On July 20th, 1999 Phish played Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre for the very first time. Phish playing in Canada is a rare event (and it gets more and more rare all the time) so of course I made the trek.

I drove down with my friend and university guitar instructor who was seeing Phish for the first time. We gave the lot a quick peek and headed in for the show. We were in the pavilion and though I kept running into people I knew we stuck to our actual, assigned seats for the whole show, another Phish rarity.

The show looks fairly standard in pixels but I remember it being a bit of a rager. Chalkdust Torture is a pretty standard opening song and I love it. Is there a greater two-chord guitar riff out there? EE-AA (little G pulloff riff then back to) EE-AA; it’s perfect. Trey must have asked himself where that one came from and why nobody else had thought of it, to which I would suggest that there’s no reason to question divine inspiration and/or intervention.

Yes, I think the Chalkdust riff is a gift from the god of rock, and only the most pagan of heathens would disagree.

Sample was next, which I always love because it gives me a chance to wheel around and see who is standing behind me. A few more songs in they hit us with Divided Sky, which probably is more impressive when you figure out that it’s not improvised – they play it that way every time (except at Coventry of course).

Waste was up next, which made for a good bathroom break, though unfortunately I didn’t realize at the time how good of a tune Ghost can be so I probably went to the bathroom again when it followed Waste. You can never be too sure.

Following along the lines of Chalkdust, the opening notes of Wilson (open E string, open E string, times two) are another stroke of brilliant simplicity. If you graphed out simple riffs versus audience reactions you would probably find that the Wilson riff rises to the top of said graph. It is hands down the simplest riff that generates the biggest crowd reaction in the world of rock and roll.

And then: YEM. The intro might as well have been written by Bach.

The second set opened with Twist, a very basic power chord progression that runs throughout the song punctuated by audience “woo”’s (long before Tahoe Tweezer reared its ugly head), then Moma Dance, What’s The Use?, and Train Song.

Back in the day I caught an unusual amount of 2001’s, so it became the one song I never wanted to hear. Luckily the law of averages eventually took over and the song got spaced out enough that I came to love it, especially as a canvas for CK5’s stellar work. But at this show I think I just rolled my eyes and waited it out. Ah well.

When the band launched into Misty Mountain Hop the crowd went nuts, including myself and my guitar teacher. Led Zeppelin is never, ever a disappointment. Ever.

Guyute encore and a little barbershop closed the show, in the form of Hello My Baby (which always makes me think of Michigan J. Frog). What a great time it was. My friend agreed, though I don’t think he’s seen the band since.

Ah well, some people only need to see things once. That’s something I don’t really get but no matter, to each their own.

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