The cancellation of this summer's Curveball festival was an incredible disappointment. It meant my summer tour was whittled down from five shows to two. It meant that my wife, Gloria, wouldn't get to experience her first Phish festival. It also meant that, with a grand total of six shows for the entire year, my attendance was at its lowest in eight years. Summer ended with a thud.
As a consolation, in addition to a full refund, all Curveball ticket holders received free webcasts of the three Labor Day weekend shows from Colorado. That gesture, along with some mighty fine playing, did a lot to alleviate the disappointment.
It also helped to know that fall tour was around the corner and that I'd be attending the first two shows, both at the Times Union Center in Albany (the Pepsi Arena the last time I was there, on Sept. 9, 2000, during the last month of the 1.0 era.
Tour openers can suffer from having to shake off the rust after not playing for a while (like this past summer) or be bursting with vibrant energy, well-rehearsed out of the gate (like summer 2014). This one split it down the middle with a show that was fully dance-able, had some impressive jams and was well played, except for a couple of big flubs. Nothing outrageous in either direction, though.
Things got off to a funky start with "The Moma Dance" and "Tube", the latter including a standout jam. If I never hear "Theme From the Bottom" again, I will be fine, but this version's segue into "Free" made it worth my while.
Speaking of segues, the one from "Everything's Right" into "Cities" was marvelous. The former was especially notable for its dreamy jam with Page taking the lead on the Rhodes, followed by Mike dropping a bass bomb that led to Trey briefly doing his peaking thing before Page took over again, this time on the Hammond.
"Halley's Comet" was fun, but the real left-field surprise was the 2.0-era rarity, the gorgeous "Army of One".
Though Page and Trey managed to badly bungle the beginning of "Walls of the Cave", the stellar jam more than made up for it. The song is still one of my favorite set closers.
The second set started like the first - with another double-dose funk throwdown, this time with a thick, meaty "Ghost" and a fun "No Man in No Man's Land". A segue into "Piper" kept things moving until, after 40 minutes of big dance-able grooves, things slowed down with "Twenty Years Later" which - surprise - ended up being the MVP jam of the night. It was noisy (in a good way) and completely trippy and psychedelic. The fact that I was in the GA floor section did not hurt, as the lighting rigs literally moved up and down and side to side, and enveloping me in all their glory. It was the kind of jam they usually do in "Split Open and Melt" these days (much to my chagrin), but working much better in this context.
On the flip side, I love "Show of Life" but stretching out the I-IV ending might have been better suited for "Mexican Cousin" or one of the other myriad I-IV songs in Trey's arsenal.
"2001" was a nice choice and I figured it would end the set as it began - with some funky grooves. But Trey wanted to rock, so he started "Character Zero", still using the chunky guitar tone from the "2001" jam that, in any other venue than an arena, would have been wildly inappropriate and noisy (in a bad way).
That, of course, did end the set and the icing on the cake was the "Harry Hood" encore that summed up the night in a nutshell - a few mistakes in the intro that were easily laughed off, a solid performance of the composed parts otherwise, and a jam was delightful, if not earth-shattering.
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