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Published: 2024/08/18
by Mike Greenhaus
photo: Alive Coverage
***
Saturday’s mondegreen moment arrived early on, just three songs into the first set of the third show at Phish’s 11th official festival. Kicking off their Saturday-night festivities with “Mike’s Song,” the band set up a traditional “Mike’s Groove” sequence that culminated with “Weekapaug Groove”—the funky, original mondegreen that, as Trey Anastasio explained onstage in Mansfield, MA, almost exactly 20 years ago, stems from a fun night involving a party, Rhode Island and a riff on Frankie Vallie and The Four Seasons’ blue-eyed soul gem “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).”
The old-school opening laid the groundwork for a classic first-set run that picked up with a vibrant “Theme From the Bottom” and gently transitioned into a sing-along version of “Blaze On,” a tune which first found its footing in the period following Anastasio’s participation in 2015’s Fare Thee Well and contains whiffs of his time at “Dead Camp.” Soon after, Phish highlighted some enduring favorites from the early 2000s, a groovy “Gotta Jibboo” and the guitar-driven “46 Days,” whose lyrics inspired two different locales at Mondegreen. The four musicians then offered their recent single, the “Nothing”-esque “Evolve”—which originated with Anastasio’s COVID-era home recordings—and the “Macarena” spoof “Meatstick,” a bouncy nugget that still winks at the band’s 2000 trip to Japan with the foreign language lines the group picked up during that short-but-impactful jaunt. After a few in the audience, and onstage, used their muscle memory for the song’s dance moves, which have unexpectedly outlived the “Macarena” craze itself, Phish moved into a playful, powerful “David Bowie” to conclude their sixth set of the weekend.
It felt like a fitting midpoint for a four-night, nine-act presentation: Even during a summer tour filled with multi-night runs at cherished, storied venues like Deer Creek, Great Woods and Alpine Valley, a Phish festival still feels like a distinct entity. Mondegreen arrives at the end of an extended period on the road, and there is a momentum and energy that has been slowly building for weeks—for the band and fans alike. In recent interviews promoting Evolve, Phish’s latest studio album, Anastasio has colorfully described Phish as the “weird uncle” hovering in the corner of a family BBQ and that uniqueness is on full display at a Phish destination event. It’s a completely immersive experience—from the illuminated trees to the surrealist art and deep-crate-and-college-rock vibes of the Bunny radio station—wonderfully designed to distort all notions of space and time.
A fun twist on the factoids often projected at festivals between sets, Mondegreen’s main-stage visuals displayed a number of curious tidbits about past Phish summits like, say, describing 1997’s Great Went as a celebration of Cheers star George Wendt and 2011’s Super Ball IX as a showing of the Vikings’ 1974 game against the Steelers (the ninth Super Bowl for those keeping track at home). The cheekily self-referential names of the activations spread throughout the main vending area and cast of Phish creatives onsite could be likened to both Burning Man and Comic-Con. Impactful, charitable community organizations like the Phellowship and Divided Sky had booths, sharing space with recognizable names like Philadelphia’s Federal Donuts who provided the tasty treats during 2017’s Baker’s Dozen residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden. And, while Dover, DE is far more centrally located than Plattsburg, NY or Limestone, ME, there is a sense that everyone in attendance journeyed here—with intention.
Likewise, Phish’s festival sets, while largely still sticking to the two-set format, are paced differently. They are looser, often a bit longer and more patient and relaxed. As Anastasio once said from the stage at a Phish festival, they are going take their time up there because “they’ve got nowhere to be.”
One slight evolution this year is the addition of some big-name performers to the lineup. 1999’s Camp Oswego aside, Phish has largely shied away from booking other marquee acts at their festivals. And while they are still technically the only band on this year’s lineup, they’ve found a creative way to round out the offerings with a mix of popular comedians and DJs. Yet, careful to keep this beautiful, bizarro framework intact, several of the comedians and all the DJs have ties to the Phish world. (Rory Scovel joked from the stage on Friday that he has seen “20-30” Phish shows, “though that’s not a lot to most of you” and likened fans’ fears of seeing the night’s setlist in advance to Dr. Brown in Back to the Future.)
Friday and Saturday’s DJs, Flying Mojito Bros, are favorites from Phish’s annual Mexico trip, and Questlove, Sunday’s DJ, has performed with Anastasio in numerous settings since the early 2000s—here’s hoping they reprise their The Tonight Show cold opening “Phish in an Elevator” later today—and last night’s entertainer, Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn, is a devoted Phish fan himself.
