first set with the dark cautionary tale “Squirming Coil”, advising all to steer clear of “Satan on the beach”. The balance of the first set was an up and down affair, as the trainwreck opening of “Ya Mar” was offset by a near-perfect run through of the intricate “Reba” jam.
But it was the meat of the second set where this show really began to shine. Phish covered the entire Quadrophenia album for Halloween 1995, and fortunately the epic “Drowned” has remained in occasional rotation, making a couple of appearances a year. The jam out of Drowned went into the familiar Jersey territory, as Trey clearly teased Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark” before transitioning to a nice spooky “Ghost”. Further buoyed by the opportunity to stretch out and explore, Trey seemed to be heading into a reprise of Drowned, which somehow then weirdly morphed into the middle portion of Scents and Subtle Sounds, which sadly petered out after about five minutes. The band refocused and launched into a gnarly Chalkdust that went into deep space before emerging through a fog of noise towards the gentle keyboard opening of Zeppelin’s “No Quarter”. At this point, the weekend had achieved musically exactly what I had hoped to see — a band playing at the peak of their powers and delivering transcendent moments in a troubling time of confusion and despair. We live for these peaks, and when Phish reprised Friday night’s “Tweezer” as the second encore to bookend my own person weekend experience, it was quite emotional. No nefarious post-show Boardwalk shenanigans could bring me down on this night, as we floated home through the magical mist of a sweet Summer night.
I recorded this show in the exact same manner as the previous night, with the mic stand only a few feet away from the Friday location. The Neumann hypers again delivered their magic and cut through the elements to deliver a sharp and bright recording. We’re extremely pleased again with this recording and hope you are too. Enjoy!
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 1:20:54] 01 Llama 02 Tube 03 Destiny Unbound 04 Ya Mar 05 46 Days 06 Reba 07 Soul Shakedown Party 08 Split Open and Melt 09 The Squirming Coil
Set 2 [Total Time 1:24:54]
10 I Never Needed You Like This Before 11 Drowned 12 Ghost 13 Scents and Subtle Sounds 14 Chalk Dust Torture 15 No Quarter 16 Slave to the Traffic Light 17 Suzy Greenberg 18 [encore break] 19 A Life Beyond The Dream 20 Tweezer Reprise
Other than two stops for higher education, I’ve lived my whole life in New York State. This means that I have a complicated relationship with the State of New Jersey. Yes, I accept that there are beautiful sections of New Jersey — the lakes and mountains in the North of the State, the breathtaking scenes along the Delaware River in the West of the State, and of course the many wonderful beaches on the state-long Atlantic coast.
But with that beauty comes some ugliness. Each of the major towns along the coast have commercialized boardwalks, and while the music of artists like The Drifters, Bobby Rydell, and Bruce Springsteen have glorified life along the Shore, the boardwalks are mostly just depressingly seedy. What is particularly depressing about Atlantic City in particular is that a hundred feet north of the boardwalk across the entire expanse of the town is even worse. Sure, there are casinos — America’s most blatant and unabashed grift — but there are also countless empty stores, vacant lots, and lost souls.
The arrival of the traveling circus that is Phish tour took this carnie atmosphere to an entire other level. This was not just a culture clash, but a multi-layered appropriation of a socially and morally bankrupt city by an out of control bacchanalia that sucked the last vestige of pride from the town. When I left Friday night’s show and walked back to my sad motel, I traversed a balloon orgy — a never-ending row of nitrous tanks where the underbelly of local criminals fed an insatiable suburban youth with the hiss of an addictive but terribly fleeting high. These scenes played out before midnight, but I am told that the hiss of evil lasted at least until 3:30 am.
I don’t have any reason to know if Phish themselves know any of this. They very clearly should know because like it or not, their name and reputation are tied to these events. But the sad confluence of a decaying scene and a band at the top of their game is not lost among those of us who are there for the music. This is not the late-era 1990s Grateful Dead, whose decline as a band in many ways paralleled the disintegration of the “scene”. What is coming from the Phish stage are consistently excellent performances, and that is part of what makes so infuriating the dangerously cavalier behavior of those who are going to ruin this for all of us.
It was against this dark backdrop that Phish took the stage on Friday night and proceeded to reference New Jersey and the beach setting from note one and throughout. The show opening “Cars Trucks and Buses” is both a Phish song and the less traveled right three lanes of the split NJ Turnpike between exits 6 and 15. The set closing “Sand” was everywhere, including stuck to everyone by the end of the night. In between, the band played one of the most solid first sets of the tour, highlighted by a bouncy and driven “Blaze On”. The second set was equally strong, with a notable Trey solo in “Possum” and the always-welcome Hood. But the highlight of the evening for me was certainly the thirty-five minutes of “Tweezer > Bathtub Gin”. At 22 minutes, this Tweezer wasn’t a long as the version from earlier in the tour, but the jams were all precise and focused. This might be the best single song played this Summer by this band.
