Post a controversial music opinion

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.

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.

yeah I appreciate that about them - I think a lot of post-70s prog acts kinda use the classic bands as a shield in a way, like well ELP did this and Genesis did that so we're not being dorks, we're just paying tribute. but Marillion were not afraid to just go way beyond, as though Peter Gabriel just didn't go far enough. idk how much I like them exactly but Clutching at Straws and Misplaced Childhood both have some really great parts.

also, two of the prog night regulars here have daughters named Kayleigh :)

people will say shit like "I slept through a 45-minute Tweezer"

i was not exaggerating for effect, i truly did sleep through 33 minutes of a 40 minute "tweezer" and i would do it again

i keep waiting for the ozric tentacles discussion to start...

i got in a janes addiction bootleg and it looks like there are jams on it. pissed off krishnas from hell...should i listen to it? it looks a little scary. *the mephisto demos*. they could have been a jam band if they had wanted to be.

what if little feat are an acceptable jammy band to me not because of their absolutely incredible chops and tightness, but because they were REALLY FUN and ACTUALLY COOL, and some hippies jammers, just aren't. it's not the music at all.

does that make me horrible?

nah. of course it's the music.

"sploosh" is still a jam

that doesn't make you horrible at all. they were really fun and cool.

x-post

there is something so normal about the college circuit jam band thing. people who look like the people they are playing for shouldn't give me pause. its nice to have approachable relatable people to be fans of. i mean i was an indie rock fan and a hardcore fan. but there is something a little TOO normal about it for me. i like a little mystery or mythos or theatricality with my rock. but to those undergrads into string cheese theory they are fun and cool and that's cool to me. its just a little too mundane or something. i'm just making stuff up now cuz i don't even know if i've ever heard that band. we should have a jam band listening thread. or maybe not. i would totally be into a prog listening thread. just album tracks. that would be fun. if someone started one. people could weigh in on old prog. or even new prog. there is so much of it.

went to a show at a small room last week (Joe Russo, John Medeski & Nels Cline) and there was a guy walking back and forth with balloons and didn't really notice. then the guys behind me in line starting talking about how they had to go on the jam cruise and a bulb lit and realized people were buying nitrous. jam cruise guys started strategizing on how to get a deal on balloons. made me consider leaving. show ended being good, but WTH.

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

― bulb after bulb, Wednesday, February 28, 2024 9:42 AM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^THIS. As great as that Pitchfork piece is, following all of her posts on here leading up to it (and the surrounding discussions) was peak ILM.

xp this is making me consider people with nitrous at show attendence-- i'd not thought of it before much beyond *eyeroll* but that seems like the worst possible thing to take at music show. is it actually good? i do not have v deep nitrous experience but i should think that would be distracting as FUCK.

feel free to share your positive nitrous-at-a-show experience (that is like related to the show/music).

(sorry i know i don't have "feel free" authority or permission lol)

this alcatrazz album i'm playing right now is kinda 80s prog in parts. Disturbing The Peace. "god blessed video" is a weird song. i can't say i'm very familiar with their records.

i just know them because Steve Vai and Yngwie served time

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.

Love to see it!

xp this is making me consider people with nitrous at show attendence-- i'd not thought of it before much beyond *eyeroll* but that seems like the worst possible thing to take at music show. is it actually good? i do not have v deep nitrous experience but i should think that would be distracting as FUCK.

feel free to share your positive nitrous-at-a-show experience (that is like related to the show/music).

― a single gunshot and polite applause (Hunt3r), Wednesday, February 28, 2024 11:55 AM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

During my jam band years, it was never an in-show drug. People only did it in the parking lots because getting a tank into the arena would be prohibitively difficult and risky. I never did n2o at shows anyway, because despite being popular, it was controversial among my crowd. "Hippie crack," some called it. How many times did I see some dude pass out face-first onto the concrete with balloon in hand?

yeah from videos i've seen of the parking lot experience, the ppl doing nitrous do not ever remember the show. they're in it for the drugs

y'all motherfuckers having too many controversial opinions, i can't keep up

here's a fucking long-ass aggregation of replies

-

if we're talking rush here's fire-toolz covering what is apparently one of the most hated rush songs with sling beam on vocals

https://fire-toolz.bandcamp.com/album/tai-shan

from abba to zappa

― kurt schwitterz

literally the name of an album by i think panzerpappa? no, sorry, panzerballett. oh! i always get those two mixed up!

see also Gabba

― A street taco cart named Des'ree (Deflatormouse)

gabba zaba

OK, but . . . who's wielding the hatchet, axe and saw?

