Phish C/D

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.

another explanation offered upthread is that some phish fans tend to rate albums by how many deathless setlist classics are on them. rift has "maze" and "it's ice" but is otherwise a coherent moodpiece and songs from it end up in the rotation sparingly

it is like a billion times better than picture of nectar but picture of nectar has "chalkdust" mannn (drained completely of its energy, god the production on nectar suxx)

would love to hear your thoughts on story of the ghost omar

I'm with you, Rift is probably one of my favorite of their studio albums. I've always thought it made for a better album experience than A Picture of Nectar, which I've always found overrated. It's fine, but so many of those songs are much better live, while I find the Rift songs to work really well in studio form too!

And, just for the hell of it, here's how I'd rank the studio output as of today:

Billy Breathes
The Story of the Ghost
Rift
Sigma Oasis (yes, really)
Junta
Lawn Boy
A Picture of Nectar
Farmhouse
Joy
Hoist (though I have a soft spot since it was my first Phish album ever)
Fuego
Round Room
Big Boat
Undermind

lol, Brad otm with a more eloquent way of trying to make the same point

For me, Billy Breathes does the same sort of job as Rift, just in a different way, I find it to be a really great and cohesive listen. Ghost is just the weirdest Phish studio album and I love it so much.

gonna get in an ongoing listening session and report back with my findings, and need to revisit those early albums (junta and rift my most-listened to by far)

Rift is by the far the studio album I've heard in its entirety most, it was frequently played at both of the houses full of hippie women i hung out with in college.

I've been at multiple weddings where "Sparkle" gets played at peak drunk dancing hour and everyone goes nuts.

Story of the Ghost is good, not bad. It strikes me as a real jazzy jam session, like lots of acts would aspire to this kind of thing but it comes off as noodling but these guys are exceptionally tight even on an album which is imo clearly coming a lot from improvisation even more than usual.

Dud.

Today I had to drive for several hours solo in a car with Sirius XM. Flipped through the stations for most of the ride, arriving at the Phish station after 3ish hours. I ended up listening to a track with “Wolfman” in its name from Halloween 1998 (I think) for maybe 20 minutes of keyboard/bass/drums drone. It was perfect for that point in the ride! But I was totally unfamiliar with the song. Is that drone jam a regular part of their set? It didn’t sound like there was any guitar unless it was going through chorus/delays pedals, heavily processed.

“wolfman’s brother” is one of their best songs and has often been used as a stage for their improvisational development, so the drone definitely isn’t a regular thing but i’m unsurprised it appeared in a “wolfman’s” jam. i’ll have to track that down

(the wolfman’s on slip stitch and pass is often considered patient zero for the funky ‘97 style)

I would never call "Wolfman's Brother" one of their best songs personally but Brad is correct that it was a big showcase for the funky style of 1997. The version that you heard, tobo73, is indeed from Halloween 1998 and is considered one of their longest and most droney/ambient jams. That style was most prominent in 1998/1999, and there are many examples, happy to give you a listening list if you like. One of their most celebrated shows by fans, Fukuoka 6/14/2000, has a lot of awesome stuff like that and was officially released so it's on streaming services (Live Phish Volume 4). Trey, the guitarist, did sometimes move to keyboards in that era but I am not sure he does in the jam you heard. He does get deep into pedals and delays and loops though. They don't go to that place too often these days unfortunately, but for the past 5 years or so they will get out there if the jam happens to move in tat direction organically. Modern versions of "Wolfman's" are more likely to embody their more typical tension-and-release rocking out.

^^ totally underrated live album that people pass over because it's not a full show

Yeah tobo, that's a killer "Wolfman's Brother", a big half hour jam. Here's how the folks at phish net describe it in their jam chart notes:

Haunting Halloween Masterpiece. At 9:50, the jam descends from low intensity funk mode into 14 minutes of dark, chilling, effects-laden improvisation. A few movements to resurface are rebuffed, and the jam remains deep down until 24:00 when a bluesy shuffle provides some cathartic relief. -> to "Piper" which further brightens the mood.

I'll have to play that one again later today, remember loving it.

ha Lavator beat me to the punch with a less lazy post

yes much better contextual post than i was capable of, great job lavator

sometimes i think "one of the best phish songs ever" = "a phish song that is stuck in my head all the time but i have yet to hate" for me, this is certainly the case with "wolfman's," but i also think "i hear the high-pitched cavitation / of propellors from afar" is like the quintessential phish lyric (silly, ominous)

yeah, i think the ship has sailed on phish ever having a real hit, but if they had they probably would've ended up in the "songs that only ever appeared in one hit" thread. i've heard wolfman's brother thousands of times and just now realized i didn't have a clue what "cavitation" meant

Phish had their opportunity during the era when Blues Traveler broke out, and even a band like Big Head Todd and the Monsters was getting a little airplay. neither were very similar to Phish but the fanbases overlapped. I guess with Billy breathes they had some songs getting into more radio rotation but they never got poppy enough and stayed stubbornly themselves, to their credit and longevity I think.

xp Another late 98 "Wolfman's" that gets into far-out drone space is 12/28/98:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcMbw3Dx1TE

I heard "Heavy Things" on rock radio pretty often around the time of Farmhouse, think that was the closest thing to a radio hit they ever had

Also just realized “Heavy Things” also uses the word “cavitate” lol

Also just realized “Heavy Things” also uses the word “cavitate” lol

The word so nice I posted it twice

quit cavitatin' up the thread, J. Sam

jk. i was at that 12/28/98 show, it ruled. thx for posting that vid! haven't heard it in a good 20 years, looking forward to listening now

pic.twitter.com/lIUDd4QwoP

— SNL Hosts Introducing the Musical Guest (@snlhostsintro) February 19, 2023

That's awesome you were at 12/28/98, Lavator! Seems like you saw lots of Golden Age shows. What's your favorite one you attended?

