Phish is a damn good band
Bear with me and give a listen to their 11/2/90 version of "David Bowie"
Even if you don't like the music I am about to describe (I get that Phish is an acquired taste), I want to highlight and explain what I hear in one particular song from a show back in 1990 that I attended in Boulder, Colorado. Every Phish fan loves the shows they see, but this moment of this show is transcendent Phish and worthy of a deeper examination.
The song is called David Bowie. (link to listen to this song from 11/2/1990 — and you should listen while you read this). David Bowie is an ambitious and complex through-composed piece written by guitarist Trey Anastasio. Like many Phish songs, this one ends with a big crescendo jam. Note that this song has nothing to do with the rock legend for whom it is named.
The song begins with a signature hi-hat rhythm, yet the band teases melodic snippets of almost every song they played earlier that night — quite a cool start. Then at 2:45, they dive headlong into the David Bowie.
After the "lyrics" and the through-composed material (all well played and worthy of its own analysis), the open-ended jam starts at 6:30. During this earlier era of Phish, many songs led to an epic guitar solo with multiple peaks (Trey is a true master). Each Phish song like this has tropes, such as a vibe, certain dissonance, distinct grooves, or where each tune goes (Harry Hood often goes pretty, David Bowie often goes dissonant). From 6:30 to the end is basically an open-ended jam.
By 10:00, they are deep in the dissonance. In particular, you can hear at 11:00 that the band thinks they are heading to the next section, and Trey hangs on that riff, reworking it over and over, and then Mike (on bass) and Page (on keys) start accentuating and complementing this dissonance. Note this descending melodic material throughout this section as it returns toward the end.
Finally, by 11:56, Trey changes into a more crunchy rock guitar tone to mark the next section while maintaining the dissonance. At this point, there is no sign of resolution — only more and more building of tension. Dig what Fish (on drums) is doing through that section: upbeats and crashing cymbals while everyone else is creating increasing unrest, while simultaneously the whole band is GROOVING!
These last 3 minutes of this particular David Bowie is what drives fans to see Phish over and over — it shows an astounding level of improvising, listening, trust, experience, knowledge, and groove. At 12:43, Page gives a glissando of the keys to initiate the home stretch, and the groove changes; now it is full tilt, high-powered, and burning. That said, Trey continues referencing the motifs and dissonance from a few minutes prior. At this point, they start trading 8's, with the first 8 moving towards the climax (12:44-12:54), and then the second 8 (12:54-13:03) sliding back (so to speak), then again moving forward. By 13:32, Trey is playing the signature shred lick to signify the crescendo of David Bowie while the band continues this moving forward and sliding back, taking it further each time. By 13:52, Trey has picked up on this motif and joins in. The band is firing on all cylinders now (listen to that bass run at 14:04). A couple more forwards and backwards, leading up to Fish dropping out to give the full effect at 14:34. Then they move to the classic ending of David Bowie.
If you could hear a face melt in the audience, that would've been mine. While that term is hackneyed, bearing witness to this music was one of my life's more profound musical moments. Two other events that night almost 33 years ago have given it such resonance. One is that I looked up at some point in the show and saw Trey drool on his guitar (maybe during Possum?). It blew my 21-year-old brain to bits contemplating that someone could be that lost playing music this complicated and not have the physical awareness that he was drooling (others have described it happening at some early 90s Phish shows).
But more importantly, I had befriended the lighting designer Chris Kuroda. On our way out, I walked by him to say, "See you tomorrow" (they were playing Boulder Theater the next night), and he said, "That David Bowie was really cool. I've never heard them do that descending thing at the end."
These days Phish is very well documented online, and one can listen to versions of David Bowie leading up to this show. Of course, I went back a few shows, and while there were hints of this motivic idea, this was different. Here is the next time Phish performed David Bowie just two nights later. It has just a couple of intro teases, and by the end of Trey's jam, they do not seem as "in tune" with each other, so the variations are not clicking. And then a few weeks later, it is similar —while better, it feels to me like they are trying to force what they found that night in Boulder.
Some say you can read the same 20 books repeatedly and get more out of them upon each reading. The same is true in music, as no one can take in the beauty of the Debussy string quartet on the first pass, nor the details in Béla Fleck's Bubbles, nor the profundity of the lyrics in Bob Dylan's Just Like a Woman on the first pass. And while Phish's body of work is profound, if not overwhelming, this David Bowie is an excellent place to take a peek into their musical genius.
Someone filmed it back then and posted a transfer of this song featuring a group of the longhaired hippies jumping up and down in front (likely me), but it was mysteriously removed. Damn you, YouTube!
Me and Phish: I just returned from seeing the New Year's run of four Phish shows at Madison Square Garden. I saw this band a few dozen times from 1989 to 1993, once in 2012, and somehow attended six (!!!) Phish concerts in 2022. And you know what? I love this band. And for some dumb reason, I feel the need to defend my love for this band. I don't feel that with the Swedish folk band Väsen nor the brilliant Brazilian choro group Trio Brasileiro nor the indomitable stringband Punch Brothers, nor my love of Glenn Gould — all very geeky music. Phish has a different lens, and so be it. And it led me to this missive.
Below is my photo from 12:01am on New Year’s Eve at Madison Square Garden. Three cheers for confetti canons!
