If Phish happens to perform on July 15, 2011, I will be there. That date will be the 20 year anniversary of my first Phish concert.
For a crash-course on what Phish is about, check out LMC Radio's Inspiration page, because the station is partly dedicated to/inspired by Phish. The last time they performed full-on in Austin was in 1999 (and I was there!) at Southpark Meadows.. Remember Southpark Meadows? ... ???!!!
I literally could write a book, but these posts are to chronicle one night of music here in Austin, and that is what I will do. Somewhere in the first hour of Phish's set, I ended up alongside a young lady who cheered at the start of each song, anticipated musical changes, had the biggest smile on her face, and danced like there's no tomorrow. She was about twice my size and half my age, and neither of those is a bad thing. Partway through "You Enjoy Myself", a Trey Anastasio composition from the 1980's that the drummer Jon Fishman refers to as Phish's "bread and butter", she turned to me and asked: What's the name of this? That stunned me-- I suddenly realized this was a brand new Phish fan who must have somehow heard the music, but just not long enough to learn the names of things, even the staples. She looked about 19, the same age I was when I first saw Phish. ..So this post is for her. And for anyone else who has a curiosity about this band, or even just good old-fashioned respect for them. Old school fans will enjoy reading this too-- because this old school fan is having fun writing it.
Phish fans have a tendency to call the band members by their first names mostly-- as if we all know them personally?-- so, band member lineup: Trey on guitar, Mike on bass, Page on keys, Fish on drums.
Before I tell you what they DID do, let me tell you what they did NOT do. Let me tell you! They did not play the vacuum, did not play from the top of an airport landing tower, and did not ride a giant hot dog over the heads of audience members. They did not form an Acoustic Army, cover The White Album or Exile on Main Street, or create a snowfall indoors. They did not design an outdoor camping festival with themed art installations, ferris wheel, FM radio station (The Bunny), and post office. (Some of their festivals had their own zip code-- we were a city, see? Details.. priorities!) They didn't switch instruments, play from midnight to sunrise without breaking, weave esoteric samples of other songs into their own, or throw 3 giant beach balls into the audience for a crowd-directed Ball Jam. They didn't engage us with Phish Talk, sing in Hebrew, or shoot the drummer through the roof with a catapult. They didn't go from metal to bluegrass, get esoteric or evil, or get bluesy or reggae on us. They didn't set aflame a symbolic sculpture, get naked (OK, only the drummer ever got naked, briefly and bravely), or jam on a flat-bed truck rolling through a camping crowd at 3am. They didn't play with Sharon Jones, a Seminole Indian Chief, B.B. King, or multiple Elvii (plural of 'Elvis'). They didn't sing a barbershop quartet, wiggle the Punch You In The Eye Storm Dance, play chess with the audience, or bury the meatstick in Japanese.
Phish = Composition + Improvisation. Jazz + Classic Rock. Geeky respect for music + slap-happiness. Letting it all hang out + hinting at the inside joke. What inside joke? That's what we're always trying to figure out.
Close your eyes during any given "jam", or extended musical conversation of theirs, and just try to follow what each of the four is saying to the other three. It's a fun game to play, and always leads me back into the entirety of the music. "What song is this?", asked after 10 or more minutes of music, is a classic sign that Phish is really flexing their improvisational, experimental, and mind-melting muscles. It's more than possible to get so lost in the music that you forget what song the conversation originally sprouted from.
Tonight was the debut of Fish's new "geriatric" drum chair. All these years, he's been sitting on a stool, at one point nicknamed Mrs. Fishman. The new improved Mrs. Fishman provides back support, and the removal of the stool provides room for more drums-- "like knocking down some walls and adding two new rooms onto the house". Room for the kids!!
What Phish DID do tonight: play a perfect set for a giant music festival.
What they played:
Down with Disease -- Possibly Phish's only attempt at a pop hit song in their history, punctuated with some macho guitar riffs--including bass, a danceable beat, and sealed with Trey's signature soaringly happy high-note climaxes. This is the one song they made a video for (like, Mtv style)-- a video that demonstrates one more trick they didn't pull this evening-- turn the stage into a giant fish aquarium. For the un-indoctrinated this evening, this was a pop-song-turned-listening-exercise, as Phish delved into a characteristic 4-piece musical conversation before neatly wrapping up.
Cities -- A Talking Heads cover, less funkified but no less classic, classic even for Phish to play-- in my recent acquisition of a musical cassette tape (plastic rectangle, holes in center) from December 1, 1984, I learned Phish covered this song during what many consider to be the first official Phish show in Burlington, VT.
Possum -- This is as barefootin, dust-kickin, and down-home as Phish gets-- and marked with some classic Phish musical tension-and-release-- plus it's an oldie from the 1980's, from Trey's senior thesis at Goddard College (a liberal arts college in VT). The thesis has an official title (he Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday), but most fans call it Gamehendge, which is the setting of the thesis' fictional story, songs, and characters. If you ever want to be really confused, read Gamehendge on paper as a story. Then, go listen to it-- if you can find a performance of it-- the band has performed it in its near-entirety, complete with story narration, 5 times. It all comes together. Except for the Possum, whose poor end was the road. So wonderful to hear this outdoors, and I think Trey made his guitar talk at the beginning of it..
