THE ESSENTIAL, EXPLAINS-IT-ALL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PHISH AND THE DEAD. YOU'RE WELCOME!
One of Phish.net's most prolific reviewers, W H @waxbanks, has written an insightful piece on his blog (blog.waxbanks.net) comparing the music of the Grateful Dead to that of Phish. He sees them as polar opposites with Phish's music being built around order (or structure) and the Dead's being built around disorder.
With his permission, we are re-blogging his piece on the Phish.net site. p.s. If you're a Dead fan, you may well be interested in his recent piece on tribute bands, particularly Furthur, and I found my self shaking my head in agreement with @waxbank's take on Obama taboot. Good stuff!
Without further ado:
"The home state of Phish's improvisatory music is order (or structure). They depart productively from it, and play against it, entering states of tense, nervewracking disorder. But they always want to resolve, to cohere. Their improvisatory structures (like the two chords of the 'Bowie' jam, with their many modal suggestions) are centers of gravity; that's why they can swing wildly away from them and return surefooted, time after time. Their improvisations are famously architectural and coherent, as are Trey Anastasio's unique full-band written arrangements. The flip side of this strength-in-order is that their experiments in purely Free jamming have rarely been wholly successful, though they've gotten much better at it over the last ~30 years. And for a long time they were afraid to be emotionally wild, preferring intellectual experimentation - at some cost to the overall musical vibe."
The home state of the Dead's improvisatory music was disorder. They were able, on unexpectedly rare occasions, to cohere into well-formed orders within their chaotic musics (cf. the 2/18/71 'Beautiful Jam'), but they were most comfortable in freeform musical spaces ('Dark Star,' 'The Other One,' 'Playing in the Band') because they were accustomed to listening to disorder. The flip side of this comfort-in-disorder is that their formal structures, particularly their practices of song-arrangement, were famously shambolic, inconsistent, and rarely ideally-expressed. Indeed, the Dead's strongest period of pure songwriting (the early 70's country-inflected Hunter/Garcia tunes) is marred by a serious lack of spit'n'polish in arrangement and performance.
Two key causes of this difference are the Dead's average lack of chops,[*] and Phish's early emotionally-withdrawn nerdiness - which respectively pushed the Dead toward expansive Free material and pushed Phish toward hermetically-sealed structures and musical comedy.
The arc of each band was in some ways different, though they shared a destination: the Dead relaxed down to their technical level while sharpening their attack on the forms they had mastered (early-70's knife-edge Free play, late-70's crystalline rhythmic pieces, sparkling joyful 80's worldbeats, ragged balladry throughout); Phish veered toward Talking Heads-style minimalism and sonic experimentation in the mid/late-90's to take themselves out of their heads, then embraced their rock heritage and (ironically) the Dead's naked emotionality in their most recent incarnation.
For the longest time it was enough to say that Phish couldn't do what the Dead did, and vice versa; for the first time, that's no longer entirely true. Phish have finally entered a phase where they can generate the kind of emotional intensity that the Dead naturally traded in. It's for another article/essay to deal with the complicated issue of how Phish's stylistic approach works in tension with this emotionality.
Anyhow there it is. Note that we're not talking about the two bands' respective decision-making approaches, the Dead's lack of a clear artistic vision-leader, Phish's totally different musical heritage, the roles of punk/prog/funk, etc. Another time.
* * *
[*] Lack of chops? Yes. Take out Garcia (with his idiosyncrasies), Kreutzmann (master), and Hart (master in a different domain, weird fit in some ways) and you have the following players: Lesh (very technically limited despite strong intuitive musicality), Weir (brilliant innovator despite technical shortcomings), and the various keyboardists, of whom only Hornsby could match Garcia step-for-step.
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However, him and I disagree about fall 97. I'm more fond of fall 98, but whatever. Thanks for doing what you do, Wally.
-a fan
The Dead always struck me as traditional songwriters where a large body of their songs had simple chord structures, A/B song structures, and a high level of accessibility for the album versions. While these were often blown to the wayside in concert, the core of the Grateful Dead was Americana music (bluegrass/blues/folk) which they were able to challenge with their live interpretations.
Phish, OTOH, had extremely challenging song structures, often times doing everything possible to keep from having a chorus. Fugues, counterpoint composed sections with little or no lyrics made for a need to work much harder to understand the musical expression in the song. More of how a symphonic piece is appreciated vs an AOR single.
From a live standpoint, Phish always seemed to have more of a Jazz sensablilty than the Dead, focusing more on tension and release than chaos vs order. Having only one or two members dropping LSD at any one time vs the whole band just may have something to do with it as well.
And the title is tongue-in-cheek.
@Dressed_In_Gray said: For the longest time I'd have agreed 100% about Phish as 'jazzier' - but I now hear the Dead's music as more canonically 'jazzy' in this crucial sense: while a straight-ahead jazz tune might feature a fixed chord progression, it's rare to hear a small jazz ensemble that so strongly favors group coherence, as Phish does, arguably at the expense of individual performers' linear coherence. i.e. The idea of the 'solo statement' doesn't really obtain in Phish's music, as it does in e.g. 99.995% of jazz horn solos. But the Dead, for all their ensemble incoherence, did focus on their players' individual expressivity rather than collective movement.
Phish fly in a flock; the Dead milled about in a crowd. Hence the Dead's tendency to crash into each other, and the miraculous nature of their moments of collective action. We take for granted that Phish will get together every 4 or 8 or 16 bars, even take for granted that they'll spend several bars sweeping up to that climactic downbeat in perfect synchrony. Harder to generate that phenomenon outside Phish's highly-structured, even formalist improvisatory approach.
100% disagree with that labeling of Lesh and Weir. To call them technically limited is very provinicial, uninformed, and really, just incorrect.
But the rest of the post I enjoyed. Good read.
But there's no question that Weir and Lesh simply aren't as skilled on their instruments as the other guys in the band. Lesh is like a slow/weak soccer player who positions himself incredibly well, mitigating some of his weakness; Weir is like a goalie who does capoeira instead of watching the game, thereby fucking up opposing players despite not being 'a good soccer player.' Both were essential to the Dead, and I like their playing. But they were n00bs when the Dead started.
Stop trying to shoehorn the comparison! Lack of chops? Where did all of you go school? Juilliard? know it all jerkoffs.
p.s. keep political plugs away from Phish.net and on pt where this the rest of the moronic conversations belong.
It's occurred to me that this distinction (order vs. chaos) might be the thing that makes me prefer Phish slightly over the Dead. In many ways, I respect the Dead more than Phish. I think it's almost undeniable that the Dead were better songwriters, at least as far as traditional songs go (rather than instrumental prog-opuses). Say what you want about Tom Marshall, for example, but he's no Robert Hunter.
Still, when it comes to being really grabbed by a good jam, I've always been able to connect more with Phish, and I think the underlying sense of structure, of (usually) having a destination, probably has a lot to do with that. As you say though, Phish did at times struggle with an emotional barrenness and an overly geeky sensibility in their early improv, and the Dead never really had to overcome that. Perhaps that's why it took Phish so much longer (IMO) to get really good.
Anyway, when I saw "waxbanks" at the top of the post, I figured it would be a thought-provoking one, and I wasn't disappointed.
I think Phish has a very hard time reaching the many ranges of emotion the Dead could call upon. Phish is typically not very good at evoking a sad melancholy that the Dead was exceptional at eliciting with songs like Wharf Rat, Attics, Stella Blue, etc etc etc.
Phish is much better at entering the musical realm that boggles the mind though. The Dead had their moments but Phish, night after night, is able to enter a space that brings me to another place entirely.
Either way.....LOVE THEM BOTH!!
lesh is one the best bass players of all time. he lays down that solid groove playing notes were they shouldnt be. also the dead always saw themselves as coltrane in a rock and roll band. also comparing the dead and phish is like comparing football and baseball yes both have a ball and the object is to win but 2 completly different sports
Meanwhile Trey and Page took, what, a couple of days to learn Terrapin?
And yet it's a good enough version of Chalkdust.
That's the difference between intuition and chops.
i also find it interesting that the reaction to the newer emotionally charged songs seems to be overall more negative. like its a foreign substance injected into phish shows people have to get used to before they can enjoy it. show of life for example is less visceral punch and more "kumbaya", but walking out of shows you hear people say "man, that encore SUCKED" and im guessing many of these are GD fans who enjoy that kind of music!
* 'College-rock' types who just wanna smoke a bowl/drink a beer and shake their fists and 'dance' in that lame way I needn't describe
* Music nerds who dig the proggy stuff and the technical side of the jams (overrepresented on online bulletin boards)
* Old-timers who miss the musical-hijinks side of the band (note the reaction to Utica around here)
* GDead hangers-on looking for something like cultural escapism
* GDead lovers looking for that old-time musical uplift
* Late-90's/2.0 types looking for spaced-out music in the vein of the Disco Biscuits (first up against the wall when the revolution comes)
* ...and of course a variety of folks tripping the light fantastic, etc.
