Post a controversial music opinion

i love phish, feel like every convo about phish is the same fucking convo, but yeah it’s this very specific phenomenon where you have to deal with the fact that their songs are fuckin… weird and bad. even the ‘80s stuff. they just seem to take all the wrong things from classic rock and prog and fill in the space with horrible nonsense lyrics, and it doesn’t get any better when they start writing about more “normal” things in the ‘90s. the dead have *songs*, the dead had a really good lyricist in tow

but phish are just very very good at playing together, and when they really play together all the shortcomings fall away and they become a really sick and tasteful(?) jazz fusion band that doesn’t sound like any other jazz fusion band. idk, i’m not trying to convince anyone. i wrote a whole essay about this. eventually you end up liking some of their songs out of stockholm syndrome, me i became a big fan of “split open and melt”

phish fans are def one of the worst musical subcultures and they should all listen to like… actual jazz… and can

but there is not a ton of distance for me between a really great can bootleg and the top phish jams, is what i’m saying

also one thing phish has over the dead is fishman is a great drummer. ok im done

also the least controversial music opinion on earth is thinking phish sucks

i also really like “foam.” “fee” is one of the worst opening tracks to a debut album i’ve ever heard and i hate when they play it but i guess it prepares you for the whole thing

My controversial opinion re: Phish is that Junta is an amazing album and it is diminishing returns afterward

their best album is story of the ghost: “brian and robert,” “birds of a feather”… gorgeous, spooky, enervated, obv they were listening to talking heads and radiohead at the time. the songs still seem like they were written by aliens recently introduced to “songwriting” and yeah… “funky” phish is not for everyone, maybe not for anyone, but it is what got me into them

i respect your fortitude and courage stepping in here after all the phish bashing. kudos! and i like what you say about enjoying how they play together. i would never want to take that joy away from someone. and i couldn't really. i don't doubt that they get locked in and come up with some choice stuff. they've been playing together forever! and that one dead drummer was a god in 1972!! holy smokes did he rule that year. he should have been Time's man of the year.

My controversial opinion re: Phish is that Junta is an amazing album and it is diminishing returns afterward

― a hyperlink to the past (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, February 28, 2024 9:13 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe i can only listen to junta with today’s ears but idk i still have a rough time with like… every single one of the lyrics

Never heard them but if they sound like Can then count me in.

but yeah it’s this very specific phenomenon where you have to deal with the fact that their songs are fuckin… weird and bad.

lol i actually said to my friend after the show he took me to something like "can you be a good band but not have any good songs?"

Never heard them but if they sound like Can then count me in.

― The British Boy of Film Classification (Tom D.), Wednesday, February 28, 2024 9:18 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

they don't! except in fleeting moments on bootlegs! stay away!!!!

They sound like the opposite of Can

They sound like Canadian, maybe the most Canadian non-Canadian band

can-adian

They cant be as bad as Rush.

(didnt want to disappoint M@tt)

there are a lot of phish fans who adore the more hyper-composed stuff. i mean, it's pretty interesting. "fluffhead" is pretty awesome imo, unfortunately it is a song called "fluffhead." my favorite dense phish composition is "reba," even when they fuck it up royally live it is still great, but again, the chorus is, "bag it / tag it / sell it to the butcher in the store," like wtf

i'm prob one of the few who is like... when they get more normal and earnest in the '90s it's like a relief, and it becomes much easier for me to like them. the goofy shit has a "arent we being so wacky" vibe that i still find it hard to get past

i am now thinking about one of my favorite phish jams, "waves" from the IT festival, "waves" is absolutely one of my favorite phish songs, i guess it's possible ppl would hate it on first contact because it's not like phish ever get less phishy but i love the gentleness of its recurring riff, and the lyrics/vocals are not terrible (high bar for this band), and eventually the song subsides into this soundworld that sounds like echoes off a cave wall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jcVJsoKit4

ok sorry i'm officially done now

catching up to the convo, the best rush album is signals and the best rush song is "the analog kid"

I used to know someone who swore blind that song was just about trees arguing with each other, and wasn't a metaphor of any kind.

