Review: Phish Celebrates Mike Gordon’s Birthday With A Scorcher in Michigan

After a short set break, the band came onstage as dusk descended on the venue. The thick bass and keys opening Down With Disease brought no bust outs to open the second set. Rather, a 25-minute long version with a lengthy Love Supreme jam worked into the second half gave the crowd a lot to be grateful for.

A solid performance in the initial verses, the song really took off in the jam. After a few minutes of jamming around the Disease melody, the band started opening up with Page syncopating Mike and Trey’s notes. By nine minutes into the song, Page started laying on some funkier riffs with Mike now playing rhythmic subtextures and Trey seemed the most eager to push the jam forward. Throughout the Disease jam was an ebb and flow of energy into ambient bliss working John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme into the jam and building into a prog-rock melody reminiscent of Rush. Mike’s bass and Fishman’s cymbals and snare laid the perfect foundation for Page’s multi rhythmic fill and Trey’s ebbing and flowing guitar solos screeching at just the right moment.

The opening notes of Fluffhead called out into the pavilion out of the final Disease jam space and across the now darkened sky. The song was solid throughout despite fleeting timing issues in the bridge. It picked up considerably in Fluff’s Travels as again Page’s short but sweet piano work stood out. As they ended the song they teased into vague noise before Fishman’s characteristic cymbals revealed the opening of David Bowie. The cymbals faded out into Trey’s noise for another minute or so before launching into one of the longest Bowies in recent history. A hit or miss song for many, this Bowie performance was a definite hit featuring some strong leads from Trey and Page, pushing and pulling at each other throughout. A short 2001 and hard-hitting Cavern closed out the second set and the band returned only moments for a slightly extended encore of Good Times Bad Times to finish up a huge night of music before the venue’s notoriously rigid sound curfew.

Final thoughts: Phish 3.0? When the band is firing on all cylinders and plays a set like this, the only thing that truly sets them aside from any prior period is that they sound better than ever. Clarkston featured a classic old-school Phish set list with only three covers (Funky Bitch, Also Sprach Zarathrustra and Good Times Bad Times) and a high energy show with some strong open ended jams.  Remarkably, the first part of second set featured three songs and lasted 58 minutes: The very same reason some people hate Phish and some can’t get enough. All in all fans at Pine Knob were treated to arguably the best show of the tour so far.

Related Content

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter