Today in Phistory: 6/19/04 SPAC - Piper

Ten years ago today. Phish played SPAC and jammed out one of my all-time favorite versions of Piper. Yeah, sometimes those Oxy jams worked out. Most of the time they were self-indulgent wank fests while Trey nodded into an Oxy hole, but every once in a while, Trey got his shit together and led the band on a wondrous journey like Piper from 6/19/04.

Here's the infamous Piper... a jam so juicy they needed to videos to contain it! FYI, it's audio only...




I caught the show with the Joker. 2004 summer tour was the first time I toured with the Joker and we've been best buds ever since.

Here's my mini-review that I wrote on my personal blog (Coventry Music was not birthed yet)...

19 June 2004
SPAC

We arrived in the mid afternoon, checked into our hotel outside of Albany, which was filled with heads. Loaded up on supplies and headed for the venue. We were in a overflow parking lot, which didn't have too much pedestrian traffic. Joker's mini-bar out of the back of his vehicle didn't pull in the monster bucks like he did in Brooklyn, but we met some cool people and that's all that mattered. In addition to Bloody Mary's, Joker was also making White Russians (the drink of The Dude) and Screwdrivers. I made a killer White Russian for a cute Columbia U girl.

We had great seats in the pavilion. The lawn was small, crowded, and hectic.

First set = lot of fun. The only downer? Scents and Subtle Sounds. Whenever you open a show with Reba, you know it's gonna be a rager. They nailed it. No mistakes. Page went off on NICU. Mike was the shit on Wolfman's. The boys jammed out a smokin' Walls of the Cave.

The highlight of second set was Piper, high energy and the peak of the show. The would not stop the jam and kept pushing along. Very cool. Fishman was the man during Limb by Limb. Had an amazing show.

I bought a couple of grilled cheeses after the show. Some crusty chick was totally diggin' my red blazer. "You're pimpin' brother!" she yelled out at me as we walked out of the show.

The funniest thing I overheard so far on this tour... from a really young, wasted Phishy chick: Man, I was pretty wasted... until that third hit of Ecstasy kicked it.