Phish’s New Year’s Eve show is often seen as a reflection of the year it concludes. But with the benefit of hindsight, Halloween performances sometimes turn out to be the emblematically significant occasions. And keeping with that trend, the performance of David Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars” last night was in many ways a portrait of Phish in 2016.

Halloween: a (not so) haunted mirror?

In 1994, the choice to cover the Beatles’ “White Album” was the work of a world-beating band on the rise, full of ambition. For The Who’s “Quadrophenia” the next year, a horn section was imported and Phish’s new Halloween tradition was really solidified as a ritualized event. Talking Heads’ “Remain In Light” in ’96, as has oft been observed, seems in retrospect to have been a key nudge on Phish’s artistic evolution toward exploration of groove and musical textures. The performance of Velvet Underground’s “Loaded” two years later leaned on Phish’s gooey jamminess of the period (including the ambient sounds into which the cow funk of ’97 had evolved) to extend a short-ish album to full-set length. For Festival 8 in 2009, the newly re-formed Phish renewed its lapsed tradition with a bulletproof hall-of-famer of the rock canon (Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main Street”)—an ambitious but responsibly professional selection that was guaranteed to be the satisfying centerpiece of a festival-sized event.

With the novelty of the ‘09 comeback exchanged for the tour-to-tour creative grind of simply just being a band again, Little Feat’s “Waiting For Columbus” was a well-earned “for the band” choice, but also one that indicated the giant-slaying element of the spectacle was now of less interest to the group. “Wingsuit” in ’13 showcased one reality of Phish of the time—it was a band that was struggling to write new original material, and bravely threw a bunch of stuff at the wall that night, most of it pretty weak. (In fairness, the material included “Fuego,” Phish’s best original of the era to date.) In retrospect though, it turned out to be a 3.0-era renewal of the famous band/audience relationship and gave Phish the gumption to pen a whole set of instrumental originals the next year for the “Thrilling, Chilling” set, one of the biggest and most creatively satisfying surprises of its entire career.

So where does that leave us in 2016? When David Bowie died in January (JadedVet quip: David Bowie died in 2016 but “David Bowie” has been on life support since the end of 2.0), many fans instantly speculated that it would be great if Phish covered “Ziggy Stardust” on Halloween. Many also said it was unlikely to happen because it seemed such an obvious choice. They were all right.

Last night’s second set was reflective of Phish, circa 2016. It was a band who generously offered fan service in place of perverse surprises: a cover of a classic rock favorite, one which many fans have fantasized about hearing like this for years. The musical arrangement failed to highlight the band’s strengths—also a problem with the recent “rotation,” percussion and Marimba Lumina jams—and put some band members, Trey notably, in positions where they had to succeed outside of their comfort zones. (Which is basically the story of “Big Boat.”) And in heartening defiance of other recent trends, the performance displayed a great deal of prep work. Trey, Page, Mike and Fish clearly took their task seriously and delivered a polished, successful performance.

Also in tune with 2016, the presentation of “Ziggy” displayed an egalitarian band quick to share the spotlight and defer to other creative opinions—among the band as well as outside collaborators. (This trend is jokingly observed in a PhishBill ad that references producer Bob Ezrin’s already-infamous call to cut “Mercury” from “Big Boat.”) Album opener “Five Years” featured lead vocals from each band member in turn; then, the second song was a Page showcase. There were guest musicians, but not the expected horn section, much less one branded as Giant Country Horns. Instead, a string section and three-woman chorus augmented the glittery bombast of Bowie’s glam-rock classic.

"Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly."

The string and vocal arrangements were by Carmel Dean, part of Trey’s Broadway-sourced network; she arranged vocals for “Hands On A Hardbody” and “Paper Wheels,” and wrote the a capella arrangement of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” that Phish debuted this summer. The musicians, many with Broadway credits, were ostensibly recruited by Dean; Jennifer Hartswick, the longtime first-chair horn player on Trey’s solo projects (not to mention playing on the studio version of “Gotta Jiboo”), was onstage but strictly as a backing vocalist. If she flew to Vegas with her trumpet safely stowed, she needn’t have.

When the heavily prevalent pre-show rumors were confirmed by release of the PhishBill at the opening of doors, the album choice seemed auspicious: at under 40 minutes, it would require some Phish-ification to fill a whole set. Some fans were banking on the “Loaded” treatment, with full-fledged jams injected into the song arrangements. Or at least something similar to “Exile,” when Phish applied its own instincts to fill out spots like the “Ventilator Blues” -> “I Just Want To See His Voice” sequence into the most musically memorable moments of the night. Even the Beatles choice in ’94 included a couple notably re-arranged songs.

Instead, Phish went up there and basically re-created the Bowie album. And by the standards the group apparently set for itself, it clobbered it. There are all sorts of ways this could have gone wrong, but the performances of each song were tight and convincing. The takeaway here is that Phish succeeded, played a classic album very well—and doing so just because they felt like doing something special, and the fans wanted it.

