Wading in the Velvet C.

ASTRO PHISH SCHTICK: The Baker's Dozen Harpua

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 03:29:00 +0000

[YouTube video deleted by old "you know whose"]

On 7/30/17 -- the second Sunday of The Baker's Dozen, Phish's monumental 13-day Madison Square Garden run -- the band chose "Jimmies" as the night's flavor. Uproar ensued. "'Jimmies' is not a flavor," some complained..."they're just sweet, and sweet is not a flavor; it's a taste." Along with the furor, elation erupted at the almost sure indicator that one very popular "Jimmy" would probably make an appearance in the setlist that evening...

Relatively ubiquitous in very early setlists, as part of a handful of mysterious and alluring tales which peppered the more thematically frisky days of Phish 1.0, the song became ever more rare, finally disappearing with the band itself into their first hiatus.

Aligning with an early-Aughts jamband trend of wacky and labyrinthine segues of tunes into each other, Harpua made its lone one-night-stand of the 2.0 in a single show at the Star Lake Pavillion in Burgettstown, PA. Punters that night will never forget the serpentine treat that began with Harpua, and ended with David Bowie, after popping up twice more within a chain including three other songs!

Phish 3.0, now nearing its decade-mark (and still chugging), has not been lousy with Harpuas, much to the chagrin of many phans, but to the glee of those who do manage to stick the landing, and turn up on a night it's pulled out of the bag. It first appeared in two, one-night segue-fests: in Saratoga, NY, and then on an explosive Fourth of July night in Alpharetta, GA, where it was famously (and perhaps quizzically) interspersed with Rage Against the Machine's relentless punk shredder, "Killing in the Name." Only 3 more times did Jimmy have a talk with Dad, once each in 2011, 2015, and 2015. To call it a rarity would be an understatement among phans...

So, to get personal, my lone storied experience with the dog named Harpua and his aspiring owner, Jimmy, consists entirely of lone, extremely damp and cathartic second night encore at the Clifford Ball in 1996. Having listened to it in so many shows, resigned to the fate that I was just lucky for making the trek to the Airforce Base in Plattsburgh and sleeping in my friend's car, Harpua just became the song other people get to hear.

Until, quizzically, your FOMO disappears, and you find yourself in the Hole in the Donut.

The Baker's Dozen marks the first time I am solvent enough to potentially have afforded the entire run, but didn't actually go for it. My relationship with Phish, when I lean back into it, is and always will be one of the most important and inspiring ones in my life. Like all relationships, it has come with its ups and downs, mostly related to the increasingly complex economic and logistical machinery involved with experiencing their copious live shows.

I've said enough to say, for the record, that I am in a great place; one of the best I've been in during the time between Phish's reunion in 2009 in the midst of an economic downturn, and today (August 1, 2017, which would've been Jerry Garcia's 75th Birthday), where I'll be getting to see Phish for the second time during the month.

However, this post is not really about that (although it is, kinda)...had I not been in this mellow mood, this relaxed mind-state borne of hard work and plump savings, and of the thick skin that forms from years of gleaning tickets from flighty phellow phans (many of whom are now young enough to be the ditzy Millennial tour babies I thankfully never had), I wouldn't have managed to score a not-too-exorbitantly-priced-over-face ticket for Night 8 of The Baker's Dozen, effectively near the midpoint of the circumference of the circle that is the so-called Dozen.

What happened on that night? Well, this happened. Actually, this happened after I scooped my jaw up off the floor, and seized the presence of mind to capture the moment I'd probably not witness again for some time. And then they started talking about astrophysics, which is one of my favorite topics in all of science. Their dulcet tones, japing and jesting, brought me back to those pastoral days, when these wily sons of businessmen plied their ragged trade across the country, to the salivating scores of many who still remain rapt and loyal. I, being one of that lot, was really glad to be there, and I'm really glad to be back here, to share a bit of it with you.

(PS: Sorry, Phish, if this is copyright infringement, but hopefully you'll be glad I'm still on the train, and I've gone through the effort for posterity... ;)

Editor's Note, 8/7/17: On Monday, August 7, 2017, the dawn of phandom's first day without an MSG show on the immediate horizon, an Important Journalist revealed in an Important Rock 'n' Roll Magazine, the provenance of the following transcription, in an Important Article from an Important Newspaper, from March 11, 2003. On that date, I had been in Upstate New York, deeply pondering my life, for 23 of what would eventually be 40 days. In the scope of this discussion, as far as I'm concerned, that is like saying, "The picture of an eyeball pasted to the inside of that Joseph Cornell box from 1953 was taken from a copy of Le Monde that he bought at a newsstand on Fulton Street some time in July of 1947." That is to say: kinda irrelevant.

TRANSCRIPTION (to my best cosmological understanding and ability. Initials are the JEMP of Jon, Ernie III, Mike, and Page. I can be heard exclaiming "Quantum Phish!" at 2:41, and, predictively, "A DONUT!" at 3:33. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I love the science. And the Phish.):

E: Wow. That's amazing.

J: What?

E: There's lumps in the cosmic gravy.

J: Huuuhhh...

E: No, seriously...there's lumps in the cosmic gravy!

P: Yes, actually, he's right! The microwave cloud is laced with ripples of splotches. Lumps in the gravy...that's where galaxies and other cosmic structures form.

J: Ahh. Interesting.

E: Yeah, the lumps are born as microcosmic fluctuations during the first instant of time, and then, they're amplified into sound waves.

M: That's actually right, Fish. And as the universe expands, matter and energy...they splosh around!

J: Wow! But, uh...I thought the universe consists mostly of, uh, dark energy that's expanding and accelerating outward. So, how does that fit in?

E: Well, that's true, Fish. There is a lot of dark energy in the universe. But, umm, for the record, it's an infinite universe, and the waves in the cosmic fireball appear randomly around the sky at all sizes. But there seems to be a limit to the size of the waves.

P: Yes! None of them extend more than, say, 60 degrees across the sky.

E: Wow!

M: It's kind of like...if the universe were a guitar string, it would be missing its deepest notes, the ones with the longest wavelengths. The bass notes! Maybe that's because it is not big enough to sustain them!
(Drum roll.)

J: Ooohh. I get it! So the fact that there appears to be an angular cutoff, like what Page is saying, hints at a special distance scale, in the universe!

P: Yes, that's it. If we only emit radio noise from the stars in our own galaxy...

E: Well...then the universe appears lumpier in one direction through space than it does in another.

P: Exactly. And if you comb the finer variations out of the map, the remaining large scale variations form a line across the sky.

J: WAIT. So, if the universe is finite in one dimension -- meaning, it's like a cylinder...

M: Oh, yep...

J: Or...like...A DONUT!

E: Wow, Fish, that's right! It's definitely a donut. There's a limit to the size of clumps that can fit in that direction. And it couldn't be bigger than the universe in that direction. So, it has to be a DONUT.

M: A guitar string can only play a note solo, depending on its length. So, the biggest blobs would have to squish out in a plane in other directions. The way home around the donut would be perpendicular to that plane...

P: It's cosmology, with shapes! Except sometimes its hard to tell the difference between a coffee mug and a donut, because each object has one hole...

E: That's true...the two can be deformed into each other, so they're kind of...I don't know...topologically equivalent.

J: Ah! I see...so maybe the universe is a coffee mug? The way a figure-8 and a pair of eyeglass frames are almost the same?

P: Haha! Yeah. 'Cause you know what they say..."The more holes, the more complicated the topology..."

(All laugh. Fish plays a rimshot.)

J: Page...you're a funny guy!

M: Well...a three-torus is a donut wrapped in three different dimensions. So...

E: That's gotta be it...it's SO obvious.

P: Duh!

J: Yeah. DUH. Three-torus...donut...universe...

E: It's tough to visualize, but it's almost like a cube with its opposite sides somehow glued together.

M: Exactly.
E: But...
M: Definitely a donut.

J: No duh.

M: No duh!

J: Yup, no question about it.

P: The universe is a donut.

M: Living in this weird universe is kind of like being inside a hall of mirrors. Though, you know, instead of seeing new stars deeper and deeper in space, I keep seeing the same things over and over again. Light keeps traveling out one side of the donut, and back into the other.

J: Weird.

E: It's like light just keeps repeating; it's just repeating patterns created in the sky by light going around and around the donut-shaped universe.

J: And somewhere, there are four guys having the same conversation, except one of them is talking to his DAD...

M: The dimensions are all curled in loops! And, of course the universe actually has 10 dimensions. Everyone knows that.

E: Of course! Nine of space and one of time. Not the four that people say it has.

J: Yeah, uh-DUH! Everyone knows that!

E: And the dimensions are curled up in to sub-microcosmic loops!

P: Like the threads in an uncut carpet pile! And if it wasn't a donut, there'd be no way to get the inflation to stop, or for there to be enough space big enough to house all the galaxies, but small enough to see within the observable horizon.

(All chortle.)

J: Well, that definitely proves it then...it's a DONUT.

E: Unless, what if the biggest, longest waves are created first, and the missing notes are the earliest ones, that would've been struck by an inflation's guitar? Maybe...?

M: Nope, wrong...it's a DONUT.

J: So, should I be looking for circles in the sky?

E: Yes. You should be looking for identical circles on opposite sides of the sky, with the same patterns of hot and cold running around them.

P: The size of the circles will depend on distance between the walls of the universe, which is, I supposed, shaped kind of like...A CAVE!

E: Ahh! Circles on the walls of the cave, if you will.

M: I will!

(Rimshot.)

M: Oh, and by the way, on an entirely different subject...umm...Jimmy...?

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 15:59:00 +0000

From the Vaults: a famous letter to the band from the March 1995 Letters section of the Doniac Schvice (and Mike's famous reply).

Still Wading

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 16:43:00 +0000

To be totally honest, I'm just posting this to get the old post out of the way, and to let the world know I still loves me some of The Phish.

"How's that book coming?" you ask.

Slowly! (Duh.)

"How've ya been?"

Mehh...I'd say I've been better, but I don't think I have been. It's just that things look pretty messy on paper. The Imperfectitude of Life has been all over me like a cheap suit in the past three years (yes, literally), so getting "creative" has always seemed like a bit of fruitless frivolity, despite how completely absurd that idea might be. Call it "fusty home-training," bred into me by post-Depression-era immigrant parents. "Get a job, work the job, hate the job, be miserable, retire" is a tune I got used to...

Phish has, throughout the years, helped me alter that tune, little bit by little bit. Mainly, rather than seeing shows (which has gotten prohibitive for a number of reasons I haven't been able to successfully outrun, it seems), I've just been getting into the music. From a somewhat celebratory but often cringeworthy 2010, to a jubilant 2011, and a dominant 2012, the boys are back for what, so far, seems to be a real old-timey powerhouse of steamy, shimmering jams, somewhat jangly progressions, but more than enough potential for positive regression to the Golden Phish of Tymes Olde.

It always seems like I get nostalgic on days they play at Jones Beach (such as today)...and I'm especially nostalgic this year (and month) since it marks my 20th Phishiversary seeing the Twisting Troubadours. Like seemingly always, I'm much too buried alive to be dealing with my own life, much less that of Phish and the incipient circus that is Phish Tour. I'm moving house on Sunday, which is good enough a reason to knock me clean out the box for all of July. However, my appreciation for that bizarre, carnivalesque cyberphunk watering-hole known as COUCH TOUR has increased tremendously.

I may go so far as to say, in some ways, I enjoy Couch Tour a bit more than actual tour.

Heresy, you squawk? First of all, derr...couch terr is cheaper by far! The signal to noise ratio is excellent...it's just me, my laptop, jacked into the big speakers, and away we go into whatever cesspool (or aromatic ocean) of a stream we'll get for that evening, from whatever intrepid phan risks life and bicep to hold aloft their mobile device for that night's festivities. I always make sure to give thanks, to share links in the chat, and to generally be a good citizen...it makes for an arrestingly similar experience to being at a show, in miniature, replete with e-Lot, pregaming, postgaming, lifted "fingers" ("Who's got a link???" and "PM ME!" being the standard equivalents there), and all kinds of other sociologically scintillating corollaries.

Anyways, I could go on, and probably will, especially since I'll be back on the couch tonight, between puttering and packing, and chatting it up with the e-w00ks in Hoodstream-land, and many a night during this Summer Tour. I'd really love to get to Gorge, and since I'm the master of last-minute planning, I got all kinds of hookups and angles I could work to make it happen (including one particularly delicious guaranteed pancake breakfast). It's on the docket, I'm thinking about it, and we're hoping it's a go (that's the Royal We, by the way...it is, unsurprisingly, still only me -- what can I say...I'm an acquired taste, LOL). It would be a Gorge-ous way to mark 20 years following these very talented musicians, who are aging like a fine old oak monkey barrel on four wheels.

You'll also notice my new Twitter roll at the top right; I spun off a Phish-only Twitter account, to spare all my massive 300+ followers from the inevitable onslaught of arcane phististics...now I'll just bore them to death with mysterious meanderings and veiled mutterings to people who may or may not be listening, and absorption in whatever OTHER obsession-du-jour has got me on the run. FWIW, I've recently gotten deep back into dance music, particularly drum 'n' bass, which was a mainstay for me during the Dry Years, that awful first post-2000 hiatus. Now I have twice the phun...clubs, clubbing, new and deeper associations there, and the good old boys. Life's rich pageant, all over again.

So, tour on, bros and sisses, and dance them asses off! I'll see you on lot: actual, virtual, or otherwise.

Everyday I Write the F*cking Book, Okay? Nothing is Planned...

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:46:00 +0000

I'm not quite sure what seems more absurd…that I haven't written here since late June, that late June is already such a fossil, or that it's finally time for me to go tromping off to lot tonight, to get my summer's only phill from the Travelers' Trough.

It hasn't been the best summer, but the good man Jah has had a few slim mercies to lay upon this very good girl. I've labored to stay sane beneath a ton of anxiety, doubt, and dizzying transition; no more squeezing my freewheeling 21st century bohemian-nerd self into the sensible corporate low-heeled loafer of my old life. But alas, where does the flip-flop shod foot shuffle in a "no shirt, no shoes, no service" kinda world? It spends a lot of time dangling off the futon couch, stepping into an unknown void of future, toes wiggling vainly for footing, all the while the mind up top reeling & appealing to "superior forces" for signs of change.

Things I have had as mine to change have been few; one of them is my physical well-being. I've eaten healthy and lean all summer, and have dragged my mortal coil through umpteen iterations of introspective kickassery, including cardio kickboxing, speed walking & light weight training. I'm still sober, which, as always, takes its own share of intensely heavy lifting all its own, if engineered in a manner leaning towards consistent elevation (rather than soulless treading water on the wagon).

And finally, as ever germane to this ongoing conversation, there's been Phish.

"Hey, Phishhead!" called my friend Ian with mischievous volume, jaunting his way into a local gathering of sober folks, right in front of a rather large assemblage of über-kewl, ciggy-swiffing North Brooklyn hipsterati, myself dwelling mostly unnoticed among them (save a little shady non-anonymity in that area, displayed on a certain popular social networking portal).

"'Sup braw," I replied, flashing a "hang loose." In spite of myself, I grinned. I didn't flinch, didn't blink, just grinned. Time was, in that situation, I'd have withered, possessed of a strangely shameful conspicuousness at being an unrepentant champion of those hapless, accidental ringleaders of the "modern hippy aesthetic." But such has been the Summer of 2010, and, by now, there's no way it couldn't have happened. The likes of it may not ever happen again anytime soon, but such a proclamation, for now, shall be nothing less than second skin.

This much is obvious: whatever I may do with the endless changes I've listened to Phish go through this summer (and last year, Reunion 2009), the relationship is here to stay. And no matter what the circumstances, I don't think I'll be able to avoid for very long the fascination with their evolution. Honestly, I think that evolution could only become strange, confounding and unwieldy if, again, it should somehow end. But for now, right now, it is alive, and thriving, writhing and wriggling, rinsing and repeating, rising and self-erasing.

As of this moment, I am poised at 0:00 at the beginning of the third "Wading in the Velvet Sea" (I almost typed "Waiting in the Velvet Sea," hyulk hyulk, sorry faithful punters!) of Summer 2010, in Raleigh, NC 7/1/10. I have, until now, and until that point, listened to every single note Phish has played thus far this year. FYI: the only shows from last year's 50 I haven't yet laid ears on are shows # 1 and 3 of last year's East Coast run: believe it or not, I still haven't fully recovered from missing them, again, due to various and sundry "life circumstances"…

Yeah, I'm a little bit behind, missing 11 shows out of 27 to be exact. Not bad…I'm just past the halfway mark. Thus, I've listened to 14 shows in 9 weeks, the equivalent of seeing two straight weeks of shows, or ruminating on almost two shows a week, which is, in a sense, exactly what I've been doing. I had to take a breather for most of July, as you could imagine, especially since the end of June saw me having several royal heart attacks at the golden fungiform treasures the band began hauling out of the trove of their personal Atlantis, towards the end of the first leg of tour.