― doleful lundgren (Matt #2), Tuesday, February 27, 2024 3:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

^^ this cracked me up

oh right i forgot none of them can sing either.

went to one phish show, fell asleep during a "40-minute 'tweezer'" which sounds unpleasant but is mostly just boring

its almost like the maga thing for phishheads. we DARE you not to like this horrible stuff! proto-maga.

lol at phish sounding like can

phish fans are def one of the worst musical subcultures and they should all listen to like… actual jazz…

Facts. I went to a small liberal arts college that was like Phish fan central and transferred as soon as I possibly could. Still have Lawn Boy somewhere which I apparently stole from my college boyfriend because it has his initials written on it. God knows why he owned it or why I wound up with it but I've never been able to get rid of it because it's like an archeological artifact at this point. It does have bouncing round the room on it which is the only of their songs I've ever liked even a tiny bit.

here see me make the same points i've made itt in this essay https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/learning-to-love-phish/

why can't there be an awesome jam band scene of bands who play great psych (like, actual psych rock not goofy flat-footed bar boogie) - with a sprinkling of pretty folk/country rock if they want - with jazz ability and improvisation? why do they all have to emulate the worst excesses of the dead?

i guess i was always kinda hoping psych jazz would be more of a thing. and less of a rock thing.

i always wanted there to be death metal improv too but actual death metal not zorn style or whatever. just death metal bands who go out. way out.

i'm gonna read that but must mention how painful it is to look at the picture at the top of it. omg they are really something to look at. jesus.

damn i would prob be one of the five ppl who really love free improv death metal

There are bands that do jam band like Can did jam band but when I’ve seen the three or four I’ve been excited to see they’ve always been missing something (a magnetic frontman)

i've been digging this album a lot. i love when extreme metal includes horns. this band also includes slide guitar on one track which is a treat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqnvQC124wM

Can didn't have a magnetic frontman after 1973 though.

(xp)

i love the band Chaos Echoes from France - think they are done though - and sometimes when i hear them i think of the possibilities. of free improv metal. or even a band like deathspell omega. structure/no structure. divorced from any 60s stuff. feels like some sort of future. that's why i love my pal keith's Utech Records so much. everything he puts out screams possibility. a way out. a way further...further away from ken kesey. the astral black metal scene has blown up in recent years.

Yeah, Chaos Echoes are amazing, and Catatonic Effigy (a one-off project I think) are equally great; I reviewed their one album for The Wire. I wish more death metal bands would make room for improvisation. As long as it doesn't wind up sounding like Imperial Triumphant, who I really want to like more than I do. They have their moments but I'm not in the mood for most of what they do about 363 days out of the year.

https://ilusorecords.bandcamp.com/album/putrid-tendency

Ivy! ha. sorry. i've been back here for awhile but i forgot that your name had changed. i love the name Ivy! and now i know that i have always loved your love for stuff i don't like! and you like a lot of stuff i don't like. haha! you really have a way of selling it. okay gonna read your phish thing. god help me.

and now i know that i have always loved your love for stuff i don't like! and you like a lot of stuff i don't like. haha! you really have a way of selling it.

Seconded. Our tastes are so far apart it's like we're living in the mirror universes from Fringe, but the enthusiasm is always welcome.

great phish posts ivy

shhhhhh pipe down stop encouraging her

;)

man, that is better writing than phish probably deserve. good job, ivy. that last paragraph is so nice. you should write fiction! or maybe you do.

Re: what Scott was asking about, just the other day I was thinking how much I missed Ghost. They were an ideal kind of psych jazz rock band, kinda. Same with Acid Mothers. Or at least certainly not flat-footed bar boogie.

