Phish – my 20-year love affair with four guys from Vermont

May 30, 2009 by Dan Taylor    4 Comments    Posted under: Music

It recently occurred to me that 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of my love affair with four guys from Vermont otherwise known as Phish.  I’d like to cover two topics in one piece here: how I was introduced to the band, and my experiences with them, and a primer on what to listen for when listening to Phish.

The Introduction:

I can remember it almost like it was yesterday, my next-door neighbor, Bob talking my mother into letting me head up to Burlington with him and his friend Casey to go to a concert.  Needless to say, Bob failed to mention that this concert was going to take place in a tiny little bar that went (and still goes by to this day) by the name of Nectar’s.  Now I’m not entirely certain if Bob didn’t know someone at the door, bribed someone to get me in, or if things were just a bit looser in Burlington in those days, but I do remember being the youngest person there.  The way Phish had been explained to me was as a Grateful Dead cover band.  I’d started toying with the dead at around age 12, with Bob giving me a couple of great tapes (back in the days of tapers trading tapes by mail), one from Buffalo, the other from the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.  I guess Bob and Casey thought it was time for their young protégé to experience something close to the Dead live and in person, specifically by these up and comers hailing from Vermont.  I can’t even tell you what originals they played that night, but that was the first time I’d heard “Fire on the Mountain” performed live, as well as Jimi Hendrix’s seminal classic “Fire”.  I can remember that these four guys didn’t look particularly ‘star-like’, nor could they really sing all that well, but man o’ man, when it came time for the solos or pure instrumentals, these guys were truly dialed in.

The Past:

Some 20 years later I still listen to Cactus (Gordon – Bass), Leo (McConnell – Keyboards), Henrietta (Fishman – Percussion) and Wilson (Anastasio – Guitar) on a regular basis.  I normally set iTunes to shuffle while I’m working, and given my massive collection of their live works, it’s guaranteed that I’ll hear at least a song or four of theirs per day.  These guys have been with me through some of the most major parts of my life, Chalk Dust Torture highlighting my high school graduation day, Down With Disease summing up most of my college experience, and so on.  Halloween 1994 will always be remembered as one of the greatest nights of my life, when Phish played their annual Halloween show in my home town, and my friend Carl and I managed to get a giant spider that we’d brought with us up on stage after the first set, with Jon Fishman placing it on top of his bass drum for the rest of the entire show, and yes…that was the classic White Album show.

The Experience:

So when I was recently asked to pick two phish songs to demonstrate the band as a whole, you can imagine what a challenge this was.  I’ll fully admit, I cannot do it.  To me, Phish is not just about the music, but it was/is the entire experience.  The packing it up in the car on Friday afternoon after class, and truckin’ all night to make it to the next gig, the meeting up with other road mates in the ‘lot and catching up, meeting new friends, making new experiences, etc.  If you weren’t lucky enough to have a ticket – sometimes that didn’t really matter, as the parking lot experience could be an entire experience unto itself.  And then there was that amazing individual that had your ‘miracle’.  Stemming from the Grateful Dead song “I need a miracle”, a miracle came from that person that had purchased an extra ticket to give to someone who didn’t have one at the show.  I’ve been miracled about 12-15 times, and when I had some extra cash, or had pre-ordered tickets, I’d do my best to miracle a brother or sister in need of a good show.  Inside the venue, once the lights went down, for the next 2+ hours, you can be sure of only one thing: anything goes.  I’ve been witness to watching the band arrive onstage via a giant hotdog that flew over the crowd.  I’ve watched Jon Fishman dressed as baby new year, about 30 feet off the stage on a fly in, tossing glitter and confetti on the crowd.  And let me just say, in my humble opinion, Phish has some of the best sound and lighting setups of any live touring band I’ve ever seen.

The Music:

So if I choose to solely look at this challenge from just an aural point of view, 2 songs still remains an impossible feat.  Instead, I’ve decided to break it down into 5 parts: Fast, Medium, and Slow and Live and Studio.  The choices in tempos should be self evident, but the decision to give live and studio examples is something that’s very near and dear to me.  I really feel like there are two very distinct ways of listening to Phish: what the record company wants the band to record in order to sell albums, and what the band wants to play in order to bring the audience along for the ride.