I'm just getting around to those now. Having just savored the very first recent emergence of one of my absolute favorite, lamentably awesome, weep-enducing hempseed shuffle-boogies, "Light Up or Leave Me Alone," I'm plowing bravely and itinerantly ahead on this newest, infinitely more demanding and personal version of V-T00R, headlong through my regret at having missed everything up until tonight, and tomorrow. Again, it's back to the Origin Space, moist incubator near the sea and sand…I can heal life's slings and arrows' wounds there keen. I'll sashay back into the fray, sample and survey the lot economy, make sure the Kids are Alright (I know, I know…you are), and try to raise my prime index finger up just right -- and will no doubt find what I'm looking for, hopefully for a low flat fee, and once again, tilt in through that misty door, to do what I can for the local pause of the Circus jalopy in my neck o' the brambles.

Incidentally (or not so), I've been writing the whole time I've been listening. Uhhh…doy? Why do you think I started this blog? I listen to Phish, I write. Done, and done. It's like smelling fresh bread and drooling…it just happens. And, with every strum, stumble and hum, I have amassed a pile of scribblins at least aloft of the foothills of Mt. Ranier (its snowy cap seen in the distance in the commemorative August 2009 post-Gorge photo below, Sea-Tac bound early in the morning of 8/9/01). What I've realized about this here bloggy-blog is that I don't really know how to handle it on a consistent basis. Actually, I barely know how to handle anything on a consistent basis; such is my peculiar mental eccentricity. But those things that seem native to my machinations, I do with great frequency, at an almost uncontrollable clip.

In short, with these mad shavings of Phish-fuled internal chatter, I'm thinking (just thinking, mind you…for me, it goes very far…I said, for me…) of scraping it all into a book. Yes, that's right, another Phish book.

"Huh? A book about a tour?"

C'mon, people, you know how I do. The jots I have collected are quasi-prose poetry based on my life, as interwoven with this phase dancing, wincing, frowning, rewinding, calculating, gesticulating, cavitating enterprise I have embarked on with my four Soul Brothers Number 1…2, 3 and 4 (in no particular order). I'm hoping that, with sufficient encouragement and endorsement, the book will not only be the first book almost solely about the analysis of a two years of Phish shows (for musicology's sake), but the first of its kind to be written entirely on a handheld device.

That's right, kids…I have thumbed thousands and thousands of words thus far, at least 40 pages of notes, all written whilst grocery shopping, dinner-eating, subway riding, platform-waiting, street-walking, corner turning, sober-keeping and generally roustabouting New York City at large. I wouldn't be surprised, speaking of kids, if I wasn't be the first to have done this, what with their thumbs much smaller, defter and more furious than mine.

However, what I have going for me is a particularly long, keen attention-span borne of that peculiar gulf between the Age of Machines, and the Age of the Cyber-Mental Melt, which still knows the creamy aroma of historicity when it smells it. My mind, heart, fingers and ears still know what knocks us all upside our heads, and/or lures us into the moldy lair of the sometimes stinky sea creatures. The sensibility can sniff out contextual sensations worthy of voicing, for the sake of either relation, or purely sociological analysis, on the level of observing outright psychiatric gymnastics.

It should probably be stated that this blog will, as time passes, also be getting a complete overhaul, to support the deepening fathoms of ongoing scholarship and absorption. The domain has been secured, and, well...the domain has been secured! 'Nuff said for now! A redesign and some greater whiz-bang is definitely worthy of the endeavor. For a big-yet-tiny mouth such as mine, best to take it all one byte at a time...

But it's all happening, folks, and it means something. Whether it comes to fire up your Kindles, or sneaks around and tickles your Nooks, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, later, your senses may oddly tingle as I pad towards the subway, pressing play, and descending, to later emerge into late summer's fading day, to have my ears bathed in all the snowflakey, quotidian glory of the Mages' livelihood a-sway. Let's hear it for meltage, ladies and gents, Walfredo's Gaucho slant and the Sloth's clogging the Maze, and the long, daily grind through my own purple haze. No matter what the rinse may hold, hey…'scuse me while I kiss these guys. Brosephs all, they never cease to inspire. And for that, the least I can do is perspire a drip. Or a few.

Cracklin' Prose: Stealing Time for the Lofty Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:42:00 +0000

An ethereal cascade into "Harry Hood" (out of a "Theme From the Bottom" taken on an eye-popping detour out its own side) made me make a Ren Hoek face. Those of you old enough to know remember narrow-mouthed, pendulous-tongued, bulge-eyed rictus of the erstwhile MTV cartoon chihuahua... Having just finished listening to the whole, very long, seriously eh-pick (in no uncertain terms), 6/18/10 was made for a writer like me to bathe in.

While positively *getting down* to the combustibly jubilant "Halley's Comet" Set II opener, I jumped up and down yelling, "This is it! This is the one!", in reference to that nebulous "thingy" I seem to need to drag my voice into the current cloud of appreciative analysis, the locomotive strong enough to ignite and propel my train of thought along its twisty track.

As I began to say above, at some point during the "Hood" intro, I decided I'm going to use Hartfords I and II as the linchpin for my discussion of Summer 2010 Tour So Far. In Part I, I shall attempt to distill the reams of critical guff I've ammassed on Toyota Park through Portsmouth, then land on Hartford I as a defining moment, a sort of power bridge between VA and what will encompass Part II, Night II of the Hartford stand, a full-blooded, gate-opening welcome to what I recently coined "3.0.1 - The New Classic Phish" in an email to a notable phellow Phishtorian.

Oh, process, glorious process! Stay tuned, lovelies! I have an end to the thing which is always the clincher, sappy as it may be. But hopefully I'll have it wrung out before I head to the Delaware River camping and rafting Thursday and this weekend, with water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink! ;-)

Shred centrally in Mansfield to-nite! Y'all are in for it; it's gonna be a week. The parapet has been breached, and the Phish war against sanity in music has begun anew!

(Speaking of which, PS: Phish, if you're listening, and you really are an "All-Request Band," then you'll do us all a favor by kicking it real "Back to the Future"-stylee with the FAST VERSION of "Sanity" (a-la 5/28/89) sometime this tour. 'Nuff said...)

The Show of Life: Summer Tour 2010 in the Velvet C.

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:24:00 +0000

Curious readers,

I am currently thrilling to the unfolding drama that is V-T00R, listening to every show the minute it emerges, and writing down copious impressions in that way that I do. These impressions are lengthy, in-depth, and have gotten discursively more elaborate, in terms of the musical dynamics of Phish. It's decidedly more thoughtful, essay-length exegesis material than the traditional daily "Hay, this show was awesome/not so good" etc. (which, too, has it's place among the voices of the community).

It takes editing, redigesting tunes, backing up and relistening...and can certainly border on mental. I've recently been turned onto the work of music "critic" Paul Williams (no, not the songwriter), and, not to mention, finally got the time (for the most part) to be as immersed in this process of writing as I've been since 2000. I'm adjusting to the whole process, and specifically that of ingesting, absorbing, metabolizing and expounding on Phish. As the joy of it all evolves, I'm coming closer to adopting a comfortable means of knowing when these sublimations of tour and the band's sonic evolution are "done" and ready for public consumption.

Oh, and of course, there's the rather brass-tacks fact that I am distracted by being without steady income, on unemployment, and waiting for that just-right, part-time IT consulting job to come along. For maximum impact, I need a clearer mind, unmuddied by looming bills and dangling fiscal responsibilities, which do dearly impede both the creative process, and (as suffered this last glorious weekend) the ability to responsibly afford to go on tour! And we all know: being sonically sequestered with just the music has its own place among the divine, but tour is the real deal.

So, just keepin' y'all posted. In capsule: Toyota was a warmup that got heated in Set II; Blossom had both petals and pedals pushing psyhedelic envelopes; Hershey began to melt the frost of rusty tendons and signaled promisingly expanding fun and flexibility; Portsmouth was an interesting plateau landing the band in the Easy Coast stew again; but Hartfords...oh Hartfords is where my mind split, and the discourse becomes electric. SPAC is next in the snack pack.

Stay mellow, campers, safe travels, and twist a knee and a booty for me.

Backwards Down the 2009: A Right-on-Time 3.0.1 Recap (Part II)

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:31:00 +0000

Great. Fine. So, you have "Mars" to thank for the appearance (finally!) of this post, the so-called "continuation" of the first "BDT2009" Recap, posted -- crap! -- almost a month ago! I'm not gonna get into excuses, but two main things are to blame: 1) My own personal "Bag it, tag it, sell it to the butcher in the store" happens to be the dreaded Three P's of Perfectionism, Procrastination and Paralysis. That is, I want everything wrapped in little bows and well-matched paper, all sense-making and thorough, and most of all (for the sake of my ego) totally awesome. Unfortunately, in the name of getting ANYTHING posted at all, these standards need to be either reduced, or eliminated entirely. You'll see in this piece I've almost opted for the latter...

Reason 2) for the extended delay of this post will rise to the surface within about 48 hours: yeah, TOUR. Tour is upon us. It's happening. But, despite all my best efforts, wishes and hopes to the contrary, it's almost 99.99% certain I will not be in Chicago Friday night, or Cuyahoga the next, or...blah blah blah. And about all that, I am NOT HAPPY. From the minute dates hit the airwaves, I've been trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents, all to no avail.

You might hearken with electrified fondness back to the beginning of Fall 2009 tour, whereupon whirling out the door to MSG 12/2/09 for night 1 of 3, I was roundly canned from my job. Well, things being what they is, I haven't found another job, and have been riding the dole wagon ev'ry since, a gig here, a drop in the bucket there, and the landlord always a-lurkin' -- but, as if by magic, it's all churned along with relative, though chaotic predictability.

But one thing became for sure about three weeks ago: saying "eff all" and going on tour on the fumes of the Government, to heck w/ my landlord for a month, and without so much as sand on the wind in terms of prospects upon my return: NOT A GOOD IDEA. Luckily, with the 2009 behind me, I've come to learn many lessons about what I WANT, and what I NEED. And what I NEED is to be well-fed, alive, housed, employed, sane, sober, solvent and happy -- in the final analysis, as much as I wanted to, going on tour wouldn't have supported that agenda in the slightest.

So, having to closely survey last year's "product," while knowing I wasn't going to be bearing witness to the laying of new bricks, has made me extremely glum and crestfallen. But soldier forth I must. I'll likely appear in a few last-minute lot bustouts closer to the the second half of this first leg of tour -- Hartford, SPAC...who knows. You know how I do.

Anyway, to get back to the matter at hand (and today, the anniversary of my *favorite show* of 2009), I'll begin by saying this: Phish plays a lot of songs.

Throughout 2009, they played many of the same songs multiple times, much to the chagrin of some old-skool fans. This, being endlessly bitched and moaned about from aforesaid fans (some indeed truly old-skool, others merely presumptuously posturing, ill-informed or bored), gave me pause, and I've landed on the side of the Phellas.

There's a whole new crop of phans coming up. I might've mentioned it, but for laughs, I'll reiterate that the crowd in the Chelsea Clearview Cinema (wherein I saw Phish 3D) had to be, on average, below age of 25. This pretty much means that a veritable glut of Phishheads are more than likely THE KIDS of the First Wave of phans!

I've come to greater and greater terms with this, on lot, on trains and planes, in crowds and stands. My good buddy Thane from the Train (to Charlottesville) is probably a nubile postgrad backpacking through Patagonia, trying to "find himself." If my old ass hasn't "found myself" yet, then I've probably not found just where I need to be looking. Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that that place may just keep moving around. And lo, thus, must I!

True...in 2009 (barring 12/30/09, har har), Phish did not play a whole lotta their vast litany of songs, sticking, rather, to decidedly more straight-ahead but, as things progressed, tinkered-with and inspiring versions of some perennial classics, both old, and new. I dunno if there's a rationale behind the frequent, healthy (yet often irksomely so) warming-up of Phish's favorite song muscles. I'll briefly posit that what seems to be a glut of repetition may actually be logistical distortion; for example, 13 instances of "AC/DC Bag" in 1994 may seem statistically fewer in comparison to 2009's 12, simply because 1994 had 124 shows, while 2009 had only about a quarter as many (50)...

Merging the above two concepts (song frequencies, plus the slightly decreased phan age demographic), I'm gonna take it back to school this time around, for Part II of my Backwards Down the 2009 Just-in-Time 3.0.1 Recap. I hatched upon an idea, while puzzling on how to tackle a "Best of" list for a band with a ~300-song catalog. "Let's do it A-B-C style," came the bright idea! But I couldn't use the whole alphabet or I'd be here all year (or longer than it's already taken me, i.e. much longer than desired!). So, I decided to look up the letter frequencies of the English alphabet, and use those selections instead!

Starting from the top, and heading south with the most popular letters players in the A-B-C's, here's what I came up with:

11/18/09 "AC/DC Bag":

2009 was the year of what I've enjoyed calling the "Bag Opener" -- an overall splendid way to get a Phish show on the road (so to shpeak). 1995 is the only other year far as I can see with as many "Bag Openers" (that is, shows with "Bag" in the first set opening position), tied at 7 with 2009. Of course, with an 81-to-50 show ratio, 2009 definitely made for what seemed like a whole lotta exploding "Bag"s. None, in my ear, were quite a pop as 11/18/09, a/k/a "Bag COBOpener" -- what better way to start the first Fall Phish tour in nine years... (where, of course, they shall -- *sob* -- be starting this new decade's Summer Tour -- *weep* -- in nary a day...*flogs self*)

The 11/18/09 "Bag" unfolds slowly apace, Trey and Page's harmonized vocals and riffs ratcheting, vamped up, boogied down, loud, sneaky and sinister... "Bag" openers are true temperature-takers, compasses for where the band and crowd are starting off the night's journey together. But things have to wind up with near-mechanical, precarious precision in a "Bag" opener, lest it poof into an overheated air-sack. The "Bag COBOpener" exemplifies this, briefly and deftly disassembling Detroit Rock City first on tiptoes, with exploratory pokes and squeals, right in time to clang into sync just over 7 minutes later with a pyrotechnical bang that twinkles off into the Great Unknown a freshly, deftly opened "Bag" has store. In this case, we're then treated to the Detroit sack's first contents: a little Cobo "Foam"...

8/7/09 "Bathtub Gin":

By the end of a hot-ass "Gin", you can barely believe what distilled from the unassuming hokey-pokey from whence it came. I'm grateful for small miracles (and comments, I must remind you!), because right when I got stuck between this "B"-stumper and the much easier rest of the alphabet (another thing hanging this post up in extended perfectionistic limbo), I got a comment from a certain "Jake," reminding me that I actually bore witness to the juiciest "Gin" of 2009: the "GORGE GIN" (which went > "Harry Hood" holy-sh'incidentally).

Clocking in at a healthy 18 minutes, the "Gorge Gin" journey began at a late point in an already magic-ass set (preceded by "Moma, Light > Taste, Fluffhead" and a much-needed "Joy" breather). I was bitch-slapped by thoroughly aggro, door-opening piano chaos, a stage-setting, determinedly upbeat march, then a host of mischievous, spark-sprinkling fuses that soon sent a whole buncha "BLAMMO" into the canyon behind the stage. At around 9 minutes, after shredding like an attack dog, Trey riffs chunkily but ever so slightly back into the mix, whereupon Fishman pops out with a quick tumble of funktification, soon matched by Mike's viciously viscous and persistent gurgling, into a full-on, key-shifting, head-tilting "frog" jam (that's "funky-prog," kids).

Then, adding insolence to inspiration, they had the absolute nards to leap off the cliffside into an 18-minute "Harry Hood"! Like, what?! Dare I say, near-religious for the hills to witness. That weekend's shows, after all, were what supplied the inspiration for this blog!

"Cities" / "Crosseyed and Painless": So invisibly plugged-in am I to the linkage of these two Talking (Phish) Heads staples, I didn't realize until just now that they're two of the sauciest C-songs in the Phish canon, both yielding fierce 2009 covers of the Renegades from RISD.

"Cities" came in two prime forms this past year, first, with a most laid-back and positively Jah-licious 6/2/09 Jones Beach-side version, and, in my pick for best, the show-saving "Cities" from Googleburg, 8/5/09 at Shoreline. Don't get me wrong: the latter show had great energy and overall awesome playing, but I think it was veritably extinguished by the glory that followed up the Coast at Gorge (see "Bathtub Gin" above). Last year's "Cities"' liked the seaside, because waves carried it away both times. As similar for the two "Crosseyed"s of 2009, the two "Cities" each have distinct merit, but with one holding slightly more weight than the other.

6/2/09 "Cities":

The Wantagh "Cities" was an atmospherically and perfect choice, with an air of laid-back yet richly historical (dare I say) Grateful Dead-like significance. A dreamy, yet persistently dubby vibe floated over the oceanside, the air fragrant with salt, seaweed and...uhh..."land weed"... With heart-informed rhythmic familiarity, the band members relaxed into each others' wah-ified, lovingly modulated grooves, creating a familiar but richly unique sense of place with a body of temples in motion, the band weaving moments in a tapestry of musical legacy, our communal memory.

After scrounging my ticket on a trade for a 6/4 extra I had in the lot, I finally made my way into the nosebleeds, and tilted into the high, high stands, just in time for this tune to fire up. I twirled slowly, dancing dizzily along the rail, ecstatic to be back in the throng after what seemed like a lifetime after a renewed taste (but indeed only two days!). I high-fived strangers, ran headlong into some old friends, then took my place, dipping down, surfacing, and dipping again into my own Phishtory, which began in that very amphitheater.