Trey's emotionally-direct songs like 'Joy' and 'Show of Life' make a lot of those fan groups uncomfortable. Songs like 'Fast Enough for You' mask their emotionality with wordplay (Tom Marshall can get in his own way, that way), so they're OK, but when they sing 'It's a small world / But we all start out small' it really goes right to the heart of a private emotional experience rather than the music's usual gauzy universality.
That's why I was so bummed out about the rapturous ovations they'd get in 1998 for the dumbest fucking cover songs in existence. (Not coincidentally, I stopped showgoing for a while after Fall '98.) The party elements, the college-rock nostalgia elements, the simple pop elements of the Phish experience seemed uppermost at that moment. The music was amazing in those days but it was...coarsening.
Now Phish play this amazingly detailed, empathetic, emotionally-open music - improvised mainly, but also their written stuff - and you see an enormous amount of complaining online about how they 'don't jam anymore,' etc. But they do jam. Like demons. What's missing, what's mislabeled as 'experimentation,' is that distancing, somewhat abstract element that historically kept Phish on a lower emotional plane than the Dead. They don't parody rock anymore, they just rock. They don't play games with contrast anymore, they embrace it to generate emotional effects. They don't segue as much, they just play the shit out of every song.
The lyrics to 'Stash' are an embarrassment. In some ways, they're archetypal Phish lyrics. (Written a line at a time by Trey and Tom, right? Like 'Cavern'?) Clever, musical, fun to sing along to. But utterly, totally meaningless.
'Light,' on the other hand, is about as close to the bone as Trey and Tom have come, lyrically. 'The future is less and less there / And the past has vanished in the air / And I'm left in the now with a wondrous glow / I think I'm still me / But how would you know?' That's wisdom of a kind. 'Purify our souls / Guide us to our homes'...they're not fooling around, all of a sudden. They mean to mean something.
But I seem to recall a reviewer dismissing 'Light,' on this very website, as 'less a song than a jam segment' or something.
That's straight bullshit - but it gives you a sense of the expectations that have surrounded this band since the early 90's. They always set themselves up as one thing, but as they glide into middle age they're trying to become something else. Of course folks are gonna complain, even Phish fans. Change is the scariest thing in the entire universe.
Even when it's the one constant in the band's history. Even then!
There's an amazing but poorly-titled compilation floating out there on the Internet, 'Jamming at the Edge of Magic' (presumably named after Hart's book), featuring sparkling 1988-95 improvisations; the Hornsby segments are the most chromatically interesting and structurally intricate by a large margin. He gave Garcia a great density of material to work with, which brought the best out of the guitarist. Ironically, H is both the jazziest of the Dead's pianists and the most 'post-Dead,' if that makes sense.
NO MENTION OF BRENT
I AM A HUGE PHISH HEAD BUT THEY DONT EVEN COME CLOSE TO THE DEAD
TERRIBLE TERRIBLE HORRIBLY REDUCTIVE ASSERTIONS
THIS GUY IS A COMPLETE NO NOTHING WITH INANE IDEAS
You're definitely right! Also: unrelated!
In general I don't know as much about Brent's time with the Dead as I'd like to. My sense is that he was a solid player; I love several shows with him, and especially the kind of rhythmic play he could bring to chestnuts like Scarlet > Fire. I dislike his vocals intensely.
I get the sense that Keith was more important to the band's evolution, but Brent was a much better fit with the band overall (and by some measures a better player, period). Still, of all the Dead's keyboardists I'd take Hornsby in a second.
In any case, what is there to say? @cobaltsea, help me here - can you talk a little about Brent in the context of my post? Or did you just come here to misspell things at me in all capital letters?
YOU ARE A COMPLETE DEAD NEOPHYTE THIS COMMENT SHOWS.
YOUR SENSE IS THAT HE IS 'A SOLID PLAYER'? GTFOH
YOU ARE PROBABLY UNDER 25. YOU HAVE NOT LISTENED TO ENOUGH DEAD TO EVEN BE ABLE TO TALK LIKE YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO.
WHEN YOU YOUR FIRST PHISH SHOW WAXMAN?
LETS GET REAL
If you were in front of me waxbanks I'd punch you on the adams apple
You little Phish fag.
I just saw three Phish shows in a row and was on the rail and I'd still kick your ass for telling people red is blue
I think that this was not done intentionally the 'fan the flame' of the frat boy set. I'm sure you've found yourself struck by a song you hear on the radio or just get in your head for some reason and I suspect an element of the reason Phish did those covers in summer 98 comes from this. I also suspect that they chose arguably 'dumb' (note scare quotes, not quote-quotes) songs because why the hell not? The "pornographic virtuosity" (from your review of 8/1/98, one of the first shows to feature a new cover) on display on that tour shows that their heads and hearts were in a place of getting that last 0.01% of their sound from '97 perfected and really being great.
If I ever had a band with the capability to semi-nail covers on a whim, I'd probably play some dumb stuff too. Like "Lime in the Coconut" or something. . .but doesn't the very fact that they have the ability to play whatever they want with little-to-no rehearsal suggest that they're already several notches above metal piece-toking frat boys there to get their gas on?
I believe that you're onto something with the Order/Disorder Phish/Dead improvisational characterization. I think I may agree with you on this score, generally speaking, which is of course the primary point of your piece. However, you really confused me by writing: "For the longest time it was enough to say that Phish couldn't do what the Dead did, and vice versa; for the first time, that's no longer entirely true. Phish have finally entered a phase where they can generate the kind of emotional intensity that the Dead naturally traded in."
What!? Fwiw, in 1989, after seeing Phish live for the first time, I stopped (ignorantly) claiming that Phish "couldn't do" anything that the Dead could do. I saw their potential to do everything the Dead were doing, and had done, even though I had not heard Phish do It yet. They were the best bar band that I'd ever seen at the time. It nevertheless took me several years to truly get "IT" with respect to Phish's music, but, of course, Phish had grown to become spectacular during that period.
That said, your statement that now, in 2011, "Phish have finally entered a phase where they can generate the kind of emotional intensity that the Dead naturally traded in" honestly shocks me. I feel like I must be misunderstanding you. You are talking about a band that, in the early 1990s, was routinely inspiring people -- much like the Dead had done -- to use-up all of their vacation time to go see as many of their shows as possible. Or to drop out of school and see as many shows as possible. Or to do anything to see as many shows as possible. Or, in my case, a combination of that and trying to HEAR as many of their shows as possible as well, and also, in effect, SPREAD THE GOSPEL OF PHISH as far and wide as possible by making copies of their shows for blanks and postage etc.
As far as I'm concerned, Phish was absolutely "generat[ing] the kind of emotional intensity that the Dead naturally traded in" in their music at least as early as Summer 1993, when I stopped seeing as many Dead shows as I could and started trying to see as many Phish *AND* Dead shows as I could... and then by 1995, I opted to go on Phish's Summer Tour in 1995 instead of the Dead's Summer Tour, something I have never regretted, in part because, as you know, in that month there was some spectacular music, including some improvisations in various songs (like Tweezer, Mike's, Jim) that -- as you suggest -- involved "experiments in purely Free jamming..." Phish's fan base was expanding exponentially in the early 1990s because, as I heard it, they were generating "emotional intensity" in and with their music (including their improvisation) that bedazzled and amazed.
Am I misunderstanding you? Are you really arguing that Phish is only today, in 2011, now "generat[ing] the kind of emotional intensity that the Dead naturally traded in" back in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and early to mid 1990s?
And of course change is a "constant in the band's history." It's a constant in your history, my history, every human being's history. But I disagree with you that the band is "trying to become something else." I don't think they are "trying" -- I think they necessarily are something else than what they were, since we all change.
Of course, what for the most part haven't changed are Phish's songs. They have the same structures, melodies, lyrics, etc that they always have had, as they must to be recognizable as "Tweezer," "Mike's Song," "Bug," etc etc etc. Some lyrics have changed here and there ("Whatever you CHOOSE take care of your shoes!"
He may know something about Phish but his whole little sophomoric tract scream the fact that he never saw the Dead and is not schooled in their music
His writing is a fluff piece for Phish hidden underneath a broad oversimplified statement.
Oh yeah Trey is a better and more intricate and nuanced guitar player than Jerry.
Nice writing LIL guy
Thanks for the response. To clarify: I don't mean intensity of emotional experience in the listener, I mean the depth of emotion in the music itself.
Let's stipulate that in some ways Trey is a far 'better' songwriter/composer than anyone in the Dead, and in some ways he still lags Garcia/Hunter in terms of directness and timelessness.
