Subject: UCLA Review 12-1 (not short)
From: eric burns
Well, you've all seen the setlist now. Ah, the return of Peaches.
It's been long enough (since 12-31-94). Anyway, it was played very
well and literally caught everyone (myself included)by surprise. And
Trey mentioned the title after Zero (I think).
Poor Heart-was energetic as always. Takes a back seat to Pen in my
book, (especially after the Sacto version w/ McEuen on banjo).
Cavern-Nice to get early on rather than as a closer. The elements
of surprise remain alive. Very good version, high energy.
CTB-Boy, they just kept the energy up. Way up. I'm still looking
forward to the day when Trey gets a solo. Page started on the B3
and then took a long solo on the piano.
Zero-This was fairly rocking. It's a good song; I was kind of sur-
prised to get this AND Cavern--and neither wasa closer. Pretty
similar to the others I've heard from fall.
Curtain-VERY surprising. I was very much hoping to hear this, but
I was figuring Curtain->Bowie to open II. Very cool...and there is
the red hot bass intro:
Disease-I was hoping for this, but it'd been played just a few nights
ago, so my hopes were low. AND, considering they've been doing this
as an opener lately (and not huge versions, either), I was quite
happy: this one probably hit 13 or 14 minutes. Reminiscent of the
11-12-94 jam (w/o the Have Mercy, o' course). Jammed very hard.
Trainsong-People seem to have a problem with the fact that Mike likes
to write short, pretty songs. I like this song. The crowd was res-
pectfully quiet and it was a nice version.
Horse->Silent-Nice. Not my fave combo, but nicely done nonetheless.
Sample-Ah SHIT. Set over. Well, pretty good set. Sample, like the
rest of the rockers, was very energetic. Wait, though, Trey's NOT
saying "We'll be back in 15 minutes"....hmmmmmm......
ANTELOPE-Alrighty then. I had seen them close the SD show last fall
with Sample>Antelope, so I was silently hoping for it. It was great:
a long, involved build. LONG third gear, as it were. No Marco, it
was Norton Charleton Heston again. Have any Spike? Man?
Set I, about 65-68 minutes. I was VERY happy with this set. Hey,
12 songs, all very high energy. The DwD made the set, as did the
Antelope.
Here's II:
Well, let's grab the bull by the cojones:
Tweezer-Very impressive. About 19 or 20 minutes. It was a crazy
jam, very involved....Trey had that "yeah, I know I've got a goofy
look on my face, but I'm CONCENTRATING here!" and the Tweezer kept
getting further out there. The last couple minutes were hilarious:
the beat was slowing down, and Trey just hung on the low E, riffing
heavy metal style, VERY SILLY. VERY. Fish was very into this.
Into, what else:
Sparkle-This song follows me around like the plague. Heh heh. But,
like a trooper, I dragged my ass outta my chair and danced.
Simple-WOW. I was not expecting this at all. They'd just played
this on Friday (and I was not there), but this one was BIG. Very
jammed out. Again, I didn't have a time piece on me (I've learned
that graduation gifts and Phish shows don't mix =^), but I would be
surprised if this version was less than 11 minutes. The whole band
was smiles for this version. Quiet outro, into:
Day/Life-I've seen this a three of my last four shows, so this song
is currently residing in my "Whatever" file. However, I was with a
couple hardcore Beatle heads who'd never seen it, so that made it a
lot better. Very long and loud outro cacophony. Then, the one song
I was really pining for:
REBA!-Help me up! Fast, but not the EXTREMELY fast version they've
played occasionally over the last year. No flubs at all. I still
get all tingly for the composed section of this. It still floors me
ever time. The jam section was also long and slow-building. Trey
stayed low on the fretboard for the first several minutes and took
his sweet time moving up. But, once we got to the peak, we got to
stay at the peak for a while. The whole band was just taking the
care to make this gorgeous. Again, no clock, but probably 14 min
or so.
Swept->Steep-Again. Well, this was MY first time for this and it
was cool. I just hope they are going to do a little more with this
eventually. The set was just over an hour in and, UH-OH:
Tweeprise-OUCH! I was surprised, especially since the Sacto set II
ran 90 minutes. Well, still an enjoyable set, with Reba and Tweez
being the big highlights.
Whoa, Johnny B Goode! Now that was icing on the cake. It was a shade
longer than others I've heard, and the place was going crazy. JBG
ends, and wait: Trey's NOT saying "Thanks a lot, we had a great time"
SLAVE! This is more cake on top of the icing. Wow. We were due for
this, but, of course, I was not EXPECTING it, not after TWO closers.
Very typical, wonderful version. Around 12 minutes long and, like
the Reba, drawn out.
And, what better way to go out than with Highway To Hell. Trey had
this HUGE shit-eating grin on his face during the whole freaking
thing. Hilarious. I've actually got to get some work done, so I'll
put a cork in it right here. Just wanted to say thanks to Marc Olson,
who pulled off 8th row center seats for me. Lovin' THAT.
