Random Show: 8/11/2004 Tweeter Center — Mansfield, MA
How ironic that, after I just opened up about the heft of 2004, I get August 11, one of the more starkly memorable shows. Another ironic twist: As I was listening to this show, a swarm of new Phish music came piling my way today: A new Live Bait 10 — a rousing collection of jams from all eras, a new Phish album, AND a live 1 hour set on Letterman — yes, all in one day. The planning could not be any better. And yet, here I am, wanting to continue this collection, writing about an era that we all would like to not remember, or to look at it positively, to not dwell on the negative, but push forward from the dark, and turn to the light. I think I’ll do that with this review, I mean this show did have some bright moments. I guess what I want to do is just make a point to connect it to something I read, if that helps at all. I must admit, writing about this concert makes me a little squeamish, so I feel that, as I’m writing and listening, things might change. I guess my goal is to count this show amongst the rest of the Phish library, to not segregate these shows as “oh, this is an August 04 show — things were fucked up then,” because yes, they were. I want to listen to it and write about it without any holding back.
First, I want to give a shoutout to Wally Holland (I’m going to step up my courage and call him that at this moment) one of my favorite Phish writers — he’s going to be working on a 33 1/3 book about A Live One — I aspire to write like him every day, at least hit his candid notes. Anyway, he was at the show. He says on 8/11:
Touching, charming, fun, silly, and ultimately a letdown. Some folks love this version of 2001; I count it maybe the most boring modern version. I imagine few people listen to the August ‘04 shows with any regularity, especially when the June shows offer such pure doses of (an admittedly very specific and perhaps limited kind of) pleasure. Along with Coventry, this is in my Just Too Damned Painful file.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with him, — it is too damn painful. They were off. For a positive starter, they were really working on 97 first set type II’s (check out Hampton 8/9/04 Chalkdust) and maybe trying to resurrect the glory days of 97/98. However, the remainder of this show inevitably crumpled. Everything that we don’t like about Phish, they did. Do we chalk it up to fatalism? I feel that, like Donne’s mirror:
Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite ; Therefore I think my breast hath all Those pieces still, though they be not unite ; And now, as broken glasses show A hundred lesser faces, so My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, But after one such love, can love no more. (From “A Broken Heart” By John Donne)
These fragments: the awkward repertoire, the mock guitar guff, they reflect all in pieces, broken, and leaving us wondering how it got to this. It was a very hard time for all of us — for me, I was oblivious to the band’s on again-off again drug use. When I saw them, they just looked exhausted — I didn’t really want to believe they’ve been bitten by fame. This resurgence in the Suzy brings some glimmer of delight. We are still envenomed by the darkness, and the band pushes toward Coventry in their ingress and egress of disconnected performances.
Now, when I listen to this show, it reminds me of Capote’s “Ghosts in Sunlight,” in which he conveys the ghosts as a metaphor for the memory and the reality converging into making it something of its former self. When I think about these shows, and reflect on being present during this time, it was mixed — I mean Phish is a place I go to to find contentment — with the community, the music, the culture. Comparing it to Phish’s history, it was a time that we didn’t really understand, yet I am overjoyed I was a part of it, I experienced a part of Phish they couldn’t control. This memory becomes jaded, this ghost. Even when I hear Undermind, they’re trying to operate under a crippled façade —the music created was brooding and had this rundown undercurrent (the DWD in this show was structured beautifully, but inspired nobody.) It was not like that swampy molasses from 99-00, but a shattered melopoeia that destroyed what they tried to conquer. And now, the ghost in the sunlight becomes transfixed on this amalgm of dark memories and present satiation, that looking at this show does uplift our spirits listening to music of 3.0. We break from the sunlight and become substance, a material that brings us joy. Maybe that’s what Joy is really about.
Wow, that was weird. It was cathartic, though. I feel that I can listen to these August shows with more confidence, knowing that they’re back in true form, especially after today’s abundance of new music. If you do give this show a re-spin, you should check out the Suzy — it has this hopeful energy behind it, like: “Hey, we’re done, but not really. We can’t give this groove up. We’ll be gone for a while, and we’ll be mad at each other, but we’ll be back. Things are gonna get fucked up for a while, but we need the time to figure it out, and because of this Suzy groove, we’re letting you know to not lose hope.” And with today, the shattered glass molds back together, to give us that image that we fell in love with, that image bereft of disease or woe.
At least that’s how I interpret it.
