Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 14:07:24 -0500
From: MATTHEW ERIC HOOPER meh144@psu.edu
Subject: phish on Conan

Since no one else has reviewed this 'performance' yet, I'll give it my
best.  I was sittin at my apartment on Friday evening hangin out with
some friends and realized what the date was.  It was November 7th and
Phish was going to be on Conan.  Everyone was excited to get the news. 
Because it was about 1:00AM, I found a tape that had ample room to fit
the upcoming showing as a Philler.  As expected, Conan announced the
band with mention of their new album.  The song was completely new to my
knowledge, and it had the chorus 'Farmhouse'.  This is the title of the
song as far as I am concerned.  The first thing that struck me was the
band appearance.  Everyone was dreesed in jeans and flannels and were
all sportin beards, even Mike & Paige!!  Fishman ditched the bald head
and ugly brown suit.  The boys look good.  Top me it looks like they are
trying to strip down to basics and just play some good old rock n'
roll.  Now bakc to the music.  Farmhouse is in my opinion a great new
song.  It was much better than most of the new materila that I have been
hearing from this past summer tour.  Great vocal harmonies with Fish
adding a lot.  Paige had this funky sounding keyboard thing goin on
throughout the song and as usual I thought that Mike was too low in the
mix.  The song lacked the cheesy Trey solos in between verses, much to
my delight.  This seemd to be the new trend, but it looks like the boys
are trying to jam as a whole.  By this I mean that everyone is filling a
groove.  It is not just Trey soloing with everyone else keeping the
groove going behind him.  I hope this trend continues.  This song is
definitely not a rocker, it has more of an electric,funkified, mellow
bluegrass feel to it.  Much like Rocky Top and My old Home place but
without Mike on lead vocals.  I have a feeling that this Fall tour is
going to be different once again.  Now that they have beat the shit out
of the new stuff on the past two tours, I think the band is starting to
find the middle ground that they are lookin for.  I am expecting a even
mix of old material and new material.  It would also not surprise me to
see some og the 'retired' songs brought back out, but reworked a
little.  I also expect about five or six new songs also.  Oh Yeh, one
more thing about the Conan performance, after they finished the new tune
and Conan came over to thank everyone, they broke into Mike's Song.  I
think that I jumped about three feet off of my counch.  But I soon found
myself laying on the floor in dissappointment when the show went to
commercial.  Everyone in the studio got a treat that night, but it
wasn't meant to be for the rest of us.  With that I would like to say
happy tourin' sarting this week (YES!!!!!) and I'll see you all out
there.  Remeber to put your heads on before you go to the shows and try
your hardest to leave the most positive impression on every town you
visit.  The scene is gettin bigger every tour and we need to start
showin the public what a great group of peoiple we are.  All of us know
that, but most of the public doesn't.  If we want the scene to stay
alive in the way that we have grown to know and love, we are going to
have to prove ourselves to the rest of the country.

Happy Trails,
Hooper