Review: Phish looks very Rock Hall worthy during Bay Area show

Having just officially won the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Fan Vote earlier in the day — coming in well ahead of the White Stripes, Oasis, Mariah Carey, Outkast and the other nominees for the Class of 2025 — Phish then took the stage at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on Tuesday night and showed exactly why it deserves to be enshrined alongside the other greatest acts in pop music history.

Whether the Vermont quartet — featuring Trey Anastasio on guitar and lead vocals, Mike Gordon on bass, Jon Fishman on drums and Page McConnell on keys — ends up actually getting into the Rock Hall is still up in the air, although the voters are indeed expected to announce this year’s batch of inductees any day now.

A positive outcome will, of course, be another feather in the cap for Phish, cementing in a more formal way that the greatest jam band on the planet earth is also in the same company as Pink Floyd, R.E.M., Led Zeppelin, Roxy Music, The Supremes and other such icons.

Yet, fundamentally, it’s not going to change things much for the band, which — with or without a fancy plaque on the wall in Cleveland — will continue to enjoy the adoration of the most dedicated fanbase in rock.

The level of dedication — as witnessed by the Rock Hall Fan Vote victory over acts that have sold far more records than Phish — was very easy to understand while watching the band’s two-set show that ebbed and flowed, in highly dramatic fashion, with amazing musicality, mind-blowing improvisation and diversely appealing material.

Taking the stage right after 8 p.m., the fabulous foursome opened the first of two sold-out shows at venue — with the second gig set for Wednesday night — with a quick jaunt through the instrumental “Buried Alive.” From there, Phish journeyed into the hard-rocking “Axila,” which seemed like it might be the perfect vehicle for the band to stretch things out and jam, but, alas, it was not to be.

“Mike’s Song” was nicely funky, thriving on Gordon’s powerful basslines — which rolled, rambled and, at times, nearly quacked — before Anastasio’s Languedoc guitar took over. The funk fest took a brief rest stop with the mellow “I Am Hydrogen,” then jumped right back into the fray with “Weekapaug Groove.” More good grooves followed with the band’s fun cover of zydeco great Clifton Chenier’s “My Soul.”

A half-dozen songs into the show, however, the group still really hadn’t taken off on one of its patented interstellar overdrive jams. But then came “Halley’s Comet” — appropriately enough — and Phish went full-on Katy Perry.

And flew right off into space.

That jammed-out “Halley’s” was one of the two distinct highlights of the first set, with the other coming with the equally exploratory “Maze” that boasted some glorious musical exchanges from these four musicians who have been honing their improvisation skills together since the ’80s.

The jams just grew meatier and more intense in the second set, as the group opened the nightcap with a tenacious 20-minute take on “Carini” that wiggled and wrestled into equally epic versions of “No Men in No Man’s Land” and “Ruby Waves.”

Those three songs alone combined to take up just a few seconds shy of an hour of stage time.

After that kind of a musical marathon, Phish made the right call to offer up a concise take of one its most lovely tunes — the romantic power ballad “Waste” — a number that some Phans have actually used for their wedding dance song.

Phish closed the second set with what may well have been the greatest version of “Down With Disease” ever performed, powered to manic heights as a very animated Anastasio worked the stage like a young Angus Young and otherwise did all he could to live up to his reputation as one of the top guitarists in rock history.

The group then brought the nearly four-hour show to a close with a “Fluffhead” that almost matched “Down With Disease” in intensity, sending the Phans out to Grove Street in great anticipation of what Phish would do for a follow-up on Wednesday.

Setlist:

1. “Buried Alive”
2. “Axilla, Part II”
3. “Mike’s Song”
4. “I Am Hydrogen”
5. “Weekapaug Groove”
6. “My Soul”
7. “Halley’s Comet”
8. “Roggae”
9. “Maze”
10. “Split Open and Melt”
Set 2:
11.”Carini”
12. “No Men in No Man’s Land”
13. “Ruby Waves”
14. “Waste”
15. “Down With Disease”
Encore:
16. “Fluffhead”