A Dream We Dreamed One Night Ten Years Ago
Soundcheck (S.Millman)
Today marks the ten year anniversary of three of the most significant concerts in psychedelic rock history. It was April 15th, 16th, and 17th, 1999 when Trey and Page stepped on stage at The Warfield with Phil Lesh, Steve Kimock, and John Molo for night one of the legendary Phil and Friends shows that united Phish and The Grateful Dead for the first time. Trey and Page started out covering Dead songs in college, yet spent most of the subsequent two decades carving out Phish’s musical identity while keeping comparisons to The Dead at arms reach. These shows represented a psychedelic homecoming for our two Phish heroes, both who revered the work of the San Francisco legends.
These three nights also represented the spark of Phil Lesh’s solo career in earnest, marking his first shows back from liver transplant surgery five months earlier. Although there had already been Further Festivals, The Other Ones, and a couple interesting Phil and Friends shows, many in the Dead community point to this three night run as the beginning of Phil’s return to prominence.
But more than anything, these shows marked the union of The Grateful Dead and the Phish scenes, two groups that didn’t always see eye to eye. Many in The Dead community grew bitter towards Phish and their scene, viewing them as watered-down imitators of their counter-culture gods. Additional segmentation occurred after Jerry died, as many Dead fans decided to turn to Phish, while others just turned a cold shoulder. It almost felt as if you had to have an allegiance to one band or the other- not both.
But then one night in 1998, everything changed. When Phish declared both their reverence for, and independence from, The Dead by covering “Terrapin Station” on the third anniversary of Jerry’s death, the door for this union swung open. Comfortable with their own place in music history, Phish no longer needed to shy away from the music and culture of their forebearers, And less than a year later we were at The Warfield.
As the rumor began to spread of these shows, it was hard to believe at first. Trey and Page were going to play three nights of Dead music at The Warfield with Phil?! A feeling of historical awe came with the notion, and the possibilities were endless. When the rumors were finally confirmed, the mission for tickets to this once in a lifetime event was on! Having scouted a Ticketmaster outlet and driven hours upon hours into the middle of nowhere in the central part of Northern California, our plan came to fruition as we were the as the second and third people in line at a grocery store in Yuba City. (A scalper was first. ) Leaving the store with tickets in hand to all three nights, the long drive back to Santa Cruz was one of the happiest road trips of our lives.
The Warfield 4/99 (S.Millman)
As the time leading up to these shows grew shorter and shorter, the question of what they would be like became the center of most conversation. With Steve Kimock, a Garcia prodigy who was known for his ability to channel the sound of his mentor, and Trey on stage together, one thing was for sure- it would be a showcase of virtuoso guitar work. But would the band gel? Would they jam coherently? Would it be intense? Sloppy? These questions swirled in both bands’ communities. Then there was the question I deemed absurd at the time- would they play Phish songs? “No chance!”, I thought- these were Phil’s gigs, we were just along for the ride. Regardless of anyone’s musical expectations- no matter how high- these three nights blew them straight out of the water.
With a sense of the historic implications, the inspriation that they represented to so many people, and ridiculous musical skills, the band created three nights of absolute, unadulterated magic. The band approached every hallowed piece from The Dead canon with similar reverence, drill-bit focus and desire to create something special- and each and every time, they did. Virtually every song over these three nights represented a sacred part of The Grateful Dead’s cultural wake, and the band members collectively treated each piece with full-on dedication; what resulted was simply remarkable. For three nights, Phil, Trey, Page, Kimock, and Molo captivated The Warfield audience beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, scripting a psychedelic fairy tale for the ages.
Stay tuned the rest of this week for the rest of a three-part series looking at these magnificent and powerful evenings! Coming Up: The Shows and The Aftermath.
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“Wolfman’s -> Uncle John’s Band” 4.15 II
[audio:http://phishthoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/2-01-wolfmans-brother-_.mp3,http://phishthoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/2-02-uncle-johns-band.mp3]***
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DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY:
4.15.99 Phil & Friends @ The Warfield, SBD < LINK
4.15.99 Phil & Friends @ The Warfield, SBD < TORRENT LINK
Trey Ripping "Disease" at The Warfield (4.17)
Over the next three days I will be featuring 24-channel multitracked SBDs of these epic evenings at The Warfield. These are some of the most pristine recordings you’ll ever hear of three truly poignant and powerful evenings of music. Today we feature the first one. Before set one, Phil, his sons and Kimock on Strat sang “Hello Old Friend” (Eric Clapton) in front of the curtain to thunderous applause welcoming Phil back. Check out tomorrow’s post for an overview of the show. Fyi, “Viola Lee Blues,” and “Uncle John’s Band” are insane.
I: Viola Lee Blues, Big Railroad Blues, Jack-a-Roe, Cosmic Charlie, Wolfman’s Brother > Uncle John’s Band
II: Alabama Getaway, Sugaree, Like a Rolling Stone > I Know You Rider, Row Jimmy, Shakedown Street > The Wheel > Not Fade Away
E: Mr Tambourine Man
Here’s some info from phishtickets I just received. I think they have to work on their automatic replies, as I gave them all the information they needed and received this:
First, my email to them..
Hi,
My bank account was charged for the Fenway lottery (I assume) yesterday, but I haven’t seen an email confirming the transaction. My transaction info is as follows:
04/14/2009 Debit CHECKCARD 0413 PHISH TICKETS 800-5948499 VA -$229.60
Is there any way I could get a confirm to find out where the tickets are located?
Thanks
………..and this is the reply I get:
Dear Fan,
Thank you for your incredible support of the Phish lottery!
We strive to reply to each and every ticket request status inquiry individually. As time is drawing near for the general public sale to begin, we understand the need for you to know whether or not your request was denied or honored.