8/5/09 "Cities":

The (other) Shoreline "Cities" delivered a whiff of similar historicity as its predecessor, taking its place, though, among a strongly-delivered, but somehow energetically diffuse show. The crowning glory of the Shoreline "Cities" is its mammoth, goal-sinking segue into an incredible "Maze" both of which were the absolute highlights of the show.

There were only two "Crosseyed"s in 2009, both cause for much endless squealing from those lucky enough to catch them. Actually, they're such rare gems that it's hard to choose a favorite, so instead, I'll briefly wax on their particular charms.

6/21/09 "Crosseyed and Painless":

The first of the dynamic duo was Set II opener of the last show of 2009 Summer Tour Leg I, Alpine Valley 6/21/09. This was the first show of 2009 after Hampton that made me elbow everyone and everything outta the way, head to LivePhish.com and snag it. Seeing the setlist, I HAD to hear it the SECOND it was available, and I was more than willing to spend my last bucks to do it. Hah, it only took them three weeks to whip me into that much of a frenzy? You can hear the blood shooting from the eardrums of the crowd even on the SBD mix, when the frenetic rhythm spins up; everyone knew they were freaking lucky.

About midway through, the trance-whip turns into an inferno, with Trey whirling out bursts of disto-tinged code. The ensuing synergetic froth is worthy of being christened the "Alpine Jam" on the LivePhish recording.

7/31/09 Red Rocks "Crosseyed and Painless":

Secondly, something about the depth of valleys sends the up the call of the "Crosseyed", since the year's second emerged from a masterfully executed, key-shifted segue out of a richly jammed "Drowned", in Show II of the 4-night Red Rocks stand that kicked off Summer 2009 Leg II. If I had to choose, the Alpine "Crosseyed" would win out, for some truly inspired Trey soloing that, in 3.0 style, meshes prominently but equally on a plane with the other band members; no showboating on this cruise!

11/22/09 "David Bowie":

The Fall '09 Syracuse "Bowie" signaled the return of Fearsome Phish; an exacting onslaught, almost supernatural in its virtuosity and near-malevolent interconnectedness. Second only to the SPAC "Bowie" (more psychedelic and otherworldly in nature), it comes out of the gate like a lion with fire in its eyes, plunging through the preliminary positions to rest heaving in the pre-jam pocket. Like a quiet storm, the band slowly (but stealthily) slide around in a forcefully loungy bebop place that suddenly catches like a brush fire, led by Trey's deliberate, feral escalation, Page's pounding piano chords right behind, and trussed up by direct and limber backend Fish and Mike (who is definitely the song's silent-but-deadly MVP).

I went to college not half-hour from Syracuse (in God's own purgatory, Oswego, NY), and I'll say firsthand that Central New York has a ferocious, hardy Native American energetic underpinning that few acknowledge; the flying tomahawk of Phish's fiercest fusionary vision sliced out the "David Bowie" opener that night, which, upon first listen, had me scraping my quivering jaw off a sidewalk somewhere in Long Island City, Queens.

12/3/09 "Free":

Captured in all its crystalline crispness and hypereality, the MSG "Free" dug deep into the delivery mechanism (i.e. the band), probing and expressing its message. Obviously, "swimming weightless in the womb" of Madison Square Garden again for a second night of three, for the first time in 7 years, the tune's joyous prosody pulsed rhythmically in the air upon its classic opening measures. Although I can't say exactly authoritatively, Phish is one of the only bands I've witnessed at MSG that can throw hooks like the circular raindance and spin of "Free" into the walls, and shrink the 19,000 capacity venue down to the size of an explosive, rhythmic block party in the round.

Trey and Mike both splash out lively, unhindered lines right from the guts to the fingers; it's a brief shot, but placed at dead center of a cathartic, bricklaying second set sandwich -- "Down with Disease > Piper > Fluffhead, Cities" followed by "Halley's Comet > (an armpit pumping party-jumping) 2001 > David Bowie", the MSG "Free" was enough to make me remember why letting life's limber magic take over is sometimes just the way to go.

6/9/09 "Ghost":

A good way to refer to some of the best instances of "Ghost" in 2009 is as "The Slappin' Apparitions" -- most of the 2009 killers rose from an eerie fog lifting off some of the year's smokinest jams. I know the pillory is opening for my neck, having not written "11/27/09 Ghost" to head off this section, but I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a minute, so bear with me...Fall 2009's Albany "Ghost" was the second leg of a Vitruvian Man-like ubermensch that floated up and shattered the ceiling many thought Phish had hit and/or been trapped under for most of last year.

But believe me when I tell/remind/convince you that the evolution was being contrived months and months earlier, you just had to be listening to hear it. Asheville's "Ghost" (or, properly, the spirited "Backwards Down the Number Line > Ghost" combo) is the direct ancestor of Albany's sky-shifting "Seven Below > Ghost". Vastly more uptempo, and true to its funky roots, but with equally expansive key-changes, ranges and flow, Asheville's "Ghost" dug one of the first holes that a grew the kind of monster seen in Albany five months later.

3/7/09 "Halley’s Comet":

To avoid the obvious “H” Phish song that people were sick to death of on the first leg of Summer tour, I'm picking a Phish-o-sophical dark horse that doesn't get near enough attention in the Phish rotation, but for the inevitable "hoo-hah party" value it absolutely guarantees from Mike's first "deep joop ba-ba-ba jimbo". But to me, "Halley's Comet", in a tradition of, say, Dr. John or, hell, even the Four Tops, espouses a familial feeling borne of whimsical, honest storytelling, despite the fact that, in the case of this song that never actually includes the celestial body of its title but in its merry refrain, it makes zero factual sense.

Much in that vein, bringing it back to the second show of the reunion (that's 3/7/09 Hampton, holder of not a great many Greatest Hits of 2009, mostly since the band was rusty as phuck-all) makes sense in the concept of historical atmosphere, space and place: phamilial, rootsy, comfortable to the point of barenaked hilarity, and the everyday celebration of good old-fashioned new-school road rock, this time satisfyingly back home among its people.

All this can be heard, and felt, in Trey's joyously quavery tones, Page's celebratory near-holler, Mike's merry boobling, some phine and poppy Fishman shimmy, and, most of all, the straight-up ecstatic "get-down" whiff coming off the crowd, even on the recordings. Moreso on the healing tip, too, the Hampton "Halley's" plops quite quickly into the debut of "Beauty of a Broken Heart," which is all about stitching up the wounds, and swerving into the light...

*whew!!* That's about half the functional alphabet right there. I'll tell ya right now; "Y" is not one of the topmost utilized letters in the alphabet, so that'll save me a couple more sleepless nights. It may take me a while, but what can I say? Mine is not an easy life in the big city. Next time, I'll hopefully be finally finished catchin' ya up on what's gone on, as what's comin' at ya...is comin' at ya!

Letter to the Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:26:00 +0000

In response to my last post's "Expansion Module jam" comment, re: 11/27/09 "Seven Below > Ghost", "Jake" writes:

Q: "I'm curious as to the etymology of your term "Expansion Module jam" for the 11/28/09 Seven Below > Ghost. Is it because the jam, and this style in general of jamming, finds what seems to be an independent harmonic, melodic, and affective segment, plays around with it, and then moves to another one of these segments with basically block juxtaposition? I'm guessing that's what you mean with the term "module," since it's a more modular style rather than a smooth progression towards an end goal (like Hood or Slave), or the very crazy, abrupt juxtapositions of old-school '92-'93 era jams (like the 8/28/93 Antelope). I'd suggest that the SPAC 6/19/04 Piper is a great example of this "modular" style jamming. 5 distinct jam segments, including a heavy Tweeprise jam..."

A: Yes, exactly. Well put. Students, you can learn well from Jake's class participation. High-fives, "Jake" -- nice work! Here's my very own (holy-crap lucky) capture of the aforesaid specimen, which was difficult to film whilst holding the top of my head on from exploding, due to the rapid change in, err, "atmospheric pressure"...

(PS: M'boy, 8/28/93 "Antelope" -- and, heck, the legendary 8/28/93 in toto -- is worthy of a whole post unto itself, and I'm glad you brought it up. A tale for another time, but an excellent reference and reminder! Extra credit!)

Part II (the so-called meat, or tofu, or TVP, if you prefer) of my 2009 "Best-of" series is forthcoming. There's a lot to write about and compile. It's coming together, I'm about 3/4 done; please be patient. The management apologizes for any inconvenience... ;-)

Backwards Down the 2009: A Right-on-Time 3.0.1 Recap (Part I)

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:26:00 +0000

[It's made out of people!!! From Phish's Official Summer Tour site.]

When I started this here blog, I spent a lot of time wrestling with myself over whether I'm just a mindless cheerleader, or, rather, an *epicure* of nuanced discussion of the *critical dialectic* of Phish. (Yeah, take that, emo hipsters!)

I quickly grasped that one who starts a blog about a band cannot, in any way, simply be a cheerleader. The conversation would get boring pretty quick.

However, critiques (mostly) aside for now, there's much good aphoot on the Phish agenda. The piece regarding my three-month absence is forming up much slower than I'd like, and may be expanded in more depth as a piece about the general phenomenon of musical obsession -- addiction, if you will -- over at my new, very slowly evolving, Phish-phree blog, Wade Between the Lines. Well, that's if someone with a blog about a band can keep things so clearly separated. Oy vey! I never said I was a kosher blogger! (::rolls eyes::)

So, as I suppose is worthy of a blog, I'm going to deposit here a recent discourse with a phriend of mine, regarding the current state of Phish. And why not? The crest of their wave has risen again and the hot, heady Summer vibe is again climbing. Awash with public exposure after last night's first post-reunion, full-band TV appearance (on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, as part of his "Exile on Main Street Week" festivities), they're on the minds of both the dyed-in-wool and uninitiated, too.

Yeah, I know what it's like when tour is nigh, people...it's happening for me as well. Invisible money is flying outta purses and pockets, rational explanations for "normal living" are wearing thin, and longing for the sweet smell of fresh-pressed Groove Juice -- that undefinable, intoxicating nectar -- is haunting dreams and (seemingly endless) work hours alike.

But, if you're a phan that hasn't yet gotten back on the bandwagon, you may be jaded, bummed, resentful, mistrustful, or just plain unable to *get into* Phish 3.0. It's gotta be tough. And, for many old-schoolers among us, there simply isn't enough time in the day, and all sorts of factors to deal with; kids, mortgages, rent, responsibilities. For the youngers, the song remains the same; cash, school, parents, cash, transportation, "hooch" (umm...), cash, finding phriends, cash...

(An aside...I'll tell you one thing; for me, sober touring definitely knocks a few more brain cells back into the equation. Gearing up for spending a lot of the summer on the road myself, I honestly couldn't -- and didn't over many years, mainly from paranoia -- make tour happen any other way. Thing is; I won't be by myself...I've got phriends in "naturally high" places. FYI, kids: yep, still sober. Made 7 years in February. Why? You don't wanna know what happens otherwise. And if that ain't a mother-flippin' miracle, I'm gonna walk on the Good Lord's bathwater.)

But I digress. Why is Summer Tour (a/k/a Phish 3.0.2, for you dorques in the audience...) worth making the effort? Hell if I know, for you, anyway. For ME, though, it's worth it because I have dedicated myself to having the time to make it worth it. You figure: a band such as Phish stays in the picture for more than two decades, it's something to pay attention to. All way-too-easy and buffoonish comparisons aside (*coughs* Jerry *coughs*), love 'em or hate 'em, they're one of the most important American bands around.

That said, I recently had a a conversation with an old-skool phriend and partner in Crimes of the Mind from way back. He's among the most staunchly discerning a-Phish-ionados I've known. Though he's scarcely the same high-strung, rangy cat he was 10 years ago (all growed up with wife and daughter), he expressed ambivalence about upcoming tour:

"If they could replicate the Seven Below from Albany [i.e. 11/28/09, the now-legend Expansion Module jam] just once, I might consider seeing them again," he said. "But their brilliance has been too far in between. It's really not their fault. In 1997 they were our age, at their peak creative abilities. They've mellowed out due to old age and their songs and straight jams and solos just don't do it for me anymore..."

Pshaw! I'm really not a fan of the "they're old" get outta jail free card, when it comes to writing Phish off as no longer a going concern as musical performers, entertainers, and innovators. And nor am I in the convincing business. But, however you slice it, I'm a PHAN, goddammit. Thus inspired by such nescience, I rattled off a few "Well have you heard..."s from between November and New Year's 2009 that I think stack up well enough to (in my estimation) make a case for some serious shizz to look forward to.

Here's the first part of my "Glad I Didn't Write This Sooner" review of Phish Greatest Bits 2009, starting with those four examples I mentioned to my grumpy ol' pal. Take a listen; comments welcome. My next piece will be a "Most Popular Letters of the Alphabet"-ical rundown of Best Versions of Songs from last year (at least as many as jump off the top of my head: in progress).

In the meantime, though, dig the sound of the just-crashed wake, bearing a promise of oncoming surf. And again, I mean it...comments welcome!

1)
11/18/09 "46 Days" jam: The first day of Fall Tour had this not-incredibly-jammable (-seeming) tune hauled out near the end of the first set. In Hoodstream.com chat, there were banal e-groans from those present, regarding the song choice. However, as we squinted with our ears to the grungy stream, no video to be seen, when the verses ended, something happened, and it went a little something like this... The jam's a little pokey, perhaps, but spacey enough that, by the end of the song (which just floats in like nebular fog), some celestial transportation has surely occurred. Also, check out this Chris Kuroda "WTF"-style light show during the "46 Days" jam, as an example of how CK5's influence as "5th Phish" may indeed effect overall improvisational outcomes, and vicey-versey...)

2)
12/29/09 "Tweezer" jam: I was working the table the first two nights of the Miami run, taking turns jogging in and out of the stands to catch bits of the show, on rotation with my other sober phellows. When the Tweezer began, we were kind of "meh." But again, when the main element had fired, and we stopped paying attention, soon, someone stood blinking and said, "Are you hearing what's happening in there...?"

3)
(later that set) 12/29/09 "Gotta Jibboo > Wilson > Gotta Jibboo": Okay, okay folks...this is just what we were used to back in the day, 50-minute "Tweezer"s and setlist gymnastics of the most consistently irie variety. Things have changed. But what slays me is how people seem to think a) they don't still have it in 'em, or b) Rome was fabricated of popsicle sticks on Jehovah's lunch break. Not at all perfect in execution, the cartoon anvil of the aforementioned segue (as you'll hear) hit the crowd like a sock full of pennies. Yes! Keep on keeping us guessing! Mush, mush, more!!

And...

4)
12/30/09 "Boogie On Reggae Woman > Run Like an Antelope" (or, as I'm fond of calling it, the "Boogie Antelope"): The pre-NYE barnburner of December 30, 2009 was so powerful, it contributed to my disappearing off the blogosphere for three months. The sheer magnitude of this last-blast of Phish brilliance for the year (no offense 12/31; you wuz aiight) knocked my flippin' flip-flops off; I was still wearing them, and South Beach sand, by the time I, err, "engineered" my way onto the floor, where I floated around for most of the show. Wearing green shorts and an orange Phish "Citrus" Miami t-shirt (bought at setbreak because my still-damp bathing suit + 1st set sweat soaked my first shirt), I planted myself messily down front in the Fish-Mike pocket, just in time for this bit of insanity to emerge. "Lost my shit" (audibly) kinda covers the sentiment in most of those in attendance...

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Phish 3D: A Glide Inside the Cubic Tube

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:44:00 +0000

I'd sacrifice anything come what might
For the sake of having you near
In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night
And repeats, repeats in my ear

Don't you know little fool, you never can win
Use your mentality, wake up to reality
But each time I do, just the thought of you
Makes me stop before I begin
'Cause I've got you under my skin

-- Cole Porter, "Under My Skin"

It’s a good thing I was in Piscus interruptus between 11/01/09, and Friday night at Chelsea Cleaview Cinema in NYC. When the lights went down just after midnight, the show was brand new to my ears and eyes. FYI, Piscus interruptus is my invented description of delayed ingestion of some aspect of Phish, in whatever form, for whatever reason, whether their whole polyvalent orbit, or just the hearing of a certain show, or shows.

The term came to me while in that very Phish-frozen state, from January 2010 until a few weeks back, circumstances of which will be discussed in more depth my next post. But, as in this case, sometimes, I just don’t get around to bearing witness to some slice of Phish. Usually, though, there always ends up being some astounding cosmic obviousness for why it’s better off that way.

Phish 3D is another file-under in that category for me. I won’t attempt to pin down their motives in producing the film, itself and its subject matter the newest entry in their litany of ambitious live concert offerings. Though brief, it’s on par with the fullness of legendary 7-disc Clifford Ball DVD extravaganza, first for the novelty of The Glasses. Never have I felt such kinship with Trey as a fellow spectacle-clad nerd; I can't have anything in my eyes except my eyeballs, so contacts have always been a non-option, making 3D movies a precariously smudgy ordeal.

