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 1998. Since we've got 135 jam tracks from 1998, we're going with a top 40 list to keep it around the top 25% (which I'm being very generous with for this year since its so damn good) 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.

1998 has been by far the toughest year to put together for this project so far. It's unquestionably a Hall of Fame worthy year of music from the band. You could make a defensible argument that 1998 is the best year the band has ever had, I'm not doing that but I could see how you got there, ya know? You could easily pick another 10-20 tracks that could be worthy of being included in this list, or even another list of 40 of the remaining jam tracks from 1998 would be an excellent playlist, but this project is about making the art fight so that's what we've done.

Coming off the continued building momentum that led Phish from the college arenas of 1994 and through to the large sheds of summer venues and larger arenas of 1997, 1998 started with the Island Tour that delivered four of the best back to back shows of all time (including a good amount of jams that made this list) and the transformation of the band's sound that had be so significant in 1997 was clearly going to continue. The cowfunk of the year before was now packaged with a new focus on ambient jamming that really pushed the music to a whole new level.

The Fall tour was another gem as the band really honed in on the ambient tones that had developed over the Island run and the Summer. A great resource if you want to do a deep dive into the Fall 1998 tour is the excellent Lost in my Reflection blog, who did a review of every show from that tour. Seriously, check it out.


The full list tops out at 11 sensational hours. It can be downloaded here and it can be streamed here

4-5 Island Possum (honorary inclusion, in case you don't want to take off)