Northerly Island, Chicago, 7/18/14: Had to Have That

The most excellent pholks at phish.net asked me if I’d be interested in writing a review of the Friday night Chicago show. Naturally, I strapped in for #couchtour and gave a pretty detailed blow-by-blow of the evening’s affairs. For your reading pleasure, linked here.

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Collected Stories: Memoirs – John Cage and David Lang at Carnegie Hall

When I started this blog, the idea was to subsume all of my informal musicological endeavors under one online umbrella: thoughts about cultural and musicological issues, conference writeups, reviews and thoughts on contemporary classical music, and my love of Phish and the Grateful Dead. At a certain point, a number of those enterprises found other recourses, I got distracted by comprehensive exams and dissertation writing, I got lazy, and I started re-obsessing over Phish. Smooth Atonal Sound followed its namesake and became a Phish blog for a couple years. But there’s a reason I chose that particular Phish lyric as my online presence — it is one of the only Phish lyrics to use a word directly from my academic field (“atonal”) and represents my scholarly passion, post-tonal music of the 20th and 21st century. To continue with another quote from the same song, “this isn’t who it would be, if it wasn’t who it is.” And this IS me, musically speaking.

Returning then to my roots, and just to be writing more often, I’m going back to reviewing classical concerts, writing thoughts on music popular and classical, and all sorts of other non-Phishy things. And Phishy things still. Let me know if you hate it. Without further ado…a concert review of aleatory music. With free drinks.

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Certain aspects of John Cage’s music have gotten played out, for lack of a better term. Cage was something of a raconteur in the 20th century, bringing performance art into the realm of concert music, and creating a space where literally anything could become a musical performance. Literally, anything: his piece 0’00”, designed as a sequel to his most infamous piece 4’33” and dedicated to fellow Fluxus composer Yoko Ono (who also, you may have heard, dated a Beatle), merely required that the performer perform a distinct act. I’ve done performances of the piece where I’ve written an email to my students.

Yet all those things that were so radical, so difficult, and so completely challenging to the way we think of art, performance, audience, and most essentially, music, have been dulled by our own shock culture over the past few decades. We are no longer bothered by a piece composed entirely of silence, and we have come to expect that the performer/audience dynamic may be inverted at any point, the fourth wall of the musical stage to be broken. A performance of 4’33” almost becomes routine at this point, a novelty item on a concert program. Nothing could make this more clear than the BBC broadcast of a full orchestral performance of 4’33” by the LSO, complete with the overeager, hagiographic introduction and commentary.

My point is this: the shock value of Cage’s music is dead, as is the novelty factor. All we are left with is the music itself, the sounds arranged in space and time. And although there are potentially some cool moments where the audience becomes the piece, 4’33” just isn’t that great. In that BBC video, the commentator’s reaction, the shots of the audience looking intently pensive, the rote and obligatory applause, it just highlights the farcical and self-serving nature of this sort of performance.

This is why Tuesday’s performance at Carnegie Hall of Cage’s Indeterminacy, with a simultaneous rendering of his Fontana Mix on lights and 27’10.554″ for a Percussionist, was so successful. It worked as a musical performance. Without being shocking, without being wildly innovative (these pieces are nearly 60 years old!), and even without drawing too obvious attention to its own chance operations, the evening was a wild success based on what we heard and saw alone.

Indeterminacy is a collection of short stories, each one told over the course of one minute, read from notecards. The order of the stories is randomly determined. The topics of these stories range from the metaphysical to the literal, but all seem to celebrate their namesake philosophical principle, that of chance, randomness, happy accidents, and happenstance. Some reinforce the meta-narrative of indeterminacy, others play out like little zen miniatures (appropriate since many of them concern Buddhist monks or figures like D.T. Suzuki), and still others are vignettes that offer a glimpse into the playful mind of their creator.

Doubling down on the aleatory concept, Cage dictated that another piece of his, or another media of art altogether, could be superimposed with Indeterminacy, so as to create even more of the chance alignments and dissonances, both musical and cognitive.

What struck me most, and what played out as such a beautiful aesthetic, was how little I was conscious of the indeterminacy as I was watching and listening to this piece. Certainly the lights, percussion, and readings never seemed to be intentionally in sync, but they still seemed to go together in some inexplicable way. Even the random ordering of Cage’s stories seemed to happily effect a narrative or some continuity, occasionally, as when a story about taking one of Schoenberg’s classes in L.A. preceded a story which began “Another time, Schoenberg…”

When the lights, percussion, and readings did happily find themselves in alignment, the overall effect was glorious. Percussionist Steve Schick’s scrapes, rolls, and hits, a virtuosic performance in and of itself, often seemed to fill the spaces in the stories. There was a notable moment when actor Paul Lazar, whose voice lacked the gentle yet focused lilt of Cage’s but who instilled the same intensity and deliberateness into the words, spoke about water to the accompaniment of Schick’s brushed metal, like the sound of a stream, while lighting director Eric Southern illuminated bright blue LED floor lights.

The stories were funnier than I was expecting. I laughed out loud a number of times; some folks around me even more. I suppose I was expecting mostly philosophical ponderings on the nature of randomness, or the randomness of nature, but many of the stories ended with a sardonic twist (especially, surprisingly, the ones about monks).

Perhaps my favorite moment was hearing the story from Indeterminacy that I know best, because it’s featured in the Peter Greenaway film that I use when I teach Cage. Although I never realized until hearing it in the context of a complete performance, I had my own meta moment of happy accident because this story, about Cage’s trip to an isolation chamber at Harvard, includes the line “anybody who knows me knows this story, I am constantly telling it.” Here I was, listening to a performance of Indeterminacy, and realizing that I knew this story, because I know Cage, and he is constantly telling it. That’s the real beauty of a performance of this sort. I became part of the narrative of indeterminate nature that the piece reveals is part of all life. It’s entirely random that I show that particular clip of the Greenaway film, and of all the stories from Indeterminacy that he could have chose, the director uses this particular one, which is a comment on how many people know this story. It was like hearing that one familiar riff in a long improvisation, or somehow recognizing a song during a random band’s performance. It made me exceedingly happy.

Despite my harping on about the wonderful musical content, one other personal highlight was an aspect of the performance that was, in some way, more philosophical than musical. With the house lights up and stage lights down, and the audience still milling about in their pre-concert drone of conversation, Schick walked on stage and began to play. Because 27’10.554″ is a collection of singular hits, scrapes, and other weird percussive noises, it seemed as though he was warming up, or soundchecking. But in fact he was beginning the piece. And just like that, Cage managed to prove provocateur again. The audience, without their realizing it, became part of the performance. I realized this within about a minute, and sat with a grin as I listened to the piece: a combination of carefully conjured percussion noises intermingling with the melody and percussion of the audience, their voices, footsteps, tappings, and seat adjustings. The man next to me started shushing people, itself becoming part of the soundscape. Eventually but very gradually, the crowd realized what was happening and became silent, by which point the piece had been going for over 5 minutes. It was glorious.

The other half of Tuesday’s performance was a world premiere of virtuosic violin pieces by David Lang, called Mystery Sonatas and based on the mystically captivating pieces of the same name by Baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. Thematically connected to the Cage works by the evening’s theme of “Memoir,” the music was a stark juxtaposition in genre, timbre, and style to the Cage, but a welcome one. Violinist Augustin Hadelich played his face off, too, pouring his emotion into both the music and his facial expressions. All seven movements featured the post-tonal diatonicism and repetitions of melody that are hallmarks of Lang’s style, I guess they call it “post-minimalist,” or whatever.

“Joy” opened the piece with delicate harmonics, establishing the higher register of the instrument as the primary one for most of the work. This slow and reflective movement gave way to a fiery display of tremolo bowing in “After Joy,” Lang outlining chords as Hadelich moved up and down the neck with precise breakneck speed. The three middle movements, “Before Sorrow,” “Sorrow,” and “After Sorrow,” all used a similar motive, with slow but steady arpeggios and a vaguely Jewish melodic character, like the minor key chanting of a cantor. Especially impressive was Hadelich’s ability to continuously bow a triple stop while changing notes all at the same time. It provided an eerie, droning pedal-point effect that was wonderful and virtuosic without the ostentation of “After Joy.”

“Before Glory” returned to the speed and precision of its inverse pair in the set, this time with scotch snap rhythmic figures rather than tremolo, while “Glory” provided a sort of major key, blissful meditation that complemented both the melancholic “Sorrow” and the ethereal, other-worldly “Joy.” Lang has created a masterful work for solo violin, still, Hadelich’s emotional display of talent was the star of this piece.

Oh, and they gave out free drinks. The “Langonade,” with bourbon, triple sec, lemon, and sprite, was delicious.

Putting Our Wingsuits On

Starting around November 3rd, I spent a lot of time listening to the second set of 10/31/13. A lot more than I thought I would. In attendance at the show, I was, like many, initially a little disappointed to find out that we wouldn’t be getting one of the most cherished of Phish traditions, a Halloween cover set. But within a few minutes my disappointment turned into eager optimism and excitement.