The oasis of chunky jams now over, the trek from the Missouri Avenue Exit One off the beach to quieter confines was both physically difficult and psychically draining. While it was impossible to avoid the utter anarchy of the overrun Boardwalk, there was always Saturday to hope for some measure of redemption.
I recorded this set with the Neumann hypercards from a very advantageous location at the soundboard cage, shielded from the ocean wind by the tent (along with some extra custom “windcutter” screens). The live mix was sublimely perfect and loud enough to rise above the crowd din. The resulting recording is superb and exceeds any expectations tempered by this difficult taping location. I’ll be playing this one loud for a long time to come, and I hope you do too. Enjoy!
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 1:04:29] 01 Cars Trucks Buses 02 AC DC Bag 03 Blaze On 04 Wolfman’s Brother 05 I Didn’t Know 06 Funky Bitch 07 Rift 08 Sand
Set 2 [Total Time 1:30:40] 09 Tweezer 10 Bathtub Gin 11 Everything’s Right 12 Possum 13 Also Sprach Zarathustra 14 Rise Come Together 15 Harry Hood 16 More 17 [encore break] 18 Loving Cup
I’m not going to say anything about this Phish show that is going to give any more information or insight than the experts. Consult Phish.net for that kind of coverage. Suffice to say, this Sunday night show at a venue near which I grew up, and where I’ve attended many shows, sports games, and various entertainment events, was special for a variety of reasons. In terms of Phish, the only other time I saw the band at Nassau was almost exactly 20 years ago, when Phish lyricist Tom Marshall joined the band to sing a Who cover. This show wasn’t a novelty like that, this was a band operating at full powers and playing a serious set of expertly performed material old and new. I’m hoping for a similar experience at the Garden shows during New Year’s week, and fully suspect that excellence will continue.
I recorded this set with the trust Schoeps cards from the front rail of the Official Taper’s Section, and although we were placed pretty far back on the floor, I’m generally pretty pleased with the quality of this capture. Enjoy!
Setlist:
Set 1 [Total Time 1:19:30]
01 Ghost
02 Rift
03 The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday
04 Avenu Malkanu
05 The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday Reprise
06 The Wedge
07 Martian Monster
08 Timber
09 Cool it Down [Velvets]
10 Roggae
11 Poor Heart
12 Tube
13 Character Zero
Set 2 [Total Time 1:33:35] 14 Everything’s Right 15 Down With Disease 16 Cities [Talking Heads] 17 Carini 18 Ruby Waves 19 Twenty Years Later 20 Backwards Down the Number Line 21 Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S. 22 [encore break] 23 Roses Are Free 24 Slave To The Traffic Light
We had such a good time at the “Baker’s Dozen” shows this Summer at Madison Square Garden, so that when a taper’s ticket for the first night of the Phish four-show New Year’s run became available, I jumped at the chance to relive recent glory. Phish v3.0 is in a good place right now. They didn’t play as many shows in 2017 as in recent years, but what they did was quite memorable. The band themselves also seem to be personally doing well — clean and sober and enjoying each other’s company.
The first night of previous New Year’s runs of shows has been jokingly criticized as the “practice” night, a show used to work out the kinks and get back into the groove. But the current version of Phish isn’t playing by the old rules and this debut night was strong and confident from the outset. The band also is unencumbered by the mandate of playing different songs on every night of thirteen shows, so that the setlist was chock full of prime material. The abundant first set highlights included a solid “Wolfman’s Brother”, and extended “Roggae” and a peak version of “Back on the Train”. The second set started with the familiar, but the highlight of the set and perhaps the entire show was the twenty-four minute “No Men” which worked through a series of often melodic and thematic jams so that the extended length didn’t drag or seem indulgent. This was just the v3.0 of Phish playing to its strengths and operating on all cylinders. Far from “practice”, this night was a year-long highlight show and quite a cap to a perfect year for our experiences with Phish.
Thanks to Noah for the ticket and Walt for the clamp space!
I recorded this set from the first row of the taper’s section on the right side. Due to our fortunate position next to the great Charlie Miller, we were able on this night to maneuver the stand onto a raised platform in the center area, and that advantageous position helped this recording to achieve its maximum potential. Its perhaps our best capture of this year’s MSG shows. Enjoy!
