When Phish opened the 30^th with “Punch You in the Eye,” it seemed that the premonitions of so many fans that this night would be the night of the run were about to be realized. With a classic opener in a classic building—immediately referencing the historic New Year’s Eve show of ’95—the band seemed primed and ready to tear the roof of the The Garden. Armed with an artillery of potent jam vehicles waiting in the wings, it felt like the band was on the brink of a phenomenal show, especially after an underwhelming 29^th. But as soon as “Punch” ended, the first set quickly disintegrated into Phish-Lite, as every song seemed more innocuous than the next—and more butchered. For the first time of the New Year’s Run, the band legitimately sounded off. Hacking their way through the entire first set, despite a pronounced “Divided Sky,” it felt as though Phish would come back after the break for some serious redemption. But aside from an otherworldly “Piper”—the most impressive jam of the past three days—the second set fell completely flat, almost as though the band was going through the motions. It was quite the bizarre evening with the Phish, and certainly not a show one would expect to hear on the brink of New Year’s Eve. After a promising first show, each performance has fallen off, leaving only a three-setter tomorrow night to salvage a New Year’s Run that once looked like it would blow up like none this era.

Coming out with “Wilson” and “Axilla” to open the second set, the one-two, hard rock punch set the stage for the centerpiece of the show and the most innovative jam we’ve heard this run—“Piper.” Building viciously within the jam’s structure, there came a singular moment when the guys collectively broke form and were locked and loaded for action. Tearing into a creative and multi-tiered excursion, the band pulled it all together for a fifteen-minute roller coaster ride through the cosmos. Starting in upbeat, choppy grooves that one might expect to hear from the song, Mike dominated the landscape with commanding bass leads. Soon, however, Page began to make his mark on this jam. Beginning to layer sounds and washes behind an increasingly intricate conversation, the keyboardist would play a prominent part throughout this trip. The band switched gears into a totally original pattern in which Trey and Mike began to wrap dark lead lines around each others’. Backed by a series of breakbeats, the band began to build the jam from an aggressive, snarling monster into a melodic, divine soundscape. Soon morphing into a looped-out piece of ultra-layered psychedelia, the band continued to flirt with universal vibrations as they were neck deep in an exploratory wonderland. Page continued offering significant contributions to this three part harmonic convergence, while Fish’s beats oozed into a liquid and delicate groove. Phish was feeling IT; flowing profoundly with the improvisational magic that defines our love of the live experience. But once “Piper” ended, we had seen, essentially, all the creativity we’d see from the quartet for the rest of the night.

Pairing “Piper’s” transcendent journey with its common setlist partner, “Twist,” the band felt like they might be on the brink of a serious set of music. But “Twist” remained wholly grounded, and then the set lost all sense of direction with a run of “Julius,” “Golgi,” “2001 > Horse > Silent In the Morning.” The first half of “2001” had some cranked up full-band action, but when they dropped into “Horse” out of the song’s second peak, the set had turned into some sort of farce. We were in MSG on the 30^th of the year, not Great Woods on a Wednesday night in June—what was going on? Despite being off for the entire first set, they band had pulled it together only to smash what they had going with a string of poor song selections. Standard renditions of “David Bowie” and “Squirming Coil” hardly did much to salvage the set’s overall excitement. It definitely felt weird.

Encoring with an energetic twin bill of covers in “Boogie On Reggae Woman” and “Good Times, Bad Times,” the band got some cheers from the crowd, but any sense of serious musicianship had begun and ended with “Piper.” Now, on the brink of New Year’s Eve, what are we to think? Did the band not practice enough before the run? Are we seeing the results of no fall tour this year? Because the band we are watching this week is a far cry from the creative juggernauts we left in Denver on Labor Day weekend. These days, the band seems to crush opening nights on the regular, and when Wednesday’s show blew up like it did, one could only imagine what the rest of the week had in store. Now with only three sets left, one has to wonder, what has happened? Will New Year’s Eve follow the steady decline of the week, or will Phish come to the rescue with a show that will give zest to the bland taste left in the mouths of many fans over the past two nights? Lord, let’s hope so.

