Phish C/D

not everything worked, the “scents and subtle sounds” in the second set seemed both like an accident and a mistake from trey’s perspective and it was quickly abandoned after the jam fell apart right away lol. but the “chalk dust” they launched into... truly evil shit. the “drowned” and “ghost” are somehow both multi-part and really impressive jams, the “drowned” in particular had tower jam vibes pulsing from it the whole way through. crowd around me was restless, i was spellbound

first set was totally perfect imo, they were in a mood and that mood was really mischievous and dubby. feel so blessed to have gotten a lovely “reba.” no one really seems to be commenting on the “split open” but i thought they busted that shit open so thoroughly it’ll never obtain solid form again. guy next to me was like “this is almost like ‘03” and if i were more in a rush to talk to phish fans i would’ve agreed with him

even the fuckin encore was good

That looks like an awesome show! Back when I was seeing them, Destiny Unbound was a long-unplayed rarity that I was always aching for them to bust out. Also cool that you got all those good Lawn Boy songs in the first set! I've never heard the slow version of Llama so I'll have to go check that out.

i think the third night in atlantic city was better than my show (not that i mind, saturday was 100 percent a setlist for me)... never miss a sunday show, they always say

my favorite baker's dozen shows so far are jam-filled (you knew i'd like that 30 minute "lawn boy," that's one of the nicest jams i've heard in a long time, can't wait to play that fucker again) and jimmies (7/30/17, weird-but-it-works-so-well first set + the "drowned" and "a song i heard the ocean sing" jams are massive interconnected bodies of water)

xp from the setlists it seems like you picked the right night, but that first set on Sunday looks amazing--an old-school Mike's Groove and YEM in the same set!

"30 minute Lawn Boy" is a trick I wish they would pull more often; they have so many great songs that are never jammed out. I guess that might feel forced or that the novelty would wear off quickly though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccN5_uO5n0U

i had never heard phish's cover of tv on the radio's "golden age" before and 1) it's a great cover 2) it astonishingly sounds exactly like a phish song in their hands. but the baker's dozen performance also has a real comet's tail of a jam appended to it. would use this particular performance to introduce someone to phish, assuming that ever happens willingly

also: "leaves" is one of the best phish songs ever

finishing up the donut holes night of the baker's dozen, meaning i have three shows left. i love that every single night of this run has the most hilarious and awesome second set ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMy-DfiAfDM

frankly cannot deal with this 17-minute "taste"

God, that is fucking sick. Nice find!

last night's show seemed like a real heater

Yeah I keep hoping it and the Gorge shows pop up on relisten soon. 47 minute "Soul Planet"????

Ran into another dad at my kid's baseball game last night that had just gotten back from the Gorge and said each night was fantastic.

btw i never fully finished my phish project, i still have two shows (2018 and 2019) to go, but i was so exhausted after the baker's dozen i needed a break lol

lol very understandable

the baker's dozen was so good tho, total culmination of everything the band was and is about

i like how the first set of 8/6/17 is almost like a concept set about mental illness https://phish.net/setlists/phish-august-06-2017-madison-square-garden-new-york-ny-usa.html

and then the second set breaks it up with "simple"; idk, the set construction in some of the later bd shows seemed a little haphazard but the final show has such a focused flow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszu0K5o9AU

y’all this is fucking outrageous

whoa mama. listened to that at work today and loved it! but then, but then, this baby came on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF2j2UPLlA8

holy hell

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

i watched between me and my mind yesterday, and it's the best phish documentary, and also the only music documentary to ever make me cry ten minutes in. the conversations between trey and his family are so raw and intimate, and when he's just hanging out with fishman talking about music and they're making each other lose their shit laughing you can feel how long they've been friends, how rich their connection is. so i had to hear a ghosts in the forest show immediately, and this entire one is on youtube, and it is fantastic. this is the best stuff trey's ever written

I still need to watch that.

I was finally able to couch tour a show live this summer, for Dick's night 2... which, yeah, not the brightest show of the tour but I had fun watching it on my buddy's outdoor projector. That "Fuego" ripcord into "Farmhouse" really sucked, but the "Bowie", "Everything's Right" jam and "YEM" were all fun.

this is the best stuff trey's ever written

Now that's a challops! Hard to compete musically for me with the compositions his brain was pumping out in the era of YEM, Reba, Divided Sky, the Gamehendge stuff, The Curtain, etc. But I do appreciate and see how much he is working on his songwriting craft.

I will watch that Ghosts of the Forest webcast sometime soon. I listened to the studio version when it first came out and wasn't really able to take it at face value because the name and marketing had gotten my hopes up that it was going to be something more experimental and gnarly. Trey's earnest songwriting of the last 15 years or so walks the razor's edge for me - it often falls off the precipice of feeling embarrassingly cheesy and populated by platitudes. But I think it is working more and more as he spends more time in this mode.

