The first actual analysis post, I’m going to begin with one of my favorite recent jams: the 12/31/14 Ghost (set 2, song 2). Time stamps given are from the LivePhish mobile app.

Listen: youtube, phish.in, livephish

Coming off of a smoking first-half of summer tour 2014 (Mansfield, SPAC, Randall’s Island, Merriweather), Phish began to cool down in the back half of summer and followed up with an up-and-down fall tour. Which had many of my friends and I wondering: had the band hit a peak? Were they ready to cool down? The firepower of early summer waned after Merriweather Post Pavilion 2, and the inconsistency of fall tour showed promise (or, should I say, Sparkle?) after a monstrous Halloween run. This meant that the band could either keep traveling upwards, or sink back into patterns of meh. But for me, this was a good thing: it meant that the only thing we could say with certainty, is that we had no idea what the band would do next, and that’s when the best Phish happens. I couldn’t swing the ticket and travel costs down to Miami with a good friend, but I did have the blessing of the webcast. A solid first set full of great songs and decent flow offered promise, and set 2 kicked off with a fiery Birds of A Feather; but would they give us a full type ii monstrosity? The band’s first response to the hanging question lies in this Ghost, and boy is it one hell of a response.

Intro/Composed Section

Ghost is one of my three favorite Phish songs as my favorite jams are blissy/happy peaks, so hearing Trey strum those slinky chords always plasters a big smile on my face. The band sounds locked in and on-point, but so far nothing out of the ordinary for Ghost through the composed stage. I will comment that I miss the sirens of ’99-’00 that Trey used to use to introduce Ghost; it was his way of saying “prepare your mind for the melting it’s about to receive.” It also gave everything a spacier, more psychedelic feel; but more on those Ghosts in another post.

Breakdown at ~2:05 – Page hitting the Clavinet hard and giving us some tasty licks. And then seamlessly back into Ghost. Breakdown at ~2:40 – Band is building energy, and the final refrain shows they’re planning something, but will it stick? Time to find out

Entering the jam: type i

Starting out with some type i grooving, the band is just feeling each other out. They want to create vibe and mood, and it’s certainly good. Trey and Page are playing off each other nicely, with Cactus joining in around 3:55. Standard A dorian fare, which is what’s to be expected from Ghost. Fish and Mike are creating a solid platform, which could springboard into any territory really; we wait with bated breath while celebrate the fact that the New Year is coming in soon. Around 4:45, Trey starts rhythmically chopping at some chords which sets a new mood; we could get dark. You can hear the audience go nuts around 5:20 as CK5 puts on some insane lighting shows

Entering the jam: type ii

Mike hints at a mode shift at 5:17 when he hits a D, and the band picks up on it like crazy. At 5:20, Page switches to piano to take us someplace fun. At the drop of a hat at 5:27, Trey switches and we’re fully in D mixolydian. Page is back on the Clavinet and the band is in the happy place. Now THIS is a Phish show. THIS is why we go to see this band. THIS is IT. Building dynamic and constructing the jam brick by brick. The band shows patience. Around 6:00 in, Trey shifts his playing to the upper frets to begin his solo proper, and Page is back on piano. Mike here is the unsung hero; he’s providing a PERFECT countermelody for Trey, and Trey is stealing all of his melodic ideas from Page by about a half-meter lag. Fishman is subtly but very controllingly picking up the energy; he switches to a mildly clamped hi-hat and starts the climb upwards. We’re locked in the ZONE!

Reaching for the first peak

We’re going somewhere, and it’s VERY happy. Around 6:55, the energy build is obvious. But what’s going to break it? It seems like we’ve achieved successful liftoff, and now it’s time to break the clouds and hit escape velocity. But the band is maintaining this D mixolydian space very nicely. Trey kicked on his tubescreamer around 7:00, and his tone is slowly getting gainier and more saturated. It’s subtle but noticeable over a longer span of time. Page is ripping this thing wide open with gorgeous parallel octaves and setting a massive expanse of space. At 7:41, Trey starts trills and sets his Tubescreamers to maximum push. Page keeps hitting Gs and Eminors (same chord) which counterpoints the D root groove the rest of the band is in like the warmest, happiest, Phishiest embrace ever. Trey sounds like he’s going to peak, but 7:58 gives us more trills. How much higher can this band go?! At 8:06, Trey hits a high note that is so satisfyingly good, it seems like it’s the peak of the jam, but the band isn’t out of the phrase yet. Everyone rolls with it and says “let’s take another step up.

