Phish on Jan. 4, 2003 - Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Oh memories, memories

Here is what I actually remembered from the show before listening to it again recently: I was happy to hear the new "Anything But Me" (love those "Round Room" ballads!), "Saw It Again" rocked out hard, "What's the Use" was gorgeous, and I had fun walking through the coliseum's corridors during set break. Twenty years later, that is the entirety of my memory of a show that was the longest commute for the shortest return on music. 

Unfortunately, my more vivid and lasting memories had a lot less to do with the actual show. But I will get to that.

A ticket stub in your hand

When Phish announced their return from a two-year hiatus with the New Year's 2002-03 run, I submitted my early ticket requests for all four shows and received one for Jan. 4. When the tickets went on sale on Ticketmaster, I got nothing.

It made absolutely no sense to drive to Hampton, VA, from Parsippany, NJ, for one show, but I did it anyway.

I arrived at Hampton Coliseum and was wowed - it really did look as cool on the outside as the pictures on Phish's "Hampton Comes Alive" album portrayed. Unfortunately, I got stopped at the gate and was told that the parking lot was full and I should park at one of the nearby shopping centers.

Rock and roll 

Hearing the show now, I am once again put off a bit by Trey's crunchier guitar tone that feels not quite right for some tunes, but the first set is a good, if not quite essential, listen (save for the aforementioned "Anything" and "Again"). "Split Open and Melt" is interesting because you can hear the seeds of the hot messes of 3.0 era "Melt", though it does stay more rooted in the actual song for much longer.

So do "Rock and Roll" and "Mike's Song" at the beginning of the second set, but they do rock pretty damn hard, with Trey's new, fat guitar tone working to his benefit.  The latter, however, eschews it traditional ending - and though it gets pushed into the key of F, where "Simple" would have been the expected segue - the song breaks down to quietude and segues instead into "Mountains in the Mist".  Four shows in, the 2.0 era is showing that unusual song selection and a penchant for not properly ending songs are among its oddities.  A heavy duty "Down With Disease" jam ends in a similar manner later on.

"Weekapaug Groove", which fades upward from Trey playing the main riff and eliminates Mike's bass intro starts at a medium pace, but Fish picks it up, and by the middle of the jam, there is some great interplay between Trey and Page that is worth checking out.  And just when you think it is going to come back around to the chorus for the end, Trey finally gets his chance to play "What's the Use".  

After a silly ending to the set at the conclusion of "2001" after some heartfelt words from Trey, the encore drops one more new song, "Friday", a 'Round Room' ballad that vaguely recalls "New Age" by Velvet Underground.

On the whole, it was decent, but it was after the show when the real debacle began for me. 

Bummed is what you are *

In the parking lot, I met a guy that was looking for a ride to New York.  I told him I would get him to a train station in New Jersey.  So, we walked to the shopping center where my car was parked and....no car.  Sure enough, there was a sign that I did not notice on my way in to this lot in which *I was told to park* indicating that cars would be towed. There was a phone  number to call for the towing company, but these were the days before it was standard to include the area code. I had a cell phone, but a seven-digit number in an unfamiliar area code did me no good since these were also the days before smartphones and I could not simply look it up. 

We found a store that was open and found out the area code, called the towing company and sure enough, they had towed the car and told us where it was impounded.

I honestly have no recollection of how we got to the place or how far away it was. But I do remember that when we got there, there was a long line of Phish fans in the same predicament, each having to pay a hundred bucks to get his car back. 

My long journey home

We finally got on the road sometime around maybe 1 or 2 a.m. and now I had to drive through the night after being up since the early morning. My passenger fell asleep in no time, and eventually, so did I. 

Being jarred awake after drifting off the road and into the dirt is a scary experience. I was lucky there was no guardrail or other obstacle into which I could have collided. My passenger woke up, too, and I assured him everything was OK, trying to make it seem like I had been fumbling around with the CD player and not falling asleep.

After that harrowing experience, I somehow mustered the energy to keep it together through the long winter night, finally dropping my guest off at the Harrison PATH station sometime after sunrise. I got home to Parsippany, around 9 a.m.-ish, if memory serves. 