I'd also say, without hesitation, that Phish's mid/late-90's music could regularly reach emotional peaks that really set them apart. The ecstatic release of the 5/7/94 HYHU > Tweeprise; the subterranean terror and blissful calm of 7/2/97; the heartbreaking solo in 'Horn'; the effortless beauty of 6/14/00 Twist > Walk Away > 2001; the cosmic even on 12/6/97 in Michigan. My god, they've moved me to tears at times. No question.
But for pathos, for yearning, for despair, for weary victory, for a sense of deep connection to the creaking brokedown countryside they yearly crisscrossed...you had to go elsewhere. Phish just couldn't do it. They were too smart for their own good, too invested in technique...
I think they broke through in 1997 and started to let their forebrains relax a little. Not entirely, but much more than ever before. At times totally. They stopped being a math-prog-energy-rock band and started living into the music. Things got dark and dangerous, and deep. Finally.
But y'know what? Tweeprise might well be the wildest, most wonderful three minutes of rock music ever played, but it's missing the extra kick that even a dopey, shambolic tune like 'Casey Jones' has. There's a universe of feeling and connectedness separating 'Won't you step into the freezer' and 'Trouble ahead, trouble behind / And you know that notion / Just crossed my mind.'
Phish have always known how to evoke certain emotions in their playing, but until recently they didn't usually communicate (to me) the passage of time, the onrush of all-ending. Y'know? To embrace simplicity and subtlety, and silence (not formally a la 12/9/95 YEM or the ending of 'Prince Caspian,' but emotionally as in 'Mountains in the Mist').
That's what I mean. I think 7/2/97 is one of the two or three best shows they've ever played, because of its silence, its delicacy, its restraint. They were There. And yet Trey's way of being There included BOTH that miraculous 'Stash' and his doofy 'Back of the Worm' story.
I don't anymore think 'bedazzled' is anywhere near as important as to have heard honest truth. But I remember thinking it, feeling it. Feeling I needed to be impressed. I think I used the phrase 'straight bullshit' before; it goes here too. I've stopped caring about being impressed by music. I think Phish have stopped trying. That seems...grownup.
Maybe this is partly to say that Phish have always had an infectious sense of humour that the Dead, as an ensemble, didn't themselves project. (If you can't laugh along with Garcia doing Good Lovin > La Bamba then you're dead inside, but still...) But I don't think self-seriousness covers it, nor is it just the lyrics. Maybe I mean Phish have always had kind of a synthetic edge to them? The Dead seem, maybe only in distant retrospect, to have fallen together and loosely held, like stardust. Phish have never lacked a certain machinic quality. Organizational. Sometimes it produces gorgeous things - 'Esther,' 'Eliza,' 'If I Could.' Mostly it's produced 'Dinner and a Movie,' the awesome-but-relentlessly-brainy 'Bowie' composed section, the rhythmic gags in 'Guyute,' the musical bric-a-brac that is 'Reba'...
Does this make sense? Even if you disagree, am I at least communicating a deep ambivalence (and a second level of ambivalence and guilt about feeling ambivalent at all!) which I've long had about this band I've long loved, desperately and foolishly?
I came late to the Dead, and that's coloured my sense of their music. But it always feels more adult to me. Well, not all of it. (Let's say: after Pigpen died. Death always changes things; it is change itself.) More...earthbound.
Partly it's style, partly time, partly just me. Partly the birth of my son, which has drastically changed how I listen to all this wonderful music, what beauty is, what art is for. Partly it's just late and I need to go to bed. He'll be needing me. And I him.
1) I didn't say Trey was a better guitarist than Garcia. I don't think they're easily comparable, actually. They approach improvisation differently. I greatly respect them both. My relationship with Trey's music goes a lot further back. But 'put away childish things' and all that...
2) This is emphatically not a 'fluff piece' for anyone. If anything it's an attempt to reconcile my very different reactions to the Dead and Phish over the years, and the way they've started to come together for me into a greater body of (merely) music, of fellowship. If anything, this post is saying that their musics aren't simply comparable because their aims and means were so different; but it's possible to open the same heart to both musics. That's important to me. (I only have the one heart, is the thing.)
3) I'm not 25 anymore, big guy. And as I've hyperbolically said elsewhere, 'Uncle John's Band' has the worst vocal arrangement of any song ever written by a nominally professional songwriter. Just atrocious. Ruins a very fine song. Truckin' is a dippy song too. (Is that Barlow's lyric? I'm not his biggest fan exactly.) Says nothing about the jams in either, of course!
Phil's got chops. Sure, I can't see Phil playing Weekapaug for shit and I can't see Mike playing Dark Star either. Rock n Roll vs. Classical. Two different "kinds" of chops in my book.
"It's as much about the notes that AREN'T played, as it is about the notes that ARE."
@cobaltsea I suggest you express your frustration in a more productive and respectful manner. Your words will carry more weight. In lamens terms- Don't be such a fucking tool.
I love Phish but
There isn't a single Phish song that approaches the gravitas of the dead
What sacred cows shall we piss on next? Revolver? DSOTM? Or shall we mix it up a little and go with Kind of Blue?
Phil's position in the Dead is structurally different from Mike's job with Phish, and his job has changed over the years whereas Gordon's hasn't. Phish fans have commented about the changes musically between 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0, but in all three incarnations the members have been the same exact 4 people. The Grateful Dead have had 6 different people play keyboards in the band! The band started with 1 drummer (and Billy K is not a jazz drummer, but an R&B drummer), then they had 2, then back to 1, then the 2nd one came back. I would argue that, especially after Mickey came back in '76, they had 1 drummer & 1 percussionist. Keyboard-wise, they had one originally, then added a 2nd who did the heavy lifting, then back to the original 1, then added a different 2nd one when the original one started to get sick, then the original one died so they kept the 2nd one (who was actually the third one, lost yet?) as the only one, which worked for a while until it stopped working, so they swapped the one for another one, which worked for a really long time (in Dead-keys timelines anyway), then they had 2 new guys, and then one of those stopped playing with them. Whew, anyone else confused?
I guess what I was trying to point out with the different incarnations is that while they kept the same name, it is hard to say they were the same band. Musicians & music will always evolve, especially in such an organic environment, but the band had whole appendages fall off and new ones added on seemingly every few years. When almost all of those changes take place in the "rhythm section", and the band also has a "rhythm" guitarist, the role of the bass player is not the same as what it would be in a stable quartet. Phil's style is the direct result of this, and a musician of lesser "chops" would not have lasted so long, much less blossomed. Lastly, comparing the "chops" of a recent liver-transplantee pushing 60 with someone in their early 30's is not exactly apples to apples.
I find it difficult to draw direct comparisons between Phish and the Grateful Dead for another reason. While there was some co-mingling at the end, I don't think anyone would call the two bands "contemporaries". Comparing bands of different eras is an extremely tricky thing to do. I am not trying to bring up the tired "Phish wouldn't have existed without the Dead" argument I have heard too many times to count, since musically Phish is obviously inspired as much by Zappa, King Crimson and the Talking Heads as by the Dead. On stage, there is little musical theory that is shared, but off-stage Phish has borrowed heavily. 2 sets + encore, unique set-lists nightly, and the general feeling that albums are just snapshots in time, whereas the live show is the ongoing story of the bands' life are just some of the ideas that started with the Dead and flowed onto the next generation. For most its career, the Dead were driving in uncharted territory while Phish has been able to learn from some of the mistakes of the bands that came before them, though obviously not all lessons have been learned.
As if the band's shambolic practice room arrangement of UJB (with its maddening parallel fifths and missed chordal chances) belongs on the shelf with perfection like Kind of Blue and Revolver! HA!
DSOTM is overrated self-indulgent nonsense. But maybe this isn't the day for that talk?
You constantly harp about the "emotionally-withdrawn nerdiness" and "intellectual experimentation" that, regardless of the semantic labeling, clearly serves as a hallmark of their origin story. It pains me to see/hear someone so damn bright so clearly missing out on what I (and many others, from the looks of the boards) consider to be the band's nadir of both creative and cultural impact.
Why does the experimentation, the playfulness, the technical envelope pushing have to be mutually exclusive of the emotional, the depth, the gravitas? What if those tools (because really, that's what what those things boil down to) could be a roadmap to emotional release?
Maybe it's because I've read most of your reviews or simply because I know where your ears tend to land when it comes to Phish's different eras. But I think you're sorely understudied on the "emotionally withdrawn" years of the band, namely 1991 through 1995.
I think Charlie's response speaks to this (and he was there much earlier than I). There is a spiritual heft to songs like the 4/21/92 Weekapaug, a glorious hallelujah in the 10/6/91 Divided Sky, that easily and wholeheartedly outgun the emotional pull of this latest batch of songwriting. Page's clunkiness? Try the 2/15/91 Ya Mar, it's one of the finest things he's ever done (and a true whole band treat, everyone is on fire throughout).
