What do y'all think of Phish?

[Gentle Giant]

An old progrock friend of mine and I were turned on to Phish years ago, just before they became huge. Picture of Nectar was their new album, and we both liked it. But at the same time that I was hearing their brief version of Manteca and seeking out Dizzy's original, my friend was becoming a Deadhead and began following Phish up and down the east coast. Over the years, my friend and I have kept in touch but we don't see each other often. Whenever we speak, he talks about Phish for at least half an hour, catching me up on all the shows he's seen, how amazing they are, yada yada yada. I've never been interested enough to buy another album or see another show, and when I do hear them, I tend to get bored quickly. How do you compare a jam band to the "jamming" of, say, Dave Holland's group? But I tend to feel bad when I don't share his enthusiasm or tell him that other music moves me more.

Last night, PBS ran a film about Phish's IT festival last year. I watched for a few songs, hoping to see something that raised my opinion about them. Aside from a enjoyable and very faithful (except for the extended solo at the end) cover of the Velvet Underground's Rock and Roll, I haven't changed my stance.

But, given that I respect people's tastes around here, I'm interested in what others think about this soon to be ex-group. In particular, if Lenny happens upon this thread, I'd like his impression of Trey Anastasio.

[Chris D]

Pleasant enough, nice sense of humor, undisciplined, generally overrated.

[Root Doctor]

Phish are the Grateful Dead without the talent or the songs.

Nah, Phish is alright.

Most people prefer them live, I actually prefer the studio albums with all the super sweet vocal harmonies and such.

Trey Anastasio is incredibly untalented as a guitarist, and I usually prefer tunes that don't have his multi-minute noodlings.

[Gary Sisco]

Well, I know two of them (living in a town the size of Burlington for 13 years, it's hard not to know people) and they're nice enough guys, regular folks, for multimillionaires, but I've never cared for the band or its records. I can remember the days when they played Nectar's as a bar band and thought the same then, and thought the same then about the absurdly childish adulation they received from the protoneohippies of the time. Actually, in those days, there were two other bands that played there that were virtually indistinguishable from Phish, but Phish outlasted them.

The best thing that ever happened for them was the Dead dying. The last Dead tour included a VT show and Burlington was left to deal with its detritus in the form of a panhandling scourge of tour trash who remained behind, apparently not knowing what to do with themselves once the tour was over. Then Garcia died, hippies cried for a couple of minutes, and then trained their godworshipping sights on Phish, who were there in the right place at the right time. That's about it.

I was running the shelter in those days and one of the bad asses on the street got hired to do security for one of their megaconcerts. When he came back, he asked me, "Where do you hide your paycheck at a Phish concert?" I dunno. "Under the soap."

[jesus marion joseph]

I'm not a Phishhead, but I do enjoy their albums. I've never seen them live. One of my firends from high school has a son with one of the guys in the band, but I can't remember which one. They were never married. I saw her at our 20th reunion last November, and was shocked to learn that her son is now 18 years old!!

[Dr Dave]

The Phish Phenomenon completely passed me by. I've never (at least not knowingly) heard them. The only jam band I ever paid much attention to was The Spin Doctors, and they only because I used to play at some of the same clubs they did when they were starting out: Nightingale, Dan Lynch, etc. Apparently, the Spin Doctors are back in business.

The Spin Doctors are a jam band??

[Chris D]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

The Spin Doctors are a jam band??

They were considered so when they stared out. The lumping included Phish, Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler. Shudder....
That's a lot of crappy music under the bridge.

[Cem]

In my estimation, comparing Phish to the Grateful Dead is like saying Medeski, Martin & Wood are a natural continuum of some Evan Parker band. Though Phish & MM&W are great fun at times, they cannot reach hights or depths GD or Evan Parker can, at least for me. They all have their place, though. I've seen 10 or so Phish shows between '92 & '00. They're a whole lota fun live, but I've never lost myself in their music --not counting once or twice I mighta been shroomed.

What they do best, imo, is rockers and covers. Their jams are often meandering & pointless. The best way they serve the music community is by turning youngsters and ageing hippies on to good music. I bet there are a ton of lurkers & posters here, for whom it is the case. For those who wanna check out some great r&r & jazz inflected rock, I suggest much of their early '90s output. Some of my faves (from the albums Picture of Nectar, Rift, Hoist & A Live One): Axilla, Sample in a Jar, Down With Disease, Wilson, Simple, Stash, The Landlady, Tweezer, Horn...

Originally Posted by Chris D

They were considered so when they stared out. The lumping included Phish, Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler. Shudder....
That's a lot of crappy music under the bridge.

