I caught a Wayne Shorter celebration there a few years back. One of the high points for me by far was the duet with Herbie Hancock.

Herbie sat down at the piano, and layed down one chord, and all the crickets throughout the amphitheater went into super-chorus chirp mode. What an amazing sound! Later, during the same improvisation, a police copter decided to fly overhead. Herbie and Wayne picked up the tempo and tried their best to make music of the disturbance.

Back in '84, I was singing with the San Francisco Boys Chorus, and we performed one of Mahler's symphonies with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting. During the quiet movement, we had a similar police copter experience, and Tilson Thomas snapped his baton, strutted off stage pissed as hell, and we waited 40 minutes or so until it blew over, they found a new baton, and we resumed the show.

Back to the Wayne Shorter event. Carlos Santana was one of the many many guests during the second set. The first note he played was standard rock star volume, so loud that the guitar sound physically blasted your chest with its thick wave of sound. Then they turned him way down, way way down to that place where he resonated beautifully with orchestra (full orchestra), amphitheater, and everything.

I imagine that if Phish challenge themselves, they can find those points of resonance in soundcheck, and make the crickets of the Hollywood bowl chirp their hind legs into bliss. One show more than any other where I really hope they bring the Coil!

Hopefully, they don't do that generic L.A. thing and attempt to rage harder than they can play. Phish is better when they're being themselves, bringing something so much more to the table. I keep thinking of that flow brought during the Starlight Amphitheater show last year. Lucid like a dream, music so colorful you can almost taste it, and strangely nourishing in quality. Ah, Phish! Rock and roll at its finest.