BathtubGinFiles #30

  This Review (BGF#30) would not have been possible without the help
of Brian Cox (serial number dank420.24-7) who encouraged me to review
it and subsequently got me the tapes so that I could.  It is because of
him that I am reviewing this. Thanks Brian! This one's for you...
BTW, after listening to this Gin, I consider it a *must-have* for any
collector.

7/25/97 Starplex Amphitheater; Dallas, TX
  GinStats: Set I  Total Time: 21:29

  Beauty of My Dreams comes to a close, followed by silence, and then at
the usual 0:00, Trey starts the strum of Ginaholics everywhere...Fish
adds in some unusually enthusiastic comments.  This is the first time
I've ever heard this Gin and right from the first 5 seconds I can tell
that it has some *serious* potent potential, simply because of the
clarity of Trey's strumming and the overzealousness of Fish, as he
makes some rolls, hits the wood blocks and adds in some other
percussive comments more enthusiastically than I've ever heard before
in this segment.

Page jumps in at 0:16 -> 0:47  and man is he ever on fire from the start!
  Maybe it's the Dallas Heat, maybe it was his breakfast at the Fog with
  Lemon Drops and Nugs...whatever it was, Page is ENERGIZED!

Lyrics Segment: 0:48  Trey sounds ominous, dark and with Guyute's sinister
  voice, Trey sings as if he knows something EVIL that only he and
  Suzannah Goodman really know...A unique lyric segment here.

Page Fill 1: 1:21->1:38  Starts off with waves, and ends up with
     his usual terry tickling of the ivories...The intoxication!
     Fill 2: 2:09 ->2:28     The Rhapsody In Blue section starts
     off with a Rhospody in Electric Blue and ends up with a blow-up
     inflatable George Gershwin.  What the fuck, it's only a buck!

FAUCET: 2:42     Typical, with the usual amount of slight flubs.

SINGING W/THE FAUCET: 3:21   Okay.  Not overly enthusiastic, or
  "all-there" but certainly more-so than the Went's version.  The second
  run-through gets a much stronger treatment, with a neat fill by Trey
  around 4:20, no joke, but they're still just going through the motions
  here...

WATER FROM THE FAUCET: 4:37 Starts off with an unusual note, but
  serves the same function as "THE" usual.  Still maintains the feel of
  most beginnings to this section and continues on a path of the
  Faucet Lick and Related Territories.  That is, Page, Mike and Fish
  continue undisturbed, while Trey solos on-top, noodling around the
  Classic Faucet Lick (CFL) that is the tune's signature riff.

  Fish spices things up a bit, without disturbing flow and
at 5:07 Fish fucks with the beat - and again at 5:15 - as if
he wants to run off somewhere else, but Trey sticks with the mood and
the thematic jamming he started off with...that is, the typical CFL
jamming continues.  It sounds like Fish was trying to take his turn at
the Hey and Trey laughed back, "Hey what?"  Trey even does a double-time
faucet lick as if it accentuate this.
 
  But the jam does change mood though, within the 5 minute mark    And
more than changing just the mood, it also changes the location
altogether, after another return to the CFL, and some straying-from
and then glorius returns-to the CFL...we change scenes.  By 6:43 we
are no longer safe in the Dallas Starplex Amphitheater, we are now
at the bottom of the Bathtub.
 
         "Under the water?  Carry the water!"

 It is as if some gravitational wieght has pulled us to the
bottom, and Phish collectively, as a band, reach up and try to climb
the sides of the giant bathtub, but continue to sink back down
everytime they get a few inches up.  It seems futile, I know, but
believe me, the results are stunning!!  :)

  At 6:57 there's a double-time CFL from Trey (ala Philly
12/28/96 and many others), by 7:18 the jam is building, somewhere,
but no one is quite sure where, but God damn this is magestic and
suddenly like a Jolly Green Giant or Incredible Hulk,
it's...it's...

---------------------------------------------------------------------
...it's ****SUPER-HERO PHISH**** and it's bursting out of the water,
larger than we've ever seen it before and, as the t-shirts predicted, PHISH
DESTROYS AMERICA!!!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------

  Trey repeats the CFL higher up on the 'doc at a more frenetic pace, and
talking about frenetics, Fish has certainly joined the ranks of the
Soldiers Of Histerics.  The country is down for the count.  Henrietta
in the lead...

  Mike funks.  Page plays along.  Trey wails intoxicatingly.

  At 8:37, Trey hits a chordal lick that could go into something, but
I can't quite recall what...LLama!...close enough anyway, as if to
say "We *could* go into this"  but then he turns on the wah-wah and
wah-wah-wah-watch out!  This is the
hottest, most erotic, PORNO-FUNK jamming I've EVER EVER heard Phish
do...9:40's  HOT DAMN!  Shaft beware, you may be the black
private dick who get's all the chicks, but this is the
PORNO-FUNK FU- shut 'yer mouth- but I'm talking about Phish....okay
then!   Get up, get busy, y'all! And don't stop till you get enough...

Phish is putting the P back into P-Funk!

  And now, in their effort to take on not just America, but the world:
Electronica beware, this is TECHNO-PORNO-FUNK....are we ever gonna
bust out of this electronica?  I dunno, like a rave this could go on
forever, and like ravesters we'd keep on dancing to it till the
morning light.   In fact, I *want* this to go on till morning light.
This is so good, I don't ever want this to end!  I think I'm just
gonna press this jam on vinyl, turn into a DJ and scratch this record
till the warehouse lease is up...The Gay Sailor has fallen in love
with cowbells in the 11 minute mark....the funk is just TOO DEEP here!

