It still feels so weird to me when I type these post titles with "Phish" and "2017" in the same line. Ten years ago, I would have never thought it possible. Yet here we are, and the fact that the band's playing is top notch - definitely as well as their lauded late '90s years - is practically a miracle.
More than anything, the eighth show of this Baker's Dozen run felt like a lesson from Phish, similar to 12/31/13, the culmination of four shows with neither cover songs nor repeats; when the only gimmick was to play a set of their '80s material in the middle of the arena floor. The lesson is, was, and always will be that it is Phish what makes a Phish show great. Gimmicks are fun, but in the end, what counts is that the band delivers the goods.
So after the pre-show Woodstock parody message on the PA ("Don't eat the brown doughnuts!") all that speculation about Phish covering Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl" for the first time in 20 years, or how they may even surprise us and do Prince's different song of the same name, or even my sudden thought of the possibility of the Butthole Surfers' "Pepper" (a popular '90s song that mentions "cinnamon and sugar") had to be put on the back burner when the band came out swinging with the first fast-tempo "Llama" in three years. In much the same way, the set also featured a return to the uptempo "Water in the Sky" since they returned to the original '97-era slow country approach last year.
Sure, the set featured standard versions of "Ya Mar", "Vultures", "Train Song"and "Horn", but with the exception of latter with some rough struggling from Trey, they were all executed in a way that let the fans simply enjoy the show. It did not have to be anything more than that. Beyond those, the rest of the set's songs - old and new, rare and tried-but-true - found a renewed freshness in simple ways: the extended mouth-drum break in "Wilson", the solo-guitar opening of "Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan" (OK, so Trey flubbed a lyric), the more powerful than usual end of "The Line", and the thousand-times-more-powerful-than-that coda to "I Am the Walrus" that had Chris Kuroda destroying us with his incredible light show.
Plus, we had the first "Tela" since last year's Hartford show and only the fourth performance of "The Birds" ever. Fun fact - I have been to 136 Phish shows; since my first show they have played "Tela" 38 times and "The Birds" four times. Yet I have seen both twice. Weird.
Set two was a real smoker that opened with an enormous "Blaze On" jam that was right up there with the version that rang in 2016 in that very venue and a "Harry Hood" that proved the oldies can still soar to the heavens. In between, the only songs older than the three-decade-old "Hood", "Alumni Blues" and "Letter to Jimmy Page", were as much fun as ever. Even "Twenty Years Later" which has a history of not quite achieving liftoff in its 10/4 time signature coda found its sweet spot and hit it hard and heavily.
And though "Meatstick" was fun(ky), the fact that nobody (except Gloria and me) actually does the dance anymore was almost as frustrating as the misplaced "Dirt" that followed. Still, even "Dirt" had a lovely ending that, to my ears, teased the "Hood" to come (along with the very "Hood"-like jam in "Meatstick").
So by the time the encore of "Cinnamon Girl" happened, it was almost unnecessary. By that point, the facts that the song had not been played by Phish since 1997 and was the sole tie-in to the night's doughnut flavor was secondary to the fact that Phish played an excellent Phish show. Let that serve as a reminder to all.
Oh, there was one more thing - thanks to the keen ears of my friends John and Meredith, "Pepper" was the first post-show song on the PA.
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