I had been up for more than 24 hours, minus however many seconds I had slept at the wheel. I had commuted 14 hours, plus a couple of hours dealing with the towed car. All for one decent but unremarkable Phish show. Was it worth it? 

*thanks, aLi!

Phish on Jan. 3, 2003 - Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Usually, nothing indicates a throw-down more than a "Tweezer" opener.  Usually, if both "Tweezer" and "You Enjoy Myself" are in the same set,  you are in for a wild ride.  But 2.0 was anything but usual.  

Why they chose to play "Tweezer" at a tempo so glacial it makes the 2022 performances seem speedy is beyond me, but I guess that is a testament to the unpredictable nature of the era. Just as oddly, it never picks up, wandering around at that tempo until it segues into a similarly-paced "Theme From the Bottom". 

Trey is always most excited to play his newest songs, so even though an adequate "Foam" picks up the pace a bit, it is "Pebbles and Marbles" that finally injects some needed energy. But it is quickly deflated when "YEM" begins so disastrously that Trey calls it off and restarts it just as badly. Blowing their signature tune was such a major low point that it was what I remembered most vividly about this holiday run, 20 years later. Which is a shame because the jam ended up being a rocker.

The "Birds of a Feather" opener for the second set helps to wash away the stink; as does the "Wolfman's Brother" that spends some time as a battle of the wah-wahs between Trey and Page before finally breaking into a traditional jam for the final few minutes.  As will continue to be the trend for the next year and a half, the song eschews a proper finish ("Twist" does the same) and leads into a very weird "Makisupa Policeman" (or is that redundant?).  Another new song, "All of These Dreams" is dropped into the set and I am reminded of how much I love the 'Round Room' ballads.

In the encore, the band has a little bit of fun with stops and starts in the middle section of "Contact", which is a unique change, before closing it out with the "Tweezer Reprise" bookend.  This is a wildly uneven show and I still cringe at that "YEM" opening, but there are bright spots that should not be overshadowed by that.

Phish on Jan. 2, 2003 - Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Upon their return from a two-year hiatus, Phish flipped the New Year's run to start with the Eve and play through the beginning of January.  Also for the first time for the holiday run, they did the bulk of it at Hampton Coliseum in Virginia.

After taking New Year's Day off, they come out swinging on Jan. 2 with "Chalk Dust Torture" and "Bathtub Gin" and right away, the 2.0 jamming style is cemented.  Straying way out of the confines of its typical jam for a solid four minutes in the middle, it is almost miraculous that the former somehow found its way to the ending of the song.  The latter stays more within the "Gin" realm, but combined they take up the first half-hour of the show.  Later in the set "Stash" provides another rager, and for those who think that it took until 3.0 for "Back on the Train" to become a surprisingly fun jam vehicle, look no further than this first version of 2.0.

The rest of the first set keeps it closer to the old formula with shorter, tighter songs from its 1989-1999 period, including a rocking ending with "Character Zero" (that starts with Trey not quite hitting all the right notes on his guitar); though the band does toss in one new tune - the title track to "Round Room" with all its Mike Gordon-led odd-time-signature rhythm.

Continuing to sprinkle new songs into the shows, the second set features the quiet "Thunderhead", but starts with the rocker "46 Days" that, like the previous set opener, runs so far away with itself that by the time they get nine minutes in, it has shed the skin of the actual song.  Somehwhere around the 14-minute mark it becomes almost an entirely different beast that eventually breaks the 20-minute mark with no return in sight.  So Trey swerves into the key of F and blasts into "Simple", which gets quiet after about seven minutes but still also manages to break 10, meaning that the first two songs once again ate up a half-hour.  

Elsewhere in the set "Limb By Limb" and (especially) "Run Like an Antelope" provided such raucous climaxes (not to mention the reliable I-IV of the encore - new song "Mexican Cousin") that my inclination to poop on the 2.0 era seems unfounded.  This is all quite a bit different from my memory of the era.  There is definitely a different vibe from where we left off in October of 2000, but this is still a band that is pushing boundaries and creating excitement.