Mike's Song 7/21/98

A Mike's Song jam builds on a funky F# blues vamp (it happens to be the only thing in all of Phish that Hilary says she likes), and it wraps up with a mock-heavy D-E-F# power chord sequence; because the jam has been a mostly Dorian affair, the D is kind of arresting. On this night at the Desert Sky Pavilion, Trey pauses after playing what sounds like a pretty conclusive lick, and Page, quite justifiably, hammers out the D on one of the next bar. Aside from the entrancing siren loop that's been going throughout (F#-F-E, up higher than the guitar neck goes), Trey's solo has been unspectacular, not for lack of trying, and it's clearly time to move on. Judging by the drum fill leading to the downbeat, Fish is heading to the bridge with Page. At this point, Trey could have been like "whoops" and flubbed his way into the rest of the sequence, which he does often enough. But instead he chunks out a F#m7 on two, and by three the rest of the band has fallen into place, establishing an open groove that's evenly distributed over the instruments, and they're suddenly sharing an interpretation of how it feels to roll loosely through space. But Trey's attention span is short, and he eventually leaves the group jam behind to attempt again a feat of heroism, and it's Page's stroke of genius to back up the minor shredding with a F#sus4-to-F#maj sequence, and when Trey catches on there's this absolutely transcendent (Jane's, 90's) moment where he keeps his blues riff going while grabbing the sus shit down below, "transcendent" as in you feel like you're suddenly outside of everything looking in, a spontaneous peak totally unlike Phish's standard structured climaxes—music has carried the day—and then Trey goes to the D, sealing up this seven-minute alternate universe out of Mike's that they wormholed into and at least half the band hadn't believed might exist.