The peaks

Bliss. Happy. At 8:14, here we are. The glorious peak. We’re on an infinite horizon of lush psychedelic clouds of swirl and elation. Trey hits the boomerang to loop the high A for just a second to play around on it (one of my favorite parts of late ’90s jams seems to have made a reappearance – never a bad thing in my book). But it’s still crafted very beautifully. The band built this airplane, and now they’re reaping the rewards by swimming in pools of happy.

Trey has a grin plastered across his face, and the rest of the band is still, slowly rocking back and forth to the music and listening very carefully. We’re at a point in Phish jams where the band is no longer certain who came up with which idea; they’re all taking something from someone else, doing their own take on it, and throwing it back out into the fray for someone else to latch onto and build upon. I love this because it is at this point that the band ceases to be four musicians playing a song or soloing, and instead they drop their egos and focus on creating sound as one cohesive unit. THAT, to me, is the definition of a band, and few pull it off successfully. And right now, no one is doing it at the level that Phish does – a large part, I think, of why we are all dedicated fans and attend show after show.

Page is in full on rolling piano chord mode, Mike is rooted solidly in the ground, Fish is on the ride driving everything full steam ahead, and Trey is playing around to see how much farther he can push it. And just when you think we’re leaving, 9:05 begins yet another climb. We’re still building? How is this possible? They’re all over this jam in all the right ways. I think this band really benefits from mixolydian jams, it’s how the band creates happy.

Then at 9:56, Trey hits the next peak, and boy is it nice. The band can now take a step back and appreciate what they constructed. At 10:12, Trey starts strumming chords and the entire band locks in and starts taking the energy back down with patience. Page isn’t done; he’s giving us more happy while slowly following the energy of the rest of the band. Fishman is still driving us somewhere, and the band is figuring out where that is. Mike is hitting those root Ds that are so satisfying.

Descent back to Earth

At 11:03, Trey goes to the wah and Mike goes to space around 11:10. Fishman mostly drops out around 11:15 (keeping things going on the ride to maintain tempo), and Page/Trey/Mike ease us onto the magic carpet for return back to Earth, but not before showing us some beautiful spacey sights on the way. Page switches gears to the Wurlitzer, and keeps pushing us to happy. And right when we think we might be done, Fish returns at 11:58 with the Ghost drum beat, but we’re still in D mixolydian. Then at 12:10, Mike shows us his approval over what just happened by dropping a satisfying Taurus pedal bomb. I love Taurus bombs; they release tension and rattle EVERY bone in your body like the world’s greatest massage, and this bomb certainly delivers. Second bomb hits at 12:22, then the band takes us back to A dorian and Ghost proper at 12:47. Well, that was one hell of a peak, and the band is elated with what they just pulled off.

But they’re not done yet, Trey still wants to squeeze more out of this jam. At 13:38, Fishman picks the tempo back up and the band goes into frenzied push mode. Page hits some wide open piano chords again around 13:55, and Fishman drives this into rock territory for a mini-type i peak. Is it sad of us as fans to ask of more from this jam? I think not, but we’ll take what the band wants to give us. at 14:44, Page takes us to C lydian, then steps up to the Clavinet instead to get funky. We have ourselves a frenzy of awesome, as Trey hits the echoplex around 15:10 to create sound. Trey starts creating sirenesque tremolo sounds around 15:50, Mike hits the flanger around 16:00, and Page gives us some warble courtesy of his Phase 90.

This could definitely go somewhere, and it does… right into Theme from the Bottom. Plenty could be said about this Theme that follows, but that’s for another time.

Taking some time to reflect on what the band just showed us, they proved that they showed up to this New Year’s Eve run ready to play ball. They didn’t peak in early 2014; they simply wanted to break new ground in ways that didn’t bore them. And I have to say, I’m a big fan of how they do this. Oh, if only we knew what the upcoming summer tour 2015 had in store for us at the time…