[Tremendous geek, ready to rock!]

The film is sensuously intimate, to say the least, though not particularly awash in emotional intimacy. How those seemingly related states sometimes don't quite intersect is one of the fascinating, enduring mysteries inherent in Phish. Phans are given equal witness to the internal mechanics of the Floating Rainbow Peanut, but, more importantly, the outer-dimensional expansions of the band’s faces, and a few entrancing (yet detached) backstage run-throughs. When the concert footage kicks in, it's fun time.

Energetic highlights of the film come early, perhaps guaranteeing energy compromise in its latter half. When "Tweezer" (perennial crowd-pleazer) began, the theatre became (unsurprisingly) thick with herbal smog, and dancing audience members filled the aisles, self included, at least until jam break.

Page and Fishman are again revealed as carnal firmament of Phish. Their left-and-right bracketed expressions suggest pressure molding in die-cuts of space, forming a perpetual vessel that contains its more volatile, arbitrary contents. This mélange becomes most thrilling to witness, as "Tweezer" gets more reformatted and ugly, then suddenly sprawling and gorgeous, 4th dimensional swerve, whilst riding a light-train into "Maze". (Weirdly and incidentally, as things Phish tend to happen, euphoric recall reminds me that "Cities" > "Maze" was a better aspect of mostly indistinct 08/05/09 Shoreline Amphitheatre…note to self, must revisit).

Onscreen, from behind my 3D glasses, terse, hyper-real, tumultuously grimaced Page soloing is tossed about by Trey’s aggressively narrow-eyed, abstract prodding, all seen as though sitting atop Page’s piano. Trey seems bent on extruding the angular maze, almost unnervingly so at times. One can only imagine kinesis in the band room, without cameras present… Again, as with Clifford Ball, I'm stunned at how very close we're getting, while remaining just-so-slightly impersonal, like tracing the metallic contours of Mike’s remarkably immobile facial features.

Soon, we’re onstage in visibly rippling, late Sunday morning Indio heat. My skin sizzles with nostalgia (not the good kind). But I’m then loudly amused at the plywood-esque brim of Fishman's cartoonish Phish baseball cap, a hilarious bit of nightmare haberdashery [see diagram]. It’s tricky to separate music of a concert film from the film itself, but the acoustic set ranks most visually and musically interesting portion of Phish 3D, much due to the Technicolor weirdness of phans, and secondarily to beautifully nuanced orchestrations of Phish in an “unplugged” format.

[Fishman and his Festival 8 Sunday morning doppelganger. Pic by C. Taylor Crothers, from phishfromtheroad's Flickr photoset.]

"The Curtain," stirring, magical, and played in stoic absorption, has not sounded as majestic, causing me to actually consider the novel concept of a 100% acoustic Phish show. I had to be careful here to mind the screen while iTyping, to not miss 3D snippets like crowd hippie sketchily painting the stage on a strangely-gessoed canvas, stippled in Martian-morning pink and white. (Some wisacre behind me quipped, “I bet it’s gonna turn out awesome.”) Better, there were more “note-to-self” phan nibbles, like a very impressive Phish lot shirt held aloft, designed like a "Twister" game board (white with big red, yellow, and blue dots), its song-name punchline emblazoned on the front: “Twist”! (That is, “Twister” in its original font, with the last two letters lopped off.) Ah, enduring artistic brilliance of phans is just a little of what keeps pulling me back in…

A rather awkward moment came in the unbidden segue of “Mike’s Junk” > "Train Song". This red-blooded American gal was shaken out of a growing theatrical contact high and well-reproduced, hot-ass desert sun, when the crane-cam, in upward drift, fixated itself momentarily on Mike Gordon’s (err) crotch, in spectacular depth. Maybe due to continuity, it was difficult to edit that part out...?

Anyway, though the remainder of the acoustic set bore testament to versatility, it began to betray increasingly unhelpful cinematic disarray.

Things began to come loose in final sequences of Phish 3D. I’m not saying this due to my ostensible past bias surrounding the Halloween costume choice. Of all “Phish Does Exile on Main Street” highlights I would've chosen, the Rolling Stones staples “Loving Cup” (a version that could be termed “Best Cup Ever”), “Happy” (love, love, love Fishman's voice, and its otherworldly, comic sensuality!), and “Shine a Light,” are a darn good lot. But by then, the audience was palpably pummeled. Over-the top, soul-inflaming tension release shoots from the screen, which the 3D brain drain could not sustain.

That Coachella Valley weekend – 90° dehydrating desert sun – was gorgeous yet challenging, definitely among Phish’s most endurance-testing venues ever (Camden notwithstanding, haw, haw). The movie’s eventual, questionable tolerability will not be blamed on that, the quality of music (which, while not among most legendary Phish, was certainly above-snuff), or thrilling, smartly documented, wild accoutrements of Festival 8. For me, less-than-wise placement of the film’s sequences end up its biggest downfall.

My re-imagining is as follows. Though not temporally realistic, it’s art, so I can do what I want (so, there!): 1) Exile backstage rehearsal footage (an initial, non-jarring first 3D taste), 2) the Exile sequence (an analogous, impressive display of the weekend’s “main event”), 3) the acoustic set (which, though muted, was surprisingly rich), 4) the 11/01/09 footage (the juicy Phish meat of the film), and 5) the "Suzy Greenberg" closer, with an absolute omission of the night’s envelope-pushing “Suzy" coda. In that order, Phish in its essence might have been preserved, and a “jump the shark” energy wane and muddling, non-Phish entities (both songs, and people) so late in the mix, avoided. A truly arresting sparrow’s-eye view -- as if perched on the end of Mike's bass headstock -- comes during the end credits, some serious 3D wow-factor gone wasted, in terms of the punchy angle they’re presumably going for.

Either way, during the throbbing finale of the Stones-skin, scorching superimposition, soul-tight impression of their musical past, I suddenly realized it was exactly 6 months to the moment it all went down, the morning of May 1, 2010. I smiled in spite of myself, simply because they're back, and I'm back, as ever inspired by it all, the lumpy and the smooth alike. I made it, despite incongruence and emotional dissonance. It (the movie) got made; it's here, we’re all here, and it’s okay. I survived! And so did the love.

The “Best Suzy Since Beacon Theatre 1994 with the Giant Country Horns" began, and I had just boarded the Ferris wheel in a melancholy, sun-poisoned funk. Now, having seen Phish 3D, I’m nowhere near as crusty, even with my constructively creative critiques, all among the magnificent pageantry of deep connection with this complex, oft ungraspable, always compelling band. Despite its flaws, the Good Lord (Buddha, of course :-) shined a light on me with this flick. At Chelsea Clearview, half-an-hour from home, I got delayed gratification from all I abandoned 3,000 miles away at Festival 8, weeping on the tarmac, reading the acoustic setlist in real-time on Twitter just after Noon, sitting on a flight out of Palm Springs a day early, to nurse my terrific outbreak of polymorphous light eruption (PMLE) in NYC.

In much less physically compromising circumstances, I was ridiculously early, "the dork" at the front of the line, demanding another free glossy poster (the top one had fingerprints all over it!), howling aloud, chair dancing and gesticulating to Maze, fully recovered from some rather profound side-effects of my relationship to this quizzical musical entity. And so it goes. There are many full circles, rearranging globs, shifting spheres, rainbow peanuts, and more Technicolor dimensions yet to come.

GG37YYYUTB6C

Fish On

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:52:00 +0000

The Buddhist Fish Symbol

In Japan, the fish means well-being, happiness and freedom. It is one of the Eight Auspicious Symbols used in Buddhism imported from China. The fish symbolises living in a state of fearlessness, without danger of drowning in the ocean of sufferings, and migrating from place to place freely and spontaneously.

-- seiyaku.com

"And Rise into the Light..."

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:45:00 +0000

If you're reading this, I've got to thank you for doing so, especially if it's not your first time here. However, I've come here today to tell you I've made a decision to shut down Wading in the Velvet C. indefinitely. It may not be forever, but I can't say right now. I appreciate the attention and encouragement I've received from returning readers, especially ones culled from recent endorsement by YEMblog. Without going into too much detail, I need to cultivate significant detachment from this project, for the sake of my serenity and sobriety.

I invite you to enjoy the archives in the next few days. Soon, though, I'll be password-protecting the blog. To create psychological distance, I need to make it unavailable for public consumption, reduce the temptation to write in it, and urge myself to explore other creative avenues.

NB: This development brings nothing to bear on my feelings for Phish. It has more to do with my own personal standards and goals than the band and its music. 2009 was one of the most amazing years of my life, with Phish a prime element of joy. This blog has been a major part of my journey, in creativity and sober recovery, as influenced and enriched by Phish. But that journey is now diverting. The timing is right.

I'll be back on the train when Phish returns this summer. A road this long may take its turns, but does not simply end. Until then, I bid you a Happy New Year. Thanks for reading. And I'll close with lyrics I find apropos...

Phish -- "Gone"

Running from yourself

Come back from the dead

All those sleepless nights

All that pain

I'm sorry you're gone

But you're gone.

When hope is nearly lost

You'll finally do what's right

Stop bleeding from your head anymore

The devil has you down

So turn around

And rise into the light

Running from yourself

(Spinning got you here)

Come back from the dead

(And there's no sun left in your eyes)

All those sleepless nights

All that pain

(You looked right through me)

I'm sorry you're gone

But you're gone

(Left alone sleeping)

When hope is nearly lost

(Gave with all your strength)

You'll finally do what's right

(Spoke with your eyes closed)

Stop bleeding from your head anymore

(I saw you dreaming like a child)

The devil has you down

(Cross the river with your friends)

So turn around

And rise into the light.

-- Party Time, 2009

The Last Splash: New Year's Run 2009, Part I - A Whole Lotta Dub

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:10:00 +0000

Miami! Weirdness, shock, awe and upheaval all coalesced into a voyage to the low Lower 48. I was scooped by random, perfectly-matched Craigslist Phishheads from MA in Northernmost Manhattan, at 12:30PM Sunday, 12/27/09. On the GW Bridge, we chanted the mantra: “Follow the lines going South!” Riding shotgun, I played iPhone Indiana Jones, bushwacking zany detours through maddening traffic from NYC to Arlington. Onward, into late night, though, it was smooth sailing; three gas stops and one gas FAIL around Jacksonville (thankfully right into Triple-A’s lovin' arms), we made it to my crash pad at Chez Haps North of Miami, at 11AM Monday.

[iPhone GPS screenshot taken while checking my status cruising through GA, listening to the high-octane Red Rocks '09 Jibboo. I gotta.]

I was exhausted, on fumes of a 9-hour heavy rotation between Charleston and Jacksonville, on our 24-hour drive. It’s jet fuel I'd gladly sip from a Swarovski flute, again and again.

Miami 2009 possessed an almost overwhelming tenor of huge import, and “Eff it!” catharsis. Commitments, travel and excitement building to Night 1 were considerable, so claims of crowd energy being weak make some sense. The band seemed to express an unspoken, satisfied closure to everything leading to the four pivotal nights. It was emotional road rescue for Phishheads, ending a quite literally epic decade that hearkened to the beginning of Hiatus on 10/7/00, 2003’s Phish 2.0 iteration (and their last NYE stand in Miami, smooched with a touch of P-Funk), and the inevitable travesty of Phish 2.5 in 2004. It is the period at the end of a ten year sentence of growth, graduations, relationships, breakups, marriages, divorces, moves, additions, changes, losses, piety and sin, debauchery, and sobriety.

It is the cherry atop the first dollop of Phish 3.0. Phish is the baleen of 20th century musical consciousness, now siphoning the water of their 21st century existential experience. Whatever I, or anyone else, had to say about This Year in Phishtory -- good, bad, indifferent, obnoxious, incoherent, together, we've seen it all -- in no small estimation, it’s been a f***ing triumph. No other band swept a decade, redefining improvised rock 'n' roll, sparking a movement, achieving record-setting numbers of shows played and audiences beckoned, and wrapping the previous decade with another Floridian gala, record-shattering, century-closing Big Cypress Festival.

[Gone Phishin'! "Woods 'n Water" magazine of Perry, FL, in some gas station near Jacksonville.]

The run-up to Miami ’09 was strange. Since the reunion, I’ve chosen to dedicate a lot of mental and emotional energy to Phish. I wonder constantly if being this involved can be “casual.” Thus, I spend equal amounts of time trying to not think about Phish. They’re quite a compelling operation, and there’s no other time it becomes more obvious than when TOUR rolls around.

[That hair-raising first approach to the venue.]

I talk a lot about V-T00R, the act of “following” Phish, without leaving one’s house, state, or otherwise comfy zone. But TOUR is different. TOUR is the Gauntlet, a pitched battle against time, space, speed, stillness, light, dark, fuel, emptiness, trust, doubt, sanity and insanity. It scared the hell outta me for a long time. Looking back, the fear was a healthy one. But now, I’m fortified, protected, and equipped…Before I left NYC, for a minute I realized I was going to see Phish again, but had no clue whatsoever where I was going. 12/31/09 was my 18th show this year, and now, having made the trip to Florida, I’ve seen Phish in all four corners of the Lower 48. That’s…something.

I went off during setbreak to someone about the analogy of tour to ancient mystical rituals of shamans and nomadic tribes...

“This age of computers and fast cars and ideas of 'success' – houses, money, jobs, mortgages, etc. – doesn’t have room for ancient rituals and routines of worship and devotion from thousands of years ago,” I ranted.

“Back in the day, nomadic devotees would suit up on yaks or asses, and wander incomprehensible miles in pilgrimage, hiking over frozen mountains to oracles, or seeking teachings of renowned masters. Mystic Knowledge didn’t come without effort, and the faithful sought it. But this age wants fashionable spirituality delivered fast with everything else.” My captive audience writhed...

“Yeah, they’re not gods or anything. Wise elders, maybe…or, uhh…channels! They’re channels, vessels, conduits of something bigger. When they hit it, they’re conduits. They catch it, the Big Holy Force or whatever…” I made a manic gesture of a vertical descending from above, and a horizontal shooting forward from my chest at a right angle… “pours out of them, into us!”

[The vessels' vessel. CK5's pre-show lightcheck, American Airlines Arena, 12/28/09.]

I deigned to board a vehicle with two unknown individuals for a day of driving, stayed a night in the backseat of a car, then three more days in a house without hot water, sacrificed two shows for two nights behind a table as a (blessed) sober person at a Phish show, to help others who wanted to do the same...or, to simply give candy to strangers. It was the best week of my life. I do feel closer to The Elders, the Big Holy Force, and whatever, as made manifest by Phish. And if you think about it, Phish are not gods, but seekers themselves; we all just get to bear witness to the Force acting (quite beautifully) upon and through them. If that’s crazy, here’s my freshly dry-cleaned straight-jacket: slap it on me, pack me on my yak, and let me ride.

[Woo-hoo, fun in the sun!]

It was difficult to post to the blog during the week. Before Christmas, I had a spiritual experience that encouraged me to live my love for Phish from a neutral place I’m calling the No Space, where subjective perception of thought, feeling and desire, all vanish within the experience of Sharing in the Groove. It sounds cliché, but it was life-altering. So, living and writing about that shizzle, in that way, is difficult!

What's more, it's hard to write about it on an iPhone, or standing behind a table for two nights, bolting in and out the venue, dancing, returning, sleeping, showering, meeting and greeting, talking eating and recovering, all nearly to the point of tears. How to pin it all down, when sand is shifting, “Zzzzz”s escaping, batteries dying, water not freezing but not warm either, and every note, as it happens, a process of electromagnetism sparking axons, until the house lights dim…?

THE SETLIST:

Monday, 12/28/2009
American Airlines Arena, Miami, FL

Set I: Sample in a Jar, NICU > My Soul, Roggae, Undermind, Bouncing Around the Room, Poor Heart, Stash, I Didn't Know, Beauty of a Broken Heart, Possum

Set II: Mike's Song > Light -> I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove, Alaska, Backwards Down the Number Line, Makisupa Policeman > Harry Hood > Contact > Character Zero

E: First Tube

["A slipper, a sand dollar, day at the shore..."]

My stomach flipped when with the stage-and-scene-setting chimes of "Sample in a Jar" rang out, then bounced from hard rock, charging right into the rousing ska embrace of "NICU"…if I spent all my time really describing the sensuous contours of my Phish experience as my ultra-sensitive faculties perceive them, I’d miss them!

Re-listening to 12/28/09, the band’s care in greatly enhancing the show with subtle sonic nuances is impressive. Trey's impassioned howls in "My Soul” are not mere additions; they’re grown into the song. Having a "good-enough" grasp on a song's emotional context (i.e. Phish 1.0), and having truly lived it (i.e. Phish 3.0), can be heard in Phish's current take on "My Soul." It’s a gospel testimonial proudly shouted from the past into the present, and the result is real, in-the-moment fervor.

Other minute additions highlight the narrative poetry of the show (say, a little tremulous bass vibrato in dreamy "Roggae"). In contrast to the Charlottesville Fall Tour closer, Miami 1 was a seeming statement that, at least for the moment, Phish is settling into exploration and navigation of their history, with concentration and authenticity. Having run a marathon in 2009, from primal soup to progressive nuts, it was the great flail across the finish line. Laughing, panting and firing on all cylinders, they carried serious, humorous, simple, complex, rhythmic, atonal, and everything in-between, down the lines going South. And the barely-audible sounds of wheels, clattering rails, jets, and camel walks elevated, as loyal hoards spirited towards the Nexus of Power.