Fast – Chalk Dust Torture

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As mentioned above, this song has a particularly strong place in my heart, simply for the lyric, “Can’t I live while I’m young?”  Chalk Dust is a prime example of what Phish does like no other band: take a relatively simple chord progression and twist it into something truly remarkable.  The studio version, featured on 1992’s “A Picture of Nectar” (and yes, the Nectar does refer to Nectar’s bar) clocks in a 4:32, and features a relatively slow ‘fast’ tempo, with only a minor guitar solo.  To me, it also sounds like the Elektra records producers put some type of effect, or even slowed the tape down on Trey’s vocals, making him sound like he’s singing in slow motion.  Again, remember, this was my first introduction to this song and I really dug it.

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Now let’s fast forward a few years to 1994’s live (and summer tour ending) version played on July 16th, at the Sugarbush Summerstage, in the band’s home state of Vermont.  The tempo differences between the studio version and live version are instantly apparent, and to me, this one just ‘drives’ a whole lot better.  It doesn’t sound as though the increased tempo is giving the band any problems at all, and as a matter of fact, both Trey’s solo, and mike funky bass line sound even better at this more appropriate tempo.  You’ll also note that this version now clocks in at 9:28, a marked difference from the studio version.  While 1994 is 10 full years into Phish’ career together, Trey’s guitar solo, particularly around the 4:24 mark indicate a technique that he’ll be developing over the next few years, using a boomerang unit to set up loops and accompany himself.  But again, that’s still a few years down the road.  This version also features something about the band that I’ve always liked, they don’t try to hide or mask their involvement with each other.  If you listen closely here, you can hear Trey giving direction to the band, and calling out changes; “Hup…yeah” and “one more round” are often things he’d say very close to the microphones, almost letting us the listeners in on what’s going on between the players on stage.

Medium – You Enjoy Myself

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You Enjoy Myself, or YEM as it’s sometimes known, is one of Phish’s most musically intricate pieces.  Starting off in Bb major, this piece weaves it’s way through various both key and metric changes.  Coming from their first professional studio recording, and third official album, You Enjoy Myself features just 4 comprehensible words, “Boy”, “Man”, “God”, and “Shit”.  The ‘other’ lyrics in the song were a subject of debate for many years, until it was finally revealed in a Guitar World issue that the actual lyrics were “Wash Uffizi, drive me to Firenze.”  YEM currently holds the record of the most frequently played song by the band, being performed at 39% of their 1,183 shows (not including the most recent Hampton Shows, and this evenings Spring Tour opener in Boston, MA).  Keyboardist Page McConnell admitted to Ted Koppel on an installment of Nightline that You Enjoy Myself is his favorite Phish song.  As with Chalk Dust Torture, the studio version is markedly slower that most, if not all live versions.  Note that even in the studio recording, Trey misses a few notes here and there, but in true Phish style, no apologies are made, as if these missed notes are actually meant to be part of the style.

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Given the vast amounts of versions of this song I have, it truly was a challenge to nail down a live example.  I chose the Madison Square Garden New Years Eve 1995 show (yes, I was there), as it’s a prime example of how the band is able to expand a 9:50 album version into a massive 25:37 live version.  YEM also features a staple of Phish’s performances, employing both guitarist and lead singer Trey Anastasio and Bassist Mike Gordon jumping on trampolines in sync together.  While this was not the first version of YEM that I’d ever heard live, at around the 2-minute mark, you can only imagine what the lighting director Chris Kuroda was doing with this spacey, nirvana-esque sequence.  Now try to picture that in Madison Square Garden on New Years Eve.  Right.  Truly mind-boggling.  At around 4:12, we receive the first introduction to the metric changes that happen throughout the song.  I only wish my skills were strong enough to figure these out, but I believe there’s a 4/4 to 6/8 to 5/4 to 6/8 something something happening there (any theory geeks want to help me out here?).  Either way, not something you see any other band do every day, and live on stage in front of some 20,000+ people.

Slow – Wading in the Velvet Sea

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Wading in the Velvet Sea comes from 1998’s “Story of the Ghost” album, and is traditionally performed live at or about the same tempo as the album version.  To me, this also signifies an earmark of the band’s development and maturity.  In other words, while the record company wants short songs that can sell records, by this point they’ve been able to slim down live versions, and capture most, if not all of the essential parts and fit them into a 4:29 release.  On the studio version, you’ll hear part of Trey’s technique that I mentioned earlier, the looping covering the beginning of the song, a carry over from the previous track, “Roggae”.  Featuring a simple, beautiful and even hunting piano intro, this is one of Phish’s truly gorgeous, melodic, and moving songs.  The meaning can be left open to interpretation, but to me, it’s all about loss. Wading in the Velvet Sea also holds the distinction of getting Page McConnell so choked up at the band’s fair well show in 2004 (Coventry), that Trey had to step in and mention just how emotional this show was for all of them.  Again, by 1998, the band had really gotten to the point of nailing studio versions down so there’s not really much to say here.

