Phish C/D

"Aye, 'twere all Nirvana back then."

"But the Spin Doctors and Phish and Rusted Root and Soul Asylum and..."

"Shut up, SHUT UP!"

And I hate it when bands/fans try to shore up credibility by doing obvious covers of artists many times cooler and more interesting than them. So sad.

Still, that first album alone has earned them a permanent place in my heart; it may well be my favorite album of the 1980s, or damn near.

I like some of their albums lots. The first four and the live ones are all good, at least in part, the others not so much. The fourth, Hoist, is unfairly maligned by fans, and the third, Rift, is unfairly maligned by almost everyone - among other things, the production is fantastic. But live, of course, is where it's at. Yes, they overdo it, but it's a measure of their generosity and willing to take chances - there's bad there, but the good can be really good. Their tradition of putting on "musical costumes" at Halloween concerts (playing an entire album by another artist) is not a bid for credibility but a chance to try something new and give a present to their fans (who initially chose the album). It's one of their many gimmicks, but it also identifies who they really are at heart - your friend's not-half-bad cover band with the monster guitar player who play parties on halloween and new year's eve, etc. Except they have tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of friends. Especially good concerts can be found from the months of August 1993 (8/14 especially), October-November 1994 (especially 11/16), and December 1995 (especially New Years). The next year or two had some interesting stuff, but they started to get a bit stale.

I'm not awake or thoughtful enough to really get into what's good about them (yes, I'll admit some bad), but some of it includes: big rawk hooks with a sense of humor about themselves, compositional structure without classical pretentions (well, impressionist ones, maybe), bliss with funk (well, boogie, at least). Also, the arena phenomenon and the lights (if you've never seen these, you're verily missing something; I say this as someone who has never had much interest in seeing a Pink Floyd show) and the dancing and the gimmicks.

Of course jazz is better. I don't listen to Phish for jazz (but maybe for 'fusion' - they sure beat Santana). The Dave Matthews Band may be able to "play" (not so sure about that), but it usually chooses not to demonstrate it. Trey can play. Mike and Fish too. Page (nb - no "i") less so, but he's functional. Also, ask me about my unashamed like of the Spin Doctors. Did I mention I'm a lawyer?

Yes, the drummer wore a dress before Cobain.

Namechecking this Onion story before someone else does.

I think Antennae Jimmy Semens wore a dress before either of them

Wait, you're counting differently than I am:

(1) Junta (2) Lawn Boy (3) A Picture of Nectar (4) Rift (5) Hoist

-- was what I thought the order was?

The production on Rift is exactly what I don't like about it -- it slicks everything up to a glossy sheen I find uncompelling. Also the compositions are mostly forgettable, with a couple exceptions, and the lyrics have become more and more obnoxious. Junta is my favorite in part because the lyrics are so often so basic -- "Boy man god shit", "Let's go out to dinner and see a movie", et al. Phish's lyrics are problematic at best, so when they keep them simple and out of the way, I find they generally sit better with me.

I hate to say it, but, well...I really like Phish. Not everything they've done, but a good 80 - 90% is in my "I like" mental-file.

In concert, that's where they shine. I've seen them and the Dead, and I don't think the comparison is fair at all...when Phish "jams", it always feels like it's moving towards something, their jams have momentum, whereas The Dead, jamming, just seemed to be this unbound floatilla just lazing around in a stream of tonal and riffular mediocrity.

The only thing I really dislike about Phish is most of their lyrics; I mean, sure there's an interesting novelness about getting tens of thousands of people singing "David Bowie!" over and over, but compared to some of their lyrics that actually seem to be worth something (such as in "Theme From the Bottom" or "Maze"), it get's SO FRIGGIN ANNOYING.

If you want to listen to a good Phish album, I highly recommend Rift and Billy Breathes above all others; there's something very focused and (for lack of a better word) "deep" about these albums than any of their others.

That's what I was afraid of.

-- was what I thought the order was?

Yes, that's the order. Sometimes I scribble addresses too sloppy when I jot 'em.

Any of you ever listened to STORY OF A GHOST? That's my favorite album of theirs.

I think it's their worst. Gnomic, depressive. A good song or two at best.

First Tube is probably one of the most hilarious songs ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1yrBoO81mU

I still kinda like Phish.

I have a Trey double-disc live album in my car.

i saw 15 phish shows in high school!

kids wont know the meaning of drugs without bands like phish and grateful dead. it's a disaster.

and why is that guy so funny looking? you tell me that.

Classic. True originals, even if you do hate the "weeny guitar tone" (as mentioned upthread, which is kind of OTM and funny even though I like some of his playing) and the goofy tunes and hippie nonsense.

I have a soft spot for many of their hallmarks (again, not even factoring in the music or the 'scene'): genuine grassroots success; never-the-same-show-twice setlists; a deep back catalog that always gets dipped into; a fondness for weird venues; relentless showmanship.

I pulled the witch from out the ditch and turned to face the furry thugs,
The sheep they smiled with teeth agleam,
The weapons in their hooves revolved I detected a prostatic ream,
I gulped and felt my loins dissolve

Make of that what you will.

kinda dud, i think, and not just for the all the phishheads. just not my bag, i guess.

though i was way into phish in a period in high school, but not to the extent of a lot my friends (i knew a lot of tape traders/collectors.... i could never understand the point of needing so many damn phish tapes).

i can still kind of enjoy parts of junta though, which is the only phish album i hung onto (when i was 17 i used to have all the major studio releases and a few live albums, including that hampton box set).

You know what, I think I hate Phish more than DMB. I mean seriously I'll take Bela Fleck, Widespread Panic and Leftover Salmon over these dorks.

since when does DMB not have some good random tracks, as does phish?

Hoos I like the way you represent. I always wanted to be able to get into these guys a little more, because I can really enjoy noodly jam stuff sometimes, but the singing - something about the timbre of dude's voice - always keeps me away.

look at all the nude spocks posting here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS7a14vXuq8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl06ch9FDDs&feature=related

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=7&entry_id=23746

:( :( :(

man why you gotta post the youtubes and make me be like "ahhh yeah" and then hit me with that

harshin my steen

So this new one isn't bad, as far as Phish studio albums go. I really like Trey's playing.

I was just reading about Phish covering Neutral Milk Hotel on Stereogum and, you know, I think it make me love them a little bit more for pissing off a whole bunch of those annoying people that hold up NMH as something holy. Some choice comments:

"No one should be allowed to touch this song. This hurt my ears."

"Keep your jam bands off my favorite album. TAKE BACK THE MUSIC!"

I've never heard the original, but Phish's version sounded pretty decent.

Won't you STEP into the FREE-ZER

Dud, because of scenes like this.

http://img3.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/8260/8260733e941cd8222009f855e46620497651f6e.jpg

oh my god, that poor little girl... : (

my child was born at home and yet you have a $400 stroller...trustafarian.

Feel sorry for the young lad. He looks inconsolably depressed, maybe high too. I have a buddy who grew up on Dead tour with a hippie mom, a total tour slut. He has horrible stories about what he and other kids "on tour" saw, the lack of supervision and boundries, the sexual abuse, the drug abuse so rampant among the aduits (and many of the kids, never being taught about little things like basic hygeine...

sweet visor

haha

Kid does look depressed and stoned and kind of like Rupert Grint.

kid on the left looks like he's having a pretty serious ~moment~

he actually looks like he is turning into a mushroom. or...
http://www.vallentyne.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/dumb_donald-300x224.jpg

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9339331/after-30-years-consider-phish-great-band

"This won't be a popular opinion in the Phish world," he continued, "but I often think that the closest match for them currently is ICP..."

They should do a joint tour where they perform each other's songs.

i went to a phish show once at msg. i was pretty stoned. i like that hide the gumbo song. also the susie greenberg song. i find most of their stuff pretty samey sounding tho and pretty boring.

Ha! Joint! Like marijuana cigarettes!

"joint tour"

ok waterface, i am 100% sure i know who you are now

"juggalo marijuana"

also the susie greenberg song.

I'm one of the staunchest defenders of phish on this board, Mordy. But let me just say:

Little Suzy Greenberg, with her head caved in
Soon to let me drown beneath the undertow
You better put that woman in a looney bin
'Cause you know I'd really like to be a part of her show

Suzy is an artist, she paints quite a lot
An artist she may be, but a genius she is not
She says she wants to be a sociologist
But she better first get checked by a neurologist

Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, Suzy
Suzy, Suzy Greenberg
Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, Suzy
Suzy, Suzy Greenberg

Suzy's 'bout as faithful as a slot machine
Pays off once in a while, but then she robs you clean
She's always afraid that she's not sure what she's worth
She's out of her mind, and she's not of this Earth

The woman walks the streets like she's the queen of the town
Doesn't talk very much, she's very profound
Little Suzy Greenberg, always playing a game
But today I bet she's probably forgot my name!

To be fair, that song was written by their college buddy, Dude of Life. But to be fair to everyone else, Phish played that song at roughly 1/4 of their shows.

suzy is totes jewish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ugF6NmI-Bs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL9rrnDbQLw

lololol

http://mashable.com/2013/07/11/journophish

A Phish fan will see a reference in a tweet, and shrug, “We are everywhere” (or type “#weareeverywhere”)

the fiscal-cliff crisis kept them from Phish’s annual three-set extravaganza at Madison Square Garden.

if anyone ever tries to convince me that phish is good, i will play them this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=om2EQ7YXork

No no, play them this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW1KOykjHss

"i think its awesome how they got a rap song with phish beats, i dont mind rap music like that"

After reading the whole Harpuabrouhaha, I attempted to watch that live Chicago vid. Halfway through (which is still TEN minutes!) I gave up and realized I will never understand this band's semi-massive popularity. I would rather be almost anywhere else than at that concert.

I can't believe I'm asking this but what is the whole brouhaha re: Harpua?

It's got a bunch of narration etc in it - some the same every time, some varies every time. Fans seem to get upset about to what degree it should vary from the "normal" version. Except there is no studio version of the song so who knows what the "real" version should be. Also, they don't perform it much these days and it's a fan favourite.

carl - in this particular case the band brought up the Second City cast to get involved in the "Harpua" narration. i haven't head it yet, but its apparently riled up the phans something fierce.

true confession, i saw them earlier on this tour at SPAC. i enjoyed myself.

Oh, well, I hope they work out their differences.

Also, they called out some fans about all that and got them onstage to explain themselves. TWhich is actually actually quite amazing and I've never seen anything like this at a show before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lHFI3yS5vk

I'm imagining Deadheads in, like, 1990, holding up signs saying "Play Dark Star the right way."

It's pretty entitled to tell a band what the right way to play their song is. I mean, like it or don't like it, that's your prerogative, but to say that because you don't like it the band is wrong is just silly. As someone who really liked Phish and went to a lot of shows until "Fast Enough for You," which I thought was a dreadful, cheesy, maudlin pile of junk and then "Sample in a Jar," which was worse, I didn't then go to shows (I almost said "get on the internet" but I wouldn't have known what the internet was much less how to get on it at that time) and demand that they stop playing those dumb awful songs. I just found something else to do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I quit smoking pot and was like, "Wait a minute, this band sucks!"

i've met a wide variety of Phish fans over the years and i think the obsessive nerdy ones are the absolute worst. the ones who talk about the "right" version of songs of endlessly argue about whether a jam was "Type I" or "Type II".

Yeah, I knew some people like that. You definitely don't want to get stuck traveling in a car with those wieners.

the band brought up the Second City cast to get involved in the "Harpua" narration.

Lame improv troupe, meet lame improve troop. Would be funny if Phish was all "quick, give me a place! now give me a food! now give me a profession! Ok, this song is called "Denver Apple Proctologist!"

Holy shit, I just had a Phish flashback! (Phlashback?) Years ago, while the band was on hiatus, I interviewed one of the guys in the band (not Trey) for the free weekly of the affluent southern resort town he was from. I thought it would be funny to say something to catch him off guard, to show I did my research, so I talked to someone who knew his parents or sister or someone to get a random fact, in this case that he apparently owned two identical Range Rovers. So I'm talking with the guy on the phone, and I bring it up. "So," I say, "I heard that you own two identical Range Rovers." There's a long pause, then he comes back very serious, very stern, with an "I'd appreciate it if you please do not put that into the article." As if I ever was going to include such stupid BS, but the guy really didn't want it in there! What a weirdo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmd-Mt_c-H8

(Many years after the overthrow of Wilson, a rebel soldier crouching
high on a hilltop above the war torn forests of Gamehendge spots a
group of loyalists approaching from their lakeside encampment below.

His trusty llama stands beside him, loaded down with a canvas pack
that holds two large bazooka type guns to the animal's sides. Near the
man sits a cache of blastoplast, each capable of destroying the entire
hillside in an instant...)

Sunrise over the turquoise mountains
Messenger birds in sight
They came up through the valley
Both sides at a time
Through the cold steady rain
Raid!
I bend down
Poke a double decker on a llama
Taboot
Llama, Taboot Taboot
Trigger a blastoplast, ramshackle laker recedes
I start to run
It was the loudest thing I'd ever heard
And I knew my time had come
To enter the delta

Leave it on press [2x]
Depress, Depress
Llama, Taboot Taboot
Leave it on press
Depress, Depress
Llama, Taboot Taboot

Llama, Taboot Taboot
Llama, Taboot Taboot
Taboot Taboot
Taboot Taboot
Taboot

Looking back, I have no idea how I stuck with Phish through so much "Llama Taboot" and yet somehow "Gotta Jibboo" was enough to bring the whole thing screeching to a halt for me.

what did they do last night cover their own new album or was that just an elaborate fake out? admittedly i dont really care @ all

Yeah, apparently they just debuted their new album. Also featured a dancing Abe Vigoda in a wombat suit.

http://cdn.hypervocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/vigoda.jpg

Looking back, I have no idea how I stuck with Phish through so much "Llama Taboot" and yet somehow "Gotta Jibboo" was enough to bring the whole thing screeching to a halt for me.

― how's life, Friday, November 1, 2013 2:06 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, yes.

phishloving coworker (who flew out to the show last night) said that one halloween they psyched ppl in to thinking they would do the dark side of the moon but didnt- then played it the next night at a small venue.

at one point he was saying he thought they were gonna do marquee moon, but later said no, it might be some elton john album.

iirc it was the fans who psyched themselves into thinking that Phish was going to do DSOTM that Halloween.

I think I could actually listen to a ton of isolated instrumental tracks from Phish. Weirdly hypnotic.

is there something really wrong with me, or is the new on, fuego, really kind of good?

I can't listen to Phish in very large doses these days. I made it about 2.5 minutes into the title track. I liked the shambling piano and the dark lyrics; wasn't really braced for the jazz boogie that followed. The second song, The Line, started off feeling like some of the more middling entries in their catalog, but it really picks up! I love the background vocals too. I also listened to 555 though and that starts off like all my Mike Gordon thump bass nightmares, so I don't know. I'll check out some of the other songs, maybe later.

As far as Phish studio albums go, it's pretty damn solid. It's probably my favorite stduio album of theirs since Billy Breathes or maybe Ghost. I'll be seeing them again later this month, now the third straight summer I've seen Phish 3.0 live.

"gumbo" is really the only phish song i like. they played it tuesday nite in philly @ mann center.

I was listening to "Gotta Jibboo" today on my ride home; I really love that song.

fyi see also people dancing to Phish

their guitar tone is shit

I think I could actually listen to a ton of isolated instrumental tracks from Phish. Weirdly hypnotic.

― Walter Galt, Friday, November 1, 2013 12:24 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but i was just thinking this too

Another thing I ask myself sometimes is "did I really spend 7 years listening to a band that basically had a love song named after a He-Man character?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTRVdogFaWI

Q: how many dogs/cats did you know named Tela?

Thought this might be about the non-ironic huge Spin article ranking 333 of their songs. I knew as soon as the appreciation for Juggalo culture started, Phish would be next. First it was the Vampire Weekend dude professing his Phish love and now Spin. I'm guessing Whiney will probably follow them on Fall Tour for a book (which, all joking aside, I would definitely read).

xp:

LOL. I was giving away a piano last year to some guy on freecycle and took it over to his house in my father-in-law's pickup truck. The guy opens his door and a little dog comes running out. "Tela, go back inside! Good girl." Sure enough, after we're done hauling the piano into his den, there's a Phish concert poster mounted above the mantel.

I would totally read a WGW-penned Phish book.

http://www.spin.com/articles/all-333-phish-songs-ranked/

Any list in which Simple is ranked higher than You Enjoy Myself is a sham.

Pleasingly high showing for the title track from Rift though!

i just want to say that if i owned two identical range rovers, i wouldn't want that to get out in the press. it'd make me look like john mccain, or something. (in fact, the two range rovers i own are completely different colors, so i'm safe on that one!)

"Sample in a Jar" is a good song but I just now realized what it's likely about from thinking a microsecond about the title. that's more thinking than I did when I listened to Phish

My dearly departed and much beloved cat, who was already named when I got her at age 4, was named Sample and I always wondered if she was named after the song. (The person I got her from was not her original owner and didn't know anything about the name.)

Back in the olden days I knew a dog named Tela and cats named Fee, Esther, and Fluffhead.

Phish spotted in the wild:

During last night's NFL game, some production team nerd kept playing "Wilson" as bumper music in honor of Seahwaks' QB Russell Wilson.

jon, is someone paying you to keep that display name all summer?

