Phish fit an otherworldly sequence featuring covers of The Who's "Drowned" and "Rock & Roll" by The Velvet Underground into their show at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey on this date in 2000.
Phish Pairs Stellar ‘Drowned’ And ‘Rock & Roll’ In Holmdel On This Date In 2000
The 26-minute pairing came at the end of a five-song first set.
By Scott Bernstein Jun 29, 2021 • 1:30 pm PDT Photo via Ticketmaster
On June 29, 2000, Phish returned to the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey for their second night at the venue as part of a summer tour of North America. The concert was highlighted by a majestic 26-minute segment in which they jammed a cover of The Who’s “Drowned” into “Rock & Roll” by The Velvet Underground.
Phish was a week into the run when they descended upon the small town of Holmdel for the performances at PNC Bank Arts Center, a 17,500-capacity outdoor venue 40 miles south of New York City. The shed first hosted the band during the summer of 1992, when Phish took part in a H.O.R.D.E. Festival stop at what was then known as the Garden State Arts Center and then returned just eight days later to open for Santana. Phish headlined th
Cluster Flies tracks “Dogs Stole Things,” “Vultures,” “Dirt,” “Bye Bye Foot” and “Piper.”
Phish didn’t wait long to use “Twist” as a jam vehicle with a 13-minute version played in Prague on June 20, 1997 followed by an 18-minute workout at the Hurricane Festival the next night. “Twist” was played a total of 11 times in 1997. However, the song appeared live just twice in 1998. The first came on opening night of the Island Tour and helped set the tone for the run.
Once Phish’s 1999 got underway “Twist” went into heavy rotation and has been a staple of the live repertoire ever since. The four-piece has yet to go more than 20 shows between plays over the past 21 years. A total of 148 versions of “Twist” have been performed by Phish between 1997 – 2020. Anastasio adapted the song for the
Phish began 1997 by touring Europe in February and March, during which they debuted the first three new originals of what would be a total of 18 to come out that year. The tour also saw Fish donning a tailored all-black dress suit instead of his iconic donut mumu dress, which he would wear onstage through the summer.
The majority of the new material Phish introduced in 1997 came in June during the band’s European Summer Tour. “Bye Bye Foot” was one of those new originals that was first played abroad, as its first time making a setlist came on the second night of the tour, on June 14, 1997, in Dublin, Ireland.
Trey and Tom created a demo recording of “Dirt” during a writing session held in early 1997 at a rented farmhouse in rural Vermont, that later appeared on the 2000 collection of demos
Trampled By Lambs & Pecked By The Dove. Shortly after making the original demo, Anastasio took the song public at a performance on May 21, 1997, at Club Toast in Burlington, Vermont. The one-off concert billed as
New York! saw Anastasio joined by Phish bassist
Mike Gordon, trombonist
Paul “Pistol Stamen” Jaffee (The Bunny radio station DJ) and The Pants guitarist/vocalist
Tom Lawson (who would later join Trey in April 1998 for the one-off 8 Foot Fluorescent Tubes show). Also making its debut was the future Phish song, “Saw It Again.”