I loved the jam in “Fuego,” I thought “Monica” was amazing. “Wombat,” obviously, was one of the more memorable Phish moments I’ve seen, just for the sheer absurdity of the event. Other than that, I remember enjoying it all (except Mike’s out of tune singing on “Snow”) but realizing that I’d need to listen more. Really, the most immediately striking thing about 10/31/13 for me was the monstrous “Ghost”>”Carini” in set 3. If there’s anything I’ve learned from my few years as a music journalist, or my many more as a musicologist, it’s that you need to listen to a piece of music multiple times before you can make any judgments on it. So listen multiple times I did.

Nearly two months later, I’ve internalized the entirety of Wingsuit (I still skip “Snow” most times. Sorry Mike, you’ve got to take that down a few steps). I know every lyric, I know all the changes, I’ve memorized certain solos. And I love it. I love all of it. I love the ethereal psychedelia of the title track, the blistering “Birds”-esque jam in “Fuego,” the catchy 60s pop of “Monica,” the floating otherworldliness of “Waiting All Night,” the Little Feat-cum-80s Dead New Orleans groove of “You Never Know,” Trey’s Neutral Milk Hotel wannabe “Amidst the Peals of Laughter,” and the dark funkiness of “555.” And as we prepare for yet another beautiful Phish tradition, the New Year’s Run, what I’m most excited for and grateful for in this incredible 30th anniversary year (other than the Tahoe Tweezer) is to hear what will happen to the Wingsuit songs over the next four nights, and then into the future.

See, the only way I know Wingsuit, the only way any of us know it, is in the barest bones version of each song. We know the basics of every tune, but we don’t know how the band will integrate the songs into the normal curvature of a Phish show. Placement means everything: “Seven Below” had potential when we heard it on Round Room, but we had no idea it would turn into a behemoth second set jam, as it did on 7/13/03 or 11/28/09. And of course, we don’t know which songs that were 5 minutes long on 10/31/13 might become 14 minutes on 12/30/13.

So here’s how I hope it goes down over the next four nights. By the time you read this, we’ll have probably already heard a few of the new tunes, and we’ll have plenty more to talk about.

“Wingsuit” was awkward as a set opener. With that melty, gooey quality to its opening chords,  it’s far too mellow to open a set. But it’ll truly shine as a landing pad following a oversized set 2 opener. Like “No Quarter,” “20 Years Later,” or the many ballads that have filled the role over the years, “Wingsuit” will excel as the re-entry into our planetary orbit after the cosmic excursion of  a “Tweezer,” “Carini,”  or “Disease” set 2 opener. “Wingsuit” retains just enough of that psychedelic tinge to provide a perfect transition from deep space exploration to terrestrial endeavors. As a counter example, think of how inappropriate it felt to hear “Number Line” after the landmark 12/30/12 “Carini.” The conventional song form and peppy lyrics were an odd juxtaposition, to say the least. But throw “Wingsuit” after something like that “Carini,” and you’ve got a seamless thread between the unknown and the known worlds. Or how about a “Mike’s”>”Wingsuit”>”Weekapaug”?

“Fuego” could go anywhere in a show, I think, from set 1 closer to show opener, to mid-second set. More importantly, what will happen to the jam? On Halloween it was a lean 80 bars of fast 4/4, just 20 4-measure phrases, barely 2 minutes. The intense two-chord jam–one of the only instances of a Phish jam embedded, dare I say, like a Bisco jam into the middle of a sectional song–is almost like a cross between “Piper” and “Birds,” but if they are willing to stretch it out, it could truly be the fire of its name.

I have no idea what will happen to “The Line.” It’s probably in my lower tier of tunes from the album, even though I know many of you out there LOVE it. I think it’ll find its way comfortably into the middle of first sets, sandwiched between a “Divided” and a “Funky Bitch,” perhaps. And I don’t think it’ll really jam much more than it already has. But I’d love to be proven wrong.

“Monica,” on the other hand, is a song that I hope Phish, and Trey specifically, have big plans for. While I loved the day-glo bubblegum effect of the acoustic ensemble on Halloween, I think this song will rock when played with electric instruments. And I think Trey needs to grab it by the balls and shred over the changes following the little vocal breakdown. I hope that dear “Monica” doesn’t end up the next “Bouncin” or “Silent,” ending with a glorious bit of vocal polyphony but identical in every version. I hope she puts her fuckin wingsuit on and flies.

“Waiting All Night” will turn into a huge jam, I hope. I’d love to hear it grow some legs mid-first set, or even mid-second. Like “Wingsuit,” “Waiting All Night” could be a nice transitional tune after a huge set two opener. But its effervescent modal qualities will bode well for some further exploration.

“Wombat” is clearly going to wind up like many excellent funk vehicles, such as “Moma,” “Tube,” or “GBOTT,” placed in a first set somewhere. But like “Moma” and “Tube” occasionally used to do, and like “Wolfman’s” still does, I’d love to hear this expand in a second set placement. We didn’t hear a single melodic line from Trey during the Abe Vigoda dance section, or the follow-up exit music, on Halloween. Imagine what will happen if he starts laying down short melodic fragments on top of that chugging, off-kilter groove. Cuddly, but muscular!

“Snow” needs to change keys. Mike cannot sing it in its current range. This is what happens as you near 50. But if Mike sang it in his natural voice instead of falsetto, I could be very happy catching this about as often as I get a “Sleep,” “Driver,” or “Swept Away.”

“Devotion to a Dream” is the only bonafide set 1 opener on the album, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it assume that role on the finished studio product. Sounding sort of like an outtake from Hands on a Hardbody, the song has affinities to “Sample” and “Number Line,” but with a slightly Phishier feel to it. We’ll definitely be jamming out with big smiles to this one, often, in the future.

On the other hand, I think that “555” has some serious set 2 jamming potential. They already proved this when they took it into a quasi-industrial noise jam that followed the same rising chord progression as “Tweezer Reprise” or every version of “Walk Away” since 6/17/10. And it was the only song that seemed to leap out of its structural bounds, the only one to go type II, before it landed comfortably in the gentle sway of the “Winterqueen.” I’m a huge fan of “Winterqueen,” and I think that like “Wingsuit,” and as it did on Halloween, “Winterqueen” will be another great late second set cooler, sort of like what “Thunderhead” did in 2003 (remember that song?), or what “Strange Design,” “Roggae,” and “Bug” often do. A nice fourth quarter rest before the set closing “YEM” or “Bowie” or “Hood” or “Slave.” But like “Bug” or “Roggae,” its jam isn’t just a throwaway. It carries its own weight.

“Amidst the Peals of Laughter” is one of those songs that I know Trey, and especially Tom, is really proud of. But I have no idea where it will go. It’s a song I imagine we’ll rarely hear, something in the vein of “Dog-Faced Boy” frequency. Finally, “You Never Know” doesn’t seem to offer a lot via jam potential, but that doesn’t mean that it has nowhere to go. Another first set tune, I could imagine hearing it as a closer following a big “Bowie” or “Antelope,” the post-closer closer. But I can imagine its groovy bounce opening a balmy summer show, too.

Like I said, by the time you read this, some of these will likely be proven totally wrong, and maybe I’ll have gotten a few right. Either way, as this 30th year of Phish draws to a close, we’re pushed up to the edge. It’s time to put our wingsuits on. ‘Cause it feels good.

Everything is Green and Submarine

During the second set of Sunday night’s stellar show in Hampton (10/20/13), which I wrote about here, my wife turned to me as we basked in the dreamy glow of Kuroda’s lights during the “Tweezer” jam and said “it sounds really Pink Floyd-y.” This wasn’t the first time she’d said so that weekend — she’d described the interstitial space between “Ghost” and “Down With Disease” in the same terms. It wasn’t just the fact that it was spacey psychedelia, it was a certain kind of spaceyness.

Usually when Phish turns to a spacier segment of their jams, they are focusing on timbre, creating washes of music that are intended to sound a particular way. It’s the combination of airy keyboards, lots of effects, often lots of cymbals, and usually rolled chords or arpeggios. For instance, one of my favorite spacey jams comes from the summer of 2003, which was a great time for effervescent psychedelic playing from the band, in the middle of what I consider the jam of the year, the 7/13/03 Gorge “Seven Below.”

Here Trey continues a loop of two notes that he’d set up, Page has a few drone chords going and adds in extra synthesized sounds here and there, Mike is droning, Fishman comes back with a slow beat with lots of cymbal, and when Trey starts playing melodically, it’s static. There’s no direction to his playing, he’s not really “jamming” or “soloing” in the way we often use the term, it’s more like he’s playing multiple notes as part of the tableau of sound. That those notes are presented melodically doesn’t really make it a melody, if that makes any sense.

I don’t think of this as particularly sounding like any other band, it seems unique to Phish’s aesthetic, especially from that summer, that tour. You can hear it all over the IT jams, especially the glacial move from “Waves”->”Bowie” on Day 1 (8/2/03), and of course it’s the basic sound of the Tower Jam.