Miami 1 was the first poetic peak of the run, followed by the lyrical high-point of Miami 3 on 12/30/09. It was a verbose show, many of Phish’s best present and past tunes exhibiting harmonic grace. Not to be ignored alongside juicy jams and raucous riffing, "Unrelenting, understroked, undeterred yet unprovoked…" (from “Undermind,” the title track of the 2004 album) remind me why it's a rare entity that can make my synapses throb while my backbone slips, not to mention move me 12,000 miles in a year, border to border, coast to coast, keeping me drooling and counting fingers and toes till the days and nights bring the next lights-down.

In mid-"Stash" jam, I'm jolted: this isn't skillful but occasionally dizzying Grateful Dead, nor is it a "weaksauce" jamband, to quote my slightly antagonistic friend Jeff's harsh assessment of Phish, after the recent MSG 2 show (my pick for MSG best-of-run). Drums are immediate and forceful, and bass lines fleet, blustery gusts. Rhythmic thrust alone packs collective power beyond most improv rock, saying nothing of verse, melody, and charismatic personality.

Speaking of which, hot pursuit and curdling fleas aside, a particularly punchy "I Didn't Know" follows, embedded in which is the portentous "Final Vacuum Solo of the Aughts," prompting @mudgebug on Twitter to post, "ok, this is where it gets weird. having to explain to my non #phish friends why the drummer is playing the vacuum"…

High drama was in full effect all week, as Phish locked into their most intimate, straight-faced, self-lampooning tomfoolery. As Fishman unleashed airy, near-mournful ceremonial whispering, the vac-jam intro nonsense was framed by a few notes of side-splitting, pokerfaced, straight 4/4 jazz bass and piano, eventually leading to the customary breakdown, where the wheezing became more upbeat, even festive. However, when the other three attempted to launch back into the final verse, Fishman plowed onward with his tragicomic hissing, irrepressibly holding court, until guttural squonks boomed into otherworldly, Tibetan long horn depths. Contrast this:

...with this:

See my point? (No? Keep coming back.) I've pretty much seen and heard it all from bands that jam -- electrified to ambient, ethereal to energetic -- but the vac-jam is why few bands have come anywhere close to Phish. They started it all, they still do it the best, and, for me, they're the only ones left tugging the strings after almost 20 years. For better (soul exhilaration), or worse (nervous breakdowns), my personal dedication is stronger than ever.

I waited until now to bring it up, but asking for two vacation days to head down to Miami was the tipping-point of affairs with my ex-boss, and had much to do with my eventual termination. I'd taken two days off for Festival 8 (not to mention a sick day to allow my desert-scorched skin to heal). The days were mine for the taking by policy, but since nothing I did seemed to be good enough for my boss anyway, I felt awkward about the request: both entitled, and idiotic.

Settling for the 30th and 31st was a huge stretch for me. But I'd take it, to participate however possible in a life of renewed creative, musical and poetic journeys, while grasping at a tether of “normality.” However, some roads almost seem to know when to end, and, itself a poetic twist of fate, the axe hit my neck as I screeched out the door to the first night of Phish's return to Madison Square Garden on 12/2/09. I didn't have to compromise, for MSG, or for Miami. I was free, and home, at last.

Miami 1 Set II might heretofore be known as "Mikeami Nice" -- Cactus goulash, feast for the air, plucky, chattery slaps gorging even the Gordo faithful right from the "Mike's Song" opening, into a sweet (i.e. delightful) segue into "Light." What seemed more evident over the next 20 minutes was that Phish was in town to rip their old selves to shreds by practically turning themselves inside out with heedless abandon, bells ringing in brazen sync, coming into the "Weekapaug Groove" jam, and bursting forth freshness, outright yelling lyrics of the seductive "Weekapaug" refrain with brash exuberance.

[Purple passion.]

"Alaska" followed, and, to briefly assume a dreaded year-end-list vibe, the tale of Aleutian romance is among my Top 3 favorite new Phish tunes, with its cool, snappy vamp and hilariously droll lyrics. To court controversy (why not?), the blatantly omitted opus, "Time Turns Elastic," is my favorite new Phish tune. SO THERE! Sure…I'll be first to agree maybe Phish hasn't (and maybe never will) find room for TTE’s epic tale of temporal transformation, among their live show rotation, without eliciting wretched sighs of agitation from the audience. But, I’ll budge not, ‘nuff said! (FYI: the 3rd is “Twenty Years Later,” with “Gone” from Party Time a runner up…it made a perfect “Tela” chaser a couple nights later.)

The fresh poppy rock of "Backwards Down the Number Line" unveils the high-par sound quality of AA Arena, as well as the pretty incredible Live Phish mix. Mike's tone in Miami is appealing to the pick-plucking bassist in me; warmth blended with bite puts him further up in the mix, for all you Trey-oglers out there (you know who you are). "Silent but lively" is my motto for Cactus in the Miami ’09 run. His face may be inscrutable, but in a forest of Phish, bass is groundwater gurgling below the earth, while drums are the woodpecker, and guitar and keys the sunlight and trees, respectively.

On the wings of a robust morning, Trey and Page joyously call out to their friends in "BDTNL," and we are soon called to lively up ourselves for an irie afternoon with the "Makisupa Policeman". Entranced in the moment, it seems, by love for, and virtuosity of, his compadres, Trey sends up his low end-brethren, kicking into high-gear a full-on Gordo-smorgasbord: "Woke up this morning, did just what I like…spent a whole two minutes listenin' to nobody but Mike!"

[Mikey catch a fire; blurry but necessary. ]

Fishman hits four snare salutes and Mike digs in for a solo, first surveying surface texture and establishing footing with characteristically calm neutrality. Phish is dressed in suits of fine japery; a "no-ham alert" warning is heard... "Two minutes!" That's when Mike’s half-steps get higher, and more mischief is introduced. Trey further big-ups his brethren with a chant, "Mike! Mike! Mike!" that sends the whole arena toppling into a Mikeysupa Lovefest.

Well-appreciated in his own right as Phish front-of-stage co-pwner [sic], it is delicious hearing thousands of phans old and new in swelling vocal celebration of recently-crowned "Prince" (cf. the bass domination in "Meat" from 11/29/09 Cumberland County Civic Center, ME). With melodic accents, the chant becomes mellifluous, and the crowd loudly follows suit. Self-effacement begins to tinge the well-sussed Caribbean roots the Prince lays down with wry humility, then trills of gratitude and abashment. Finally, there’s just silence, as Mike lets the voices chanting his name become him in the jam.

With a deep breath exhaled into what could be palpably suppressed hilarity, they drop back into "Makisupa." Phish work best together when they decline to take themselves at all seriously, except as a toughly-united corps of constantly transmogrifying musicians. The post-bass jam is a deep, clearwater dub-dive. Colorful creatures float by, curiously eyeballing four odd-looking gents swimming past, pulsating with muted mutant delay-laden sounds and alternating lyrics -- "Policeman, Kingston, house, Kingston,” and naturally, eventually, "Policeman came to Mike's House…" The audience stands ashore, skanking, shouting, and gasping in waves of glee.

Not to belabor the point, but clocking in at a not-at-all-conservative 8:49, this is probably one of the most tonally expert dub versions of "Makisupa Policeman" in recent memory. Relaxation, innovation, synchronization and jubilation all unrolled in equal measure, serious riddim is cast out and reeled in, trailing clumps of hooked and wriggling phans with every pull and change of phase. Crisp piano, wah'd-out clav, a synth "elevation" (as I like to call 'em, cf. mid-"Time Turns Elastic"), guitar trickles, buzz, and some wild delay-looped seagull-type calls, spacious hollowness in toms, loose snare and rim shots, the odd well-placed cymbal clang, and, of course, bass sliding from straight-ahead tone, to enveloped karate chops and gurgling buzz…

The version finally flattens out for a minute into a drone, and when another tom-roll readies us for more hypnotics, a fakeout is expertly executed, and the band drops without notice into "Harry Hood." I was flummoxed. Coming out of a mind-altering dub into the malevolent reggae trudge of "Hood" was jarring, but so refreshing in that “Oh no they didn’t!” way.

Perhaps addled by their own indulgence, they reel around in the intro with effects, but by the song's title chant, composure is restored from a glut of psychedelic tumbling. Fresh perspectives abound with an even cursory listen to Set II of 12/28/09. When Phish allow themselves to go deep into individual or collective "happy places," especially in a genre-specific way (i.e. "Makisupa” dub), upon reemerging into semi-orderliness, the "wildness" of their "eclectic” stylings suddenly make sense.

Up for air from irie fathoms, "Hood" post-intro traipses into eardrums; rhapsodic, upbeat pastoral Americana evolved to Allmans Brothers' "Ramblin' Man", lightly schmeared with Carib-jazz, and perhaps the slightest whisper of Afro-Beat. The real genius of it all is that (at least in my imagining) the deliberation involved in mashing it together is probably tantamount to taking a nap and dreaming. Harassed by a jarring funk-metal-opera groan, then serenaded by sweet harmony, the listener is punted softly into a mellower-than-average “Hood” jam that becomes absolutely aeronautic.

Beautifully and busily intertwined, prehensile strumming between bass and guitar, swaying, entrancing interplay of undulating rhythm, it drifts after takeoff, then rises above the clouds, twinkling in clear space with prismatic sunlight fading to the horizon. Then, it winds and blossoms in all directions, like lights from the city in a foreign land descending from above in a night-time landing, the startle of wheels on Tarmac a hot, gratifying, fluttery crescendo.

At the end of “Hood” they go deep again, and shape-shift into an alien landscape, wheat-strewn plains morph to Martian slopes; synth and bass sustain, mechanically modulated guitar ricochets, endless clutter of drum rolls…oh my! But we actually roll around the bend of another chapter with “Contact,” old-school fave comprised of lazy cha-cha turned bendy funk; mutant maudlin vaudeville piano turned wacked-out synth-laser clav, and tandem band-audience arm-waving homage to automobiles…

["Yes they am..." Pic by Dave Vann.]

"Contact" is followed by a loud, set-wrapping arena-rock incantation to oneself about life lessons in visiting some dude named "Mulcahy" (“Character Zero”), and capped with the “first” of two Phish songs featuring the word "Tube" – this one a broad, wordless, persecutory and practically thermonuclear edition of the disco-prog fugue.

Working the sober-phreak table during the show, dipping back and forth into the arena over the night, I felt the pre-pre-party crowd start to simmer, and indeed, things ended on a high note. Pummeled even by a truncated show experience (and more likely the still-punishing aftereffects of the endless drive…after all, we’d only crashed ashore that morning), an asymmetrical arena coughed us all out into a sea of wandering phreaks, smoking makeshift hearths, hissing tanks, bursting balloons, “Jerry Rolls,” hempy collars, homemade stickers, perplexing, riotously celebratory t-shirts, and a slowly fattening moon over Miami...

[Mike de Lune...Phish video on the giganto-screen outside of American Airlines Arena.]

The Last Splash: Phish New Year's Run 2009 (Prologue)

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:57:00 +0000

I'm near a remote town called Crystal River in Northeast Florida, in my parents' Nature Coast home. I left Miami this morning with a couple of already very dear sober phellows, hitching a ride west to come pay my folks an impromptu visit for a couple days, after not having seen them for a while. I've been punching at the iPhone all week, jotting here and there, snapping pics, chewing fat, wading deep, laughing hard, spinning and screaming and twirling while leaping. But at present moment, to be really, truthfully honest, I've been rendered essentially inoperable by the fact that Phish played "Tela" as a mid-set bustout on 12/30/09, third night of this past week's timeless, year-ending, heart-swelling, New Year's Eve Reunion Run.

I'm grateful I was there. I'm stunned I managed to be on the floor when it happened (and I mean standing, not lying, on it). It was the first "Tela" since 11/24/98. It was my fourth "Tela," the first being at my third show, punchy little Upstate number 4/9/94 at Broome County Arena, Binghamton, NY, and the last place I'd seen it before Wednesday was the same as the first, on 12/14/95 back in Binghamton. (Incidentally, 4/9/94 was the same show in which Phish debuted "Demand," which was itself jaw-slackeningly busted-out the following 2009 New Year's Eve night in Miami...)

Working with others the sorcery of colors, paper and wishes on prayers, I worked my way down to the smooth grey floor on Wednesday, reeling around as Phish dispatched bustout after bustout of nostalgic, fist-pumping, life-renewing revisitations of songs and themes unexplored, since their long disappearance. There were also newer tunes, which punctuated old homages with tastes of days to come.

Then Trey strummed out two warm, tentative chords, Mike bubbling up from below with a quiet, pleading urgency mixed with weariness, impending resignation -- I'm still not sure how he always manages to get his bass to sound like an upright during this tune, but I digress. Fishman rained lightly across the cymbals with his stick tips...

And the notes. The voice. The song. The words (thanks, Trey). Struggle. Steadiness. Resolve. Determination. Devotion. Natural magic. Beauty. Transfixion. Dissolving. Melting. Yielding. Magnetism. Heat. Wetness. Cold. Hardness. Breeze. Gentleness. Light. Color. Vision. Love.

[Epic props to MrDaveStone, another new tour buddy, videohero of the Miami 2009 New Year's Run, and possibly undercover superphan.]

I'm completely exhausted, and cannot be trusted to accurately organize, or even attempt to judge, and/or present, the events of the last five days in a way that will do it all any justice. The prospect has been scaring the crap out of me all week, basically because I know that until some things get said and done, I may not pass over an invisible wall I've been behind.

It's already almost midnight. Last night, on a smoking balcony at the venue, I called my mother to tell her I was thinking of stopping by. I told her I was in Miami seeing Phish. She said, "Phish! Fish, but P-H-I-S-H, right? You're still following them around?!" she laughed.

"Yeah, that's the ones," I drawled. My dad asked the same thing. An avid gardener, I wished I'd have remembered to get him a "Lawn Boy" lot shirt.

Staring back into a pair of green-gold orbs in the middle of a state in an Upper Corner, the spark that would soon open this space leapt across the Great Divide, settled in my own eyes, then heart. I can't forget that every time I come here to write.

By an amazing turn of fate, the jewel returned the gaze on the other side of the stage in a Lower Corner four months later, having traveled a river of tears and fear through a widely- and weirdly-opened gate. The Yellowshirt failed to stop the dance past, and, as they called her name, gem of the domain, I flicked off my flip-flops, felt the smooth chill beneath my feet, allowed them to reach up to my heart, out through my hands and head and hair, and my soul uncoiled its voice. In mid-release, I'd fleeting peer across the ebony.

As soon as it began, one age from before to after, it was done. Quickly reshod, blood surging, soles burning, I turned and walked away.

That being said, when I return, I'll hopefully have worked to psychologically process, simplify, and recount at least some portion of the past week in Miami, in the most essential, effective and enjoyable manner. And if it's later than sooner, I'll have until Summer to try.

[Four very hard-won ticket stubs, bought on lot, sent via air, stored and fished from bags, pockets, carried in shoes, wallet, bra, covered with sweat, water, lint, grime, and saved by a love supreme.]

Foamy Phishmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:03:00 +0000

Here is my gift to you on this most special Phishmas 2009, having been blessed with their return. With best wishes and good cheer, here's some dude in the audience during the decidedly nog-licious 11/2/94 "Foam":

And lo! He is joyful throughout! Listen on, good patron, to the foamy goodness in its 10:47 entirety:

Ah, indeed my friend. 'Tis true. 'Twas good, 'tis good, and 'twill be good. Foamy Phishmas to all, and to all a good spike...maaaaannn!

PS: This show is perhaps more noteworthy for its 30-minute-long "Tweezer," but I thought the "Foam" was Yuletide-fitting because it reminds me of snow. If you want a bigger present, clear a half-hour from your post-Christmas shopping schedule and dig some serious cold, cold, cold instead:

[Shite-awful Photoshop by yours truly; pic by Nubar Alexanian]

Notes from the Center of the Forest: All is Well

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:43:00 +0000

"...A multitude of words is tiresome, unlike remaining centered."

"Words and the thoughts behind them may be clever, perhaps inspired, but still there can be enough of them. Then it is better to silently take it all in. We don’t need to describe everything we experience, or to express all that we learn. The words are mere shadows. If we focus on them we may lose sight of the reality they try to imitate.

"Instead, we should trust that our inner stillness finds the Way, and makes us see the patterns in the constant bombardment of information that is our daily life.

"The word ‘centered’ in my translation...is jhong (or zhong) in Chinese and means middle or center. It is used in the name for the Chinese nation (Jhongguo or Zhongguo). The Chinese character for the word is a simplification of an arrow hitting the center of a target. In Lao Tzu’s use of the word, inner balance and steadfastness is implied, somewhat like the keel of a boat that is unaffected by the waves on the sea. That is how the human mind should be – calm in whatever turmoil surrounds it, confident even in a rain of urgent questions and answers."

