Thoughts On The Dead

Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: phish (Page 8 of 10)

A Phish FAQ For Deadheads

January 27, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Tell me about Phish

They’re a rock band from Vermont that relies heavily on improvisation and the audience being on drugs.

What kind of music do they play?

It’s tough to pin it down, but the overriding genre is “music for white people to hug strangers to.”

Why can’t we do these FAQs without you being a douche?

Fine. Phish sounds like Phish, to be honest. I guess you can hear some Talking Heads in there, or some Beatles, but mostly they just sound like themselves. Which makes them a Great Band.

And that phrase is capitalized because..?

Because it’s my Theory of Rock Band Greatness: a truly Great Band could play, say, Louie Louis or Wild Thing or any other of those rock and roll standards–without vocals–and you would recognize their sound within a couple of chord changes. Ramones, Stones, Dead: you can hear how they’d play it your head, right?

Which brings us to the Dead.

Borne ceaselessly into the past, we are.

What do the Dead and Phish have in common?

Numerous strains of herpe, one ex-wife, an accountant, and the legal inability to visit Japan.

…

They also have a similar gestalt and demographic and niche in American society.

Thank you.

Also like the Dead, their records suck and they’re goofy-looking.

Surely, they have a Bobby.

They do not have a Bobby.

Tough to make it in this world without a Bobby in the band.

And the drummer wears a dress.

…

Does he rock that shit in a Beyonce-like fashion?

In no way, shape, or form.

I need you two fuckwits to concentrate. Comparing the Dead to Phish on the internet is dangerous territory. All of the jamband-related forums look like the Somme.

Nice segue, Bro Namath.

Do not call me that.

So: Trey Anastasio playing with the Dead. First off, who’s Trey Anastasio?

He is a ginger guitarist.

He any good?

Fuck yeah: hair as red as it could be.

I meant at the guitar.

Oh, yeah. Old school guitar god. Sometimes his guitar’s like MWAH and sometimes he goes mEEEp and other times he’s all DEEDELEELEEDEEDLEE. And if you let him, he’ll solo from now until the heat-death of the universe.

And that is different from Garcia in which way?

Oh, in no substantial way at all. Stylistically, they’re nothing alike, but that’s just the minor choices. Stupidly complicated custom guitar, beard, lust for opiates: pretty much the same guy.

Okay.

Although, to be fair: Garcia preferred to smoke his opiates, while Trey liked pills.

Noted. Irrelevant, but noted. So what’s the problem?

It mostly stems from people being dicks. Or dummies. Or silly gooses. Any number of things, really. Some longtime Deadheads don’t think Trey’s good enough, or Fake Jerry enough, or whatever lunatics come up with to rationalize their shouting. There are Phish Persons that think this is distracting Trey, even though they were taking it slow this year, anyway. There are also a group of young white men in the corner wearing “Rand Paul ’16” buttons and yelling about the gold standard, but they’re twits, so let’s ignore them.

Anything else?

Some Deadheads have a view of Phish Persons as trust fundamentalists who will buy up the tickets and attend just to see Trey, not knowing every word to every song , or being able to recite set lists from heart, or having given a tugger to Brent.

Sounds a bit like status game bullshit and cliquish snobbery to me. Why are they doing that?

They’re human. It’s how we occupy our time between shows.

Right.

…

What’s with the WOOing?

Phish Persons are like Ric Flair mated with a beagle. It’s just the sound they make when they’re happy or sad or cold or vengeful.  WOOs mean different things at different times: it’s a very high-context culture.

Rules, Radicals

January 22, 2015 / / 5 Comments

Every culture has its own inviolable rules of hospitality and that is a good thing. Each participant in the visit has certain responsibilities and roles to play, and in the knowledge of this, can relax and know that they may avoid disrespecting their host (and embarrassing themselves) simply by following the rules.

In Asian and Scandinavian countries, shoes must be removed before one enters a home. In Paraguay, though, the host and guest exchange shoes for the length of their time together. In Moldova, people just hit each other with their boots in the town square. (There is very little to do other than drink and inbreed in Moldova.)