But Sunday night in Hampton, and indeed ever since Tahoe, Phish’s spacey moments have had a lot more structure, a lot more rhythmic drive. The band hasn’t been content to just create washes of sound and noise to create space, they’ve been making a more conscious effort to play spacey jams. All the elements of a normal jam segment are still there: guitar riffs, steady drumbeat with clear accents, a bass line, sometimes even a chord progression. But they’re combined with the ambient, psychedelic timbre, those synths and warm, fuzzy sounds, alongside ample effects pedals. One reason this has happened is that I think Page has become much more comfortable with his rig, especially with some of the previously less-used pieces, and Mike has also become much more comfortable playing with electronics in his pedal setup (and of course he’s got that killer pedal with the foot keyboard, you know the one, for that “brown note” effect in “Tweeprise”).

And so you get a space jam with all the colors of ambient jams from years past, but with drive, purpose, direction, and more clarity than we’re used to. You get this jam from the Hampton “Tweezer”:

It grows from that same place of total a-everything: arhythm, amelody, etc. But then it turns into a legitimate jam segment, with a two-chord progression, and a distinct sound.

Basically, it reminds me a lot of this:

That’s part of the intro to Pink Floyd’s “Echoes,” the crowning jewel from their 1971 LP Meddle. But there were other parts of Sunday’s show that reminded me equally of other parts of that album. Take, for example, this meaty and noisy chunk of the “Golden Age” jam:

The keys and guitar are both pulsating, Fish is erratically hitting anything in his way, and the sound seems to come back into the texture in large waves. I was shocked when it was happening because it was so good and so daring, and even more shocked when I listened back and realized how much it recalled Floyd’s “One of These Days” for me:

So now I’ll make the irrational jump to conclusions: I’m making the case that this year’s Halloween album will be Pink Floyd’s Meddle from 1971.

Let’s start off by admitting that my evidence here is FAR from scholarly and sound, it’s merely a wild guess and shot in the dark, as are pretty much every guess at what Phish is going to cover tonight. Still, here’s my logic. Phish has said that they always feel like their Halloween album must be so obvious because it’s reflected in their playing leading up to the show. In retrospect, I’m not sure there’s anything particularly Little Feat-esque about the Fall 2010 tour, in that Phish generally sounds pretty Little Feat-esque these days (especially on laid back funky tunes like “Wolfman’s,” “Ocelot,” even “Alaska”). But especially the music that came after their 1996 Halloween costume sounded like it had been washed in Remain in Light, and as I’ve written elsewhere, part of the reason Fall 1995 was such a great time for Phish is that playing Quadrophenia forced the band to tighten and reign in their unchecked, wild experimentation from the previous summer. 

Phish sounds like they’ve been practicing, listening to, and internalizing Pink Floyd these days. And it’s not just because two jams from Hampton bear an uncanny resemblance to tracks from Meddle. It’s the overall style of jams, with a funky character that’s still laden with psychedelia, that leads me to think this. Remember, Pink Floyd in the 70s was pretty funky, even though we don’t always think of them that way. Consider “Have A Cigar,” “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2,” “Pigs (Three Little Ones),” or this funk jam after the lyrics in “Echoes”:

There are other reasons, of course, why this album would be great for Phish. “One of These Days” is a driving, menacing tune, which Gordon would absolutely slay. More so than other albums they’ve played, Meddle would lead itself to extended improv. Certainly during parts of almost every song (except maybe “Seamus” and “San Tropez”) there could be moments to stretch things out far beyond where Floyd took them. The album is only 46 minutes long, so they’d need to stretch it out a bit to fit it into a full set.

The album wouldn’t require any guests, since Floyd has the same instrumentation as Phish. Some of you may be griping “but they already did Floyd, remember?” Of course they played all of “Dark Side of the Moon,” but it wasn’t on Halloween, it wasn’t rehearsed. It was a beautiful idea that came together at the last minute and they pulled it off pretty well, but it’s not without serious problems (I mean, they learned it in an afternoon!). Meddle, on the other hand, would be polished, practiced for weeks, listened to for longer, thought about. In short, it will have become ingrained into Phish. Indeed, I think it already has.

“Fearless” would be a great song for Trey to sing, perhaps with acoustic guitar, and is probably Floyd’s best verse-chorus pop/rock song , “Pillow of Winds” could get stretched out wonderfully, I can practically already hear Mike singing “San Tropez” and Fishman singing “Seamus.” And “Echoes.” Oh, “Echoes.”

There probably isn’t a Phish fan alive who also loves Pink Floyd that hasn’t daydreamed about Phish covering “Echoes” at one point or another. Ever since I discovered the song (which was after I started listening to Phish), I’ve had a fantasy of hearing that “ping” at a show. As a composition, “Echoes” actually mirrors how Phish is jamming now. They start with a song structure, then it moves into funk, then space (deep space), then it gradually builds back up with a huge peak. Each of these sections could get lengthened: Floyd’s album version is 23 minutes, Phish could turn this into 35 minutes if they wanted, especially by jamming out the part after the lyrical return (the album version sort of just fades away…).

So that’s my case for Meddle. Granted, after the Reading show, and after reading a post from the guy who called the Little Feat album in 2010, I’m more inclined to believe the current rumor of the Allman Brothers Band’s Eat A Peach, which would be an entirely different beast altogether. Parts of the Reading “Down With Disease” smelled strongly of “Mountain Jam,” and Kenwood Dennard would be the perfect steady Butch Trucks to Fishman’s wild, jazzy Jaimoe. We’d have to deal with the fact that every song on the album, even the ones recorded without Duane Allman, feature slide guitar, something Trey has never utilized. But Phish used to cover “Whipping Post” all the time, and they slayed it without a slide. Plus, they could always ask one of their friends, like Seth Yacovone, or maybe one of the guys who actually plays Duane’s parts in the Allman Brothers Band (Warren Haynes or Derek Trucks) to join them. The more logical ABB choice, for me, would be Brothers and Sisters, mainly because it features Chuck Leavell on the piano as a much more prominent role in the band, and only one guitar throughout. Page would kill Chuck’s solo on “Jessica.”

But that’s the beauty of this Halloween gag. Even in this age where information gets leaked and everyone knows everything, we’re still awake at 1am the night before Halloween, wondering what we’re gonna get.

 

The Age of Miracles

10/20/13 Hampton Coliseum

I: Julius, Funky Bitch, GBOTT, Roses Are Free, Sample in a Jar, Ginseng Sullivan, 46 Days, Divided Sky, Bold As Love

II: Paul & Silas, Tweezer>Golden Age>Piper->Takin’ Care of Business*>2001>Sand>Slave to the Traffic Light

E: A Day in the Life>Tweeprise

*Phish debut

I knew something was up during Saturday night’s “Tube.”

Not that it blew up or anything, the entire version didn’t crack the 6-minute mark (which actually puts it at nearly twice the length of some recent versions). But there was something in how the band was communicating during “Tube.” Page starts off with a clav solo, as per usual, but Trey happens upon a little riff that catches hold of him, and he just lays it down. He goes from  the first scale degree up to the fifth, and then down to the fourth, at first in choppy bits of melody, and then he turns it into long, legato notes played with heavy portamento (sliding between notes).

Then he gets locked into a strumming rhythmic pattern with Page’s clav work, and Mike hits the fight bell a bunch.

At various points over the next 2 minutes, Fishman gets into a very disco-fied moment, Trey starts playing those warbly “we’re about to take this to deep space” chords, Mike gets a slap bass solo, Trey switches to the watery effect, Page jumps to the Rhodes, and then finally they take it to the blues turnaround back into the final verse.

And it occurred to me how very different this “Tube” sounded from others this year. Not because it was jammed out like we all want it to be, but because the brief jam featured many varieties of jamming style, affect, groove, and even lead instrument, without leaving the structure of the song. It was “Tube,” for sure, and it never deviated from being a “Tube” jam, but at points in the jam, it sounded like it could go anywhere.

It’s that edge of the structural cliff that Phish toed during the “Tube,” the edge where, if they wanted to have pushed it just a scoatch further, they would’ve vaulted that “Tube” right into a heavy type-II moment. That’s where Phish seemed to be playing all weekend. Sunday night’s first set was all about that edge. On paper, this set is pretty “meh.” Fun songs, yes, but nothing to really grab hold of. But trust me when I tell you that there was something just a little different about the “Funky Bitch,” the “GBOTT,” the “46 Days.” Take the “Funky Bitch.” It did everything it normally does: rockin’ blues soloing, the lyrics, a sweet organ solo from Page, Mike’s long vocal sustain. But when Trey begins his solo, it’s not just a wailing blues.