When I was younger, there were two seminal moments that forever changed the face of music for me. Both happened at Phish shows. The first was the 6/21/94 Split Open and Melt, the second was the 11/30/95 Tweezer. I would hold either of this "songs" up as canonical, spiritual experiences from this band. And what I think makes these particular moments that much more powerful is the RANGE of emotional density that these guys could traverse in one SINGLE song. We're not talking the simple pathos of a lost love, or a dying friend (not that those things evoke simple feelings, but for the argument...). These are the ridiculously complicated sturm und drangish yearnings of a band operating in a post-rock, simulacrum-filled world of Internets and energy crises, of multiple identity disorders and reality TV.
The jazz conversation needs it's own thread, but I think it's interesting that of the two bands, only one of them ever played straight-ahead jazz on a regular basis.
Also, the last few times I've seen Phish they (contrary to 15-odd years of arguing against friends and family) actually DID sound like the Dead. Several times.
Stupid academic dyslexia.
The real story is that the Great God Icculus went into the future and stole Jerry Garcia's missing finger from Wharehouse 13. He then traveled back in time to give it to Trey with the instruction that he must perform the Oh Ke Pa Ceremony before each show or the flubasaurus will will appear. Thankfully, the cast of Wharehouse 13 are actually secret Phish fans, so they have no intention of recovering that relic.
If you look closely at Trey's guitar, you'll see an Ivory carving, which is actually made from ... Yeah, you guessed it, Jerry's missing finger.
Thanks for this comment. I think my posts tend to get hyperaggressive about Phish's young-time music, partly because so many fans are undervaluing the incredible stuff they're playing now. But I have a hard time articulating exactly what I mean in technical terms (as if those would help anyway!).
Maybe this iamge will make it clearer: the difference between Phish's (say) pre-1995 jamming and their later, deeper stuff is the difference between a great TV show about farming, and a day on the farm. The TV show can do all this work to place the farm in wider social/economic contexts, can give us vivid characters, can even seem far realer than real...but a day's manual work does something to you, to your thinking-body, that the show simply can't touch. I've always been one to prefer the TV show, but the last couple years that's become harder to sustain.
(That's not meant to denigrate fans of the early stuff, though in my clumsiness I'm probably sounding that way.)
There's a moment in the studio version of 'Light' when, over the beginning of that spiraling guitar solo, Trey sings a single sweet note at the octave...nothing but 'oooooh,' a lonely syllabub held as long as he can muster while the instruments start to bang away underneath. That note, the emotion behind it, is something I'm not accustomed to in Phish's studio albums: it's pure. No tricks, no arrangement, no ideas at all. Just the reborn feeling that comes of unself-conscious release.
That moment in 'Light' - and, say, the whole of 'Twenty Years Later,' one of the best tracks Trey has ever written - gives me a feeling, even 'just' preconsciously, of emotional vulnerability and full presence. I think 'Eliza' and 'Billy Breathes' and 'Cavern' and 'Esther' and 'Divided Sky' do express something wonderfully human and humane. I've always admired Phish's efforts on behalf of joy and uplift - and they long ago mastered a rock'n'roll language made to communicate those very things. But their delicacy and sunlit happiness in those early years seemed to emerge, not from ragged weary living, but from a childlike feeling of lightness, of getting away with something.
For me, the old stuff is far better at doing Happy than at living Weary - in place of the latter it often seems to offer (pardon me) sentiment. Does that make sense?
I don't know that I'm actually offering an argument at all here. But this feeling, for me, is inescapable now. And what's weird about it is that Phish's 1993-1995 music has brought me SO MANY TIMES to a place of thrilling heart-swelling happiness...but that tends not to happen for me now. When I listen to that young-time music, I hear the brainwork, a pulsating neocortex so rich with ideas that it can never fully give way to the hormonal rush.
And I continue to think that that transition, from brilliant young players able at times to access feelings far older and deeper than their own glands or big ideas to mature musicians able to join in the Weave, really kicked in around summer 1997. Not coincidentally: when they slowed down, quieted down, and cooled off.
So I'm not disputing your account of the band's early power - they could bring something wonderful to their music from the very start, as even the studio 'Esther' and 'Reba' show - but I think part of that power is the rush of possibility, or something impressive.
Apocrypha: James Joyce, asked whether his was a productive writing day, protesting that while six words' worth of output was reasonable, the problem was getting the words in the perfect order.
Bill Evans:
Phish's music never lacked for complex composition and textures, back then or now. But the thing that escapes, the hidden term, the truth (time passes; death comes; distant one may as well be beloved other; nothing will save you but you can be saved)...that suffuses their music today, I think. As it suffused the Dead's music. Phish have never been heartless. Far from it. But I think they had to become brainless. And they have. Which is why so many folks insist now on the importance of the fact that they're no longer impressed, when the music says over and over that 'impressed' isn't much of anything at all.
'Impressed' is to look at The Wire and say 'This is a good cop show. Better than that other cop show.' And only that.
Again - I think I'm not really addressing your point. But maybe that's my point: I can't. I can't see the old stuff the way I used to. I can't get past a feeling I have. And I needn't give any of it up, anything that's ever been, to feel as truly as I've ever felt anything that something new, everything new, is yet to come. A new category of thing.
***
The key, here, is that Phish killed it last night, and you might like it.
The Dead use a completely different rhythm section than Phish. For the dead, the rhythm is anchored my the dual drums and Bobby's chords, this frees Phil, Jerry and (insert favorite keyboard player here) to explore simultaneous leads at the same time. When it works, it can be stunningly beautiful, when it doesn't, it sounds like wind chimes (or disorder). In Phish, the drums serve more as timekeeper, with Page & Mike anchoring the rhythm (order). Leaving only Trey to explore. Lately, I've really been enjoying Light, and the reason is that Page and Mike both relinquish the Rhythm and just head out exploring with Trey.
Funny though I was just thinking about Darien Lake and the highlight of the show for me was FEFU. Also, one of my all time favorite Phish memories was If I Could on 6-28-00.
I guess I need more of that now.
Otherwise, great article!
but the difference between emotions stemming from the visceral nature of an intense jam caused by the expression of individuals through the instruments themselves is a very very different thing than a song that on paper is created specifically to be an emotional song.
the creation of by the band and enjoyment of by the fan are not the same thing.
This thread has reminded me that I need to spend more time listening to Brent's work with the Dead, and I'm glad to be so reminded. I don't think that changes the argument of the post, though it makes me want to expand on my aside about the band's chops, which seems to have sucked up a lot of oxygen here!
'Fraid that doesn't really cut the mustard, bub.
I get it. You're older now, they're older now. You've lived a bit longer, a bit harder, brought new life into this world, relationships have come and gone, couches turned to sofas and a mortgage replaces midterms. All these things I understand. The music, accompanied by a few whimsical and stirring quotes from band members along with Trey's (appreciated) sobriety, these are grown-up times, Obama times, everybody more mature and wizened from life's hard knock lessons.
Here's the thing: the music doesn't reflect that.
Sorry. It just doesn't. And this is where we'll probably have to part ways. Every single time I concede to listening to one of the new tunes I have to turn it off halfway through. People on this board talking about Brent's "cheesiness?" There's a difference between "writing about what you know" and "writing about what you know WELL."
You can't disregard musical composition just because you're now committed to writing about more serious themes!
Let me break that down a bit: if you're going to write a three minute pop song, it damn well better have a hook. I'VE NEVER HEARD A SINGLE HOOK from Trey's recent offerings. On the contrary: if you're going to write a prop-rock epic, it better have all the trappings of that genre as well as a cohesive vision and vehicle for the emotional message of the song. Successful example? Fluffhead. Failed example? Time Turns Elastic. One feels like a seamless suite of passages, the other a pastiche of trite proggy cliches.
Look, I'm not some grizzled vet (ok, maybe a little) who won't listen to anything past 1995. Quite the contrary. But I want to point out that Phish has been doing dark and road-weary for longer than you think, Wally. Look at the insert photos on the back of Billy Breathes. Trey looks like he's been up for three days. Everyone grew weird beards. And they put Billy Breathes, arguably their finest (and most emotionally resonant) moment on tape. Trey even talks about it in the Believer interview.
He's talking about composition vs improvisation but it hits right where you're hollering from. A guy with new priorities finding ways to fit music into his present tense life. I don't think because they no longer relate to the Golgi Apparatus lyrically, the music should be tedius or trite. David Byrne has been cranking out album after album of wonderfully diverse pop nuggets, all dealing with rather adult themes, and he shows no sign of slowing down. The music is vibrant, danceable, and full of hooks taboot.
You say
I say I can't see past the new stuff. The Phish I grew up with and traveled with and went through some heavy shit with was singularly capable (I don't know of any other band that could do this, except maybe Ween, maybe Super Furry Animals) of taking something "juvenile" or "immature" and invoking it (investing IN it) with a supernatural/supercharged/hyperbolic ETHOS. Not pathos, mind you, but something that felt divested of whatever earlier signifiers had marked it as jokey, or fun, or light, and that same thing now becomes dark, and twisted, and full of black magic.
