On Friday night, Phish rolled into The Forum in Inglewood, CA for the third consecutive year and the penultimate show of the 2016 summer tour. After an unusually sluggish opening two weeks of the campaign, starting with Great Woods Phish had returned to mid-season form, including most recently a successful run in San Francisco that featured entertaining jams and a bounty of bustouts. The tour has seen its fair share of ups and downs, but with an upward arc and two high-profile, webcasted, weekend gigs to wrap up, the hammer was theirs to pull out the come-from-behind tour championship. Let’s see how they did.

Photo © Derek Gregory

The band took the stage at 8:15p and opened with a “Moma Dance” > “Sample” combo, a set of songs that are often deployed in early slots because they are easy to perform, relative to much of the band’s seemingly limitless repertoire. “Moma” safely allowed everyone to get comfortable, but in what turned out to be a harbinger for how much of the show would play out, Trey struggled with routine parts of “Sample.” The first “Paul and Silas” since 10/20/13 Hampton (107 shows) was a fun surprise and would be the only rarity of the night.

The balance of the set was standard modern first set fare, without anything in the way of real highlights. There were plenty of “average great” segments: check out Trey’s MuTron deployment in “Kill Devil Falls,” the short but engaging jam in “Stash” (after Trey oddly flubbing the easy part and getting a chuckle with the crowd), and the jam segment of “Antelope” which saw Trey briefly run free and relaxed, a state that seemed elusive for much of the set. There were competent if forgettable performances of “Yarmouth Road,” “Halfway to the Moon,” “Blaze On,” and “Cavern,” while “Horn” and “Heavy Things” joined “Sample” in the trainwreck category.

On the heels of the first set from the final night in San Francisco – widely and appropriately praised as among the best first sets of the 3.0 era – it was understandable that Phish would serve up an uneventful, average-for-3.0 first set. What followed though was a genuine surprise, with a set break that lasted as long as the Worcester “Runaway Jim,” almost an hour. The crowd (and fans following along on couch tour) was of course drunk with speculation as to what it all meant, man; the delay could have been the result of a million things that don’t benefit from guessing, but we’d be remiss not to note that it happened.

Photo © Derek Gregory

The band finally returned to the stage a little after 10:30p with “Axilla,” which perhaps not coincidentally was present in the 7/3/16 SPAC3 second set. As has been the case for the last several outings, “Fuego” featured a nice Trey jam that was given room to roam, setting the stage for a centerpiece jam. There was a moment of indecision where a new improvisational launchpoint briefly emerged, but that window closed in favor of “Back on the Train.” “BOTT” packed a lot of spunk into seven and half minutes, and with the opening notes of “Saw It Again” it was clear that they’d be delivering a suite absent an improvisational centerpiece.

The next half hour was uneventful, as “Saw it Again” was followed by a combo of “Prince Caspian” that floated upon the “Waves.” Along with “Paul and Silas,” “Waves” was the only 2016 debut of the show. It was a great call in a vacuum, though placed between “Caspian” and “Joy” was not an effective sequence for the heart of the second set. “The Wedge” further cemented the sense that this night was basically two first sets of mostly short and thematically unconnected songs. “Scent of a Mule” featured the sought-after Trey-Fish Marimba Lumina duet for the drums/space portion of the show. “Rock and Roll” reached a peak that was sorely needed by this late point, and “You Enjoy Myself” brought the set to a close, but not before a Mike and Trey face-off duel. Phish oddly limped home in the encore with tepid, sloppy versions of “Boogie On Reggae Woman,” “Bouncing,” and “Golgi.”

Photo © Derek Gregory

There is Phish, the fantasy. This is a world where everything Phish is unicorns and rainbows, and the only variations in Phish performances are whether they were merely “totally sick” or, more likely, “the best ever!” Phish as escapist fantasy is totally valid approach – an island oasis of lights and colors, brilliant scents and subtle sounds, amongst friends. Everything. Is. Awesome. If you loved that show, more power to you! Own that experience, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Then there is Phish, the reality. The very human reality of four musicians — and the staff and crew and managers and partners that support them — who perform live and without a net. They are four humans who grow and regress, who have good days and bad days. Phish is a band that has climbed virtually every mountain they faced and sometimes several times over, but that progress has not nearly always been marked by linear growth. They are a band that has pushed change relentlessly, sometimes stumbling but seemingly always coming up Millhouse in the end. Tonight at The Forum was a stumble… and that’s, OK.

Fans who came of age in the 3.0 era are often looking for “their” equivalent of the revered moments of Phish’s earlier career. In 2016, they have it, in “their own” 1996, a year of creative uncertainty and adjustment following a historical peak. It’s part of the package if you hang around long enough as a fan. It’s also a convenient time to reflect upon the true greatness that Phish exhibited in 2015. 2015 was a great year of Phish, and if 2016 seems in any way less so, relax – that’s just gravity. If you don’t like the weather, stick around – it’s likely to change, dramatically!

Phillip Zerbo is the editor of The Phish Companion. #ReadTheBook

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