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Now the reason that I chose to highlight Wading in the Velvet Sea as a great ‘slow’ Phish tune centers around this live version.  Recorded September 4th 1999 show in Boise, Idaho (sadly, I was not there, but Elisa was, and she tells me that yes…it really was that good).  To me, Trey’s guitar solo on this version is simply gorgeous.  Melodic, lyrical, sustained, complex, and simple at the same time; its all there.  While Page and Mike carry on with the repetition of “I’ve been Wading in the Velvet Sea” Trey starts noodeling a simple melody that comes to fruition when the lyrics drop out.  Just listen to those beautiful sustained notes around the 3:45 mark.  Mike on Bass and Jon on drums are perfectly locked in sync here, with Page doing a simple accompaniment.  To me…this is one of the finest examples of the band’s unity.

And there we have it.  Please keep in mind that these three songs should not be taken as ‘THE’ definitive Phish works, but rather, a short sampling of the range that this quartet have produced over the years, a beginners primer, if you will.

Welcome Home:

I was certainly sad to see the curtain fall in 2004, but overjoyed at the fact that they’ve had enough time off from each other, and have decided to give the grueling road tour circuit another go.  If not for their enjoyment, but for the thousands upon thousands of phans who call our boys from Vermont the only ones for us.  Mike, Page, Trey, and Jon, Good luck and Godspeed.  We’ve been listening, and waiting.  Welcome home.

LEGO launches Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture sets

May 22, 2009 by Dan Taylor    14 Comments    Posted under: Photography

In conjunction with the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation, LEGO has just released two of a planned six sets of an ‘Architecture‘ series, celebrating the work of the architecture great.

OMG RLY????  Nice!

The release of the LEGO structures coincides with the real Guggenheim Museum’s “From Within Outward” exhibition, which is a celebration of 50 years of Wright’s continued influence after his passing.

The first of the sets was released on the 15th to coincide with the opening of the exhibition, and are part of LEGO’s LEGO Architecture line of sets, made to “inspire future architects, engineers and designers as well as architecture fans around the world with the LEGO brick as a medium.

[via designbloom]

Holy crap!  Please file this under DO WANT!  I haven’t pulled out the LEGO collection in years, but something like this just might do the trick.  Throw some Charles Renie Mackintosh furniture sets in there, and I’m more than sold.

Speaking of tricks, this reminds me of a clever one I managed to pull while in college.

I managed to get myself a private tour of the Edward E. Boynton house in Rochester, NY, by way of convincing a real-estate agent that I was a photography major at RIT.  While I was in school (mid to late 90′s) the house was for sale.  Being a huge lover of all things FLW, I hatched a plan to not only get in, but to spend some time with the spirit of Frank.

I casually called the real-estate agency representing the property, told the folks that I was a student at RIT and was traveling to the Pennsylvania that summer to shoot Falling Water, had already shot the Darwin D. Martin house in Buffalo, and wanted to shoot the Boynton house.  I remember them apologizing that the house was empty, but if I’d be fine with shooting a bare structure, they’d arrange for it to happen.  We set a time and date and I snagged an ID from a friend at RIT that looked absolutley nothing like me.  Luckily, they never asked for credentials, and I spent almost 3 hours shooting the entire house.  Needless to say, these are in the days before digital (well, at least on a college student’s budget), but I still have the prints and negatives…maybe it’s time to get them scanned?

Survey says – Geeks do it better!

May 21, 2009 by Dan Taylor    5 Comments    Posted under: Technology

Here’s one I came across this morning that was just too good not to pass along.  According to a recent study conducted in the UK, those who work in the tech sector are less selfish in bed, while at the other end of the spectrum, those that work in the fitness industry (read:meatheads) or were regular gym-goers were more all about themselves in the sack. Four out of five respondents who work in the tech sector noted that sex should be more about the partner rather than themselves.

As for regularity, it looks like Joe Average office worker is getting plenty of play with over 53% claiming to have sex 3 or more times per week.  The self absorbed fitness nuts scored second with 47% responding 3 or more times per week, Techies taking third with 38%, manual workers scoring 36%, and in dead last – business owners, with only 21%.  Ok, fair enough, business owners work like motherfu#$ers, and I’m sure they’re ready to catch some zzz’s after a 14 hr. work day.

Oddly enough, the survey was conducted via the UK’s leading PS3 videogame console site, which begs the question – has all of that hand/eye coordination finally come in useful for something other than obliterating opponents?