Eric
"Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not
truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, and
music is the best."
-Frank Zappa
---------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: First Phish show [long]
Date: 2 Dec 1996 17:50:30 -0800
From: mbstone@crl.com (Michael Stone)
First Phish Concert (Pauley Pavilion -- UCLA -- 12/1/96)
Apologies to any of you who find the comparison between GD/Phish a little
boring by now, I am making mine for the first time having seen maybe 50
Dead shows and 1 Phish.
First of all, I had given up hope of ever seeing Phish at all, let alone
in a reasonably small venue. The last couple of times I thought of seeing
them they were sold out by the time I forgot about the show. I had read
reports of large venues being mobbed by ticketless hordes, so I figured I
would get to see 'em in a stadium venue, if at all. To my surprise, the
Pauley Pavilion show wasn't sold out, and my ticket was stage left about
10 rows above the stage where I could get a good look at the band and
stage.
Pauley Pavilion is a smallish venue (UCLA basketball games are played
there) of maybe 7000 seats; I had seen the Jerry Garcia Band play there a
couple of years ago. Even before one entered the venue, it was clear that
Phish loves and respects its patrons in simple and obvious ways that could
have, should have been addressed by the Dead years ago. I'll leave it at
that except to add that those who produced Dead shows, if they were to
visit a Phish venue, would recognize what I am talking about and would
leave humbled.
Also humbling to the Dead would be the emphasis on production values.
Unlike the Dead stage, which consisted of everyone's Anvil cases parked
behind three Oriental rugs, and which for a venue like this would have had
little curtained-off onstage rooms for each member, Phish's stage was
Spartan, consisting of a 50 by 70 foot black riser, a rectangular area
mostly empty except for a stairway at one corner, and a cluster of band
equipment in the middle. It was not clear to this first-time observer
whether this arrangement was "normal" or was for this tour only.
Phish's setup is different from nearly every other band in that the two
guitarists are situated behind and in between the two other members (the
drummer and keyboardist). (You can tell I am a Phish newbie because I
have absolutely no idea who the members of Phish are!) In most bands, the
guitarists play downstage of the other band members. One wondered whether
this arrangement was designed to equalize the band members in the view of
the audience and to give them all equal billing.
During the concerts, the Phish guitarists never strayed from their fixed
positions, and this would appear well suited for stadium gigs where the
band members look like little dots from wherever one is sitting.
The lighting consisted of a truss containing maybe 50 voltage- controlled
Varilite spotlights, about the same as in a typical indoor Dead show. The
lighting was first rate, although some of the Varilite moves, panning up
and down the audience, seemed overly jerky and digital.
The PA was not visually impressive, consisting of maybe a dozen flown 8"
speaker cabinets per side. Noteworthy was the floor- level positioning of
the bass bins, four per side, which were part of the crowd barrier and
were aimed right at the front orchestra seats on the far left and right
sides. (The PA turned out to be well tuned for the venue, nice
considering all the new lyrics I hadn't heard before and which were heard
clearly in the last row of the balcony).
And then the house lights dimmed and I was left to decide whether Phish
deserved the GD's three-star Michelin guidebook rating or whether they
were just another bar band from Brattleboro. Forgive me for being
unfamiliar with the Phish repertoire -- I can't tell you what they played!
Suffice it to say they started to play real fast, and onomatopoeic, and
made skillful use of neurolinguistic anchors within the lyrics. I walked
back to the center of the venue behind the soundboard, in the balcony, and
at a point I could not quite identify, Phish came on like liquid sunshine.
It is always nice to have something happen to change 20 year habits and
suffice it to say the Phish' overall approach to things was refreshing and
paradigm shifting. One component of Phish that was absent from the GD was
that Phish's music is full of sexual energy. Not the Rolling Stones, mind
you, but still toasty hot.
As a former audio tech, I observed that the richly textured sounds
appeared beyond what I had thought were the capabilities of four live
musicians. I wondered whether portions, or even entire segments, of the
performance might have been helped along by the use of looping, sampling,
or sequencing; to paraphrase the old Clairol commercial, only one's PA
mixer knows for sure, and certainly nobody cared.
The band played a 1-hour first set and maybe 1:40 second set and encore,
some other poster will have to post the set list because, as I said, I
don't know any of the material. [While the amount of "airtime" was
substantially less than that typical of the later-years GD, no one was
complaining.] I really liked the cover of the Beatles' "A Day In The
Life," and the rest of the show as well, and Phish certainly is highly
recommended fare for people who are prepared to approach rock concerts
with the proper frame of mind.
Whether I would travel to see Phish is another thing, not because of any
shortcoming of Phish, but because of the lamer tourheads. I had been
looking forward to a possible campout venue a la Eugene, but I would not
wish the Phish tourheads on Eugene. I was amazed at the scams I
encountered. This guy was trying to sell me VHS videotapes with "Phish
New Years 95-96" scribbled on 'em -- must of been having a sale on blank
tapes at the drugstore! It's hard to party with people who take and take
and who are willing to lie and steal to finance their pleasure. But Phish
presumably has deep thinkers working on this problem and other intractable
societal problems as well.