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)

uruk-hai

"the trees" is a protest song about how fucking long entmoots are

I would argue that there is a Grand Canyon-sized gulf between the first two artists on this list and the latter three.

Rush — I don't listen to the albums that often, but they were amazing both times I saw them live. Yes — one of my favorite bands ever.

I have never heard a Marillion song as far as I know, and I hope to go to my grave with that streak unbroken. Dream Theater are some of the nicest people I've ever met in my life but their music is agonizing. And Tool live up to their name in every way.

― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson)

see, in my prog elitist days back in the '90s the only _real_ band were yes. rush were for bonehead libertarians who thought they were sophisticated for listening to a glorified styx. of course, i was even more elitist than that. "symphonic" prog was consonant dreck. henry cow, now _that_ was the real shit.

i got over that elitism. i still dig henry cow, though.

most of it is a generational thing, i think... yes were first-wave brit prog, rush kinda came in on the tail end of that and typified what ashratom (who probably knows more about the genre than anyone else) terms "USA Midwest / Ontario Progressive Rock". archival releases by labels like syn-phonic have rehabilitated this subgenre's reputation in proghead circles over time. and then marillion were second-wave prog, dream theater were second-wave prog-metal, tool were, i don't know. crossover or something.

i consider them an extra-musical rock band. you don't actually have to like music to be a fan. same with Phish people really. they never buy anything either. ever.

― scott seward

phish people just listen to bootlegs online

i think people who get into phish a lot of the time listen them exclusively, or almost exclusively, at least for a while. because the requirement is that you shut everything else out.

i found it too insular

― A street taco cart named Des'ree (Deflatormouse)

i mean i spent the first couple years of my transition listening basically exclusively to the grateful dead. built up a huge cherry-picked collection of the stuff of theirs i liked (i'm very much a cherry-picker - a lot of dead i got through "save your face")

i think i rant about more 90’s stuff than anything but i do love music from other decades i swear

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl)

nothing wrong with having favorites, i never fucking shut up about 70s shit, there's music from all other stuff

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

― ivy.

i'm on board with you regarding phish. for a long time i had a second-wave jam-band head who was really into phish who's recommend all of this different stuff. what i hit on is first, this site called "just jams" that cuts out the song portions of their music because oh god the lyrics make me cry with how bad they are. if i'm going to listen to "tweezer" please for the love of god _cut out the song bits_.

i was also going through my journal from around the time of my GRS... going over my old journals is always interesting because what i write in the journals and what i remember are often very different. anyway when i was in the hospital after my surgery i listened to the long-ass "ruby waves" from jul 14 2019. i'm not out to convert anyone, never have been. it's not for everyone; you get into it or you don't. GRS isn't for everyone either, and i guess that "ruby waves" and my GRS are now linked. it's not something i listened to before and i haven't really listened to it since (i'm listening now).

and then there's halley's comet. i don't think that's a great song either, but phish didn't write that one. i've read the story. i'd kind of like to hear the original richard wright demo of the song. it sounds really interesting. he's a really interesting guy. and that, to me, that history is inextricable from the nov 22 1997 "halley's" (which you mention in your article). it's funny. my first wave of phish listening was '94 to '96, when i was in college up in dayton. when i got kicked out of that school i got more into, idk, gastr del sol or some shit. the phish -> gastr del sol pipeline, lol. i mean it really was, for you it's phish and can, and for me i was listening to "a live one" and "millions now living will never die" and hearing them as being kind of the same. anyway i kinda forgot about phish for a while, i figured they'd peaked. which i guess wasn't so much true lol.

oh wait, the original "halley's comet" demo is right there! idk how i didn't see it before. anyway. it's not good, but it's _interesting_.

phish are cringe, but sometimes they're cringe in ways that intersect with the ways in which i'm "cringe". that's what i value about them.

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

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili)

"the analog kid" just reminds me of my teenage years on BBSes. when i was a teenage nerd in suburban new jersey and starting to get into the pirate BBSes like everyone was _huge_ into rush and were _huge_ kind of... entitled teenagers. to be in the BBS scene you kinda had to have rich parents or be better at doing crime than i was. i barely managed to shoplift enough to post on the message boards, i never had the hottest warez, as far as getting a second phone line so i could run my own board, forget it, haha. like you'd have a bbs called "rivendell" and it wouldn't be named after lord of the rings, it would be named after the rush song _about_ lord of the rings. that was the scene. and then there was always the token adult and you look him up 20 years later and it turns out he's doing life in prison for being a pedo. good times.

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

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili)

oh so like dilation then

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

― ivy.

ivy like 70% of all trans women would love that

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

― ivy.

ok i got to this part:

Which is when I thought, Oh, I like this.

Which is when I thought, Oh no, I like this.

ok this is literally my experience with gender euphoria. that was literally how i felt when my egg cracked. for the record.

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

― The British Boy of Film Classification (Tom D.)

it's funny, my favorite live can is actually _just_ after damo's departure. there's this audience tape from birmingham feb 10 1974 that's just _so good_, absolute peak shit.

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

2.) Sesame Street-assed lyrics

― peace, man

ex-fucking-scuse-me

i am a _big fan_ of joe raposo

don't talk to me about "sesame street-assed lyrics", "go ahead and touch" is _light-years_ ahead of anything phish could ever _dream_ of doing

I love Ghost. I love Goat, too

― a hyperlink to the past (flamboyant goon tie included)

Ghost Of All Time

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.

― doleful lundgren (Matt #2)

oh all over youtube, yeah

went to a show at a small room last week (Joe Russo, John Medeski & Nels Cline) and there was a guy walking back and forth with balloons and didn't really notice. then the guys behind me in line starting talking about how they had to go on the jam cruise and a bulb lit and realized people were buying nitrous. jam cruise guys started strategizing on how to get a deal on balloons. made me consider leaving. show ended being good, but WTH.

― bulb after bulb

i don't see anything weird about that? people who are into music and who are also into getting high? i got enough problems sober so i don't fuck with that stuff personally, but a lot of people i know do all kinds of weird shit.

"sploosh" is still a jam

― massaman gai (front tea for two)

the CW on ozrics when i was younger was that their entire career was basically them doing slight variations on gong's "master builder". i'm not sure that's entirely fair. that said looking at their RYM is pretty fascinating. tons of different albums most of which have, like, 400 reviews, and all of which are ranked between a 3.4 and a 3.6. they definitely are doing the same thing, over and over and over. even moreso than phish!

roly wynne interested me. i got a side project he did called "pyramids on mars" (sic)... it's not the best thing ever but it's interesting.

damn, kate, how am i supposed to get any work done? i'm gonna come back and read all that but i gotta get ready for this record show on sunday . cheers.

oh and by the way for ILXors in general: CHUCK EDDY SAYS HELLO!!

hi chuck!

Ivy, very good writing and insights.

Thing is, drugs are the key to being a good band without good songs.

My father is an expert on drugs (personally and also professionally) as well as music. He notes that weed (especially) inhibits short-term memory. So you forget that you've been listening to the same dumb chords with goofy pentatonic noodling over them for 15 minutes. I think he was talking about the Dead at the time, but it seems modestly relevant.

damn, kate, how am i supposed to get any work done? i'm gonna come back and read all that but i gotta get ready for this record show on sunday . cheers.

― scott seward

EXACTLY HOW I FELT TRYING TO CATCH UP TO THIS THREAD lol

HI CHUCK EDDY

yeah i can't keep up, not gonna try, but not familiar with ivy's published words so look fwd to this phish piece thank u

Thing is, drugs are the key to being a good band without good songs.

My father is an expert on drugs (personally and also professionally) as well as music. He notes that weed (especially) inhibits short-term memory. So you forget that you've been listening to the same dumb chords with goofy pentatonic noodling over them for 15 minutes. I think he was talking about the Dead at the time, but it seems modestly relevant.

― alpaca lips now (Ye Mad Puffin)

totally true. i remember seeing my morning jacket back in 2011. they played "dondante" for 20 minutes and ten minutes in i was screaming at them to modulate to the phrygian dominant already for god's sake. you know why? BECAUSE I WASN'T ON DRUGS. That's how NORMAL SOBER people listen to music.