But the question that really got me smiling was, “Do you regularly use sex toys with your partner?” with 80% of tech workers reporting that sex toys played an important part in their relationships, finally proving once and for all that geeks love their gadgets, no matter WHAT the function.

Back to basics

May 19, 2009 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: News

For quite some time now, I’ve deviated from how this humble blog started out: a collection of my interests, thoughts, etc.  Granted, a lot has changed since I started this thing way back when (I’m looking at you twitter – and oh, who’s laughing now Altchiler?), but unfortunately so did the way I ran this thing.  There are plenty of folks that I know that make money from their blog, running advertising, using affiliate links, paid blogs, etc. but to be completely honest, non of that really interests me.  I’ve spent a lot of time fiddling with fancy templates, changing this code, altering those links, and yes, it’s taught me a lot about how css and xhtml work, but I think I’ve lost sight of the prize: to put my opinions out there.  And yes, I did do a few alterations to this newest template – but no where even close to some chop jobs I’ve done with past templates.

Maybe it has something to do with one of the things I do for a living, where it’s my job to write in a way that reports the news, covers recent developments in the field, etc., but that’s not really what a personal blog should be about.  That’s not to say that if I find something interesting, I’m not going to write about it, even if it is a press release, but rather, I want this platform to stand as a location where I can simply put my thoughts out there.  If anyone is listening, great, if not…well, in the end, that’s fine too.  I’m tired of trying to be the ‘expert’ on any one specific topic, because at the end of the day, I AM one of those rare people that have a lot of interests, and luckily for me, I tend to be halfway decent at whatever I put my mind to.  With that said, this can also be a blessing and a curse, as I often feel a ‘jack of all trades’ but a master of none.  I’ll never forget the day that my high school music teacher Connie Zweifel said to me, “You’re going to have a really hard time in the future, because you’re so good at so many things, you’ll never be happy to settle on just one.”  Can I get an amen to Connie?

So I make this promise now, both to myself, and to anyone out there reading:  I’m getting back on track with turnthescrew.  This blog will no longer be about just social media topics.  It will no longer be about video.  It will no longer be about photography.  It will no longer be about design.  It will be about all of them – and more!

To those of you that have had a regular read over the years, thanks.  To those of you that may just be tuning in – welcome.

adidas and deviantART: Celebrate Originality

May 10, 2009 by Dan Taylor    4 Comments    Posted under: News, Social Media

While partnering and running major brand contests is nothing new for deviantART, they have crossed into a new social media interactivity zone with their newest collaboration with adidas.  Dubbed as the “Celebrate Originality” campaign, adidas and deviantART have created an online fingerpainting contest that seeks to engage (and presumably draw in even more) deviantART members in a competition to create and submit original art using the worldwide know adidas ‘three stripes’.  With a user base of over 9 million members, attracting some 26 million unique views per month, there certainly isn’t a lack of talent and/or usership at deviantART.

Promoting the 60th anniversary of adidas, the contest is seeking out the most original, stylish, and celebratory entry.  Contestants can use almost limitless forms of media for their entry: traditional, digital, sculpture, photography, etc.  Instead of having the general public have to come to deviantART to view the entries, here’s where things get interesting: artists can now use an embeddable widget that can be placed anywhere on the internet (think facebook, wordpress blogs, etc.).

Naturally, adidas is not only helping to showcase the talent of entry artists, but build a nice bit of self promotion (like this article, for example) through the powerful effect of social networking and embeddable tools.

Angelo Sotira, CEO of deviantART, said: “We love that adidas Originals picked us for this project. We are really excited that they understand the art community, how vibrant it can be for their branding as well as the impact of marketing in social media.”

Sadly, open only to residents of the United States, the adidas Originals FingerPainting Contest grand prize winner will be flown to New York to view their artwork showcased at the adidas Originals store located in SoHo.  If that wasn’t enough, the winner will also receive a $2,500 Amex gift card, a $400 adidas gift card, an Online exhibition and artist bio on the adidas Originals Facebook page, a painting made in the commercial by the band The Ting Tings, and boatload of deviantART swag.  All entries must be submitted by 11:59:59 PM (PT) on May 15, 2009

Simon Atkins, Head of Sport Style Division, adidas America said: “Our Originals store is in SoHo at the epicenter of the art community in New York and so it made perfect sense for us to work with deviantART. We really believe in leveraging the viral and network effects of social media advertising. This is another example of how adidas Originals plans to connect with our fans, now and in the future.”