Now that we have finished working through the Fall 1996 Tour in total we can start diving in a bit deeper to pull out the true highlight moments from the shows. As we have gone along I have been adding all of the ‘takeaway’ highlights that I note for each show to the music player in the left sidebar. As the tour progressed that list became quite large, eventually including some 176 tracks or about 180 songs if you were to pull apart the tracks that have more than one song in them as well as to put the ‘jam’ tracks back in with the songs that precede them. Now, I’m a pretty gracious guy but that’s a playlist that is unwieldy even for the most dedicated listener to digest in a reasonable amount of time. I mean, it comes out to something like 35 hours of music for Icculus’ sake! Who could possibly listen to that much Phish? Don’t answer that.

Well, I am here to help you wade through the giant morass that I have created. The first step is breaking down the list into more manageable chunks. This says nothing about the relative subjective quality of the music to a particular listener as it is only one fan (me) putting their opinion to it. These are not rankings and they are not value judgments that diminish the in-house experience one may have had. Quite simply, it is just how I have categorized them after listening to each show multiple times and then this list again more than once and putting whatever form of order that I can without getting too persnickety and analytical about the whole thing. I would expect that pretty much every other fan’s list would be at least slightly different but that will lead into the big philosophical discussion we don’t need to have since we are all adults here (kind of) and can understand how this all works (aside:  Heraclitus 4 lyphe yo!). That being said, here’s a couple of (rhetorical) quandaries I pondered while doing this…

• what makes one ‘type I’ version of a song better than another? Is it the number of notes Trey plays? The interaction with the crowd? Something else more abstract?
• Is it possible that every single Simple and maybe even Disease from this tour could be included? I mean, is there a point at which too much of a certain type of goodness becomes TOO MUCH?
• Is there more value in a quick funk vamp jam than in something more old school simply because it is something they hadn’t shown us previously?
• How the heck do you pick which of all of these wonderful Hoods to include?
• Does anything that has a sit-in deserve to be included or just the really big stuff?
• How long of a list is too long?
• Am I overthinking this?

You know, that kind of stuff. But before we get to that level let’s look at the raw lists which can be listened to over there to the left if you want. Just don’t dilly dally as I will be updating the playlist to be the final ‘top takeaways’ once I have completed that whole thing. You have been warned! These lists are chronological so don’t be coming at me with any of that rankings bullshit. And in case you are wondering, the playlist is chronological with the tier one first followed by any tier two for each night, respectively.

Fall 1996 Tour – Raw “Tier One” Takeaways

Fall 1996 Tour – Raw “Tier Two” Takeaways

SEE??? I told you the lists were massive. I listen to a lot of Phish – I mean A LOT OF PHISH – but even for me that is a tad much. So stay tuned because I’ll have a revised list of just the tippety top highlights for you to take away here in our next posting. Plus we need to go through the end of tour stats too because that is always quite entertaining and educational as well… But for now? Go get ’em, tiger!