-- Stefan Stenudd, Tao Te Ching: Each Chapter Explained, Chapter 5

Things are better. Work on the horizon, agreement with space, no big motion for now, and time to sort it all out in the next month. Plans for Miami are underway; tickets and a ride (ROAD TRIP!!!) being secured, and crash space being outlined in the approximate shape of one sleeping bag containing a human form, and one Vaude camping backpack. Oh, and a pair of shoes.

Trying to keep it simple. Had a spiritual experience last night working on a large exegesis of a Hampton '09 / Phish 3.0 Fall Tour shuffle mix I allowed The Fates to deliver to me. Funny stuff. May post it soon. But writing and watching the Clifford Ball DVD up in a corner of the screen (magical: Disc 4, Day 2, Set 1, "Reba > Cars Trucks Buses"):

"Be the stream," a voice said.

We are each a stream: strong, silent, turbulent, slow, quick. Streams flow through their beds, moving, not clinging to rocks. I've spent a lot of time struggling; "Why this, why that?" I ask, carving out my niche of expression and understanding of Phish, in an otherwise statistical, repetitive cloud of showy self-competitiveness. In a moment last night, I merged. Fingers stopped. Brain stopped.

"Be the stream," the voice said again.

A lot on my mind, a lot on my plate. Much to reflect upon, and to celebrate. Not a lot in my wallet, but so much in my heart. The music of Phish makes me feels good, enhancing life, encouraging tolerance, very challenging, very rewarding. Their acceptance and inquiry -- of each other's notes, changes and fills, small and big breakthroughs, instrumental evolutions across time both brief and extensive -- is extremely engaging, and wholly satisfying.

But I'm going on...suffice it to say, I'm transitioning into a new experience. More will be revealed. I don't know if "more" will look like emptiness, or fullness, but there will be sounds of Phish, whatever it is. I'll be standing in the stream, water to my ankles, rocks under my toes, eyes closed, listening, feeling, letting thoughts rise from my ears, and pass from my nose. Learning to describe without description, and write without words, while chanting words from a song.

I neither cling to the stream bed, nor attempt to detach from it. I am in the stream. I am the stream.

Winter Recess: School's Out in the Bush of Ghosts

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Gotta take a break, folks...be back soon! Life is in session. -- C.

If You Become Naked (Guy): The Charlottesville Meltdown, Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:43:00 +0000

"It's Almost Like Being Naked"

Once again, I can't believe I finished this post. You'll be lucky if you see another one by New Year's Eve, I'm so f'in exhausted. Hell, you'll be lucky if you see me at New Year's Eve (unless you're willing to make my rent). But I'm going to start Part II of the Tour Closer report with a broad analogy:

One of the things Phish continues to teach me is how to use structure and containment, to allow free play within a framework, like quarks in the Hadron Collider. Containers provide a means of marshaling less definable, static substances, such as liquids or gases, as opposed to solids; e.g. Ernie Stires to Trey Anastasio, Page McConnell to Phish, the pentatonic scale to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart… There are a myriad wild, untamed forces in the universe that, if left at least partially unchecked, might have made the Universe as we know it an impossibility.

The entropic implosion-sans-containment theory can be seen, in another example, up and down the rock music timeline. The Joplins, Hendrixes, Staleys, Cobains, etc… Musically, psychologically, logistically, there may not have been sufficient regulation of the sheer force of their talents, causing the engine of their volatility to devour them whole. Unfortunately, adding insult to injury, a great many creative people are out of their goddamn minds. Oh, hey…self totally included! I was reading my old Jambands.com pieces last night (which I've finally scraped together, at least temporarily, via links to their archived pages, over on the right). As entertaining as they can be, I get a f*cking headache reading them!

I don't want to assume terminal uniqueness or anything, but it can hurt to have so many things going through your head all at once, all the time. It's exhausting. I'm also stubborn, and often mistrustful, so I often try to do things my own way. Initially, various substances served to throw my crazy brain-salad at an angle, and into a different level of focus, so I had to more carefully watch what was flying into, and out of, the bowl. Emotions, impressions of the world and people, my own activities and responsibilities…it was all too much to deal with in the first place, so "managing" it with self-directed chemistry experiements seemed like a convenient means of control for a good long while. Not to mention, it just felt good to have the rest of my body feel as wacky as my mind so frequently did.

The whole operation was now on its own mission of perma-crazy autopilot. In a mind already naturally riddled with incoherence, believe it or not, coping by making it more crazy seemed like a perfectly sane idea. At some point, though, the helpful tilt, manufactured tension of watching everything and keeping stuff tilting this-a-way and that-a-way in my head, to make things seem "straight" -- "sanity via reverse engineering" -- backfired. All I had left was a three-and-a-half legged table in an empty room, with lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage and other salad items in varying states of decay, strewn all over the place.

Family, community, moral and ethical balance, chord structures, programs of recovery, religion, instruction manuals, computer programs, shelving units, meditation practice, antidepressant medication, a new pair of glasses…all these things and hundreds more can provide fine alternatives to the use of illicit and/or non-prescribed drugs, to remedy the chronic inability to manage one's own disorganized thoughts and/or life in general. But boy…for a stubborn, oversensitive mess like me, that last method was just so EASY! My Man (you know, the same one Lou Reed was waiting for) is always lurking around; at the deli, on the corner, hell, anywhere...ready to pony up the easy way out. I look at the clock and, hey! It's 4:20! Temptation is everywhere…any f'in excuse I (or anyone) can find to "take a break" -- I will usually wanna take it, especially if it seems to be the way around feeling pain or discomfort. Yes, it seems to be…and I can be wrong.

As a member of 21st century society, I can either believe things are getting easier, faster and more convenient for me to just be able to work less and do less, or because, through these advancements, I'm meant to deepen my mental, emotional and spiritual experience, with more time to work on removing certain obstacles. By way of circumstance (or the mercy of an unknown source), I've been able to find a little structure, and sorta get my shit together. I'm still pretty much a bona fide mess, "wookin' pa nub in all da wrong places," trying to force solutions and fantasize my way into reality, making unreasonable demands.

But a few key changes, additions and lessons learned have informed me of a new path, if I choose to take it. And yeah…given what I was like at the end of the last path, with the lopsided table and overturned salad bowl, sure. I'll try to keep giving structure a shot, a day at a time. Basically, getting sober and trying to learn how to live and grow up a little -- it's kinda been like someone throwing a rug over my bare ass.

Baby Snakes

On my iPhone and MacBook are scattered rudiments of a piece I began writing in March 2009, called "The Evolution Will Be Terrifying." It is the interminable "Ur-post" of this blog, which evolved between Hampton I and one month after Gorge II (8/8/09, the night a pile of disparate thoughts in my mind was ignited by a spark that shot from the stage). In the ratty, often incoherent piece, I consider the concept of "error" as it applies to the new, live Phish experience (i.e. Phish 3.0).

Now, as I've mentioned, I can be kind of a pushover, and often find it difficult to be critical of, or contrapuntal to, entities I deeply admire. I've been thinking a lot lately, too, about where this blog and my now rather public phandom pushes the boundaries of "people-pleasing" (cue Jon Lovitz as Harvey Fierstein: "I just wanna be loved, is that so wrooooonnng?"). But I'm trying to cultivate neutrality here; it feels new and interesting. I wouldn't say it feels "good" just yet. It feels worth the effort to be part of the conversation, instead of a strip of wallpaper. While excessive critique is definitely an impedance to formulating intimacy, an informed criticism is the stuff productive relationships are made of.

In the early moments listening to the inaugural reunion show (3/6/09 Hampton), I got verklempt. The deafening roar and first notes of "Fluffhead" won't ever, I think, cease to cause the hairs on my neck to bristle, and tears to well. Witnessing the opening of a long-closed faucet of creative collaboration, envisioning the intricacies of relationship, communication, trust, and risk involved in those notes finally being played onstage…I was immediately inspired to kick out the jams. At a transitional point in my own life, I knew it was time to head in a new direction.

However, a short ways into the show, it was apparent there was slipping and sliding going on. Compassionate as ever, I thought, "Dude, they're onstage for the first time in years; sure, they rehearsed, but you know it's never the same in front of a crowd…" After a while, it got scary; the mountain of expectations came down in a big avalanche. I tried to push the sluice back up with the Benefit of the Doubt: "Give 'em a break!" But the powerful entropic force of gravity pressed my hands, saying, "Crap! Trey's blowing notes left and right; it's so awkward! How can this ever good again?"

Looking back, I realize that right then, when I a) acknowledged what I was feeling, then b) picked up my proverbial pen and started scratching out the horror and the terror and fear, I joined the conversation, the process of evolution. I made a decision to see it through (or rather, feel it through), note for note, splotch for splotch, botch for botch, and (yes) peak for peak. Humanity wouldn't, and couldn't, have moved forwards if fellow Cro Magnon, or other adjudicators, stood by scrutinizing: "Oh no, no, that hair shouldn't be the one to fall off!" or "No! Walk this way!"...

Among the landmarks of early Phish were a few key experimental performance tanks like Hunt's, The Front, and most of all, Nectar's, popular clubs in and around Burlington where the band cut its live teeth back in the mid-1980s. Phish: The Biography has naturally been informing a lot of my discourse on the band these days, teaching and re-teaching me a lot about the granular details of their transformation throughout the years, in another handy (and appealingly more narrative than statistical) volume.

Talking to confidantes this past post-MSG week, they made reference to "devices" they'd like to see employed, to somehow manufacture comfort, intimacy, latitude and creative contingency in and around Phish shows. Unpredictable disturbances, and/or the long-term commandeering of a specific venue were put forth as ploys that might be catalysts for chaos, in this static age of Live Nation, 10,000+ crowds, and airtight security seals, to recreate the original kinetics that made Phish what they were in those germinal stages, right after small-venue sparks caught tinder among a bursting audience, and propelled them towards bigger theaters in the U.S. at large.

Drugs (booze to benzos, soup to nuts) are a means popularly utilized to fabricate an atmosphere of "acceptable" comfort, trance, and contingency in a band, and among an audience. But what happens when a carefully cultivated consensual space of "acceptable altered reality," created by generic handfuls of chemical mechanisms, and disorganized, unpredictable organic forces…are stripped away? Reality encroaches…but what is "reality," really...?

Well, it took me a while, but here we are, back in December 2009. A skinny guy with no clothing bursts into a hermetic space, and changes the game for Phish once again. How did he do it? Why? What was going on before he got there?

THE SETLIST:

Saturday, 12/05/2009
John Paul Jones Arena, Charlottesville, VA

Set I: AC/DC Bag, Chalk Dust Torture, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan, The Divided Sky, Ya Mar, Sneakin' Sally through the Alley, The Old Home Place, Cavern, Funky Bitch, David Bowie, The Wedge, Bold As Love

Set II: Tweezer > Light > Piper > Free, Sweet Virginia, Harry Hood > Suzy Greenberg, Golgi Apparatus, Run Like an Antelope

E: Loving Cup, Tweezer Reprise

[JPJ Arena: The Crucible.]

Logistically, here was a band at the end of a stretch of 13 shows, or, moreover, at the end of a year of 46 shows, following a hiatus of 5 years. Such numbers were drops in the bucket to the Phish of the 1990s, but it's a decade later, and while the name of the game may still be "take it to the limit," the real science behind limitations is how to negotiate with them, without sacrificing the integrity of the experiment, by endangering (or eliminating) key variables.

There was an "AC/DC Bag" opener, much like the first show of Fall Tour in Detroit, the first show of the Albany run, the first show of the MSG run...and, hell, debuted on 4/1/86 at Hunt's in Burlington. Not quite sure what they're going for with all the "Bag"s, but the jaunty tale of the robotic hangman borrowed from the energy of the last few shows to launch things at JPJ. "Chalk Dust Torture" was next…it was revealed to me last week in an interesting little hiatus-era (2000) teen magazine-type Phish snippet in Entertainment Weekly online, that "Chalk Dust" is allegedly Trey's favorite song to play live. Hmm! "No wonder they keep playing it," some might say, just like I might remark about "Prince Caspian." I glowered at some folks when they griped about "Character Zero" last week, which I personally would miss if it went away. Hey, to each their own. Either way, despite a remarkably fumbled change towards the end, the "Chalk Dust" was heated up with some guitar dominance.

"Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan" became third in what sounded like conspicuous consumption of Southern guitar energy to keep ramping up the already raucous storm brewing in the arena. "The Divided Sky" that followed, as compared to, say, mid-1990s versions (i.e. the "we are aware of our awesomeness" phase, 1996-1998), is woolly, shaggy and propellerheaded. There's nothing serious about this "Sky" but the pause, which, interestingly enough, was a particularly pregnant one that caused my squirrelly, inebriated seatmate to look at me and say, "A little arrogant...?"

I rubbed my chin and quietly watched. I never scream during The Pause. I use it as a moment to breathe in the vibe, to taste the energy of the audience in my skull and skin. I've always had a (probably improbable) dream of the whole audience falling silent with the band in the crevasse the four create, plucked from the chaos, frozen meditatively in time, with blue Kuroda spots slowly punctuating space with extraterrestrial calm. The vaster majority of 15,000+ rowdy onlookers goaded them with the usual screams...

"Elegant," I responded.

An Effervescing Elephant

It was obvious by this point in the show nothing technically special was happening; apparently, it was just the opposite. The jamming is loose to nearly sloppy, a few elementary changes are tilted, such as one near the end of "Chalk Dust" (which has been performed in no less than a quarter -- 24.76% -- of all Phish shows), lyrics are melted, and the normally precise, taciturn Mike Gordon seems wacky on the Groove Juice, sliding all over the Modulus frets like they're covered in chicken grease. Fishman has turned into a total fill-aholic, playing what seems to be a constant stream of exploratory improvised interludes, rather than the "drum lines" of the songs, and the only one seeming to hold the hay-cart together is usual straight-man, Page McConnell, who has, it appears, taken on a stern resolve, having stepped South of the Mason-Dixon Line, in stark contrast to his boyish, billionaire bachelor energy from the rest of the tour.

Onwards, either amused by their own disregard, or simply in a chiefly end-of-tour space ("I'm gonna finally get a minute away from you mo'frackers when this is all over!"), the fellers began to wind into what could become a spicy "Ya Mar." But right in keeping with the ridiculous, off-kilter temperature in the steep, concrete cauldron of JPJ Arena, a pink wisp of a shape with spindly legs suddenly interrupted the sanctified, familiar four-person aquarium of the stage, followed by three burly security guards in hot pursuit. A streaker, running so fast his feet barely touched the ground, leapt with incredible deftness over an undoubtedly intricate assemblage of sound equipment. He pounced on Trey in a puppyish hug; Trey patted the guy on his bare back, grinning benignly. The guy continued to give the guards brave chase until, finally, he was pressed down near Fishman's kit, and hauled off by the authorities.

[Apologies for the grainy, clumsily captured, Bigfoot-like photo.]

Speaking of Fishman, what was most notable to me while it was all going down was: before it began to the moment it was over and beyond, the Befrock'd One didn't stop playing the hi-hat and kick-drum Calypso intro of "Ya Mar" for one single second. This says a few things to me, some of them conspiratorially speculative: 1) the spirit of unpredictability can be nothing if not alive and well in Phish -- like anything else, it has required re-invigoration after a period of dormancy; 2) did Phish plant the Naked Guy?

While it's not entirely impossible to believe Phish would be that calm if a mercenary came onstage with unrevealed intentions, to be so immobilized with unconcern says either you're in an excellent, Zen-like position, or you're already aware of something everyone else is not. By the time I got to the last conclusion, I realized, well…Fishman's always that close to naked, so perhaps it's just kinship.

So, I'm at the show, furiously thumbing thoughts into my iPhone, and my nosy seatmate bluntly asks if I'm "a reporter or something." I stare at him for a moment and keep thumbing. "I mean, are you covering the show for something?" Looking at him again, I say, "Sort of…" and continue thumbing. After a second or two, he says, loudly, "Whaddya writing over there, a novel?" I like to be respectful to my surrounding phans at shows, and the whole nakedness idea reminded me of my last post, which talked about the seemingly contrary disciplines of critique vs. boogie at Phish shows. I took the dude's babbling as sign from the Universe to stick with the fuckin' show (despite being the last of tour), and not wreck it for others with my bright iPhone poking. In a bold gesture which felt kind of refreshing, I turned my phone OFF, and prayed for the resurrection of a few old, hooch-enfeebled brain cells to remember what happened.

This show is refreshing in its urgent messiness. Right about here, keen setlist choice takes over, sending JPJ to the moon again and again, tapping deep into the feral insides of traveling phans, first with the slippery classic, "Sneaking Sally Through the Alley," a personal fave, if not for simple recall of that gorgeous 8/7/09 evening in George, WA. "Sally" brought Charlottesville to the brink of abandon, putting the ever more jangly, unfastened atmosphere between band and audience to excellent use. The trend continued with cozy homage to C'ville with Bustout of Show, "The Old Home Place" (last played 4/15/04), the shoe-minding reminder in "Cavern" (albeit with some more unfortunate lyrical muck-uppage), and a massive save with "Funky Bitch," played thrice in the 3.0 so far, and pulled from the bag at an excellent juncture.

