Another archival Phish release is available for streaming and download: 11/14/1997 “E” Center in West Valley City, Utah:
On November 14, 1997, Phish played their first of three shows between 1997 and 2003 at the “E” Center in West Valley City, Utah - a newly-opened hockey arena in the Wasatch foothills near Salt Lake City that was constructed in preparation for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Utah ’97 was the second show at the top of an illustrious 21-date fall tour that stretched from Las Vegas to Denver to Hampton/Winston-Salem to Philadelphia, Michigan, Dayton, and upstate New York. Fall tour was dubbed “Phish Destroys America” and it lived up to the moniker, coming near the end of a busy year that had already included two Europe tours, recording sessions for what would become ‘The Story Of The Ghost’ and ‘The Siket Disc’, and release of Phish’s debut single-show live record ‘Slip Stitch And Pass’. The band was exploring funkified treatment of their catalog, crafting seamless sets packed with monumental jams. That night was a full moon, tickets cost $22.50, and the Friday night show drew in a crowd eager to check out Phish’s evolving sound.
Utah ‘97 set I highlights included a Runaway Jim show opener followed by a breakthrough gooey funk Gumbo, Maze > Fast Enough For You, expansive 2001 > Funky Bitch, and Run Like An Antelope with a whistled “Marco Esquandolas” segment as part of an extended joke from Trey’s Guyute dedication to FOH engineer Paul Languedoc (who told the band that any song with whistling is a good one). A blistering four-song set II unleashed a non-stop improvisational voyage through Wolfman’s Brother > Piper > Twist > Slave To The Traffic Light that lit up the room and sealed this show’s destiny as an archival release. A Bold As Love encore closed out the night – an exclamation point on a phenomenal show that quickly intensified the legend of Fall ’97.
Utah ’97 was recorded by Paul Languedoc to 2-track digital and mastered by Fred Kevorkian.
Setlist and notes from phish.net:
SET 1: Runaway Jim, Gumbo > Maze[1] > Fast Enough for You, Also Sprach Zarathustra > Funky Bitch, Guyute, Run Like an Antelope[2]
SET 2: Wolfman's Brother -> Piper > Twist > Slave to the Traffic Light
ENCORE: Bold As Love
[1] Unfinished.
[2] Whistling in both the opening section and closing "Marco Esquandolas" section.
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