Yup… Time for me to crawl out from under my research rock and get back to writing up jam analyses. This is a jam that I didn’t think much of for a while, and the more I listened to it the more it grew on me. It’s one of the jams I’ve been listening to the most recently, and it tends to fly under the radar. Set 2, song 6; time stamps given are from the LivePhish soundboard (available from the “Wisconsin Edition” bonus CD that came with pre-orders of the Alpine Valley 2010 DVD).

Listen: youtube, phish.in

Alpine Valley: a storied venue in jam band history. Not to mention the history the Grateful Dead had at the venue, Phish made it obvious that an Alpine Valley show was not one to be missed either, as they’d throw down just as hard here as they do any other must-see venue. This Tweezer is definitely an argument for such a claim, and future years continued for proof of that (the 7/24/99 Fluffhead is the strongest contender, in my opinion, although I’m sure plenty others would cite an extensive list of jams that I’m not going to start mentioning as I need to focus my blog post on the jam…).

The debut cover of Ramble On kicked this show off on a strong note, which was followed by a very strong Mike’s > Esther > Groove and Guyute to keep building. Set 2 has more fire power than I care to mention, even excluding this Tweezer; I’ll leave the set for listening as an exercise for the reader.

But then… Then, Phish drops this Tweezer halfway through the second set. Strap on your seatbelt everyone, it’s time for a glorious ride through clouds of bliss.

Intro/Composed Section

From the drop of the first note, you can hear the energy in the venue is fiery; everyone is cheering for both a celebratory segment of Piper > Wilson > 2001 > Magila > 2001 > up to this point, and we haven’t taken a breather yet. Not to mention, those opening notes of Tweezer are enough to get me grooving and attentive for a potentially monstrous jam; I imagine this is the same for many other Phish fans as well. At 2:03, the band plays a little with the rhythm and Page spends a moment on the Clavinet, just enough for us to know that the band wants to keep throwing down. Aside from that, you’ve heard one Tweezer proper you’ve heard them all. This one does have the distinction of having the mellower, thicker, and soupier sound of the late ’90s, which is expected for any ’98 jam. The speed of this jam is a hair faster than I’d place most Tweezers, which I think is mostly from the band’s adrenaline, but this is by no means the fastest Tweezer I’ve ever heard. Pre Uncle Ebenezer breakdown at 3:21 shows some nice tasty Clav work from Page again, with everyone else just creating space and groove. They stay here for a vamp or two longer than they normally do, but aside from that not much to talk about. Uncle Ebenezer breakdown is dominated by Page’s piano, with some of Trey’s whammy work in the far back for good measure.

Type I

Right off the bat at 4:45, Trey strums a chord and allows Page to take center stage. Mike is holding his usual space at the low end, sticking to the A, Fish is creating air on the hi hat. Page is just playing around with A- and G-major – A dorian for those of you playing modal bingo at home. Trey kicks the wah at 5:14 to help strengthen the rhythm section and to emphasize the 2 and 4 of each measure.

Shall we get a little spacey?

At 5:18, Page steps up to the synth – our first indication that things are going to get properly weird. He shifts to a focus on a G major chord around 5:40, building a tension around the rest of the band’s A pentatonic language. Then Page starts playing with the filter on the synth to provide some serious textural layering and to fill up the top end of the frequency spectrum left by Trey taking on rhythm duties. Page’s G major also plays very nicely against the Amin7 and Amin/D7 vamp that the rest of the band is playing. For the Amin7, the G major provides grounding for the otherwise minor 7 of A, and for the Amin/D7 it serves the same purpose for the A minor but shifts the focus away of the D7 from the jazzier seventh to the dominant D. At 6:03 Page decides to return to the piano to compliment his synth work, while the band just works on building the groove and tension. At 6:20, Trey plays a few scratches to signify a potential moving onwards.

At 6:24, Mike finally hints at the first break for type ii jamming. He shifts to a C fifth-octave pairing, with emphasis on the fifth on beats 1/3 and the dominant major octave on 2/4. This move is very clever as the C major he’s playing is a natural compliment to Trey’s and Page’s A minor. Fish is still in the standard Tweezer groove… for now. Page begins playing around with a C lydian chord when adding in Trey’s augmented 4th (if thinking in C major, he’s playing the F#, which Page highlights in his runs) shifts every other measure to a D major resolution. By 6:36, Mike has shifted back to A, but only for a moment.

The climb and ascension to type ii

Trey is the one who rips this jam wide open. At 6:38, he changes his approach and starts hitting a slow trill between G and E, which doesn’t seem like much at the moment but plays a foundation in where the rest of the jam goes. Page shifts his focus to the E, countering Mike’s A root. At 6:55, Mike again switches to C, cementing us in C lydian footing for a while; Page follows with attention to the E-F#-G note combination for his focus. At 7:00, Trey has hit some delays to create a wash, and he switches to A-G trills. He also turns on his Leslie rotary speaker to signal that we’re shooting off into space.

7:10 – the most important shift to happen yet. Mike switches up to D, which when coming from C lydian puts us in D mixolydian. Trey accentuates this by hitting his whammy for octave-up trills, and is now hitting major 2nd/major 3rd trills, cementing the foundation of D without actually hitting the tonic. Fish starts adding fills, and realizes he needs to mellow out the space on top with a ride cymbal; he obliges us kindly. At 7:15, we are officially on the infinite horizon of a bliss jam.

This jam doesn’t really peak – one thing that held it lower for a long time in my eyes – but this space is just fine by me at the current time of writing this. That’s the thing – the vibe and mood IS the peak, in an almost Grateful Dead manner (I’m not one to compare Phish and the Dead as they’re two totally different things, but the Dead definitely focused lots on mood, and Phish is doing a damn fine job of it here). Fish holds down the fort, Mike keeps us rooted in D, Trey is spacing out, and Page realizes that this jam needs focus – which he provides by switching to the piano as the lead solo voice. He focuses on a fourth-third-second-root arpeggiation scheme for a while. Trey decides he wants to continue, and decides to come out of space to provide counter melody to Page while his trills stay on loop in the back. Trey holds the middle ground by playing octaves across the mode, sandwiching Mike’s tonic playing to Page’s chording and soloing. Fish may seem like a background rhythm at this point, but pay attention to his hi-hat: he’s creating a heavily syncopated polyrhythm using the hi-hat pedal that fully opens at times to build more tension.

At 8:34, Trey goes back to his trills, albeit with more ferocity and distortion, and his wah kicks back on. Mike begins to build power on his bass notes, and Fish opens his hi-hat fully to build tension. And the entire time, Page is going absolutely ham on his piano between chords that counter the D root and single-note runs that are nothing short of pure beauty. We stay here until around 9:28, when things start to simmer after a short roaring boil.

On the backburner

Mike steps back down to the A at 9:30 to bring us back to Tweezer. But Page and Trey aren’t done – they’re staying in D, and Page steps up to the Clavinet to get just a little funky. By 9:40, Mike has decided that D is the place to be, as going back to A would bring things out of focus and possibly end the jam (which I don’t think he wants here). Page begins to echo some of Trey’s earlier trills on the Clavinet, allowing Trey to step into a very clean tone and noodle for a beat. By 10:10 he’s on chords.

At 10:20, Trey hits the Leslie speaker again, wanting to get a little spacey and squeeze more out of the jam. Every other bar he is keeping a strong D major, with every bar in between focusing on the minor 7th (remember, we’re in D mixolydian), with an added G to create a C lydian space in the alternating bars. Fish is very subtly occupying the top space again with his cymbals, while also maintaining the original Tweezer snare/kick pattern – an interesting middle ground between foundation of the jam and the type ii space. At 10:30, Trey steps up the fretboard but keeps his chordal framework the same, to allow Page to grow a bit on the Clav; he steps back down by 10:50.

