On June 20th, 2004 I attended the second of a two-night Phish run at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, or as music fans throughout the northeast and beyond refer to it: SPAC.

(Bless the board of directors for not bowing to the wheelbarrows of money that have doubtlessly been offered to rename the beautiful, wooded venue after some cold, ugly corporate entity.)

This would prove to be my last Phish show before what we all were told would be the final Phish shows ever, at the ill-fated and long-hated train wreck of a weekend musical outing: Coventry (but enough about that fiasco for now).

As the band headed into what was to be their final end (spoiler alert: it wasn’t) it was clear that they were not going out on a high. Strike that: they were going because the bandleader and figurehead of Phish was on a high.

Too high to play, that is. Trey Anastasio was in a bad way and it was effecting everything in his realm, not the least of which was his band. Not to be unkind, but the anchor started to sink the ship and the other three guys in the band could no longer bail him out. It had come to the point where there was no longer any option but for everyone to jump overboard.

Wondering if it was really that bad I decided to re-listen to the show this morning and yeah, the band was clearly going nowhere but away.

Case in point: the very first lead guitar melody bit of the very first song of the night – Rift – was pooched from the opening line and remained rough and amateur-sounding for the remainder of the ninety-second interlude. Frankly, even when Page jumps in to take over on piano it sounds very sub-par. I guess the band as a whole just wasn’t getting together to practise like they used to, but really, it just sounds like the air was coming out of their tires and the whole band was sounding somewhat deflated.

And no wonder, it must have been a serious drag to stand next to Trey on a nightly basis and just watch his musical mastery slip away so noticeably. Like, a serious drag.

Just take a listen to Trey’s guitar solo in that opening song and compare it to any solo he played in the entirety of the 1990’s. The writing was on the wall; it was over (temporarily, thankfully).

Anyway, I won’t pick the whole show apart (which would be easy, and lengthy), suffice to say that the end was obviously nigh, and the pending disaster of Coventry was very, very predictable.

But really, it was still way better than going to see a Journey concert or Foreigner or something, and all my friends were there too, so you know, I had a pretty great time anyway. And Trey’s playing wasn’t all bad, it just wasn’t like it was (or would be), and we all missed him, even when he was right there in front of us.

In short I’m glad I went to this show, but if things hadn’t improved drastically (and by “things” I mean “Trey”) I sure wouldn’t still be going (another spoiler alert: I am).

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