This double-edged sword of signification (the fun is now funhouse, the joke is now on you, pyschonaut) is what makes Phish, well, Phish. When I hear them now, these older bifurcations have been stripped away, the fun songs now just fun, the heavy songs plodding their plotted course towards a (raise your arms and sign along) climax. It's all been dumbed down a bit, partly to ease the struggling musician's aging fingers but mostly because of things like energy, mood, drive, and appetite. It's all different. I respect it, but it's not for me.
As far as "comparisons", they can be silly and futile but its human to do so. This particular piece sound's intelligent but behind the cosmetic literacy of the writing, there's so much underlying ignorance, particularly with regard to the Dead's side of the discussion, that its really a silly premise.
First, the most important thing about any song-based music endeavor is, well, the songs! I don't begrudge Phish or their fans anything. They are authentic and have more artistic integrity than almost any band on the scene today - if that wasn't the case they wouldn't have such a loyal and enduring fan base.
However, the biggest and most important difference between them and the GD, before you get to the altogether flawed "technical analysis" offered here, is that the GD have one of the greatest books of original songs in pop-rock history. On the other hand, Phish doesn't have a single great song - not one classic like Friend Of The Devil, Jack Straw, Eyes, Casey Jones, Touch Of Gray, Truckin and on and on. The Dead wrote 90% of their material between 1967 and 1987 - 20 years. Phish has been in its prime that long now and even I, who have seen them live and know them better than 99% of music fans who are not Phish "heads", can't name one Phish tune that has any of the elements of a classic SONG. You can end the comparison right there.
But lets go on, since the writer bases his argument on other, ostensibly more convenient, basis of what he considers given facts:
First of all, The Dead INVENTED the musical approach that Phish, admittedly in their own stylistic manner, adopted for their band. They would be the first to admit this and indeed they have. This is important on its face. As Dizzy Gillespie said about Louis Armstrong, "No him, no me".
Second, I don't know where this guy got whatever musical training he pretends to have, but he shows his ignorance all over this peice. I won't go into everything, but his lack of understanding of Weir & Lesh's talents as compared to Garcia's are astonishing, particularly given, for example, Mike Gordon's humble attitude about his mentor, the master Lesh. You would never see, say, a Branford Marsalis get onstage with Mike Gordon for example but for the writer to even make the initial remark makes that point a waste of time. Same with Weir - indeed, one of my frustrations with Deadheads is their general lack of appreciation for Weir's musicianship which, in its own way, is the modest equal of Garcia's and Jerry himself would be the first to say so and often did. Meanwhile, perhaps the most revealing comment in this regard was the shallow and ridiculous opinion that the lightweight keyboardist Bruce Hornsby, who doesn't cut it as a jazz guy OR a rock guy - he's basically one of those "pop-jazz" cats who did well to even associate himself with the Dead - is the only one who could, what did he say? "follow" Garcia, as if that's the idea... If this writer ever listened to Keith Godchaux with the Dead, their keyboardist during most of their best performance years, he obviously doesn't know enough about music history to understand the depth of Keith's sophistication and overall talent.
Third, as far as the whole point about arranging and musical structure, again - the song's the thing. The extent of Phish's technical sophistication, like the "prog" bands of the 70's like Yes, are for the most part gratuitous. Complicated for complicated's sake. When the Dead wrote in odd time signatures, they did it because they knew how to genuinely SWING in that realm. They never wrote ANYTHING for the sake of showing off, although they did write some of the most ambitious music of their time.
Fourth, and last for now, is a point that drives me crazy - that Phish has a "sense of humor" that the Dead somehow lack. What Phish lyrics are is plain silly, I don't care how obscure their references might be. Aside from Bob Hunter's wry sense of humor (he's the ONLY lyricist who Bob Dylan, the most underrated humorist in American poetry covered), the Dead could make you laugh out loud with actual, subtle, shadings in their music. Trey is a great guitarist and Phish are formidable musicians, but the personality behind the technicians doesn't have a fraction of the depth of Garcia and the rest of the Dead. I could site examples from here to Timbuktu but I don't have the time nor the inclination as the very fact that this goes so far over this guys head makes it altogether superfluous.
Phish is no doubt an excellent band whether they're my taste or not. They are righteous, adventurous and have been able to carve out a giant following by going way outside of the music industry (for which they of course credit the genius of the Grateful dead for inventing that very model). Nevertheless, The Grateful Dead, more and more (as is usually the case with great art) are deservedly getting their due as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century - on the same level as The Beatles, Picasso, Hemingway, Miles Davis, Bartok, Hitchcock and the other great artistic masters who's art already has and will continue to stand the test of time - that is, to be utterly timeless.
For me I was into the Dead before Phish and had a harder time gettng Phish due to the serious nature of many of the Deads lyrics and the the apparent lack of that in many of Phish's. I have come to realize that they both reach specific parts of my "musical soul." Sometimes the areas they reach overlap, but there are things Phish does that the Dead could never do for me and likewise, things the Dead does that Phish can't. I'm not sure that the following point has been made: It's not that Phish's music is not as emotional as the Dead, but in many cases it is not as "lyrically emotional". I really enjoy some of the "lyrically emotional" songs Phish does but don't think they are hitting Brokedown Palace type territory.
I does bother me how badly these newer slow songs get hated on. I think Joy is a great example, which BTW does have a hook.
Overall I am very, very grateful to have these two Different bands to compare, contrast, and lap up every ounce of musical goodness they serve.
I didn't wish to make anyone feel bad with this post, though - as I've said over and over in a variety of ways, I've got nothing against the Dead. They really were a unique and powerful band and I've developed a great fondness for 'em. (The 2/13/70 Dark Star was the first music I played for my infant son; I didn't make the choice glibly.) In any case, thank your friend for sharing his obvious enthusiasm, however possessive it might be.
@kevinarehollo - I can try to respond later to your latest comment but I think your last two paragraphs outline an essential, insurmountable difference or distance between us on this matter. I'm not sure whether I can convince you, here - or even what I'd be convincing you of. So for the moment I'll bow out. It's been swell, but there's a lot else to do.
Then stick to things you know. Wow, can't believe this is put on the home page of Phish.net. Very disappointing.
I am not bashing the OP, I think it was a good article. That's just my opinion on why Phish's music wasn't as "emotionally intense," although that is a completely subject opinion to being with.
On the subject of the post, it is another difference between the Grateful Dead and Phish. Phish definitely did not draw their influences from Folk Music.
Superb resource in any case.
Thanks for pointing that one out. I'm going to give that one a second read when I have more time to consider it in depth. First impression is that the writer see's the universe in a grain of sand.
DI: Right about that time, you remade I'm a Woman.
MM (John Kahn's ex-wife): After a couple of years, I left L.A. I fell in love with John Kahn, who was Jerry Garcia's bass player for many years. He pinch-hit for my bass player, who'd gotten a sudden case of dreadful stomach poisoning. We were opening up that night in San Francisco. He showed up and learned 20 songs in an hour. He was a fantastic musician. One thing led to another, and we fell madly in love. I moved up to San Francisco to be with him. At that time, he had Ron Tutt, who was Elvis� drummer and bandleader. I loved the Garcia Band so much. Donna and Keith Godchaux were in it, and I would go moonlight with them whenever I could. I would show up with my tambourines and stand between John Kahn and Ron Tutt and play tambourine when they did �Mystery Train.� You know, I could just do that for days. Jerry enjoyed having me and eventually asked me to join the band. I did Cats Under the Stars with them and toured with them and had a wonderful time.
DI: What did you learn from working with Jerry?
MM: I learned that it isn't so much the notes or the technical perfection -- because he could flub a few notes, old Jerry, you know -- but the way he played came from the inside. He would start out on a solo and he'd just feel around. He wouldn't just come out of the gate with some rip-roaring, dazzling, fancy licks (Trey); he would sort of meander around and wait until the spirit came together. He would build a stairway to heaven with his notes. It didn't have to do with fanciness; it had to do with waiting for the spirit to descend on him and the band. When that happened, the whole audience would get it. It wasn't about, Look at me, I'm going to do something dazzling. It was more about, Let's all really feel this moment together. I've had very accomplished guitar players since then, guys who could just whip all over the guitar neck. A fabulous black guitarist from Marin County named Archie Williams, a real jazzer, could play any kind of lick -- inside out, upside down, backwards, fast, you know -- and he just didn't get it. There are a lot of other very accomplished musicians who don�t get the �Jerry thing.� They wondered, �How come he�s selling out to millions of people, audiences everywhere, and I�m so good and nobody knows who I am?� I tried to explain to them, it�s because Jerry was not playing from a place of ego. He was not playing to impress anybody; he was playing because the spirit moved him to play. And John was right there with him. It�s really just a tragedy, the whole scene that surrounded them got more and more involved in drugs. It�s a pity because it brought down two of the best musicians I ever heard or got to work with. I miss them dearly to this day. [Stanley] Mouse did a great, wonderful drawing after John Kahn passed away. Jerry�s sitting up on a cloud playing. In the first picture John, with his little hat on, is sort of flying up to meet him with his bass in hand. Then, in the next picture, they�re both sitting on a cloud jamming. And that�s just the way I have to think about them. [laughs]
OK, Weir is harder to defend. Known for NOT being the best slide player, not to mention a big spitter, Weir still played incredible counterpoint to Garcia, especially in 72-74 jams. There are Dark Stars, Playin in the Bands, Bird Songs, etc from that era that many people dig, not realizing that it's Bobby playing a role in a jam that they think is Jerry. Cool little jolts of spaceyness that Bobby laid down often get lumped with Garcia's mystique. And beyond that Bobby still was the MAN, especially once Garcia really started to decline (say '94 and on). Today however, Rob Eaton (Dark Star Orchestra) is the primo Bobby. But Furthur is a different discussion...
