Phish Video of the Week

Welcome to a new weekly feature on Phish.net. Every Friday, we will highlight a video with a brief recap of the show it is from and what makes it interesting, noteworthy or simply fun. With the help of Dan Saewitz from Phishvids.com, we hope to keep the stream of videos coming at you entertaining and interesting. Have a cool video you’d like to suggest? Interested in contributing a review yourself? Please feel free to PM me and we’d be more than happy to get your input. Thanks, @tmwsiy


1990, Phish, and Colorado. If you had played that trifecta with your bookie in 1989, you would have walked away a huge winner. Host to nearly a couple dozen shows in 1990, Phish was tearing Colorado a new one night after night. One of the more memorable shows came on 11-02-90 at the Glenn Miller Ballroom at the University of Colorado in Boulder in what became a very well known show and a highly traded & collected tape throughout the 90’s.

This early 90’s show had many of the quirks, jams and special moments that had begun to attract attention & new-found fans from coast to coast. After an announcement that the band had broken up and the show would be performed by “Phish 2000”, the band ripped through an engaging first set that culminated in a "Possum" > "Buried" > "Possum" sequence replete with "Charlie Chan" and "Oom-Pa-Pa" signals.

As engaging as the end of the first set was, the second set closed with a truly memorable "David Bowie". Through a myriad of teases, mostly from songs played earlier in the evening, the band once again showed Colorado what Phish was all about. Teases in the intro to Bowie included a medley of Possum, Mockingbird, Forbin's, Divided Sky, Lawn Boy, Landlady, Mike's Song, The Asse Festival, Lizards, Foam, Hood, Lengthwise, and Makisupa Policeman. Obviously, this, along with Trey's shredding guitar work earn this version a spot on the Bowie Jamming Chart.

Part of the University Memorial Center at UC Boulder, the Glen Miller Ballroom has hosted many concerts including the Grateful Dead, but only this one Phish performance. Though an excuberant videographer pans and zooms more than necessary, Part 1 and Part 2 of this David Bowie show quite nicely what a typical Phish show looked like in the early 90’s: A handful of spotlights on stage without even rudimentary gel changers or other advanced lighting wizardry that would become a hallmark of the live show in coming years, the band arranged left-to-right, Fishman decked out in his Zero-Man garb, a modest crowd completely engrossed in the energy from the stage, no signs, cell phones or camera screens, and a make-shift stage with a black backdrop prior to the Minkins that graced the stages later in the decade.

Part I: (view count 4,100 as of posting)
Part II: (view count 1,200 as of posting)
More Phish Videos: www.phishvids.com