Phish - Slip Stitch and Pass (1997)
Indulge me a little bit as the reunion and concerts and new album and such have put me on a bit of a kick lately. SS&P is an official, traditional-style live album from what gets characterized as an inbetween period of Phish's career: after their arguably best-show-ever but certainly legendary Madison Square Garden 12.31.95 show, after they had gotten big enough to support big scale festivals as a single act (8.16 & 8.17.96's Clifford Ball), but before they had gotten into the so-called cow-funk* that came to dominate their dance grooves of late '97 and '98. The album is culled from their 3.1.97 show in Hamburg, Germany, and the title refers to the fact that the show is cut and presented in an order that does not match the order in which the songs were actually played, a metaphorical knitting move.
* - Presumably this is because it's funky and they hail from Vermont where there are cows. I've also heard it referred to more pejoratively as "white-boy funk" or "Steve Miller funk," which is also probably because it's funky and they hail from Vermont. Ha! Seriously, without delving too much into urban / suburban theories of popular music creation, I think it's fair to say that Mike TPB et al throw down "phunk" just as fine as Parliament or Sly or whoever do, it's just that it's goofy ol' Phish and it's hard to take it seriously as an instrument of social change. In nice beat / can dance to it / bass bombs / wah wah guitar bliss terms, though, it passes the test.
The pre-funk period comment is important to note because the first two tracks on the disc feature some rather thick, groove-based playing that sound like a significant departure from their previous live album, A Live One. The opening track is a sublime cover of the Talking Heads song "Cities;" Phish's take is a very much slowed down shwank-fest, and they absolutely nail it, complete with bubbly mooging and the requisite wah-wah abuse. They *also* keep it short at about five minutes, sticking to tight 32 bar or so instrumental breaks, which just emphasizes that they can make a song their own without necessarily pushing things out to a marathon. Of course, they do like to run 26.2 miles, and the next track is allegedly the very birth of the aforementioned phunk: "Wolfman's Brother"gets the full extended treatment. Many phans cite this specific jam as the inspiration for funky Phish songs and jams that dotted the next two years. The song proper is an energetic, much more lively affair that benefits a lot from the in-the-moment energy (relative to the overly poppy and hated-by-Nyet Hoist version), but the highlight is the focused groove jam. Clocking it at 14 minutes total and ending with about 6 minutes of '70s cop car cool, the tune sounds a sea change for concerts to come.
But that's not even the best part - the group takes their established groove and baby-walks it down to a crawl and cleanly segues directly into another slowed down number, their cover of the ZZ Top blues number "Jesus Just Left Chicago." Page takes the lead vocals and drives the songs with piano accents and takes his turn dominating the soloing; Trey gets some turns, too, and in the end it's a perfectly delivered 12
"Mike's Song" warrants its own paragraph. First, this is one of my favorite Phish songs - just a super riff rocker matched by a high vocal from the wacky bassist, and a very natural, dark jam section that follows the lead verses. Before this album, "Mike's Song" had not been officially released, and there's still (to my knowledge) no studio version available. And of all the versions to release first, this was a crazy choice. Everything starts fine with another expertly executed, flub free rendition of the composed sections and a move into a soaring, creepy guitar-led freakout. And then things crescendo and crescendo and get more frayed and more dissonant until Trey drops out and we're left with... Page and Mike playing an Eastern-sounding snake-dance number over reverbed looped guitar-effects. About a minute later, things have taken a very obvious Doors-y turn. Mescaline-style. Trey starts chanting random lines from "The End" and mumbles about Indians dying and something from "Peace Frog," then screams, and then repeats taunts of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" (a Pink Floyd song), then some more talk about "walking down the hall." "Mother" ... then more death wails. Eek... every now and then, Phish hits an edge that is just a little too frightening; you don't always, for example, want to leave your lights out during one of their YEM vocal jams. And here, despite the fact that the whole section is a ridiculously sarcastic, musical joke, things get genuinely eerie.
Of course, that won't last long. They drop suddenly into their lovely but equally ridiculous lounge song "Lawn Boy," a Page showcase that is straight out of a 1950s noir bar scene. Except that Page is singing about "smelling the colors outside on my lawn." And Fishman, of course, keeps yelling exuberantly, "He walks on down the hall!" The goofballs hit a fine surreal note with this one, to be sure. The traditional bookend to "Mike's Song," a fast bass showcase number called "Weekapaug Groove," follows, this time replete with "Mother... I wanna cook your breakfast ... I wanna borrow the car" references to "The End." They go rock star style with this one, and some fireworks come out of all that aforementioned mayhem.
The album closes with a quick a cappella "Hello My Baby" that is unfortunately actually a cappella - the band is barely ambiently picked up by the stage mics, and so the song is way softer than the remainder of the album. It's easier to hear the shhh-ing from the audience than the barbershop quartet on stage, and it's disappointing that the song could not have been better mixed for album purposes. The "encore" of sorts is "Taste," a rocker from Billy breathes that the band, again, juices up in this live setting. Standard, energetic closer to a "show."
And that's just it - this disc is a strange one in that even though it takes up an hour and twelve minutes of your day, it feels very short. That, of course, is because it seems like it should be a Phish show - it was taken entirely from one show, after all - and not a live album. For its purposes as Phish's second live album in 1997, it does a superb job. In the era of livephish, however, it feels very strange indeed to have only about a third of a full concert in the player. True, they picked crispy, choice cuts from that concert, and "Mike's (End)" is sort of a perfect document of their bizarre side. And the first three tracks in particular represent some of the tightest, non-indulgent playing / jamming they've done. And, oh yeah, it's a top to bottom great disc. Still, I can't help but want to hear the rest of it, and in the right order, so the disc is a frustrating experience. And something I've perhaps under-emphasized is that as this was a sort of inbetween show, it's in Europe, it atypically featured a bunch of zaniness in the middle of the Mike's Groove, and the songs are somewhat atypical, it ends up being a non-representative Phish show. Which is a strange thing to say, as I don't know exactly how one would go about crafting a "representative" Phish show - again, you really have to take in this band on the encyclopedic level to get the whole story - but this disc has a definite feel of being "odd," whereas other selections (e.g., ALO) strike me as more typically Phishy.
All of that is coming from the perspective of a total Phish-nerd, though, and in terms of an introduction to the band's live act, this has a ton to offer. So I will split my recommendation here for phans and non-phans, for the converted and for those in need of proselytizing. It's definitely worth checking out this document of Phunk-development - just be careful with that bass, Eugene.
Status: Recommended (for newbies), Recommended (solid) for phans
Nyet's Fave: "Cities"
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