Set List
Show Notes
This was the second day of Phish’s second multiple-day, single-band festival. Tickets cost $70.00 including camping from noon Friday 8/15 tuntil noon Sunday 8/18. Attendance was estimated between 65,000 and 70,000. The show was simulcast over 88.9FM WENT Radio aka “The Badger”. Before the show, the band and fans collaborated with photographer/artist Spencer Tunick as part of his 50-state tour to pose for “Only the Brave – the world’s largest nude photo shoot.” The Great Went Orchestra (twenty-five members of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra) performed before set I in the Went Central area and during the set I-set II setbreak onstage where they played Debussy’s String Quartet No.2, Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat and Debussy’s Claire de Lune as a glider flew overhead, trailing red smoke and looping to the music. Members of the BSO also performed onsite as the Blue Hill Brass Band. The Wedge opener lent new meaning forevermore to the “Limestone blocks so large” lyric. Tweezer included a Cities-esque jam and teases of Simple before dropping into Taste. Down With Disease was unfinished and featured Page and Fish spray-painting their contributions to the Art Tower on plywood set on easels at the side of the stage. Page teased Proud Mary during this huge Bathtub Gin, affectionately dubbed “The Went Gin.” During this landmark 2001 Mike and Trey painted their contributions to the Art Tower on plywood. 2001 included a Crosseyed and Painless tease and some Mike foot bell. During the Art Jam, the band handed their art down to the crowd who passed the band pieces overhead out to the side of the concert field where it was assembled and hoisted onto a large wooden tower to join an array of collaborative artist and fan art that had been assembled all weekend. Trey explained the Art Jam saying “What we’ve been doing here this weekend is an idea that came out of the fact that when we jam up here we always feel like there’s a mutual energy going on between everybody the four of us and all of you guys and something is being created. We don’t only feel it we know it…The whole idea here – something we’ve been wanting to try since last year…is to do a mutual piece of art with you guys and us all built into one thing that was represented throughout the weekend…It was completely improvisational and was supposed to be the same kind of spirit as the music, which is that we get up here and we don’t know what’s going to happen and we just go for it.” During Harry Hood, Trey asked Chris to turn the lights off and the band jammed while the crowd spontaneously erupted into the first full-blown glowstick war. Buffalo Bill was played for the first time in more than two years (since 12/31/94) and the Digital Delay Loop Jam was played for the last time to-date. During Tweezer Reprise, a giant matchstick ignited the Art Tower, burning it to the ground and drawing the festival to its end. The house music over the PA following the Art Tower burn was Disco Inferno. This was the last show until fall. The Summer 1997 Doniac Schvice Phish News previewed upcoming dates “Looking forward, the late fall holds more US tour dates in store. The tour is tentatively slated to run from mid-November to mid-December and then resume for four year end shows December 28-31.” Between this show and the next, Fish and Dan Archer recorded Oh Dreidel for release on the Feast of Fools Magic Hat CD. Fish also joined the Gordon Stone trio for shows at Club Toast and Slade Hall. Trey’s Barn studio was under construction. The band then went into Studio A at Bearsville Recording Studios to begin work on what would become The Story of the Ghost. Pork Tornado played multiple gigs at Club Toast, Trey and Tom recorded the Utalk: You Should Be On the Core sessions in Stowe and, on the same night (10/17), Trey sat in with Steve Winwood at the Flynn and with Pork Tornado at Club Toast (who also hosted Johnny Lang on guest guitar at another show that month). Samson Riffs, The Music Of Ernie Stires was released on CD by Phish Dry Goods, and Slip Stitch and Pass was released on Elektra records with promotional singles Taste and Cities. The band began rehearsals for fall tour and performed Farmhouse on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and Mike sat in with Max Creek at Club Toast in Burlington.