The Best Phish
Trick Ever
By Dave Kemp, Amanda Talbert, Abigail Prior, Delilah
Jones, and the Jay Dewald Experience
Hello everyone. I
hope a lot of you reading this are recovering from last night’s show. I’m back
in Hanover. I got Reading and just Halloween through mail order and with my
budget I had to pass on doing the whole 3 night run. But that did allow myself
to get back to my crib and begin an intense critical listening of Phish’s new
album from the future “WingSuit”. My
friends are listed as co-authors because all I did from the time the show ended
until I slept a little bit and then got up was talk about the second set. I’ll
give credit to them when I can remember who exactly said what. So as someone
once said, Let’s get this show on the road.
The hype for this
Halloween was off the charts even more than normal. Being the 30th
year, we were all ready for something truly epic. Would they actually do a Grateful
Dead album because 2 guys with the same name who have a crazy bunch of Phish
coincides were finally going to attend the same Halloween show? Or was it going
to be the Allman Brothers, with all the teases we heard over the previous 2
weeks of Fall tour? Or maybe the Band with horns, to honor Levon Helm? Hell, in
Reading, the last show before Halloween, they gave us beautiful jams that
sounded like the Dead and the Allmans. We were all geeked beyond belief.
On the way to the
show, we saw a post saying the boys sound checked From the Mars Hotel's nugget
Unbroken Chain. Ohhh the Dead. Then a photo of the playbill looked like
Radiohead’s OK Computer album cover. More uncertainty. Jay knows a guy on the
crew. Upon being asked, he said “I can tell you but then they would kill me.”
Gonna guess he’s afraid of Don Gordleone.
I’m gonna be
brief as it’s all about WingSuit. First set solid. All the songs, all originals,
were well played. The Gin was out of this world. Up there with Went ’97 and
Muret ’93. That is the jam we would be talking all about if not for the rest of
the show.
The thing about
Phish is we all love it in our own way. Some are more passionate than others.
Some more know than others. But we all love it. And we are all right about
Phish as fans. Except when the band is right about Phish. Which is all the
time.
So let’s don our
WingSuits and think about the following points, which are all my opinions. I’m
not saying I’m right about any of this. I also have not read any other reviews
or posts about the show.
The movie This is
Spinal Tap is a documentary about a fake rock band that has experienced every cliché
in rock as well as changed with the trends of rock from the 60’s through the 80’s.
Folk Rock>psychedelic rock>Prog Rock>Heavy metal. If you love
something so much you must be able to laugh at yourself. I saw someone dressed
up as Nigel Tufnell at the show.
Larry David is one
of the creative forces behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. His last
episode on Seinfeld was the dark comedy of the season finale when George’s fiancée
dies from glue poisoning and he’s almost relieved. And then think about the series
finale, where they go on trial. You see these characters that you have grown to
love are really awful people. They gave the fans what the fans thought they
wanted, a recap of the characters’ lives and the fans recoiled.
In the playbill Trey says they went back and
listened to all their great jams, because that’s what the fans wanted. But when
you try to recreate or clone the past, you get an inferior copy. Think about
the Michael Keaton movie, Multiplicity. They cloned him and every copy was
inferior to the previous one. So think of this music as Bizzarro World Phish
(BWP), (an example Vlad the Impaler is Wilson, fans even were chanting Vlad the Implaer during one song) a little universe they carved out during sound checks, downtime in
studio, writing sessions and time spent ignoring the advice of record labels,
record producers, concert promoters, hypercritical fans, any old guy with a
blog………
These are my
observations based on one listening. You will hear something different with
each listen.
Stuff in bold were thoughts I had during song.
WINGSUIT
The “feels good because it feels good” sounds like BWP Hood.
The space at the end feels out of place.
This sounds slightly off timing wise
FUEGO
Crazy nonsensical lyrics, just like a lot of Fluffhead and
several other Phish songs. Actual Phish Jam the 2:30 mark. Rolling repeated
vocals at end BWO Halley’s
These lyrics seem
like random groups of unrelated words strung together
THE LINE
Cornball cliché ridden lyrics. Awful backing vocals, sounds
like an 80’s situation comedy TV opening credits theme. Good jams but empty
lyrics. Corporate Phish rock as if they had been co-opted by the record labels,
back when they mattered in the 70’s and 80’s.
They can’t think this
is good
MONICA
Mumford and Sons Phish, because that’s the trendy thing
right now. We all want the bluegrass jams of the Fall of 94 tour (think Long
Time, Long Journey Home, etc). BWP bluegrass. Great chords, bizzaro lyrics.
Vocals and chorus BWP Gotta Jibbo. Awful solo Fishman vocal at 2:00 mark
This has got to be
some kind of joke right?
WAITING ALL NIGHT
70’s classic AOR rock. This would have fit in great during
the rock block of Free Bird, Layla and Stairway to Heaven, while the DJ did the
blow and bang the hooker the A & R man provided as payola. He sings about
his love sailing on, away from him. But as he bemoans her leaving, he also is
singing about how she was so far away, what did she expect him to do. He does
this in the same phrase at the 1:40 mark. Inappropriate meatball effect at 1:25
mark.