I: Punch You In the Eye, Prince Caspian > Backwards Down the Number Line, Nellie Kane, Divided Sky, Sand, Vultures, Rift, Joy, Quinn the Eskimo

II: Wilson, Axilla > Piper > Twist, Julius, Golgi Apparatus, Also Sprach Zarathustra > The Horse > Silent in the Morning, David Bowie, The Squirming Coil

E: Boogie On Reggae Woman, Good Times Bad Times

One facet of Phish’s storied legacy is their profound exchanges of energy between themselves and their audiences, often reaching levels not experienced in any other place on the planet. Madison Square Garden has long been a venue where such interactions reach massive peaks, that energy—almost—becomes a tangible entity. Thursday night at the Garden was defined by this metaphysical interplay as tidal waves of shared energy rippled through the midtown Mecca from start to finish. Throughout two sets, and specifically the first, Phish drenched the arena in high-powered rock and roll. But when the show ended and the only risk the band had taken was a sublime and out-of-left-field transition between “Chalk Dust” and “Hydrogen,” and the only two true jams that could be named were “YEM” and “Weekapaug,” many wondered what had happened to the daring spirit on display throughout the first night of the run.

The show got an adrenaline shot directly to the heart in the form of a “Sloth” opener followed by a marathon dance session in “You Enjoy Myself.” And in 2011, with only four versions in the books before last night, this early-show shocker came as even more of a surprise. In the fifth version of the year, Phish showed love for their old-school opus, engaging in a fully entrenched dosage of “YEM”-funk to jumpstart the show laced with staccato guitar phrasing  and creative bass lines holding down the bottom end of a jam that has—literally—become synonymous with The Garden in the moniker of “YEMSG.”

Then, in each subsequent song performed throughout the first set, the energy in the building continued to build, coming to mid-set swells in a rousing “Funky Bitch,” “Maze,” and “Roses are Free”—a version in which the energy, alone, in the room had to carry into something musically significant. But it wasn’t to be. And the same phenomenon befell the following selection, “Halley’s Comet.” Phish even carried the composed jam a bit longer than usual only to come to a routine ending that moved into a crushing, set-closing “Antelope” in the same exact slot on the same exact date as 1997, when the jam virtually crumbled MSG all by itself. All in all, a ferocious, old-school-themed and in-your-face frame of music set the table for what had to be a monstrous second half. But that massive set that would surely build upon the 28th never materialized.

Though the band certainly played quite well through each and every selection in the second set, their jamming had somehow left the building. If you had told me beforehand that the first two song’s of the second set would be “Crosseyed and Painless” and “Simple,” and the band would haven’t engaged in a bit of exploration throughout the entire two-song sequence, I would have scoffed at the notion. But, in fact, that is exactly what happened. “Crosseyed”—like much of the second set—was lead by high-powered, though straightforward guitar work, and when the band bled into an ambient ending, it sounded as they might go into “No Quarter.” But instead, they crashed into “Simple” in a somewhat of a head-scratching maneuver. And even when a second set, standalone “Simple” screamed for further caressing, the band turned a cold shoulder in favor of the one of the most welcomed treats of the night—“Lifeboy.” The mid-second set rarity hypnotized The Garden with its lucid reality, seemingly setting the stage for what had to be a huge jam vehicle. But when the band dropped into “Guyute” next, I was left wondering what date of the year it was.