In the West, it is natural and polite to compliment your host on his or her taste on home furnishing, even if the place looks like a meth lab. In Arab cultures, telling your host how much you like a painting will obligate him to make a gift of it to you, so if you’re ever at a party in Yemen, make sure you tell the guy who owns the place that everything looks like shit. He’ll thank you for it.

As there might be some of what might be called “Phish persons” making their way to the Farewell Shows, TotD has taken it upon himself to let our “phriends” (get it?) in on some of the things that might not fly at Soldier Field.

  • No throwing glowsticks. In fact, Soldier Field will be outfitted with an AEGIS-class targeting system to instantly triangulate the thrower of any glowstick hurled aloft, and then shoot that person in the asshole with a laser beam.
  • Leaning over to your neighbor and saying, “Phil would look a lot better with a Hermes scarf, dontcha think?” is not okay.
  • The drummers will both be wearing men’s clothes. They’re crazy, not weirdos.
  • Don’t bother Bill Walton. (This is actually for your own good. He will start telling stories about the time Coach Wooden taught him how to please a woman.)
  • Don’t touch Spinners. They’re a long story. Just don’t touch them.
  • Please conform to Deadhead bathroom protocol: at the urinals, peer over at your neighbor’s penis, and say “Tell you what, pardner: that shlong don’t have no mercy in this land, know’m saying?” And then he’ll be your friend.
  • If you are in the lady’s room, merely compliment the penis of the woman at the urinal next to you.
  • If Mickey throws you his towel, you have to give him your Coca-Cola. Those are the rules: I didn’t make them up.
  • Deadheads and cops–over years of coexistence–have developed this little game where hippies sprint at them, and try to steal their guns. Trust me: they love that game. Try it.
  • Molly’s adorable, but it’s a Dead show: take some acid like a grown-up. The only people who take molly by itself are Gaysians in speedos at EDM festivals.
  • Don’t be alarmed when Bobby starts to play slide guitar; it’s supposed to sound like that.
  • Leave your WOO’s at home. Not kidding on this one. Time and a place, junior, and this is neither. I don’t want to hear that syllable at all. Someone asks you your favorite Chinese action movie director, think up someone other than John Woo. A stranger wants to know which Tang it is no one’s supposed to fuck with? Walk away.

The Grateful Dead 50th Anniversary Shows FAQ

January 17, 2015 / / 7 Comments

What’s this I hear about the Dead’s 50th anniversary?

The Grateful Dead’s first gigs were in the spring of 1965, making this year their gold anniversary. The surviving members of the group who have penises and are not TC will be marking the occasion with three concerts over Fourth of July weekend.

Just three shows?

The Dead thought it would be more special to limit the number of appearances. Also, any sort of extended tour would most likely kill one or all of them. But: mostly the thing about making it special.

Didn’t the main guy die years ago? Hairy Mendoza?

Close enough, and: yeah. He died in 1995 and since then, the Dead have reassembled in various forms under different names and with any number of guitarists.

Fake Jerries, yeah.

…

Dude, you can’t call him Hairy Mendoza and then know the term “fake Jerry.”

Sorry, sorry.

The bit is Frequently Asked Questions. Just be the guy asking questions frequently.

Okay, so, who’ll be playing guitar and singing with the Dead at these shows? 

That’s actually (one of) the exciting part(s): Trey Anastasio from Phish will be playing lead guitar and singing a whole bunch of Garcia’s songs.

And that’s exciting because?

Well, first off: Trey’s got a hell of a lot more star power than any of the other dudes up for the gig. Did you know that there is a man named John Kadlecki and he’s a damn fine guitar player?

I do now, I suppose.

And does that fact make you want to book plane tickets and a hotel room?

In no way, shape, or form.

Right. So: Trey. Also, while Phish is clearly the “heir” (whatever that means) to the Dead’s legacy, they’ve always tried to maintain a separation from the Dead in musical styles, lyrical content, attitude towards improvisation, aesthetic presentation.

Would a normal person be able to tell the two bands apart?

Oh, fuck, no. Guitar solos for white kids to take drugs to. Like: 99% the exact same bullshit.

