Photo: Crothers/FilmMagic
Combining two of their most beloved traditions for the first time — the multi-day festival and the Halloween album “costume” — Phish got their rocks off at their Festival 8 in Indio, California, during the second of a three-day set with a crushing start-to-finish version of the Rolling Stones‘ classic Exile On Main Street. Just a day earlier, Stones frontman Mick Jagger took the stage himself 3,000 miles away, joining U2 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert in New York.
Under pristine conditions at the Empire Polo Field and in front of a devoted Phish crowd of 40,000 fans, the Vermont foursome rollicked in Exile’s swamp blues and roadhouse country, extending several songs with their own jams, highlighted by a spacey interlude between “Ventilator Blues” into the gospel-esque “I Just Want to See His Face.” Special guests Sharon Jones and three horn players (one, trumpeter David Guy is a Dap King) added their own flourishes (horns to “Sweet Black Angel”), and each band member took lead vocal turns. Incredibly, four of the double album’s songs made their big-stage live debut —”Soul Survivor,” a scorching “Casino Boogie,” “Turd On the Run” and the flickering ballad “Let It Loose” — having never been performed by the Stones themselves. The set clocked in at nearly a 100 minutes, 33 more than the actual album.
It was perhaps the safest, most durable album choice for the band to tackle — they’ve played the bar-room sing-along “Loving Cup” in their own sets for years — narrowing it down from a list of 99 in September. On their Website the band vowed to play “the last album alive” where albums that didn’t make the cut “killed off” by an ax or arrow.
Besides Exile, the final contenders were Radiohead’s Kid A, Genesis&#...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily