Being as it was the second and ultimate day of The Clifford Ball, August 17th, 1996 marked the end of the beginning of Phish festivals, a series of weekend concerts hosted by the greatest band in the land that has so far numbered ten (eleven if you count Curveball, which was cancelled), of which I have attended six (seven if you count Curveball but c’mon now, who am I kidding? Even though I was onsite with all my friends and well into my second day of revelling in the super-choice VIP camping area when the cancellation was announced doesn’t mean a festival that never happened should “count”…). And I tell you, they were all fantastic.

As a matter of fact, the band hit a festival home run straight out of the gate; you’d never know that they had never done this before. They had secured an excellent spot for the shows on a air force base in Plattsburgh, New York, smack dab in the middle of Phish heartland and just an hour from the band’s home base in Vermont. They had arranged for military flybys and meandering circus performers, they had booked several classical musicians who played at seemingly random intervals on the stage, they had scattered nifty art installations amongst the grounds, and in a feat of weather-mongering, the band somehow arranged for excellent weather the entire weekend (or at least the parts I remember; every memory I have from the weekend is decorated with a sun-kissed blue sky or a canopy of stars on a clear night). Not to mention the fact that Phish drew a crowd of around 70,000 people, making it the biggest rock concert in North America in all of 1996, so yeah, not bad for a bunch of first-timers.

This was pretty early in my Phish game – I had seen the band just four times before The Clifford Ball – so I hadn’t really worked out “favourites” yet and somehow the band still managed to play tons of my favourites: Maze, Slave, Golgi, Fluffhead…How did they know? Heck, the final set by itself (they played seven sets over the weekend) could have stood alone as a concert to end all concerts! It started with the greatest one note (twice, twice) singalong riff in the history of singalong riffs, Wilson (it must feel magical to hit an open E string four times – badump, badump – and have 70,000 people pick up the cue and shout “Wilson!” together), then on to Edgar Winters’ greatest riff Frankenstein, then a dance/romp through Scent of a Mule. The rest of the set saw the band squish A Day In the Life and the elevating singalong Possum in the middle of their best rock/riff tune Tweezer and it’s bookend, Tweezer Reprise.

And finally, as if that wasn’t enough get this: Phish encored the whole shebang with their epic song Harpua while a illuminated glider (or was it an ultralight?) meandered overhead spewing coloured smoke trails and the band left the stage without finishing the song. What’s so cool about that?

This: They finished the song at their next festival, 364 days later. What a cool band.

https://toddmanout.com/