Date:    Mon, 16 Mar 1998 21:36:21 GMT
From:    Barekoala 
Subject: Munich 97: Was this show _that_ bad?

      At the time, everyone felt a little bad about this show.  The Icognito
is not a bad veue.  It's basically a bar, and there were even bar stools to
sit on while we watched this band called Phish from the US.  I ended up
sitting on a bar stool that became the coat depository for everyone, maybe I
don't look _too_ sketchy?  Who knows, but I got to talk to a lot of people
that night, and I got to see how they were feeling about the shows and when
they left.  Cause my pile of coats was mighty low before the end of the show.
While making this tape today, I began thinking yet again, why did I feel so
bad about that show?  "What's the one thing I remember most about the show?"
is the first thing I thought.  I guess that would be the famous interrupted
"My Friend, My Friend.  At this point, there were a couple of German girls
hanging out with us.  They had won tickets from a local radio station and
decided to check it out.  I think they didn't get IT or anything like that,
but I think they did enjoy the show.  The atmosphere of the show really suited
the venue.  They _sounded_ like a very talented bar band, and I think the
Germans there really enjoyed that.  However, the My Friend My Friend was a
rather jolting moment.  A lot of people left . . . including those girls.
Phish did a great job pulling out a rocking fav that they could jump right
into:  DWD, but the girls had already left.

that's the moment that stays with me the most, but what really happened at
that show.  First of all, there was a nice Runaway Jim, not a super jam,
remember this was a back to solid basics tour, where Phish started to think
about experimenting with many songs, not jusst the more infamous jam tunes
like Tweezer.  Think about how Phish has moved through waves of jam tunes this
year.  Ghost is now more of a concert staple than the epic experimental jams
of this summer.  It is the birthplace of the phunky and has remained a little
phunkier ever since.  Cities has been less in rotation on Fall tour than on
summer tour.  BEK is one of the big jam tunes at the moment.  Carini just made
a reappearance, but if you listen to all five of the Carnini's from Spring
Europe Tour, you'll see that each one is so dynamically different, that the
WHOLe song becomes a continuously changing and mutating jam.  Each version is
an individual jam that just happens to have the same words, the styles even
vary drastically.  The Munich show, with the exception of the Mty Friend My
Friend fiasco is rather solid.  Nothing to fancy, but solid rocking out.  The
Runway Jim followed by My Soul seems natural.  Jim is not the symphonic,
creamy Jim of Worchester, but a solid tune, more "traditional," if you will.
The section with Sydney Ellis is the perfect thing to follow My Soul.  The
boys as a doo-wop mo-town like backup singers is just a riot.  You can hear
the good vibes as the bow to Ellis's voice.  This section is funny quirky
silly Phish at its best and though at the time I didn't appreciate the vibes
going on, I now listen to the tapes and reflect upon how great it was.  Ellis
left Phish to get bakc to their thing and that is what they did.  A typical
staple of this tour, Stash was nice, but nothing earthshattering, it was the
Amsterdam Stash which made me start clapping again.  Waste is nicely done, and
is Taste and Loving Cup (can't ever get enough of this one anyway), and we've
got a solid first set.  Like I said, this is not an epic show, but it is not a
bad show.  Come to think of it, bad shows with Phish are few and far between.

So, set 2.  This is where things get a little messy.  I think that Phish can
not possibly have all their songs in top notch form every time they play.  But
Europe is the most likely the place where they began to experiment with
playing without set-lists.  Though everyone had had a little too much beer
(hit the Augustiner Kellar for the best beer!), the rest of the show is pretty
solid.  Upon further reflection, I'd have to say that something havng to do
with set-lists was probably at work with this debacle.  Trey may not have
wanted to play it, who knows.  The point is that the rest of the show is
solid.  Again, it's a BAR and they are promoting their new record in Europe.
Beauty of My Dreams is a typical version, this is one song I think could be
pretty nice if they played around with it a little.  Too bad they didn't do
this one with Bela Fleck . . .  the boys melded so nicely with them in Lyon.
Sample in a jar, is again a nice solid version.  It's  nice choice in light of
the overall atmosphere of the show, solid staples, well played, more of a
"rock 'n' roll" feel.  Still at the end, there's a nice little guitar solo,
very much Trey on top and going at it.  Though Page is engaging and playing
his heart out.  The PLM really had the right idea, I've got to hand it to Mr.
Satan and his boys, whether it really worked or not (I DID see  PLM sticker on
one of the buses), or was just good karma, there is a marked difference in
Mike's playing.  If this keeps up, things will only get more interesting.  I
just love it when Trey and Page struggle with each other a little.  And Mike
doing his Scent of a Mule thing at Landover was just sweet!  This is followed
up by a nice PYITE, where the jam really starts as Page sprinkles dust motes
of music over top of a driving and pounding rythm laid out by Trey and Mike,
although I like the Phunk, and it seems to me that Page's organ obsession
really adds to it, I sometimes miss the piano a little.  Still the techniques
he uses with the organ are sometimes very interesting variations on his piano
technique and his organ mastery is often mind-numbing, particularly on songs
like the Tube from Dayton (I'm like an addict with that one, I could listen to
it into infinity).  This song fades into Free, which is also a nice version,
we just forget in light of the shocking first Amsterdam encore which just
rewrote my mind's understanding of Free and of Phish.  That whole run was just
an in-your-face though-you-knew-us well take a look at this experience.  This
whole year has been, when you think about it.  I feel bad because at this
point it is hard for me to look BACK when this whole year has been about
pushing us and them to look FORWARD.  For me, each show has erased some of my
past and some of my perceptions have been severely warped.  THANK GOD/DESS for
tapes.  (subliminal message:  BUY THE CD'S, SAVE THE TAPES).  Free was
followed by Fee, which has also not been played that often.  This was a nice
touch, since we had all hoped to hear one after being teased with the sight of
the megaphone on the stage so many nights.  (I can't rmemeber if they played
it more OH LOOK< i can check this on my PHISH STATS from WWW.IHOZ.COM, wow all
kinds of information to WRITE ABOUT).  i've heard it one time, and i don't
recall it being played at brussels or london, so it was only played once on
euro tour last spring.   Following Fee was the bad moment.  Oh well, let's
rock out with DWD, and that's what they did.  I remember telling my friend it
was a shame those girls had left, they missed Phish in a great moment, taking
a pretty bad thing (IMHO) and just moving on.  That's stage presence, if you
ask me.  Prince Caspian always moves me a little even though everyone
complains about it, I don't mind it that much.  La Grange was a nice song to
hear and I rather like the silly barbershop quartet tunes loike Sweet Adeline.
Although Chalk Dust is played often, and someone mentioned the irony of all of
us having a song about how we're oppressed, I still like it.  All in all,
Munich WAs a pretty good show.  It was certainly not as bad as it has been
made out to be.

As always, any of the shows mentioned are available for b&p (with the
exception of the Lyon and Worchester which I don't have in my possession yet).
The requirement this time is that you post some kind of comparitive analysis
of a show that is either not often mentioned or else is your fav show.  This
must be cross-posted to the Phunky Bitch phish-women@netspace.org and to rmp
phish@phish.net.  Send a copy my way and I'll hook you up.

Allison

List=Mistress for the Phunky Bitches

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