From: Matt Dallman 
Subject: Review of Kansas City, 10.19.95 (fwd)


Dan, here's my review of the KC show. :)

Matt
--

Hi there, pholks.  I just got back from the show.  Great time!  First, 
the basics:

10.19.95  Municipal Auditorium, Kansas City, MO

I:  Cars Trucks and Buses, Runaway Jim, Horn, Punch you in the Eye, 
    Esther, Chalkdust Torture, Theme from the Bottom, Acoustic Army, 
    Split Open and Melt, Billy Breathes, Cavern

II: Frankenstein, Poor Heart, Mike's Song*--->I am 
    Hydrogen--->Weekapaug*--->Space--->Lawn Boy, 
    BBFCFM--->Kung--->Suspicious Minds, Possum
E:  A Day in the Life

*Trey on his percussion set

This won't be as long as some of my summer reviews, because I am just too 
tired to think creatively right now.  

Anyway, the venue was part of the larger theater district in Kansas 
City.  Right downtown.  No central parking, but we parked no further than 
a five minute walk away.  Kinda chilly, no check that, *definetly* chilly!!

The auditorium is much like an enlarged high school gymnasium, or a mini 
Boston Garden.  Very average for acoustics, but I have heard much worse.  
Similar to the Dane Co Coliseum in Madison.

CARS TRUCKS BUSES was the first.  Cool Page organ melody in this one.  
It's a tight, vaguely dissonant number than certainly started the show on 
an interesting note.

RUNAWAY JIM was next, and it was pretty standard, kinda off-key, and its 
usual good time.  Nothing earth shattering here, but a good jam, nonetheless.

HORN carried the show further, and damn do I love this song.  SO melodic, 
and so emotional.  Was NOT a downer, by any stretch!

PUNCH YOU IN THE EYE!!  Same as always. Such catchy verses!  :)

A gorgeous ESTHER, with a pretty drawn-out intro from Page, came out of 
the end to pyite.  I sat down for this one, remembering that I a bunch of 
shows left in the next 2 weeks.  I hadn't heard this song in 2 years.  
Wonderfully smooth...

CHALKDUST, it's usual rockin self, took the band on Allman's -esque 
journey.  Again, and consistent with many of the jams tonight, it delved 
into a healthy dose of dissonance.  Three endings to this song. :)

The long, glorious, endlessly smooth, wonderfully textured song that is 
THEME FROM THE BOTTOM followed.  Whatta jam this song is already!!  And 
after only five months, taboot!  Very tight, and the end of the jam was 
very much like "A Day in the Life", in that it sonically rose into 
heights of musical chaos and tension.  Damn hot.

The band then gathered at the front of the stage, resuming their 
positions for Acoustic Army, but before they started that, Trey proceeded 
to recap for those uninformed the chess match currently being played 
between us and the band.  He couldn't resist a bit of shit-talking: "It's 
pretty clear that we [the band] are winning!" he would repeat a couple 
times.  The bastard! ;)  He encouraged fans to gather at the 
Greenpeace table to decide on a next move.  All I know about the 
chess game is that we [the audience] took captured a pawn. 
Whoo-hoo!! ;) ACOUSTIC ARMY followed, and it was standard.

A dark, muddy SPLIT OPEN AND MELT brought the band back to the amplified 
world. Frankly, I wasn't much impressed by this version -- very unfocused 
and dragging, IMHO.  Cool still...

I think what followed was BILLY BREATHES, but I cannot be sure, because 
it is my first time for this one.  Nice tune, and very smooth. :)
Help?

CAVERN finished the set in standard, danceable fashion.

SET I, 80 min.

45 minutes of break, enough time to grab a much-needed soda.

FRANKENSTEIN tore open set II.  Tight, and effortlessly played.  *Very* 
nice opener.  Reference to 'ween?  Hmmm?

POOR HEART surfaced next.  Kinda predictable, but a nice tune to build 
the rest of the set upon.  Very standard.

And then things got interesting:

MIKE'S SONG, my first since last summer's OJ show, rose out of the muck 
of PH, and I was *psyched*!  The opening was standard, but great.  The 
jam was an almost entirely percussive one.  Trey only twice touched his 
axe, concentrating mostly on his little percussion set.  The percussion 
jam kinda dragged on, at first, to be honest.  Page was carrying this 
whole tune, btw.  As the jam progressed, he gradually took more and more 
control of the jam, taking the cue of Trey, who seemingly was egging him 
on to take over.  The descending chord progression, post-tramps, was  
sloppily executed, but kept the groove. thankfully.  Trey had an awkward 
guitar re-enterance, and it kinda through the band off.  But, let it not 
be said that this was not an EXTRAORDINARY Mike's Song.  A whole new 
approach to this song.