I saw Between Me and My Mind in the theater and, as I often do with Trey, found it both affecting and awkward. He just always puts it all out there, for better or worse, but getting to see that that's true 100% of the time helps to contextualize times when he's being excessively goofy. It has been edifying in that regard listening to the "Alive Again" podcast that covers the history of his solo projects, it is a constant stream of enthusiasm and gratitude for making music, every single one of his collaborators, the fact that he gets to do this for a living. He's like the living embodiment of the opposite of jaded, which is pretty amazing given how long he's been doing this and how easily he could coast given how dedicated his fanbase is.

hey did y'all watch that Simple jam I posted above? Please do so.

you're absolutely right that trey's lyrics for ghosts in the forest can slide into cheese and platitudes, one of the revealing things about between me and my mind is that he's composing and recording that album at the same time he's taking "soul planet" around to the different members of phish, "soul planet" being the worst or near-worst offender in terms of trey's tendencies towards platitudinal hippie shit

but idk, it works on the album for me, the production is so good and the songs are both really organic and well-structured; "drift while you're sleeping" has the hyper-composed qualities of early phish but it's coming out of an actual song, which i find so refreshing

i like sigma oasis slightly more tho, and it's likely because the lyrics are mostly handled by tom marshall and not trey anastasio

musically "beneath a sea of stars" contains like several of trey's best melodic ideas, i find that song totally overwhelming

i have no idea why i keep calling ghosts of the forest "ghosts in the forest"

Yeah I mean there is a whole contingent of Phish fans that hate his current lyric writing approach, most often slagged off as "dad rock". Which isn't necessarily a complaint without merit but also, come on, let's not pretend that every era has been littered with absolutely terrible lyrics.

I'll be honest, I've actually avoided the phish appearances of the Ghosts of the Forest songs because I still have the bias that they're bad. But I do have a recollection that "Beneath a Sea of Stars" is very pretty and am excited to dive back in.

One way to avoid getting the name wrong and simultaneously level up your Phish fandom is to use acronyms for everything. Just call it GOTF (or gtfo!)

Part of why I like that "Soul Planet" Shoreline jam so much is that it's the newish Trey song people bitch about the most, "oh you hate 'Soul Planet' do you? here you go...".

my god that is not where i expected them to take "simple." 4.0!!!

i should also say my ghosts of the forest fandom is also rooted in the fact that my favorite phish songs are "walls of the cave" and "waves" and trey writing more songs about how awesome the ocean is (even when that ocean is a metaphor... for LOVE) is only a plus in my book

Yeah that "Simple" is great.

I also think the 8/31 "Stash" deserves some major attention, though it's understandably overshadowed by the "Soul Planet".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZlmRRPUv80

xps

There are certainly terrible lyrics in all the eras, but I think a lot of fans feel like they're in on the joke of the earlier terrible lyrics

"The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road" - wink wink

"The ocean is love" - embarrassing sideways glances

Of course there are good ones in all eras as well. Unaccountably, one of my favorite Phish lyrics is

Rabid victim martyr stranded
Level headed boy, ya better bend
Soon your luscious honey sugar
Mellifluous life is gonna end

oh yeah, Waves rocks. Brad have you heard this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYUNK0V4EwA

If not get excited.

Another great underwater ocean song is "Theme from the Bottom", has great lyrics too

lol the "fluffhead" lyrics, bane of my existence

Of course there are good ones in all eras as well. Unaccountably, one of my favorite Phish lyrics is

Oh absolutely, gems in every era too. I dunno, to me if part of the current, happy, settled and productive Trey means getting a higher ratio of cringe lyrics in songs, I'm willing to accept the bargain.

Still never dreamed of the day a Phish thread would be bumped so often around here, <3 to see the enthusiasm here.

haha, i am a longtime phish fan, it has been my secret shame as an ilxor and i have felt very validated by y'all

Rumors flying that the upcoming Fall Tour is going to be shifted to outdoor only venues. Which makes sense but does not bode well for the rumored winter tour that was going to include three nights in Chicago. Sad that I'll have to go yet another full year without seeing the guys. Going to love the future when tours for half the year are restricted solely to the warmer states.

On the plus side in a few years they'll all be warmer states so no worries

Yeah then we'll just have to worry about fire, floods and intense weather cancelling half the shows.

what a time to be alive

catching up on some shows that were recommended to me during the project. 7/29/03 was great, love an unsettling first set full of bust-outs and a second set "crosseyed" that has the most rocket piercing the firmament of space at one billion miles per hour vibe. i think the only knock against it is "harpua" is not my favorite phish experience, even though this one is fun. the cosmic donut-themed "harpua" from the baker's dozen was so entertaining it may have ruined the rest of them for me

i just started 7/30/03, which has a reputation as a majorly dark, jammed-out show, and it is kind of the show of my dreams so far, this "scents and subtle sounds" is incredible

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

this may be the eeriest phish show i've ever heard. five stars

revisiting my atlantic city phish show, can everyone here please confirm that i witnessed the greatest "split open and melt" of all time https://relisten.net/phish/2021/08/14/split-open-and-melt?source=317834

that was the phish i came to see and they fucking delivered

Apparently they played "And So To Bed" from the White Tape for the first time ever last night. God bless this band

sort of a capper for my phish project https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/learning-to-love-phish/

oh awesome! very excited to read that having accompanied you on the journey! and major lol at the picture they chose to accompany it. just on the off chance any readers might not have an entrenched sense of them as the dorkiest band on earth

Awesome Brad, can't wait to dive in! As Lavator says, even more excited having been able to see bits of your journey along the way.

Also, yeah that photo is lol, "quick, find the dorkiest picture of these dorks you can find". Feel like this was the runner-up:

https://phishsonian.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/1723253_10151854724266290_996336485_n.jpg

Just finished the piece, I love it. I appreciate the honesty and the skepticism that framed part of the journey, pretty common starting point for a lot of people I know into Phish.

A far fairer piece on the band than I'd ever expect to see on Pitchfork, tbh. Brad - I would love to see you do a Sunday review for one of their albums, studio or live! Hampton Comes Alive could be a fun one, or Slip Stitch and Pass.