But to a Deadhead or a…what do you call a person who likes Phish more than the Dead?

Wrong.

…

What?

Are you trying to start a fight in the comment section? It’s already weird enough in there.

Sorry.

Let’s continue. Who else is going to be performing with…what is this phrase they keep using? The “core four?”

Yeah. The “core four.” Someone thought that phrase up and now we all just have to live with it.

It rhymes!

It does. So: Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti will be playing keyboards.

Two keyboardists?

Yeah. Weird thing: Bruce Hornsby refuses to play with the Dead unless they provide him with another piano player that he can bully. And Bruce Hornsby’s maybe seven feet tall, but he’g got quick feet, so you can’t get away. He did some fucked-up shit to Vince, but the stuff he’s already doing to Chimenti is going down in the history books. Or arrest reports: times have changed and this kind of behavior is rarely laughed off anymore.

Already doing?

The night the contracts were signed, Bruce Hornsby dressed in drag, seduced Jeff Chimenti, and–during love-making–implanted several post-hypnotic suggestions into Jeff Chimenti’s sub-conscious.

I thought you said Bruce Hornsby was seven feet tall?

Jeff Chimenti likes ’em big.

Are you two gonna be serious?

Yes.

Yes.

Sorry.

Don’t be sorry. Stop enabling him. Help people out with some honest answers to the questions they might have about the Farewell Shows. This is a big deal to some people and they want some true facts. You were a journalism major in school: act like it.

Unemployed and bitter?

Hey. Get back to the FAQ or say goodbye.

Fine.

Why are the shows being held in Chicago?

It’s kinda/sorta/almost the middle of the country, so people from both coasts are equally inconvenienced. And Chicago is very temperate in the summer.

Is it, really?

Oh, fuck, no. It’s like a marsupial’s pouch. The precise temperature, moisture level, and smell of a tin wash basin full of piss left out in the sun all morning.

Are the shows sold-out?

They haven’t gone on sale yet, but they’ll sell out the second the digital gate is opened. The ticket-bots and StubHub touts are already circling and shenanigans have most suredly already begun.

What about the prices?

What about ’em? This is a goddamned capitalist society and the Dead’re free to charge whatever the market will bear as recompense for their years of creativity and struggle!

Slow down, Dagny: I just wanted to know how much the tickets were.

Oh, expensive as shit. Well, actually: the Stones charge more, and those fuckers have been on that farewell tour of theirs for so long that they’ve run out of places to play and had to hit India and Australia. Also way cheaper than the Super Bowl and they have that every year and attending it in person is empirically provable to be worse than watching it on a TV at a halfway decent gathering. So: not ridiculous in context.

Is it going to be any good?

Oh, fuck, yeah. It’ll be a great time no matter how they play and I think they’ll play well, regardless of their history at every single important gig of their entire career without exception. Who cares: you won’t find a ride like this no more.

…

Seriously, why two keyboardists?

Listen: Bobby and Phil just kind of have custody of this Chimenti guy. They share him, I think. Anyway: he’s become their John Kahn.

Please don’t accuse people of that. End of FAQ.

Treycia

January 16, 2015 / / 3 Comments

trey jerry fat

Weird things had begun happening the second that Trey signed the contract to join the Dead for the 50th anniversary shows at Soldier Field.

He had had beards on and off for decades, but he never recalled any of them being quite so full. So…muppety.

The weight gain was alarming, but not surprising. Usually a vegetarian, Trey had been having insatiable cravings for meatball subs and 7-11 hot dogs and Haagen-Dazs straight from the container. Luckily, Trey’s vanity had disappeared, too, so he was fine with sweatpants now.

The fires and the ex-wives, on the other hand, were not fine at all with Trey, who at this point was wishing he had taken up the bass clarinet.

Thoughts On The Phuture

August 4, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Beyond the proximal silliness of the webcast starring the Phishes last night, there was a deep and primary weirdness to the entire evening.  Real-time, hi-def, multi-cam, and 5.1 surround sound. Free, delivered wirelessly (and if you’re in one of an exponentially-growing number of public places, the wi-fi is free, too) to the device of your choice. ‘Cast it to your 80″ LCD TV or squint at your phone: this is most assuredly a small and wonderful piece of the future.

