A Phenway Review for Phans - Fenway Park (Boston, MA; May 31, 2009)

*Editor’s note: as you may well have noticed, melophobe experienced a major outage in the midst of our Phish at Fenway coverage. Because of our down time, we missed out on bringing you the incisive coverage you’ve come to expect. As such, we wanted to make sure all y’all phanatics out there got a chance to read the rantings of our in-house phan, Seth Wolfman. Enjoy.

Ah, Phish . . . when else in a Major League ballpark would performance-enhancing drugs be highly encouraged by both players and fans?

Fenway was like Hampton all over again in the sense that it was the first show since The Return for probably 98% of the crowd. It was Bliss Factor 10 all over the place. Say you go out with your friends one day and you have a really good time, significantly better than usual for whatever reason. OK, now multiply that by 20. That’s Phish right now. Of course Phish shows have always been incredible events, an automatic highlight of your entire month or even year. But I’m telling you, the unchecked joy amongst everyone inside shows right now is at another level. There is no question it was not quite like this when they were playing 80-140 shows a year. We’ll see what happens when they’re 25 shows in and the novelty factor is gone, songs start getting repeated, and the road wears down the fans. But right now, energy in the stands is unreal.

That said, we gotta get on the road with analysis unbound! Fantastic Phish stunt having the actual Fenway announcer introduce them as if he were introducing the usual pregame anthem singer, and then themselves coming out to sing the national anthem. Also a nice touch throwing a bone to the people in the back stands by singing from the pitcher’s mound. Incredible timing with the rain stopping just as the band was walking from the mound to the stage. The first onstage song was “Sample,” and I like “Sample” a lot, but I felt they should have come out stronger. I didn’t expect another earth-shattering “Fluffhead” moment à la Hampton or anything, but it just struck me as a bit tame. Say you lost touch with your best friend from college for 5 years. Then you find each other on Facebook and arrange the reunion meeting. You get there and you’re totally stoked, ready for a big-grin long-hug backslapping moment when you first meet up . . . and your friend greets you with a moderately happy, “Hi. How are things?” with their hands in their pockets. It’s nice enough and you go on to have a great time from there, but your feelings at that moment weren’t totally reciprocated the way you might have liked.

I love the fact that Phish is debuting new songs, and some good ones too. “Ocelot” sounded like new album material and I’d like to see it again. “Light” had good vocal rounds, though placement-wise I wasn’t sure it worked coming out of “Tweezer.” “Time Turns Elastic” is really cool, I cannot believe how much they sing in that song. It felt like they were singing for 8 or 9 minutes straight. Holy Tom Marshall, the vocal chart for TTE must have more notes than any other Phish vocal chart with the possible exception of “Colonel Forbin’s Ascent.” Good stuff.

One crowd observation worth its weight in prickly hairs: It seemed nobody knew “Destiny Unbound.” There was no reaction at all anywhere near me, even when they got to the chorus where they actually say the name of the song. Did “Destiny Unbound,” the undisputed Greatest Bustout Imaginable for 790 shows from 1991-2003, now being played for only the second time in modern Phish history, just FLOP?! After the show I asked several friends who were sitting in all different sections to give their take on what the reaction was. Reports from all areas concur: very, very few people knew what the heck “Destiny Unbound” was. On one hand I’m shocked. On the other hand, this is completely self-explanatory through a Phish quasi-Yogi Berraism: Destiny Unbound is so significant because nobody’s heard it!

Honestly now, at the start of “Cavern,” what percentage chance did you give Trey for nailing all the lyrics? I guessed it was probably the same as David Ortiz’ batting average, or about 19%. Miraculously, Trey pulled it out! Hey, Ortiz homered once four times this season too. But seriously, they sounded really tight. Sorry to the legions of crotchety Phish listeners who listen only for mistakes and then bitch about them on the internet, but you don’t have a lot to go on. With the exception of a 10 second stretch early in “Bowie” and starting “Tweezer Reprise” in the wrong key, Trey and everyone else seemed to nail everything. What a tour it will be!

Finally, a few choice words on ticketing. I was mildly surprised outside the park when there were dozens of people with extra tickets in the air, trying to get rid of them for anything they could, and not a single finger in the air looking for a ticket. I saw at least 3 people walk in with their extras still in their hand because they couldn’t give them away, and I’m just one guy at one gate at one moment. This is a very good thing. It is commonplace to complain about ticket agencies and pro scalpers using unfair tactics to hog all the tickets, and it is certainly true that this is going on. But the uncomfortable truth is that phans’ worst ticket enemy is really other phans . . . the ones who eat up tickets to shows they have no intention of going to just so they can use them as “trade bait” or maybe just resell them. This artificially inflates demand and drives prices skyward because you’re getting 5-10 times more fans trying for tickets to a show than actually want to go. Then nobody can get tickets to their local show because other people who aren’t actually going are just holding the tickets hostage. This doesn’t happen to any other band. The only way this is going to stop is if people start having to eat tickets and learn their lesson that trading over the internet is very tricky and in a lot of cases just doesn’t work. I’m sure a couple of people with extras tonight had friends who couldn’t go at the last minute, and I feel bad for them, don’t get me wrong. But there’s no way this accounts for the hundreds of extras that were around. The fact is, a lot of people who live far away and gobbled up the tickets as trade bait simply couldn’t trade, and they ate their extras. Everyone who pre-ordered all those extra Burgettstown, Alpine Valley, Knoxville, and Saratoga tickets that they only wanted for trade bait are now facing daunting drives to get to the shows and use the tickets since there’s nothing else they can do with them. Sorry, but this needs to happen. If you’re traveling to a show, great, get tickets. If you’re not, leave them alone and let the people who are going get them. It’s the only way demand and resale prices will ever reach sanity.

That’s it for Phenway.  See you for Great Woods!

DOWNLOAD: Phish - Tweezer Reprise (live at Hampton) (MP3) or Follow us for more Phish MP3s (Twitter)

Phish review to your liking? You'll sweat:

PHINALLY - Phish’s Triumphant Comeback Makes Life Complete Again (Hampton, VA; March 6, 2009)

Deep Phried Thoughts From Hampton (Hampton, VA; March 7, 2009)

True Roo: Bonnaroo Friday Report (June 12, 2009)

Ween - Orpheum Theatre (Boston, MA; Nov. 28, 2007)

1 comments thus far ...

Concerts We Recommend

melophobe sponsors

Connect To melophobe

1. melophobe
2. concert reviews
3. fifty-word reviews
4. articles
5. links
6.