Trey starts out low and subdued in his blues-rock idiom. But rather than just hosing it down from the start, there’s a strong sense that this jam will build. He eventually finds his way into a single-pitch rhythmic pattern, which Page picks up. Trey then uses this as a signal that he’s going to take it into the next gear, unleashing some of the hose. Mike does an admirable job building this one up too, following Trey’s lead with both intensity and melodic activity high on the bass neck. Finally this jam does reach a peak, before one more rhythmic tag to end it. Think about it – when was the last time you heard a “Funky Bitch” that actually built a jam? And the entire jam segment was barely 3 minutes. But it was different than usual.

Things really came to a head during the “Roses Are Free.” For those of us who have internalized 4/3/98, we always have a secret hope that any version of “Roses” will do it, will go there. For two minutes, the 10/20/13 “Roses” did go there. Pushing past the endpoint of the song proper, Fishman kept going with the cacophonous drumming until everything fell into a very Who-esque jam, with Trey coaxing some whale-infused distorted notes out there. Just as quickly as it began, it fell apart. It was the foot testing the waters over that edge.

Even though there were no standout moments of improvisation in the first set, there were many small moments where you could feel the band tickling that improvisational itch within the confines of short jams, or barely any jams. It was almost weird, hearing a variety of moments where any member of the band could have potentially steered everything into the abyss.

As has been the case many times this year, the first set was for songs. The second set was for that abyss.

Everyone in the Phish world is fully aware of what happened in Tahoe, and I think it would be fair to say that no one expected any 2013 version of “Tweezer” to top the 7/31 version. And while I wasn’t there in Nevada, I’ve heard it many times, and this Hampton version is on par, if not better in places, than the Tahoe behemoth.

Trey immediately starts dismantling things, not with melodic or harmonic excursions, but with percussive strummed noise, which he turns into a loop. Some strong dorian whale jamming follows, and it’s clear that they’re pushing this thing, not towards a clear endpoint, but out there into the deep end. One of the reasons the band has been able to slink through jams with such ease and musical dexterity is their transformation of germinal melodic ideas into larger scale harmonic moves. Early in this “Tweezer” jam, we get this type of motion: Trey finds a riff descending from the minor third to the tonic note in A minor, C down to A. When Trey suddenly decides to sustain that C instead of descending from it, the band adjusts and launches right up into a momentary tonicization of D major, creating a wonderful dissonance between Trey’s C and the band’s D major that suggests the mixolydian. All Trey has to do it adjust up to the D, and he moves the jam into D for just a second. Then they all fall back into the A minor. Trey laid the bait, the band took it, he met them there, and then they all regrouped.

As the jam dissolves into space, and Mike starts playing some deep impact notes, we can still hear that loop that Trey set up at the start of the jam, pushing this thing onward. The jam has dissolved, but the basic beat is still right there. They’re on that edge again. Trey, probably unintentionally but still amazingly, brings back the 1-5-4 slide riff from the previous night’s “Tube” jam. And then Mike pushes everyone over the edge.

With the jam still hovering in a spacey A minor, Mike moves up the triad to C, and then plays a pulsating two-note E riff. This E is higher than the previous A, and so the entire jam has the feel of suddenly getting lifted upwards. Often when this occurs it’s from a minor key area into a major key area, and we hear that uplift as the aptly named “bliss jam.” But here, the band lifts up into another minor key (the same key as Carini, btw) and now it’s downright evil Phish (when they started this, I remember thinking how much it reminded me of the 12/30/12 Carini jam). Page somehow follows Mike instantly, matching his two-E pulse with quiet E minor chords on the piano, and they’re ready to build this jam section up.

It happens quickly and effortlessly, but it’s that’s spontaneous composing-on-the-spot style of improvisation that has set this year’s jamming apart. When Trey finally starts adding chords, the whole thing gets moving, and Trey adds in a menacing sounding slide from G to E, just to solidify the fact that we are definitely now in a nasty E minor jam.

This was one of those moments where Kuroda merely adds to the treacherousness of the whole thing – Trey finds this very dissonant chord that he plays on the upbeat to the measure, and Kuroda flooded the stage with menacing white strobes every time Trey nailed that chord (Mike Hamad calls these the “Screech chords,” which perfectly sums them up).

This jam starts off as just Mike/Page/Fish; Trey is just providing those screech chords, and then he leads into some tasteful whale jamming, something that he has mastered since he first introduced the technique in 2010.

When this jam hits the point where it seems it might peter out into the next tune, it turns into another opportunity to stretch things even further. Like the Tahoe Tweezer, at every possible moment of termination, the band just pushes the jam to the next segment. Trey starts some “Ghost” sirens, and we have a true section of space, before Page leads everything into a soft, blissful major key. There’s something wonderfully Pink Floyd-y about this section (think Meddle mellowness). Starting on the Fender Rhodes, Page sets the stage for the prettiest jam section of the night, and when Fishman picks up a gentle beat, it feels like we’re suddenly in the chillout room of a club somewhere. This is that moment, when you realize how completely lost in the music you’ve become.

Trey ventures into strong sustained notes that sound like he’s jamming on “What’s the Use?,” but he doesn’t actually play the melody or chord progression of that composition. Still, this whole section sounds like a Siket Disc outtake, with powerful soaring melody from Trey and psychedelic glissandos from Page. And then just as it begins to die down, Trey starts the “Golden Age” riff. It’s a true “>” moment in the setlist, as the riff emerges perfectly out of the fading psychedelia.

I’ve always liked “Golden Age,” but I think that this cover, like “Rock and Roll,” “Drowned,” “Ya Mar,” and “2001,” has attained ownership status. As in, this is Phish’s song now. At least that’s how they play it – they’ve found their voice on it. And their willingness to stretch it out just confirms this.

There have been some pretty special “Golden Age”s in the past few years, but this is one for the record books. Not only is this the longest version to date, but it’s certainly the most daring and dynamic jam.  There’s a nice jam on the sunny bridge chords, and then the improv turns back to the verse material, continuing the trend of most “Golden Age” jams. Usually this heads right for very pointed, tight funk jamming, but in Hampton there was a stronger rhythmic pull away from that funk towards darker territory. Fishman starts by finding a rhythmic pattern somewhere between “Golden Age” and “Manteca,” and Page joins him on piano. It’s clear from the start that this won’t be a typical funk jam.

This section leads to something even more redolent of “Manteca” rhythmic patterns, punctuating the last and first eighth note beats of every measure. The band is taking their time with this, showing incredible patience as Trey and Page both stick with more psychedelic timbres before Page breaks out with his clav-wah sound. Mike begins to rumble up from low on the bass, Page oscillates notes on his synths, and the entire sound starts seeming like it’s washing over the crowd with a ominous quality. As we emerge from the other side, it’s suddenly a different place, even though it’s so similar. The darkness is deeper here, and with Trey laying down some muted staccato patterns, Page gets even noisier and more cacophonous.

Then Fishman dissolves the rhythm, and we’re into deep dark space. Rather than just a quick fade, they linger in this darkness, sounding very much like the drum and noise sections of “Saucerful of Secrets” (more Floyd – a Halloween teaser?). Whereas the “Tweezer” jam went to a cathartic place, the “Golden Age” went to a soul-crushing hellscape. What better way to get out of that than “Piper?”

“Piper” quickly turns into an exercise in fast strumming, with an extremely tight rhythmic pocket, and Trey finds a sweet double plagal progression, sounding a little bit like “Rock and Roll.” Turns out Trey did have a specific progression in mind: Bachmann Turner Overdrive’s “Takin’ Care of Business.” This segue defines seamlessness.

In the context of the show this was the pure essence of Phish. After over 40 minutes of face-melting psychedelic improvisation, Phish segued into something so silly, so stupid, and so much fun – a classic rock pop song from their teenage years. It’s all about the beautiful absurdity of the juxtaposition — the serious improvisation and the dorm cover band — but also the totally non-ironic celebration of guilty pleasure music that we all love. We probably won’t ever know how Phish found their way into a BTO song. The fact that they segued out of “Piper” perfectly, the fact that Trey and Page were cracking up as they fumbled their way through the lyrics, and the fact that they didn’t nail the cover like they could’ve all suggest that this was impromptu. Maybe they heard the song on the radio that day, half-assedly learned it, and figured “let’s just play this at some point tonight if we’re in G major.” Maybe it was planned, maybe it was totally unplanned. Whatever it was, it was perfect. They genuinely took care of business during that Tweezer>Golden Age.

A “2001” that actually got jammed out a bit followed, as much an indication that Phish was in it this set as any. True, it’s still an 8 minute version, but those extra 3 minutes of jamming set this one off from many others of the 3.0 era. And again, the second jam sounded different, and was built up from the bottom, rather than just skimming along the usual surface. Trey and Page let everything fall away leaving Mike’s riff, which Trey then turns into the basis for the jam. They listen to what Mike is doing, and then build a unique jam around that riff.

