First off, Happy Halloween!  It’s the second-most important day on the Phish calendar. I know everybody is probably looking forward to tonight, but in case you forgot, we had a show last night!

As an aside, just right now this minute I have been chatting with a cool guy Hideki from Tokyo who has come over for the festival.  He first saw the band in ‘92 (I assume in Japan…did they play there then? Don’t have my Phish Companion handy)  In his opinion, last night was one of the most special shows he’s ever seen.   He feels they’ll play Electric Ladyland tonight, but I’m pulling for the Stones.  Anyway, the setlist:

I: Party Time, Chalk Dust Torture, The Moma Dance, NICU, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan, Stash, I Didn’t Know, Poor Heart, Cavern, Beauty of a Broken Heart, Ocelot, Time Turns Elastic

II: Punch You in the Eye, Down With Disease* -> Prince Caspian -> Wolfman’s Brother -> Piper, Joy, David Bowie, Harry Hood !-> Golgi Apparatus

e: Character Zero

There’s not a lot I can say about the first set – our flight got delayed 3 hours leaving Minneapolis yesterday morning, so we got into LAX right during rush hour, so it took us forever to get down to Indio.  We missed Party Time, a song I still have not heard, and finally caught the very end of Chalk Dust Torture on the Bunny as we neared the venue.  We also heard The Moma Dance, NICU, and Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan on the radio. It was actually kind of surreal, hearing a live Phish show on the radio as it’s being played.

We missed Stash completely as we made our way from the car past the horse stables and training grounds to the festival area.  However, as soon as we walked in I could tell this festival would be something special. The grounds themselves are absolutely beautiful, but all the special festival art installations and setup is spectacular – definitely the best festival I’ve ever seen from an aesthetic point of view.

We arrived in the stage area just as Fishman was taking the front of the stage for I Didn’t Know, which featured a pretty good vacuum solo.  The rest of the set pretty much just flowed along with a collection of songs – Poor Heart, Cavern, Beauty of a Broken Heart (one of my favorite new tunes), Ocelot, and, mercifully, getting it out of the way so we can all stop wondering when it’s going to appear this weekend, Time Turns Elastic.

Spent the long setbreak exploring some of the various festival trappings that were set up.  There’s some really cool stuff – I should be posting pictures later this weekend.  As we were making our way back, the familiar scraping beginning of Punch You in the Eye rings out, and I dance my way back to the stage area.  PYITE is followed by Down With Disease.  There’s not much crazy going on with this Disease until about the 10:00 mark when Page starts going nuts on the Clav while the band supports him with some start-stop type jamming, and then Trey gets in on the action with some effects of his own.  All of this contributes to one of the strangest segues I’ve ever heard as Trey starts ringing out the opening chords to Prince Caspian.  Somehow it’s strangely effective, though.

The last notes of Caspian make a more natural transition into Wolfman’s Brother.  This is a very good Wolfman’s, probably better than any I heard from this summer.  The beginning of the jam is heavy on piano, then it takes a grooving turn before going into a great noise jam which leads into Piper.  I have to add that the lighting effects are absolutely stunning – Kuroda has the palm trees surrounding the music grounds lit up and tied into his rig!  Even the tents 400 yards behind where we were standing seemed to occasionally be synced to the music.  Incredible!

Joy follows Piper, followed by David Bowie (foreshadowing? Supposedly Trey introduced it with “Here’s a hint for Halloween”, but I didn’t hear it, and I’m not sure I would believe it if I did).  But the you-had-to-be-there gem of the year was Harry Hood.  It begins in an inauspicious manner, normal Hood stuff.  However, a few minutes into the jam, a huge orange blob of balloons (lit up from inside the balloons, like they had glowsticks in them) rises up from the crowd, Page side.  It looks like the Great Pumpkin, and I think this is the “burble” that was rumored on the internets last week.  And let me tell you, this thing was mesmerizing.  It hovered in place for a long time, before suddenly changing colors to, I think, green.  Then purple. Then back to orange.  By this point, everybody in the entire crowd has turned to their left and is watching this thing. A gasp of delight erupts as the burble spontaneously ripples with new colors, and it begins floating towards the back of the grounds.  I don’t think anybody is even paying attention to the music anymore, which at this point is a mere soundtrack. (It’s one of those sort of noisy, directinless Hoods – it was great for the situation, but I’m not sure if it will hold up on tape).

Finally the burble stops way back and tethers to one of the art installations as the band launches into the set closing Golgi Apparatus, and a strong encore of Character Zero sends the show off.

I should not that the band had very little interaction with the crowd – not sure if they’re nervous, or just being coy.  But I guess we’ll see tonight…I can’t wait. Wish you were here.

Synopsis:

Set I: Mostly a collection of songs, of which I missed half.

Set II: A couple of interesting jams, but the highlights were all visual.

Notable versions: Down With Disease*, Wolfman’s Brother**, Character Zero*

You had to be there: the Hood burble

Overall: Mostly just a warmup show for the important Halloween set.

Filed under: Category Uncategorized | Tags: 2009,character zero,dwd,festival,wolfmans by doug