It was thrilling to hear Trey play things like the signature guitar figure in “Ziggy Stardust.” The ensemble blew a hole in the roof with “Suffragette City.” And the guests added depth to the sound that caused a chill here and there (“Soul Love”) but largely turned out to be not such a big deal. Each band member totally owned the lead vocals of at least one song; Mike met the challenge of “Starman” (with Trey on acoustic guitar to better represent the sound of the original), Fishman had his “Happy” moment with “Star,” and Page convincingly delivered “Ziggy Stardust” with mic in hand, exchanging gleeful looks with Trey as he summoned the rock and roll gumption to deliver lines like “well-hung with snow-white tan.”

Most riskily, Trey stepped away from guitar entirely to showcase his weakest attribute as a performing musician, singing committed lead vocals on “It Aint Easy” and the finale, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.” Each was a tremendous success, amounting to probably the highlight of Trey’s career as a vocalist. “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” even sounded like a continuation of lyrical themes found in some recent Phish songs. But the move also took away Phish’s strongest tool for a not-insignificant chunk of stage time. The trend, seen in 2016, of Trey spending more and more time doing things other than playing lead guitar, is represented here but is hardly encouraging. It’s a creative risk, but with little upside.

The set did overplay the album’s running time a bit, reaching the 47-minute mark—still notably short for a Phish set—but only because of between-song pauses and very slight augmentations like a brief vamp on the outro chorus of “Hang Onto Yourself.” No, they didn’t find a way to play a Type II jam in any of these tightly conceived songs. Nothing was recast entirely, into a Henrietta showcase (like “Willin’” in ’10) or winking upbeat Phish-grass (“Don’t Pass Me By” in ‘94). There are no moments here that feel much like Phish, really.

Even the standalone cover “Space Oddity,” arranged by a collaborator outside the group, reflected Phish’s personality and made me proud to be a fan of a band who would do that.

So, where were the spiders?

In 1994, the fact that Phish simply covered another band’s album as a Halloween surprise would have been earned bragging rights in the rock and roll world; the band went ahead and made no doubt of its exceptionalism anyway by tackling the album it chose. “Phish played the ‘White Album’ on Halloween.” Can your favorite band say that? But since then, concert performances of beloved albums are almost a cottage industry; yes, bands usually (but not always) play one of their own albums rather than someone else’s, but in 2016 the whole concept feels familiar rather than brash and surprising.

Last night’s second set was a collection of great songs, vividly brought to life by Phish and friends, who met the originals strictly on their own terms. I like the album a lot, and so have enjoyed replaying last night’s second set a few times today. It marks a happy moment for Phish. The band made a promise and kept it. But, unlike most past Halloween shows, there’s little statement here. No gauntlet has been thrown. The group raised the conceptual bar with the twin nights of new originals in ’13 and ’14 (even if the “Wingsuit” suite had many low moments). This was a retrenchment. Yes Virginia, like every other band that has ever existed, Phish does not in fact stretch the boundaries of rock performance on every occasion it takes the stage. Sometimes it just does something cool, something its fans have been feverishly requesting.

To say you want the band to play a Halloween show in which they cover a great album (ideally with onstage guests in the mix), and they do that and knock it out of the park, it seems supremely ungenerous as a fan to then complain too much about the conservative arrangement of the material. Ultimately that's the artists' choice: to carefully embody Bowie's songs rather than reinvent them. I too hoped they’d use the material as more of a springboard to improvisation, possibly in concert with an additional performance aspect (like dance) or even scenic design. Those elements, executed successfully, would have improved the performance. But in the absence of that imagined staging, the one that Phish actually did present at the MGM Grand last night was a success, on its own terms. I think Phish fans, myself included, sometimes need to be reminded to take yes for an answer.

After the briskly executed "Ziggy" set, the night finished pretty strongly (and stronger than the third sets of some 3.0 New Year’s Eve shows). There was an atypically upbeat, Type II “Sand,” a “Twist” that dropped quickly into an interesting jam (that unfortunately let to a percussion and Marimba Lumina sequence), a “2001” with “Fame” vocal quotes, and a sizzling “Slave to the Traffic Light.” And beforehand, the first set included the first “Carini” opener since the pre-Hiatus west coast run in 2000 and a strong if unspectacular run of songs for an opening salvo.

Yes, the “Exile” set pointed toward a middle ground between daring improvisation and extended vamps, but even that was eight years ago. In 2016, when Phish wants to do something on Halloween, it practices very hard on a great, topically relevant album, and Trey calls in his theater friends to collaborate. And it's webcast to the device of your choice, radiating the communal experience outward. The set went by quickly (because it was short) and didn’t bring with it the Phish-world-shaking import of the most recent Halloween show, in ’14.

I say anyway: Huzzah.

Phish may not have said anything new last night. But what it said sounded great. Obvious? Predictable? Sure, if you insist. But when a performance like last night can be considered predictable, your band is in very good shape.

—Jeremy D. Goodwin

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