These are the kinds of questions Phish fans hope to get asked at parties, and most of the other party guests really hope no one brings up, lol. But since you did!

That New Year's run, 1998, I saw all 4 shows. I was 16, and my Phish-loving friend and I had unsupervised lodging at his grad student cousin's place in NYC. That whole experience was dreamy and those shows were fantastic. Probably the most fun I ever had at a show though was a month earlier, 11/27/98, aka "The Wipeout Show", released as Live Phish 6. Another contender is 6/29/2000 - it was the closest I ever got to the stage at a big arena/amphitheater show, and the first set closing duo of Drowned->Rock and Roll was a peak Phish moment for sure.
The 2 fests I attended were Big Cypress and Magnaball - both incredible and at the top musically, but sort of in their own category.

Here's the list of shows I've seen for anyone interested. As you can see, I've been a more sane show-goer for the past 20+ years, but I still try to see them every year or two when I can. Sadly unlikely to happen this summer, but hoping they hit my current locale of New England in the fall...

Wow, you've seen some legendary stuff. 12/9/95 is one hell of a first show with that YEM. And Big Cypress! 11/27/98 was the first Live Phish I bought when it came out; that second set must have been a blast to witness IRL

yes, exactly - between the great jams, the rarity bustouts, and the Wipeout fest, I think I gave a big bear hug to a total stranger multiple times in that set.

12/9/95 I was in 8th grade, essentially tagged along with a family friend who was a few years older than me and his buddies, and didn't have a clue what was going on. Obviously I got some kind of bug from it though!

Man, you definitely got to see some great 1.0 shows Lavator, that's great. I didn't start seeing them until '96 and only then I was pretty limited to what came to Champaign and the immediate area. Working and going to school full time didn't leave me with the chance to tour hard, breaks and summer were for working to pay for school. I did see some great shows though, with the 8/10/97 probably being the greatest and most memorable. Was supposed to do Big Cypress, but through a series of laughable minor calamities no one from my crew ended up going.

(boring rant ahead that probably no one else here will care about)

Since the summer tour announcement I've been seeing a lot of people on Reddit, Twitter and in other places bemoaning the state of Phish in 2023 and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it because, for the most part, I don't think they are wrong. I'll preface this by saying that we are extremely lucky to have this band exist at all and still touring as much as they do, not to mention still playing as top notch as they are. And I'm really thankful that they've found a reduced schedule that keeps them from getting burnt out, it's a nice balance.

That all said, it's disappointing to see the live Phish experience turning into a playground for the richest of phans only. Obviously you've got the destination weekends like Mexico that only the most privileged of fans are going to afford, which is fine for a one off thing and something tons of bands do these days. But the increased leaning on MSG, in lieu of hitting up more stops (even if they keep the number of shows the same per year) is disappointing for pretty much everyone that doesn't live in the immediate NYC metro area. It's probably one of the most expensive places to travel to see a show and find a place to stay, so seeing another 7 show run there was kind of a bummer (not to mention playing these summer shows indoors instead of out in the sheds, as summer Phish is meant to be played lol). Toss in 4 shows at Dick's, another stop that's just become another big party destination that's really tough to get tickets to, and that's literally 48% of a 23 show tour that is out of reach for a lot of people.

I get that the road dog days of 100+ shows a year are over and I don't begrudge them that one little bit and I get how having MSG as practically backyard shows for the guys is a big draw, but I do miss the days of having a realistic show of seeing them every year or two without having to drop a ton of money to travel.

(end old man 1.0 phan rant)

8/10/97, that's an incredible show to have seen.

i hear you jvc on the old man rant. as a new england resident with a fair number of family and friends in nyc to crash with, i'm spoiled with this band, but it would be nice for them to do some more conventional tours. while they still technically play shows more frequently than the average band, they've sort of come full circle from how they made their name. they no longer really bring the music to the people. you wanna see it, you've gotta come to them. that said, i suspect the alternatives are either that they don't play out regularly and take whole years off, or live an unhealthy lifestyle to the detriment of the people and the music. the former scenario is intriguing, but clearly their prerogative to do their thing.

finally listening to the gorge '98 box

set 2 of 7/17/98 is everything people say it is. best "weekapaug groove" i've heard, it really honks

For New Year's Eve they did the first full Gamehenge since 1994:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSO6H7e-Gm0

I'm only up to "Lizards" but it's fun as hell so far. Huge appropriately goofy production values. Everyone is having a blast and seems super well-rehearsed

I haven't watched the video yet, but I've listened to it a few times and it was fun! The "AC/DC Bag" jam was great.

thank you for posting that - i have been meaning to buy the webcast ex post facto so you just saved me $40 :)

(no guilt, phish have pleeeenty of my money from the past 25 years)

I mean, Phish put that out on their official channel for free, so I don't think there's any need for guilt.

of course. excited to watch it!

i was at 12/29, just sort of treated myself to a ticket and went solo in between family stuff up in massachusetts. i really enjoyed it. the first set was very paint-by-numbers but still played exceedingly well, i thought - the little fills and stuff around the edges in the various war horses was all tight and inspired. Second set the Chalkdust was a total mindfuck of dissonance, one of the coolest things I've heard them play in a while. Rest of the set no slouch either. Recommend

Nice! A Phish NYE show is on my bucket list, 12/29 is the only one of the four I haven't yet listened to at all.

I love the 80s stuff. Any Colorado 88 fans up in this?

I've been waiting until I have time to watch it uninterrupted. Very stoked that they did it.