“Sand” does it’s typically awesome 3.0 thing, and then “Slave” wraps everything up perfectly. Here again, Phish seemed to want to do things a little out of the ordinary. Trey starts strumming on the beat, very simply, almost right from the beginning of the jam. It’s a twangy guitar sound, and Fishman is following him. As they ebb and flow the dynamics, they maintain this on-the-beat pulse, creating waves of sound with a strong upward drive. “Slave” jams usually feature dreamy counterpoint at the start of a jam, but here Trey is barely playing any melody at all. He’s content to let Mike wander melodically. When finally Fishman switches to a more standard “Slave” beat, Trey breaks free, and begins his slow climb to the heavenly peak. On a night like last Sunday night, you get a “Slave” like this.

So what do we take away from this third Hampton show? For one thing, starting a tour in the band’s favorite indoor venue not named MSG is a very good thing. Fall tour is here, in all its dark intensity. But not only are we going to hear scorching 15+ minute jams a few times this tour (fingers crossed), but even songs that don’t see huge improvisational moments might get something a little different added. Whether it’s the last two minutes of “Roses” stretched out beyond the last cymbal crash, a bit of extra meat in the “2001” jams, a more calculated build in “Funky Bitch,” or a more idiosyncratic 5-minute “Tube,” things are different for the better in Fall 2013. 

Next up for me: Hartford. Never miss a Sunday show.

Land of the Brave and Free

I originally wrote the following article for the Summer 2010 issue of Surrender to the Flow, which as far as I know is still the only Phish lot fanzine out there (and still free on tour!). Many thanks to Christy, the editor at STTF, for giving me permission to reprint this here. The question she posed was simple: describe your favorite Phish jam. Yet as I made clear in the introduction, that’s not the easiest task in the world.

When prompted to give my favorite Phish song, I’ll tell you it’s “Tela” without hesitating. Ask me my favorite show and I’ll likely end up telling you 12/31/95. But my favorite single jam? That’s much harder to pinpoint.

Probably this is because Phish jams are so varied in their style, their mood, and of course their number. Generally speaking, my favorite jams come out of Bathtub Gins, Ghosts, and Bowies, yet I’d just start a laundry list of dates if you asked me to pick one. I almost picked the legendary “Halley’s”->”NICU”->”Slave” from 12/14/95. But ultimately, there’s one jam that I keep returning to, one that I used to permanently keep on my old, small 8GB iPod, one that I turn to when needing something to take me away: the 4/3/98 “Roses Are Free.” As good a contender for my favorite jam as any.

When I sat down to try to figure out exactly what makes it so spectacular, I was pleasantly surprised. Unlike so many of my most-beloved jams – the 12/29/94 “Bowie,” the Went “Gin,” the 7/13/03 “Seven Below” – the Island Tour “Roses” doesn’t travel all that far in harmony, rhythm, or melody from the basic chords of the song. The real beauty of this jam lies in how Phish listens to and communicates with each other, how they blend subtle elements of funk, blues, psychedelia, and rock to create something that is, without a doubt, one of the best examples of Phish succeeding as a whole rather than a set of parts.

“Roses” is in Bb major, and the jam begins innocently by vamping on that one chord (timings correspond to the LivePhish track “Nassau Jam”). Gradually, Trey starts adding little riffs featuring the note Db, a member of the Bb minor pentatonic, or “blues” scale. Around 2:00, Trey turns on the wah-wah, still in that Bb minor blues, a funky blues jam rather than the in-your-face porno funk of Fall ’97.

Gradually the texture thins out, Fishman tightens up the beat, Mike brings a more pointed sound to his bass, and Trey begins a muted, staccato riff. Mike’s bass is still blues but with a strong minor feel, he’s actually alternating between major chord arpeggios and minor chord ones. Page starts adding in some electronic, synthesizer noise, one of the hallmarks of the funky ’97 sound that most often reared its head during “Ghost”. At 8:30, it’s dark, minor, eerie quietness. But still bluesy. And still funky. This is what makes it so good – it’s dabbling in all these styles at once.

 

Page starts to add another harmonic key area, a bluesy F chord that will have important implications later, on top of the Bb minor soundworld. And with the start-stop jamming at 11:00, the fun aspect really comes out.

At 11:34, Trey slowly strums a Bb minor ninth chord, essentially adding Page’s earlier F minor chord on top of the already present Bb minor chord. Ninth chords have a jazzy sound to our ears, and with that gesture, Trey brings the jam out of the funk.

 

Yet the basic rhythm and Mike’s bass stay locked into the groove, and so the amalgamation continues: jazzy psychedelia, funk, blues, rock, all at once. Around 13:00 Trey begins soloing in F minor, which feels so natural coming out of the Bb minor harmony, and the melancholy sweeps over. The last minute or so of the following clip is probably my favorite section of this jam.

As this section builds and builds, the rest of the band’s rhythms begin getting more agitated, creating exciting polymeters. Mike oscillates between F and Ab, which are main elements of F minor but which also offer a way out of this darkness. And it’s at this point that Trey performs the jam’s ultimate coup-de-gras: he takes Mike and Page up on their offer and pivots into the blissful world of Ab mixolydian.

This mixolydian scale is like a major scale but with a flat seventh degree, which takes away the feeling of being forced to resolve, of being forced to teleologically complete itself. It just exists there, as if rotating on a pedestal for us to bask in the joyful sound of a major key without having to go anywhere. Not coincidentally, it is the scale Jerry Garcia uses most often to give us his most powerfully soaring jams. Trey’s slowly played descending mixolydian scales around 16:40, in his purest, most un-distorted tone, are the apotheosis of this jam, the god-like light that overloads our cerebral cortexes. For almost five minutes, they milk this for all its worth, before a little noisy space brings them out of this jam and into Piper.

Phish’s musical communication is brilliant in this improvisation, constantly taking cues from one another on stylistic changes, and subtle harmonic shifts. Even in the end, they end up not at all far from where they began a half hour before with the intro to “Roses Are Free,” merely moving a whole step down from the opening Bb major by way of Bb minor and F. There are other jams where Phish communicates well, and sometimes their cues to switch styles, chords, riffs, or rhythms are much more aggressive and intense, creating meaningful but abrupt juxtapositions. This jam is the opposite: its shifts are so fluid, its flow is so steady, and its styles are so linked to one another that you barely notice the changes – you just keep dancing, smiling, freak out a little, and then smile some more. That’s why it’s my favorite jam.

I know I’m not alone in my love for this jam. It’s perennially cited as an all-time favorite amongst those who love the ’97-’98 sound. What especially makes it so wonderful is that it’s the second set opener in what is one of my favorite single sets of Phish. This is one of those classic 4-song behemoths that showed up frequently from ’97-’99, when the band was so locked in and interested in creative improvisation that they largely eschewed song structures in favor of wild experimentation. The “Piper” that follows leads into one of the darkest and most evil-sounding jams I’ve ever heard Phish play, while the ensuing “Loving Cup” rescues the set from the depths and adds shimmering, joyous brightness to it all. After almost 45 minutes of cerebral cortex-searing psychedelia, the familiar blues rock comes right at the moment you need it to, just on the cusp of total freakout.

And then the “Antelope” that closes this set. My oh my, that “Antelope.” It has the now-infamous “Carini’s gonna get ya” opening, inserted because Pete Carini had recently chased down a fan who ran up onto the stage during the “Loving Cup” peak. Then Trey asks Kuroda to kill the lights for the jam. Then the jam is one of the most ferocious “Antelopes” out there. And then they go for a super-slow reggae section, followed by one of my favorite tricks – the silent jam during the ending where they only play the punctuating last chords of the 4-bar phrase.

I love the arc of this set, encoring with “Carini” after all the Carini-related nonsense during the “Antelope,” and then closing the encore with, of all things, “Tweezer Reprise” despite not having played “Tweezer” at this show! The energy was just too heavy for them to play anything else. But it all starts with the delicate interplay and seamless blend of funk, blues, rock and psychedelia in this monumental “Roses” jam. Push it into third if you know you’re gonna climb that hill.

Breaking the Silence

And a Happy New Year to you too!

Mostly, I didn’t want to go a full year without posting anything on here. But I’ve been inspired by a recent rush of new Twitter followers (thanks @TheBabysMouth!) to get my blogging act together. Coming up soon – a few new posts on what constitutes a “song” in the live Phish experience, some retrospective reviews of my favorite Phish 2012 jams (since the last time I posted, there hadn’t yet BEEN any 2012 shows!), reviews of some classical music concerts, and the long (really long)-awaited sequel(s) to my article on the evolution of the cow funk.

Part of the reason for my extensive  blog silence over the past year (other than that whole dissertation thing, y’know…) is that up until October 2012, I was writing at least once a week for the excellent music website, Consequence of Sound. I’ve included a new link in the menu along the top of the page to all the content I wrote for them – lots of album reviews, a few live reviews, and one really long, pretty awesome summary of Pink Floyd’s albums. The live reviews are classical and rock, the album reviews mostly indie rock stuff, but I’m proud of all of it. I’d still be writing for them if it weren’t for that looming dissertation thing…

Finally, check out this great new site of Phish essays: Please Me Have No Regrets. The dudes over there are doing some cool stuff, it’s now on my blogroll. I’ll be writing some thoughts on their latest essay, about what they call Phish’s “Cubist” era, shortly.

