LawnMemo

The Daily Ghost

The Daily Ghost #56 09/22/1999 Pan American Center, Las Cruces, NM

(@KernelForbin Remaster)

Background (Ghost Position: Set 2 of 2 – Song 2 of 8 – Show Gap: 4)
Ghost moves back to the beginning of the second set.  The segue and entire Taste is included.

1999-09-22 stub

Composed Section (0:00-3:55)

Eeeooooooooow! The familiar Trey loop rings out and is soon accompanied by Mike and Fish.  The vocals come in pretty quickly as the pace sets an average tempo.

The solo section gets some love from Trey at the start before Mike and Page get real funky.  The pause is a little bit longer than usual.  The drop is more extended than usual and they actually nail it!  That was pretty nice, lets rock this jam!

Not messing around tonight  (3:56-7:40)

The jam begins with Trey moving out in front right from the start.  Trey moves into an easy going lead with Gordon and Fish providing the rhythm.   At 4:43, you can hear some beautiful melodies from Page beginning to find their way into this jam.

A patient groove pocket breaks out right away.  Then at 5:30, Fish starts to pick up the pace just a touch.  Trey’s melodies become more inspired and Page asserts himself more after the tempo change.  By the 6:00 minute mark the size of this jam has begun to build.

At 6:20, Page plays another gorgeous melody blending it wonderfully with Trey’s soloing.  At 6:38, Mike becomes extremely powerful as he repeats a couple notes.  It then seems like he wants to drive the jam downwards into some dark territory.  Trey continues to play over top of them.  Fish lets the battle between Trey and Mike continue as he proceeds moves on a neutral beat.

Trey eventually wins out and the jam continues to move at a rocking pace.  Trey is balancing nicely between taking over this jam completely, and playing pretty rhythms that fit nicely within the rest of the band.  Mike has fallen back to a more supportive role as Trey and Page are the leaders of this section.

This opening jam section is more high octane that usual, Trey is ready to go from note one and doesn’t spend any time trying to find a direction.  It is a heater from the drop of the gate.

Bass Quake Fire Starting (7:42-10:46)

When a little break in the action happens around 7:38, Mike starts to get into it.  He increases the amounts and range of notes he is playing drastically.  The result is this jam builds quicker with more aggressiveness.  The blend of Trey’s soling, Page’s chords, and the furious runs by Mike give this build some bite.

At 8:40, Trey holds a noooote out.  You then hear Mike repeating his bass line and it sounds like an earthquake coming at you.  From that nasty bass quake, Trey starts running with his solo.  He will not be caught by the Cactus Quake!  Trey rips into that solo with a fury and Mike’s bass quake counters it for a rocking result.

By 9:20, things have escalated into full heater mode and some crowd yelling gives Trey even more fuel to unleash his guitar.  Page provides some great chord work underneath the extreme work from Trey.

At the 10:08 mark, Trey starts to work off of the fury for a couple of measures, before unleashing another nasty lick.  Then at 10:28 Trey starts to play the same note and hold it.  You know what that means, we know what is coming.  TIME TO BUCKLE UP!

Adios Mucchaco!  (10:47-12:30)

When Big Red lets go of that held note he grabs the machine gun off of the rack and commences annihilation.  It has been a while since we have seen this kind of attack mode from Trey in Ghost!  There is no space invasion, trip to hell, or groove coming from Phish here.  This is full band raging tidal wave mode, get out of the way!

Around the 11:00 mark, Trey repeats a lick that just allows the jam to explode.  He continues to repeat that rocking melody, while the rest of the band is hammering behind him.  Fishman is going bonkers, Mike is running up and down his bass, and Page is hitting any chord his hands get get to.  11:00-11:25 is what kids these days call “the goods”.  I love that lick from Trey, it feels like like he could break his guitar in half with the power he is playing with.  Not to mention that with each strike, the rest of the band becomes more powerful.  This small section from 11:00-11:25 is why I have to take Lipitor.

The band continues to blaze for a couple more measures before Fishman changes things up.  As Trey lets off the gas around the 12:00 mark, Fishman begins to bring the jam downward.  Measure by measure, the fire starts to diminish, and the darkness begins to set in.

Down we go (12:31-15:49)

Mike finds a note that sounds like a ship sinking into the dark ocean.  Trey finds some weird effects to help move the jam down.

The jam comes almost to a halt at the 13:25 mark as the crowd responds.  Some loops from Trey circle around the applause and at 13:52 Fishman plays some of the loudest bass drum notes I have ever heard.  It sounds like Big Foot is knocking at the door.

Things gets pretty spacey as the loops continue and a touch of Big Foot’s knocking continues to lurk.  In this spacey craziness it sounds like a little birdie appears at 14:38.  The bird flies around and just smiles at the weirdness around it.  Some really cool meshing of sounds in this minimalist outro.

As the jam becomes smaller and smaller, the segue into Taste comes in and picks up the pace.

Final Thoughts 

This Ghost does not mess around.  It gets bonus points for not needing any time to find a direction.  When the jam begins, it gets going and moves into a blistering peak.   After the peak some great outro work develops and a decent segue into Taste results.  Another extremely strong version.

Score: 9.0