Phish Cram the Jams and Trampolines Onto Cubicle-Sized Stage for ‘Tiny Desk’ Concert
Phish staged perhaps their smallest gig in decades as they packed into a cubicle for NPR’s latest Tiny Desk concert.
Over the course of five songs and 35 minutes, the legendary jam band delivered a performance that spanned their decades-long discography, from the title track of their just-released album Evolve to “You Enjoy Myself,” a live favorite first featured on the band’s 1988 debut LP Junta (and guitarist Trey Anastasio’s personal pick for the potential last-ever-song played by Phish, as he recently told Rolling Stone).
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“When we started the band, we used to practice in a room exactly this size… it was probably smaller,” Anastasio said during the Tiny Desk gig, which opened with a rendition of “Sigma Oasis” that featured a musical nod to NPR’s All Things Considered theme. The band then followed with “Evolve” and the prog-rock epic “You Enjoy Myself,” complete with the synchronized trampolining and a vocal jam that’s a staple of the band’s performances.
After those three songs and 25 minutes, the Tiny Desk concert ended, and credits rolled… but in true Phish fashion, the band reemerged for an encore, playing two of their most popular quasi-hits (even though they admittedly have no hits), “Sample in a Jar” and “Chalk Dust Torture.”
The quartet will return to playing to a much, much larger audience when their summer kicks off Friday with the first of three shows at Mansfield, Massachusetts’ Xfinity Center. The trek, which includes the band’s Mondegreen festival in Delaware, concludes with a four-night stand at Colorado’s Dick’s Sporting Goods Park from August 29 to September 1.
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