Phish Squeeze Fun & Music Out of Lemonwheel
“Build a city, build myself a city to live in,” guitarist
Trey Anastasio chimed on the first day of
Phish‘s weekend extravaganza, pausing that
Talking Heads cover mid-song to call out to fans
on a faraway Ferris wheel.
It was a fitting line, given the setting: a veritable nomad city
of 65,000 built upon the turf of the former Loring Air Force Base
in Limestone, Maine. Lemonwheel, this summer’s
grand Phish tour finale, was well underway. And in the tradition of
1997’s Great Went (also held at Loring) and 1996’s
Clifford Ball in Plattsburgh, N.Y., the tribes had
turned out in force.
The return to Loring allowed for creative planning that resulted
in a more highly evolved theme-park vibe. Inside the concert
grounds sprouted a Garden of Infinite Pleasantries, an Asian-styled
playground with tiki huts, huge papier-mache cranes, a
stacked-Portalet pagoda, walk-in sapling sculptures and a rock
garden where fans piled stones.
Then, of course, there was the music — more than four hours of
Phish per day, as well as an after-hours jam where the quartet
probed Brian Eno-inspired soundscapes on the main
stage, surrounded by nearly a thousand candles painted by fans in
the crafts area. (The Eno influence would surface again in lulling,
whimsical tunes “Brian and Robert” (as in Eno and Robert Fripp),
“Relax” and “Wading in the Velvet Sea,” all slated for the October
studio album The Story of the Ghost and generated from
improvised sessions like the Lemonwheel space jam.)
But Lemonwheel’s peaks came in robust jam vehicles like “David
Bowie,” an afternoon “Possum” (with Miles Davis
guitar quotes) and “Down With Disease,” which segued into the
accelerating trance of “Piper.” Those songs found Anastasio,
bassist Mike Gordon, drummer Jon
Fishman and keyboardist Page McConnell
locked in shifting, telepathic grooves that retained a muscular as
well as a cerebral focus, driven home by a monster sound system and
light show to rival the Maine sky. Also welcome were the playful
intricacies of art-rocking rarities “The Divided Sky” (played the
first day after the sun came out) and “Fluffhead,” as well as the
goofy “Sanity,” where the band sang “Lost my mind just a couple of
times ….”
Then, of course, there were the covers. Fishman took center
stage in his tattered housedress to croon Marvin
Gaye‘s “Sexual Healing,” and add a “sounds of love” solo
on his vacuum cleaner, which he played like an inverse kazoo. And
Phish opened its final set by nailing the Beastie
Boys‘ “Sabotage” with edgy garage-punk glee, and later
followed with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” revived from Phish’s
performance of the Beatles‘ entire White
Album as a Halloween stunt in 1994, but rarely played in
recent years.
However, the strangest cover — and moment — of Lemonwheel came
at the end, when band members lit an onstage fuse that worked its
way to a giant elephant sculpture off to the edge of the crowd.
Fireworks exploded in the sky as the elephant raised its trunk and
blew mist (while Fishman provided a soundtrack on trombone), then
rolled toward the campgrounds while Phish loped through
Henry Mancini‘s “Baby Elephant Walk.”
Lemonwheel was quite a trek for Phish’s road-tripping fans, and
drew about 5,000 fewer people than the Great Went or Clifford Ball.
Of course, it was still a big crowd (the band should have kept the
video screens of the past two years), especially compared to the
few thousand folks that showed up for Phish’s free ’91 show on a
farm in Auburn, Maine. Yet, in its artistic scope and carnival-like
unpredictability (the campground was a trip unto itself),
Lemonwheel offered an unparalleled escape from the outside world,
and a detour from today’s cookie-cutter concert venues.