hotel carack: Loring Air Force Base

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Phish's Lemonwheel Festival was the Third Festival Held at Loring AFB and it's Anniversary was yesterday and the Day Before.So We Are Going to Wrap Up the LAB anniversary's Today: Soundcheck, Both Shows, and Ambient Jam shows at the Bottom

Phish played the third festival, Lemonwheel, at Loring Air Force Base yesterday and the day before. So let's wrap up the trilogy shall we?
All three show plus soundcheck and ambient jam below

The Lemonwheel Festival was the third of the three at Loring that all took place on the same couple of dates, three years in a row. Then came, Osweago and Big Cypress, etc. I have to admit I didn't attend this one so I don't have the intimate knowledge of this one like I do the first two. Lemonwheel was a special fest because it had attendants making candles all weekend, the band played an ambient jam surrounded by hundreds of candles during the fourth set of Saturday and the band lit a fuse that lit up a tower near Page. I'll leave the surprise until the end of the article.

The band played seven sets over the three days of the festival. This festival had other, unlike the other festivals, acts like Keller Williams, Manic Mule, and returning was The Gordon Stone Trio, and The Miracle Orchestra. There was also skywriting, people on stilts, jugglers, wandering minstrels, an elephant, and the Garden of Secret Pleasantries. This garden contained a five-story Port-a-Let Pagoda, crawling tubes,viewing mounds,smoking huts, and prayer temples. It also had a changing garden of stone statuary, a walking pipe that led to a waterfall which fed into a pool with a lemon tree in it. This pool cooled off rocks that were heated in an ember pit by artisans. They also had a walk-in bird nest and a coterie of artists and craftsman and a whole lot more. They spared no expense to please the fans. Let's not forget the Ferris Wheel. I didn't ride that until Festival 8. The whole campground was laid out like a figure eight or the infinity shape, depending on your view or state of mind.

Photo by: Cliff Shubs

Three sets each for two nights plus the "ambient jam" and the attendance was about 60,000. Once again, it also made the festival one of the biggest city in Maine for the days it was open. On Sunday night, during the "ambient jam" the band used the propane fueled pagoda flames to light a fuse that burned up and around the stage, twisting and turning in spins and then out of the right side of the stage and along the perimeter fence when it reached the elephant "statue". It was spotlit from the stage and smoke came out of the bottom of the elephant who then raised it's trunk and sprayed water into the air appeared to howl, which was Fishman with a trombone, who was joined by Page, then Mike, then Trey on drums who started to play "Baby Elephant Walk" and fireworks blew into the air behind the perimeter fence. The elephant, named Lee, began to move through the crowd led by men on stilts and others carrying tiki torches the length of the site with the crowd gathering in behind it, while it went into the campsite and continued to walk around until about 3 in the morning.

Phish.net makes the connection of continuity and movement from The Clifford Ball, The Great Went, The LemonWheel. Ball, Went, Wheel. Draw your own conclusions.

Written by:Greg Heffelfinger

Friday, 08/14/1998
Loring Commerce Centre, Limestone, ME

Set 1: Funky Bitch, Ginseng Sullivan, Back at the Chicken Shack, Jam, She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride, Dog Log, Down Home Dirty Blues, I Gave My Love a Cherry, Please Send Me Someone to Love

Saturday, 08/15/1998
Loring Commerce Centre, Limestone, ME

Set 1: Mike's Song > Simple > Beauty of My Dreams, Roggae, Split Open and Melt, Poor Heart, The Moma Dance, Divided Sky, Water in the Sky > Funky Bitch > Cities >Weekapaug Groove

Set 2: The Wedge, Reba, Gumbo -> Sanity > Tweezer > The Horse > Silent in the Morning > Chalk Dust Torture, Slave to the Traffic Light

Set 3: NICU > David Bowie^[1], Strange Design, Limb By Limb > Brian and Robert, Loving Cup

Encore: Halley's Comet > Cavern > Tweezer Reprise

Set 4: Ambient Jam

Sunday, 08/16/1998
Loring Commerce Centre, Limestone, ME

Set 1: Ginseng Sullivan, Bathtub Gin -> Rift, Punch You In the Eye, Lawn Boy, Ya Mar >AC/DC Bag > Frankie Says, Birds of a Feather, Guyute, Possum

Set 2: Down with Disease^[1] > Piper, Ghost > Fluffhead, When the Circus Comes >Wading in the Velvet Sea, Hold Your Head Up > Sexual Healing > Hold Your Head Up, Run Like an Antelope^[2]

Set 3: Sabotage -> Also Sprach Zarathustra > Wilson > The Mango Song > Character Zero > Bittersweet Motel, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Encore: Harry Hood -> Jam^[3] -> Baby Elephant Walk

[1] Unfinished.
[2] Alternate lyrics referring to "Bob Weaver."
[3] Fish on trombone.