Just too lazy to think of something new.

hadnt realized they played down in mexico, set up looked gorg wow

http://phish.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/PRM2016_0115_190720-0283_ALIVECOVERAGE.jpg

HOOSy Steenberg

waht

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_r54FPveiA&feature=youtu.be

waht?

Trey Anastasio's free jazz side project with MARSHALL ALLEN

oh lord this radiohead cover is terrible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmLPnbH7T0c

fishmans singing there right? that @ least used to mean its kinda a joke

Not sure what stirred this one from the depths of my mind this morning.

BUFFALO BILL
Originally performed by Phish

(Anastasio, Marshall)
© Who Is She? Music (BMI)

"Looking for owls?"
The young man asked
Hoping to lighten the tension
And the scowl he received
as his only reply
Made him smile
as he relived the mention

And the coward fool
walked on alone
Quite proud of the fear he instilled
And later they found him
tied to a log
Bent over and buffalo billed

I think the worst thing about Phish might be the music.

Rye rye rocco
Marco Esquandolas
Been you to have any spike, man?

I think the best thing about Faberge eggs might be the precious jewels

The Phish bassist has more strings than the band has good songs.

comin down on phish like the wolfman's brother over here

I guess in light of my surprising latecoming to the Dead, I've put on You Enjoy Myself a few times lately and tried to listen with "fresh ears," i.e. as though I had no idea phishheads were a thing. It was pleasant and neat I guess but a bit unsatisfying -- the proggy parts aren't proggy enough, the harmonic movement is sort of mickey mouse, there are parts that *almost* evoke Phillip Glass but don't really lean hard enough into that to seem deliberate. Moments that reminded me of Close to the Edge but only in an approximated sort of way. Ultimately nothing that really made me want to revisit it let alone check out more music.

Did a couple of looong solo drives this week in a car w Sirius xm and both times found myself stumbling across the phish channel in a moment of desperation.

There are some solid moments and I’ve always thought their live mixes and each instrument sound really good. The keyboard dude has an awesome rig full of instruments I’d love to be able to afford and I think he uses them well. The drummer is a million times better than the dead’s guys after 1975. Trey seems like a genuinely nice dude who has handled himself quite well.

But in the end it’s just too wanky. And I’m a massive GD apologist.

This band’s saving grace for me is providing fodder for the very entertaining Analyze Phish podcast (R.I.P. Harris Wittels) — a must for fans and haters alike.

I second that^^^

I was gonna say “you can’t be serious” but I actually don’t like or hate phish so nevermind

is it like that Celine Dion 33 1/3

Just start at Ep. 1, you’ll get the idea pretty quickly. I’ve listened to the whole thing twice through (skipping Ep. 5 & 6, which are a detour involving Jaws).

Out of all the thousands of bands I've seen over the decades Phish is still the least enjoyable performance I've ever endured. That was a support slot too, if I'd had to sit through 3 hours of it or however long they play things might have got nasty.

Phish is probably the most ILM-reviled band I kind of love. I went off to college in '94, which was the year they really broke. I mean, I also got into Dream Theater that year, but Dream Theater are the only band I ever stopped liking. Phish, they're still sort of the apotheosis of the hippie jam band thing to me - in '94, I hated the Dead; they were a long, strange train wreck in progress. In the years past I've come around to old Dead and realized the weird mystic power they had that Phish didn't... plus they had some good songs, which Phish never did.

But Phish are all very good musicians who can play well together. I like that. When that first live album of theirs came out I picked up a copy, and I do still enjoy "You Enjoy Myself". I like the intro a lot - I think it's better than the intro to "Firth of Fifth". I could do without the silly mouth noises, but yeah, last October when I realized I'd run out of good Grateful Dead live stuff to listen to I got back to checking out some of the most acclaimed Phish recordings, and there are some very good ones.

http://renameforall.com/get-involved/suggest-a-name/

There is a petition to suggest names for Denver, CO's Stapleton neighborhood, which was originally named after a former Denver mayor and KKK member. Right now the Phishheads are in the lead with Gamehendge. If you know, you know; if you don't, it's really stupid but here. I'm sure this petition is non-binding. I just want you to please click the link and help put the stupid hippies back in their place.

Oh good, someone is going through the suggestions and policing for morons.

Glad to see Westrbook back up in the lead by a comfortable margin.

I get it that they are a live thing, but I love it when fans defend them but go on to say that they don’t really have any good songs or make good albums

The name could only be
The one, the only
The great and the knowlegeable

lol

i owned farmhouse when i was a kid and also loved billy breathes but have never seen phish live and prob know better at this point that to try to get into them again

regardless i do want to talk about how the story of the ghost is a really rad record

I loved SOTG back when I was a Phishhead. It was a huge record for me. I listened to it again recently to grade my original vinyl before selling it. It was pretty good! Guyute really didn't fit in, stylistically, and I have a personal aversion to all the circus imagery in Roggae, but everything else was solid. Particularly like the title track, Brian and Robert, Shafty.

i will say one of the very best things about the story of the ghost is that it tricks you into thinking the members of phish are good singers. crediting andy wallace with this

and i think "guyute" works on a record that also has, like, "limb by limb" and "water in the sky"

also it's possible "guyute" is so good that it asserts its place on that record for me regardless of sonic identity

i think... that for me, to be able to sit with certain aspects of phish's songwriting, to sit with the horror and disgust those aspects evoke in me, without dismissing them as being necessarily fundamentally grotesque and repulsive, while at the same time acknowledging the positive things about their songwriting, the ways in which their music continues to appeal to me... i think that this is an instructive and useful act for me.

Yeah, Guyute's a good song and all, but it's very much a throwback to 80s Phish - their longer, primarily instrumental songs like Divided Sky or David Bowie or You Enjoy Myself. And they actually debuted it in 1994, three years before the batch of songs that became SOTG. So just because I was listening to Phish extremely actively at the time, it kinda felt shoehorned in there and I guess my prejudices may remain.

I also remember preferring the more trad country version of Water in the Sky that they had debuted in 97 (available on the Walnut Creek show they released). Similarly, I still think I like that one better but am not quite sure.

that's really fair! i am of course completely disengaged from that kind of phish fandom, but i always got the sense fans didn't really like farmhouse because it's full of oddly-realized studio versions of what were by that time several-years-old live jams

i ended up downloading a show because i wanted to see what a 20 minute version of "ghost" was like (11/17/97) and wow this is really great :(((((

"hey this is pretty cool, who is this?" –me, to a bartender who was playing Phish off his iPod over the speakers

i ended up downloading a show because i wanted to see what a 20 minute version of "ghost" was like (11/17/97) and wow this is really great :(((((

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson)

yeah that's a fucking amazing show, they were killing it in fall of '97

This band’s saving grace for me is providing fodder for the very entertaining Analyze Phish podcast (R.I.P. Harris Wittels) — a must for fans and haters alike.

― the last Berry La Croix in the work fridge (morrisp), Saturday, July 27, 2019 7:54 PM (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I second that^^^

― tobo73, Saturday, July 27, 2019 8:09 PM (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

i started this today! it's great. i hate scott aukerman but he's kind of the antagonist of this show anyway

went to their show at the garden on dec 30th and fell asleep during a 35-minute version of tweezer

my wife once fell asleep watching king crimson play "starless"

"starless" is a great song, but she was tired

and it was a seated show, which didn't help

xxp Cool! I’ve listened to the whole thing, several times thru (well, skipping the digression episodes in the middle that are about “Jaws” or something).

it occurs to me that i am one of, possibly, the few people on this board who would rather listen to phish play literally _anything_ than listen to a podcast

went to their show at the garden on dec 30th and fell asleep during a 35-minute version of tweezer

This is widely consider by lots of Phish fans to be one of the best jams of the bands current, 3.0, era.

step into the freezer
fall asleep to tweezer

tbf to me, it was widely considered to be one of the drunkest nights of my current approaching 30 era

xp

idk if it's just me but i feel like the song portion of this is much less obnoxious than that time in '95 they played the song for 45 damn minutes straight

i mean it's still a terrible song but it sounds less terrible somehow?

mind you if the "jam" portion has anything whatsoever to do with the "song" portion the relation is too musically advanced for me to be able to parse

I saw the 58-minute Runaway Jim at Worcester 97. It was flat-out amazing to dance and be high to, but much less captivating when I finally got a tape of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n-lLrqcfJY

The recent super long (38 minutes) Phish jam that I've really felt earned it's length was the "Ruby Waves" from Alpine Valley last summer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI6xUJ4fmDk

i am listening to fukuoka 6/14/00 and this is prob the phish show i’d try to convert someone with (ha fat chance). i am very stoned right now and listening to it is like floating through interstellar clouds

Ah, that takes me back. Had a roommmate that played that one a lot. One of the official live releases, right? Never been a huge fan of the band but a few songs on there (Twist, and uh, I forget) are undeniable.

Phish is the ultimate “What is this record you’re playing? It’s awesome. Oh.” band.

...except for their songs that sound like someone soloing over a cross between the Sex & The City theme song and the Will & Grace theme song. This was the barrier I was ultimately unable to cross

Oh, you mean The Landlady.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ckN45Z-ykQ

xpost - yeah, it is one of that first batch of Live Phish archival releases they did in the early 2000s. Sadly, I was one of those people that kept them in those stupid foldable binder pages they came in, so my entire run of those releases had the discs ruined by the adhesive.

i also really love the fukuoka jam on "gumbo," very subtle, small movements that suggest vast inner galaxies of psychedelia, very floyd imo

i have spent so much time listening to the denver "ghost" > "fire" this week lol

which. maybe the "johnny b. goode" > "denver jam" is even better. fishman is totally playing a motorik beat for most of it

Did they ever release a box set of the IT festival? I remember hearing some of that and liking it, especially the stuff they played on that tower thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNJhQn5N0D4

oh this is so rad. i love this show (4/4/98) sooo much, bunch of phish songs i think are legit great ("taste," "limb by limb," "birds of a feather," "ghost") stretched out as far as they can go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0lpSBuNd7E

real mindblowing inner space funk jam they get out of this ween song. wish this upload had the "piper" ending though

just listening to "harry hood" on a live one today and thinking man, phish is so good

this and the 420 thread are parallel explorations of personal growth and unlocking hidden potential, love it

A Live One is the only Phish album I own and I've never had any desire to explore further but the stuff from the Island Tour Brad linked to is making me reconsider.

island shows are all worth hearing, like i think they're even better than the canonical phish shows i've heard (denver 97, fukuoka 00, nye 95). 4/4/98 is the peak imo but they all have something to offer, they were in a very exploratory mood. my friend pointed out that they only repeat one song over four separate nights ("birds of a feather," which was brand new)

I was a huge Phishhead in middle school at the tail end of 1.0 and saw them twice back then (5/21/00 Radio City Music Hall and 9/22/00 Rosemont, IL--the latter was KILLER). I drifted away from them after that but the 2017 Baker's Dozen spectacle pulled me back in in a big way--just a huge achievement playing 13 GOOD consecutive concept shows with no repeats and packed with thrills like the live debut of End of Session after 19 years.

They have so many great songs and jams, but what I keep coming back to is the Reba jam. The song itself is fun, zany prog-mode Phish, but the way they ride those two blissed-out chords in the jam section is like heroin thru the veins for me. So currently vibing to Reba 12/7/97--Page getting properly spacy on the Rhodes with tasty, delicate leads from Trey. Brad otm re: Story of the Ghost upthread; that's def where they peaked studiowise. Guyute is their Terrapin Station

Is it generally accepted that people who like "Farmhouse" are posers? Like the equivalent of a Touchhead? Because I think I really like "Farmhouse."

Gonna check out the rest of the Island tour shows today. Damn you all

I like large swaths of Farmhouse, but I absolutely loath both "Heavy Things" and "Gotta Jibboo" (though the later has gotten some decent workouts on stage), so I can never fully embrace it. The opening and the closing run from "Dirt" to "First Tube" are both great.

It's weird, I don;t know if there is any real general consensus on Phish studio albums. There's a sizable contingent these days that seems to essentially ignore the studio records and don't care about them at all, but I do know of quite a few fans that dig Farmhouse and look at it as their Workingmans' Dead/American Beauty (i.e. super distilled version of one particular thread of Phish songwriting, that happens to lean more heavily towards a folk/country sound in parts - though the comparison isn't precise).

I came on board with Rift and still think it's pretty enjoyable and compelling. The sequencing is smooth, the production is crisp, the performances are energetic, a phenomenal batch of songs.

Hey y'all, bona fide Phish head here. First off, it is a treat to see them getting some love on ilx. I definitely fall into the category of Phish fans whose defense of their lyrics, singing, songwriting, scene, etc. is often feeble and apologetic. So really nice to see people from other corners of the musical world appreciating what they do.

I was at 4/4/98 and it is indeed awesome. I think most Phish fans still recognize the Island Tour as pretty close to their peak -- all the adventurousness of their playing in 1997 with the added jolt of the freedom that came from scheduling 4 off-the-cuff shows just because they were itching to get out in front of an audience again. The second set of 4/3/98 is the pinnacle for me; as Brad mentioned, in addition to the looong, patient jam out of Roses are Free, do check out the Piper that followed it. Equally patient and subtle. For those who are novices checking this stuff out, I also strongly recommend Twist from the first night, 4/2. After some pro forma jamming it really gets to an amazing place.

Studio albums: it seems like the first 4 or so have come to be regarded by fans as classics, and the longer the band exists the more fans seem to rate all of the albums from the 90s, but I think there's more than a hint of nostalgia/distance driving that reappraisal. It's weird to me that anyone would see Farmhouse as their masterpiece, as half the songs are leftovers from the songwriting explosion that led to the previous album, SOTG. And I agree with you jon, Heavy Things and Gotta Jibboo back to back in the middle of the album is just so dire and really kills it. I think what it has going for it is that they sort of hit on the ideal sound for studio Phish, but the song selection and sequencing negates that for me.

Personally, I stan for Junta, Rift, and Billy Breathes, and never reach for any of the others. Junta may be hard to take for non-fans because there's a lot of silliness in the lyrics, but there's something super charming about the clean, basic production on these long proggy songs that you get used to hearing in the high octane live environment. With Rift I have never really been able to hear the criticisms. To my ears the production sounds a lot richer and fuller than all their previous albums, they were writing more ambitious lyrics and actually hitting on many of them, the complex/proggy songwriting is toned down such that it serves the songs better, and the eclecticism of the previous 2 albums is smoothed out just enough for the whole thing to feel cohesive (previous album Picture of Nectar is the antithesis of cohesive). Billy Breathes was long regarded as their "masterpiece" as it were, but that does seem to be slipping somewhat. I think it is still probably their most successful album, but it is also maybe the one least representative of what the band's overall thing is. So.

Happy to make additional personalized recommendations if people are looking to dip their toes into this band. I guarantee a better job than Harris Wittels RIP. and I'm always looking for ways to justify the embarrassing amount of space the Phish live catalog takes up in my brain!

Here's the one performance I'd recommend to anyone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MzLuQXUeh0

xpost glad you agree on Rift, peace, man!

Sounds like a pretty good testimonial in the album's favor, imo!

Nice post Lavator. I would definitely throw Billy Breathes up as my favorite studio record, it's the one I go back to the most. SOTG would be a close second, such a weird, knotty record.

xp Lavator that Ghost from 5/22/00 is fantastic! I was at the previous night's show at Radio City, which I found kind of underwhelming at the time. Looks like I picked the wrong show of that run.

I was kind of disappointed by Farmhouse because it was such a sharp turn away from the deep funk of SOTG and Slip Stitch and Pass, but it's held up pretty well. If Phish has a "Workingman's Dead/American Beauty" I'd say it's Billy Breathes

I can see that, but I really feel like Farmhouse better fits the WD/AB mold because it was the one to break out with a wider audience. I think I caught "Free" once or twice on alt-rock radio back in the day, but "Heavy Things" and "Back on the Train" were inescapable on AAA stations when Farmhouse was released. That felt like the point where Phish was being most widely acknowledged by more mainstream radio at least.

But, yeah, Billy Breathes is most definitely the better album of the two.

livephish no. 8, a '99 show in camden, nj, is really solid throughout, contains the best "chalkdust torture" i've heard and probably the best "bathtub gin" (not normally one of my faves) too. second set is pretty immediately off the chain with a slow heavy "tweezer" that works itself into a really odd space and then a "birds of a feather" that fuckin' cooks which is what i really care about

my friend recommended this show to me by saying that the "chalkdust torture" turns into stereolab and she is not wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xZMHQjRTSM

fucking amazing 18 minute "fluffhead" too my god

Yeah, that’s a great one! Sadly one of the many Live Phish sets I had that was destroyed by the mystery goo.

i enjoyed that show so much that i had to hear another summer '99 show, and the only other official release from that tour is 7/23/99 at the polaris ampitheatre in columbus, oh. starts off a little slow but the last thirty minutes of the surprisingly long first set are incredible, and then the second set is... def the best second set i've heard after my all-time favorite show (4/4/98). "ghost" > "free" alone is like floating. absolutely worth the $10 i paid for it on livephish dot com

goddamn i love "birds of a feather" so much

I love when Brad goes on a Phish kick! I’ve always loved a good “BOAF” jam.

Hey y'all, please check out this awesomeness. Depending how deep your Phish kicks have gone this song may not be as deeply embedded in your DNA as it is in mine, but this is a revelatory arrangement any way you slice it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtGTKE-RKTU

I haven't been able to check out any of the Beacon Jams shows, but def going to give that a watch later. Thanks for the reminder!

