This is a jam that I’ve been told to spin multiple times by multiple people for some time now. I finally got around to it last night, and since then I’ve spun it five more times; it’s a real treat and gave me a whole new respect for 2003 jams. Set 2, song 1; time stamps given are from the LivePhish soundboard.

Listen: youtube, phish.in

Whoo! Phish is back after hiatus! New Year’s 2002-03 showed strength of material in the form of new Round Room songs, and a slaughtering Hampton run following NYE immediately left a smile on everyone’s faces. Phish was following the dark, spacey psychedelic grooves that they left unfinished in 2000.

Falling on the tail end of a winter tour littered with solid jams and proof that this band hadn’t said everything it needed to say in 1.0, 2/28/03 saw a return to the venue where half of the famed Island Tour took place. This show was boosted into legendary status thanks in no small part to the monstrous bustout of Destiny Unbound in the first set. But don’t sleep on the Bathtub Gin or Back on The Train from the first set either, and the Walls of the Cave has some oomph to it as well to round out the second set.

Then, the boys take the stage for set 2 and we’re treated to this monstrosity of a jam…

Intro/Composed Section

As usual, nothing out of the ordinary. I find that when I’m treated to a particularly special jam, I go back and look for clues in the beginning of the song or show. Sometimes it’s there (see the 12/29/13 Down with Disease, where we got a nice little “Thank you, we wrote that” from Trey in response to a little intro jam from the band’s tune up). But usually it isn’t, and this Tweezer is a perfect example. One could argue they showed their hand early in the first set Gin, but then again hindsight is 20/20 isn’t it?

Around 2:35 the audience starts going nuts. Could be from Kuroda’s lighting, could be from something the band did on stage, could be something fun happened somewhere in the coliseum. Having not been there or seen any videos of the show, I can only guess; my money’s on simple crowd energy and vibe, which I’ll never complain about.

The vibe is definitely right, the band is on point right now. Trey’s tone is certainly more defined and hard-edged than it was in 1.0, most likely a function of the fact that he isn’t using his Ross Compressor at this point in time, and he’s got a Fender Deluxe Reverb on stage with him aside his Mesa Mark III which is a brighter amp.

Pre-Uncle Ebenezer breakdown features some tasty clav work from Page and absolutely shattering whammy screams from Trey, and without missing a beat Fish and Cactus bring things back together on point. Uncle Ebenezer breakdown is its usual psychedelic self, going all over the place. I’m ALWAYS blown away by how Fish is able to go nuts while still keeping things in time, and brings the band back into focus from seeming chaos.

Type i noodling

At 5:03, Trey is still riding out the Ebenezer noise, and Page builds with him before they settle into a slick Tweezer groove. Fish switches up to the cowbell after a phrase of 8 bars, leaving space for Page to fill the air at the top end. His playing is seriously understated here, he’s driving things in a million different directions – super jazzy chords. Trey is noodling, but he’s actually providing a rhythmic glue between Fish/Cactus and Page. He’s doing a fantastic job of letting Page fly, until he muscles his way into focus around 6:28 but he’s still standing on the shoulders of Page and he’s fully aware of it.

6:35 is the first inkling that we’re in for something special Trey starts sustaining a feedback note, and Page switches up to the organ for a beat before we slip back into Tweezer groove. Page and Fish are very subtly bringing the energy up behind Trey, matching him by 6:52. Page switches to organ around 7:05 to accompany some quiet notes on piano, and the energy they built up remains unresolved while we settle back into the groove. At 7:35, Page adds some rhodes to the mix to get swirly and thick; his notes bounce around my earphones very pleasantly while he see-saws between A-minor and B-minor with Cactus following suit by 8:10.

Enter the void: type 2 awaits

Trey is trying to find his footing still; his noodling is starting to sound aimless. It’s right about now that this could use some Page synth to blast things off into outer space… RIGHT THERE. 8:50 sees the Yamaha synth ooze into the fray out of nothingness, and we’re in true psychedelic space. This is a very nice groove. Trey is feeding back and sustaining, Page is filling up space on the synth and rhodes at the same time, Fish is keeping us locked into a groove, and Mike is the cement on which this foundation lies.

At 9:20, Trey starts hitting some sparse notes that hint at what’s to come. It’s very careful, almost Santana-esque playing and sets a mellow, jazzy vibe to the entire thing. Mike has entered a groove that reminds me of a smoky bar. But we’re still in the standard A-blues of Tweezer. The tension builds and builds, just waiting for the container to break from the pressure the band is building into psychedelia bliss land.

Trey hits his wah around 10:45 and pushes us further into deep space, with no end in sight as Page brings his space lasers from his synth to make things really meaty. Trey hits his rotary speaker at 11:05, Fish switches up to some crash cymbals in his fills, and now we’re really in space. Trey hits a Amin-Gmaj-D-maj progression that could easily slip into either G major or D major for equally fun bliss grooves, with some C major add-ons for good measure.

Finally, Page switches back to his piano by 11:52 and we’ve found some gravitational pull back from space. The band builds subtly in Tweezer A, until finally Mike takes Trey’s cue and they switch together at 12:23 (Trey) and 12:25 (Mike) into D major.

Psychedelic Candyland

Page starts hitting some D major suspension/resolutions thanks to a D9, which begins the liftoff into happiness. Trey slips the leslie back on at around 12:35 to make things swirly. Mike is all over this thing using the open D to drone and soloing on the upper frets to create gorgeous slash chords (when a chord has a different note in its root). Trey hits some trills high up on the neck at 12:50 to propel us into the clouds. Houston, we have liftoff.

