Set One Notes:
“I can dig a Julius opener”, is what I hear. It’s a good way to get things moving, with its raging wah’d out guitar soloing, band in full form. Maybe I’ll make a run down to Treehouse after this quarantine is over someday, pick some Julius up. Ah… Anyway. With Bathtub Gin dropping, I get the sense that the band is intending to jam. Special insight, I think. I actually find Gin to be kind of a weird two-spot call, but I know that a good jam would smooth over everything. Getting into the jam, four pure-toned instruments begin to coalesce into a warm, comfortable musical groove space to bounce and float around in. Page begins to clear a path through the clouds with his synths, and Trey guides the ship through on his soaring guitar. The jam comes down into a satisfying wah-funk groove, with some melodic pounding by Mike. The Champaign Gin is the winner of Set One for me. Llama comes in and stomps the gas, straight into a fake-out intro. I’m digging this set at this point. I dig a first set that alternates between big jams, short ragers, and calm interludes. Gin -> Llama has caused some time dilation for me, and Llama continues to rage in that distinctly ’97 way, Trey doing his best to evoke Hendrixian sound forms. Dirt has always been a nice interlude for me, grounding in a way that its name implies. LxL follows. It stays relatively contained in a great set placement. LxL jams have always sounded to me like a musical circular dance by the band members around a single central point, pulling back and forth, but staying in a particular orbit. This Spreadsheet recording, by the way, is such a crisp AUD. Funky Bitch is a good call here, as the energy needed to come up a bit for me. Page is a full-on piano man hero, with a big rev-up, with Trey’s solo section breaking it way down, getting real low, then breaking out and charging forward, Trey raging, with Mike Meatballin’ all over the place. Theme From the Bottom sinks the vibe down underwater, a nice lull of energy for a bit. Its anthemic chorus and jam is probably the right call for those that need a soothing, high spirited jam at this point in the nice. Ginseng Sullivan is always my favorite “bluegrass” call, I love the imagery Mike describes. I will take a Fee whenever, it’s a great late set call. Fee has the particular quality of making any show feel small and intimate, closer knit, like “Gather ‘round, it’s time to listen to the jazzy silly story band, kids.” This Fee has a beautiful delicate outro, bringing me to a forest stream in the spring. For some reason, Mr. Sausage is out there, way out there in the woods, offering me a Meatstick. Spacey synths arrive as I enjoy the tasty Meatstick, leading into an Antelope. This is a good way to send the crowd into set break here. Trey is sharp and on, right off the bat, Page pounding away on the baby grand. The band hits a buzzsaw shift into the next higher gear, gets twisted up, starts raging, guitar screaming away at the peak, with a clean, synchronized landing into the final section of the song.

Set Two Notes:
That distinctive hi-hat-snare-bass drum rhythm is exactly what I realized I needed to open the second set. A great fake-out intro, with cool back and forth between Trey and Mike. Our craft hovers at low altitude for a while, cruising and grooving over the landscape, investigating a little here, a little there. Soon, though, low bass and synth thrusters get fired up, and our craft begins the journey into deep space, before we have even reached the first “chorus”, the Sun a distant speck and a vast void of groove space ahead of us, growling low thrusters building the momentum that will carry us through the deep, uncharted set ahead of us. After the first “chorus” we get Superbad funk-man Trey, stop-start funk behind him. Mike is hitting that liquid thump, Page is enveloping the space ground-upwards with his low-enveloping organ and padding Rhodes hits. 2001 is one of those songs that especially benefits from the Fall ’97 musical project, wearing the cowfunk-danceparty-with-a-solid-dose-of-sci-fi-weirdness Fall ’97 is. Those familiar chords of Wolfman’s are a nice return to familiar terra firma. Yeah man! Into the jam we get low-key strutting funk, with clean piano and Mike slappin’, a sparse yet full groove. We move into haziness, floating beneath a low fog. Trey hits the gas suddenly, racing alone through the fog, overdriving the headlights, and the band needs a minute to figure out what he is doing. This moment is extremely tense, as Trey makes no indication that he is going to try to fit this new riff into anything – no, the band is going to come to him. After some momentary discomfort, the band snaps in with him, pushing forward. Now we are galloping along with Rockstar Guitarman himself, making a pass through the gravity field of Xeyed territory. The groove builds into a manic pseudo-Remain in Light mood, peaking at a slam-down-head-bang-funk-snap-back moment. The hard charging groove continues, with Trey making another pass at Xeyed. The guitar leads a straight nosedive into some high velocity maneuvers. Suddenly, I am aware that the hold band is holding a position of balance, propping up a delicate peak, ready to crash down at any moment. I’m holding my breath, finally exhaling on the comedown to low-key, dark riffing. The whole band builds around a new set of changes, getting locked in, and, of course, it’s so sweet. We ride a bluesy shuffle, then, into Makisupa. What a Makisupa. Here I am, reminiscing, on this 4/20 as I listen, on my one weed-related encounter with law enforcement. Don’t worry, it went fine for me. Shit was way stashed. Its crazy that its even a thing that happens. I know, preaching to the choir here. Page puts down the synth landing gear, Trey and Page scan the crowds’ minds with their waves and washes. Somebody whispers “Machu Pichu” in my ear. Somebody makes a guttural scream, overtaken by the strange experiment developing before them. It’s getting too weird, man, a maniacal misunderstanding of reggae, born in an extraterrestrial purgatory. Page’s clav probes the cavern, the sustaining light of musical reason beginning to fully fade. An eerie musical red light bubbles up from below. Things start lurking, barely visible in the dim cavern, the energy in the space growing to unbearable levels, the howls of digital monsters surrounding the listener, closing in. Suddenly, the cave crumbles. It’s all good dude. Listen to me. It's just Makisupa. You’re okay. You are okay. It’s just Makisupa, dude. You good? What a fucken’ trip man. Seriously, what just happened? I like Taste as the back-to-Earth call here. It’s a high energy, soaring song, bringing everyone back up to positive spaces after getting spiraled. Ripples of energy come off everyone involved throughout. Trey is tearing shit up, the band firing on all cylinders behind him here, as good as Type-I gets. Taste is a hell of a way to end a set, especially this one. Possum encore is cool. That’s just how I feel about Possum. Solid, rote. But it doesn’t matter. This second set was solid gold, a real all timer. I get that the majority of it has been released in SBD form as extras on the 11/17 LivePhish release, but I still think this show flies beneath the radar. That second set is an all-timer for me. Hearing this Possum, I really focus on Trey’s tone. It was so good in ’97, balanced, not quite as dry as the classic early 90s tone. Possum has a few interesting breakdowns that show potential to open into cool grooves, but this is Possum, and Possum must rage on. We get a Chuck Berry build-up into a Rockstar peak.

Listen to this second set very soon. The Champaign Supernova (sorry).