Setlist:
Set 1 [Total Time 1:16:01]
01 ACDC Bag
02 Wolfman’s Brother
03 Roggae
04 Tube
05 Bouncing Around the Room
06 Back on the Train
07 Your Pet Cat
08 Waking Up Dead
09 Theme From the Bottom
Set 2 [Total Time 1:40:57]
10 Wilson
11 No Men In No Man’s Land
12 Twist
13 Everything’s Right
14 Also Sprach Zarathustra
15 Harry Hood
16 [encore break]
17 The Wedge
18 Slave to the Traffic Light
Boston cream was the theme of this twelfth and penultimate night of the Phish “Baker’s Dozen” series at Madison Square Garden. And if that offered two all-too-obvious musical groups in one donut flavor, Phish couldn’t avoid taking that bait, making a mashup of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” and Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” an early highlight of a show whose uneven moments were bested, in my view, by that ever-available fount of inspiration, the jams. If the first “Sloth” of 2017 excited more than a few heads, there was a killer “Gotta Jiboo” up next for the Saturday night crowd. That said, this was no Saturday night version–a sprawling jam that veered the song away from its upbeat, party vibe. If 2014’s “Plasma” isn’t the best-known song in the catalog, it certainly was one of the standouts of the first set, closing it out.
As has been the norm, the second set was where the fireworks were, virtuosity-wise. Kicking things off with a particularly languid version of “Ghost,” the band let that song take center stage as the night’s first huge jam song, followed by relative newcomer “Petrichor” and “Light.” After a “Lizards”>”The Horse”>”Silent In the Morning”>”Quinn the Eskimo” jam, there wasn’t much to be said. Nearing the end of curfew, the band wrapped with one of their more maudlin numbers “Joy.” If that song felt like a strange note to end on, with just one night of this epic MSG run left, it drove home the idea that with Phish, it’s best not to ask why.
I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones in the center of the tapers’ section. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!
SET ONE
01 Soul Shakedown Party
02 Uncle Pen>
03 The Sloth
04 Gotta Jibboo
05 Fuck Your Face
06 “Sunshine Of Your Feeling” [Sunshine of Your Love -> More Than a Feeling > Sunshine of Your Love > Foreplay/Long Time]
07 Frost
08 Scent of a Mule
09 Fire
10 Alaska
11 Plasma
SET TWO
12 Ghost
13 Petrichor
14 Light>
15 The Lizards
16 The Horse>
17 Silent in the Morning>
18 Quinn the Eskimo>
19 Rocky Top
[encore break removed]
20 Joy
Phish did it again last night. On the 11th night of the historic Baker’s Dozen shows at Madison Square Garden, this one themed on a Lemon donut, the band again delivered a unique set of breakouts, first-time covers, and surprisingly placed jams. You could excuse Phish for maybe missing the mark once on this run, but its clear that every single show has been an all-timer and this is why we continue to insist that this a bellwether stand for the band.
Last night’s set opened with a first-time cover of the blues standard “See That My Grave is Kept Clean” or “One Kind Favor”, performed by a litany of artists but first attributed to Blind Lemon (get it?) Jefferson. The set also featured stand-out performances of not-classics “Ocelot” and “Winterqueen”, two songs of recent vintage that got the full jam treatment at this show. The set finale of “First Tube” was truly remarkable, an intensely jammed version that ended with Trey literally waving his guitar around above his head in some sort of feedback devotional ritual.
The second set started off slowly with a puzzling silly acapella “Dem Bones” but quickly moved into jam mode. “No Man’s Land” is another new-y that got some peak extended play, before unfinished it quietly segued into a song that had some heads scratching and phones clicking. Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place” fit the theme (“sucking a lemon”) but certainly seemed like “worlds colliding” of musical genres. But the band did a bang-up job on the number — if a bit spacier than the original. Moving forward, a sample of the “sucking a lemon” vocals would continue to pop up during the set. Phish continued this strong set with a “Scent and Subtle Sounds” which not only reached jammy peaks but also contained a neatly interposed reprise of “No Man’s Land” tucked into the jam. The set ended with crowd-favorites “Prince Caspian” and a now-infrequent visit with “Fluffhead” before the band returned with a non-unfamiliar cover of the Edgar Winter Group’s classic “Frankenstein”.
This was my own personal final show of this run — acidjack is scheduled to capture tonight’s show — but I have to remark that this was all-in-all clearly the highlight of my lengthy but limited relationship with Phish. I suspect its also a highlight of the long-time and truly dedicated Phishheads, and that’s saying something.
I recorded this show from the dead center area of the taper’s section on the rail behind the video cage. The sound in the venue was extraordinary this night and our centered position was advantageous. As a result, the sound quality is superb and I believe this is my best sounding recording of the three shows I attended. Enjoy!
Setlist:
Set 1
[Total Time 1:09:49]
01 See That My Grave Is Kept Clean [Blind Lemon Jefferson]
02 Punch You in the Eye
03 Party Time
04 Big Black Furry Creature From Mars
05 Dinner and a Movie
06 Ocelot
07 Poor Heart
08 Winterqueen
09 Bold as Love [Hendrix]
10 First Tube
Set 2:
[Total Time 1:24:19]
11 Dem Bones
12 No Men in No Man’s Land
13 Everything in Its Right Place [Radiohead]
14 What’s the Use
15 Scents and Subtle Sounds*
16 Prince Caspian
17 Fluffhead
18 [encore break]
19 Frankenstein [Edgar Winter]
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