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Phish to Release 12/6/97

guitarberman

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guitarberman Newbie

guitarberman

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Phish will look to their December 6, 1997 show at Auburn Hills MI’s The Palace of Auburn Hills for their next archival release. The remastered show is slated for release Tuesday, September 25 as a download at LivePhish.com and as a two-CD LivePhish Limited set exclusively from Phish Dry Goods. The release was created from Paul Languedoc’s DAT stereo soundboard mix remastered by Fred Kevorkian and contains 16 songs totaling two and a half hours of music.According to the band: Phish’s third show at The Palace on December 6, 1997 was yet another defining fall ’97 gig, with an under-recognized set I and a renowned set II that must be heard in one sitting, preferably loud with headphones.Set I highlights include an intense second-song Run Like An Antelope, alien landscapes of Train Song and seamless pairings of Bathtub Gin > Foam and Fee > Maze. Set II was a unified, non-stop affair: Tweezer > Izabella > Twist > Piper > Sleeping Monkey > Tweezer Reprise. As they rounded the bend into the final week of this storied fall tour, the band had a confident swagger that exploded in The Palace with a flood of combined energy that flows through on the tapes. The Palace is deep in the suburbs but this Saturday night show in the home of The Pistons was a slam dunk that reverberated throughout Detroit Rock City and beyond.
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RUSTLE Newbie

RUSTLE

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I had front row center for this show. Oh what a night! If i remember correctly the front 5 rows on the left side were all Canadian mail order fans. I miss the old school mail order.

You are correct! i was there with 4 others right in front of Page! I miss old school mail order too!

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peipunk Newbie

peipunk

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Phish phunks out Palace crowd

December 8, 1997 - Michigan Daily

By Rob Mitchum

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a Phish snob. In the two years since I first experienced these four guys from Vermont, I have obsessed over every facet of their careers. I collect tape after tape of past concerts, memorize the setlists, analyze their jams and attend as many shows as financially possible each tour. Because of this knowledge, I can be harshly critical of a Phish performance, to the point where something as trivial as mediocre song selection will decrease my enjoyment of the show. Thus, I am a Phish snob, and I'm hard to please.

Behind me sit five large guys in baseball caps and tight t-shirts, intoxicated from a variety of substances. "So, do these guys dance or anything?" asks one of them, unaware that Phish usually shows about as much emotion as four cardboard cutouts on stage, preferring to let the music provide the action. "I hope they play 'Bouncin' Around the Room' tonight, man. That would be awesome!" These guys haven't seen a Phish show before, and they've come to hear the few Phish songs that are well-known enough to qualify as "hits," not to see long, complicated improvisational jams.

This is the dilemma that Phish has had to face every show since it moved into larger arenas and ampitheatres. In an audience split between elitist obsessives like myself and the casual fans behind me, it would seem impossible for the band to send everyone home happy. But Saturday night at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Phish was up to the task, providing a show that left not one fan in the arena unfulfilled.

Right off the bat, Phish provided an example of its completely unique sound with the opener, "Golgi Apparatus." The song, like most in the band's catalog, is a train-wreck of different musical styles, alternating between hyper ska chording, arena rock dynamics and intricately composed solos, all beneath Phish's trademark nonsensical lyrics. The crowd wasted no time in becoming a gigantic, jiggling mass of dancers, moving in the light of a hundred joints simultaneously being lit.

Phish fed off of this energy, moving swiftly into an unusually early version of the traditional set closer "Run Like an Antelope," which gave the band its first platform for launching into improvisation. Guitarist Trey Anastasio led a 10-minute jam session in the middle of the song, using a variety of pedals and soloing techniques to add atmosphere.

"Bathtub Gin" also featured an extended jam, this time built upon the spiraling riffs of Anastasio. As the band effortlessly soared through the jam, the incredible light show put on by crew member Chris Kuroda perfectly complemented and sometimes even seemed to play an active role in the improvisation. The almost psychic communication between the members of Phish was also seen as they suddenly turned the jam on a dime into a darker groove, from which the song "Foam" slowly segued.