YEM one of the few Phish songs I still listen to. This version is exemplary.

Thanks, Lavator - beautiful, and then I was just was grinning like a goofball from 5 and a half minutes onwards - infectious joy! Looks like I'll be binging these shows over the weekend.

listening to live show and this band getting "funky" might be the worst thing in existence

Dud.

classic!!!!!

the funky era is the best one

the drummer is so bad at it

the drummer is probably the best musician in phish lol

well...

I mean, there are a lot of valid criticisms of Phish, but saying they are "bad musicians" just shows me that someone has no intention of negotiating with their music in good faith.

they are definitely an example of how good musician doesn't necessarily translate to good music

They are great musicians! They just have trouble with doing certain things that a lot of great musicians have. (xpost w josh)

The parts where they get more spacey and into out there jam territory are what they are good at (for me)

Okay, fair, I guess you weren't really suggesting they weren't, I just see that argument so often and it drives me crazy.

What show are you listening to UMS? some of their funkiness admittedly embarrassing. other times very good tho

so...selected semi at-random: LivePhish Vol 7 8/14/93 World Music Theatre

I saw em live once, and this confirms my basic feeling, I like the second half of longer songs or jams when they get more out there/jazz fusion/prog/spacey/pretty, just feel like i have to sit through a pretentious spin doctors song to get there

divided sky and split open and melt were the best for me so far

Ha, sounds like how I feel about Zappa, minus the Spin Doctors part. More the feeling of sitting through some truly awful moments to get to moments of brilliance/bliss.

To my mind Phish really didn't start digging into the "funk" sound until after '96-'97 when they started to stretch out stuff like "Wolfman's Brother" and "Ghost". Also, I've always felt that the Phish "funk" is a bit of a misnomer, because it really has very little to do with any traditional definition of what we think of as funk, like P-Funk or whatever.

I go back and forth on my Phish sympathies - the only constant being that I rarely feel like listening to them and when I do, it's not in large doses. But since this is on the topic of funk:

how's life wrote this on thread worst album covers ever: Primus -vs- Phish on board I Love Music on Mar 8, 2018

xps:

I was a Phish fan for about 7 years and what really broke them for me was when I went to check out some of the songs they had been covering. Especially Purple Rain. Can you imagine never having heard Purple Rain, only the jokey Phish cover, and then finding the Prince album on discount cassette one day and buying it just because what the hell? I had my fucking head blown off. It was like I had been lied to about the nature of music. Same for Sneaking Sally Through the Alley, Boogie On Reggae Woman, dozens more.

I mean, just

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kA_lcxxQaY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6IMshcg-ow

Phish were creative and adventurous improvisers in 1993 but hadn't yet learned to (or cared to be) consistently patient or subtle. I'd recommend checking out Live Phish Vol 11, 11/17/97 to hear some more adept funkiness. Granted it is still not conventional funkiness that is comparable to the Meters or P-Funk or whatever. It's very much its own thing. But look to the 1997-2000 era for considerably more tasteful funking. The latter half of that era is less funky but will yield greater returns in the spacey/pretty genre that you may enjoy more.

if you really want me to nerd out I could give plenty more specific recs

xps basically what j/v/c said!

and yeah i've never understood why Boogie on Reggae Woman is a fan favorite. SO FAR INFERIOR to Stevie. ugh that repetitive guitar chording. i guess it's a fun bass showcase

comments re Purple Rain otoh really not fair to Phish. criticize them if you will for choosing that song as one to mock but it's obviously not intended to be a "musical" cover, it's comedic

yeah if you have a recommend that's more on the jams/space/pretty etc i'm all ears

we just got to this song "esther" this spoken word over a looney tunes version of "alabama song" by the doors is getting on my last nerve

Classic af. I don't have the time or energy to write a coherent defense, but I WILL RETURN

ok we're out of the woods on esther now

i shouldn't be talking this much shit tbh

i guess phish is like my mom and christianity, she goes to a liberal, very social active church and i can def see how it affects her life in positive ways, in terms of comfort, community, service to others etc etc, but when i go to church with her on easter or xmas like i can't *believe* it the way she does, even if i appreciate it on a level

so...selected semi at-random: LivePhish Vol 7 8/14/93 World Music Theatre

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, February 11, 2021 9:29 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this isn’t even from the funk period!!!!!

the only livephish i truly rep for is 97-99. a live one is also a good record

ums - curious to know what you'd think of the half hour "Wolfman's Brother" from 11/19/97, I was in the audience for that one and it is essentially what converted me. It's filler on LivePhish 11, which I believe is on Spotify.

I'd also recommend the "Tweezer" from 12/30/19, a rather recent example of a killer deep dive jam that flips through multiple sections. I've spent a lot of time with that one.

and yeah i've never understood why Boogie on Reggae Woman is a fan favorite. SO FAR INFERIOR to Stevie. ugh that repetitive guitar chording. i guess it's a fun bass showcase

otm, particularly when I think "Roses Are Free" did a better job of mining a similar vein

xp Esther is gorgeous once they get past the "oom-pa-pa" part

lol i see this was covered

<3 when Brad talks Phish

divided sky and split open and melt were the best for me so far

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, February 11, 2021 9:32 AM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

great songs!!!

i shared this video upthread, ums i think you will enjoy significantly more than what you're listening to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MzLuQXUeh0

brad i don't know phish periods!

xp [X song] is gorgeous once they get past the [insert here] part

― J. Sam, Thursday, February 11, 2021 10:53 AM (four seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

variations on this thought is has come up a lot

okay "poor heart" fuck me

"funny country" songs are literally the worst thing in music

they have no respect for genre and believe they can do everything. country stuff one example. please steer clear of their reggae songs! to their credit they are self-deprecating about it all though. but i think in aggregate it's better for musicians with questionable taste but good ideas and skills to be fearless and produce a lot of crap because you get plenty of diamonds in the rough.

comments re Purple Rain otoh really not fair to Phish. criticize them if you will for choosing that song as one to mock but it's obviously not intended to be a "musical" cover, it's comedic

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Thursday, February 11, 2021 11:47 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, Purple Rain is obviously different from some of their more straightforward covers. I mean, I get that it's a joke. But in the context of being a full-on Phishhead at the time who was pretty convinced that they were the apex of modern music, then "ironically" buying the album that the joke cover was on and hearing all these amazing, weird, tight, funky songs, and capping it off with a performance of the "joke" song that was full of emotion and nuance and passion and basically fireworks going off in my head. Then looking back at the joke cover and being like "this is what you guys choose to make fun of? This amazing thing you could never do?"

i mean funny country is by no means limited to them, green day's "dominated love slave" was one that always rankled.

will check out the 00 show you posted

"ghost" jams are what converted me, they always end up in this totally psychedelic hellspace, and "ghost"'s debut as a song in the set coincides with the dawning of their cowfunk period, i swear i didn't know any of this information a year ago ums lol

but it's very superficially similar to the dead, they're both fusion bands, the dead comes from a more roots country/bluegrass tradition and phish is like all prog and zappa, prob to their detriment as songwriters. however they know how to drive a jam through outer space and back, and that's the appeal (and many of their songs have grown on me, horribly)

i will say i have little-to-no use for them as a covers band. the slowed-down talking heads "cities" is mostly interesting coming in and out of jams. "roses are free" is their best cover and that's for obvious reasons

prob to their detriment as songwriters

lol, "prob"?

;)

yeah very different than the dead for sure. they don't really have that weary, sad quality the dead does and jerry's voice does.

jerry's lead playing as well is just very singular and delicate, trey is very good but he always seems like more of a "guitar dude" vibe

i think i'll probably end up in the same spot i am with zappa, some great stuff that is outweighed by the considerable dross and my allergy to "funny" music (for the most part)

however, i will say their general amiable vibe, though dorky, is far preferable to zappa's toxic misogyny and general assholishness for sure

"Cities" could get really good. My favorite time seeing it was Deer Creek '97 with a five song second set where they started with a 23-minute "Cities" before ending up in a "rotation jam" where they all switched instruments and Page played a theremin. The "Cities" holds up on the tape, the "rotation jam" a little less so - def much better appreciated in person.

One of my best friends used to be a huge Phish guy, apparently very very active in the trading community. Even he I've heard vacillate so much on the band and its merits, it's kind of fascinating.

I think they're kind of like a cross between Zappa, minus the worst stuff, and the Dead, minus the best stuff. Which leaves them floating in this purgatory.

learning about phish last year i discovered there is no bottom to the dorkiness, just gets dorkier and dorkier all the way down. the way their fans talk about them or refer to classic songs... you'll never get out of the maze

I also, to be fair, honestly hate the sound of their instruments, the tones.

I mean, yeah, the dorkiness is legion. The trampolines, the vacuum, playing chess against the audience, etc.

when i saw them they did "dear prudence" and it was really beautiful, the keyboard player sang it. he's a lot better singer than trey! he should sing more, please forward this feedback to phish HQ for me

page is a great singer and player. him and fishman are like... obv the best members of phish to me. i love trey's guitar tone tho

ok "great" singer is extremely relative in this band

I've probably mentioned earlier on this thread about the time I saw the Trey band play. The crowd was cool, and the band was killer ... except for Trey. There would be this great sorta Afrobeat groove, with horns and a hot shit drummer and ... John Medeski? And Trey would have this big grin, just taking it all in, and then he would play and it would just take me ... out.

Oh man, I think Trey has one of my all-time favorite guitar tones.

they really spaced out on "dear prudence" at the end too, was very pretty and a cool jam

the people next to me (very nice couple who found out it was my first phish show and let me have some of their weed) were super excited because they hadn't played it in like 1000 shows or something

lol excellent experience

i am looking forward to seeing phish live post-pandemic hope it happens

what's with the glowsticks? at a certain point in the show the second deck of the arena started throwing all these glowsticks down on us

iirc it started out when a bunch of fans started throwing glow sticks during a "Harry Hood" jam in Chicago back in the early '90s, then another one broke out at their Great Went festival in '97, also during "Hood" and Trey kind of encouraged it because it looked cool from the stage and it turned into a whole thing after that. Now I think it's just a spontaneous thing and isn't really tied to a specific song, just when the crowd feels it I guess.

I know a couple who are Phish fans, they went to a Trey show, he liked it, she didn't, and it shook the foundations of their relationship.

I've actually never been to a Trey solo or TAB show. I saw a GRAB show when Trey and Mike Gordon toured with Joe Russo and Marco Benevento, it was pretty cool. Russo's a great drummer and his JRAD (Joe Russo's Almost Dead) is one of the few Dead cover bands that I think is doing interesting things.

Wait, this band is interactive? Like Barenaked Ladies, whose fans threw boxed mac and cheese on the stage? Ugh.

Some years back I was in Jackpot! records in Portland and there was this nice, earthy music playing in the store. I asked the guy who it was, and he told me it was the new Phish album. Really? I asked. Really, he said. When I got home I picked up the new Phish album and it totally did not sound like what I heard in the store. To this day I'm not sure if he was fucking with me, if I got the wrong album, or if I got the right album but the part I liked was really fleeting or something. Probably fucking with me.

Wait, this band is interactive?

be thankful you've never heard of the meatstick dance

Not even going to risk googling that

Meatstick would be one of their better late-90s songs if not for the lyrics being about burying a Meatstick.

I don't think that the "glowstick war" was fully an interactive thing a la Barenaked Ladies. It's more of a spontaneous thing with the fans. But (in addition to the Meatstick dance), the band definitely had interactive bits in the early 90s:

https://phish.net/song/secret-language-instructions/history

Phish’s success is often credited to non-unique factors like variable setlists and letting fans record live performances. Sure, those helped. But what really sets the band apart are dozens of smaller elements – including a “secret language” of musical “signals” – that generate band-audience interaction beyond what any other act has achieved. Five have been “taught” to the audience during a show, of which the first four were introduced on 3/6/92:

All Fall Down: after a sequence of four descending notes, everyone falls (or at least crouches) to the floor as the music collapses in a downward spiral, until Fishman’s high-hat resumes the song. First appearance: 3/6/92 (at the 4:23 mark).

Aw, Fuck!: (aka “Fingerscrape”) after a long scraping noise from Trey (introduced 3/13/92), scream "Awww, Fuck!" and hold up your middle finger like you chopped it off. First appearance: 3/6/92 David Bowie (1:53).

Random Note: after a ten-note sequence you’d recognize as circus music (from Julius Fučík’s Entrance of the Gladiators, the two measures immediately after the opening 12 seconds), the response is to sing "ahhhhh" at any pitch, tone, volume, etc. First appearance: 9/13/90 Possum (5:47).

Simpsons: when a 10-note sequence from the opening of the Simpsons theme song is played, scream “D’oh!” like Homer. First appearance: 9/25/91 Possum at 1:11 (the signal was also played earlier in the show during Reba but without the “D’oh!” response).

Turn, Turn, Turn: after "to everything, turn turn turn" from the Byrds’ classic is played softly, everyone turns to face the rear of the venue and cheers as if that’s where the band was. First appearance: 3/6/92 Possum (0:45).

Also, they had a thing called the Big Ball Jam back then, where they would throw giant beach balls into the audience and try to play their instruments to the rhythm of the balls as they bounced. See maybe from 9:30 on in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1rBSf3do6Y

holy shit

it's worse than I thought

I know I definitely heard Surrender to the Air, Trey's "free jazz orchestra" thing, back in the mid-90s when I was new to Phish, but I had virtually no context for jazz or non-hippie improv at the time and I'm sure I didn't pay close attention. Listening to it again now and it's... not terrible? I mean it's definitely not the most compelling set I've ever heard, but I think there are a few moments.

For the uninitiated, the lineup:

Marshall Allen: saxophone
Trey Anastasio: guitar
Kofi Burbridge: flute
Oteil Burbridge: bass guitar
Damon R. Choice: vibraphone
Jon Fishman: drums
Bob Gulloti: drums
James Harvey: trombone
John Medeski: Organ
Michael Ray: trumpet
Marc Ribot: Guitar

I haven't listened to that since it came out. I remember waiting and waiting for it, then going out one night to buy it and have a little stoner listening party with my buds and no one was into it. I doubt that any of us had much context for free jazz at the time.

Simpsons: when a 10-note sequence from the opening of the Simpsons theme song is played, scream “D’oh!” like Homer.

Thankfully most of that "secret language" stuff faded long ago. My current day, 3.0 (hopefully soon to be 4.0) Phish complaint is the incessant damn "woo"-ing. Started with mostly one song, "Twist", with the audience interjections, but some shows it's creeped over into a LOT of other songs. I am definitely team no woo.

i don't think i told anyone here yet but i'm seeing phish for the very first time in atlantic city in august, i am SO excited

i also bought this show immediately after seeing the year and the setlist, gonna get stoned and listen to it in a bit https://www.livephish.com/browse/music/0,1557/Phish-mp3-flac-download-07-23-97-Lakewood-Amphitheatre-Atlanta-GA

bought it even before i saw ppl in the comments arguing it contains the greatest "ghost" of all time

They feel they never told you

That's great Brad, I def want to hear your report after the show!

I haven't seen them since fall of 2018 and probably won't this year unless the rumors of another fall tour come true since they aren't swinging nearby for the summer tour.

yes Brad please provide full report!

I was at that show and it was one of my favorites back in the day. Hope you enjoyed.

lakewood 97? yeah totally blew my mind last night. not my favorite “ghost” as it turns out but amazing all the same. heartened by how many reviews of it say “this was my first phish show”

i have started a dumb project i will prob abandon at the first signs of struggle but i'm going to listen to every phish studio album and at least one live show for every year they've played ('97-00 i'm just gonna try to pick one i haven't heard yet, which will be easy)

checking out colorado 88 rn and fuck me, this is so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba4vCGtMBo8

i also listened to the white tape today and i think it's actually pretty cool and maybe the least embarrassing weird thing phish ever made

if phish didn't become phish i could see that tape becoming ultra-revered by the kind of ppl... well, who love zappa and ween of course. but in a cool way

vivid memory taking a flight from the Hartford, CT airport back home to see my folks and the inordinate number of people in legitimately mud-stained phish clothing.

Turns out it was fans that had attended their “last show” show in Coventry, VT.

i enjoy junta a lot more now that i'm familiar with all of these songs as set warhorses. still kind of hate "fee," still find "esther" awe-inspiring

Brad, please keep sharing yr thoughts, really loving this. I never came around on "Fee" either, still not really a fan of that. Glad you checking out Colorado '88, killer comp of where they were that year.

colorado '88 is really good for the most part!!! an edit of it without the jazz odyssey or fishman's trombone playing would be one of the most accessible phish records imo

but of course it would be less quintessentially phish

otm on both counts, although I love the story about Fishman getting lost on a mountain while tripping and leaving the band hanging (which is why they were playing that jazz odyssey in the first place):

Perhaps Fishman’s most infamous Colorado memory isn’t what he played, but why he didn’t play. “It was the only time a member of Phish failed to make a gig,” the drummer says. “I went to Ajax Mountain with my friends and we tried to come down an alternate route and ended up running into about one thousand feet of sheer cliff. The only way to get out was to go back up the mountain and down the way we came. By the time I got to the gig I had already missed two sets.”