Surprisingly, the highlight of the show came from the unlikeliest of places—within the middle of a “Mike’s Groove.” Following an aggressive odyssey through “Mike’s Song” that saw Big Red earn his nickname with slashing guitar leads throughout, the band oddly entered “Chalk Dust Torture,” a song that didn’t really fit its placement, but certainly felt congruent to the vibe of the entire night. And just when you least expected it, the band tossed a curveball. Taking the piece into intense realms, Trey moved from the dark side into a melody that sounded oh-so-familiar. Within a moment’s notice, it became apparent that Trey was blending “Chalk Dust” into “Hydrogen” as the rest of the band chugged away beneath! In the unquestionable moment of the show, Phish brought the house down with an absolutely stunning transition that nobody in the entire city saw coming.

The dramatic musical move clearly juiced the band as their creativity spilled directly into a full-throttle “Weekapaug” jam that was fully on the level. One had to wonder where any of this late-set spirit had been when huge jams hung in the air for much of the second half. Finishing the night with an exhale in “Show of Life” and final bursts of spirited rock playing in “Character Zero” and “Loving Cup,” the end of the night maintained the same the vibe of the entire evening—smoking rock, but hardly anything that could be described as adventurous. Juxtaposing a night of jams on the 28^th with a night an energy show, through and through, on the 29^th, one has to believe the 30th will feature a bit more for the psyche. And in just a few more hours, we’ll find out.

I: The Sloth, You Enjoy Myself, Back on the Train, The Moma Dance, Funky Bitch, Maze, Roses Are Free, Halley’s Comet > Run Like an Antelope

II: Crosseyed and Painless > Simple > Lifeboy, Guyute, Mike’s Song > Chalk Dust Torture-> I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove, Show of Life, Character Zero

E: Loving Cup

***

THANK YOU!—Thanks to everyone who came out to both the book signing and afterparty at The Irish Times! Both events had great turnouts and were incredibly enjoyable, and it was great to meet so many new people and hang with a bunch of old friends all at the same time! A great time was had by all.

Stepping to the plate in their first night at The Garden 2011, Phish dropped a smoking show that could have easily been plucked from the middle of any recent tour, while offering but a glimpse of what is to come in this what feels like a New York holiday extravaganza in the making.

Showing no signs of rust, the band came out with a far stronger opening set that many might have imagined, kicking off the run with the first show-opening version of “Free” in history, following it up with a well-played “Glide” —a couplet that started the run with a different sort of flavor than you’re usual “Possum, “Moma.” But that “Possum” wasn’t far behind, batting right behind the table setters! The show, however, got going into earnest with a “Cities” jam in which Mike pushed the guys towards more creative planes. Growing into the first jam of the holidays, Phish dipped into some early exploration in “Cities” before oddly ending the jam in premature fashion as things were getting serious. Though some “Cities” jams can float off into the distance, this one—after reaching some engaging early realms—vanished in midair. But when the band came out of that silence with “The Ballad of Curtis Loew” many fans left those aborted thoughts in favor of new ones, as the set’s best pieces were yet to come in an intense, classically-contoured “Stash” and an anthemic “Welcome Back” in the form of a set-closing “Bathtub Gin.”

Despite the several peaks of the opening set, however, the band came out after setbreak and obliterated it with a non-stop performance strewn with creativity throughout. Firing out of the gates with a fierce “Birds of a Feather,” the ominous tone of the set was set for the more marquee set-two highlight, “Carini -> Tweezer.” As soon as the opening chords of  “Carini” crashed into play in MSG on December 28th, a tidal wave of memories  of 12.28.98’s seminal version washed ashore, upping the ante for what was about to go down, at least in my mind. As Trey unleashed a comically huge guitar solo over “Carini’s” menacing textures, the band seemed primed to take this version to a place of significance. And once Big Red settled his seething solo, the true beauty of the jam set in. Migrating from evil to blissful in the matter of measures, Phish transformed their darkening jam into a gorgeous one-minded excursion that got to the heart of things through patient interplay and divine harmonies. And as the exploration settled into a mellower groove, Trey laid down the “Tweezer” lick right in rhythm with the rest of the band?! In a segue that seemed primed for Trey to get jumpy, this time no nerves took hold and Phish passed seamlessly into “Tweezer” on the first night of the run!