"Foam," a track from Phish's first album, "Junta," shifted the spotlight from Anastasio to the melodious bass lines of Mike Gordon and the fiery keyboard work of Page McConnell. Drummer Jon Fishman also laid down a seemingly impossible beat, all four of his limbs keeping perfect time through the many twists and turns of the song.

The rest of the band's first set turned away from the strong improv of the first five songs. What followed was a run of songs aimed specifically at my inexperienced friends behind me: songs such as "Sample in a Jar" and "Fee" to which they could pump their fists and sing along. Here, Phish showed its ability to write a pop song that could be consumed by the general public, but in doing so sacrificed the eccentricity and talent that separates the band from the pack.

As the set closed with the sing-along anthem "Cavern" (you haven't lived until you've heard 17,000 people singing phrases like "serpent deflector" and "viral dissector"), the difference in opinion among the crowd was obvious. As the group of guys behind me exchanged high-fives, I wondered whether I was becoming too jaded to fully enjoy a Phish concert. When one of the guys exclaimed "That set rocked because I knew all the songs!", I wondered why the band wasn't experimenting more and playing more rarities. Where was the sense of adventure that had made me so excited at other Phish shows?

But soon after the second set began, every ounce of disappointment I had experienced in the first set evaporated. The band opened with "Tweezer," a song that has been known to reach lengths of more than 30 minutes in the past. But this version took a completely different direction than had ever been heard. As the band moved into the jam section, Anastasio positioned himself on his wah pedal and proceeded to lead the band into a deep funk jam. Gordon's bass led the way with some of the most danceable grooves this side of Bootsy Collins.

As the intensity grew higher and higher, Anastasio left the wah and let loose with a fiery lead, his flying fingers eventually finding their way to the riff from Jimi Hendrix's "Isabella." The rest of the band soon followed, and Anastasio proved himself to be a master of the big-rock solo and a worthy successor to the Hendrix's throne.

The cover then melted away as the band returned to the land of funk, pulsing with the deep groove of the moment. This jam represented the new improvisational direction of Phish, with each of the four members playing an equal part in the overall sound. Eventually, the beat became so funky that the band members themselves could not resist dancing, with Anastasio shimmying back and forth on the stage.

Out of this jam came two brand-new songs, "Twist Around" and "Piper." The former reflected Phish's new ability to combine pop sensibility with intricate playing, while the latter was simplicity itself, a slow buildup of a single-chord progression. As the song reached a frantic, yet breathtakingly beautiful pitch, the entire crowd was enraptured as if a powerful beam of energy had been formed between the 17,000-person audience and the four members on stage. It was an incredible moment, the kind of experience that only a few artists can achieve.

As the show closed with a lightning-fast run-through of the bluegrass classic "Rocky Top" and the lights went up, there were smiles all around. In my moment of doubt, I had received a reminder of why I devote so much time to the worship of Phish. Even the guys behind me seemed to enjoy it, despite the fact that not one of the songs played in the second set was well-known. Phish had defied the odds, proving that an artist didn't need to play by the rules of corporate music to send the entire crowd home with smiles on their faces.

Article © 1997 Michigan Daily

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RUSTLE Newbie

RUSTLE

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Man, so nice to hear this as a SBD - it's been so many years since I even listened to this I forgot HOW bad ass it gets.

agreed! i've had this on non-stop all day... the only copies i ever had of this show (on tape) were bad. i never fully heard page until now. one of the best shows, hands down, ever.

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Northern Wish Newbie

Northern Wish

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Wow. I remember the long wait to receive my dandy set of XLII's in the mail for this show and being utterly disappointed by the muddy (at best) sound.

I was transported back to The Palace on that crazy weekend this afternoon. From the snow storm that almost prevented us from getting to Cleveland, to the hardcore paper we found in the lots just before this one started- it was an epic trip; certainly not one for the faint of heart or mind.

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