"David Bowie" arrives with the audience boiling for more heat, and more than interlocking groove (witnessed in Albany or Syracuse), there's an alternating undulation, each instrument's flow rising and falling, wrapping and writhing around the others, separate but closely engaged. It sounds like a race…a mutual urging. This "Bowie," unlike the more bossy, forthright 11/22/09 Syracuse version, inspired me to begin making an effort to think more in terms of the instruments in Phish, and less of the players behind them.

I can get lost in personalities and temperaments of the musicians, so I'm making more of an effort to hear the music, regardless of what the people playing it do. Not to disregard the un-disregardable (that is, those four lovable genii), but they are, as I often need to remind myself, MUSICIANS. The point of all this inquiry is, at very, very bottom, that which is channeled through their hands and voices. Why is it a difficult enterprise to make the important (even compassionate) distinction between music and musician? I'd say one reason could be because most people can't afford themselves enough time away from the everyday schlock of living to play, either by making music, or just having unstructured fun, being goofy and randomly inventive. Cleaving to the Pied Pipers is easy because, more or less, they do "fun" for us, and they do it pretty darn well, and for me, the excuse to travel is almost one of the best parts of the package...

In more salute to the spirit of all who've ridden the rails with the band over the year, "The Wedge" expanded on the broadness of the show, which added to that hair-in-the-wind, devil-may-care feeling.

Capping the set was a "Bold as Love" explosion which hepped me to the fact that the keys were conservative, but sticking and moving in a manner only detectable in retrospect. The intensity is in the interstices; eyebrow-raising, head-tilting.

[Kinda shaky in the beginning, but just wait for it...]

Dare I say Phish 3.0 is not so much about "jamming" as it is about "flourishing"? There are certain quasi-erotic elements -- foreplay, for example -- which are absolutely integral to intimacy-building. I'm not being clever by suggesting anything about duration. But I am hinting that choice moments of intensity may provide equal satisfaction and otherworldly transport, rendering a slavish adherence to "duration-as-quality" in jams suddenly debatable. I've enjoyed listening to Phish throughout the year, and hearing moments of flourish, despite cringing through alleged "fails," and indeed, witnessing the moments (Cobo, Cinci, Syracuse, Albany...) when flourishes amass, collect and cohere into brain-erasing jams.

"Tweezer" begins Set II with a bold gesture speaking to either impatient insistence, or (as I like to think) a "Last one there's a rotten egg!" friskiness…as the band emerges from backstage, Trey marches over to, and picks up, his guitar, straps in, and guns right into the "Tweezer" intro, without the rest of the band even having gotten to position. Fishman, for example, quickened his walk to a scurry to get to his kit stool. I was like, "Hell yeah! Trey's not fuckin' around!" True enough, Anastasio was the 1986 Lenny Dykstra of Charlottesville; shifty and fast, not so much about precision as he was aiming to "git it done," quite steamy in its own sense, and a large part of the show's heat.

They crunched through a thick, metal-esque sludge jam, then segued slightly clumsily into "Light," in which Trey promptly conflated the lyrics (inadvertently flipping the second and first verses). But "Tweezer > Light > Piper > Free" is probably the most poetic segue-fest in recent memory, though not entirely deft in its transitions…the jam out of "Tweezer" has more of that undulating quality, alternating between interlock and splay, clamping down briefly into a dancehall reggae-style percussive stomp, with some truly puzzling steel drum-type guitar effects melding with other ambient percolations.

No, the transitions are not clean. Why should they be, must they be? I was gonna develop that question, but for right now, I'm gonna skip it, because I've got a thing I'm trying to do here. It's a narrative. The jam that blooms into "Piper" is an amphetamine spin, and, as the song kicks off, the deficits of JPJ's cavernous concreteness are revealed in some jarring, squawking feedback -- but the band rolled onward without any attempt to right the situation.

So much about this show is where I think Phish is heading…the Universe will conspire to manufacture more instances of retrograde evolution, which will continue to yank the trajectory of the music in a forward, outward direction. A band this big cannot turn back the hands of time, morphing MSG into Doolin's circa 1985 Vermont. But one of the things Young Thane from the Train and I agreed upon, on the 12:05 to Charlottesville, was that, on an primordial level, Phish needed to STOP GIVING A PHUCK. I'm dying to text Thane up and say, "Yo, it's Carol from the train…would you say that Phish STOPPED GIVING A PHUCK in Charlottesville?" I'm almost positive he'd say "Hell yes!"

Mike kept throwing down this low C note that kept me thinking they were gonna bust out playing "The Guns of Brixton" by The Clash, which would definitely qualify as "not giving a phuck," musically or thematically:

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?

When the Naked Guy comes a-knocking, how did Phish greet him? How would you? If you're Fishman, one foot's on the kick, and the other's on the hi-hat; Trey, a smile and and a pat on the back, Mike with a few low notes floated amused before a question mark, and Page, staring narrowly and ready to leap over his gear and put some Chuck Norris-style hurt on the phucker if the security guards failed...

"Sweet Virginia" was my first Phish-does-Stones live since Halloween: it was the third Exile tune played since F8, the first being "Torn & Frayed" (Cinci Night 2), and the second, "Shine a Light," played the previous night at MSG III. Really Drunk Dude and His Friend, Other Dude had switched places (possibly because Drunk Dude was embarrassed to be standing next to Not-at-All-Drunk Girl). Other Dude plopped down when the Stones tune began, then loudly asked me the question I least wanted to be asked right then:

"You like the Rolling Stones?"

Yaaaghhh! Oh why'd ya have to... I don't typically like sitting down during Phish shows; I usually perch on the edge of an upturned chair, propping myself up gymnastically, arms straight against the seat back, or one foot on the seat in front of me and the other on the ground, or some other not-quite-standing-or-sitting position. I was so positioned, smirking and silent.

I asked him, "Do you?" (Well played, right!)

He said carefully, with a mishmash of exasperation, surprise and forbearance, "There was a two-year period for me that, if it wasn't the Stones, it was BULLSHIT."

Ah! Hmm. Okay, I've definitely been there, with Pavement, Steely Dan, hell…Depeche Mode and Black Sabbath in high school and early college...that's how we music addicts do. If you're there, you're there; if not, it's like the horse and the water. If you're not thirsty, nothin' doin'. Like me trying to justify to Jesse why Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic would've been the PERFECT Phish Halloween costume; he just never "got" the Dan. Man oh Manischewitz…it's just the way it's got to be, though. I've been sort of ashamed lately: how I can say I'm "open" to the ongoing continuum of Phish, but not step foot near an MP3 of the Halloween set? Yeah! It's weird! I won't deny it!

Is that where I am with Phish? Errraaahhh...uhhhh...sort of? I've been listening to other stuff, sure (even compelled myself to go out club dancing the other night, and had a dandy time). But it all inevitably gets thrown through the grinder. What can I say? It's just something I'm ready to do right now. Like I said once before, the timing is right, and why not?

One thing I'll definitely give the Stones, which has caught up with me in my post-Festival 8 teeth-gnashing and re-examination, is that they're amazing poets. "19th Nervous Breakdown," "Emotional Rescue"…while not quite ever doing it for me musically, for whatever reason, the Stones have always impressed lyrically. But I guess it's a matter of choice, and focus. While I'm willing, at this time, to examine the relevance of Phish playing TV on the Radio's "Golden Age" (Dig the lyrics to that one, whoa! Talk about Sunburn of the Spirit!), I'm not as appreciable of their musical donning of the Stones. As mentioned, there are also extenuating historical circumstances further complicating the bias, which appear to be presently non-negotiable in my psyche. Okay, psyche: have it your way. I can adapt. But I appreciated hearing these lyrics in particular, in Fishman's raspy murmur:

Thank you for your wine, California,
Thank you for your sweet and bitter fruits.
Yes I got the desert in my toenails
And I hid the speed inside my boot.

But come on, come on down Sweet Virginia,
Come on, honey child, I beg of you.
Come on, come on down
You got it in ya, uh-huh
Got to scrape the shit right off your shoe.

The words drew my life into focus as I perched in JPJ, through a big magnifying glass sweeping over the last six weeks. Just, really…PHUCK IT. A tall, blond dready dude came up to me during setbreak and shouted me out for this blog. Aghast, I smiled and nodded idiotically at my first public shout-out, as he expressed regret for the recent loss of my job (he'd read it that recently??). All I could manage to say, standing there again in a foreign state with no idea how I was getting home (but surer than ever, irksomely, that it'd all fall into place), was "Aww, PHUCK IT!" He grinned appreciably at my (albeit manufactured) defiance. We do what we can, when we can, I suppose.

Another good part about "Sweet Virginia," and why it wasn't just a leg-rester at its point in Charlottesville, is Fishman's vocals. News flash: I am a total sucker for Fishman on vocals. "Moma Dance," "Taste" (and the little in "Limb By Limb")...his voice (believe it or not) does something to me. Its rarefied, mysteriously tart sweetness is the underutilized secret kiwi fruit in Phish, yet another of the Universe's unsolvable enigmas, lurking within that hoop-covered frock.

Doug, a dude from North Carolina sitting to my left, said, "This isn't a very nice song to play for Virginia, is it?" (likely referring to that whole shit-shoe thing). I had no comment either way, but did find it sort of nice how I tend to befriend all the weirdoes sitting around me at Phish shows.

Charlottesville's "Harry Hood" was like being wrapped in a warm, freshly-washed, fluffy beach towel after a good soak in the hot tub. Everyone scattering out sun-dots: mellow Rhodes tinkling like emerging beads of sweat, slightly fuzzed guitar emitting a detoxifying flush of heat on the brow, bass and drums together the heart's racing thump from increased temperature, all together winding upward in cascading steam, until…your asshole friend comes running up behind you and shoves you into the ice-cold POOL…of "Suzy Greenberg"!

Warm towel goes flying! Cold, chlorinated water surrounds and goes up your nose! Flounder! Splutter! Expletives! Waving fist! Yet a sense of relief…when you're hot out the jacuzzi, and feel like you're gonna faint, the hilarity of shocking oneself with a cold dip is quite like the naughtily abrupt launch from "Harry" into "Suzy" here (whose titular irony is not lost on me). Adding to the scandal, a handful of keyboard solos come stampeding from the stable for a few scorching dips back into the hot tub -- set up nicely by a couple of uncharacteristically subdued guitar bridges -- first with frenzy-inducing wailing and moaning synth licks, and later, forbidden juke-joint piano flickers, then hauled back into the elated arms of Trey, who heaves the final verse to Fishman, to nail the hell out of another "Suzy" neurologist interlude with extraordinarily extemporaneous gurgling, as he's been doing expertly lately, causing me to scream with laughter in the middle of public places. The crowd boils over with mania…phew!

And just when you think it's safe to be back standing jacuzzi-side with your warm, fluffy towel, along comes that douchebag friend again…SHOVE! "Golgi Apparatus," in the place it appears in this second set, can't go wrong, even with its messy thrown-down intro…and more hilarious contingency, when Mike's bass rig decides to poop out in the first minutes of the song. What does he do? Well, of course: he starts singing the notes! I was too giddy to notice all this, because, for the first time since, maybe, the second time I heard the song live, I was busy getting out my ticket stub so I could actually dance with it.

During the first chorus, still inspired by Fishman's reh-tehr-ded blubbering in "Suzy," I stuck the stub behind one of the lenses of my spectacles, and danced like I was at a hoe-down. By the second verse, the stub was getting all damp, too close in proximity to my forehead, so I flapped it about in my hands, and passed it once behind my back from one one hand to the other, in an homage to the hallowed Passback-Cluster Technique (granting, umm, possible guaranteed admission to a section of your friend's ticket stub's choosing, or, umm, instant ejection from the venue if handled poorly…hey, life's full of risks).

Speaking of which, good old Naked Guy was then sent-up at set's end in the unprecedented "Naked Guy" rendition of "Run Like an Antelope." In the intro, I must point out that the drums caught a brief case of "Dixieland Fever," with a clearly detectable micro-Charleston riff rising from the toms, causing me to break out in my best wrist swingin' and ankle twistin', much to my surprise. The rest unraveled into a sweaty-palmed sauté, with the band interlocking again, not undulating or alternating, but plugging directly in for a straight-ahead firestorm that, upon climax, caused one audience member to quite rightly scream, "PHUCK YEAH!" The end of "Antelope" raged such that I almost wanted to do "THE CLAP," that most vulgar of endearments, as Trey inquires as to the crowd's possession of any "Naked Guy." The ensuing "run run run" harmony is so rich and together, Page and Mike sound sliced out of the '60s vocal group, The Association. And, in his most gleefully ironic fizziness, Trey interjects with "Run run run run, Naked Guy!"

In a citrusy explosion of lime and yellow, Kuroda turns December into June, as Phish throws the Fall Tour into a tropical crescendo. There are actually even audibly lusty "Oooh!"s and "Ahhh!"s for Kuroda's lights on the AUD recording of the show. I swear…listening to it now, I wonder: even if Phish didn't deliberately stage Naked Guy's assault, how could absolute chaos continue to elude them? They are, after all, still essentially the same people as they were in 1985, if not in the same exact circumstances, bodies or mindsets. They seem to have re-asserted a dedication to their craft, which was always approached with a rigor and tenacity that went untouched by serious external augmentation for years.

The question I'm having to ask myself so often -- every other fear-and-sweat-soaked minute, in fact -- is: at what point in the life of an artist dedicated to "Pure Art," do life and art become inverted, so, as inside, so outside? Or, so as one's desire to evolve, so the seemingly spontaneous delivery of the "pure" means by which to execute that, even if it's only time in which to dig further down, writing for 60 minutes, then resting, exhausted, for another 90 minutes, dreaming fitfully about making "CK5"-engraved pancakes for Chris Kuroda (seriously), awakening, drinking Red Bull, rinse and repeat? (Which it was for me this past strange, depressed, bewildered week...)

I keep using the "hot, hot heat" metaphor for Charlottesville because it was indeed so warm, in the midst of the cold winter bite, and that fast-approaching, kinda glum "end-of-tour" feeling…it was like Phish saying, "Nature…people…what's wrong with y'all?" and insisted upon righting the order by a) bringing the heat back to the South where it belonged, and b) dare I say, warming and messing and mixing things up to a fever pitch and leaving them there to marinate, and pick up in Miami right where they left off. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" hasn't ever made as much sense. Did drugs make me more naked or awake? For a while, they sure as hell did. But that's not why I did them in the first place…I first put foreign substances in my body to attempt to solve my problem of not knowing how to be in the world, by artificially erasing the fear, emotion, doubt and anxiety associated with lacking life skills.

Fortunately, it worked for a while, otherwise I'd have been in very bad (possibly invisible) shape. But it was later revealed that my problem with living was too great to be remedied by being wasted 24/7/~4/12, especially when the anxiety and emotions were pretty much all that was left, rather than solutions. Now, I have to move through my goddamn emotions, anxieties, and doubts, not around, over or under them. Nothing else works. When I try to circumvent my humanity, it's always lookin' to find me, usually does, then roundly kicks my ass. But when I plow forward and split my fears into pieces, in time, they're changed, and then gone.

So now, and again, and again, let the nakedness begin. Are Phish n00bs? Stop giving a phuck. It's getting hot in here! So, take off all your clothes. "Let 'em see you sweat!" is my new motto. Something I don't need anymore might melt away in the process.

If You Become Naked (Guy): "Too Hot" Tour's Cold, Cold Closer (Part I)

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:01:00 +0000

You could call Fall 2009 Phish Tour the "Too Hot Tour" -- it was for me on occasion, in more ways than one, sweat trickling furiously into my eyes too quickly for me to swipe it away with frenetically gesticulating hands. I tend to liquefy when in motion-propelled trance states, or just extreme heat in general; expansive, progressive Phish shows are obviously no exception.

This here's the first installment of my tour recap, which I shall be engineering in reverse, from most recent to the beginning, backwards down a blistering, controversial, celebratory cluster line of shows marking the return of Phish as I know and love 'em: sometimes slowly, haltingly, and occasionally in great bursts of brilliance. Thirteen shows in sixteen days yielded a condensed slab of evolution in the band, its phans, the "discourse" surrounding them as a "phenomenon" and of course, their music, which is escalating in exploratory risk exponentially.

So, if not to only prove my point that some points on that line can definitely be termed "key evolutionary moments," I'm going to start at the end, and work my way back, with the full complement, travel and music, opinions and sensations, soup to nuts...me, you and my kazoo, on Phish T00R 2009.

I remarked to the friend of the dude from whom I bought my ticket for last Saturday night's Charlottesville tour closer: "The amout of sweat on the forehead and neck [indicating with right index finger] is a barometer of the quality of the show so far..." He stared at me, blind drunk, having imbibed with a vengeance since the lot, then swiffed readily from a hip flask of some reeking firewater before the show (of which I demurely declined to partake).

Later, paralytic, he tried to slow dance with me during the pastoral "Harry Hood" outro jam. You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to try that one on me. His unsteady arm attempting to encircle me, I unraveled a dainty pirouette that sent him reeling Fishward in confusion towards his friends. Capture narrowly averted, I continued my avian Page-side gyrations, the matter flying blithely behind me.

