Phish Keeps Madison Square Garden Residency Rolling With 30-Minute ‘Fuego’

Phish‘s Saturday night looked back and forwards, with ‘90s-era and other 1.0 classics complimenting 3.0 and new additions to the band’s substantial catalog.

Saturday night’s show — the second of seven Madison Square Garden concerts before a brief break in Summer Tour — featured a blend of new and old, but lacked the sheer firepower of the previous night’s improv-heavy show. However, for fans of early Phish, the show was a treat with a handful of tunes from Rift, as well as seeing Junta and Hoist represented. Phish referenced three different Halloween musical costumes over the course of the show, and the second set went deep and dark with a couple surprises and one heck of a bust-out.

Just after 8 p.m. ET, the band took the stage and wasted no time in launching into a succinct “Back On the Train,” off 2000’s Farmhouse. After a solid seven-minute rollick, the song tapered before veering into an early set “Down With Disease.” “Disease” can be deliciously dark; it can feature trilling, blissful melodies and upbeat sustain — or, as this particular version did, it can shift from one to the other seamlessly.

Still, though the longest tune of the set at just under 19 minutes, the “Disease” remained unfinished and turned sharply into “The Dogs,” a Summer Tour debut. The song was from Disneyland Records’ Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House, which the quartet donned as their musical costume for Halloween 2014. Guitarist Trey Anastasio, like being chased by a pack of Hellhounds, bobbed and weaved across the notes, propelled by a rabid rhythm section and keyboardist Page McConnell‘s prodigious barking dog samples. No Caturday night tonight, folks!

Throughout the set Kuroda’s lighting rig unfurled above the quartet; the lights expanded to the far edges, before contacting and folding back in on themselves, and then reaching to the rafters before touching back down on the floor: breathing, limbering up for the rest of the residency, as we’ve so often seen them do.

Following “The Dogs” was Farmhouse’s “Bug,” which Trey dedicated to “my friend Jovi who is in the audience tonight.” Jovi Crusen is the then 7-year-old, who requested to sing the song as a duet with Trey in June of 2022 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“Bug,” over too soon, was followed by the jovial Mike Gordon-sung “Sugar Shack,” another tour debut and was in-turn followed by “Evolve” off of Anastasio’s 2020 solo record, Lonely Trip. The tune has a nice, propulsive feel before an expected, yet nevertheless abrupt ending. It’s a tune that would be an interesting one to extend a bit to see where it goes, however Saturday night was not the night to see that happen: “Evolve” and the previous two tunes collectively came in right around 20 minutes.

Swinging back into the band’s older catalog, Trey signaled the beginning of “Horn” from 1993’s Rift, before dipping right into “Foam” off 1988’s Junta. Both songs were played pretty much as written, with little improvisation or deviation. However a hallmark of some ‘90’s Phish is that songs are deeply technical and succinct in their execution, so from that perspective, this pairing was spot on.

The set, just over an hour long, closed with a fiery version of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” off Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The album was another record the band used as a musical costume for Halloween, this time in 2016, the year Bowie died.

Read on after The Skinny for the rest of the recap and more.

Set two started just before 10 p.m. ET with an ever-so-slightly bumpy version of “The Wedge.” The band’s timing seemed slightly off, however our heroic FUCKING PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS pulled it together in time for Trey to tease “Stash” before heading into the title track from 2014’s Fuego.

The band signaled they were going to take the set’s number two tune for a walk, expanding into a deep, layered jam, which metamorphosed from funky to Type II, to blissed out peaks and thundering valleys. Kuroda’s lights were in perfect harmony, bursting outward like a psychedelic butterfly.

After what did not feel like 30 minutes — but was — “Fuego” segued into “Oblivion,” debuted at the 2023 Summer Tour opener in Huntsville, Alabama earlier this month. This version marked the fourth time the song has been played in 13 shows, signaling an enthusiasm for the band to explore its boundaries. And for about 14 minutes, explore, they did.

The song had the peaks and valleys that characterized the first night of the MSG run, and seemed to have a willingness and energy to go as equally deep as “Fuego,” but instead saw the band slow down the set a bit for a weighty version “Wingsuit,” its tour debut. Mike signaled with a mechanical wheeee of his power drill the end of “Wingsuit” before drummer Jon Fishman popped in with the opening beat of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” more commonly referred to as “2001.”

The “2001” went in an unexpected direction, rather than the typical funk, it traversed a more modular direction before Trey’s “Hold Your Head Up” licks signaled that Henrietta would be making an appearance. As Fish put down his drumsticks and moved to center stage, giant cymbals in hand, Trey took over drum kit duties for a pretty rough but incredibly fun version of Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie.” Saturday marked the first time Phish had played the 1970 hit since July 6, 2012 — a span of 397 shows. Additionally, the cover was last seen before that in 1999 with only four renditions performed between 1995 and last night.

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The band came back together to close the 81-minute second set with a brief “Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S.” off Kasvot Växt’s í rokk (another musical costume from 2018’s Halloween show). A very tender version of “Farmhouse” teed off the encore, before the band turned up the heat to finish with a slightly rushed “First Tube.” Both “Down With Disease” and “2001” remained unfinished … for now.

Overall, and particularly compared to night one, the song selection and energy seemed a bit uneven on Saturday night. Frankly, it would be hard to top Friday night’s opener, and the band has five more shows to work out any kinks.

Phish’s Madison Square Garden residency continues tonight, Sunday, July 30. Watch livestreams of the MSG shows and the rest of Phish Summer Tour 2023 via LivePhish.com.

Phish From The Road Photos

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvTKt32JiLw/?img_index=1
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvTZniNuA-2/

Posters

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvPzpPvLJ80/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvP2f7DLIiC/

Source: JamBase.com