Selection: “Light->Manteca->Light”

Memo’s “Other Jams” Memo: Very good first set “Wolfman’s Brother”, cool combo of “Crosseyed>Slave”, yet another solid “Sand”

From Josh Diskin:

INTRO

As a 3.0’er, I was a jacked up with Phish’s return to AC after Halloween 2010. I made that run, at the instant-classic Boardwalk Hall, after coming into some tickets at the last moment and hitching a ride down from NYC by way of craigslist.

This time around, I headed back to AC with an actual plan. Be there for the Friday and Saturday shows and then back home Sunday with time to recuperate before work on Monday. Well, by the end of the weekend my plan had crashed spectacularly and I ended up staying all 3 shows. Here are just a few of the memories that I had the privilege of forming that weekend in place of being a responsible member of the rat race:
The short bus dance party on the way to the beach party where a bunch of my Turntable crew out-raged all the gorilla juice heads at an oceanfront bar at 2am following AC1.

Meeting the hippy nectar chick with a bird claw necklace at the 24 hour Bally’s Wild West bar. Mark my words — Go to Bally’s post show! 24 hour happy hour, which pretty much makes it one of the most deplorable scenes you will ever witness. Bally’s Wild West is perfect for weird time, aka 3-5 AM post show.

Chilling on the beach during the day of AC2 and running into my Craigslist ride from the Halloween run! He was a 6’5″ tatted fan and one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Despite how nice he was, my friends still lectured me about taking rides from strangers on Craigslist.
Meeting “Guy” who became our “tag-along” walking back from AC2. He was a fan from the 80’s with amazing primary-source Phish stories, like the time at the 1986 Halloween show when Phish hosted an acid test… He ended up complaining too much about his ex-wife however, so I had to tell him he wasn’t being fun anymore and cut him loose before bedtime.

“LIGHT”

0:00 – 3:17 Standard Intro
The band launched into “Light” following a second set opening “Crosseyed and Painless” that had an atypical, sweet-sounding outro and segued into “Slave To the Traffic Light.” There was a super chill vibe at this point in the show.

3:18 – 4:17 Don Draper (Trey), Betty Draper (Light), and the jazz loving mistress from season 1 (Mantenta)
After some “Still Waiting!” lyrics, we have ourselves a typical ”Light” lift off that settles down into some Trey guitar scaling. Around 3:57, in the middle of Trey’s territorial exploration, he finds a single note landing spot and begins to dance with a “Manteca” motif. He fools around with “Manteca” for a while before returning back home to “Light.” But only for a moment…

4:33 – 5:29 “Manteca” (for real this time)
Trey then launches back into some clearly identifiable “Manteca” playing. The band connects with him, one by one, forming one of the smoothest transitions of the entire summer. Mike clicks in with Trey around 4:40, followed by Page at 4:47, who places some beautiful sounding chords on top of Mike and Trey. Fishman drives in with the full blown “Manteca” beat at 5:05. This is a full-band meeting of the minds and the outcome is some “Manteca” lyrics that feel a hell of a lot more organic than their “YEM” counterparts on 12/31/10.

5:30 – 8:02 Fishman Nitro Boosts!
The band ventures back into ”Light” with some continued interplay between Trey and Page. The jam starts losing its mojo before Fishman provides a nitro boost. Trey uses the opportunity to take a short lived turn to the dark side, before the jam dissipates into some jazz-funk odyssey. It gets topped off with some straight rocking guitar licks by Trey. Fishman must have used at least 2 nitro boosts at 8:16 and carried this jam to another plane.

Page chimes in with some “Tears of a Clown”-like grand piano chords, emanating happiness, around 9:00 but the jam goes right back into Fantasia territory (not the Disney movie, but the weirdo make-believe land from from “The NeverEnding Story”). The jam builds up in grandeur and Trey reaches for some “Crosseyed” sounding licks to form the peak.

11:17 – 12:55 Still waiting… but more than welcomed
We wind up with some full-band “Still Waiting” singing, but this time around with a backing groove that is actually pretty awesome. Around 12:22 Fishman drives up the tempo again (foreshadowing the ton of ass-kicking he will hand “Light” throughout the summer) and some great release-energy emanates at the end of the song.

12:56 – 14:11 Hmmm….?!?

The awkward come-down of the song isn’t pretty. If you listen carefully through the clouds of dissonance, you can hear some primordial jamming soup, that reminds me of the beginning “Dick’s Light” jamming. All four band members seem to come out of their own left fields in order to culminate into uncharted epic territory. Also of note, the last few seconds here sound a lot like “No Quarter.” I’m sure a ton of people at the show made that mistake before the band headed into “Theme From the Bottom.”

As a whole, this jam had one of the most flawless segues of the summer with some tight jamming throughout. It is evident that the band was laying some foundational structure to “Light” and setting it up for some epic versions to come throughout the rest of the summer.

———-
Bio
Josh Diskin loves living and working in Detroit. Check out the new mobile app game he’s been working on called Emochi (available for download in iTunes for free). It’s a Pictionary-like game with emoji’s. Josh got the idea from group texts sent within his crew. His friends would send out Phish song titles made out of emoji’s for everyone else to guess. It’s really fun, you should try it sometime.

Favorite Ghost 6/15/2000 Osaka

Twitter @joshdiskin