In Fishman’s absence Anastasio sat behind the kit and the group offered a “jazz odyssey” based around Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage.” While the results were at times less than stellar, the group overcame its follies through humor. “I came waltzing in with a handful of flowers and a head full of acid and Trey told this story about me while I played high as a kite,” Fishman laughs, before pausing to look at the unopened copy of Colorado ’88 resting on his shelf. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a recording where I was on acid before.”

well ok the gamehenge stuff would be an obstacle for normal ppl but i have figured out on this go-around that i really like the gamehenge songs :(

xp

i read that story last night and it genuinely terrified me lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN5CqvC5TCY

Mike turned to me and said, “Check everyone’s minds they’ve turned to egg yolks” which, meant so much to me.

lol

amazing first set on 8/26/89, pretty much every early phish song i love right in a row

"harry hood" increasingly seems like it's my favorite phish jam

"Hood" is so much fun live, I hope you get one at your show. Killer way to end a set.

I humbly submit 8/10/97 (my second ever Phish show) as a show to check out when you get to that year:

SET 1: Bathtub Gin -> Sparkle > Down with Disease > Dirt, Cars Trucks Buses, Billy Breathes, Split Open and Melt, Bye Bye Foot > Ginseng Sullivan, Harry Hood

SET 2: Cities -> Good Times Bad Times -> Rotation Jam -> Rock A William -> David Bowie

ENCORE: Cavern

The rotation jam in the second set doesn't quite hold up on tape as fun as it was in person, but the "SOAM", "Hood" and "Cities" are all among my favorite ever versions of those tunes.

thank you mr. miner

bag it
tag it
sell it to the butcher in the store

lawn boy is a little more uncanny than junta because here we have 4-5 phish classics presented in somewhat-to-radically different studio forms, but that's kind of to their benefit, at least in this particular space?

10/31/90 was a weird show, clearly has a deranged-yet-playful aspect to it because it's halloween, but both sets have their peaks (early "stash," great YEM jam and vocal jam, "the asse festival," "reba" -> "runaway jim" into "foam" into early "tweezer") and valleys (mostly just "love you")

7/12/91: i didn't know this was a phish w/ horns show until i started it! this freaking rules!!!!!

once you hear certain tunes with horns, you can't not insert them in your head for all subsequent listens to those songs (Suzy Greenberg, Cavern, Gumbo...)

i would go nuts if they did another horn tour sometime but trey largely channeled that side of his musical interest into his solo band. 91 was the only time they ever did a whole tour of it, and they haven't even really had sporadic horn appearances in like 20 years

I saw them on that 91 tour with the Giant Country Horns, never having heard a note of their music, at the Bayou in DC. Completely blew me away but I lost the thread shortly thereafter.

this is def one of the best phish shows i've ever heard even though it features pretty much none of the searching improvisational fugues that i fell in love with. the horns just sound SO good and give the show so much energy and as a bonus make phish sound way tighter than normal

Brad you are becoming a true blue phan

a picture of nectar is a solid hour of everything that’s really bad about phish

“stash” is still good. “stash” is always good

11/19/92: fantastic show for the most part, really ideal versions of "foam," "split open and melt," "divided sky" in the first set, the debut of a bunch of rift tracks, the highlight of which is a "fast enough for you" with additional pedal steel (said pedal steel also turns "llama" into a really hot basement with mold growing in the corners, best rendition of the song i've heard yet). "tweezer" is a nightmare, in a good way. unfortunately "lengthwise" is the closest i've come to thinking "fuck this band" during one of their shows

really glad they did away with having an obligatory fishman singing showcase in the second set, always a momentum slaughterer

rift is awesome!!!!!!

"horn" is one of the best phish songs ever imo

I love Horn.

8/26/93: wow! wow!!!! best show yet. first time they sound like a Real band, by which i think i mean there's just a confidence and professionalism where previously there wasn't exactly a lack but it wasn't the priority. they are just firing on all cylinders for the whole fuckin' show. first set is an embarrassment of riches, the "reba" totally perfect, the "split open and melt" flickering like a damaged signal. they even jam briefly on "fee" which makes me like the song a lot more lol. what sets '93 improv apart, afaict, is the density, more than ever page and trey feel like they're creating these masses of notes that jut out at odd angles like a mountain of cars in a junkyard

link for the interested: https://www.livephish.com/browse/music/0,1200/Phish-mp3-flac-download-8-26-1993-Arlene-Schnitzer-Concert-Hall-Portland-OR

it is a real treat hearing these first reactions from someone with a honed but open-minded musical ear. i couldn't agree more that picture of nectar blows and rift is awesome (somewhat controversial opinion among phish fans who, afaict, are going just based on how many "classic" phish songs each album contains), and love your descriptions of how the improv changes and improves from 92 to 93 (conventional wisdom in the fan community but you articulated the qualitative difference so nicely)

August 93 was kind of the first era of the band to develop legendary status, soon to be followed by June 94, November 94, December 95. 96 widely considered an off-year (though making a statement like that is sure to elicit valid defenses of numerous shows therein), and then once you get to 97 the really experimental improv becomes such a mainstay that it's hard to single out specific stretches. However, by that time a lot of the tightness starts to wane so you have to really be in it for the jamming

Horn is an absolute beauty. Part of the reason Rift stands head and shoulders above the other albums of its era, imo, is it captured this little window where Trey was writing reasonably normal lyrics about relatable human experiences, but before the quirkiness seeped out and those lyrics just became corny and trite. Horn is a great example of that sweet spot. It's also just such a lovely composed guitar solo.

I took guitar lessons from this grizzled blues dude in 8th and 9th grade, and he would just ask me to bring in tapes of the songs I wanted to learn. It was lots of Phish and Zeppelin, as I recall. I remember always having the distinct feeling that he was happy to teach me whatever I wanted, but didn't have the highest opinion of the non-classic stuff I'd bring him. When he was teaching me Divided Sky, though, I remember him complimenting the writing on a particular section - the one right after the proggy atonal part, but before the slow ethereal part - in addition to giving me a sense of pride in Trey/Phish for impressing him, it spurred me to attend to and appreciate how their composed sections and melodies are structured in a new way.

ugh a picture of nectar was so bad. sequenced nonsensically, and a really good case study of using the studio to ruin and drain the energy from your own songs

i'm really glad the shows i selected for this project so far hit close to or dead within those classic periods you name

this is the project so far btw:

- the white tape ✓
- colorado ‘88 ✓
- junta ✓
- 8/26/89 townshend family park, townshend, vt ✓
- lawn boy ✓
- 10/31/90 armstrong theatre, colorado springs, co ✓
- 7/12/91 colonial theatre, keene, nh ✓
- a picture of nectar ✓
- 11/19/92 ross arena, saint michael’s college ✓
- rift ✓
- 8/26/93 arlene schnitzer concert hall, portland, or ✓
- 12/31/93 worcester centrum theatre, worcester, ma
hoist
- 7/8/94 great woods performing arts center, mansfield, ma
- 12/19/94 providence civic center, providence, rh
- 6/19/95 deer creek music center, noblesville, in
- 11/14/95 university of central florida arena, orlando, fl
- billy breathes
- 11/2/96 coral sky amphitheater, west palm beach, fl

well, i almost formatted that well

i will resist the urge to give you any advance notice of what awaits you; suffice to say i'll continue to look forward to the project documentation :-)

12/31/93: chosen because some fans rate this as the best show ever. i can see why they think that, it's a really well-rounded show, but the august 93 show i heard before this was just a little more thrilling. i also suspect people really rate this show because of the "harry hood," which is exactly that good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z15ORtarX4

regardless, really fun show, amazing debut of the "down with disease" jam right out of "auld lang syne." as usual fantastic reads of "reba" and "split open and melt" even though imo both are in better form (the former more beautiful, the latter more broken and fucked up) on 8/26/93. i really like "it's ice" every time it appears in the set and this was my favorite yet, the falling apart section was really beautifully played

hoist: i heard "lifeboy" for the first time during the 8/26/93 show and got fairly caught up in trey's solo but the song itself really came together for me in the studio recording, which is one of the most gorgeous things they've ever done imo. proto-billy breathes for sure. the guests are all refreshing and add warmth to the songs even though it is super weird to hear alison krauss' voice on a phish record, and "wolfman's brother" sounds totally sick with horns. pretty good album! better than expected, if not quite as special as the two that follow

7/8/94: went out on my roof tonight to watch fireworks and smoke weed and listen to the first set of this show, which is all gamehenge including narration, and it's phenomenal

what's different about '94 phish? well so far it's starting to feel like literally anything could happen in the middle of a jam, e.g. the way "llama" just falls apart into "N02" at the start of this show

the "stash" from a live one was taken from the second set; not sure if i'm gonna make it there tonight but the fireworks are still going off so who needs sleep

12/29/94: i could talk about this show but i could also just post the second set's 35-minute "david bowie," which starts off in an event horizon-esque "outer space is hell" place and only gets scarier from there. '94 phish is maybe a little less loose and wandering than '97 or '98 but the spirit of that later style starts here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MmY8oL8B_I

a live one: just because it's hilarious to make this project way longer than it has to be, i'm revisiting the two official live releases from the '90s, this and slip stitch and pass. somehow a live one sounds even better now that i have a lot more context for where they were at that point. the "yem" is astonishing. i loved this "stash" before i even thought i liked phish. etc. one of the best live albums ever

Goddamit, Brad!

I'm listening to Phish for the first time since probably 99 and maybe earlier than that. I absorbed plenty of them in college in the early-90s and then post-college friends were into them so I knew some stuff up to Billy Breathes. I liked a few of their bigger, more poppy songs but generally thought they were tiresome.

Since then I got heavily into jazz and the Dead and now I'm listening to Junta and really enjoying it. Definitely nostalgic because certain songs I can instantly recall from those days.

I'm really enjoying reading your journey through Phish, Brad. I agree that A Picture of Nectar is one of their weaker albums, but I think "The Mango Song" and "Guelah Papyrus" are great underrated songs that they got right in the studio.

When I got really into Phish in 1998 as a 6th grader I had the 5th edition of the Pharmer's Almanac that came out that year, and that shit was like the bible to me. It had all the known setlists through the Island Tour (it was thin on mid 80s shows; apparently lots more shows/tapes have come to light since then). I didn't have access to tapes, so my live Phish collection at the time was limited to A Live One and Slip Stitch and Pass. I would pore through the setlists and show notes in the Pharmer's Almanac and fantasize about hearing, e.g., 12/31/95 (voted #1 show of all time by phans in that book), the fall 1997 tour, the Great Went, etc. When we got internet in my house in late 98 I found some fan sites that had Real Audio™ streams of a few shows and that was like manna from heaven. I realize I keep using religious terms to speak of this band lol.

By the time I finally saw them live in 2000 (5/21/00 Radio City and 9/22/00 Rosemont Horizon) I wasn't as obsessed as I had been a year or two prior, but I feel very lucky to have witnessed the tail end of 1.0. I started paying close attention to them again circa the 2017 Baker's Dozen shows, and whenever I put on a show it feels like coming home

Wow, thanks for that David Bowie!

This is ideal phish to me.

Mr. Narrator
This is ideal phish to me.

Add my post to the pile thanking BN for the posts and journey. I played the 94 David Bowie for a rat I live-caught as I drove to release it 15 miles away. Really enhanced the experience.

Feel kinda bad the lil guy mostly got "outer space is hell" before drop off in a new home.

Sky Blu Sky era Wilco sounds a lot like LivePhish vol 20

Add my post to the pile thanking BN for the posts and journey. I played the 94 David Bowie for a rat I live-caught as I drove to release it 15 miles away. Really enhanced the experience.

― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, July 5, 2021 6:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

literally the best story i've ever read

but I think "The Mango Song" and "Guelah Papyrus" are great underrated songs that they got right in the studio.

i think this is right! "mango song" is ill-served by how late it appears in the tracklist. "guelah papyrus" is one of those songs that is sick both in the studio and live even though it doesn't really get jammed out, the 12/31/93 "papyrus" is freakin tense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpROAhjbXcA

i think almost every show i've picked for this project has a "reba" and i'm not complaining

Oh hell yeah, that's a flawless hi-NRG Guelah xp.

The blissed-out jam section of Reba is my favorite Phish jam, so the presence of a Reba is often a deciding factor when I'm picking a show to listen to

speaking of, from the show i'm currently listening to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n861757Irsw

6/19/95: too early to judge probably but the vibe i get from 95 phish is "victory lap." they are playing at such a high level that even the songs i do not care for at all ("cavern," "poor heart" with added screaming and punk energy) sound dope, and the jamming, when it happens, is always taking you into an elsewhere state; "antelope" is not necessarily my favorite vehicle for phish jamming, but the "antelope" here leaves a lot of scorched earth behind it. the "reba," posted above, rivals and potentially outdoes 8/26/93 for my favorite "reba" yet, effortlessly slipping from dreamy impressionism into a cathartic rock finale. at this point they are playing "david bowie" at 100x speed or something and once again the jam is a fully can-esque nightmare. and yet the peak of this set may be the opener, "theme from the bottom"?

ooh mama, lots of activity on Brad's project and on this thread while I was away camping for the weekend. I'll have more thoughts at some point, but Brad, just wanted to say to follow up on your previous love for summer '91 horns Phish, that another side alley to go down might be Trey's self titled album of 2002 + the live album Plasma. That era is peak use of horns, in my opinion, as Trey tries to take the M.O. of afrobeat and apply it to his unique songwriting styles. There are a few clunkers on that album but some great ones as well. It's also still an acquired taste, but not to the same degree as Phish - that stuff is easier to situate in a paradigm, and it is insanely groovy and danceable.

11/14/95: this is even better than the other '95 show, dynamite first set with early renditions of "billy breathes" and "free," the latter even leading into a jam(? don't think i've heard that happen before). second set immediately announces its intentions with a very angry "maze" a slightly askew "gumbo" and then... the motherlode... that's right... the 40 minute "stash"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7q_4uFFRLA

which i would say is about as good as phish ever gets

fucking incredible

i love phish

I have been inexplicably seduced by Brad's running commentary in this thread and am bookmarking

i especially love "like a pink floyd album being composed in real time" phish

paul don't do it! reconsider!

Too late! I'm digging out my copies of A Live One and the one disc-rotted LivePhish volume I have as we speak!

well in that case, wash uffitze drive me to firenze

shiiiiiiiit

update:

- the white tape ✓
- colorado ‘88 ✓
- junta ✓
- 8/26/89 townshend family park, townshend, vt ✓
- lawn boy ✓
- 10/31/90 armstrong theatre, colorado springs, co ✓
- 7/12/91 colonial theatre, keene, nh ✓
- a picture of nectar ✓
- 11/19/92 ross arena, saint michael’s college ✓
- rift ✓
- 8/26/93 arlene schnitzer concert hall, portland, or ✓
- 12/31/93 worcester centrum theatre, worcester, ma ✓
hoist ✓
- 7/8/94 great woods performing arts center, mansfield, ma ✓
- 12/19/94 providence civic center, providence, rh ✓
- a live one ✓
- 6/19/95 deer creek music center, noblesville, in ✓
- 11/14/95 university of central florida arena, orlando, fl ✓
- billy breathes
- 11/2/96 coral sky amphitheater, west palm beach, fl
- slip stitch and pass
- 8/10/97 deer creek music center, noblesville, in
- 11/23/97 lawrence joel veterans memorial coliseum, winston-salem, nc
- 4/4/98 providence civic center, providence, ri
- 8/1/98 alpine valley music theater, east troy, wi
- the story of the ghost

if anyone feels like recommending me another '97 or '98 show... please do... otherwise i'm just gonna listen to the only show i haven't heard in the hampton/winston-salem 97 box, and it's gonna be great

i also have two '99 shows on my hard drive and remember nothing about them, so i'm thinking of just relistening to them lol

apologies in advance, but the phish revisit brought back a few small related anecdotes to pepper between BN's posts of actual substance. (hiding for easy skipping) 1) I spent a good portion of my elementary school days at the high school gym, forced to watch my older sisters play volleyball. To pass the time, I'd hang around the open section of hallway next to the concession stand. A part of the hallway featured student works of art, including a faithful pencil drawn copy of the Storm Thorgerson photo on the cover of Slip Stitch and Pass. I was infatuated with the drawing and would make a point of admiring it every game, probably while eating starburst fruit twists. I considered it to be the greatest work of art at the time, during which my own art was mostly drawings of dunking basketball players with lightning bolts in the background. 2) I had a similar obsession with my older brother's Junta shirt with the fish-shaped "PHISH" logo. I would search for it by rifling through the basket of clean-but-not-folded laundry. This was all before I ever heard the music. 3) In high school, I admired an older guitarist that owned an actual all-white stratocaster and was technically much better than me. My friend heard his band was going to play You Enjoy Myself at the high school battle of the bands in 2002. I was so disappointed when they knowingly played only the short funky bit, segueing out of Roses Are Free. Nobody gives a shit about isolated sections of Phish songs.

billy breathes: i think ghost is my favorite phish studio album but there's no doubt in my mind this is their most successful studio outing. it sounds incredible, they're writing many actually-good songs, and they actually replicate the feeling of their jams, it's just in the sequencing (especially on the abbey road-esque cascade of the second side) instead of the playing

"taste" is my favorite phish song that's not "harry hood"

lol at this lillywhite quote on the wiki

"Phish, for me, are the musical equivalent of watching a flock of birds fly across the sky: They don't scatter every which way, but rather, they move with each other; they dip and dive, they go up and down; but at all times, they seem to have this radar, this instinct, for where the bird in front or in back of them is going. Musically, each member of Phish knows what the other is doing, which then carries over to the whole. The band can play anything, which then raises the question: Well, what should they play? With Billy Breathes, it's the closest they got to making what I would say is a good stoner album. You know what I mean: you put on the CD, you fire up a big one and you just go down that road. There hadn't been a good stoner record since Dark Side Of The Moon. Billy Breathes got close. I keep telling Trey Anastasio we can make a better one."