Teases:
· Sexual Healing tease in Run Like an Antelope
· Crosseyed and Painless and Super Bad teases in Also Sprach Zarathustra
· Jean Pierre tease in Possum

(setlists courtesy of phish.net)

Lemonwheel soundcheck

Lemonwheel 8-15-98

Lemonwheel 8-16-98

Lemonwheel Ambient Jam

It was Almost Twenty Years Ago Today, that Phish decided to Play a Festival at the Top of Maine so let me re-introduce to you: The Great Went: With both shows

On this day in 1997, it was the second day of one of the best of the Phish Festivals and the first at the top of Maine at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone,May on Aug. 16-17,1997

Phish loved throwing the Clifford Ball so much the previous year, that they planned another festival at the end of Summer Tour 1997. This was the age of "cow-funk" and the band played a great pair of shows almost twenty years ago yesterday and today. One of the most famous parts of Phish lore is they played "Makisupa Policeman>Harpua" that finished the truncated version of "Harpua" the year before. The Great Went was named after a scene in Twin Peaks:Fire Walk with Me. The movie referenced a scene from the television show Twin Peaks.

The event was moved to Limestone,Maine. It was held on the decommissioned Air Force base. The site is mildly famous for a bunch of ufo sightings (and one alleged abduction) in 1975. There is also the fact that the site is also a toxic landfill that the government decided was cheaper to leave there then truck somewhere else. The site is as close to Canada as you can get, more or less, then actually being in Canada. Therefore, there were a lot of nuclear activity at the base but that is kind of besides the point.

The attendance figures were around 75,000. Which was a fairly large jump from the previous year. The town manager made the hilarious tongue-in-cheek comment," They put Maine on the map".

As people walked in, they were hosed down by the world's largest fire truck to cool everyone down. This show also had some new things from the year before. They had a string symphony but this time it was the Bangor Symphony Orchestra playing Stravinsky and Debussy, on Sunday. They also had The Gordon Stone Trio ,who played on Rift and The Beatroots Gypsy Caravan, This was different from the year before, in which they had the symphony but no other bands. They provided 89.1 WENT, an onsite radio station, which was called BALL radio the year before.

Phish, themselves, played almost 500 minutes of music (courtesy of ZZYZX), and a disco set where they all played old synths and KORG equipment and Fishman played on electric drum kits around 2-3am on Sunday morning. The main things that made this festival special, besides the magical shows, were an all-nude photo early in the morning to cap off a fifty state photo tour by Tunick. Fun fact, Tunick was arrested in New York city for organizing a nude photo shoot in 1999. There was also a naked marathon/run/jog for those early risers. Also, throughout the festival, fans were encouraged to make their own art and add it to an installation that, while Phish played, each member painted their own piece and passed it over the crowd to the installation. At this point, an oversized, large matchstick was lit and set the whole thing ablaze. Trey was talking about how everyone contributed to this installation and set it ablaze to commemorate our commitment to art and togetherness and etc... It had shades of Burning Man before that became the big sellout rave in the desert it has become. On the third set of the second night, a fan was breathing/spitting fire and it showed up in the documentary of the festival, Bittersweet Motel, but even though he was broadcast on the big screens, cops and security were seen chasing him through the crowd, so maybe it wasn't sanctioned after all!

Now for the numbers, Phish made $4,337,184 making it the highest grossing high concert of the year, although who knows how much they spent putting it together, so the net is a mystery to all but a few.There were also different attendance figures put out. One guy said 85,000 and another said 70,800 but I would trust the official number from Phish that kind of splits the difference.

The shows were amazing and consistently rank among the top rated shows on Phish.net. However, there was a dark side to this festival. This was the first time that I heard hard narcotics being sold out in the open on Shakedown. You knew they were always there but it was kept on the low down. This, I felt was one of the turning points for the scene and it turned out to be for the band too. I had never heard opiates being sold so openly. You're used to hearing about the psychedelics and herb at Phish shows but this was the first time I had heard people selling Oxys and Dilaudid out in the open. If you think it wasn't around, you're being incredibly naive but it's mostly kept to the camp that is holding. Also, this was the first time I was offered heroin at a Phish show. So this festival had a hint of things to come, even if the band wasn't participating. Even though there were dark clouds on the horizon, the levee didn't break for a few years. It was an incredible festival though and the music was top notch.

Written by: Greg Heffelfinger

Saturday, 08/16/1997
Loring Commerce Centre, Limestone, ME

Set 1: Makisupa Policeman -> Harpua^[1] > Chalk Dust Torture, Theme From the Bottom >Punch You In the Eye > Ghost > Ginseng Sullivan, You Enjoy Myself > Train Song >Character Zero, The Squirming Coil

Set 2: Wolfman's Brother -> Simple -> My Soul, Jam -> Slave to the Traffic Light > Rocky Top > Julius^[2]

Set 3: Halley's Comet -> Cities^[3] -> Llama > Lawn Boy, Limb By Limb > Funky Bitch^[4]

Encore: Contact > Loving Cup

[1] Picked up where the Clifford Ball Harpua left off.
[2] Intro performed a cappella with finger snaps.
[3] Trey altered lyrics to reference "Fishman sleeping in the daytime."
[4] Fireworks.