The jazz thing amazes me. I've read so much about Phish being labeled jazzier that the Dead, but after 3 or 4 years of listening to a LOT of Phish and finally getting to shows (after close to 20 years of Dead) I still hear MUCH more jazz in the Dead. It seems many say the Dead were more chaotic, spacier, whatever. Agreed. I hear much more real, 100% improvisation with the Dead that I do with Phish. And to me, that's what jazz is all about. The Dead's **attitude** toward music was more jazz that Phish is, even if there were cowboy songs, and country songs, and Dylan songs, etc in the Dead's musical bag. Plus, Eyes of the World with Branford? Pure jazz
Big DeadHead? Guilty as charged. But also a Phan for a handful of years now. To oversimplify the differences (which are not as important as the similarities, which include GOOD LIVE MUTHA F-ING AMERICAN MUSIC):
Phish: more composed, higher rock'n'roll-type energy, more off-the-wall lyrically
Dead: more improvisational, lots of midtempo, more rooted & ambigous lyrically
Ciao. Now proceed to the next show of whatever kind you can get to and ENJOY!
the emotional maturity of the dead came after the wildness of the *free-form only* was over, and this is why they needed a late-70, 71, before the glory of 72. the batch of hunter/garcia songs that came out of workingman's etc. came after the chaos of 68-early 70 because they intuited that the unit could not hold without an anchor, and that was precisely what enabled 72-74 to be as amazingly effortlessly spiritual in jamming and emotive balladry. reconnecting with archetypal americana didn't need to be ironic or post-ironic because it was a genuine connection made possible by the symbolic earlier rejection of the roots of the country. the anchor that connected them to reality was in place, and genuine emotional resonance was possible because they had already been through the formlessness of the edge of madness and stepped back to embrace the simple feelings of life.
this is my take on the simpler chord structures and lyrics of hunter that blossomed in an era where the rest of the country was falling into its own brand of disillusioned nixonian-induced chaos. the hippies didn't work, the world didn't change, lets try "conservative" values, watergate/cambodia/inflation/energy crisis/et al.> oh shit that doesn't work either. the dead had the confidence to express themselves in a truly authentic manner because they were truly establishing their own new order in a world whose disorder allowed for it. there needed to be no humor because the genuine seriousness were in the lyrics and the joy was in the music. a good counterpoint is zappa who seethes with humorous satire. his response was the template for phish, just look at the involved composition and humorous release.
the difference between phish and zappa though, was that zappa had already happened by the time phish came into being. so if the world had become post-modernly self-referential and zappa had mastered the art of musical humor through satire, where does that leave phish? the increasing information with no authentic cultural guideposts, the lack of essence or zeitgeist, the deconstruction of art involving the necessity of self-referential creation, all of this leaves a band in a place where there are no wharf rats, casey jones, or scarlet begonias. the "nerdy" self-enclosed response that phish seemed to be having in its formative years were a response to the fact that simplicity was increasingly hard to be true or beautiful. the world had changed in a big way between 1967 and 1987, and it would be almost impossible to compare the two bands without this GIANT asterisk of a post. trey went so far as to creative a fictional narrative to deploy themes of post-modern alienation after failed freedom; you want simplicity and beauty ala the dead, then try out the toure de force of gamehenge.
Big difference.
Phish came up in a musical world in which: punk rock had flared, snarled, and died; VCRs and cable TV made 'close viewing' standard (as the Walkman did for close (re)listening); the Walkman, moreover, made booming root-downbeat bass a musical imperative for public listening; disco and New Wave music had placed a musical premium on sweeping, swooning old-fashioned sentiment atop ice-cold synthetic beats; Michael Jackson was a long way into his journey from the naked sincerity of 'Just call my name / and I'll be there' to the TV-paternity-scandal freeze of 'Billie Jean / is not my lover' and beyond; rock'n'roll had embraced, discarded, then re-embraced pure bombast as a defining feature; and hip-hop was beginning to assert itself as a close-kept musical counterforce to white pop radio. In other words, the musical universe was totally changed from when the Dead came up.
Add to that a sharp decline in LSD use (due to its illegality not least!), the rise of other drugs and other drug culture, the Nixon/Reagan reaction to the culture wars of the 60's (where is Nixon in the Dead's music?), the widespread shaming of Vietnam era 'opt-out' culture, and the domestication of human dreams like space travel and nuclear power. There was simply no way to embrace a warm-blooded late-60's cultural form like the Dead's music/circus...and Anastasio was never that kind of guy anyhow. In some ways he still isn't - in the Charlie Rose interview he talks about the sidelining of the musical work itself as his biggest Phish-related regret.
My point is that you're right to emphasize the different worlds the two bands came from, but since Phish is in some way a conscious reaction to the Dead among other bands, it's good to throw light on the very specific transformations made to the Dead's legacy, and to the broader legacy of the Sixties cultural revolutions, by the time Phish got together in the mid-80's in Vermont.
I still think it's good to contrast the two bands, particularly given the important overlap between their fandoms (and their similar fan-methodologies).
Good on ya.
I admire Trey for being willing to do confessional stuff like Joy, BDTNL, 20YL, Light...but yeah, Marshall isn't anywhere near the lyricist Hunter became.
Light / Dark
Shall we go? / Am I me?
Light grows Brighter / Dark Star Rises
In any case, I'm given to understand that Tolle's book is meditation/consciousness alteration/ego dissolution/enlightenment stuff, and Marshall's titular 'light' is radical awareness of the gap between body/brain/mind and the projected/defensive/aspirational ego-Self. That's why 'Light' is such a perfect encapsulation of Phish's musical ethic/aesthetic: it's all about surrendering to a present without occluding time-sense or self-sense. Same with the 'hose.' Same with 'surrender to the flow.' Same with the oh kee pah ceremony. Same with the machinic minimalist clatter of Dave's Energy Guide, the head-clearing decentering circular structure of Bowie's second verse (what a gorgeous piece of musical construction), the dissonant-minor-to-blissful-major-release structure of Reba and Hood.
The songs are musical machines for altering consciousness by suspending self-consciousness. So few solos in Phish, so many four-handed 'jams'; that's the whole point. Not to be a note, but to join the chord, the chorus.
I don't think 'Dark Star' is lyrically profound; it's become something it wasn't through interpretation. It's nice, but somewhat Marshallese. But the music's structure - the rhythm flexible enough to accommodate slow 4/4, quick 6/8, swing, rock; the simple modal jam allowing the band to sway between chord pairings and implied progressions, to build relieving cadences almost anywhere along the chordal circle - is perfect for dissolving expectations. Playin' is the same kind of jam, versus (say) Morning Dew, which can only really go one place...
* duration (very long jams all over the place, unmotivated)
* sameness (so, so, so many '2.0' jams sound alike)
* reversal of jam/song polarity (jamming was the point, not the songs)
All of which adds up to fan enjoyment of danceable flow - it all felt like one kind of long jam, at times. Hazy uptempo 4/4 jams, heavy on the effects. Whatever its merits, 'Phish 2.0' was unquestionably the least interesting, least challenging, most danceably groovy music the band had played in their career.
Near as I can tell, the Disco Biscuits' music, while pleasant in the background, is essentially dancefloor electronica played live onstage. I've never once heard them play music I'd call exploratory or 'original.' It's just not their thing. Phish 2.0 wasn't really about exploration either; it was about that gliding, hazy, fluid feeling their long jams so often produce. Trouble was, that was pretty much all it was about (after February).
Plus the Biscuits' *songs* are terrible, their vocals truly abysmal; much in common with '2.0' right there too...
Sand > Light > Dirt > Waves > Undermind > Steam
This, to me, is an incredibly smooth-flowing hour+ of music. Sand goes through multiple stages before making way for Light, which reaches peak intensity and complexity and dissonant madness all at the same time; Dirt is a perfect palette-cleanser, and the musicians take their time, taking (if memory serves) an extra chorus at the end to distance themselves from the darkness of Sand > Light. Waves is a strummy/textural jam, so the melodic/funky post-lyrics minor key outro has a little extra impact.