"taste" is lovely,one of their best. you owe it to yourself to listen to the 7/22/97 walnut creek version, which was released on a dvd at some point

one of my favorite things about trey anastasio is that he can play the drums

Even more reason for you to hear 8/10/97 then! Spoiler tags in case you want to be surprised...

The long, involved Rotation Jam to set up Rock A William started when Page went to the theremin for a solo. Soon after, Trey took up the keys and Mike went to play guitar. Page eventually picked up Mike’s bass. After they jammed a bit longer, Mike went to join Trey on the keys. Trey then joined Fish on the drums. The two of them played on the same drum set and Mike took a piano solo. Trey eventually kicked Fish off the drum stool, and Fish picked up Trey’s guitar.

i have downloaded a copy of that show jvc, thanks for the rec!!! it’ll be a good follow-up to the 11/2/96 “crosseyed and painless” which trey plays a small percussion kit on afaict

my pick for the phish song that is amazing every time it's played even though it never turns into a jam is "the lizards"

Lizards coda, while it doesn't jam, is a jam

11/2/96: was '96 an off-year for phish? starting the first set with "ya mar" and "julius" tells me they're not really in a hurry to go anywhere, so maybe! "stash," which had been flipped upside down and shaken over the past two years, is... just very normal-good here. the "free" jam is very cool though, better than the one a year ago in '95, feels like the song is drowning in its own reverberations

was '96 an off-year for phish? alternate answer: not if you're listening to any minute of the coral sky "crosseyed" > "antelope"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpdAqCjnEvg

"Phish, for me, are the musical equivalent of watching a flock of birds fly across the sky: They don't scatter every which way, but rather, they move with each other; they dip and dive, they go up and down; but at all times, they seem to have this radar, this instinct, for where the bird in front or in back of them is going. Musically, each member of Phish knows what the other is doing, which then carries over to the whole. The band can play anything, which then raises the question: Well, what should they play? With Billy Breathes, it's the closest they got to making what I would say is a good stoner album. You know what I mean: you put on the CD, you fire up a big one and you just go down that road. There hadn't been a good stoner record since Dark Side Of The Moon. Billy Breathes got close. I keep telling Trey Anastasio we can make a better one."
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Tuesday, July 6, 2021 10:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I kind of want to say the same thing to this guy that I always want to say to overenthusiastic deadheads - "You know there's a whole genre of music called jazz, right?"

'96 always felt like a weird transitional year to me. I feel like they were still adjusting to having a whole new level of popularity and interest, along with the bigger arenas and expectations. Part of this was planned and a natural part of their evolution as a group, but toss in the wild and weird expectations in the post Jerry Garcia void and, well, I think they struggled to find their footing. They hadn't yet latched onto the cowfunk sound that would inform the best moments of '97, especially that fall tour, plus they spent some time being an opening act again (for Santana in Europe). But yeah, I always find '96 to be less engaging than either year around it.

Fwiw, Rob Mitchum has a pretty nice substack going where he goes over shows from 25 years ago the day of, right in the middle of that Santana opening run right now - https://phishcrit.substack.com/.

you know that makes a lot of sense

a lot of phish dot net reviews of the 95 shows i listened to were chronicling the loss of garcia and the influx of dead fans in phish audiences

Yeah, I'm sure the crossover was starting before '96, but summer of '96 would have been the first summer without a Dead tour in ages, so I think that's when the influx really hit home. I remember so many magazine articles in '96 about how Phish was the "logical" replacement for the Dead, I have to imagine that fucked with their heads a little bit.

i should also say that "crosseyed" is the first appearance of the funk siren in this project so far

they could've put out an album with 11/2/96 "crosseyed" on the a-side and "antelope" on the b-side and it would be the best phish album ever (i have listened to this jam a few times today lol)

a lot of fans date the genesis of the funky '97 sound to their choice to cover Remain in Light for their '96 Halloween costume, and the Coral Sky Crosseyed>Antelope is sort of like that seed poking its head up through the ground for the first time. You can sort of feel that they were learning to play in new ways in order to not thoroughly embarrass themselves doing RiL, and then that show, which is the very next show after Halloween, they're just bursting to integrate those new moves into their jamming

i have to start reading that phish substack, i really enjoyed this piece about the fearlessly ugly 30 minute "tweezer" they put on a live one https://phishcrit.substack.com/p/the-long-game

I saw phish once per year in 1993/94/95/96 at venues that held 1610, 1590, 8023, and 37,000 people respectively. That last year felt much different, huge and druggier and sketchier with lots of people who had obviously migrated over from Dead shows.

I saw them again in 2016 and it felt kind of shiny and wholesome, with lots of old people my age with nice cars, camping with their kids, and discussing their jobs in the cannabis industry.

slip stitch and pass aka 3/1/97 abridged and rearranged: i love this album. it’s quaint sitting next to a live one as their second official live release but that’s why it’s good. it’s the phish live digest, less commitment than a full show and yet a complete-feeling snapshot anyway. the “wolfman’s brother” is perfect, the “mike’s groove” always entertaining if a little self-conscious of where it’s going with all the floyd and doors quotes, and a ripping performance of “taste.” i also love that christgau really liked this record, makes a weird kind of sense to me

did i add this show to my list when i found it on youtube? yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8tHfibTkJ0

profoundly uncool people play music together

i was not impressed with the "ghost" that opened that show but this "bathtub gin" is hot

made me that more excited to hear the legendary winston-salem "bathtub gin" which is coming up :D

and the "wolfman's" > "magilla" > "bowie" was totally worth adding yet another show to my list

Brad, have you heard the 7/29/98 Bathtub Gin? 25-minute show opener, legendary euphoric jam. The rest of the show is really good too, would be a worthy stop for when you hit 98.

i haven’t!!!! hooray

oh yeah this is the famous "gin" included as filler on the unrelated '98 date they used for livephish 17... gonna try to find the whole show

7/10/97: thank you for recommending this show to me jvc. if there were a soundboard available, i would buy it. as it is, the audience recording i found is OK but weirdly cuts out between and sometimes during songs; regardless it's clear enough that you can hear how phenomenal the first set is, particularly the "gin," "down with disease," and ESPECIALLY the "split open and melt" which has grown far crazier since the last time i heard it in '94 or so? and the "split open and melt"s in '94 were bonkers!!!! capped off with yet another beautiful and cosmic "harry hood," if it were possible to rank "harry hood"s it'd probably be one of the best ever

second set is a little less thrilling buts that's because (as you expected jvc) the rotation jam doesn't really translate to an audio recording

it's hard to divide up phish years like dead years (the dead, for one, had lineup changes which make it easy to identify certain eras) even though there's obviously something distinct going on in each of the crucial '90s periods. but i would say the most significant and isolatable shifts in phish's playing and sound occurred in august 93 and over the course of 1997, peaking in the fall. the jams are far more open and less crowded than they used to be, and everyone feels more inclined to ride a groove than to smash a bunch of chords up against each other. if they're not quite playing in the world of infinite possibility that defined '94-'95, it feels like they're headed toward much more mysterious and rich dimensions

Great descriptions again!

Not sure if you're already past this point but I'd also encourage you to listen to the full Hampton/Winston-Salem 1997 box set. At the very least, supplement your 11/23/97 plan with the second set of 11/22 as well. The Halley's Comet is all-time.

7/29/98 Bathtub Gin is a fantastic add as well.

My other highest priority recommendation to add to your project is to supplement 4/4/98 with (at least) the 2nd set of 4/3/98. I was at 4/4 and love it but the Roses Are Free -> Piper is must hear. As is the Twist from 4/2, actually...

i've heard every island tour show! it was my gateway, and 4/4/98 is my (first) favorite phish show of all time largely because the "tweezer" > "taste" is a perfect half hour of music and the second set is fucking relentless. i really rate the "roses are free" > "piper" from 4/3 though

i'm revisiting 4/4/98 because i wanna see how it stacks up now that i've heard so much more phish lol. also a video of it seems to have surfaced on youtube in the past two months

i've also heard most of the hampton/winston-salem box, i've been saving the last show for reasons unknown to me other than it's hard to listen to a box set of three very long shows with any kind of discipline

ah, I get that.

xp I love that 4/3/98 Roses Are Free so much because it has the unbounded creativity you accurately associated with '94-'95 above, but with the restraint of '97-'98. And then the Piper is all about restraint - find a menacingly slinky groove and just build it for like 10 minutes, at least that's how I remember it. Anyway, glad you already know those shows. Many days I'd say they're the pinnacle of Phish.

xpost - Glad you liked it, I think it's a great show even if it's not available at the highest sound quality. I wore a tape of that show out back in grad school and I guess I'd hoped maybe a better source had popped up in recent years, but not really. Anyway, yeah, that first set is so bonkers and I'm not surprised the rotation jam doesn't really hold up, though I still have vivid images of Page playing the theremin and the absolutely huge goofy grins the dudes all had as they goofed around.

I found CDs of the full Island Tour at Reckless about five or six years ago and snagged them all for about $35 total - that was a happy day.

"piper" is so simple that it is barely a song and yet it's like the best phish song ever

oh yeah

it's even less of a song nowadays - starting in '99 or '00 or thereabouts they stopped doing the "slow build," to the chagrin of many or most fans, and just get right to it and launch the jam.

Thinking about "Piper" and the lyrics reminded me of another must hear '97 show, the 7/2/97 show from Amsterdam with the legendary, creepy "Back of the Worm" jam and narration. (really the whole Amsterdam '97 box is killer, but this show is particularly deep in weird and unsettling Phish. In Trey's words:

"I usually don't talk about my drug use, because I feel it's a private thing, but, whatever, I'll tell you this one story. When we were in Amsterdam, me and a friend took a couple of hits of acid and a hit of Ecstasy later on that night. We were walking around and I started imagining I was riding on this giant sandworm, because the roads kind of go up and down. I was picturing these huge sandworms, diving up out of the canals. That's where that phrase, "Back of the Worm," came from. The next night in the middle of this crazy jam--one of these jams that get out of control and you feel like you're not really playing, it's just playing for you--I think I was yelling that and people started saying, "Back of the worm!" Then I read about it on a T-shirt six months later and I'm laughing 'cause I was with my friend who was with me that night in Amsterdam. We were just laughing that some guy was wearing a T-shirt with "Back of the Worm" on it."

also forgot to say the “cities” jam in the second set of the 97 deer creek show is very very good, prime jazz fusion phish

Yes! Meant to ask about that "Cities"!

i ended up going back to it a few times, really phenomenal, especially after hearing so many straight "cities" covers without a jam portion. the "bowie" from that show was also like.... really weird. nine minutes of space noises before the head even appeared

really loved that show, even when it didn't work at all, thanks again jvc, my kingdom for a soundboard

eh fuck it i'm listening to the whole hampton/winston-salem box

i fucking LOVE “punch you in the eye”

hot take all the gamehenge songs are great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pSY7JXlc9c

well this is well-timed (i love the lost in vegas dudes)

i bet they don't like it!!!

11/21/97: well this show is just fucking amazing idk what to tell you. fall 1997 phish is the best band in the world. first set underrated, the "emotional rescue" groove is hypnotizing and the "punch you in the eye" gains so much from that extended dwelling on the funky opening riff; "chalk dust" gets weird and "prince caspian" gradually decays into delay pedal echoes. second set is basically everything i love about phish, and i don't even think "ac/dc bag" is a great song (i know what i said earlier about gamehenge) ("ac/dc bag" IS a great riff on "life during wartime") (i love that phish just love the talking heads so much). the "ghost" jam is quiet and unassuming and then very... emotional? not really used to this song going there but it's way more inner space than outer space. the "bag" is a psychedelic experience that bleeds right into a gorgeous like... pointillist "slave to the traffic light"? right into "loving cup," which they play really well bc they're fucking feeling it. 10/10. the show after this is somehow better

Love reading Brad enthusing over Phish <3 <3

This reminds me that it has been way too long since I pulled out that H/W-S box.

seconded on both counts!

the vocals on that live moma dance are just painful. feel like if you plot phish live track instrumental performance vs vocal performance, that video would be way upper left.

lol def

i like that they keyed into my favorite kind of phish jam style and dubbed it "alien spaceship taking off"

'reserve judgement' was an understandable conclusion. I think they'd dig most of the Ghost studio album. they sing mostly on key there.

rift, billy, and ghost all feature lovely singing from a bunch of dudes who cannot sing at all

well, i guess, of all of them, page can sing

Page is the most conventionally successful/accurate vocalist, but since none of them are "good" singers, might as well lean in to the weirdness. I've definitely seen non-fan opinions - possibly on ilx, possibly upthread! - that preferred Fishman's or Mike's vocals

lol that is very interesting to me. i like trey's voice actually. mike only tolerable as a backing vocal presence live even though i've gotten used to him on lead

Trey's singing voice is what put me off the Dead at Soldier Field thing. Thought his playing was fine, even good, and those are obviously big shoes to fill, but the vocals didn't work for me. I've come to mind them less now that I've dipped my toes a little deeper into Phish, thanks in large part to this thread!

Yeah, Trey's voice never really meshed well with the Dead's sound, even when his guitar did. But even that was hit or miss on certain songs. Love the Dead, love Phish, but they don't really mix - even though I'm glad I caught one of those shows.

I hate to admit it, but Josh Mayer does a much better job of fitting into the Dead's sound than Trey did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4MZWwYtQdk

goddamn

i don't even like "halley's comet" as a song at all but the song is obviously beside the point here

11/22/97: obviously a ridiculous comparison on its face but at their best phish remind me of agharta-era miles davis and that's exactly the kind of space that the opening "mike's groove" works itself into on both ends, riding the newfound funk of the "mike's" into realms that resemble either heaven or hell, while the "groove" feels like jamming in reverse, gradually stripping itself of elements and volume until we're in a universe of pure psychic emanations, which trey stops dead before launching into another solo over the head. fuckin....this is phish. then they play "harry hood"! it is not my favorite "harry hood" but it is still really beautiful and makes this show almost too special

second set is like the band went through the wormhole and came back changed, cf. the "halley's comet" posted above. would probably rank high on my personal favorite shows but i'm trying to avoid becoming such a deep fan that i have a list of my favorite shows if you know what i mean. it's not working

i think in the ideal phish set, the "breather" songs just end up feel like extensions of the jam or mood they've already set up, and set one of 11/22/97 easily feels that way for me, despite the fact that you can kinda divide it in half between jams and breathers. i'd say the only real flaw of that entire show is that "billy breathes" seems really hard to play, lotta slightly flubbed chords when they slip into that one

ideal phish first set*

is what i think i mean, bc breathers rarely rear their heads in second sets at this point

Otm re: 11/22/97 Mike's Groove. I listened to this one a few days ago and was reminded how much I love "I Am Hydrogen." It's the perfect ethereal breather between the deep jams of Mike's and Weekapaug. As much as the jams are the main attraction, I'm always slightly disappointed when "Hydrogen" gets left out of the Groove

Agharta-era Miles is a much beloved sound in the Phish world ime so hard core fans would prob not find it a ridiculous comparison

11/23/97: there's probably a better argument for 11/22 being the ultimate phish show, for one thing the setlist is more consistent, but this is my favorite show of the hampton/winston-salem box, from the moment the "theme from the bottom" jam starts it's like the band themselves have tapped into a '95-ish energy, just applied to the more cosmic stylings of '97. this, at least, is my explanation for why "black-eyed katy" feels so distinct from its workout on the previous night, and why "twish" into "stash" is like a dream where you walk through a door and realize you're walking on the ceiling of the room you stepped into, i.e. blood collects and boils in the head of this "stash." phish fans who care about them not fucking up the really complicated composed sections of their songs will balk at how much i love the "fluffhead" from this show, but again, the energy, it even infects "character zero" which i think of as a set non-event (great closer for that reason) and they just play the shit out of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2HgeBj_py4

^^^ the second set is a single 50-minute jam that swerves between "bathtub gin" and "down with disease" (and which, as a jam, may exceed the quality of the "halley's comet" from the previous night) with a "bold as love" coda, yet another perfunctory phish set ender that gets a transcendent reading at this show

12/11/97: ok i almost can't believe it but i may have a new favorite show? there isn't an official livephish release of it but if you can find the boot (see: slsk) it'll likely be a soundboard recording, one of the very first from the fall '97 tour. (there's also an aud on youtube, i haven't heard it but one of the comments reps for it lol.) the first set is inexplicable, just like blinking in disbelief as it happens, from the heavily syncopated "punch you in the eye" to the watery, uneasy "disease" jam, after which i begin to feel like a train hit me and i'm using whatever bones aren't broken to crawl through this "maze." "dirt" is the most gorgeous phish song ever and the best phish lyric, hardcore depressive stuff (i'm finally spit out of the maze only to realize i'm depressed and alienated from everyone i know?? that's the breather in the set??? ok!!!!) then "limb by limb," gentle unfolding arabesque of a song, always feels like hands stretching out a paper lantern, and the soft dreaminess they extend it into... bliss, phish at the peak of their powers, one of those jams where it feels like the band is actively shaping trey's solo, which builds and builds and builds and explodes back into the chorus, the vocals of which hang over the song as it disintegrates into the opening chords of "loving cup," a usually solid cover that seems extra forceful on this night, maybe bc it's responding to how many headfirst dives through the widening gyre they've done in the last hour. "rocky top" played at punk speed. hell yeah. best first set ever

does the second set pale in comparison! not really! it has a distinct narrative from the first, which i think charts an anxiety attack, whereas the second set is all about hell and doom. it also leans surprisingly heavily on covers which i think thematically rhymes with the end of the first set, and it's also like phish the band is falling away from the music hovering in front of them. the who's "drowned" almost threatens to be a more traditional jam and then it hits a groove for a few minutes and as soon as it loosens from the groove it's like they've steered the whole ship into a cave of glowing limestone. this is "composing a pink floyd album in real time" phish!!!! the very first "roses are free" masses out of the darkness they've driven into and it's like... coming up for air, haha, yeah, especially because they play it straight, only hints of what they could knit out of its ends by april 98, but also it turns into a furious "big black furry creature from mars" which, idk, maybe phish should've written a few more hard-sci-fi hardcore more-than-halfway-to-naked-city-by-the-time-the-noise-breakdown-starts type songs. lots of debris and smoke after that jam, and then they just... snap into "ghost," which page adds a lot of clavinet to just to make it funkier???? it works. the jam is deeply entranced, quiet and groovy and lovely, all gentle gradations, not as showy or spacey as "ghost"s past and future but maybe ultimately more haunted for that, cf. page's keyboard shimmers in the first half. as the band starts to regain volume the jam starts bending itself right back into... the "down with disease" solo!!!! thereby tying the entire show together. blistering "johnny b. goode." "waste" encore. perfect show, or idk as perfect as a phish show could be for me

also a full 15 minutes shorter than most phish shows. would you believe it helps

Brad your enthusiasm seems only to grow as you get deeper into this! I hope you left yourself a trail of breadcrumbs.