This segment of the jam is an example of my favorite type of Phish: psychedelic bliss. All four guys are locked into each other. Trey and Page are stealing ideas from each other left and right, to the point where it ceases to become stealing, and everything merges into one lick where nobody’s sure who came up with which idea anymore. Fish holds things airy on the ride cymbal, and his bass/snare serve to keep propelling us upwards into the atmosphere. Mike is the true unsung hero right now; if you aren’t paying attention to him you’d think he’s simply the nuts and bolts of the structural integrity in this rocket of a jam, but in reality he’s the one expanding and pushing everyone else to build. He’s providing a perfect counter-melody to the one-two punch of Trey and Page. Listen carefully to him here, and you’ll notice just how much he’s contributing to this jam

This is the point where we reach the infinite horizon, dancing in the clouds of a beautiful bliss jam. The first time I heard this section, I texted a bunch of my friends: “I didn’t know life could be like this,” and it’s very true. Jam segments like this make me ecstatic to be alive, breathing, and experiencing everything around me. And to have this jam play out in front of me… this is my happy place. It creates mindfulness and inner peace; I can only imagine what it must have been like to be there and experiencing this play out in front of me. But this is all just me, diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks.

Trey sustains a high note at 13:37, and uses his looper to keep the note going as he begins to play around it. The high A Trey is sustaining fits in perfectly with the D drone of Mike’s open D string, creating a root-fifth power pairing. Trey and Page are ALL OVER the major thirds and fourths, relating them back to the tonic D and keeping the major key bliss theme running. Mike switches up to add a major 4th in a G for the root starting at 14:00, which compliments the D/A theme beautifully, and Page follows by adding suspended D-9ths on top of the G. At 14:25, Page switches up to the clav before deciding better of it and sticking to his rolling piano chords; he does this multiple times, realizing this isn’t the time for funk yet and he should instead keep squeezing everything he can out of this vibe.

At 14:49, Trey begins introducing his tremolo every other bar to compliment his swirly rotary speaker tone. On the other hand, Page, Fish, and Cactus think about scaling back the energy. That is, until Trey tells them otherwise and octave-whammys some notes at 15:03 driving us into the stratosphere and holding us at the threshold of a localized peak. He finally hits the high notes at 15:46, creating a subtle peak cresting at 16:08 but also holding us at a consistent happy high until about 16:25. Here, Trey scales back and allows the other three to ramp down the energy.

Descent from the clouds

Mike picks things back up around 16:50, and Trey turns off his overdrives to create some clean come-down noodling five seconds later. He adds the minor-7th C, before going full blues. Fish goes double time around 17:15 to inject a bit of energy and dance to this comedown section. By 17:30, the band is still recovering from what they just constructed, but also feeling a slight second wind. Toeing the line between D mixolydian and blues, Trey and Fish drive us into tunnel vision around 18:15. Mike switches between the original A of Tweezer and the D of this Tweezer jam around 18:30.

Plinko time/Think time

At 19:02, we get treated to some Plinko grooves on the organ while Trey, Cactus, and Fishman create some interesting rhythmic chop to support him. by 19:50, it’s apparent this jam isn’t over yet and we’re not in comedown but rather in the fray of a multibeast. Page tears this jam apart starting at 20:00, with Trey joining him around 20:40. Do I hear hints of Tweeprise around 21:00? Maybe so, maybe not.

At 21:25, Trey and Fish start playing on twelve-of-eight before wrangling things back in after a few seconds. At 21:40, Trey hits a D-F-G-D sequence that reminds me an awful lot of a Blues Brothers tune (Arethra Franklin’s Think), and the rest of the band falls into place around him. At 22:15, Trey is once again the star and leading a funk-rock dance party. Phish.net calls this a Do You Feel Like We Do tease, which I think is equally valid. Either way, Trey is ripping things up, flying all over the fretboard with Page offering the perfect counter in very jazzy ways.

Into the murky depths of feedback

Around 23:25, the band settles back to a straight D groove, almost like something out of Theme from the Bottom. Which serves well, as we begin diving into dark, murky depths with Page’s accidentals and Trey dropping things down with his whammy pedal. These segments are usually how I think of 2.0 Phish: dark space/deep-sea diving type jams not unlike lots of 2000. Fish has stopped playing a beat by 24:10, simply pushing things along with cymbals and tom rolls. Mike has his spacey, almost Down With Disease-esque tone from his Lexicon reverbs running loose, and Trey is in full on feedback mode. Page is rooting the melody with chords, giving context to Trey’s wailing feedback. The two of them are listening to each other very carefully, and they cease to become two musicians and instead focus on creating one cohesive sound. At 25:35, the band switches from D to A, giving things more of a growl and ferocity. Trey hits the diminished Bb, countering Mike’s root A until he and Page join the Bb by 26:00. Time to shift up to C at 26:30, offering some resolution to the diminished Bb.

Where are we again?! Oh RIGHT! This is still TWEEZER. How the hell did we get here?

At 27:00, it’s obvious this jam is done… but where will it land us? It lands all right… right into Soul Shakedown Party. The perfect comedown from this mind-melter of a jam. Time to get our dance on.

This is easily my favorite jam of 2.0 that I’ve ever heard, and in a bit more than twelve hours (eight of which I spent sleeping) this jam has already entered my top 10 jams. I’m thoroughly impressed by this one, and will certainly be digging into more 2.0 than I have. I’ve already gained a small affinity for the 2/25/03 Theme and the 7/12/03 Ghost; if you have more recommendations for me I’d love to hear them!