This is the next installment in my Top 25 PJJ tracks series for a year, which you can stream every track directly from Phish Just Jams. As with the previous installments, this is meant to be a list focused solely on the Phish Just Jams tracks from the year in question.
This is my version of the list for 2000. Since we've got 76 jam tracks from 2000, we're going with a top 20 list to keep it around the top 25% from a time period. I'm not suggesting that it is the definitive list and there are a few choices that I could swap out with others depending on the day. I'm not ranking these 1 to 20 but just presenting the list as a whole because really what difference does it make which jam I think is 11th or 8th or 23rd or so on. The purpose of this list is just to provide a Phish Just Jams playlist of the best jams from the year. The list will be presented chronologically and can then be parsed and dissected from there. The list will also link to the full version of each song from the terrific resource that is www.phish.in for those want to take in the whole song instead.
2000 was a transition year for the band. Coming off another peak year that featured their first trip to Japan, a stellar Summer that included a festival (of sorts) at Oswego, and a two leg Fall tour where the millennial sound became fully developed (oh and they did something in Florida for New Years too), there was a sense of "what do we do now?" that the band has reflected upon in interviews since. After performing a 7 and a half hour set in front of 80k+ it does seem odd to play in your random outdoor shed, particularly for a band that it has habitually outdone themselves at every turn.
The year is a little uneven as the band is following the path that will lead to the first hiatus. There are transcendent moments that stand among Phish's all-time best performances and a fair criticism can also be made that the jams seem too similar as the band searches for a new sound or direction. It's a year that I had a harder time connecting to as it was happening, but have really come to appreciate the greatness of over the years thanks to some prompting from proponents of this era of Phish.
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