But: it’s not longer a concert, is it? A concert happens somewhere–by definition–at a certain time (then twenty minutes late because musicians.) The doors are closed; an in-group/out-group gestalt is created which births the magical Crowd; the Temporary Autonomous Zone creates itself again. A concert relies on senses–smell, touch, and especially the sense of pressure: being packed in a crowd, the sound waves–that a webcast (or any other non-live medium) can’t even begin to simulate or stimulate.

Also, there is neither buffering nor the “chat” section. You might have to wait in line for the toilets or talk to a nincompoop, but let’s face facts: the world is a better place without the “chat” section.

You seem kind of hung up on this “chat” section thing.

Everyone is stupid and it makes me sad.

…

Valid point for a Monday.

For as futuristic as last night’s webcast was–and it was damn near to magic–it was still stuck in the past. The aesthetic, the camera shots, the scarves: they were The Song Remains The Same, with those low-angle icon shots of the guitarist and ZOMGBONHAM views of Fishman behind his drum kit.

Phuck that, Phishes: go Pharther.

Flood the place with cams and give full control to the viewer: all it costs you is money and bandwidth and time. Four cams on each of Page’s vintage thousand-pound keyboards that he plays for six minutes a show. Flip between those cams and the crowd cams and play Spot the Black Guy. Watch the drone-cam during the glowstick wars. Hang out with the beer guy and watch people try to get their heads together.

Hell: HELP people get their heads together! Why not tele-presence into the show? For a gold-level member, a robot (it’s just an iPad taped to a stick and stuck on a Roomba, but that’s a better robot than you have currently, isn’t it?) will be your avatar at the show. Wander around talking to people, try to get ladies to show you stuff, watch the band: be yourself all over the virtual place. (Warning: your avatar will almost certainly be attacked and/or loved to death by a guy on drugs.)

The finest solution, obviously, is wearable cameras: strap go-pros to twenty or so fans and turn them into one-man mobile uplink units. This is a genius plan for a number of reasons:

First of all, this would immediately set off internecine warfare within the audience ne’er seen since the War of the Roses. Sabotage would begin within hours.

Okay, there aren’t a number of reasons: just one great one. It would become about the people wearing the cams so quickly and disastrously. They would all have twitter-fights and instagram-beefs and Antelope Greg would get involved somehow: it would be SO ENTERTAINING.

Fandoms would form just as quickly and within three shows–on the outside–there would be large-scale turf riots going on at shows.

…

How did you manage to get from a Phish show on the internet to turf riots in 500 words?

Freedom.

Thoughts On Phish

August 4, 2014 / / 0 Comments
  • Say what you will about Billy or Mickey, I never had to stare at their pasty, hamhock-sized upper arms for an entire evening.
  • A number of times during the second set–the part that I was awake for–Trey became confused about the difference between “a slightly forced transition” and “starting to play another song than the rest of the band.”
  • Page is actually placed on his little stool fourteen hours before the show and then they place his keyboards around him.
  • All mocking aside, Page is the best protected against an incursion of zombie Wooks.
  • The base-level competence necessary to pull something like this (real-time streaming HD) is so far beyond the Dead’s it’s not a comparison: if the Dead had tried something like this, they would have begun by trying to invent a new and louder internet, accidentally knocked three weather satellites off course, and misplaced several hundred thousand dollars.
  •  Either you can skip the gym, or you can wear tight little high-fashion t-shirts. Can’t do both.
  • Also, Mike’s new hair gives him Johnny Bravo’s profile.
  • I cannot overstate the horror that was Fishman’s arm fat.
  • If a Dungeons & Dragons game broke out: Trey would insist on being the DM; Mike would alternate between taking the quest too seriously and organizing a coup against Trey; Page would be quietly the best at the game; and Fishman would be touching himself under the table.
  • Contrary to stereotype, three of the first set songs (555, Fast Enough, and Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan) all had pretty decent lyrics and reflectable lessons and morals and you all know how I like some good sermonizing in a song.
  • In line with stereotype, the rest of the tunes’ words sounded like a clever man having a series of small, but debilitating, strokes.
  • Very few men on the planet have ever consistently banged so far out of their league as Page.
  • Trey does some sort of cockroach-stomping elven dance when he gets excited and it’s deeply unsettling.
  • Y’know what’s worse than Dead.net commentors? People who participate in the “chat” during streams. If you participate in the “chat,” we can’t be friends anymore.
  • In between sets, Mike went from bare-necked to scarf. Now: it’s August in Georgia; this wasn’t a warmth thing, so its appearance begs the question: what was the decision-making process? Was this always the plan? Did Mike’s sense of style cal an audible? Did a fox backstage say, “Great first set but I could have used more hipster scarf!”
  • And then once the choice to be-scarfinate himself has been made, how many choices are there? Does Mike make the crew lug around an entire road case full of semi-diaphonous Gordon Garments? Does he receive a new one every show and trash his dressing room if it isn’t there?
  • How long did it take him at the mirror to make it look so casual?
  • Do the other Phishes make fun of him while he does this?
  • If not, why on earth not?

