oh kee pah

Our pal Parker Harrington – aka @TMWSIY - put together a wide-ranging survey about Phish Summer Tour 2010 and received nearly 1,000 responses. Parker has kindly permitted us to share the results with our readers…

Beloved though they are, the Gamehenge songs at this point sound pretty juvenile, especially compared with the many better — in some cases much better — songs Phish has composed in the years since Anastasio wrote those whimsical Gamehenge tunes back in school. I guess I should’ve been happy that I got a “Tela” or, especially, “Colonel Forbin’s Ascent → Fly Famous Mockingbird,” which, according to the immensely useful Phish.net, had not been played in 40 shows. But I was happier to hear the funky “Camel Walk” and “Gotta Jibboo,” the ecstatic “Heavy Things” and “Julius” and the beer-soaked “Down With Disease,” which lasted well over 11 minutes and featured searing guitarwork by Anastasio.

Phish began to reach a balance of open and structured improv before reeling things in a bit through the end of tour, favoring energetic forward rock and roll to exploratory jamming. Busting out of the gate in Chicago and Blossom with “Light,” “Ghost,” “Rock and Roll, and a “Number Line” that still sits amongst the most creative pieces of tour, it seemed that experimentation would, once again, become a focus of Phish. But as tour moved on, the band backed off their exploratory mission, leaving “Light” as the only guaranteed sonic experiment, but their playing and their shows remained strong. A Hartford-heavy weekend in the Northeast, led by 6.18′s second set, was promptly blown away by the tour’s peak the following weekend in Camden and Merriweather.