And check out how Trey shapes the segue into Undermind...the band's ready for Timber, so he just layers these nice major chords (if I remember right) over their building rhythm, to smooth out what might otherwise have risen/fragmented into the more menacing Timber music. There's no hesitation from the other players, but also no hurry: it's not calm but it's peaceful, if that makes sense.
And, and, and: and Trey doesn't hurry past the FX-laden first half of his solo (he's playing his usual blues licks with a parallel line added a fifth above, essentially layering a knotty modal jam atop a common blues-Undermind jam), segueing smoothly into a more conventional Undermind solo. And then DAMN: the gorgeous Undermind outro jam, which is a slowed-down Undermind chord progression played with unexpected delicacy and reserve, dissolving into the opening of Steam. They don't let go of Undermind an instant too soon, but they also keep the momentum going. The Undermind outro feels like a valediction instead of a distraction; it's part of the progression from the chunky mid-song jam into the chilled-out textures of Steam. It makes perfect emotional/musical sense.
When folks talk about the smooth flow of Phish 2.0, they invariably mean 'long jams that change very slowly.' But the new stuff, at its best, has the same emotional logic, the same sense of elastic time and infinite space...with more variety than any 2003-04 jam ever mustered.
They are peaking right now. I love the IT festival and stretches of Summer '03, but I think the new shows offer up the best, the richest music they've made since February 2003. What a time to be a fan!
I'm spewing? You're a writer and THE writer of the piece I responded to. I think I can safely assume you do a lot more "spewing" than I.
However, to "spew" a bit more, let me first point out that the best you could do to address my central point about a song-based musical endeavor needing to be about, more than anything else, umm, the songs, was to argue, I guess to try and invalidate my entire premise, that Casey Jones isn't an original song because the lyric is a retelling (really more of a literary reference used as a vehicle to update) of a traditional tale - a literary tradition you're apparently unacquainted with. The music in CJ, of course, with its deceptively complex arrangement (deceptive because it serves the song rather than to call attention to itself), is completely original. Sensational example of Weir's guitar genius on the studio version, btw, emulating Chet Atkins as he often did with his syncopated chordal attacks and pithy solo in the break before Garcia's more extroverted but no less beautiful reciprocal.
In response to one of your subsequent remarks, it was, conversely, not my intent to piss on Phish ("Piss On Phish" - I kinda like that!) and I went out of my way to give them credit for the major output of good work they've done and the joy they've organically brought to a relatively sophisticated audience. Its YOU who seems defensive here - my dear fellow, if you're gonna put stuff out there without decent command of your subject be prepared to hear back. If I was offended about anything in your piece it was your pretentiousness in attempting to write a serious technical analysis of the Dead's music (in this case in comparison the Phish) without any evidence of depth of musical knowledge or substantial history with the Dead's music - I don't care how many children you listened to Dark Star before anything else after birthin'. This is giving you the benefit of the doubt, because if you really have listened carefully to your share of Dead music and have come to these conclusions on that basis you're worse than pretentious - you are just not much of a musicologist. On the one hand you seem to say I made harsh statements without backing them up (although your inability to counter my first and central point where I cited examples altogether invalidates that idea), and on the other hand you imply that I was long-winded ("spewing"
A couple of additional thoughts, if you're still with me: If you really believe Lesh is limited technically, check out King Slomon's Marbles / Milkin' The Turkey from Blues for Allah (it speaks for itself). That's what we call swinging, my friend. In jazz, you can either swing or you can't and if you can't, you don't get to first base. Its the antitheses of intellect because you can't teach it. If you DO know what it means, please hip me to the best example of Gordon swinging you can think of and I'll gladly eat crow and tell you so if he slays me. I saw his band at Brooklyn Bowl two months ago, BTW - nice set, good band leader, improviser & general player but still not a distinctive voice like Lesh, Casady, Jaco and others who you can readily identify regardless of context.
Now, if you really think Weir is inferior to ANY guitarist, lead or rhythm, check out just about anything from Europe '72 (an album on which HE is the star player of the band - not that there's normally any point in making that kind of comparison) and in particular his solo during the segue between China Cat & I know You Rider (that ought to be relatively easy for you to pick out), the undisputed high-point of the album; or his incomparable comping on Epilogue (the jam that transitions out of Truckin') that I bet you've never listened to carefully, if at all. As for Godchaux, on the same album (trying to make it convenient for you here) check out his esoteric but aesthetically gorgeous improv on Prelude (which you've probably never listened to carefully either) which initiates the highly directional jam (that is, with a clear, skillfully paced narrative) that reaches three increasingly intense climaxes before softly landing on the B-list Morning Dew that closes the record. And, speaking of records, for the "record" let me say that I'd much sooner listen to the excellent keyboard work of Page McConnell over Bruce Hornsby any day.
But why don't we just leave it at this- don't take my word for it (like you were waiting for permission); as such a distinguished authority on the music of Phish, you must know the band members personally. Ask them - tell Trey what you said about Weir; Mike what you said about Phil and Page what you said about Godchaux (and, to a lessor extent as far as I'm concerned, Mydland) - in fact, show them the entire piece in person - and see if they don't laugh in your face. If they don't, they're just being polite...
Regards,
Rob
It's like, "With all due respect, you daft cunt..."
But don't let me interrupt Sports Chat.
Read it again. That wasn't me.
"A couple of additional thoughts, if you're still with me: If you really believe Lesh is limited technically, check out King Slomon's Marbles / Milkin' The Turkey from Blues for Allah (it speaks for itself). That's what we call swinging..."
I think we're running antiparallel here. Let me put the Lesh/Gordon comparison in terms that will hopefully make clear what I mean by 'technically limited': both players started out as n00bs, so to speak, though Gordon was much further along when he joined Phish. At the n00b stage, Gordon evidently decided to get 'good at the bass' and thereafter built a style (in your eyes a non-style?) atop a foundation of very serious all-around technical competence. (He also learned a lot from Lesh.) Lesh decided to build a style around his limited early expertise - by all accounts he was an arrogant prick back then, which goes some way to explain that decision - and while he improved technically as you'd expect any musician to do over several decades of playing, he never came anywhere near Gordon's facility on the bass.
Their respect levels of innate musicality, intuition, swing, and so forth aren't in question here. For fuck's sake, my claim was always and only that Lesh's chops were never what they could have been, meaning he remained 'very technically limited despite strong intuitive musicality.'
"Now, if you really think Weir is inferior to ANY guitarist, lead or rhythm..."
Oh, you do go on. Try and remember, will you, that I originally described Weir like so: 'brilliant innovator despite technical shortcomings.' I share a heresy with a good friend - much more hardcore Deadhead than me - that in some respects Weir is a more interesting guitarist than Garcia. I was excited, back when, to hear him talk about learning about comping/voicings from listening to McCoy Tyner, whose stuff with Coltrane burns in the firmament as far as I'm concerned.
"And, speaking of records, for the "record" let me say that I'd much sooner listen to the excellent keyboard work of Page McConnell over Bruce Hornsby any day."
Interesting. I think Page has come further than any other member of the band, over the years; he'll never be a great soloist but he does really extraordinary things in terms of subtly moving jam tonalities. Hornsby's role in the Dead was 'guest lead,' in a way, so while his chromatic understanding reminds me some of Page's, they just approach jamming really differently.
"tell Trey what you said about Weir; Mike what you said about Phil and Page what you said about Godchaux"
I just repeated what I said about Weir and Lesh. Now do me a favour and try this simple reading comprehension exercise: flip back through this thread and YOU tell ME what I fucking said about Godchaux. Here's a hint: I've said almost as much about leprechauns as I have about Keith.
Regards,
&c.
Oh, Mr Bertoletdown - glad you liked that old business world sign-off sardonicism. Another, slightly more antagonistic variation, usually reserved for an even more hostile communique, is "Best PERSONAL Regards..."
1) Sorry I mistakenly attributed the CJ comment to you. But that being the case, you therefore had no reply at all to my main point about the comparative quality of their songwriting, which in the case of two song-based bands, trumps everything else IMO.