Oh, thats right, I remember hearing an interview with them where they talked about being a psuedo Jazz band before they broke out.

Oy........

What happened there???

Blue Traveler, have their moments. They seem to be quite talented as musicians, but for the most part their songs kinda suck.

Hey Cem, what about Scent Of A Mule?

I've always dug their bluegrass/hillbilly stuff.

Their two best studio albums to my ears would be Billy Breathes and Story Of A Ghost(which has my favorite song of theirs, "Gayute").

Hoist is a complete dog with a couple of good moments.

[Cem]

Scott, I enjoy the hillbilly stuff as I'm a bluegrass fan. That's mostly Mike Gordon, iinm, who pushes bluegrass. Billy Breathes is them at their most Beatles-esque. Yes, good studio album. I have not listened to Ghost enough. I think I kinda lost them after Slip, Stitch & Pass. I love Hoist, though, for the energy & fun factor. You can tell it was a fun record to make.

Oh my.

Slip, Stitch, and Pass.

Why did you have to dredge up that awful memory?

Jesus Just Left Chicago was pretty good, the rest of the album was as bad as a live Phish album can get. And much worse!

Their best bluegrass piece ever is Water In The Sky from Ghost.

[Chris D]

"Hoist" is at least concise. These are folks who need a good editor.
"Julius" is my favorite of their songs.

Hoist just seemed to be an anomaly to me.

The albums leading up to it had all been very good. Well, at least from Lawnboy on.

And I thought Rift was a masterpiece.

Then Hoist. Yuck. A few good moments.

Then Billy Breathes, Story of A Ghost, both incredible albums, so on and so forth..........

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Chris D

They were considered so when they stared out. The lumping included Phish, Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler. Shudder....
That's a lot of crappy music under the bridge.

The Spin Doctors were pioneers in the jam band world. None of these bands were or are very good, I think. True confession: I thought everything the Grateful Dead did after "Anthem of the Sun" was boring. The only band that was any good at the genre, in my opinion, was The Allman Brothers, and only because they had Duane Allman, who was a great soloist.

Come to think on it, wouldn't Cream be grandfathered in to the jam band category? Most of their live stuff sucked, too. Before you start flaming me on this one, Chris, remember that "Crossroads" was heavily edited from a far longer original performance.

Widespread Panic's 3 disc Live In The Classic City is excellent.

They are very much in the Allmann Brothers vein.

And much better than the other jam bands I've ever heard.

You should check 'em out, Finch.

[Gentle Giant]

I was never much into the jam band thing, even the "grandaddies." My favorite Dead albums are all studio and tend towards the mellower of their output: Workingman's Dead, American Beauty, Wake of the Flood, and Blues For Allah. I saw them three times and found too much of it tedious (between Drums and Space, that's about three half-hours I'll never get back).

The Allman Brothers were brilliant because they kept the ideas and the groove flowing while they jammed, and they were always grounded in good old country blues. In addition to two great guitarists, they had Jaimoe, who kept things always interesting and exciting.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Widespread Panic's 3 disc Live In The Classic City is excellent.

They are very much in the Allmann Brothers vein.

And much better than the other jam bands I've ever heard.

You should check 'em out, Finch.

I probably should. You, on the other hand, should check out King Johnson . I've never heard any of their albums, but I saw them live two weeks ago, and they were very worthwhile.

[Steve Reynolds]

bought a couple of their CD's years ago

heard them play a couple of tunes recently


BORING

[Chaz Longue]

Sorry, I missed this thread the first time around.

[Gentle Giant]

At the very least, I'll be glad when all this end-of-Phish hype dies down. Even PBS reran a recent show of Charlie Rose with Trey on it.

I'm spending next weekend with my Phishhead friend, so I know I'm going to have to listen to him go on about the shows. I'm hoping to shut him up for a while with my new Gentle Giant DVD.

I just purchased their "final" studio album Undermind the other day.

I can honestly say that they went out with a bang.

One of there very best, on par with Billy Breathes and Story Of A Ghost.

[Gentle Giant]

Looks like they went out in style (although I have to say that Steve Morse - the Globe music writer, not the guitarist - is often full of shit):

Phish goes out on top
Fans jam onto muddy farm for an emotional farewell
By Steve Morse, Globe Staff *|* August 16, 2004

COVENTRY, VT. -- The parallels between Phish's Coventry and the first Woodstock weren't planned, but were unmistakable. Coventry was held on the 35th anniversary weekend of Woodstock. Both were on remote dairy farms -- Woodstock on Max Yasgur's land in Bethel, N.Y. Coventry on Maxwell's Neighborhood Farm.

And both were weather-driven events victimized by mud but redeemed by crowds that didn't know the meaning of failure.