Laws are ROMs; courts are CPUs (C)'96 MS
-------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: L.A. 12/1/96 Setlist (incomplete)
Date: 2 Dec 1996 16:42:55 GMT
From: RubberChicken
Just got back from the Pauley Pavilion show as well as the California
Turkey Weekend Phish Tour (I-5) style. A complete review of the the three
shows (San Francisco, Sacto, and LA is forth coming, it will have to wait
until after San Diego ;) )
The order is very very suspect, but these are most ,if not all the songs
they played. After Character Zero Trey said "Thank you very
much...uh...the first song which some of you might not recognize was
Peaches En Regalia written by Frank Zappa..a hometown boy." In the famed
Pauley Pavilion, which gave birth to many a concert by both the Mothers
and Zappa. If Frank were there, he would have been proud. The LA show
was by far the most balanced and energetic of the three this weekend,
dazzling. Plus there was some Drew Barrymore look-a-like in Green Pants
and Yellow t-shirt running up and down the aisles humping and kissing
every man in the arena. Hmmmmmm.
More on the California leg later.
Charles Morogiello
-------------------------------------------------------
From: smitheng@west.net (Brian Smith) Subject: RE: 12-1-96 Pauley
Pavilion, LA Date: 5 May 1997 01:05:39 GMT
I'd like to add a newbie's perspective to this thread.
12-1-96 was my first Phish show. I have quite a few tapes, but their
rare recent appearances on the west coast haven't made it easy for me
to see them. I saw The Grateful Dead over a hundred times and have a
firm belief that a person's opinion of a show has a lot to do with
their own likes and dislikes and their expectations when they walk in.
I also think people who have seen a band lots of times tend to become a
little biased towards the song list rather than the quality of the
performance.
I: Peaches en Regalia, Poor Heart, Cavern, Cars Trucks Buses,
Character Zero, The Curtain, Down With Disease, Train Song, The
Horse > Silent in the Morning, Sample in a Jar, Run Like an Antelope
The first five songs seemed like they were done in about 15 minutes. I
was a little dismayed with the pacing at this point, it seemed like
they should be kicking back and jamming more. The Curtain and DWD made
me much happier. Trainsong was a nice break in the pacing, a gave us
all a chance to cool down after the DWD. SITM was pretty cool, with
the band really getting into the crescendo at the end. The Sample was
well done.
I thought the Antelope closer was the highlight, and is probably still
the best version of this song I've heard on tape (I maybe have 10). The
first set was solid, and I was really pretty happy with it.
II: Tweezer > Sparkle, Simple > A Day in the Life, Reba, Swept Away >
Steep > Tweezer Reprise > Johnny B. Goode, Slave to the Traffic
Light
E: Highway to Hell
I would disagree with the previous comments in this thread that said
this show lacked a groundbreaking jam. The Tweezer jam at this show
was totally unique and one of the best I've heard. At the end of
Tweezer, the band started doing this descending melody with Fish
pounding out the beat, and each time they did it, they did it slower.
It was a totally spontaneous jam and the band was really into it.
Sparkle was really fun, coming from someone who'd never heard it live
before, and Simple was solid (but nowhere near as good as in Vegas).
The entire rest of the second set was outstanding. Reba was the best
I've ever heard, with the jam at the end being the best part of this
show, for me. The Swept Away->Steep was really impressive, because I
couldn't believe how well they pulled off the perfomance live.
I left this show pretty impressed with Phish's live performance, very
glad I had tickets to see them twice more that week in San Diego and
Las Vegas.
After seeing all three shows, my favorite was San Diego. I haven't
seen much discussion on that show in this newsgroup, but I think it was
by far the best of the three. The band was really hot that night,
especially Trey. It was the first time I'd heard Guyute and PYITE.
Vegas was a big disappointment. The phans really loved this show, and
I was totally disappointed. I thought the jamming was mostly
uninspired. The Mike's->Simple->Hood->Weekapaug was really long, but
it lacked any really strong soloing. It was fun to dance to, because
the band was just kind of working a rythym groove, but I kept waiting
for Trey or Page to take off and play and they never really did. The
jam at the end of Simple was the best part. The encore was pretty
cool, but not enough to make this show for me. As a newbie, I couldn't
really appreciate how special it was, I would have rather had better
jamming like SD and LA.
I've been listening to the tapes since then, and I seem to listen to
the second set from LA more than any of the others. I think it's a
tape I think I will listen to a lot, because the improvisation was 1st
rate, a that's why I listen to Phish.
| -- Brian Smith smitheng@west.net 05/04/97 18:13 | --------- Using:
OUI TE 1.5 from http://www.dvorak.com
-------------------------------------------------------------