Hold on to your butts. Phish’s only performance (to date) at Niagara Falls kicks off a week of absolute monsters.
Stream on Relisten | Setlist and notes on Phish.net
I kinda hate to do this to everyone on a Monday, but what are you gonna do. The first set is well played start to finish, with the beautiful Slave to the Traffic Light and precise Guyute as standouts.
The second set is where things get big, with a crazy Split Open and Melt opening things up, a new landspeed record for Reba, and a big Mike’s > Weekapaug. This feel like a make-up for the 12/1 version where they forgot the key change in the middle and they nail it. One thing that I never noticed until it was pointed out on a podcast is that Trey is basically playing rhythm lead for the last five minutes or so of Mike’s — neither here nor there, but a little inside baseball thing that that emphasizes how Trey was at the height of his powers during this period.
Anyway, make sure to stretch and pace yourselves — it’s gonna be a fun couple days.
1 Comment
Evil Phish bwahahaha. This show is not for the casual listener.
The first set was so solid. It gets unglued and terrifying for those of us that dabbled in psychedelics back then. Fun Ina Godda Da Vida and Pop goes the weasel teases. It felt like they played a few happy or light tunes just to break up the mood of pure unadulterated evil.
The ending of this show was super weird. Not sure what happened but coming out of Weekapaug it looked like Trey gave the “kill it” sign, and then he and Fish argued for a little during the delay loop. It definitely wasn’t just a conversation, and then they closed the set with Amazing Grace and a short encore. Two a capella set closers, and bluegrass tunes to open and end the show. Super odd. The only Reba that I’ve heard this wild was the debut where the sections are all flipped around and there’s a crazy vocal jam.
I had also heard there was a fight in the back of the place during SOAM, and cops used mace or tear gas to break it up. The place was a long aircraft hangar type building with bleachers in the back. Super weird vibe, but evil Phish makes weird things happen. The whole show seemed to be a battle between good and evil which alternated every couple of songs.