Many xps
But for the people looking for death metal stuff with a free jazz bent, there’s a burgeoning subset of “free death” adjacent bands like ByoNoiseGenerator, Encenathrakh, Trichomoniasis, Chlorama, and especially Effluence.

the local sports talk morning show used to use a short clip of “step into the freezer” and the gorgeous vocal harmonies filtered through lofi AM radio band caused me to assume it was some doobie bros or csn deep cut

Wow I wish I knew you people in my twenties <3

drugs enhance music for sure, but ime none of that effect has to do with their impact on my short-term memory, except for maybe like the first few times i smoked weed. i particularly take issue with the suggestion that repetition requires drugs to be enjoyable, a lot of the best music is built on loops that can go on forever

A lot of people can't bear that kind of repetition without chemical assistance.

I don't think I would listen to anything that required not being sober to enjoy it. Like, that's a pretty clear message your brain is sending your way. "This music is bad, listen to something else." Or, "that's enough of that, put something else on."

I mean, it's a fool's errand to defend Phish around here and I'm not really motivated enough to try anyway, but with reference to recent tangents, I've seen Phish multiple times stone cold sober and enjoyed the show just as much as I did when, uh, less than straight edge.

You need drugs to like Phish is just such a lazy complaint at this point anyway. Believe me, there are many fully legit complaints about those four goofballs and the corny ass music they can make, no one needs to lean on that old saw.

(also, fuck the nitrous mafia, an absolute scourge on the scene)

fuck the nitrous mafia

otm that is some scary shit (speaking as someone who enjoys a whipit every so often)

Was it in one of those All Gas videos where someone (Lance Bangs?) describes Phish as "children of dentists selling meth to buy coke?" Anyway, joke or no: dentists, Phish, nitrous, it all adds up.

if phish didn't sing they'd be doing the superbowl is how i break it down to an extant.

Ivy's Phish Odyssey: Phish C/D

(xps: sorry, really should have said above that I did talk to the jam cruise guys in line and they were nice guys, don't want to unfairly place them, whatever else was going on)

Music in general is just something to keep us entertained when we can't find anything new in superior mediums such as stand up comedy.

or if we are waiting for the pickle ball court to open up.

wait i've got a contro/op! THE ONLY 21ST CENTURY INDIE GUITAR BANDS WORTH LISTENING TO ARE ALL FROM AUSTRALIA. its true. dune rats. rolling blackouts. violent soho. hockey dad. drunk mums. total control. the uv race. raw balls. dick diver. lace curtain. rat columns. dag. blank realm. NEED I GO ON??? not to mention famous people like courtney and amyl.

pretty much the only modern indie rock i listen to. everything else is lame. how do they all make their guitars sound so cool and fun? and why does it look like they are having so much fun? aren't all the koalas on fire over there? down there. so infectious. AND NOT JUST THAT SMOKO SONG. they can't ALL be related to the Go-Betweens.

i'm a little behind though. i need to find some new kangarockers.

(i'm listening to the song "dive deep" by rolling blackouts right now and i think could marry the entire band. so good.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=628gXZn-zYw

not to mention Billiam, Gee Tees, R.M.F.C., Busted Head Racket, Tee Vee Repairman, Hagol, etc etc etc

and Terry, and EXEK, and The Lewers

Maybe if you include Canada too. Some of the indie guitar bands from up north: Dumb, Kiwi jr., Ducks Ltd.

ooh yeah aussie recs for me here please. i started a YT playlist ages ago but i should update or create a better one. plus its an old account of mine that i don't use anymore. WOOLEN KITS!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4uJu4UGWv-Rn0YA53IvBEQTcxQ2E0u1n

SCOTT & CHARLENE'S WEDDING RULE. i have one album by them. so great.

i never look at my old account. this is still the best thing i've ever put on the internet probably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFHPsThGQ1E

see also

Lothario
TGRX
Tombeau

"children of dentists selling meth to buy coke?" Anyway, joke or no: dentists, Phish, nitrous, it all adds up.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, February 28, 2024 5:47 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Actual LOLs because the biggest Phish phan I knew at aforementioned college was the son of a dentist studying to be a dentist who also happens to be the only person I've ever done whipits with so that tracks.

xpost Tropical Fuck Storm

Power Plant too, forgot them