Hello Phish Phans!
This week’s Phish jam is a Piper jam from 1999. It took place during their 4th Festival, in the small rural upstate New York town of Volney (Oswego County)! Camp Oswego was a two-night run at the Oswego County Airport on July 17 and 18, 1999, attended by 65,000 people. Fun note: during the festival, the band and audience attempted to break the world record for the most people doing the same dance at one time (to the song “Meatstick”). Representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records were in attendance. Unfortunately, they did not break the world record (something about the band and audience rotating in different directions which disqualified them).
Piper isn’t really a song, but I would recommend listening to the whole thing instead of skipping to the jam (which starts at 5:45). It’s just the same chord progression that builds for several minutes and then you get some nonsense lyrics in typical Phish fashion. The song is basically just a springboard for some lengthly jam.
Anyways, this Piper jam has a slow build up, followed by a raging jam that lasts about 10 minutes before shifting into a more funky, multi-faceted rhythmic groove. This jam is a much more exploratory jam than a typical ’99 Piper jam. Another fun piece of info: the intro of this live version was spliced together with the studio recording for the album Farmhouse (I got that from the YouTube comments).
Here is the version from Camp Oswego: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntPJSXYfK9o
Compare it to the studio version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtXgjnZol0Y
FYI: for those of you in Illinois, Phish is doing 3 nights at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont (October 26-28) http://phish.com/tours/
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