Wolfman's Brother -- A slow funky rock number with a bit of soul, this song really lept out as something new and different when it first emerged in 1994, and really came into its own by the end of the 90's. This would be a great moment to point out that Phish's lyrics are sometimes a head scratcher, with this song being a case in point. The band relaxed into Wolfman's tonight, perhaps to save it for..
Chalk Dust Torture -- An upbeat rocker that never fails to reach every person present-- we've all been bored at school or (unless we're lucky) bored at our current jobs. I've never seen this song performed mildly, or without the centerpiece lyric can't I live while I'm young belted out with crowd in unison. This is almost 2 decades old now, written by Trey and his songwriting comrade Tom Marshall. Great example of Trey mixing some swampy/butt-heavy riffs with a screaming solo in the same piece. They once played this on the David Letterman show in 1994, back when David had hair, and the same sense of humor.
Rock and Roll -- A classic Velvet Underground cover that is the story of our lives. Many times Trey is the main vocalist, but this is a good time to point out that all band members take turns singing & often harmonize. Page sings this one, and seemed especially into it tonight. Maybe his life was saved by rock and rock and roll too. After the mandatory Rock and Roll jam (mandatory because Phish is known for adding jams to songs, and mandatory because.. look at the song!)-- with Trey's articulate guitar in stark forefront--and Mike's serpentine and insistent bass underneath-- the spacey ending after the close of the song was ambiguous for awhile, perfectly Phish, until the drums kicked in, leading us to..
Also Sprat Zarathustra (also known as "2001")-- This is.. is.. in my Top 3 favorite live Phish pieces, and has been for decades. This is a symphonic poem (go look it up) first composed by Richard Strauss (Germany) in 1896. Sounds stuffy, eh? No way-- at least not when Phish gets their hands on it. This composition, in part or whole, has been borrowed, used in films, and covered by other musicians for more than a century. During the gigantic December 31, 1999 ("Y2K") Phish concert in southern Florida (85,000 people attended, the largest concert on earth that night) my friends kept throwing out the phrase Dance Party 2000!! The phrase stuck with me, and any time Phish turns us all into dancing fools, like they did yet again in Austin 2010, I shout it out. This is a good time to give props to lighting director Chris Kuroda, whose colors, timings, and patterns make Phish's music a visual experience, and highly aesthetic.. Except during the musical peaks of "2001", when Chris turns a white light- the most evil and naked of all lights- to the audience, burning all of our retinas and temporarily blinding us. We scream in agony , and the band likely thinks we scream because the music is climaxing or we are having fun or something. We are screaming from damaged vision, temporary stupefaction, and potentially permanent brain damage -- but we press on with our funkiness. Dance Party 2000!!
Backwards Down the Number Line -- This is a song by friends, for friends. This is a newer song with a sweet and poignant origin-- I won't tell the story, but I recommend you read about it from a hopefully reputable source, maybe Phish.net, or find the NPR Morning Edition interview with Trey and Page from September 2009. The accompanying jam to this song tonight was at first buoyant, and then increasingly rocking!
Harry Hood -- This is an oldie from the 80's, performed continuously for decades, and appears on no studio album. This is Classic Phish. Why? Because it is a beautiful composition with several movements that show off the band's ability to be delicate, relaxing, scary, funny, weird, ambient, concentrated, and beautiful. Within and between the movements is plenty of room for improvisation, which the band has explored with different faces in Harry throughout the decades. Harry Hood is Classic Phish because this is a prime example of where composition meets improvisation, and where the band goes "in" at some point, brings us to stillness, to pure listening attention, and usually brings it back "out" with cascading musical majesty. (Many times there is a "glow stick war" amongst the crowd during Harry-- first born when one time the lighting director was told to turn all stage lights off during a certain section-- to place all attention on the music-- and evolved into a dazzling display of flying colored sticks.) Of course, this is also Classic Phish because all the loveliness revolves around a cartoon character from a New England dairy company commercial. Plus, before the Internet, you'd never know who Mr. Minor is-- one of those things that draws you curiosity. The inside joke! And the joke was on us-- the band ended Harry Hood early, did not bring it "back" from the exploratory jam.. and instead led directly into "Light".
Light -- A new song from their most recent album Joy(2009). Enlightening and spiritual lyrics-- not always Phish's specialty. Light is based on Eckhart Tulle's book The Power of Now -- but it works, especially because the accompanying "jam" to this song is increasingly complex and dense in the past two years. This exploratory rock song is in its relative infancy in the Phish timeline, and I look forward to watching it evolve.