And this “Tweezer” turned MSG inside out with a collaborative groove bug-out that felt like a continuous highlight reel from beginning to end. Trey laid way back on any guitar leads as the band entered a four-part funk symphony. In a golden trail of rhythmic acrobatics, the band laid down a smooth centerpiece of  elementary sophistication—all compromised of certifiable, grade -“A” Phish crack! And when the guys did finally emerge from their collaborative syncopation, Trey took a snarling final bite at the piece before winding down into “My Friend, My Friend.” At this juncture, the set read “Birds,” “Carini -> Tweezer”—I had a shit-eating grin on my face—and instead of concluding with the chilling laughter of “Myfe,” Trey came right in with one of the year’s indelible jams, “Rock and Roll.” Phish had thrown caution to the wind, dove right into this New Year’s Run and just dropped a mid-second set “Rock and Roll?!” What night was this again?

The subsequent jam sequence of “Rock and Roll -> NICU” provided the second exploratory engagement of the set. Following a high-octane, guitar-powered peak, the band got down to business with an avant-garde joyride through varying time changes and textures. Playing off each other’s subtleties, the band built, perhaps, the most unique jam of the entire show, featuring multiple tempo-shifts and forward-looking jamming. And the creativity continued to flow. Building slowly into “NICU,” Trey made sure this jam found its landing point, but this time, not as gracefully.

Concluding the set with “Harry Hood” on the one year anniversary of its monumental version from Worcester, this was the only real place where I thought the band slipped a bit. After battling through the compositional section, the band seemed a bit aimless through the beginning of this version. And while they certainly righted the ship into a solid set-closing combo with “Bug,” this final stamp on a special night left a little to be desired.

Finishing on the most bizarre of tones—“Tube,” “Rocky Top,” and “Reprise”—the opening night was in the books. And just like that, the band dropped a two-setter of significance on opening night of the Holiday Run something that hadn’t happened since 2003, and before that, 1998. But before we start talking about any place in New Year’s Run history for last night’s show, let’s see how this four-nighter turns out—because something tells me that we’ve only scratched the tip of this iceberg.

I: Free, Glide, Possum, Cities, The Ballad of Curtis Loew, Stash, Contact, Sample In a Jar, Kill Devil Falls, Bathtub Gin

II: Birds of a Feather, Carini -> Tweezer > My Friend, My Friend > Rock and Roll -> NICU, Bouncing Around the Room, Harry Hood > Bug

E: Tube, Rocky Top, Tweezer Reprise

****

EVENT REMINDER:

Book Signing and Afterparty—TODAY @ The Irish Times!

I’ll see you in the matter of hours at The Irish Times for Phish Thoughts Book Release Party! I’ll be down there between 4-6 pm signing and selling books on the upstairs level of the bar. We have to wrap up at 6 sharp, but you can leave your purchased books (to be locked away during the show) for your retrieval at the Afterparty at the same upstairs location as the signing. Though the afterparty will commence as soon as the show ends, please allow me 30 minutes from the show’s end to get back to the books. Thanks! Details are below.

The Irish Times

254 W 31^st St. (b/w 7^th and 8^th Ave)

Less than 1 block from MSG!

The Book Signing: 4 pm – 6 pm

***

The Afterparty: Post-show – 3 am – $5 cover

After the show’s final notes, don’t worry about grabbing a cab, come back across the street to The Irish Times for a post-show party! Without skipping a beat, Coltrane and Friends (funk, nu-disco, re-edit) will keep the grooves going for hours—and everyone is invited free of charge! With two floors, booths to sit and plenty of room in the bar, there will be ample to space to dance or chill, whichever your post-show selves prefer. Come and celebrate all that we, as a community, have to rejoice over at the end of an amazing year! Books will also be for sale throughout the after-party.

Check out some of  Coltrane’s mixes here!