By now I’m starting to think about this all in the Spinal
Tap frame of reference. I notice a lot of nice melodies but awful lyrics and vice
versa. And I’m starting to laugh. There also is a lot of downtime in between
songs, no flow to show. Jay said several times” I really think Trey is
regretting all this”
WOMBAT
White man’s funk, but done wrong, too fast. BPW’s Antelope.
The lyrics are so silly and semi sexual, almost skanky. Please take time to
listen again. Wombat is a playa in the club. The leave it behind lyric is close
to a Spinal Tap homage, i.e. Big Bottom. The Abe Vogoda Dancers, old show biz cliché.
Like the Jackie Gleason show with the Lucky Strike Dancers. Or Ace Rothstein and
the Ace’s High Dancer’s in Casino. Sorry couldn’t find a clip.
OK this is definitely
a joke. And I start telling Jay its Spinal Tap Phish, last episode of Seinfeld
Phish. Amanda gets it.
And now I explain
Abe Vigoda. He was on the Barney Miller sitcom in the late 70’s as Det. Phil
Fish. He even had his own spinoff. I bet when Phish first started people asked “oh
is Abe Vigoda in your band”, that type of stuff. He also played Tessio in the
Godfather and we know how much the band loves the Godfather. At the Great Went
in 1997, the 2 campgrounds were named Camp Corleone and Camp Tattaglia, the 2 families in the Godfather. Just a
guess, but I’m sure Trey has had people say they think Gamehenge is a ripoff of
Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, maybe even the Godfather. Probably an inside joke
among the band.
Godfather 1 and 2 are two of the greatest
movies of all time, directed by Francis Ford Coppalla. For years, fans wanted a
sequal. They begged for it. Said his 80’s movies sucked compared to the classic
years. So he finally did Godfather 3 and the reaction was awful. Critics and
fans hated it. The climatic scene takes place in Atlantic City, with over the
top violence, which is what fans thought they wanted. Coppalla also directed
Apocalyspe Now, which a parody of was the announcement for Fall Phish Tour. So
they started with a Coppella movie parody and ended the tour with a Coppella
movie ending. All Amanda on this one
SNOW
Poorly sung vocals, almost
weak.
DEVOTION TO A DREAM
Upbeat music, totally
depressing lyrics
555
Great bassline, BWP Moma
Dance. Really good Phish jam at 5:05 mark. BWP Tweezer Reprise at 6:30 mark, no
peak, all blue balls. Pointless title, just like 46 Days.
WINTERQUEEN
BWP Dirt, rhyme pattern
simliar to Stash. Lots of dead air at end. 7:10 mark, speech similar to Page’s
at end of third set but insincere. 7:35, lead vocalist syndrome. Total 70’s
live album banter cliches
ADMIST THE PEALS OF LAUGHTER
Depressing suicidal lyrics. BWP Chaulkdust for older,
working people. Phish heads in regular society. Jack and Jill, nursery rhymes.
But when Mike teased Pop Goes the Weasel at the beginning of DWD in Reading,
everyone loved it. 3 minutes of time killing banter at end. Manger ripped them
off, every band including the Grateful Dead had this happen to them. Rock cliché,
right out of Spinal Tap.
This sounds like it’s
off a Foghat live album. And certainly Phish fans are more sophisticated
than to enjoy 70’s corporate rock clichés… except when Phish plays them at
Hampton i.e. Takin’ Care of Business by one of the ultimate AOR bands of the 70’s
Bachman Turner Overdrive.
YOU NEVER KNOW
Party Time, rock star clichés
Myself” It’s almost as the music was bad Phish, but still
better than everything else”
Amanda “I’ve been saying that since 1998”
Jay also pointed out there has never been a Phish show with
3 such distinctive sets, and different crowd reactions. Amanda thought that the
second set was like our reaction to every new Phish album or song, we don’t like
it and then it grows on us and we demand a 25 minute version of it.
So all of the above is Bad Phish. They are so good at Good
Phish that they created this alternate Phish world where they sold out,
listened to record companies and producers telling them what they had to do to
have a hit and grab that golden ring. It sounds kind of like Phish but that special
something is missing.
As we sat in set
break and I tried to articulate what I wrote, I kept telling Jay that the third
set was going to be the best thing ever. Better than the Tahoe Tweezer, better
than Cyprus, better that Halloween 1994, my previous favorite show….. And I was
right. It was like the sweetest, most epic love making 2 entities can have. Now
most of us aren’t old enough (I’m 40 and 11 months) to have been with a soul
mate for thirty years, going through the ups and downs of a long lasting
relationship. But we have had that with Phish. No matter when you got on the
bus, you absorb the past thirty years.
Every jam was
perfectly executed. Everything was slowed down nice and slow and right. It seemed
like they pulled chunks of undiscovered jams from Fall of ’95 and ’97 and unleashed
them upon us. All hose. And every song was a Phish original, somewhat
autobiographical, about the band, the fans, and their relationship together. Ghost,
Carini, Birds, Hood, Bug, and Antelope. All with lyrics that seem silly and weird
just like BWP.
The whole show
was originals except for the encore. Phish was saying, You don’t need us to
cover an album, or have horns. We can give you everything you want and desire
and crave just with Phish. We got this.
And the encore? The Mighty Quinn, a
song written by Bob Dylan and performed by the Grateful Dead. Almost as if they
are saying, yes we are really good, but we still have a ways to go.
Dave Kemp
BA American Studies
PhD Rock and Roll