  Motherfucker! This is some of the most imaginative, creative
jamming I've heard Phish do in some time.......anybody who doesn't have
this Gin is just plain lacking in their Phish collection and anybody who
doesn't try to seek this Gin out is just plain stupid! I, too, was
once just plain stupid, but Holy Shit!  This is Funk from 2000 Leagues
Beneath The Sea!  And I really really do believe that....Funky Bottom
Jamming....Funky Bottom Jamming...that's what this is!  If anybody
even *liked* the VA Beach Gin, this is the same brand, but of a much
finer caliber! It's VA Beach on wheels and with a cape...Funky techno...

  At 12:51 Page goes over to THAT thing that he's been on all summer,
while Trey just scratches the wah underneath.  Yes, I said,
"scratches with the Wah."   Trey has something gotten into you?
Oh my god....oh my gawd!  Look at him, folks!  Someone has
kidnapped Trey Anastasio and replaced him with

   D J   F A T   B O Y

instead!  DJ FAT BOY on the guitar, MC NEON GELL CAP on the keys,
GORDON GIN on the bass and THE GAY SAILOR on the grOOves...this whole
thang is nothing but the grOOve...welcome to the next century.  Phish
has taken over America rather than simply destroy it!
 
This is Techno-Phish for sure...Sounds like something I'd hear at a
rave.  Trey sounds more like he's a record with a DJ scraching on top than
anything....Page sounds like a Man With A Master Madman Plan...It's
as if he has the blue prints to the bomb that will flatten the world
and he's transfering it to Agent #38 through the use of his
keys...every note more data goes out to that Secret Agent Man by the
soundboard while thousands of kids dance clueless.

No, I'm kidding,
nobody could have danced clueless to THIS.  I mean, everybody must have
known that *something* important was going on.

At 14:26 Trey returns to the land of the Faucet,

Okay, that's it...we still have four or five minutes to go, and I just
can't take this, people...not only did we dive off the deep-end, not
only did we go to waters we've never been before, not only get we get
hosed in places we weren't supposed to unless we had ID on us, but we
RETURNED!  Thank you Trey!  Thank you Page! Thank you Mike!  Thank you
Fish!

In the 14th minute, Page now is a Science Fiction GOD.
At 14:57 Trey teases Lizards maybe..in a way...if Lizards was played
through speakers under the deep end of a swimming pool.  Or if there
was to be a movie called "200 Leagues under the Lizards" this would
surely be the Also Sprach Lizards...

Did I forget to mention, forget to mention that I never have heard a
Bathtub Gin quite like this?

Sure, The Great Went's had that incredible build, like a Hood or a
Slave or a Dw/D, and I agree that the Great Gin from 8/17/97 is
overpowering...but this is true ingenuity in this one folks, wheas
that one's more like the most magnificent Slave or Hood.  This
isn't just taking Gin to a higher level than its ever been before
(as 8/17/97 did), but this is also taking it to a whole 'nother
direction, a whole different genre and style of music, and crossing
the boundaries, it dares to cross back, and it dares to do it
smoothly.  Yes, that's right -- it *dares* to be *this* *good*!

I guarantee you that this Gin is unique in that you do not have 20
minutes of Phish in your collection that sounds like this.  You may
have things you like just as much, probably even other Gins in-fact (I
know I do)...but nothing will sound quite like this.  It's
fingerprinted and we have it on file now! :)  It goes from VA Beach
style Porno-Funk to Techno-FAT BOY to Deodato's Gin back to Porno-Funk!

By 18:19 we're getting even more mellow, and Trey starts climbing,
building notes on top of Page's high-end calculus chatter.

At 19:09 there's a double-time Faucet lick as if to confirm that yes, we
are still in Bathtub Gin and not just some random Jam...they're
mocking us Mockingbird Setlist type, saying "This is not Gin->Jam, you
dolts!  This is all one intoxicating shot! One shot at glory!"  The
nerve! The nerve!

Trey continues to jam out on this double-time lick, still repeating
it in-between other notes as late as 19:59....at 20:0X he goes into the
Original Classic Faucet Lick and indeed the whole band follows
him....motherfuckers...this is intoxicating!  Gin is winding down, ala a
Tweezer Wind-Down, and we can feel like they'll finish it proper,
(even if there's no Bathtub Gin sung refrains)...this return is just
as amazing as the return to Dw/D from Taste in Amsterdam 2/97.  21:02
this starts to segue into Makisupa...motherfuckers, they've amazed me
again.... mutherfuckers...this segue is smooth and slow, inch by inch
moving from one song to the other, the way a Fine Sloe Gin should
be..at 21:29 they're fully into Makisupa.  Hot Damn!  Somebody call
me a Makisupa Ambulance, I think I may dead and in Phish
heaven...somebody once said of Opium: "But the dreams! The dreams!"
I say that same thing about this Gin. But the dreams! The dreams!

ENDS AT 21:29 if you're including the seque jamming...if not, 21:02.

Rating: 98 proof.
 

(btw, for anyone discontent with me labelling the Went's Gin a 97 Proof,
may it comfort you to know that it would have been two notches
higher, but it got docked a point for the opening flubs, and another
point for the *very* beginning of the jam section. Considering that
the "average Gin" should be in the 70->79 Proof range, 97 is still
almost as high as you can get...and still a rare treat, making it
elite as one of the best-ever Gins)

Dallas still gets one notch higher though....:)
Don't knock it till you've tried it!

Walk with light my friends,
Benjy