"I'm amazed by how dedicated these fans are," Coventry producer Dave Werlin of Great Northeast Productions said yesterday. "How many bands have fans that would put up with what they've put up with this weekend?"

The producers spent "hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said, to bring in extra gravel and wood chips to cover the mud so the show could go on. Coventry was almost canceled Friday night before the producers persuaded the police to let it happen, even though 50 percent of the parking lots were unusable. Up to 2,500 cars were abandoned on Route 91, police said, with countless fans walking in four hours from there.

This survival of the Phish-est crowd heard singer Trey Anastasio admit last night, "I've never been nervous going on stage at a Phish concert before, but tonight I am." Supportive applause echoed from the estimated 65,000 fans plucky enough to slog through the mire to get to the 600-acre site.

It was an extremely emotional night. Anastasio broke into tears when discussing how much Phish's friendship had meant to him during the group's 21-year career (and many in the audience cried as well). Pianist Page McConnell was too choked up to talk, but bassist Mike Gordon said it had "been a real wild ride" and drummer Jon Fishman said, "Thanks from the bottom of my heart for coming here."

Phish's first set last night was a turbo-charged roar that picked right up from Saturday's late-night set that had featured stellar versions of "Stash," "Free," a double-time-spiced "Guyute," and encore of "Harry Hood."

Last night the band expelled tensions with a take-charge "Weekapaug Groove" (with Anastasio riffing like a man possessed), a celestial "Reba" (with McConnell at his intricate best), the bluesy, Led Zeppelin-like "Carini," and a hyperkinetic "Possum."

The set included a bittersweet "Satellite" and a happy moment where Anastasio's mom and bassist Mike Gordon's mom were brought out on stage, where their sons danced with them. Anastasio had introduced the band's dads the night before, calling them "The Coalition of Dads." It was nice to see this become a family affair and it further lightened the mood. The band's lyricist, Tom Marshall, was also introduced on Saturday, then band manager John Paluska yesterday, making this feel like a completed circle.

The weather turned sunny during the weekend and all systems were go, including Phish's closed-circuit broadcast to 50 cinemas across the country. "It went well except for a ten-minute power outage in Atlanta," Phish spokesman Jason Colton said.

Deadline pressure forced me to miss the very end of the last set, but Phish launched it with a pensive, Pink Floyd-evoking "Fast Enough for You," leading to "Seven Below," "Simple," and a wholly energized "Piper." That was followed with a climax of a giant fireworks display and "The Curtain," with the verse "please, we have no regrets." Only the second set on Saturday was mildly subpar and even that had some peaks with "Ya Mar" and an exhilarating "David Bowie."

Otherwise, this was Phish at its most unleashed, building on Gordon's backstage hopes on Saturday that "I think we need to get unhinged. This is what all these years of our bonding and chemistry have led us to. I hope we really open up."

His wish was granted -- the band's jamming was uncannily rich and intuitive -- and now Phish can join a very select group of bands that has gone out on top. One thinks of the Police in the '80s and also of the Woodstock-era the Band, whose final show was filmed for "The Last Waltz."

"How can you not be here? This is a band that build its entire following without the help of radio," said Chris Mann, who drove up from Philadelphia. Added his friend, Brad Karpinecz, "If anybody is going to put on a show in two feet of mud, it's Phish." Hopefully someday the music will be remembered more than the mud, but thankfully, Phish has given us much more to remember than just one crazy weekend in the Vermont countryside.*

[Rob C]

I recently tried Phish Food ice cream for the first time. It was pretty good.

[Root Doctor]

I saw the detritus from the show, all tie-dyed and goofy hatted, thumbing along RT 15 as I drove to work.

[Ennis Snavely]

I never got into the dead, never got into phish (actually I've never even heard 'em). I stopped doung drugs twenty years ago, so what's the point?

I've missed the whole jam band thing too. If I want to hear jams I'll put on some Cecil or Evan or...

I still feel like an asshole, though.

[HenryMc]

No Phish without Tchips is my motto

[steve(thelil)]

I often dig certain Dead stuff. I still get transported by Sugar Magnolia from Europe 72. So when I initially heard that if I liked the Dead I'd like Phish I wanted to like Phish, I guess. But, from the start I found whatever I heard of Phish to be tremendously annoying and I developed an irrational anti-Phish bias so quickly I can't claim to be objective. The best stuff I heard sounded to me like a National Lampoon record's parody of the Dead. Although the rock parody stuff Lampoon did was much more enjoyable, musically and more profound, lyrically:

Santa Claus making the Soul Train Scene
Slicking down his Hair With Afro-Sheen
.............Have a Kung-Fu Christmas.