Post a controversial music opinion

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....

i just think its weird that there were SO MANY bands here in the 60s/70s who could write decent stuff and jam their asses off. no name bands who could jam rings around a band like phish. fierce fiery extended jams. then they all went away. i'm listening to one right now. i'd kill for a nu-santana to go see. people still learn how to play instruments, right?

i love this album. one of thousands just like it. (get past the blues-belting intro and you get some choice grooves, doooood.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6HUdke8elw

Now I'm thinking about the time I saw Sunburned Hand of the Man open for Sunn O))) at Tonic and for the first time in my show-going life had one of those "Have they...started? Or are they still tuning up?" moments.

Was the dog in the band at that point? When I saw them they had a dog

I love Ghost. I love Goat, too

I went to Glastonbury 1983 (or was it 1984?) with my parents, I was a very small child, not much more than a toddler. The headlining act were Marillion and for some reason my nan decided that this meant my dad loved them and bought FOUR of their albums for him, which he had no interest in, so I ended up with them, then I used to listen to them a fair bit aged 10 or so. I am consequently really familiar with their music without really being a fan. My defense of them would be something like: they were wildly ambitious and had absolutely no fear of looking or sounding ridiculous, and even if they almost always fell way short of what they were going for, at least they kept trying, and from time to time they did come up with something transcendent, in the manner of a stopped clock I guess.

This song/video is a perfect three-and-a-half-minute encapsulation of Marillion if you want to work out whether you should bother with them at all, it has all their faults and all their best qualities too (NB Fish is singing "wide boys" NOT "white boys", in case any Americans are thrown by that)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pkyZhlK8Q0

To be fair I wouldn't pick up a 6'5" hitch-hiker with a skullet either. Great acting from the lads there though.

Bringing Fish into this admist a discussion about Phish is a recipe for confusion lol. I used to work with a guy who's brother was president of the UK Marillion fan club at the time. That is the only reason I know who Fish is.

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?

Little Feat?

I'm wondering what the hierarchy of the Marillion fan club might have been, were there ministers too?

little feat were so great. i wish they were the normal jam band template.

i think i have, uh, made my feelings known in the past...

Little Feat Fuckin' Rocked Tonight!!!!

i just think its weird that there were SO MANY bands here in the 60s/70s who could write decent stuff and jam their asses off. no name bands who could jam rings around a band like phish. fierce fiery extended jams. then they all went away. i'm listening to one right now. i'd kill for a nu-santana to go see. people still learn how to play instruments, right?

They do, but there are a lot of solo virtuosos on social media who learn from other solo virtuosos on social media, and the infrastructure just isn't there to support bands getting off the ground, playing the necessary amount of local gigs, doing regional tours, etc. That's my theory anyway.

xposts - No idea but hope so.

eh seen phish, know many phishheads (whom i generally like- same as deadheads- even though i'm pretty clean), from new england, drowned in burlington vibes. i appreciate them for what they're willing to go for, and i'll admit they play better than the dead did to my bad ear. but their songs. they are sooo bad. they should never sing a word ever. even other ppl's good words. it's not even just the meaning of any words, it just tis toxic pabulum vibe

like, in the background as i type is that waves video at min 7, and i can at least listen to that without being pissed off by it. then oop they start singing again and nope.

*walks away* ok now it's a little excursion at 13min plus, and ok, almost spacey, some pedal-y stuff i can deal with. this is more interesting than anything that happens when you open your mouths.

i'm glad team controversial post solved phish for me, make it real

xp fuck i love little feat they are like one of few bands in that ilk i truly dig

"playing the necessary amount of local gigs, doing regional tours, etc. That's my theory anyway."

mine too. people would play in 10 bands, play weddings, etc, and play different styles with different people and THEN - even though they were still young - form the band that they would be known for. now everyone is just in their room.

i'm so happy that my kid found sympatico people to play with. they can all really play. they study it too. they rock the clubs in montreal. they are recording a single with a guy engineering who was in.....some band with a bad name. Viet Cong? are they from canada? anyway, they are getting out there and getting experience playing live. that's the thing.

Possibly discussed elsewhere but is there a 'Grayfolded'-type edit of all the good Phish bits anywhere? Psych jams in, vocals out kind of thing.