Phish C/D

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"