#i know about the Blaze and Ice almost getting tier 3 and almost starting a war

[lunar-wandering]

Oh my God did i get excited to see your bbb posts, have you managed to finish the comic version of season 2?

Also its so cool to find someone who is a fan of bbb and monkie kid

I know what HAPPENS in the comic version of s2 so...kinda??

the free version of the comic in english that im reading gets updated on fridays and sundays and is up to the first few chapters of the Ice and Fire Planet Arc. so. i sort of know what happens beyond that but like i don't have the Context for it

[theghostpinesmusic]

Ha! I was going to write about my Thoughts and Feelings whilst on the road and instead I just did Midwestern self-abnegation stuff and didn't talk about my emotions with anyone! And now here I am over a month later just writing about Phish again! I sure fooled you! I "win"!

Passive-aggressive, multidirectional cries for help aside, this jam is a weird one to cover, but it's the only one available on the official channel from the 8/2/23 show, so I'm going for it.

8/2 was a bit of a weird show in the broader context of this seven-show MSG run I've been covering in the sense that it was the first (and ended up being the only) show of the run that didn't completely blow me away. Four incredible New Year's run shows and four mind-boggling summer MSG shows drug me back to listening to Phish regularly (and convinced me to buy tickets for Denver this September without really having a plan to get there) and then there is this show, which is a show I would have been thrilled to see in person, but that lacks a certain...something that the previous eight shows all had. More flow and less jam in this one, methinks. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly not a bad show, but I'd put it on a slightly lower tier than the previous four if I was someone who "objectively" rated shows.

But I'm not, right? RIGHT?!

Anyway, I would have gone with "Blaze On" or "Carini" as the highlight of this show, but instead we've got a "Jam" -> "Meatstick" -> "It's Ice" sequence, where the "Jam" is technically out of a cover of the Apples In Stereo song "Energy," and "Meatstick" and "It's Ice" are neither of them jam vehicles, per se.

It's worth mentioning (and not to undersell this jam) that while they may have cut the "Energy" cover proper from this video to keep from having to worry about copyright and such, it was also a pretty roughly rendition of the tune, and the following jam was a fairly aimless for a bit before picking up speed en route to the segue to "Meatstick." So, with that all said, the video starts somewhere mid-jam...

...with Fishman playing a backbeat and Page leading the way over it on piano. Almost immediately, Trey and Page start playing off of each other, leading to a more cooperative jam that sounds pretty straightforward unless you listen to Mike, who is just going absolutely insane by himself over in the corner. He eventually steals the spotlight to the point where Trey and Page are both borrowing riffs from him, which is great.

Around 1:55, Trey switches to a more robotic tone and the jam coalesces around this descending riff that he, Page, and Mike each take turns playing and improvising around at various points. This bit of the jam is definitely less about any particular band member blasting off and more about interplay. At 3:20, Mike introduces a bit of tension into the proceedings, but we come out pretty quickly on the other side still in more or less the same sonic space.

Trey pushes out in front a bit at 4:05, which moves the jam into a more standard rock-and-roll direction, though Fish and Mike keep things interesting and a little dissonant. Then there's this great mind-melded drop into a bluesy breakdown that happens around 5:05...like, how do these guys all know how to do this at the same time?! Phish magic, I guess.

I'm not sure if it's the mix through my headphones or what, but Mike continues to DOMINATE this section. The lights kick in in an especially trippy way next, as Trey continues a sort of bluesy build/jam that reminds me a bit of "46 Days."

At 6:54, Fishman finally switches over to a more unambiguously driving beat, and we're off for a bit on a straight (and great) blues vamp. This is making me reconsider my first take on this jam as being "fairly aimless." I mean, it's certainly not the weirdest or the most experimental jam in Phish history, but it's definitely got a swing to it.

The band smoothly switches tacks at 8:45 again here, to something funkier and spacier sounding, though Fish keeps driving with the drums in the background. Trey falls back to some chording, which allows Mike and Page (on the clav) to shine a bit more. Page, in particular, starts coaxing weirder and weirder tones out of his rig, and as much as I'd love for the jam that's happening at 9:35 to just keep going forever, he starts up the (knowledgeable fans insert the name of the correct synth here) that is irrevocably linked to one and only one song in the Phish canon: "Meatstick." And so, instead of more jam we get an excellent, clever segue into one of the weirdest songs Phish plays.

Meatstick starts at 10:05 or so, and continues until 14:25. Yes, the band is singing in Japanese during the second half of the song. And there's a choreographed dance. Obviously. Try to keep up!

At 14:25, Trey plays a little reprise of the song's melody for a minute, but the band pretty quickly and smoothly moves into another improvisatory space by 15:05. There's a darker, funkier tinge to this jam, and it almost feels like a continuation of where they were headed right before the segue into "Meatstick." Trey's lower-octave effects/playing here is something, if you like Evil Robot Funk (which I very much do, as you likely know by now). I love the build in crowd noise that happens about 16:15. It might well have been something specific happening off-camera that set the crowd off, but also sometimes thousands of people will all start cheering at once at a Phish show because we all experience the same wave of collective effervescence at the same time. So maybe it was that.

Trey keeps leading this new jam with variations on a particular riff until 17:45, when eagle-eared listeners will hear him start to play a variation on the opening riff from "It's Ice." That's where we're going, but the band is going to take an extremely smooth and well-executed segue to get there. How they end up at the beginning of the song proper at 18:32 is beyond me, but it's one of my favorite transitions I've heard in a long time.

"It's Ice" doesn't feature Japanese lyrics or dancing, but it's one of my favorite Phish songs from a composition standpoint. For any uninitiated who still read these screeds (thank you!), everything from 18:32 until XX is the composed portion of the song. There's a break, then, that the band will sometimes improvise at length within and sometime will...not.

In this case, they jam briefly, starting at 24:00. It's a return to the Robo-Funk of earlier, with Trey and Page riffing off of each other while Mike and Fish lay down a jazzy foundation. This section reminds me of a jauntier Pink Floyd, and features a few "Frankenstein" teases from Trey. It's short but sweet, dropping back into the song proper at 25:45.

From here, "It's Ice" wraps up, and that's it! Like I said at the top, sort of a weird one compared to most of the jams I've written about lately, but there are a few noteworthy bits of improvisation in there, and nobody does transitions like these but Phish. So, a memorable segment from 8/2 even if there's no "monster jam" in there.