I hesitate to tell you this but there is some great video footage of 12/11/97 contained within the first widely released Phish doc, Bittersweet Motel. Hesitation because if you haven't seen it, much of your good will towards the world of Phish will be seriously threatened by the non-musical parts of the movie, which paint the fans and the scene (indisputably), and the band itself (disputably), in a highly unattractive light. However you can skip around to just the music parts. :-)

Also FYI if you don't know -- http://www.phishtracks.com and http://www.phish.in (though I think soundboards are far better in general)

i will be watching bittersweet motel as part of this project lol. i'm v excited to see the footage of 12/11/97

Oh man, yeah. LS otm wrt to that documentary. Worth it for some of the performances, but such a terrible reflection of the fans/scene.

Also FYI if you don't know -- http://www.phishtracks.com and http://www.phish.in (though I think soundboards are far better in general)

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Monday, July 12, 2021 3:22 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

i did know about phish dot in but i didn't know about phishtracks! thank you!

project update, rest of 1.0 mapped out:

- the white tape ✓
- colorado ‘88 ✓
- junta ✓
- 8/26/89 townshend family park, townshend, vt ✓
- lawn boy ✓
- 10/31/90 armstrong theatre, colorado springs, co ✓
- 7/12/91 colonial theatre, keene, nh ✓
- a picture of nectar ✓
- 11/19/92 ross arena, saint michael’s college ✓
- rift ✓
- 8/26/93 arlene schnitzer concert hall, portland, or ✓
- 12/31/93 worcester centrum theatre, worcester, ma ✓
- hoist ✓
- 7/8/94 great woods performing arts center, mansfield, ma ✓
- 12/19/94 providence civic center, providence, rh ✓
- a live one ✓
- 6/19/95 deer creek music center, noblesville, in ✓
- 11/14/95 university of central florida arena, orlando, fl ✓
- billy breathes ✓
- 11/2/96 coral sky amphitheater, west palm beach, fl ✓
- slip stitch and pass ✓
- 7/21/97 virginia beach amphitheatre, virginia beach, va ✓
- 8/10/97 deer creek music center, noblesville, in ✓
- 11/21/97 hampton coliseum, hampton, va ✓
- 11/22/97 hampton coliseum, hampton, va ✓
- 11/23/97 lawrence joel veterans memorial coliseum, winston-salem, nc ✓
- 12/11/97 rochester war memorial, rochester, ny ✓ (new favorite show alert)
- 4/4/98 providence civic center, providence, ri
- bittersweet motel
- 7/29/98 riverport amphitheater, maryland heights, mo
- 8/1/98 alpine valley music theater, east troy, wi
- the story of the ghost
- the siket disc
- 7/23/99 polaris amphitheatre, columbus, oh
- 12/11/99 first union spectrum, philadelphia, pa
- farmhouse
- 6/13/00 drum logos, fukuoka, japan
- 10/7/00 shoreline amphitheatre, mountain view, ca

you can do more on phish dot in but phishtracks is less buggy ime

please add the Trey solo live album Plasma to your agenda

oh good rec, that'll be a nice break between 1.0 and 2.0

watching bittersweet motel. someone tell me todd phillips recorded all of 12/11/97 and the footage is sitting in a vault somewhere, decaying. they're playing so well they even manage to look cool

i'm not very far in yet but idk just the clip of them arranging "birds of a feather" endeared them all to me

to say nothing of the Great Went, which is also amazing and heavily features in the movie. I do think they probably have pro footage of both complete shows. Maybe someday.

There are a few extras on the DVD from 12/11 - Punch You in the Eye, Big Black Furry Creature, and Dirt

ugh i am gonna buy a used dvd of bittersweet motel, i see this in my future

the movie did not bum me out until the great went montage started. the band (by which i mean trey mostly) comes off a little full of themselves but also with the correct perspective on what they're doing and why they're doing it. the concert footage is insanely great throughout, it's only when i see trey in a goofy beanie during went that i remember phish is the goofiest band i will ever like. trey interacting with the fan was one of the strangest interactions i have ever seen and made me think it must be weird to have adoring stoned fans when you yourself are stoned and driving a golf cart. the intensity with which trey judged the first set at the great went really surprised me honestly but ... then again it does not surprise me that they took their project very seriously at this point

a really solid music doc

i did think interviewing those two dudes about weed and babes was a little much, todd phillips

the scene with the band that i remember being most cringy was in the gun shop. and yeah, those two guys - that's the one with "the chicks roll up in their v-dubs"... ugh

knowing what we know now about todd phillips' career and subject matter interests, it makes total sense the way he focused on the more party-oriented elements of the fan scene. a different director could've made as rich and convincing a movie though leaning into like the nerdier sides of phish fandom, the huge early internet presence, ties to prog, etc.

Re: early internet presence, the "phish.net" is the reason I first went online in 1991, to trade tapes and download guitar tabs. It was console-access back then, or at least it was before I knew about browsers.

oh yeah the gun shop scene was rough and thankfully brief. trey got a whip

the worst, most deflating moment in my phish fandom so far is when fishman employed a jamaican accent for the long dubbed-out reading of "lengthwise" on 11/19/92. ruined an otherwise good show

think there's still a kind-of-funny punchline to the gun shop scene, which is that trey only actually buys a whip, aka one of the few things in that shop he could use as a musical instrument

i
can see through the lights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b17Cp0V7OMg

my favorite performance of my favorite phish song

Ah man, was not aware of fake-patois "Lengthwise," that sucks. I think about that song all the time. It randomly pops into my head as a kind of mantra

i love it on rift for sure, down to the lyric

which, it's mostly a lyric lol

I've been working my way through the Amsterdam box for the last couple days for the first time, and Brad I know you're past 97 in your ever-expanding show queue but I just wanted to put 7/1/97 on your radar if you haven't heard it. Perfect setlist and they're on fire the whole time. Deep funk 97 Phish but with a looser, goofier touch than the fall tour--it's European Vacation Phish. The "Cities" in set 2 is extremely SLOW and gives me the "Pink Floyd in real time" vibes of which you speak so perceptively

Yeah that Amsterdam box is really great. I know this makes me an old-fashioned luddite, but I kinda hate that they are ignoring those nicely curated box sets and focusing just on digital only archival releases through LivePhish.

Feel like those boxes gave me more impetus to focus on a specific era, while the digital archival stuff kinda ends up being just more noise in the static.

Vegas '96, Roxy '93, Chicago '94, St. Louis '93, Amsterdam '97, Ventura, Hampton/Winston-Salem '97, Hampton Comes Alive - all so great.

i've been routinely downloading shows to check out after this project is over... whenever that is. i grabbed a really cool-looking august '93 show and, yes, the amsterdamn '97 box

Posted this in the rolling jazz thread, but I think it makes sense here too - Dezron Douglas, who has played with Makaya McCraven and Brandee Younger, among others, just got announced as the new bassist for Trey's solo band.

omfg that's so sick!!!!

Yeah, I think it's an incredible addition for Trey but not one I would have predicted at all.

joining the Bittersweet Motel watch. Trey popping balloons onstage with the cut ends of his guitar strings is edited to absurdly high drama.

lmao that scene is hilarious

4/4/98: if 12/11/97 has the best first set of all time, this has the best second set of all time, and i am very familiar with the previous night's second set "roses are free" jam, which is awesome don't get me wrong, but "birds of a feather" > "2001" > "brother" > a fast funny "single edit" of "brother" lol > "ghost" > "the lizards" > "david bowie," then encore "harry hood"???? explains itself i think. first set's got some downtime but as i said upthread, the "tweezer" > "taste" combo made me fall in love with phish

hearing '98 so close to '97 it strikes me as slightly lower energy, not necessarily in a bad way. maybe it's like how '95 feels like like a victory lap for '94; you can hear how they've gotten comfortable in this groovier-but-also-spacier-and-honestly-getting-spacier-by-the-month improvisational style

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zHOeq9MYc

they jam on "2001" for twelve minutes before they play the theme and you can hear the crowd go nuts when they finally do it

also i've listened to it many times and i'm still blown away by how they go from the vibrating "ghost" jam into "can't turn you loose" (they saved the party, brother!) into the opening of "the lizards"... so seamless. "brother" jam is also classic evil phish

these are the funniest sentences i have ever read on phish dot net

2) Dog Log: Who doesn't love a song about dog shit? Would go nuts if I ever saw this tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MGWHZC0xHU

fuuuuuuuuck, the riverport "gin"

what i am hearing approx 16 minutes in is astonishing to me

Hell yeah. I have weird feelings about that show because I could have gone to it if I had pushed my mom hard enough at the time. I was 12 years old and had started getting really into Phish earlier that year. I grew up in St. Louis, which is the closest big city to the Riverport Amphitheater, and I got their Doniac Schvice newsletter so I knew the upcoming tour dates. I think my mom was not too keen on the idea of taking me to this show, and I thought "well I'll have plenty of chances to see them in the future" so I didn't press the matter. I remember going to the library in the month after the show to log onto phish.net to check the setlist (we didn't have internet at my house until December 98 lol). I don't think I was too impressed with the setlist at the time because I was unfamiliar with half the songs, and it wasn't until years later that I realized the Riverport Gin was this legendary thing. So yeah, a time machine to spring 98 would be cool right now

7/29/98: think i've been listening to an audience recording of this, at least when A/B'ing the show with the livephish release of the riverport gin; it is one of the best sounding audience bootlegs i've ever heard so kudos to whoever taped it. this show is also phenomenal, first set is full of weird phish rarities and new songs (even though set-ender "birds of a feather" sorta has its wings clipped, pretty much a straight read of the studio version, whatever, awesome song, pleasure to hear it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv7NFBhzf-U

second set starts off really slippery with a bunch of massing psychic energy field sounds that eventually break down into... "buried alive"??? a goofy bluegrass instrumental that is afaict now the soundtrack of someone's psychosis. rivals the "gin" for the highlight of the show somehow

what is the best produced rock album of the '90s

the story of the ghost

Hard to argue with that. It's always sounded very warm and comforting to me; very easy on the ears. And obviously very funky. It made me unreasonably happy to learn that they played "End of Session" live for the first time ever on 7/25/17 (the Baker's Dozen show with the 30-minute "Lawn Boy")

lmao 30 minute "lawn boy"

looking forward to getting there

8/1/98: this is the first '98 show i've heard that i don't love unconditionally but that's ok, it's still really good, and it contains the best fucking "tweezer" i've ever heard. the first set is... fine, gradually peters out after the "mike's groove," but the show really hits its stride in the second set, during "2001," so entranced by its own groove that it almost accidentally becomes "magilla" after nine minutes, which is legit hilarious. then the "2001" groove returns for eight whole seconds before collapsing into "tweezer," which, this side of the riverport "gin," i've never heard all of the elements in a phish jam align so perfectly. here, check it out. it bleeds right into a killer "fluffhead" too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqIXJXK7tx8

i also really love the quieter section of the second set, "brian and robert" plus a cover of my favorite neil young song, "albuquerque"

the story of the ghost: if you had asked me about phish's studio output before i started this project, i would've said billy breathes and the story of the ghost were very good and the surrounding records were all very ymmv. even listening to farmhouse at am impressionable age, i could tell there was an identity crisis piloting that album? of course, it's also all leftover songs that were written in the same sessions as the material on ghost, so naturally it feels weird and lopsided, like a bunch of songs that don't really have any business being on the same album (hoist managed this kind of diversity better imo)

whereas ghost is very holistic, a collection of songs that emanate from the same quiet source, a steady simmering that puts a lot of smoke in the atmosphere, a lone candle in a dark room making all of the shadow around it look heavier and sharper. not a single song on it "rocks." instead of "rocking" they do things like "breathe," "shiver," "crawl," "hang upside down from the ceiling." i was texting a friend about it last night and made the (admittedly ridiculous) comparison to d’angelo’s voodoo, an album where he stripped down everything to the groove, making every gesture and flourish he put on top of it sound enormous. that's kind of what's happening here. it's a heavily-overdubbed record that never once feels crowded, even when the funk siren is going off in the extreme background of "ghost." and it feels like the right move for them in the studio: if it’s hard to capture your expansive, space-exploring improvisations on record because it requires a crowd to exchange energies with, then why not reimagine the studio as a way to create that space without actually playing it. shrink the songs down to the size of whispers and see what grows around and over them. this is why no other phish record sounds like it, and yet it is the phish record most aligned with their jam philosophy and their good qualities as a band (though it helps that they were writing the best songs of their career at this point). one of my favorite albums of all time now, i didn't think i'd ever love a phish studio album this much

i still think "guyute" ended up on the right album. it's a throwback to junta-era phish, like i think of it as "esther 2," one of those infrequent moments in the catalog where they remind you that they really love the band yes and they're gonna get yessed out. but i think it also, like "esther," captures part of their ethos as a band, going back to trey anastasio writing children's songs with his mom and gradually bringing them into the compositions he was writing for his band, where there's this sort of adventures of mark twain-ish creeping dread in the childlike atmosphere, and i think that fits in with the other songs on ghost (and with the cover art tbh) just right

the siket disc: pairs well with the 2000 drum logos show as an example of phish sounding as little like phish as possible, and that is why i love it. it came out after farmhouse but i moved it up in the lineup because these recordings are from the '97 sessions that produced a lot of the story of the ghost songs, and as such it feels like an appendix of that record, the untamed dark from which those songs sprung. if i were trying to get someone into phish, the first song i'd play for them is "what's the use?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WB9GyLrOiE

which is imo something you wouldn't think twice about hearing on a rarities comp by can. the rest of the record is a little "assorted studio experiments and fragments" but that's also what makes it excellent music to write to

Love the Siket Disc, just finally got around to that during the pandemic. It's cool. I also broke down and bough the huge box for Joy that included the Party Time bonus disc, which I don't think is streaming? Or at least not the last time I checked.

11/11/98: yeah i added another '98 show to the queue, whatever, i found the last one a little disappointing and wanted to hear something that reminded me of why i fell in love with the island tour. the setlist of this show looked awesome, so i was like, why not, and i'm so glad i went for it, this has gotta be one of the best phish shows ever. first set is awesome, the "gumbo" jam is gorgeous, "birds" is starting to burn up the stage again, and the "bottom" and "julius" are both excellent. second set is off the chain, an even better endless-scrolling-universe-of-pure-groove "halley's comet" than the classic hampton one, a jammed-out "simple" (!!! i have been waiting to hear what this was like and i wasn't disappointed) that steers right into "walk away," imo the best song any rock band could conceivably cover, and then... well, since story of the ghost is out at this point, they're starting to play with the structure of "limb by limb," the solo section of which now juts out of the chorus at the oddest angle, while "ghost" finally starts like the album version, sirens sounding through a thick fog. the encore is three phish songs i don't care for (although it's fun to hear "contact" in funkier form) but this is still immediately one of my favorite shows

That is indeed an awesome setlist on 11/11/98. If I see a "Tela" I'm about 10 times more likely to press play on a show. Re: disappointing encore, I love "Contact" dearly but "Rocky Top" and "Funky Bitch" are songs I never look forward to hearing

Ha, I don't think Phish's version of "Rocky Top" is particularly great, but it holds a special place in my heart. In college, during the summers, I worked for a county highway department and the foreman was this lovable old Midwestern farmer guy in his seventies and "Rocky Top" was his favorite song and he would whistle it alllll the time. He lived in the same small town as me and every year there was a little carnival at which they would set up a stage for some country and bluegrass bands to play, and one of the groups would play "Rocky Top" every single year and this guy would stand up, dance around, hootin' and hollerin' with the biggest damn grin on his face. Hard to hate the song after seeing that.

Haha love that. I've got no problem with the song itself, it's just not something I get excited about in the context of a Phish show

Rocky Top was easily my least-favorite of Phish's bluegrass covers. Top three were: Ginseng Sullivan, Old Home Place, and Minds Got a Mind of Its Own.

