Bringing Back the Dead for the Holidays December 15, 1999 - The Washington Post By Mike Joyce Album Review - Hampton Comes Alive While Phish's new six-CD set, "Hampton Comes Alive" (Elektra), could be viewed as a career retrospective--featured are such longtime concert staples as "Wilson," "Mike's Song," "Bathtub Gin" and "Guyute"--it's basically a celebration of a specific point in time. All 45 tracks were recorded last fall during a thoroughly loose and loopy two-night stand at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia. The ties to the Dead's legacy are apparent in the quartet's free-wheeling approach to rock and pop and are sometimes underscored by guitarist Trey Anastasio's jazz-inflected guitar work. Unlike the Dead, though, Phish likes to spend a lot of its time onstage playing songs strictly for laughs, which is one of the reasons this collection doesn't seem nearly as long as it is. Comic relief generally comes in the form of surprising or goofy arrangements of familiar tunes, including the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," and, best of all, Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping," which serves as the anthology's irrepressible coda. Other cover tunes, including Bob Dylan's "Quinn the Eskimo" and Stevie Wonder's "Boogie On Reggae Woman," reveal the band's whimsical charm in more subdued fashion, while the Beatles' "Cry Baby Cry," another concert favorite, produces an unabashedly sentimental interlude. Although this is the third live set released by the band, the length and scope of "Hampton Comes Alive" allows Phish to freely improvise in ways that help compensate for the lulls created by the band's frequently inscrutable lyrics and sometimes stunted melodies. A good thing, too, given the set's nearly $70 price. Phish performs tonight at MCI Center.