Here’s to a more active Smooth Atonal Sound in 2013! I shouldn’t have took more than I gave. And for a little music, here’s my blog’s namesake tune from 12/28/12, closing the first set in the holiday spirit with a HUGE version including Little Drummer Boy interpolated within:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVz8gP4q5ow]

Memories of Being Free

I wanted to share some thoughts about one of the coolest things on Twitter (if you’re a Phishhead, that is). Tom Marshall, our lovable giant lyricist/singer/Springsteen impersonator, has been releasing demo versions of Phish songs that he wrote with Trey, mostly from the late 90s and 2000s, but a few legitimate oldies in there too, like the original “Silent in the Morning,” and from the way-wayback machine, “I Am Hydrogen.” Browsing through these, I came across this one from December 3, 2011 (yeah, I know, I’m super late on this):

And so here you go, the original “Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan,” written in October 2003.

I absolutely love this version, and would kill to hear it live in the middle of a meaty second set jam sequence. The tempo is obviously the biggest difference from the finished, 2009 Joy version, which transforms the laid back groove into a badass rock song with a killer riff:

Like many Phish songs, this earlier version is basically a three-chord vamp, but what’s especially interesting is that this skeletal version lacks the long dominant pedal during the “gonna dream” lyric before leading back into the song’s signature rock riff. Trey often reserves the two- or three-chord vamp for the jam section of a song (Hood, YEM, Slave, Mike’s, Reba, etc.), but here it’s basically all there is. You can hear him play a quick dominant chord just before “of being free,” but it’s barely audible, nothing like the big build on the finished version.

In this sense, this song becomes more like a jam structure on top of which lyrics and melody have been added, much like the groove-based songs of the late 90s like “Sand” or “Jibboo” and more recently, “Waves,” “A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing,” or “Steam.”

The chord progression is i-bVII-i-IV, similar to what theorist Walter Everett calls the “double plagal cadence,” which is I-bVII-IV-I (e.g. the outro to “Hey Jude,” or the verse of “St. Stephen”). As a cascading descent of subdominants, the dominant chord is avoided, creating a very different feel than the big E major chord in the 2009 version of “Stealing Time.” As Nicole Biamonte has pointed out, this type of chord progression, a i-IV or i-bVII-i, lends itself to modal melodies and jamming. In A minor, i-IV is Am-D, and the mode mapped onto that progression would be A-B-C(#)-D-E-F#-G-A, or A dorian (which also accommodates bVII or G). Dorian is basically an older version of the minor scale, and there is definitely a “minor feel” to the soloing the Trey is lightly layering above this progression. But the lowered seventh degree also suggests the mixolydian for jambands (which would activate the parenthetical C# above), because this is mode of choice for Grateful Dead jamming (the “Playing in the Band” jam is basically the same, a D dorian jam with a mixolydian flavor).

At this tempo, with the modal soloing, the song feels more like a jam song, rather than a rock anthem. Much like the nearly contemporaneous “Scents and Subtle Sounds” jam, it’s a gentle rocking back and forth between tonic (but in this case, a minor tonic) and subdominant areas (IV/IV, or bVII, and IV). Yet it’s also a very mellow jam, and sounds much like other songs written in late 2003/early 2004. The watery, phasing guitar timbre is the sound used on “A Song I Heard The Ocean Sing,” which, as Tom reveals, comes from the same session as this “Stealing Time.” It seems Trey was playing around with that sound and wrote these two songs. These two songs share other attributes: they’re both a bit serious and heavy, they both deal with intense feelings of expectation, inevitablity, mortality, and both share a slight desperation.

And this is what makes the original “Stealing Time” so interesting: it was written in October of 2003. Fresh off Phish’s underrated and outstanding summer tour, in which Trey was reportedly NOT partying after the shows (he was quoted as saying that he went directly back to his hotel room every night, did yoga, and avoided “the scene”). Of course, some time between then and the next year, Trey got pretty hard back into drugs, resulting in the calamitous Vegas shows in April 2004 and the Coventry meltdown. “Stealing Time,” it seems, was written during a tumultuous period in Trey’s life, when he was trying to reconcile his own addiction with the knowledge that it was not sustainable for his band.

Of course, I, like many other Phish Heads, have always assumed that “Stealing Time” was another one of Trey’s “recovery songs,” a song composed during his early years of sobriety (2007-2009) when he was using music as a therapeutic tool in dealing with sobriety, recovery, and his demons. This would put “Stealing Time” in the same department as “Let Me Lie,” “Backwards Down the Number Line,” “Twenty Years Later,” and others. It makes sense to think of it in this way: the “faulty plan” is, of course, drug usage, “act as though I’m still a man” might refer to Trey’s responsibilities as father, husband, and primary earner that he jeopardized with his addiction, “shrug demands off of me” might be him leaving those addictive “demands” behind, and “dream of being free” is being free of the guilt, the shame, and the addiction itself. We all know why he’s “got a blank space where my mind should be.” And is there any image more pathetic than the former partier, surrounded by high-end booze and drugs, forced to consume nothing but “a Clif bar, and some cold green tea”?

For me, the song changes a little knowing its lyrics aren’t about Trey being stuck in sobriety, but rather Tom Marshall being stuck in a desk job he hated (the one he worked when he wrote “Walls of the Cave”). Should it matter that the subject matter isn’t Trey’s sobriety, but rather Tom’s unhappiness? Maybe not, but I’m a firm believer in the idea that social and personal context makes a big difference in how we understand a work of art. Why didn’t “Stealing Time” see the light of day until 2009? Why wasn’t it included with the other Undermind songs? I think it’s because Trey perhaps couldn’t relate as fully to the song, being in a different stage of his life.

This might also explain the arrangement, and later re-arrangement. Trey wrote a fairly typical Phish jam under the lyrics. It was, like his addiction, comfortable, safe, and hermetically sealed from the outside world (of typical rock song forms). His vocals were subdued, quiet, and lower in pitch – as we all remember, Trey’s voice took quite a beating during his years of abuse. In the new version, the song gains strength from its powerful rock riff – it’s probably the strongest pure rock song Trey’s written since the comeback, this era’s “Chalkdust” or “Character Zero.” His voice, slightly higher in pitch, is clear and lucidly tells a re-appropriated story. Trey finally gets it – he can relate to the words his friend wrote eight years ago. He understands the same feelings of being terminally stuck, unable to affect your own life, because he was there with addiction.

And the song form itself has a long dominant leading back into the ritornello-like riff on the “memories of being free” lyric. By inserting the most classic pop/rock and Western classical gesture back into the song, a big V-i perfect authentic cadence, Trey is showing that he’s unafraid to write what amounts to a typical (albeit very good) rock song. His memories of being free include writing songs that take chances, that aren’t safe. For Phish, a band whose early catalog is anything but typical when it comes to harmony and form, writing something so common might just be the biggest risk Trey could take. He’s “giving us one more chance to see” that he can be the rock star guitar god we want and need him to be, fueled not by substances, but by his own adrenaline, renewed sense of purpose, and some cold green tea.

moe. or less

moe.
1/23/12
Hiro Ballroom, NYC

1 set: Downward Facing Dog->St. Augustine, Haze, Rainshine*, Paper Dragon*, Puebla->Moth
Encore: Chromatic Nightmare, Rebubula*

*with acrobatic dancers in giant fabric swings

Live Review: moe. at New York City’s Hiro Ballroom (1/23).

Come on, moe., you can do better than that. Although they didn’t really have much to prove to anyone. This was basically a feel good, low key event to celebrate all that is moe. before the real work begins on tour this Friday in my former city, Seattle. But it didn’t have to be so vanilla. It was my first time hearing any of the new album’s songs live, but I’ve heard “Puebla” on recordings a bunch, and that song is the real deal. It’s almost always a springboard to bigger and better things. But it just didn’t get there last night. Chuck spent most of his solo exploring the minor blues pentatonic scale. Sure, he’s got killer chops, but it just wasn’t harmonically or melodically exciting. moe. has the ability to do what my favorite jam bands do: to leave song structures and expected harmonic progressions behind and to carve out new territory. Maybe they’re just saving their energy for tour. That’s my hope, at least.

“Rebubula” killed. If they had opened with that song, it might have changed the course of the night…

But enough. Any band, even my favorite ones, are allowed an off night every now and then (I’m looking at you, Phish 6/1/11 and 12/31/11). Just don’t make it a habit.

More importantly: PICTURES! I took a ton of pictures at the show, and only three of them ran with the article on Consequence of Sound (and they didn’t include a gallery). So here are the rest of the pictures that I wanted to include. These are the best from what I got, click on any to view bigger as a slide show. Enjoy!!

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Consequence of Sound is a New York- and Chicago-based, worldly influenced music blog that seeks to cover the music world as it has never has been covered before. Features news, reviews, mp3, and festival outlook.