"rocky top" at the right placement and the right speed is a blast. "ginseng sullivan" def the best bluegrass cover

If I see a "Tela" I'm about 10 times more likely to press play on a show

"tela" RULES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JykBMI_U4-Y

happy to have found video for the next show i'm listening to (7/23/99) if only just bc i've always wanted to see the lightning storm that apparently goes off during the second set's "ghost" > "free"

7/23/99: i actually own this show and have listened to it before, but couldn't quite remember anything about it. OH YEAH, this second set. what differentiates '99 phish is, idk, they are absolutely out of their fucking minds? cf. the "ghost" > "free" > "birds of a feather"; video above adds a lot because you can see trey getting super amped about the heat lightning flashing all around them while he's soloing in "free"

the first set struggles to find a rhythm but the renditions of "ya mar," "punch you in the eye," and "back on the train," and "possum" are all very strong. i reiterate that the second set is absolute fucking nonsense in the best way

Meatstick would be one of their better late-90s songs if not for the lyrics being about burying a Meatstick.

ilx user peace, man is correct about this one

Watched the whole Polaris set on the tv last night. They needed a camera that shows what Trey is gawking at throughout.

funnily enough the only time they panned out to the crowd i was like "pls never show the crowd again" and the 1999 camera crew must've heard my request through a portal in time

lol

7/23/99: i actually own this show and have listened to it before, but couldn't quite remember anything about it. OH YEAH, this second set. what differentiates '99 phish is, idk, they are absolutely out of their fucking minds? cf. the "ghost" > "free" > "birds of a feather"; video above adds a lot because you can see trey getting super amped about the heat lightning flashing all around them while he's soloing in "free"

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, July 16, 2021 9:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lmao at Trey cracking up at that "boing" sound effect that Page keeps triggering during "Birds"

otm youtube comment:

Eamonn Geraghty
3 months ago
I wonder what it sounded like to Page because he looks like he was out of his gourd at this show 🤪

7/31/99: wanted another '99 show to get a more complete idea of the year and picked this one because the setlist is weird; turns out, like the polaris ampitheatre show, it's a fitfully interesting first set and a second set born and raised in hell. ok actually the 25-minute "bowie," one of the best i've heard so far, is really pleasant and so quiet it at one point goes silent. this show also has one of the best encores of all time, nawang khechog joining them for a freeform horn/vacuum jam (i normally hate when fishman brings out the vacuum but this is kind of cool) out of which the most gentle and gorgeous "brian and robert" forms. afaict page's voice is shot for the whole show which unfortunately throws off literally every attempt at vocal harmony

12/11/99: y'all stop what you are doing and listen to this immediately. is this the best phish show? if you want a first and second set that turn you inside out in different ways and contain only good songs (well aside from "cavern," as usual.... it's fine)... this is it. it's like '97 phish traveled two years into the future for this night, and also the time travel turned their brains into black holes that connect to the end of the universe. the bootleg i have is murky but you can still tell, the energy in the room, the way the crowd just straight up howls at every awesome development, how no one told me "scent of a mule" was this cool live, how they splice a gorgeous "simple" jam AND "i am hydrogen" into the most furious fucking "mike's groove" ever????? the "ghost" that is fully a tour of a rotted space station???? this is it!!!!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q0U8biL6ak

dear phish, please release a soundboard recording of this show and i will send it to all the phish haters i know with a note that says "see haters, here is a show that rules from top to bottom, this band is sick and i'm not embarrassed about liking them at all"

farmhouse: seal "gotta jibboo" in an iron coffin and sink it to the ocean floor

unfortunate it features some of their best ever studio jammimg lol

which is maybe a natural byproduct of how little of a real song it actually is

this album sounds GORGEOUS btw, and i still really like "bug" and, unlike almost every phish fan on earth, the (admittedly overworked) studio "twist," plus "dirt," the strongest evidence anyone has for phish being able to write astonishingly beautiful songs with STRINGS. i think "piper" doesn't make a ton of sense as a studio song even though it is the best phish song ever, and the album just kinda slips through my fingers after that, "first tube" excepted

the studio "piper" did make me feel very emotional about the approaching end of 1.0 in this project

6/14/00: one of the first phish shows i ever listened to, you can see me advocating upthread for it as a good intro to phish for people who hate phish, which, yes, it is, but now that i've listened to a ton of phish shows... man. what the fuck. the mood is almost scarily contemplative, like they are staring over a precipice right down into the void within. the take of "cities" moves at a somnambulant pace, and this is an already-slowed-down cover of a fast song, so the fact that it holds together at all is fucking mesmerizing. you would think phish, of all bands, playing at this sluggish pulse would kill the energy, but it's just a different kind of energy, or at least it reminds me of how i fixate on the wider emptiness between beats on something like a dub techno record. their jams have never sounded more like they're literally mutating after being exposed to radiation, how else to explain the dark and grim place that "gumbo" goes to immediately? also none of the jams contain elements that are remotely 1) beautiful or 2) rockin', and there's usually a lot of both at phish shows. this show is all-gnarled, all-cosmic-drifting all the time, its limbs are octopus limbs, and in fact when i hear this show i feel as high as the band were at the time they were playing it. (i'm not.) never forget that phish sounds like this sometimes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht520QVJYRc

alternate review: this is the phish show that makes me feel the drug-sweats-iest

9/14/00: it is time for both phish and me to take a break bc it's getting a little painful to hear highly imperfect versions of "reba," even though i feel weird complaining about that because "reba" is a complicated song and i'm sure playing it well sober is a great achievement and playing it high is probably like executing a drum solo underwater. so i'm not really complaining, but you can tell the burnout has set in and it's not 1994 anymore. fortunately you wouldn't be able to tell by listening to the jams, all of which are out-of-body experiences at this show; i'd get into them but this is a very early livephish release so i feel like if people know, they know, but i specifically love the "carini" and the extremely fucked up "drowned" jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DpKS6V3X8M

one of the reasons i'm listening to the "last" show, 10/7/00, is i found video of it

it is a really really great show

Some previously-unseen '91, audience-based, video camera footage has debuted over on phish.net. Originally intended as part of a Gamehendge CD-ROM project that never saw the light of day.

https://phish.net/blog/1626683534/lost-gamehendge-cd-rom-footage-released-30-years-later.html#comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCO2ZOAikUw

Ooh, thanks for that! I'll definitely be digging into that at some point.

10/7/00: two developments i've noticed in '00 phish, one of them maybe dating back to late '99: 1) trey starts using the loop pedal to solo over himself a ton (cf. the opening "first tube"), creating this spacey light-trail effect; 2) mike is singlehandedly trying to bring back the slap bass as a thing in the year 2000. he will not succeed

very strange energy at this show. none of the jams really call attention to themselves, most of them just slowly plugging away at a single idea, but that ends up making "bathtub gin" really chill and lovely and "2001" very disco. vocal jam at the end of "yem" was ominous and weird-sounding like an atonal cluster of voices you'd hear around an obelisk

and that's it!!!! 1.0 is done!!!!!!

1.0:

- the white tape ✓
- colorado ‘88 ✓
- junta ✓
- 8/26/89 townshend family park, townshend, vt ✓
- lawn boy ✓
- 10/31/90 armstrong theatre, colorado springs, co ✓
- 7/12/91 colonial theatre, keene, nh ✓
- a picture of nectar ✓
- 11/19/92 ross arena, saint michael’s college ✓
- rift ✓
- 8/26/93 arlene schnitzer concert hall, portland, or ✓
- 12/31/93 worcester centrum theatre, worcester, ma ✓
- hoist ✓
- 7/8/94 great woods performing arts center, mansfield, ma ✓
- 12/19/94 providence civic center, providence, rh ✓
- a live one ✓
- 6/19/95 deer creek music center, noblesville, in ✓
- 11/14/95 university of central florida arena, orlando, fl ✓
- billy breathes ✓
- 11/2/96 coral sky amphitheater, west palm beach, fl ✓
- slip stitch and pass ✓
- 7/21/97 virginia beach amphitheatre, virginia beach, va ✓
- 8/10/97 deer creek music center, noblesville, in ✓
- 11/21/97 hampton coliseum, hampton, va ✓
- 11/22/97 hampton coliseum, hampton, va ✓
- 11/23/97 lawrence joel veterans memorial coliseum, winston-salem, nc ✓
- 12/11/97 rochester war memorial, rochester, ny ✓
- 4/4/98 providence civic center, providence, ri ✓
- bittersweet motel ✓
- 7/29/98 riverport amphitheater, maryland heights, mo ✓
- 8/1/98 alpine valley music theater, east troy, wi ✓
- the story of the ghost ✓
- the siket disc ✓
- 11/11/98 van andel arena, grand rapids, mi ✓
- 7/23/99 polaris amphitheatre, columbus, oh ✓
- 7/31/99 fuji rock festival, japan ✓
- 12/11/99 first union spectrum, philadelphia, pa ✓ (BEST SHOW EVER)
- farmhouse ✓
- 6/13/00 drum logos, fukuoka, japan ✓
- 9/14/00 darien lake performing arts center, darien center, ny ✓
- 10/7/00 shoreline amphitheatre, mountain view, ca ✓

Loved following you on this journey Brad, it's been a genuine treat!

I can't wait to follow you through 2.0, I was largely tapped out during this era. Never caught them live and just followed whatever studio or official live albums they released. Wasn't until 2010 that I finally started seeing them again and fell back in.

next up, probably after i take a break for a week:

hiatus 1.0:
trey anastasio
plasma

2.0:
round room
the victor disc
12/31/02 madison square garden, new york, ny
IT
11/28/03 nassau coliseum, uniondale, ny
undermind
headphones jam
6/19/04 saratoga performing arts center, saratoga springs, ny
6/20/04 saratoga performing arts center, saratoga springs, ny

(please recommend me more 2.0 shows)

Good lineup so far. I would add Mike's 2003 solo album Inside In, which I really dig but ymmv. It has kind of a Soul Coughing-goes-country vibe and the songs are solid. Also don't skip 2/28/03, which was released officially and has one of the best Tweezers. The whole show is absolute fire start to finish

thank you! exactly what i'm looking for

i relistened to 12/11/99 tonight just to see if it holds up as my favorite show. it does

trey anastasio s/t: the last two tracks of farmhouse were "sand" and "first tube" and this album takes them as a blueprint, almost every song is groove-based and light on its feet, and while this makes for a fun listen, there's not a lot of meat (lol) in the songwriting department—the only song that reminded me of the level he was writing at circa ghost is "flock of words," maybe to a lesser extent "drifting." but hey, the horns sound great

plasma: ok this RULES, replicates the feeling of phish with horns but with really surprising and huge jams. you can tell trey was listening to a lot of fela kuti at the time. it looks good on him

reading about "sand" made me aware of the existence of... the boredoms... covering... "end of session" and "free"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZsSET1hIvM

Brad, can you (or another Phish head itt) explain exactly why Phish fans are so down on 2.0? The, uh, phans I know talk about it like it's the Dead in 1995 or something. But the words I've heard people use to dismissively describe this period - ambient and "aimless" - make it sound like it might be the Phish era for me!

i won't know for sure until i get there, but my impression is: trey was really deep into opiates at that point, so a lot of the composed songs are full of mistakes (sooo many phishheads are really anal about this and i both get it and don't) and sometimes the jams don't really come together? again, i don't really know about the latter, the only 2.0 i've heard so far is a clip from live in brooklyn and idk it sounded pretty good

my other impression is that the true phish ambient era is 3.0

Got it. I'll keep checking in here!

lmao, j. sam, thank you for telling me to listen to the mike gordon solo record, i was expecting very little and i kind of love it?????????????????

plasma was so good i added a full trey concert to the list (10/25/02). gonna put it on at some point today

i'm also listening to the vida blue album and it's lovely. not sure i love page's voice out of phish context strangely enough

xp haha I'm glad you like Inside In. It's such a fun, unassuming record

round room: very frustrating album tbh, functionally their st. anger, recording their rehearsals in a blatant attempt to put together an album that was looser, rawer, and more related to who they were live, and... it sure sounds like it, for better and worse. marshall's lyrics are getting, how do you say, too dense. mike gordon should be prevented from writing lyrics for this band, even though both of his songs are very good. "mexican cousin" is a terrible song. "seven below" is a perfect phish song, down to only having one verse. trey sounds like shit. really the whole thing would be improved from being just slightly more produced. then again, not sure "slightly more produced" would allow for the transformative jams that "pebbles and marbles," "walls of the cave," and "waves" all morph into. it's also 80 minutes long. ugh. the millennial a picture of nectar (even though it's better than that record)

the last three tracks of round room on their own are prob the best studio phish i've heard yet tbh

unfortunately they are attached to another 50 minutes of album

the victor disc: overwhelming feeling is i didn't have to listen to this, and i get why they didn't release it. someone needs to edit down these jams into siket disc form, and no one has, and as they are they just kind of sit in place for a while until they're different. sometimes it gets interesting? idk. it's so long

For a number of reasons my family ended up spending Friday night at a remote cabin with no internet or cell service where the only kid-friendly media was a DVD of "Scooby Doo and the Loch Ness Monster" which we of course ended up watching with my 6 year old and it had this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85UdckcI2uc

A couple friends in our group chat were kicking around the idea of rallying for Deer Creek, but nixed the idea when reminded that the tour kicks off this week in three straight states with the some of the lowest vaccination numbers in the country (Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia). Really hoping this doesn't turn into a super spreader tour.

Couch tour time.

thankful that my show is outdoors but yeah

Yeah I mean, I'm not shaming anyone for hitting an outdoor show, it just makes me nervous for a big tour to start down there.

12/31/02: first set: holy stage rust batman. i should be really down with a 15-minute “piper” as an opener but it doesn’t ever really work or go anywhere interesting, and it sort of feels like the band are out-of-sync, to the point where i wouldn’t call it “loose” or “shambolic” as much as “sluggish.” i know the rehearsed a lot before this show but i think it’s evidence that taking a two-year break from what was a pretty nonstop fifteen-year endeavor kinda makes it hard to get the engine going again. and whereas 1.0 was marked by constant development, even as they were running out of gas in 2000, 2.0 starts off sort of recalling ‘97 through thick gauze. it’s funky but it’s also just a little too blurry to focus on. also playing the cast away clip before “wilson” is soo corny and a momentum killer extraordinaire. highlight: the “bowie” is short but good

second set: oh this is more like it. “waves”!!!! it’s so good and the jam lives up to the potential sketched out on round room, and it leads right into a really fun “divided sky”

set three: i think i have a lot of trouble with the new year’s shows, the momentum is always so faltering, probably bc it’s always three sets and the first two are always a little stocked with goofy phish songs (pls correct me if i’m wrong, i’ve only listened to 3.5 new year’s shows). this third set is the closest they get to 1.0 phish at its stride and it’s largely bc they finally achieve focus. “seven below,” “taste,” “walls of the cave,” all pretty awesome jams, “taste” especially finding its way into a fugue that recalls both ‘94 AND ‘97. really incredible. as much as i found this show frustrating it’s sorta like they regained flexibility in a limb over the course of three hours

Lol all of these goddamn Phish posts lately and not one single comment on the tour opener?

^sarah huckabee sanders

2/28/03: wow, three months later and it’s like night and day, they’re phish again, surprisingly they’re as tight and as energetic as they’ve ever been, and they hit upon a perfect setlist here. all-time versions of “gin” and “back on the train” in the first set and… it’s difficult to isolate the highlights of the second set because it is all highlight, one huge flow. i criticized the new year’s show for not really giving us a new form of phish, which is probably an unreasonable expectation, but something is happening here, obviously using ‘97 as a jumping off point but working itself into strange ambient blinkings and hisses, cf. the… jams(?) that crown “round room” and “soul shakedown party.” apparently trey was getting sober for the summer tour(? this is information gleaned from youtube comments so idk for sure) and he’s just playing wonderfully. one of my favorite shows, thanks again j. sam

in other news i watched the IT documentary and thought “i absolutely have to hear the tower jam” which of course led me to decide to just listen to the entire festival, why not, lol

Diving deeper into Phish than I ever have (gee, thanks, Brad!) I have come to the not-very-controversial conclusion that I much prefer Phish when they dispense with even the pretense of having actual songs and just jam. That sounds meaner than I mean it to, as I love "Strange Design" and "Farmhouse" and a few others, but overall, I find I'm most amenable to Phish when I see a song on the setlist that is unapologetically a glorified launchpad for a jam, like "Tweezer," because I feel like when these guys improvise inside a "type II" jam, they're peerless among rock / jam bands.

But so many of the songs, ugh. I'm not nearly enough of a fan (yet?) to understand the songwriting division of labor when it comes to the specific tunes, but I think I may just strongly dislike Tom Marshall as a lyricist? Which may not be enough of a barrier to my becoming a phan. Though my aversion to "Stash" may be, as I'm not sure I could ever be a true fan of any band for whom this is like a a top 5 crowd favorite. I think I may even hate "Stash."

This is just a guess, but I'm pretty sure the lyrical division of labor is 95% Marshall, 5% other.

That makes sense. I like "Strange Design" enough to go read about it because it seemed like such an anomaly (especially lyrically) and sure enough it sounds like it's a Trey / Marshall tune in name only and was written by Trey. He should write more lyrics.

Though my aversion to "Stash" may be, as I'm not sure I could ever be a true fan of any band for whom this is like a a top 5 crowd favorite. I think I may even hate "Stash."