Segued nicely into I AM HYDROGEN.  Same as always, and very standard, but 
GOD is this song beautiful!

Standardly segued into WEEKAPAUG GROOVE!  A very understated first half of 
the song.  But great!  The pulse was not coming from any one band member, 
but collectively, an UNBELIEVABLE groove was created.  And the jam at 
first reflected this utter JOY.  So fun to dance to!  Trey, almost on 
cue, though, abondoned his axe, again, for the trance-like Zen of his drums, 
and Weekapaug took on a very tribal feeling, almost Rusted Root-ish, or like 
the 7.25.92 YEM with members of Santana.  I like Trey on percussion!  
Good new direction.  Once rhythm-bound, this jam slowly, but surely, took 
on a very SPACEY tone, moving away from the joyousness of the Weekapaug 
experience.  Very free-form, and lacked much coherance.  Hence the space tag.
A VERY long transition, beautifully executed, into...

...a tremendously cheesy, and gloriously campy, LAWN BOY.  This was a 
true segue, not a start-stop thing.  GREAT to hear jams like this!  Page 
stood up and walked around his keyboard, ala the Chairman himself.  Slow, 
and loose, I really liked to placement of this song.  A wonderful downer, 
ya know?  Needed.  Page ended this in a cute little falsetto fashion. :)

The Mike's>H2>Week>space>Lawn Boy was 25 minutes, BTW.

Then Trey boldly began the opeing riffs to BIG, BLACK, FURRY CREATURE FROM 
MARS, and the chaos resumed.  Very swingin chorus, more than usual, I 
think.  More or less a typical BBFCFM, until Trey put down his guitar in 
favor of his megaphone, and he paraded around the stage and close to the 
crowd with it.  He, intentionally, I think, recreated the famous picture 
of him, arms outstretched in front, megaphone in pistol position.  The 
picture appeared in the ALO booklet, and on the promo flyers for this show.  
The tone then was reduced, and resolved into...

...the KUNG chant.  An animated Trey, arms a-flailing.  Again, my first Kung 
experience since the OJ show.  Unbelievably, another SEGUE into...

...SUSPICIOUS MINDS, cape and all for Henrietta. Kinda long, to be 
honest, but it was pulled off fine.  Funny, of course!

POSSUM arose out of the wake of HYHU.  A fall-down signal was played, and 
the band fell in unison to the ground, and stayed there for a minute or 
two.  Didn't seem like too many in the crowd got the signal, or 
understood it, but that's okay...I did!  Otherwise, Possum exuded its 
typical greatness.  A good balance between machine-gun Trey and textural 
Trey.  A good bit of sustained dissonance, of course.  This IS Kansas 
City, ya know!  Great set closer.  Better than the Deer Creek Possum by a 
country mile!!

Set II: 55 minutes

A powerful A DAY IN THE LIFE served as the encore.  I know this one has 
been played a LOT recently, but this one WAS great, much better than Deer 
Creek or Red Rocks.  The dissonance of the night kinda was resolved here, 
given continuity, and the "circle" of dissonance was complete.  The crowd 
loved this encore.

E:  8 minutes

All in all, a very good show.  I have never heard a Mike's like this 
one.  Far from some definitive version, it was a totally new approach to 
the jam.  I LOVE this percussive direction, and it opens up but another 
string of possibilities.

The crowd was mostly well-behaved, if a bit noisy. I think Trey wanted to 
scream something through the megaphone at the end of BBFCFM, but the high 
crowd noise wouldn't let him. :(

Using the Scott Jordan Concert Review Poll [tm] scale, with 5.0 out of 
ten being an average, typically great, ordinary Phish show, I give this 
one a 6.5.  The percussion itself wasn't exceptional, but it was great to 
hear the band experimenting!!  And this percussion COULD be 
transendental, given a bit of time.  Trey could be louder in the 
percussion mix, Paul! ;)  GET SET II AT ALL COSTS!!! :)

Thanks for reading, and look for (or avoid!) reviews from me about the 
upcoming Champaign, Louisville, and 'ween shows.  An offer is in the 
works for newbies, so be paying attention. :)

courteously abstaining,

Matt Dallman

mcd1@cec.wustl.edu

NP:  Return of the Jedi...when's the next Star Wars due?  Two years?