Fil And A Fish

December 7, 2013 / / 0 Comments

phil trey dark

The problem with the lighting wasn’t apparent until Phil’s head slammed back into his torso when the spot came up and he flashed back to Altamont.

“GET TO THE CHOPPER,” he screamed and then he mistook Trey for Jack Cassidy (however you spell it: the shaggy bass player with the giant lips and giant bass guitar) and put him in a headlock and threw them both headlong into the drum kit, which Phil was completely convinced was a helicopter.

There was no encore.

Box Set Nitties

November 8, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Themed box sets are the wave of the future, mark my words. Enough with these pedestrian groupings, lumping together shows merely because they appeared consecutively in the timestream.

How primitive.

One could argue that the shows have become free from temporality now, so far away from the piss-and-shit smell of the actual reality of “a show.” An Event, a thing to be done, gone to, waited on, hoped for, remembered fondly and dearly and well. Strip away the context, and we’re left with just the text–only the music remains.

So why, then, are our box sets still chained–enthralled!–by the simian processes and demands of time? We need to see the Dead’s career from above and follow the threads that link performances from across the years, even decades. Here are a few that the band have been working on:

TC: Secret Hero? It barely filled a CD, so this project was shelved and the money diverted to fund a cobbling program to help inner-city youths overcome the lures of drugs, gangs, and chickenheads by learning how to make TC’s fancy little booties. The project was a failure and resulted in multiple deaths.

Billy’s Got His Dick Out Randomly, but regularly, Billy would play the show with his dick out. You could look, you could not look.Billy didn’t care: it was muggy or something, his hog wanted some air, and Billy was a fucking American–what are you gonna do about it? This 25-CD package was to include the infamous 1973 show in St. Louis when Billy’s dick took his own dick out, and everybody freaked right the fuck out, because, honestly: what the fuck, Billy? We will not have your forays into infinite masculine regression up in this muhfuh, if you please.

January ’78: It’s Bobby Time!  Those three or four shows in wich Garcia lost his voice, Bobby lost his mind, and we lost our patience. There’s only so many Mexicali Blues in a row a man can bear.

The Complete Wagner’s Ring Cycle by Phil and Ned  12 discs of atonal, non-synchronous, apathetirythmic (that’s when you know where the beat is, but you don’t care) musiqúe concrete loosely alluding to, obliquely referencing, and distinctly ignoring the text of Wagner’s multi-evening magnum opus. Sometime in August of ’73, Phil and Ned shot way too much crystal meth and did all 16 hours at once and the fall-off from beginning to end is rather severe. At one point, Phil audibly wanders out of the studio and has to be lured back in with candy. 

GD: The Tahoe Tweezer by the Grateful Dead Like, nine or ten discs of the Tahoe Tweezer on repeat. The packaging is a plain cardboard box containing a poorly Xeroxed photo of Phish with Garcia’s head taped over all four of theirs’. It’s both disconcerting and telling how far through the decision-making process this idea got before falling by the wayside.