― Paul Ponzi, Sunday, August 1, 2021 7:51 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

hmmm maybe so maybe not

marshall is an uneven lyricist imo. i think the lyrics to like “limb by limb” are awesome. i also love that “sleep” is the exact same concept as “eid ma clack shaw” by bill callahan, tho it obv pales in comparison

the nonsense stuff that he wrote for phish at the start sucks though, and yeah the lyrics for “stash” are soooo dumb

anyway the deeper you get the less it matters lol

I'm definitely starting to relate to that

other good phish lyrics: birds of a feather, dirt, sand, brian and robert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUaL2eYwayM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbfeTkrjpvY

my verdict is that 03 phish were goddamn fucking amazing, at least at this point. “ya mar,” a song i do not like, transformed and transcended

attn paul, re: your question about 2.0 upthread, the “waves” from the IT festival is an open-ended ambient jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLjDWJGPHYY

Yeah, I always thought I'd love the IT era. I recall roommates watching that DVD a lot back in the day and I remember having to concede that the Tower jam was especially sick, even as a Phish neutral person

I don't think I'm Phish neutral anymore, but I'm still choosing to proceed with caution. Like I've limited myself to watching only every third video itt lol

i relistened to that "waves" jam this morning, still can't believe it

Man, I'm impressed with this recent start. 4 shows in and they've already dropped in 3 massive jams. I haven't heard last night's "Tweezer" yet, but I was a big fan of the "CDT" from the other night and the kinda dark "Carini" from a few nights back. The "CDT" is up on YouTube for free, worth it.

i'm excited to check it out, especially since i just got really obsessed with the stretched-out "chalk dust torture" from IT

There is definitely some rust, if you are pressed for time I would just completely skip the first Arkansas show. The rest of had some rough spots, but the guys are clearly engaged in the jam again, which is great to hear.

coming toward the end of the IT festival... and getting turned inside out by the 40-minute "46 days".....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvQ9mPh6i-k

i'm so glad the one phish festival i decided to dwell on was IT, at least this little window of time contains a lot of the best phish improv i've ever heard

i think it's useful to compare a jam like this to the car crash-esque 30 min "tweezer" they included on a live one, where they were constantly collapsing into dissonance and struggling to tie anything they were doing together, whereas here they achieve kind of a continuous flow of dissonances

btw, for anyone who ever considered subscribing to livephish+: the app is very good, if a little buggy, however the desktop experience is godawful

first month was only $1 so my complaints are ultimately minimal

IT (documentary plus 8/2/03 and 8/3/03): these aren't the tightest or most perfect phish shows ever, but there's no question in my mind that this is the best music they've played in the span of time i've covered in this project so far; i could just be talking about the tower jam here but the actual sets are dense and overflowing jungles of sound themselves, only hinted at by the clips i've been posting itt, cf. the underwater pulsings of the "waves" jam are enjoined in a narrative between the (dissociated and strange) "discern" that precedes it and the (relatively normal in a "we've decided to land on earth" way) "david bowie" that follows. i have a few qualms—for instance set 3 of 8/2/03 is nearly perfect until they decide to play "spread it 'round," but even then they invert the good hippie vibes in the small jam it leads into, which is like a terrifying photonegative of the song; and set one of 8/3 takes forever to get going, and only wakes up during the massive "chalk dust" jam

but i think i have an idea of what distinguishes '03 phish, if not 2.0 in general, which is that it's the dreamiest they've ever gotten. set two of 8/3 speaks to my point, i think, from "ghost" to "mountains in the mist" to "pebbles and marbles," each of which is like advancing further and further through a fog-shrouded reality. the doc helped reinforce this, as it gives you a sense of the kind of immersive alternate reality they built here, from the temporary structures that constituted the "sunken city" to their decision to play an hour of totally improvised psych rock in a decommissioned airport control tower

i think i might be getting a distorted and overly-rosy impression of 2.0 because i'm only listening to the great stuff? i have considered listening to their "final" '04 shows at coventry bc legend suggests they are not good or fun, but i don't think i really have time for it, as i'm seeing phish in less than two weeks(?????!!!!!) and i'd like to get through as much of 3.0 as i can before then

btw pls recommend me 3.0 shows, i have no compass for any of it

Man 3.0 is so hard to recommend, to be honest. It's so wildly all over the place in terms of quality and ideas.

Off the top of my head, I'd def suggest checking out the full Baker's Dozen run from 7/21/17 to 8/6/17. Tons of great jams and interesting covers and tangents. Honestly, the spirit of those shows is the closest I've felt to the more "playful" old Phish (if that makes sense). Lots of other great individual shows. I like the Kasvot Vaxt Halloween show (10/31/18) and the epic "Tweezer" show from 12/30/19. Mostly more recent stuff, I'll have to think on this a little.

lol i was afraid someone was going to recommend me every baker's dozen show

Haha, sorry. I could probably whittle it down for you, I just found the high points (of which there are many!) to be so spread out. It's not was easy as naming 2 or 3 specific shows.

it's totally cool, i'm actually excited to listen to all of them, it's just... so much lol

+1 for Baker's Dozen. I'm not actually too familiar with 3.0 generally, but the Baker's Dozen was what got me back into Phish after mostly ignoring them for like a decade. That run of shows is just an incredible achievement in so many ways, and every show I've heard from it is loads of fun with quality jams, 7/25/17 being the clear standout imo

Also 7/14/19 is really great. Set 1 is packed with rare bust-outs, and set 2 has a "Ruby Waves" with one of the best jams I've ever heard

Yeah 7/14/19 is probably a good call, but tbh I just go back to the "Ruby Waves" and haven't heard the full show since right after.

this is all very good thanks y'all! i've figured out a few early '10s shows to investigate just from livephish comments, can already tell i'm gonna spend minimal time in '09/'10 from reading the setlists

Probably safe to avoid those years for sure. 2013 was when I really got back on board, 6/30/12 was my first Phish show in person since 1.0. It wasn't great, but I was shocked to see them covering "Golden Age" at that point. The following year at SPAC was when I really fell back in love with them again.

Was any of the IT festival ever released in a format other than DVD?

both dates are on livephish and include the soundcheck and the tower jam

https://www.livephish.com/browse/music/0,294/Phish-mp3-flac-download-8-2-2003-It-Loring-Air-Force-Base--Limestone-ME
https://www.livephish.com/browse/music/0,295/Phish-mp3-flac-download-8-3-2003-It-Loring-Air-Force-Base--Limestone-ME

11/28/03: it's the 20th anniversary of phish! this show is mad underrated, the first set is flawless and full of surprises, from "ghost" bleeding into "what's the use" to the abnormally fast and gnarly "ac/dc bag." trey's voice is starting to give but he's playing really hard, like he's basically shredding like prince through the whole show, and it makes "sample in the jar" an unusual set two highlight. then they play two undermind songs in a row and the show only sorta recovers with the "mike's groove." think i have a sense of what's coming down the line

one thing i'd like to say before i get into '04 is that '03 is fishman's best year. he was always the best musician in the band but his playing is just perceivably even better somehow on the '03 shows i've heard

he was always the best musician in the band

whoa, you can't just drop this bomb without elucidating! I'm not a musician but it does seem to me this is a band without a weak link in the proficiency department. That said, I don't necessarily hear Fish as a cut above the other guys. Then again, I haven't been bingeing like you have!

i wasn't necessarily a true believer before this project but fishman is legit one of the best drummers to ever play the instrument

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZwRQ6bsm_k

ok i spoiled myself a little and watched this

holy shit

Right? The wooks can call this 4.0 all they want if we get tasty jams like this.

undermind: i find this album very confusing. i think the approach must've been white album-esque, every song presenting a different angle of the band, but that's ultimately why it reminds me so much of a picture of nectar (which, ugh) while also sounding broadly kind of like an album a mid-'00s indie rock band released during their country phase? i really feel that during "the connection," immediately one of my favorite phish studio songs. "a song i heard the ocean sing" is not only an obvious jam vehicle but sounds formed itself out of a jam which is a very good thing and i can't wait to hear it in sets. "scents and subtle sounds" is a pretty cool song, i really loved it during IT and the studio version... is a studio version. but "secret smile"'s string-soup production doesn't work and is at odds with the sound of the rest of the record. idk. album does not make any sense to me as a follow-up to round room or as a phish album experience

headphones jam: i had to write the above about undermind really quickly so i could get into the profoundly emotional response i am having to the headphones jam. they recorded this before they started tracking undermind and somehow their congealed unconscious minds were still capable of producing something of near-tower jam quality. if you like phish that is totally disconnected from songcraft and instead wired into banks of smoking electronics this is your jam. atmospheric, funky, confident, moving from mode to mode like ocean waves gently collapsing into each other. a true follow-up to the siket disc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4kbsZOCf_U

who among you knew that i would be posting a video of the '04 saratoga "piper" well before i heard it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQgBcpEWZGU

i can't write sentences and that youtube video didn't embed so lol. amazing jam, though, if you haven't heard it it's 35 minutes of ... hard to describe

2.0 is 2.over!!!

6/19-6/20/04: both of these shows have faltering first sets and all-time second sets that are vast psychedelic continuums that happen to proceed from interconnected phish songs. 6/19 starts with a fine "reba," a fine "runaway jim," my least favorite phish earworm "nicu," and then finally starts massing into something huge and unrecognizable with "scents and subtle sounds" and a "wolfman’s brother" that kinda recalls the microfunk versions of early europe ’97. then they play "walls of the cave," a song that opens them up profoundly literally every time they play it, and the only jam in the first set that forecasts the second

which, "a song i heard the ocean sing" > "piper" is about as close as music gets to feeling endless, for me. not in the sense that it’s really long, it is, but more like how the horizon never ends, you can run toward it but you’ll never actually reach it, it just scrolls forever. that is this show’s "piper." my hatred of "gotta jiboo" does not translate to live versions, it always sounds amazing, i’ll just always wish someone had written lyrics. and the set descends from its peak rather literally with "limb by limb"

6/20, is, if anything, a more awkward first set and a more locked in second set, but i prefer the show all around tbh. every jam is like those staring-into-the-void moments during agharta. i don’t think i’ve heard them plunge so thoroughly into this sound since ’98, with the new threads of trey just shredding nonstop, cf. the massive "drowned" jam (best phish covers: 1. "roses are free" 2. "drowned"); and the ’03/’04 tendency to get quiet and contemplative until the music sort of sounds like four harmonized throbbing pulses. set two: a three song fugue, "seven below" > "ghost" > "twist," which may explore literally every dimension of phish, followed by a lovely "yem." a set like this is hard to process knowing they were going to break up in another month, as they sound totally engaged and like they’re still capable of surprising themselves… it’s just weird, i’m familiar the circumstances that cut off 2.0 just as it had achieved liftoff, and they register as much sadder to me when i’m listening to a show like this

goodbye phish 2.0!!! you are much better than the fans think, and ’03 is a year i’m going to explore a lot more in depth in the future

2.0:
- round room ✓
- the victor disc ✓
- 12/31/02 madison square garden, new york, ny ✓
- 2/28/03 nassau coliseum, uniondale, ny ✓
- IT (documentary + 8/2-8/3/03) ✓
- 11/28/03 nassau coliseum, uniondale, ny ✓
- undermind ✓
- headphones jam ✓
- 6/19/04 saratoga performing arts center, saratoga springs, ny ✓
- 6/20/04 saratoga performing arts center, saratoga springs, ny ✓

All this archival talk is great but are u watching the tour happening live right now

i watched the "tweezer" from 8/1

and i'll be seeing them in atlantic city, which is why i'm doing this crazy project

here’s what i got going for 3.0 so far:

- joy
- party time
- 11/28/09 times union center, albany, ny
- 10/30/10 atlantic city, nj

I listened to a Punch You in the Eye a few nights ago and I've been mulling over the purchase of a hacky sack.

joy: hilarious thing to me about this album, produced by steve lillywhite, is the opening sequence is identical to billy breathes: sorta soothing rocker > total rager > ballad. i also like this album much more than undermind, which... i think i like a lot of songs on undermind individually but hate them all together in that order. here the track order doesn't seem calculated to pull the floor out from under me on every song, and that's good. the lyrics have gotten cornier, somehow, but the songcraft behind them feels restored, confident yet relaxed. in other words i could see myself listening to this album on purpose. i think page's obligatory track destroys the mood unfortunately, and they would've done better to include something instead from...

party time: obv an outtakes collection, every song on joy feels interrelated and this instead seems to pick up every ragged end of the phish sound. my particular favorite is "if i told you," aka the dawning of electro phish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpPIvLXV5e0

i also love "gone," for my money the best song trey's written since round room, completely at a loss as to why it isn't on joy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMEqtQeEVnU

my vote for "phish song i don't want to hear at a show ever again" is "nicu"

song i wanna hear at every phish show: "seven below"

- 10/30/10 atlantic city, nj

ok this show is off the map, glad i picked it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzZv6T0WS_4

a real highlight of that show is this "wolfman's brother"

Wow that show looks ridiculous on paper, like half of Led Zeppelin 2 plus Stairway to Heaven lol. How'd they do with that?

well it's known as the "tweezeppelin," so they slip in and out of "tweezer" and it keeps morphing into different zep riffs. they do consistently fuck up the zep songs, which dampens the effect a little imo

the '09-'11 shows were all really fun but also felt like very old 1.0 shows in a way: all business, if way more relaxed and grateful to just be here about it. a lot of people on livephish consider the 2012 dick's gigs as the resurfacing of exploratory phish, and having heard 8/31/12, aka the "fuck your face" show, it's hard to argue with them, cf. this "farmhouse" where they linger on the final note for 5 minutes and play all this ambient falling-through-space stuff around it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwPr_XV9G0k

ton of amazing jams at that show, not sure why i picked that one except that it was really unexpected

there's about 20 seconds toward the end of that where you couldn't be blamed for thinking they were going to go into Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

i haven’t been updating as rigorously about my 3.0 explorations as it’s really hard for me to pin down in words what’s going on. the first sets are largely not registering for me, the second sets are phenomenal and feel distinct from 1.0 and 2.0 in their playfulness? also might be listening to shows that are generally too close to halloween. here’s the list:

3.0:
- joy ✓
- party time ✓
- 11/28/09 times union center, albany, ny ✓
- 10/30/10 atlantic city, nj ✓
- 8/5/11 gorge amphitheatre, george, wa ✓
- 8/31/12 dick’s sporting goods park, commerce city, co ✓
- 11/1/13 boardwalk hall, atlantic city, nj ✓
- fuego ✓
- 7/27/14 merriweather post pavilion, columbia, md
- 8/12/15 the mann center for performing arts, philadelphia, pa
- big boat
- 9/4/16 dick’s sporting goods park, commerce city, co
- baker’s dozen
- 7/14/19 alpine valley music theatre, east troy, wi
- sigma oasis

i will be going back to listen to all the 2012 dick’s shows, seems like a special moment for them, if not quite on the level of the baker’s dozen. speaking of, the baker’s dozen is the finish line for this project; if i make it there, i win(?)

I get that as a logical ending point, but it's also amazing me that they are dropping so many bombs this summer. It's been as exciting to keep up with in a way it hasn't been since 1.0, for me anyway. Not to argue they're back at that peak at all, but it feels like we are getting "event" shows or mega jams 2 out of every 3 shows instead of once or twice a tour. I haven't yet heard Sunday night's massively divisive second set, looks messy on paper but supposedly they were having a blast.

I mean:

SET 2: Bathtub Gin > Waves -> Ghost > Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley -> Twenty Years Later -> Waste > Twist -> Makisupa Policeman > Twist -> Makisupa Policeman -> Twist, Most Events Aren't Planned > More > Bathtub Gin

Considering we've had a bunch of 6 or 7 song second sets this summer.

reading that setlist makes my head hurt in a good way

will def be catching up on this tour after my atlantic city show (assuming it happens, i have every digit on my body crossed)

I certainly hope you get to go! I was bummed they skipped Alpine this summer, but probably better for it since that would have required more travel and accommodations than I would have wanted. Rumors of more shows leading up to NYE but uh I'm not sure I'll be ready for an indoor Phish show even if they end up happening.

the song choice in that set reminds me of the second set of 11/1/13, the run of "twist" > "gotta jiboo" > "makisupa policeman." 11/1/13 is probably the funniest phish show i've ever heard, they keep yelling "KUSH" and "BUSH" during "makisupa policeman" in sped up and slowed down voices like they're part of a dub remix xp

fuego: ok yeah this album is so good that it's almost great. whereas joy is plagued by a few songs that just exist, all of these songs feel like they contribute to the overall purpose and mood of the album. even "wombat," which, i find it funny that phish fans hate this song bc i don't find it significantly more embarrassing than, say, "brother" or "meatstick," both of which it resembles. it may be the most quintessentially phish song on the album lol

"the line" is the best "pop" song they've ever written imo

Yeah I like Fuego quite a bit. That definitely is my most played studio album after Farmhouse, though I think Sigma Oasis might sneak up on that soon.

my sense is that the 2012 and 2016 runs at dick’s are v special and all the phish fans here would really enjoy them

idk how they measure up to the baker’s dozen but they are very much the twin peaks of 3.0 for me so far

my personal favorite show though is 7/13/14 randall's island, one of my favorite setlists they've ever put together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUr-u89tmNY

i'm still making my way through big boat but this page song 1) is awesome 2) has gotta be the best phish studio recording i've heard since ghost

also color me extremely surprised that fishman could write a song as good and weird as "friends"