Phish @ The Bridge Benefit
10/18/98
The Bridge Benefit, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA
Hello My Baby*, Billy Breathes, Piper, Roggae, Loving Cup, Albequerque,
My Old Home Place**, Gyute, Brian and Robert, Sad Lisa#, Four Strong
Winds##, I Shall Be Released###
* acapella, sung backwards facing the Bridge School children
** Mike on banjo, Page on acoustic bass
# With Sarah McLaughlin on guitar and vocals (duet between Trey &
Sarah).
Sad Lisa is a Cat Stevens song from the album "Tea for the Tillerman"
## With Neil Young on guitar and vocals, Sarah McLaughlin on vocals, an
Ian
Tyson song on Neil Young's album "Comes a Time"
### Bob Dylan? song, Page, Neil and Trey each sang a verse, Sarah
McLaughlin on vocals.
The band played all acoustic instruments and set up in opposite
positions
as usual (Fish & Mike on stage left, Trey & Page on stage right). They
played in this linup yesterday as well.
Thanks to Marco, Ellis & Robert Johnson for info
10/17/98 - Bridge Benefit, Shoreline Ampitheatre, Mountain View, CA
(All Accoustic)
Carolina*, Glistens@, Beyond My Grasp@, Possum, Blue & Lonesome, Freebird**,
Driver***, Wading in a Velvet Sea, Harry Hood^, Helpless^^
* Facing backwards toward the Bridge School Children
@ Possible names of the new songs based on verses
** Acapella last played 06/19/94 [337 shows] (thanks to ZZYZX's Phish Stats)
*** Another New Song
^ Unfinished, Neil Young joined Phish on stage for the jam
^^ Neil Young Cover, w/ Neil
Thanks to Erin and Nate for the call & the Phish.Net.
Erin's Review
as promised, my bridge school review. nate and i arrived around 5:30
(having gone all the way into san fran before realizing the tickets
were in berkeley...) and we rolled in to find katie bolger and dave wolfin
with a spot for us on the lawn. we had discovered earlier that we had
up until tonight each seen 34 shows - this was our joint 35th. i
connected with a kid from tahoe and bought 2 tickets for the greek.
bunch of crappy bands played (wallflowers, barenaked ladies, the eels,
etc.) nate and i rolled into the pavillion for phish.
now, the entire time all the bands were playing, on a raised level of
the stage behind the bands were all of the bridge school kids.
seriously mulitply physically handicapped kids. all in wheelchairs.
sitting with their parents on the stage. it was kind of weird.
anyway, phish came out and opened with an acapella carolina which they sung
facing the kids. the entire set was accoustic. then they came around
front, trey said he was really excited to be a part of such a great
project, and they had written some new tunes which they were going to
debut.
i'll be honest, i can't remember much about the first two songs, except
that they were very mellow, and kind of whimsical, like songs that you
might hear in a sesame street movie. after the second new song, trey
looked around and started right into possum. it took people a while to
recognixe it, but once page came in on keys it was a done deal. the
solo was sweet. actually, mike was the most amplified, i thought (and
page) so you could hear him much more than trey. most of the solos
were in the background. which was kind of cool. kind of allmans-esque.
anyway, the possum was great, they ripped it up.
after possum, trey introduced mike on the banjo as "a man of many
talents" and page on the bass as "also a man of many talents." blue
and lonesome came next, which was nice, sung by page, who hit some insanely
high notes. mike showed some skills on the 'jo and when they were
finished, we saw the acapella mikes coming out to the front of the
stage. immediately, nate and i turned to each other and said
"freebird!" a couple of times, joking around, and then, what the hell
happened? the fucking busted a freebird! out of nowhere! it was
crazy.
trey was bopping up and down, they were all rocking out on stage. the
funny thing was, all of the non-phish crowd didn't really know how to
react. like they couldn't really process what was going on. i could
barely process what was going on. i feel like it was something they
busted out for all of those people who didn't get to go to the
fillmore...
after freebird, they played another new song, driver, which begins and
ends with the line, "did i tell you about the driver in my head?"
another mellow, whimsical tune, but if i remember correctly, some
quality lyrics. the whole time i couldn't stop thinking, i can't
believe they just played freebird. wading in a velvet sea was next, which
was alright, a little boring, but, you know.
hood was great. unfinished, but great. completely unexpected. i was
stunned, in fact. they didn't slack on the jam, i thought, either.
like it didn't matter if a lot of people couldn't "get" it, the hood
had some serious discordant moments (the good kind) and spacey,
grunge-style guitar (for an accoustic) before neil young came out and started
playing. i couldn't really discern what neil, specifically, was
playing, but the jam was sick. again, it was mostly mike and page.
oh, by the way, i forgot to mention that page and fishman were on opposite
sides of the stage. but anyway, the hood jam kind of just faded out
without ever going back into singing, and then they played a neil tune,
happiness. which was pretty good, very mellow.
as the band was walking off stage, they all stopped to say hi to the
kids, and mike leaned into a microphone and yelled "phish!"
it was quite fun...
erin
Bridge School Quote - From Tube R
ider Magazine
"According to Phishheads who made it into the Thursday 10/15 Fillmore
gig, Tonight's 42 minutes of Phish were great by comparis
on. Phish
familiar with the scene and Neil (Farm Aid, Oct 3) seemed
justified and
comfortable singing to the kids, jamming with Neil (Helpl
ess),
introducing new songs from their upcoming 10/27 release a
nd doing a
head-on barbershop quartet 'Freebird' - including Bobby M
cFerrin
style percussion, segues, fills and solos! Phish is good.
"
Andy's Phish Page