If, for whatever reason, you did not receive your e-mail status notification that was sent Tuesday night, the best way to find out on your own is to check your credit/debit card statement. If you see a charge from Phishtickets in the past 24 hours, and you did not receive your status e-mail, then feel free to e-mail us back to find out which show(s) on your request were honored. If there is no charge, then you can assume your request was denied.
If your e-mail is not about the most recent lottery of the 2nd leg of the summer tour, we apologize for this response and ask for your patience. Please resend your inquiry and we will address it in the next 48 hours.
Again, thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Ticketing Customer Service Dept.
—– Does that make any sense? For one, I sent my bank statement info, and then they re-ask that question, huh?….then it goes on about the 2nd leg of summer tour when the last lottery they did was for the 1st leg?? WTF?
Oh well….come on section A!!!
I remember me and a buddy running into an older dude at a local park, say in his late 30’s at the time, when we were teenagers and majorly into phish already. He was wearing a Dead shirt, and I went up to him and was like, “hey, you into phish?” and he basically was stoked on phish and said he had always been into the Dead and said, “but, yeah, phish is jammin'”. clearly a true dead fan upon talking to him. I still run into him now and then around town and he’ll just hand me a live mix disc with dead stuff, trey, phish, whatever he’s been digging at the time. gotta love that
lol @MP and wt!
thanks miner for posting these shows, just grabbing the torrent now, for some reason I never sought these out…looking forward to them, and my wife will really love ’em
last regular season game of the year tonight and I just noticed how funny Blazers vs Nuggets is for 2 of the headiest cities in america…I will be BLAZING some NUGGETS tonight while I watch the game for sure
Hey Walfredo – Is that long string of numbers something you don’t want to be posting for the world to see? Just checkin’ . . .
@ Walfredo… I got the same email but my card was not charged. I would email them back with the same info as your first message and maybe they will respond this time with a non-auto reply. It sounded like there were quite a few people that didn’t get an email, so hence the auto-reply maybe? Good luck!
Miner if you can edit Walfredos post above to hide the number that might be a good move, Jon has a good point there
The 0413 CreditCard is the ending numbers of the credit card number. No way to steal info from that. Also, credit card numbers are 16 digits.
err.. that should read “0413 are the ending numbers….”
Speaks me sum gud inglish. ;-P
Good, I didn’t know, thought maybe it was routing # + acct # or something just checkin
jerry band 3-10-78 says it all. I will answer your questions later……
washington D.C i beleive. jerry is absolutely untouchable. If i recall jerry enjoyed his side projects very much. sometimes he even enjoyed playin in the JGB because it was less pressure and stress free. his playing certainly goes with that statement. How about some Legion Of Mary, whow is this some different music than the dead we are used to hearing. Jerrys side projects are a very addicting they are a must to any music lover
of course jerry enjoyed his side projects otherwise he wouldn’t have done them
the amount of music garcia produced over the years is absolutely astounding. Wheather it was with the grateful dead, jerry garcia band, garcia/grisman, old and in the way, legion of mary, garcia/kahn…ect ect… just the amount of music is staggering. hundreds of thousands of hours on tape. Some years he must have played 350 out of 365 nights. Seemed like he never stopped playing or took any breaks…except perhaps when he was ill in 86/87.
excellent discussion- just read through it all…lol at blazers v. nugs….
Legion of Mary is the shit….John Kahn is the man
Your the man miner! 🙂
thanks in part to this site and the stimulating discussions, i have successfully navigated through one more day with ease…one more day logged into the history books…one less day untill summer tour! What is it now? 46 days? lol
lee fordham sold me out…
46 days untill the coal ran out!
Im pretty sure Jerry is the most recorded guitarist ever in history…something like over 15,000 hours or music available.
even jerry couldn’t play music through a coma 🙂
Maybe he couldn’t play through a coma but he could still play half dead. At the end of 95 he was so bad he had to have a monitor with the lyrics he was almost gone. One of my favorites is the fire on the mountain from seattle in the end of may. The guy was practically laying in his death bed and still managed to make a good 20 minutes of magical jamming. It makes me happy everytime I hear it just to think of him snapping out of it for a moment and being alive again. He was notably using his wand of god effects pedal too which was fairly new.
Thanks for the concern on the credit card info, but none of those numbers are part of my card or routing….I made sure of that. The 0413 is the date (Apr 13th). Looks like Miner took off a few #’s…that’s cool. Anyhow…appreciate the concern. Just wanted to show some folks what kind of info I was getting from the ticketing source.
I’m sure I’ll be good….just pretty strange seeing I’ve been putting in for tickets since they started the online lottery and have never had issues with not receiving an email, good or bad.
LOM is sick. Also…Hooteroll is one of the sickest Garcia treats around.
any way to get the wav files of this. the mp3’s are sweet but a losless copy would be over the top. thanx so much for the share of this sweet show.
Back on Track…
There is some Great Video of the 3 night run out there.
To The Community- Don’t Hate on Torrents
Phish, Dead, Bisco… whatever; you can find quality DVDs out there
I was not there but the video of these Phil& Phriends shows just
how much fun they were having even when they flubbed.
SBD or bust
Other Walfredo-
It is clearly an auto-reply. Sounds pretty clear if you were charged you got tickets. It is saying to follow up to see which show the tickets are for. If you only requested one show- you are set.
Hey Walfredo….didn’t know there were two of us. Not sure who was first, but I’ll change my handle. Other Walfredo is now Stun the Puppy.
Still haven’t gotten my reply back from phishtickets….hopefully today I can find out where those Fenway seats are!
Did you go to the July 2nd/3rd shows with Billy on drums and the Dave Nelson band? I came over from the UK to visit my uncle in SF and we went to both nights! Magical…