Having Fun Onstage With Bobby The yellow dog joke! The deer poaching joke! The clever asides, wisecracks, and japes! That weird Okie accent he does for no reason sometimes! Two full discs of him ending songs with ‘THANK you!’ in that high-pitched voice. It was scheduled to be released last July, but Bobby locked himself in to TRI Studios for three days and immediately upon getting free, locked himself out. Then he soured on the whole project, which is a shame because the gold lame suit he had ordered from Nudie Cohen had cost $45,000.

Egypt ’79, ’83, ’84! During the Heineken Years, Phil would occasionally just refuse to believe they weren’t back in the Land of the Pharaohs and mostly people just rolled with it, except for when, at one of the ’83 shows, Phil saw a swarthy guy backstage and screamed, “GET DOWN, ANWAR SADAT!’ and tackled the poor hairy bastard. Covering five mostly-well played shows that take place mostly in desert cities, although the ’84 was in Maine, which worried people, but amused Billy because he’s awful.

Bound To Cover Just A Little More Ground

November 8, 2013 / / 0 Comments

The Phishes do this thing most years when Trey isn’t dead where they cover an album at Halloween. This year, they pretended they were themselves in the future, or the past–i can’t figure it out and really don’t care to. Also, Mike Gordon probably tried to drunkenly finger Abe Vigoda at the after-party.

So, the big Phish sites (and damn, they look better than mine) were advocating for this album or that, when I realized that–as usual–Big Dead was hiding things from us. I broke into Dennis McNally’s condo and interrogated one of the many, many women he had imprisoned as part of his role as a major conductor on the unholy railroad of the white slave trade.

Dude, we’re gonna get sued.

She showed me to a secret cache of documents and recordings that proved BEYOND A SHADOWING OF DOUBTFULNESS–

For fuck’s sake, Crazy Pants…

–that as usual, the Dead were the first to do everything, but poorly. Below are a by-no-means complete list of attempts the Dead made at covering an album.

Abba’s Greatest Hits was out. They tried it at rehearsal but Phil kept wandering away from the beat and then Mickey would pull out his oud and Bobby would start doing his Swedish Chef routine. So, it was interesting, but not quite listenable.

Phil wanted to do Beethoven’s Fidelio, and then he got down on his knees and put his hands in his shirt like had flipper arms and starting telling everyone he was Thomas Quasthoff and the people that got it didn’t think it was funny and Phil’s feeling were hurt so he built a restaurant and charged everyone a million dollars to eat oven-roasted shrimp and watch him jam with his kids. 

Bobby recommended they cover American Beauty and when gently informed about what covering a record meant, he said, “Yeah, I know. But we cover ourselves, man. Aren’t the masks we wear in real life the true representation of our actual selves? Man?” And then Billy, deservedly, punched him in the dick and was suspended indefinitely by the Miami Dolphins.

Our esteemed Prime Minister of Optimus and West Coast Promotions Man, Mr. Completely, reminds us of Phil and Ned’s abortive stab at Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? in 1974, Seastones-style. It had been going for 45 minutes and showed no sign of ending when a small Chinese man carrying a plastic bag stood courageously in front of the synthesizers.

In a quiet and unsure voice, Vince asked if they could play something from The Tubes. No one said anything. “I already know all the parts,” Vince added. It was quiet until Ramrod told them it was time to play.

Billy said he wanted to try Lonesome Prairies by Dick Punch and Brent said, “Who’s Dick Punch?” and Billy went “Yours!” and punched him in the dick and it was hard to muster up any sympathy at all for him there.

One year, the members of the Dead crowded around Garcia’s iPhone that he had plucked from within the Time Sheath and somehow not set ablaze. They read forum posts, bloggings, articles, and listicles speculating on what their musical costume would be that year and as they read, their mouths took on meins of disgust as they realized that the phrase “musical costume” was perhaps the least cool thing they had ever heard and decided to just play their usual show, but poorly, as to show their displeasure. Billy also posted a comment on one of the sites calling the author’s mom gay.

Thanks to the gents over at The Phunion  for the idea, which they themselves stole from Relix.

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