At 11:05, Trey kicks on one of his tubescreamers and provides a bit more oomph to his chords, opting for full strums as opposed to arpeggios. With Page back on the piano, we’ve somehow slipped very subtly back into type ii land.

The second “apex”

Page’s chords are very open, with focus on the major 9th and octave. Trey agrees with the sentiment, mirroring it in his playing at 11:18 and resolving with the major 3rd/10th. Mike begins to play with the 6th against his tonics of root/second/4th/5th and eventually reaching for the 9th. By 12:09, Fish has switched up to the ride cymbal to allow everyone else to expand further.

Here, we settle into another nice space that the band just rides for a while. It’s not particularly fiery, but it’s a nice happy and mellow groove. The only person really expanding here is Page, but he’s far in the background making it hard for him to provide major growth for the band. I understand why he’s sitting back, though – it fits the mood of the jam.

At 13:10, Trey starts playing triplet trills high up on the fretboard, hitting a third peak of sorts. Page’s chords are still doing their crazy off-the-wall jazzy thing, and they play off of Trey’s trills nicely by giving movement to this section of the jam. Trey loops his trills and moves to some light soloing work around 14:05 which forces Page’s chords to become quite staccato so as not to interfere with Trey’s smooth and swirly tone.

At 14:35, Mike switches focus to an E tonic, which five seconds later becomes an A major tonic. Page joins him for a measure on a dime, and simultaneously they switch once again back to D mixolydian.

What’s The Use?-esque teases

At 14:50, if I didn’t know better I’d say this is a What’s the Use? tease. But it is significantly mellower and has less feedback than WTU?, while also focusing more on major and less on klezmer/arabian/byzantine accidentals. The band just coasts along in this space for a while until Page hits staccato chords at 15:25 to create polyrhythmic twelve-of-eight against Fish’s four-on-the-floor beat. At 15:40, quite possibly the closest thing to a WTU? tease emerges from Trey, albeit for only a minute.

Around 15:55, Page relies on a 4th-3rd-root cadence, hinting at finality to the jam… but we’re not done just yet

Into a psychedelic jazzy black hole

If you haven’t picked up by now, this is one of the mellower Phish jams out there. So this one can only go so far “down the rabbit hole” (so to speak) and only for a brief period of time, without causing a jarring and extended journey. It simply doesn’t fit the mood of this jam. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get a short little taste of intergalactic space jazz.

At 16:20, Trey steps on the whammy and starts moving his notes out-of-key. At 16:27 they hit octave up status, by 16:32 Page starts the out of control spiral, and by 16:37 the rest of the band has joined him. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is a David Bowie jam from hell -it’s chromatic with diminished root-augmented pairings all over the place from Trey, Page, and Mike. Fish is building tension on the cymbals to round things out. At 17:04, it resolves itself (admittedly a little awkwardly) back to D major thanks to Trey. The space peters out into something that is halfway between Taste and My Left Toe as Fish switches up to a triplet 2/3rds beat and Page/Trey sustain D majors with jazzy chords thrown in once in a while for good measure. At 17:24, Page switches to the organ, fleshing out the bliss. But the jazz odyssey isn’t done yet: Trey keeps pushing chords as dissonant as they can go.

At 18:00, all members have resolved once again back to D. They ride this space for the remainder of the jam, with Mike and Fish contributing some strong rhythm work and Trey providing some final trills.

This sets the stage perfectly for the landing pad of > Fluffhead.

Overall, this jam isn’t much of a fire breather. It’s a very mellow jam overall that focuses more on texture and wash, and its language is for the most part restricted to D mixolydian outside of the firepower that is the final chaotic jazz. I really like this jam for lack of peaks and nice headspace. My personal favorite section is around 7:10 – the headspace there is more than enough to keep me coming back and revisiting this jam over and over. Plenty to wrap your brain around in terms of theory too.