Suzy Greenburg -- Of the entire Phish song repertoire, a list several hundred pieces long, there is no single Phish lyric I relate to more than the line: "Little Suzy Greenburg, with her head caved in." If you have ever had a crush on a wacky gal, or have been a wacky gal, this song is for you. Completely fun, an oldie from the 80's written by Phish friend The Dude of Life. Page usually has several openings in Suzy to funk it up on the keys, and tonight he went back and forth between an electronic and classic key sound. In the words of one fan tonight, "Page owned it." Although there were no horns tonight, it's worth mentioning this piece is perfectly embellished by brass, including the "monster" Suzy Greenburg of Festival 8 (featured in the Phish 3D concert film) with Sharon Jones, Saundra Williams, and several members of the Dap Kings on lavish backup.
You Enjoy Myself -- Another Phish Classic, a composition by Trey from the 80's. It's long, complex, with several moods and movements-- but none of them are ever rushed. This is one piece of music that tells a story. There are some pieces, and some nights, I think Phish takes us "underwater"-- where the ebb and flow of the melodies, with Fish's soft jazzy timing underneath, combined with supple blue and purple lights, literally makes you feel buoyant, peaceful-- like you're in another world-- namely: underwater. The first section of YEM (a lazy nickname I'm not a fan of) is like climbing magical stairways, and showcases some fancy fingerwork and timing.. but then the band slides underwater.. and they will stay there for as long as they wish. When they decide to surface, there's a beautiful section that features Page on keys and is enough to get any real-life music box dancer twirling.. eventually leading to a suddenly staccato segueway, exciting chord progressions, and the .. setting of the trampolines. After some interestingly timed conversation between drums & guitar, some screaming notes from Trey, the tension builds, the notes climb higher, higher, higher.. until all four members literally shout on the top of their lungs. BOY. MAN.. complete signature tension and release. The band moves to groovy funkland-- you don't know how we got here--but it sure feels good. All that funk deserves bouncing. Such as.. the synchronized trampoline dance by Mike and Trey. Yes, while still playing guitars-- and Mike holds it down as solid as he ever does. When trampoline time is over, the funk jam adventure begins, never going the same place twice. Again, Phish will stay here as long as they wish, and they have their choice of neatly wrapping up with a refrain of the minimal lyrics (wash Uffizi and drive me to Firenze, or, it could be "wash you feetsie"..) or they begin a vocal jam.. which they did tonight. All four members start making random sounds-- with the only instruments they are playing-- their voices. It's usually trippy, textured, eery, sometimes funny-- tonight was all three-- bringing this masterpiece to a psychedelic close. I was jealous of folks hearing the likes of this for the very first time. What's the name of this? she asked.
Encore:
Cavern -- A straight-up rock number with a declarative ending-- the song has a plot, and a moral--and good luck discerning what either of them is .. it's easy to get lost between the primal soup, septic maidens, and rudiments of gruel. This is the song that references Nectar (in a vague and veiled fashion), the club owner who let Phish gig and gig in the 80's. What is not vague or veiled is the 1992 album from which Cavern came-- A Picture of Nectar-- or the album's cover, which is a photograph of an orange, with the shadowed contours of Nectar Rorris' face transposed onto it. True story: When Phish reunited in 2009 after a 5 year breakup, their reunion set of shows were at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia. Fans from ALL over flew in. As one plane was about to empty, the pilot, after the usual time and weather shpeal, quoted the last lines of this song: "Whatever you do, take care of your shoes." The plane's passengers erupted. Phish fans-- we're everywhere.
First Tube -- This piece will drive you straight across the country-- or into outer space. Many times a show opener or closer-- perhaps to send us all home with a kick in the pants, or ants in our pants-- this electrifying and propulsive instrumental is a little over a decade old. Constantly pushing forward, First Tube has Trey picking in 3, Fishing sharply cracking the kit in 4, Page embellishing throughout, and is a great example of Mike's rhythmic, thumping prowess on bass. (After almost 2 decades of listening to this band intently, I would say Mike is the musical "center" of their most musically dense and experimental moments..) This piece is not experimental, but straightforward, increasingly energetic and triumphant-- with an enjoyable space-loop Trey throws in halfway through with one of his toys/pedals-- and closed with some playful, climactic guitar feedback-- in case we forgot this is rock and roll.
I think with the wristband I had, I could have waited on a line to be on the side stage, with strangers who potentially don't know or even like this band. Why would I do that, when I can be with my friends on the lawn, strategically placed in front of the soundboard? And then watch the clouds change colors with the sunset, follow the mass of iridescent dragonflies glowing in the dusk, circling above. Just before the music began, someone let go a helium balloon in the shape of a red heart. It floated up and up and up. I kept watching, with the skyline of Austin below it, the orange clouds alongside it. I got to thinking, about the twenty-something years this band has been together, their dedication to the live music experience, to the art they constantly evolve, my relationship with this live music city, my seemingly permanent admiration for this band's music. I watched that balloon for a long time. Some powerful combinations are meant to keep going, and some old loves never die.
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