2) Look, I'm a musician - a guitarist specifically. I don't make my living from music (I'm currently producing a feature film that you will be hearing about in the coming months) but I started playing in '64 when the Beatles arrived and have been performing on and off since '66. That doesn't necessarily make me more of an authority than you, but could you please try and back this "technical / chops" stuff with some examples (of your own, preferably)? Lesh took up the bass in '65 and two years later played beautifully (technically and artistically) on the first Dead album - check out his graceful and melodic counterpoint on Cold RAS, for example. A year later, on Anthem OTS, one of the most progressive and altogether awesome rock albums ever, he played virtuoso-level bass from beginning to end - check out, for example, the incredible Alligator Jam. Do you dispute the quality of this playing on any basis, technical or otherwise? If so, please explain! Then, in early '69, four years after he took up the bass, Live Dead was recorded which includes some of the finest, most unique, precise, swinging, powerful and melodically sophisticated bass playing of all time. Listen to the prelude sequence of DS, which Lesh essentially leads, or the 4/4 jam overlapping into the 11/4 jam on The Eleven. No technique? What do you MEAN by that? As you obviously now know, I could go on and on and I've already cited the breathtaking King Solomon's example from BFA to which you offered no response. Why? Go ahead - ask Mike if Lesh doesn't have chops, or even didn't after only two years on the instrument. Seriously. Excellent and humble musician that he is, he'll set you strait, post haste.
3) As for Weir, again, I previously cited primo examples of what I and many great guitarists consider to be the most elegant all-around technique in electric guitar history. No response. You think his technique is anything but brilliant on the examples I cited? How then? You CAN'T be a brilliant musician (or "innovator"
4) Godchaux: I believe what I said was "by inference" - that is, you said, with regard to the alleged lack of "chops" that included "the various keyboard players" (which you would have to admit includes Godchaux, right?) except for the "guest" player Hornsby who was the only one who could "match Garcia step for step" (why would anyone try to do that to begin with?). Since I believe Godchaux was the best of them, I used him as the example. Capice? You're so unaware of the quality of the man's playing that you didn't even realize that you trashed him. And, what do you mean by "chromatic understanding" with regard to Hornsby? Do you know what chromatic means? Are you sure you didn't mean "harmonic" understanding?
Look Mr Waxbanks - you seem like a decent writer, a serious music fan and, I'm sure, a great guy, but you're not an educated or experienced musician and, despite your relative agility with language, you don't demonstrate the ability to back up any of your opinions on what some of us out there consider to be pretty serious musical matters. For example, why do you think its heresy to say Weir is in some ways a more interesting guitarist than Garcia? Not only is that true, but the reverse is also true. So what? Garcia himself explained this very eloquently, but its always been obvious to me and the many serious musicians who love and study their music. But, the question is, do you even know what that means or have the slightest idea how to explain it, or do you simply rely on a composite of opinions from friends you think know what they're talking about to support your emotional need to view and promote Phish in the manner that you do?
I'm not patronizing you when I say that I think Phish is a great band, worthy of their success and the loyal following that in many important ways is reminiscent of the Grateful Dead's. However, if you seriously want to build a case such as the one you attempted to make in your piece, know that there are serious musicians who will take you to task for assertively stating what come off as self-serving opinions without the ability to back them up.
Peace, Rob
I did mean 'harmonic.' Apparently my baby son has decided to steal my vocabulary as well as my sleep.
Be careful in future: when you praise someone's facility with words, then say things like 'Do you know what chromatic means,' it makes you seem unserious and juvenile. Which is a darn shame, because you've otherwise given not even a single instant's evidence of being either of those things.
***
I've written several drafts of this comment and can't settle on the right way to go about it.
I realize that it's futile going back and forth with someone who isn't interested in learning about music through discussion - who just wants to win a fight. I dislike that aspect of my own character and it's nauseating to recognize it in your comments here. So my desire to talk about the music (Weir's China > Rider solo (5/3/72, right?) being built out of exciting rhythm patterns, he's a fine rhythm player as I said, but otherwise not leaping out of the headphones for me; Lesh's very very simple/repetitious bass figures on that Dark Star, and his (willfully perverse?) objection to root/downbeat bass playing sometimes undercutting climactic moments in jams; Keith's work on the Truckin' jam (5/26/72?) being really good indeed, and my opinion of Keith being coloured by his withdrawn playing during his/Donna's later time with the band; and Anastasio's own rhythm work with Phil'n'Friends in '99 being a nice illustration of the musical/intuitive flexibility that pure mechanical facility can provide) is lessened. My own compulsion to explain, again and again and fucking again, why the Dead's total inability to play music like Phish's is not a mark against them, just a boring fact about their training and playing style...well, it's outweighed by other desires.
So since you're fond of ad hominems, let's take a beat for those instead. You're projecting your own insecurities on me: talking about 'self-serving opinions' while feeling compelled to mention your job, your music school, your 'experience'; castigating me for vagueness when most of your comments are flat assertions of the Dead's miraculous blah blah; namedropping in order to make a point about the lame predictability of namedropping (and misspelling Debussy, for colour!); harping endlessly on the difference between our respective definitions of chops while falsely claiming I haven't explained mine; and of course building up in your Grand Finale to this...
...which is evidence that you didn't understand my post and aren't actually interested in exchanging ideas about music. You want to be the Big Swinging Dick. That's why you didn't ask about my own musical training, you just (1) presumed and (2) started talking about yours.
OK, by all means, have it: you can be the Dick if that's what you want.
You can reply if you want @robw911, but I don't expect to revisit this thread anytime soon, and I'm not really making any arguments here either - there's probably no percentage for you in replying. Best to just enjoy the weather, the next thing.
I apologize to everyone else for letting this thread get burdened with personal nonsense and namecalling. Apparently I'm a magnet for that kind of thing - which I say in self-criticism, not self-defense!
In 3.0 they seem to have regressed back to the old tension and release formula, which is frankly boring at this point.
I saw much animosity on furthur lot this summer for PHISH and obviously vice versa. I even saw very confused faces when me and my homey SOLO raged the SAT NITE SUPERBALL STREAM at the shakedown in the Electirk Forest ( cheese/ dub step fest). I wondered why these people could not feel the love we have for them and music in general?! This is Jerry's dream.. sitting up on a cloud, watching it all continue to evolve be4 our very eyes. As I participaed in the Phish festivites this past weekend in Chicago and Phish raged on with a blazing "FIRE".. all i could really think about is what JIMI would say and i got my answer.. GROOVY BABAAAYE haha. Im a machine gun funk, great garcias ghost anomaly who discovered the power and majesty of Phish a little later than some of his peers. Instead of people trying to be so divisive.. maybe they should frickin realize that it is one big family tree. One feeds of the other and THAT IS THE TRUTH. Its odd when you old heads, (PHISH AND GD) feel you need to make snap judgments from that high pedestal you stand on. DONT YOU CATS REMEMBER THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS BEING THERE..... and you have no real idea of the true textures of soul and music that are being shared unless you are there... literally!~ Its not a damn competition. The scene is strong because of us all. We are a team working together.. for common goals of creation and UNITY!@!~ I will always hold GD MAGIK above all as they were the innovators but like my girl shannon told me. TREY IS MY JERRY!@ and shes' fuckin right. Ive felt that Phish gospel more than once. I told my homey Deg1 after Cuyahoga 6/4/11 how i got that wonderful, sparkly, family feeling and it was definetly confirmed in my heart of hearts down in CHARLOTTE NC 6/17/11. I cannot discount my furthur tour.. if you doubt me listen to the end of SPAC 7/19/11 wharf rat> eclipse> MOTM> UJB> VIOLA LEE... the next nite i met a cat that goes by the name UNK.. he asked me for a dollar more than once.. to get himself into the show.. I told him persistence pays off and he definelty agreed as SPAC was his 700th dead family show since 89'.. thats alot of fuckin shows kids! Dead serious is what they call it~ something must be bringing him back again and again.
You can argue technical merits of music til the cows come home.. but like another friend of mine told me a long time ago.. It does no good to debate about music, because, whatever you like is what you like. Music is art, conveying much emotion but on its most basic level... it should just make YOU FEEL GOOD! ( ABOUT HOOD) OR as we continue to "PLAY IN THIS BAND" of merry gods and goddesses... fountains of youth.. frickin unicorns, fluffheads and double rainbows; Just remember.. that it all can coincide under a "brand new crescent moon". the basic truth of the DEAD ( WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR UUUUUUUUUUUUUU KINDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!~?????
I love all of you so very much..... This beautiful family continues to teach us all. Now its time for the earth to die once more as autumn approaches. Death and Rebirth.. the cycle continues above the waves and beneath. I am forever grateful for all of you. and Jerry I know would ask of us "CAN YOU STILL HAVE FUN????!!!!!" XOXO from the desk of darkeststarstillwaiting..... peace eternal
hahahahahaaha.
probably the best discussion i've ever read on here. waxbanks always raises the bar for arguments on pnet. great blog, great discussion.
It's ok to like both bands. Seriously. Trust me.
@waxbanks said:
@robw911 said:
However, I do agree that the Four are, individually and cohesively, notches above in musical talent. And that's what makes this an amazing world! We all can share our individual thoughts.
Awesome read man. Follow me @mattybmarcino
The Grateful Dead live scared the hell out of me at times...Phish has danced me into a puddle on the floor but never cuts too deep. Both powerful experiences but very different.
Phish, body. Grateful Dead, soul. Ivory tower be damned!
.e