New Year's Eve with Phish at MSG

It was the night for which I had waited 14 years - finally ringing in the New Year with Phish for the first time since 1999. I was not going to let anything stop me. I took the whole day off from work, ran my (tired) nine-miler, and drove to Hoboken in the afternoon. My brother, who lives there, had a parking pass waiting for me. When I showed up at his door, he took one look at my face and said, "Excited?"

Taking the PATH train to 33rd Street, I got to Penn Station in time for some pre-show eats, then it was upstairs to the Garden for my Section 210 "bar row" seats.

The bar row is at the very top of the section, with unfortunately inferior sound, but an interesting sight line, plenty of dancing room, and a counter on which I could put my belongings. The seat itself was literally a bar stool. Straight ahead, at eye level, was the new Chase Bridge which completely obscured the scoreboard. But the well placed, crystal clear screens attached to the bridge facing our section showed the whole thing - the webcast camera shots, the mini-movies, and the countdown.
 
Any speculation about a Gamehendge set was squashed right away with the "AC/DC Bag" opener. With that, the band continued to play all original songs, both old and new (notably, one of my favorite recent tunes, "Halfway to the Moon"), culminating in an enormous set-ending "Fluffhead" that had me leaping for joy during its entire ending section.
 
The references to Phish's past that came next were hilarious and poignant. Trey Anastasio and Page McConnell posing for a re-creation of the 'Colorado '88' album cover, except the keyboard was actually a huge cake which they shared with the audience on the floor. The mini-movie that followed showed Jon Fishman driving a truck hauling remnants of New Year's past - the hot dog, a disco ball, golf carts, etc. Suddenly the truck appeared on the floor of the Garden and was "driven" into the center of the arena.
 
With a simple stage setup on top of the truck, it recalled the "flatbed jam" from Clifford Ball, but more specifically echoed the band's bare-bones staging from its club days in the '80s. The set-break music was entirely from the early '80s (Eddy Grant, Duran Duran), setting the tone for the band to emerge on the truck and play a set that could have easily been from Nectar's in Burlington, Vt. Among the early gems was "Fuck Your Face", my first time seeing them perform it. It is still rare, though thankfully not absent as it was from 1988 through 2009.
 
During "Icculus" in that set, Trey, in his usual fervor in speaking about the fictional "Helping Friendly Book", kept referring to "the message" and how some people still had not gotten it. It became clear to me that "the message" was that Phish is what it is because it has always been Phish. Set list jokes, cover songs and albums, special guests, theatrics, and gimmicks are actually peripheral to what comprises the band we love.
 
We spent three days on Twitter, buzzing with theories and speculations about what zaniness was in store for New Year's Eve, and we forgot that the best thing Phish could give us was Phish. They did it on Halloween, and yet we still did not get "the message".
 
And so, in a strange but necessary reversal, that wrapped up the New Year's shenanigans which usually take place at midnight and into Set III. When they came back out and played "Character Zero" into midnight for a balloon-and-confetti drop so huge it had to be done in waves, the party was then re-focused directly on the original music of this extraordinary band.
 
Kicking off the New Year was "Fuego", easily the best track from the band's upcoming album. To my ears, it sounds like Weezer meets Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I am probably the only person that thinks so, but regardless of that, it still sounds 100 percent like Phish.
 
Perhaps the mass of balloons flying toward the stage was a bit distracting because this version of the instant classic was not nearly as good as the Halloween debut. But it still rocked the party in a big way, leading into yet another in a four-year streak of amazing renditions of "Light". And finally, they seem to have ironed out the sloppy kinks in the coda of "Twenty Years Later" a song that has continued to grow on me.
 
A co-worker recently asked me if Phish had a signature song and I told him it was most definitely a 10 to 20-minute little ditty he has never heard called "You Enjoy Myself". They saved it for the end of Set III as their 30th anniversary came to a close. It was wonderfully well-executed, excellently jammed, and included some funkier-than-ever dancing from Trey.
 
What followed was a 15-minute video montage of Phistory - photos and flyers of their very first gigs to the pics of the recent Halloween show. It was emotional, bringing back a lot of memories, including a bunch of "I was there!" moments, and showed the long, wild journey of this strange little band from Vermont.
 
The encore included another of my favorite songs of the recent era, "Show of Life", which played beautifully as a coda to the festivities and, for one last joke, "Grind", during which each band member recited, in days, how old he would be for their 60th anniversary in 30 years.
 
As we exited, a photo of Phish as old men showed on the screen, requesting that we "save the date" for their 60th anniversary show on Dec. 31, 2043. I doubt they will really be playing when they are 80, but it seems to me that Trey  got "the message" too - the band he broke up for five years is back to stay, for as long as they can still do it. And Phish will forever be Phish.

Message received.