I’ve been in and out of the Phish hole so many times over the last 20 years I can’t keep up…I’m currently out and not paying attention to anything they’re doing, but I most recently fell in hard around 2021 when I was back into them to an almost frightening degree and had been pretty big on them in the early 00s as well (I may be crazy but I also feel like they got back into a groove live in ‘21, but what I’ve sampled of shows since then seems remarkably less interesting).

There’s some truth in what everyone has said…Junta-era is great and I’d think most Zappa fans would like it, they CAN sound like a Can bootleg at times (I’ve made this comparison myself) later on, and even in the 90s and beyond they do at times lock in as a band to create moments of transcendental beauty that very few bands reach.

The problem is that to find those moments you have to sift through a lot of bad-wacky and sometimes just horrible or annoying songs, and their fans ARE as bad (or worse) as everyone stereotypes. Right now I don’t have it in me to sift through and find what I like, but at other times that feels like part of the ‘fun’. They really do have some great songs as well, or at least songs that can sound great live (their studio recordings do often sound pretty flat).

It’s not just the wacky stuff to sift through…sometimes their jams suck as well, mainly when Trey takes the lead.

The drummer spent one song dressed as a cleaning lady

He has spent his entire career dressed as a cleaning lady!

Phish's biggest problems, as ranked by me, a Phish fan:

1.) Their fans
2.) Sesame Street-assed lyrics
3.) Vocal problems (never their strong suit) becoming more pronounced as they age
4.) Country Bear Jamboree vibes on some of their slower songs
5.) Improvisations don't always succeed, so people will say shit like "I slept through a 45-minute Tweezer" (but when they do, which is more often than not, they are fire).

"Phish fans should just listen to jazz" people - it's not the same thing, at all?

Trey was once in a cool supergroup with Les Claypool and Stewart Copeland and the two songs Trey wrote for that album were so good it really disappointed me that nothing I've heard of Phish sounded like them

i have to admit that thanks to ivy's essay i can hear what is good in that long version of ghost. there's too much good music that i'll never have time to get to for me to ever spend more of it with phish, but i'm grateful that if nothing else i'll have something nice to say if i encounter phish fans in the wild

(xxp) You make them sound like the Grateful Dead.

Trey was once in a cool supergroup with Les Claypool and Stewart Copeland and the two songs Trey wrote for that album were so good it really disappointed me that nothing I've heard of Phish sounded like them

I saw this group (Oysterhead) live and I thought it was lame. As I've probably mentioned before, I also saw Trey solo band live once and surprisingly enjoyed everything about it ... except him and his playing and his stupid face. Maybe John Medeski was there? Def. horns, iirc a little Afro-beat.

man, that is better writing than phish probably deserve. good job, ivy. that last paragraph is so nice. you should write fiction! or maybe you do.

I read this as a swipe at Phish. i.e. "praising Phish = writing fiction". Ha! But echoing scott's praise over here and ivy. please write fiction actually if you don't already

have no need to listen to Phish, but love reading Ivy talk about Phish.

lol i actually said to my friend after the show he took me to something like "can you be a good band but not have any good songs?"

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, February 28, 2024 9:19 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This gets at it, and Ivy OTM throughout. They (really Trey and, lyrically, Tom Marshall) are profoundly bad songwriters, and I don't think it's very controversial to say they've probably never written a good song across like 15 albums. Kinda funny that they didn't let that hold them back.

I'd die for an Apple Music "skip intro" button that just took me to the jam. I never need to hear the DWD verse/chorus again, just take me directly to the cool part, please.

"I was thinking how much I missed Ghost. They were an ideal kind of psych jazz rock band, kinda."

omg exactly! they were so great live! and they could do acoustic temple bell stuff and the fierce psych. they could do anything. one of the best shows i've ever seen was Ghost in the 90s. if there was a scene like that? sign me up. most of the ghost fans here who had bands were cool but not as technically adept or as compelling and they didn't have great songs. Ghost had really cool songs! the american bands of indie/undie 90s psych could all drone really good or do a good freakout. not naming names because some are good friends....