I Think That This Exact Thing Happened To Me Just Last Year

Happy New Year!!!! 2012 – the first year I’ve decided to pronounce “twenty” rather than “two thousand.” I hope that this year brings about all kinds of good things for all my family, friends, colleagues, and blog readers who don’t already fall into one of those three categories :).

Saturday night was fun. Phish New Year’s Eve always is – there’s no such thing as a bad show on December 31. Of course, there are some 12/31s that stand far above others: 1995, 1993, 1999 (even though most of the midnight-to-sunrise set was 1/1/2000). In other years, 12/31 takes a back seat to a blow out one of the other nights of the run: 2003 (when 12/29 was probably the winner), 1997 (12/30), 1998 (12/29, I think, although 12/31 did have that great Mike’s Groove>Ghost 1st set), or 1996 (12/29).

Looking back today, it’s tough to tell what the highlight of this run was. For pure fun, obviously it’s gonna go to 12/31, although much of that had to do with the close friends I had with me and the amazing time we had enjoying Phish, regardless of the actual playing (which was quite good). For jamming, it’s tough because there was no single show that stood out above the rest; rather, there were individual jams that were crowning achievements. Wednesday’s “Rock and Roll,” Thursday’s “Crosseyed” and the entire Mike’s Groove but especially the “Chalkdust”->”Hydrogen,” Friday’s “Piper,” and the NYE “Light”->”Golden Age” are all contenders for jams of the week. If I had to pick one, I’d go with the “Piper,” but the “Light”->”Golden Age” was pretty ridiculous. More on that later. For funk and for energy, it would probably be 12/29. And for song selection, it’s tough to beat 12/28.

That’s all the better, spreading the love across all four nights. However, you do expect a bit more from 12/31, simply because it is New Year’s Eve. With three sets, it’s a chance for Phish to go even further on their quest to blow minds on any given night. Did they accomplish that in 2011? Not exactly. Everything from the 1st set ending “Fluffhead” through the entire New Year’s stunt ending with “Down With Disease” was pure gold, every single note was exactly what was needed, the jams were all somewhere between “great” and “fucking outstanding,” and the song selection was choice, a nice mix of classic Phishiness, new tunes, “big” tunes, fast, slow, funk, rock, etc. Most of the first set, and the second half of the third set, left something to be desired, but to say that they were bad would be absurd. They were perfectly normal Phish performances, which is to say, they were amazing and high energy and good songs, but nothing beyond that.

Ask me what I thought of the show, though, and I wouldn’t say anything other than “absolutely awesome, man,” and mean it completely. And now it’s time for a breakdown.

There were two “safe” opener calls this week: “PYITE” and “AC/DC Bag.” 12/30 saw the former, 12/31 the latter. Still, “AC/DC Bag” is a very fun start to a show, and everyone was pumped to sing along with “Let’s get this show on the road!” One of the reasons I love MSG is that the energy is just through the roof, quite literally – you can feel it in the actual structure of the building. There are spontaneous moments of energy surges that anyone who’s been to MSG knows well – it’s what happened during the 12/4/09 “First Tube,” and on Friday night this year when Mike dropped the bass bomb midway through the “Piper” jam.

“Wolfman’s Brother” was next, but being this early in the set, we were deprived of a lengthy jam, and instead got a concise jam that peaked nicely. “Scent of a Mule” was a fun time, as always, but I was beginning to get the feeling that, consciously or no, Phish was repeating a lot of the tunes they played last New Year’s Eve. Not that it’s a huge deal, but you’d think they would like to vary up the selection from year to year. “Stealing Time” came next, followed by the Page love of “Lawn Boy.”

The only real jam in the first set came in the form of a slowly building “Jibboo.” This wasn’t a jam that really pushed any boundaries, but it was a nice bit of first set improv. It seemed to start much quieter and more chilled out than you’d expect on 12/31, with Ghost sirens from Trey at the beginning of the jam. Following a very patient trajectory, the “Jibboo” jam found its way to a climactic peak, something that the band was able to do over and over again throughout the night even when far-out exploration was absent from a jam.

Next came a trio of newer songs, which, to be honest, didn’t feel all that New Year’s Eve-y. “Farmhouse” was a slow down song in a set that didn’t really need more slow tunes, followed by another slower tune in “Pebbles and Marbles,” which of course blew up at the end. Any jam on this was elusive, though. A late set “Ocelot” again had me thinking back to 12/31/10, and again featured a great peaking jam. But then the set really woke up with a closing “Fluffhead” – a perfect choice given the nearly constant stream of “recent” songs (yeah, “Jibboo” still feels a little “new”) that started with “Stealing Time” (except for “Lawn Boy”). An infusion of old school Phishy compositional complexity was exactly what this set needed, even though I was hoping for a “Melt” to follow and close out the set. “Fluffhead” was mostly flub-free, although there were a couple hazy notes here and there, but the energy was through the roof, and Trey’s playing and tone were quite strong and aggressive especially in the “Clod” section following those lyrics. A little “Auld Lang Syne” tease during the closing jam got everyone back into the holiday spirit.

Set I largely felt like a warmup. Other than the “Jibboo,” which was a good version but by no means an improvisational powerhouse, the set was mostly jamless, and probably could have tended more towards rare or older songs that would’ve really gotten people psyched up (no “Lizards,” “Gumbo,” “Mound,” “Curtain,” etc.). Luckily, the “Fluffhead” left everyone feeling pretty jazzed up for set II, and, just as it was with 12/31/10, the second set would be the overwhelming MVP of the night.

The “Party Time” that I thought would be part of the NYE stunt instead initiated a second set that was exactly that: a big ol’ Phishy party. A fun jam gave way to “Light” – one of the few big jam songs left on the roster for the night. As expected, this “Light” would be the improvisational highlight of the show, but in a way that completely blew me away. Once the jam got underway, it seemed to be heading in the typical harmonic direction for 2011 “Light”s, turning to the flat side and going into darker, minor territory. About six minutes in, the song’s structure started to fall apart, as various rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and timbral aspects disintegrated away.

Page remained playing some “Light”-esque material, but Fishman broke the beat down to its barest essentials, Mike adopted more of a drone, and Trey went with his octave pedal for some psychedelic sounding effects. As Trey gave way to pulsating chords (same effect as in the previous night’s “Piper”), Mike took on the lead role, dancing his notes around the bottom part of the texture. And that’s when the jam turned to noise.

Noise rock and its cousin industrial rock are some of the last frontiers that Phish has yet to explore in their improvisational journeys through the years. Phish Heads like it when things turn weird, but we like our weirdness to still have a strong melodic component. Thinking back to the craziest 1994 and 1995 jams – they usually still had bits of melodic jamming and thematic snippets. Plus, noise is noisy, it’s loud, and it can be violent, not exactly the aesthetic most Phish Heads go for, although that’s probably changing as our other pop music tastes change, too. With more and more modern/indie rock these days heading for noise, ambient, and droning styles, it’s no wonder we’re seeing some of it creep into Phish’s music (since we know that Trey listens to plenty of modern rock, and I assume that Mike’s musical tastes match his new fashion sense).

Trey set up a few repeating loops of sound, some in the lower range of his guitar, others in the stratosphere, while Mike seemed to be emitting a constant low drone of warbling sound, eventually turning to little melodic circles and patterns. Trey, too, got involved in a few ostinato patterns of repeating notes, while Fishman went down to practically nothing. And Page brought out the theremin. That was the kicker – it seemed to inspire the rest of the band to go for the most abstract thing they could. Fishman got a beat back but it was all fills and toms, just a hint of hi-hat holding it all together. In addition to the various loops, Trey was doing his own whale-call imitations of the theremin. Most importantly, it was all LOUD, very loud in fact, so that the dissonances and waves of otherworldly sound were that much more pronounced.

Finally, Trey began playing the riff from “Golden Age” while Fishman starting trying to pull the band up out of the noisy mire and back to a fast jam. It seemed as though Fish didn’t hear Trey, or was trying to move the band in another direction. Trey wanted to start a new song, Fish wanted to resurrect the jam they were already in. Unfortunately, Fish was playing too fast to really incorporate the “Golden Age” riff, and so when Page began joining in on the riff, Fish gave in and stopped playing, waited a few seconds, and then joined in on “Golden Age.” I would’ve liked to have heard what Fish had in mind for the next level of the “Light” jam, but I was just as happy to hear the TV on the Radio cover that has really grown into its own in Phish’s repertoire in 2011.

“Golden Age” was perfect, as it has a truly celebratory feel in its bridge section, which jammed briefly before turning back to the verse riff for a funky outro jam. With Page slaying the clav and Mike getting really creative, Trey merely sat back on his wah-wah strumming, letting the jam coalesce, led by Mike. Just as the jam was getting on the verge of venturing out into the unknown, the band wore it down, and entered into the cool down of “Theme From the Bottom.” I love this song, so I was happy to hear it, although I really wanted five more minutes of “Golden Age” jamming.

