Tonight (Tuesday, August 11th), Phish will air their October 28th, 2018 at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, IL as the twentieth episode of their ongoing archival webcast/cooking series, Dinner and a Movie. Tune in below at 8:30 p.m. ET and scroll down to follow along with our 10/28/18 Stream Companion.
Phish Dinner and a Movie Episode 20: 10/26/18, Allstate Arena
Previous Dinner and a Movie Stream Companions have included a little paragraph here about the past episodes, but it’s stopped being so little after 20 weeks. Now, it’s a list instead, so you can check out the past episodes and revisit their respective Stream Companions:
This week’s twentieth (!) episode of Dinner and a Movie takes us back to Fall Tour 2018, a brief jaunt five multi-night runs ending in a four-night Halloween celebration in Las Vegas. Tonight’s show was the first night of the tour’s penultimate run at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, IL, just outside Chicago. Phish has maintained a long relationship with the collegiate/minor league arena, where they made their debut back on Halloween 1995 by performing The Who‘s Quadrophenia in its entirety.
Tuesday’s episode of Dinner and a Movie comes with a very special after-party. Following the Rosemont stream, Trey Anastasio will be featured as the musical guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The performance comes in support of Trey’s newly released quarantine album, Lonely Trip, and marks Trey’s first scheduled performance since the live music shutdown began back in March. As Jimmy Fallon noted in a tweet, Trey will also be The Tonight Show‘s first in-studio guest since they returned to taping at 30 Rock. Tune in after Dinner and a Movie on NBC.
First live in studio guest for us. All done safely and carefully. We are so psyched!!! Tonight!! https://t.co/DCjEnlxJn5
— jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon) August 11, 2020
This week’s show may feel somewhat underwhelming after last week’s trip to Gamehendge, but it’s certainly no slouch—a strong show from a strong tour. All the same, this isn’t the Fall 2018 show we’re really pulling for to make an appearance on Dinner and a Movie. One week soon (we hope), we’ll faceplant into rock once again. For now, let’s dig into 10/26/18.
The band dove in with a “Punch You In The Eye” opener featuring shimmering keyboard swells from Page McConnell alongside out-of-the-gate lighting magic from Chris Kuroda and company. Trey was noticeably on from the start, bobbing and weaving as he executed the song’s “The Landlady” bridge near-flawlessly. Out of the mist of “Punch You In The Eye”, Page began to pepper in chopped-and-screwed snippets of the “Martian Monster” narration before blasting off in earnest, Mike Gordon leading the galactic funk groove.
As “Martian Monster” faded out, the searing “Axilla” crashed in to take its place. The set continued in exciting fashion from there with “Reba”, maintaining the string of tour debuts that opened the show. Like all good “Reba” jams, this one saw each member of the band add patient yet integral layers to the blissful vamp before building to a fiery peak. A well-crafted “Reba” is always a highlight of any show in which it appears, and this version surely fits into that satisfying category. It’s a testament to this show’s quality that it wasn’t even the high point of the first set…
📸 @rene_huemer pic.twitter.com/vEzMxfSI9J
— Phish: From The Road (@Phish_FTR) October 27, 2018
Phish took a beat to deliberate after a short and sweet “My Sweet One” before launching into “Mercury”. While this marked the first song of the set that had already been played that tour, the extended voyage was significant for making its return to the first set after appearing exclusively in set two following its first two performances in the summer of 2015… Ok, that’s not really why this “Mercury” was special. It stood out so starkly for the fantastic improvisation it prompted, moving through multiple distinct sections and cycling between darkness and light behind spacey sonics from Page. This “Mercury” easily holds its own among the 14 others the band has played and is one of the multiple songs from this show that’s worth a relisten (or several).
The band kept up the planetary vibe from there as they moved into David Bowie‘s “Moonage Daydream”, marking their third performance of the song after its debut during the 2016 Ziggy Stardust Halloween costume set and the compact and highly potent rendition from the opening night of the Baker’s Dozen. A typically ripping “Walls of the Cave” finally brought the excellent first frame to a close.
Set two was highlighted by thrilling improv and tasteful song selection. “Tweezer” got things moving, quickly breaking out of its shell and pushing into uncharted territory for a 20+ minute ride, one of the tour’s best. Kuroda shined once again on this standout jam, a fact corroborated by multiple moments of cheers from the crowd that are clearly audible on the soundboard recording. As “Tweezer” began to wind down, notes of “Golden Age” began to bubble up within the jam. Before long, the band re-routed into the fan-favorite TV On The Radio cover in earnest. “Golden Age”, too, featured some outstanding improv, contrasting the sinister rendition from the previous weekend at Hampton with a brighter reading.
After more than 16 minutes, the jam dissipated into “Frost” for a well-placed mid-set ballad. The selection from Trey’s 2012 solo album, Traveler, was dusted off for the first time since the Baker’s Dozen and just its third time ever in the Phish arena. The pace picked right back up from there with the first “Limb By Limb” of the tour, Jon Fishman rock-solid as always on the rhythmically complex number. A raucous “Sand” followed as Anastasio helped build the song to a towering peak with a barrage of angry, unhinged riffs. A clip of this “Sand” wound up making an appearance in Trey’s 2019 documentary, Between Me and My Mind.
The Rosemont ‘18 Sand is featured in Trey’s Between Me and My Mind documentary 🤘🏻 #phishdinnerandamovie pic.twitter.com/EUw9GM5mJk
— Wombat_Mätt ✭ (@Wombat_Matt) August 10, 2020
A crowd-pleasing “A Day In The Life” came next before a “Possum” dance party brought the set to a close. Phish returned to the stage for their encore with “Wilson” before closing the show with “Tweezer Reprise”, whose placement at the tail end of a “Tweezer” show was at that time, oddly enough, a departure from several recent renditions.
Scroll down to check out some photos from 10/26/18 courtesy of photographer Matthew Rea. Tune in at 8:30 p.m. ET for Dinner and a Movie episode 20, and head here to read about this week’s recipe (via Betty Frost) and beneficiary (NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund).
Setlist: Phish | Allstate Arena | Rosemont, IL | 10/26/18
Set One: Punch You in the Eye > Martian Monster, Axilla, Reba, My Sweet One, Mercury > Moonage Daydream, Walls of the Cave
Set Two: Tweezer > Golden Age > Frost > Limb By Limb, Sand, A Day in the Life > Possum
Encore: Wilson > Tweezer Reprise