“I first heard the band via a friend’s cool older brother, who would play A Live One nonstop while we were in the other room playing Final Fantasy or Pilotwings,” Sanborn, who is performing under his Made of Oak alias, told The Daily Greens before his show in The Heliograph, which climaxed at 2am with Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” “I remember being fascinated by the artwork, the whole world of the band seemed so mysterious and alluring, and I wanted to know more. Not that long after that some friends asked me to go with them to what ended up being my first show, 8/1/98. I loved every minute and was hooked for life. [Sanborn’s first show, which was held at Alpine Valley, is notable for featuring the Phish debut of Jane’s Addiction’s “Been Caught Stealing,” with Anastasio and Mike Gordon on trampolines.)
Much like Phish, when Sanborn is thinking about how to put together his set, he takes his environment into careful consideration. “A few hours beforehand, I’ll put a folder of music together that I think fits how the day is feeling to me, then shortly before I go on I’ll try and figure out what to open with based on the energy of the crowd,” he says. “After that, it’s just feeling the room and trying to get everyone on the same level, and there’s no way to plan that.”
Despite his success—Sylvan Esso, his duo with singer Amelia Meath, has played some of the most high-profile festivals in the world and even took the stage at Madison Square Garden this spring on a bill with Tyler Childers—he’s also not afraid to surrender to the flow of good-natured geekery when he finds himself in the right place, at the right time. When asked about a favorite Phish show, he admits, “There’s too many to count, let alone rank,” but does cite a gig he took in during the Baker’s Dozen.
“I remember excitedly texting with my friend Kyle when the band announced that the theme for the Baker’s Dozen night we had tickets to would be ‘jam filled’—we were both losing our minds,” he says. “And then, standing with him and all our friends as the band launched into the ‘type-II’ section of ‘Sample [in a Jar],’ I remember looking at each other in disbelief and hugging each other—what a night.”
While there is still a full day to go, Saturday afternoon leaned into that end-of-camp, bonfire feeling a bit when the fan-and-staff erected paper City Hall was taken down a bit early due to the impending inclement weather. However, the festivities continued at full speed. Leigh Fordham Hall hosted a game show and comedian Jordan Jensen delivered a raucous set that touched on sex, gender identity and relationships. Soon after, she yielded the stage to Gianmarco Soresi, who joked that he has been a rabid Phish fan since he received an offer to appear at Mondegreen way back a few weeks ago. He quipped that he understood the band’s outsider status given his love of musical theater. (He equated Phish’s apostle-style fandom with his quest to get his friends into the musical CATS.) Elsewhere, Gordon could be seen visiting Phish photographer Rene Huemer in his booth and new Goose drummer Cotter Ellis participated in a food contest.
Of course, Phish remained the main event. Their second set commenced with “2001,” a theme of the summer of 1993 that has matured into a funky staple and light-show spectacle during the ensuing decades. That arrangement segued into a rocking “Oblivion,” an Evolve highlight that has quickly grown into a jam-vehicle with open-ended potential. From there, the Vermont Quartet launched into a tease-colored “Down with Disease,” the Hoist single Phish has continued to explore in new and interesting ways during the past 30-plus years. That extended, unfinished take on the tune, which made good use of the bass pad Gordon has enjoyed since Phish’s April Sphere debut, set up a deep, exploratory, completely segued sequence. It weaved into the perennial improvisational highlight “Tweezer,” a complete, slinky “Scents and Subtle Sounds”—with Gordon pausing ever so briefly to remove his jacket to audible audience applause—and then a funky take on Stevie Wonder’s beloved “Boogie on Reggae Woman.” The group then stopped for a moment before closing their second frame with a blistering, choice take on “Carini,” the full-band composition that name-checks a number of onetime crew members and band friends.
Phish’s encore contained a few surprises, too. The musicians opened up the three-song offering with “Backwards Down the Number Line,” a yearbook-like entry that will forever be tied to the band’s 2009 reunion, and then presented Anastasio’s signature compositional masterpiece “You Enjoy Myself.” The Junta track was the exclamation mark on Phish’s 1.0 period, closing their final pre-hiatus show, and from its fugues to its trampolines and vocal jams, it will forever tie the various aspects of Phish together. However, last night they opted not to stop there, instead finishing off what they started during the second set with a rocking, climatic “Tweezer Reprise.”
In 2016, Anastasio told Relix that he hopes Phish will one day be like the Modern Jazz Quartet, playing close together, to dedicated crowds, into their latter years. And, in a recent Rolling Stone interview, he extended that date into their 90s. Just this week, Valli, who is 90, has been making headlines by asserting that even at his advanced age he is still nowhere near done with performing. With any luck—and if this weekend is any indication—then Phish may be playing their “Weekapaug” mondegreen when they are nonagenarians as well.
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From Sunday’s ‘Daily Greens’ Newspaper at Mondegreen: "The Full Monde" – Jambands
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