I went to get a beer during “Heavy Things,” because after that craziness and given the craziness that would follow, I certainly could afford to miss “Heavy Things.” I kept saying out loud in the beer line “let’s go before they start playing ‘Ghost‘”! Luckily I made it back to my seat just as the “Ghost” jam was starting. Again, an odd choice to repeat a song from 12/31/10 in almost exactly the same spot. While I wasn’t expecting this version to reach the levels of that magical version from exactly one year earlier (and it didn’t), I was hoping that it would provide one of the highlights of the night (it did). The jam quickly started with contrapuntal interplay between Mike and Trey. There would be no quiet funk jam tonight (just like the previous night’s “Sand”), but instead, Trey lept right into passionate rock leads, with Mike surrounding him and Page skipping his electric keyboards entirely, going straight for the baby grand.

Trey started going for louder strummed chords, and eventually began a slow trill which formed the thematic basis for the end of the jam. He kept returning to that slow trill idea, sometimes soloing around it, but also allowing the rest of the band to use it as a jumping off point. The band brought things up to a big peak, with Page finally hitting the Hammond organ for the climax, before bringing it all back down to the main “Ghost” riff. The jam itself was great, although the “Ghost” felt a little truncated because it didn’t have a quiet funk jam immediately following the lyrics. Going with the theme of this run, though, it was all energy, and fantastic type I jamming.

Phish kept the groove going with “Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley,” which provided another great funky dance opportunity. A fun vocal jam, as has become de rigueur for this song, began with the band singing the parts they were playing, and eventually turned completely a cappella, before returning to a fun but short final jam. Trey took the closing sounds of Page’s organ and turned it into the opening riff of “46 Days,” a perfect “>” segue. While it was another repeat from 12/31/10, this version provided another one of those MSG moments, when the energy in the room comes to a fever pitch and the band feels it and plays out to it. The excitement and intensity were palpable during this jam, with machine gun Trey licks and wild Fishman playing. The jam peaked early, and then kept going and going and going. I couldn’t help but think of Trey saying how it’s like “all day long I’m cumming!”:

A fun, quick “Suzy Greenberg” closed things out. This was definitely the set, one in which Phish showed that, should they choose to do so, they can take it out as far as they, and we, want them to go. Absent in the first set, and appearing sporadically throughout the first three nights of the run, this second set saw a bunch of great jamming in the “Light->Golden Age” and the “Ghost,” plus that transcendent moment during “46 Days.” A great vibe to carry into set III.

Set III began with “Cavern,” a nice energy-pumper and a quick entrance into the third set. After this, the antics began. The sound of a tea kettle going off came over the P.A., and a tea kettle next to Trey started to smoke and steam. Trey mimicked trying to diffuse the steam with a towel, and then grabbed the kettle and moved it over to his signature amp. Then he started to play “Steam.” I was hoping to hear this song, as I think it’s one of the best new tunes the band has written, and I hadn’t heard it live yet. But I wasn’t expecting it would be the NYE stunt. Not only will the song forever be associated with Saturday’s gag, but it was also by far the best version of the song to date, caused in part by the necessity of using it for the NYE stunt, and because it fed off the energy and excitement of the theatrics.

As the signature steam sound and clouds of steam filled the stage, Trey’s amp, the one with the tea kettle on it, starting to float up off the stage! Then I noticed the wires hanging down from the ceiling all around the arena, and a series of red lights were all over the floor, looking similar to the landing guide lights used at airports (and last year when the hot dog landed on stage). So I figured we’d be getting some sort of aerial show for midnight, although I didn’t know exactly what kind. Soon, Mike’s backup bass starting floating up behind him, and then Page’s keytar. All three band member’s components were just floating up and down above them. On the final steam sound, Fishman’s vacuum went up too. The jam began, and I spotted a couple people with STEAM signs in the front row. “Wow, they were lucky,” I thought. But then one of them jumped the rail and started dancing around. From my angle, it looked like she was dancing on the rail, until I realized that she was on a separate platform with its own rail replica. A “security guard” mock wrangled her, but alas, she got up on the rail, which was now raised directly in front of the band, and before long, she too was floating dead-center stage above the band, dancing wildly in mid-air! Everyone was going nuts, it was a lot of fun, and people seemed to be responding well to her energy.

All the while, Trey was crafting a beautiful solo on this “Steam,” gradually building the jam but really taking on the lead role here, as Mike was mostly laying down the groove. Soon, other aerial dancers dressed as fans, many of them with “hippie” attire, hats, etc., started floating all above the various floor sections. They also seemed to be blissed out from their dance moves, and the effect was really cool. The dancers did a great job mimicking the excitement and fervor of a real phan, responding well to the music, which just made all the rest of the phans that much more excited. But really, it was Trey’s playing on this “Steam” that was pushing everyone, the dancers and the audience, to such heights (no pun intended).

“Steam” peaked in a frenzy of notes with a great bit of tension/release jamming, as all dozen or so dancers were now airborne and going apeshit along with the music. Since they had to keep jamming until midnight, they brought it back to several more peaks, each one texturally different from the last, and Fishman pushing the jam faster and harder. When Trey hit the big chord to take them out of the climactic end section, they moved to a more hard rock sound, with wild strumming and just a touch of dissonance, Fishman going even more off, with punctuating chords. Trey soon found his way to a very “Llama”-esque style of strumming, and that’s when the extremely loud countdown began, seemingly from the main aerial dancer girl in front.

“Auld Lang Syne.” Balloons. Champagne, kisses, hugs, general mayhem and love and happiness. Phish New Year’s. There’s absolutely nothing like it. Phish went through “ALS” a few times, actually jamming a little on it at the end. The dancers seemed to disappear, but it was tough to tell from all the balloons.

At this point, it seemed nearly a guarantee that we’d be getting “Down With Disease” after midnight, and Mike’s bass intro shortly followed “Auld Lang Syne.” The song was a bit messy, no doubt because of all the balloons onstage, but the aerial dancers returned, now each of them holding a pair of searchlights, and doing choreographed moves to go along with Kuroda’s lights for “Disease.” They were also being lifted up and dropped much faster than during “Steam,” more of a flying and falling motion than floating. Disease was a lot of high energy fun, especially with the dancers, but one of the best parts was when Trey and Mike were raised about 20 feet off the stage on tiny hydraulic platforms, all while still raging out the “Disease” jam. When they were finally lowered back down, they took advantage of their wireless instruments to run around the stage, a la Fishman during “HYHU,” while still jamming. You can get a better view of the hand-held lights from this video’s angle (“Disease” starts around 14:00):

After all the excitement and silliness had calmed down, the jam headed for a funky denouement, or, as I hoped, the beginning of a big third set jam. It wasn’t exactly to be, though. This spacey, minor blues/funk jam got going pretty well, with Fishman actually getting a little faster and more intense. But then they decided to just abort the thing, winding it down with a big cadence. On the soundboard recording, you can hear someone yell “cheesecake” after the “Disease.” Nice.

This was the moment, the point at which a truly legendary third set could have been made. I was hoping it would be “Reba,” a tune that would have gotten everyone so psyched, and would have jammed really hard, and would have generally defined the feel of the set. Instead, Phish went with three shorter songs that didn’t recapture any of the fantastic energy of the NYE stunt. I love “The Wedge,” it was the first Phish song I heard live. But it meant less time for a big jam. And then we got Alaska’d. I think “Alaska” has it’s place in a Phish show, and that place is mid first set. When a song consistently substitutes for a big jam moment in a show, you begin to stigmatize the song. I think that’s what’s happened to “Alaska.” It’s actually a good song, and it has a fun jam, but it has come in so many late second (and now, third) set moments when all you wanted was a big improv vehicle. We didn’t really need a slow song, but we got “Velvet Sea” anyway, another song that I love but that I didn’t want to hear at that point in the set.

A rocking “First Tube” got the energy going again, but it wasn’t enough to salvage the second part of the set, and no version will ever come close to the feel of the 12/4/09 version, which had some kind of extra-musical power. Swapping last year’s set III closer and encore, the band came back out and played “Slave to the Traffic Light,” a great final tune, but I couldn’t help but wonder why “Melt” and “Reba” were left on the shelf during this run. It was a mostly standard “Slave,” the jam starting with nothing and gradually but methodically working its way to a peak. No big deviations from the norm.

No matter, it was still a fabulous New Year’s Eve. Everything from “Fluffhead” through “Disease” gets an A, and the rest of the show gets a B (which is still above average, as I’m constantly reminding my students!). “AC/DC Bag,” “Mule,” “Ocelot,” “Ghost,” “46 Days,” “Disease,” “First Tube,” and “Slave” were all repeats from last New Year’s Eve, which is mildly curious. With only four shows, you would think they’d want to vary things a bit. As there are nothing but rumors out there for 2012, who knows when the next Phish show will be. Thankfully, we know there will be a next Phish show, and it’s just now becoming clear that, with Trey sober and the band in a very good balance of work/family/side projects, we have many more Phish NYE celebrations ahead of us. As long as the Mayans are wrong…