"Naked" is a pretty good way to describe where I was at by the time I got to the Charlottesville, VA Saturday evening; a raw, humble, surrendered space, where silliness settled upon me like a blanket of new snow. Soul-wise, I was clothed in nothing but my smile, and all the wry and elusive humor I have inside floating around me like gauze. Imagine, if you will, six weeks of feeling like you're living in a nightmare, a trapped parakeet stuck in an all-wrong situation you feel powerless to change, but one making you monetarily able to enjoy a delectable freedom otherwise difficult to achieve. I found myself on my knees on a few occasions, pleading for a solution to emerge. Now, with one crucial part of the equation solved (awkward, ill-fitting job = removed), a new level of puzzlement presents: Life Without a Net (all the time in the world, while the world bears down)...

Flashback to Madison Square Garden, Wednesday, 12/2/09, 7:52PM. I got a ticket from a phan in Phlorida, and was chillaxin' with the one and only Mike Z, a/k/a The Famous Nile, responsible for getting me into this mess in the first place, back in '93. Just kidding! Being a turbo-phan isn't so much a mess as a perpetual toss-up. If and when it does get messy -- e.g. including, but not limited to, body parts afloat in a pool of perspiration, the result of an electro-fried Cactus slappin' irrepressible Fish shimmy po'boy -- it can be the finest morass imaginable.

Believe it or not, 12/2/09 was Mike Z's very first MSG show. I realized later with surprise that, with that statistic, I've probably surpassed him in the number of shows attended, which is a bit like realizing you've grown taller than your mother; kinda odd. Weirdly, the exact moment I uttered my recent occupational update to MZ, an MSG guard descended upon us like a screeching falcon, where I innocently perched with Mikey and some other "seat magicians" attempting to conjure up a "psychic upgrade" before the lights went down. We were drawn up sharply and threatened with eviction by The Man, and Mike Z sidled off, remarking in mock gangsta behind Makisupa's back, "I took a bullet! Yeah! I took a bullet!" That's my Maggie!

He didn't get to hear the news until a text floated in, nearly paternally on Sunday evening: "Are you alive?" The last he'd heard from me was frenetic begging for his credit card as the whole rental deal went south; of all the pholx in the world, he was the one I knew would dig the scenario, and sweetly researched the train in tandem with me, and suggested it as Plan B, when we discovered he'd need to rent the car himself to pull it off. He was already at his place of employ when I anxiously called SOS, one main (uh, rather crucial) reason he couldn't even come on the trip.

I sent him a few texts earlier that week, pix of my sweet spot in Philly, of ex-AstroTurf-clad "Lawn Boy" Doug Loeb in Albany (mutual pal from our SUNY Oswego days), and one that said "Which MSGs are you going to? I've missed you all these shows! :-P " And it's true...as much as I've whined about that old college roommate "stealing Phish" from me, Mike Z gave me the gift of Phish, and I have partaken richly.

Now I know the reason

That I'm feeling so forlorn
I'll pick you up at 8 as usual
Listen for my horn...

Flash Forward: Saturday, 12/5/09. I'm on the 12:05PM Amtrak to Charlottesville at Penn Station. I'm thankfully rested from the "misfortune" of getting shut out of the final MSG show. The way I see it, if you got into Friday's show you either hit the lottery, knew someone who did, bought a ticket soon thereafter (right around the time I was still languishing from Festival 8 expenditures), got lucky in the lot, paid above face, or "knew someone." Miraculously, I managed to miss every one of the hits in that list, hence (actually hilarious and kinda sweet) sufferin' my very phirst Phish shutout in 16 years. Not bad odds, considering!

[More (depressing?) (hilarious?) (holistic?) footage of me and the miscreants outside MSG Friday night, giving the streets a taste of what was up...video by me.]

I mucked it up until a clearly deranged phellow shutout babbler splashed some squalid moonshine on my New Balance'd foot. Later, y'all! (Thunderous Zzzzzzz's...)

As the train rolled outside Penn Station on its way, I see it's now snoshing outside: that is, dumping down a nasty mixture of snow and slush in damp, fluffy flakes. Staring out the soon-speeding train, I was really glad I wasn't in a car on the road. The original plan foiled by The Man and his heavy requirements (that wee matter of credit cards being necessary to reserve rental cars in the borough of Manhattan), may have made me feel even more like a doofus that can't get their "adult act" together.

But, self-deprecation aside, one never really knows why any of these things happen, job-loss mid-tour, bollox'd Charlottesville rental car plot... For me, driving 6 hours in wintry mix would've been nothing short of a total horror-show. All the spraying backwash, flying grit, and tedium of trying not to swerve and spin, would've been just enough to render me loopy before the last show in an already pretty commanding run.

And the job thing...that's a little more tricky. I'm still adjusting to not having to go to that office anymore, which generates a sense of blessed relief beyond expression. But though I now have an assload of time to write, I also have an equal measure of time to stare into space trying to "solve my life" through sheer force of will.

Won't make any calls

I'll just bounce off the walls
Till I go back to Kill Devil Falls...

Thanks for the reminder, Trey. I'll try leaving the house later, maybe. Maybe I just won't talk to anyone about my job, and pretend everything's fine.

This uncomfortable phase of my existence has been reminding me of a story in Phish: The Biography that cracks me up wildly, and has been lending me a little comfort about the eventual amazing success possibilities of those who meet adversity in attempting to cram themselves into the Mainstream, with less-than-excellent results:

"Around this time Fishman went through a hard bout of the lovesick blues. A serious girlfriend split up with the drummer, plunging him into a chronic funk. The relationship ended over what she saw as his laziness. One day he had awoken with the revelation 'work sucks,' and decided not to show up for his job shoveling snow in downtown Burlington. She issued an ultimatum: 'Either you go to work or I'm leaving.'

"He didn't go to work and she made good on her promise, so Fishman retired to his bedroom, rising only for band practice. Actually, he didn't even have a bed at that point, just a growing mound of dirty clothing that he sprawled upon. Each day he began sleeping later and later. The cycle was broken one day when when Mike Gordon brought a plate of eggs and toast to his room.

"'I thought you might enjoy breakfast in bed,' he said with the barest flicker of sarcasm. It was five o'clock in the afternoon.

"'That was the first thing that made me laugh in a long time,' said Fishman, 'and from there, things got better.'"

Hey, where are my eggs, Mike? (kidding, kidding) It's no easier that Phish likely escalated what was a non-working job situation, which makes it look amazing like I got let go because of tour. But I think, though it'll take me a minute to get my footing, the benefits of the turn of events will begin to show themselves, at least in terms of the real thing I've been avoiding doing for the last seven years which is: write, write, and WRITE, already!

And that, I'll continue. Plan B to Charlottesville meant eating a hundred bucks for a train ticket with some bananas and nuts, reclining and reading said Phish bio, and ended up sharing my heady snacks and talking shop with a young gent I'll call "Future Boy." He's the New Wave of Phan, 23 year-old recent Ohio University graduate, lanky baja hoodie-wearin', slow-talkin', dirty blond floppy-haired tour kid named Thane. As in "of Cawdor" (that Macbeth boy); or to me, now, just "Thane from the Train." This young gadabout opined authoritatively from under heavy eyelids on the finer points of every show from Hampton 2009 onwards, which he proudly boasted were his first Phish shows ever, which he promptly began hitting like meteors from the moment he stepped aboard, missing none except Hampton #3. I felt for him...

He got me completely re-aligned with the imperative to revisit Late Summer 2009 Tour, which (I know, I know!) I still haven't even touched my tongue to yet (though the ears have savor'd some glory), and, specifically, gems nestled among its early stampede (e.g. Red Rocks #2, 7/31/09, a near-historic dollop of proto-3.0 spontaneous shakedown). It came with great clarity speaking to Thane that I was bearing witness to both the evolution both of a brand-new Phish, as well as a brand new phan. There, before my eyes, was the future lot scene, with a Bachelors degree in Sustainable Urban Planning. Nice!

Thane and I detrained and made our way to the local bus stop across the street, to catch the #7 towards the arena, after realizing there weren't any cabs in Charlottesville, and the soonest you could get one via phone was 90 minutes! Not sure what I expected having not been able to find a cab anywhere at Midnight, the night before Thanksgiving, at the train station, dead in the center of Philly...yeah, right. I personally love taking mass transit when I'm on tour, to get a feeling for the "local color." Speaking of which, the lighting in the bus was low and blue, the mood of some mobile nightclub grotto, a random assortment of students and semi-toothed hobos gathered in the bizarre disco glow. We hopped off the dismal Studio 54 on wheels when it rolled into a swarming flow of activity in the wet, glistening street about 5 minutes up the hill...

We hopped from the bus into a marauding phalanx of chaos. I will now posit my "Show Tone and Tenor" for the Charlottesville Tour Closer: CHAOS. The scene was not gritty like, say, Camden or Philly, and not outright silly like Worcester or Boston, but a haywire, inebriated, Final Four-type frenzy of heavily-accented co-eds, mixed in with an assortment of phreaks of every stripe.

Strangely, though, rather than being obnoxious, it was jubilant. Thane and I (the new and old guards, together) were pumped to finally be there. We made it! Both of us had suffered last-minute travel contingencies in NYC, and had the same miserable "I'm f*cked!" moment, then took the extra leap to find our way South in the wintry climate despite. Getting our collective shit together (tickets, peeps, meetups, etc.), we traded digits and bade each other farewell, and each disappeared into the mix.

The scene leading into the John Paul Jones Arena was a precarious tangle of rowdy, heedless obscenity; comically upset boyfriends and/or girlfriends attempted to hush their significant others' loud, inappropriate, Southern-drawled statements in close quarters with fellow phans. "Well, I never!" I said aloud at one point, at some of the dialogue. "Uh-oh, I think I just might have..." I replied to myself.

Inside the venue was a mess of a different sort. The interior of JPJ Arena must've been engineered by a disused slaughterhouse architect. The onrush of squashed spectators surged inward, and were then forced around an almost tubular corridor surrounding the arena space, like a grumbling herd of disenfranchised sheep in an interminable chute. This unnerving march was inconveniently punctuated by huge lines of beer-buyers, through which the already-ornery masses were squeezed like an absurd human sieve. Somehow, though, all the mayhem and disorganization made for an oddly edgy, cheeky fun.

It was a disaster in the happening -- the JPJ folks should really do some kind of follow-up on the way crowds are funneled through that place -- however, be it the tour-end energy, or everyone's collective excitement to finally be warm, safely traveled and at a Phish show in the Fall, chaos met euphoria, and the resultant product was a show that didn't stop for a second; no valleys, only peaks, and for all its hiccups and winding, precarious palpitations, Charlottesville was an apt end to a solid couple weeks of logarithmically evolving Phish.

[To be continued: the music part takes a little longer to write. In the meanwhile, do your homework: read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 if you haven't already done so.]

"Let's Hear it for The Naked Guy...That Took a Lotta Balls!" -- Trey, 12/5/09, Charlottesville

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:32:00 +0000

I'm still recuperating from tour, but in the meanwhile, here's a little placeholder taste of my post-to-come, on the Charlottesville tour closer, thoughts on my life in the past few weeks, and possible futures. I haven't laughed as hard as I did in Charlottesville in a long time, and if laughter is a sign of rebirth, then I think I'm a couple of days into an infinitely weird-feeling, but triumphant, bare-assed infancy...just the way Jesus found me.

And, apparently, Charlottesville's now-infamous Naked Guy is in the same position, albeit now possibly clothed in a fashionable neon-orange prison onesie. The two best parts about the dude's appearance (and I'll repeat them in my next post) are: 1) When he lovingly bear-hugs Trey, Trey barely registers any surprise, and just kinda pats the guy on the back, like, "Aww, hey there, naked guy!"... and 2) Fishman just never, ever, not for ONE SECOND stops playing the hi-hat intro to "Ya Mar." Not...for...one...second.

This band does NOT miss a beat. And why should it, when rhythmically propelled by God's Own Original Naked Guy, or Practically Naked Guy, anyway? Y'all know what's up under that frock, right? Umm, no pun intended...? (*faint*)

Anyway, without further ado, let's have a look at Naked Guy's contribution to the Charlottesville Too Hot Tour Closer, soon to be tackled (hyulk) in slightly more depth by yours truly.

NAKED GUY UPDATE!!! This just in from "meltyourface," a reviewer over at Phish.net: apparently, naked guy was NOT arrested, just cited for indecent exposure! Huh, I guess they don't call it the Dirty South for nothin'...! Thanks for completing the Fall Tour Package, Naked Guy! (uhhmm...)

Aggressive Mentation vs. the Art of Dance: Soul-Searching in the Garden of Earthy [sic] Delights

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:52:00 +0000

Tonight will be my sixth Phish show in nine days. I've never seen this many shows in a more or less consecutive fashion since 1993; the most I think I'd seen at a clip was four, and I'd done that tons of times, but never more. The last two nights have been hometown shows, the first in the NYC area since the Jones Beach shows. It has been bewildering, electrifying and stupefying, once again showing up for this ride with the constant companions, and once again, through another series of bizarre kaleidoscope fragments.

[Ed. note, 12:44AM, 12/5/09...I didn't get into tonight's show, getting shut out as I did in the lottery, and refusing to buy a plus-face ticket, or worse, a fakey (which were going for $150+ outside the venue). It's fine, because I planned to go to Charlottesville in the event of that very thing happening, and have decent seats in Section 109 for tomorrow's tour closer. Har har, phoiled again!]

I met Jesse Jarnow both nights before the show, in circumstances that both gave me some pause, and rocked me to the foundations of my self-esteem. You're going to have to bear with me in the next few days, weeks, whatever...as much as I complained about my job in this blog for the past months, I will probably spend at least a little while musing aloud on what the hell it really means, from a practical standpoint, to now be without that job. The job was indeed a bad match; I was a hands-on, systems-oriented, hardware-centric technologist, in a client-centered, application-centric, software-based company. Yes, I will continue to assert that Phish didn't make me lose my job, nor did I get fired because of Phish. But I'd be sort of a putz to encourage a level of denial in myself, to not examine the very real influence they had on this new phase of my existence, as a writer, a music-lover, an adult woman, and a citizen of Earth.

Obviously, meeting up with Jesse both nights before the MSG shows led to us talking a bunch. Jesse is another of the resurgences in my life, having rejoined the "jamband" community (as it were), at the behest of Phish. After I began my underground descent in 2000, slowly but surely, relationships with the people with whom I had camaraderie -- close associations with others that closely followed and publicly remarked upon the phenomena of the improv rock band-and-fan community -- began to slip away as well. Another is Richard Gehr, also an old friend in the "scene," who even allowed me to babysit his kids for a couple of years.

I've been back in touch with Jesse and Richard in the past months, and speaking with both him and Jesse, I've been slammed at the base of my being with a clattering question: what is my journalistic, analytic, characteristic contribution to the body of Phish wisdom going to be? I don't keep name-dropping these people to appear credible, though that's what it appears either "phan society," (male-centric, not to speak of race) or circumstance (after all, I did "go underground" for decidedly unglamorous, unpopular reasons) might require. But like it or not, easy or hard, it's now time for me to bite the bullet and throw down in the ring for real...despite my insecurities, self-recrimination and expectations, the evolution of that contribution will happen in its own way. Perhaps my contribution will be a living, breathing, changing thing, much like the subject planet, and its unique surrounding atmosphere.

Hanging out with Jesse during Phish shows throughout the years has always been both delightfully exhilarating and profoundly annoying. Such could be said, globally, about our friendship! With his intense scrutiny and musicological understanding, crucial examinations are made in both a historical and temporal context about, in this particular example, the music of Phish. Both our minds work in that way, so it has been a relief, at times, to share that thirst for granular analysis, almost as an expression of love; we give enough of a shit to listen that deeply, and care that much.

However, it happened again last night; one of those moments where my particular, occasional (but integral) temperament towards apprehending the music of Phish came in direct and grating opposition to Jesse's, causing me grave emotional and mental distress, practically all of which went unmentioned, for the obvious reason: visceral, muscular, non-linear emotive response finds no cozy bedfellow in the brittle, pebble-tumbling of critical minutiae.

One thing I do do in this blog is relate my personal experience. Come hell or high water, it's the only story that's truly mine, and I believe it's my birthright to tell it. It just so happens to dovetail rather interestingly with my life, as a music-lover, an artist, a professional, and finally (most pertinent to this journal), my life as a reconstituted Phishhead. When my life fell apart in 2003, all I had in my two hands was a pile of ashes that had been a semi-promising career as a music journalist, and a few chards of dignity. From that meager mound, I fashioned a relatively successful IT career, and a life manageable enough for me to continue surviving in the meat-grinder that is New York City, and to get my bills paid.

I'm naturally capable of a level of critical analysis that can detect and expose inconsistencies and interruptions in harmonious patterns of synergy and symmetry. I'm a computer technician as well as a writer: detecting anomalies has been my stock in trade for the past five years. But weirdly enough, there's this whole other thing going on in me that has always been there as well, a sensibility beyond time, a big-picture lens, an almost molecular, spiritual barometer that understands and processes phenomena from a position of wholeness, of oneness.

The past week of shows, to don my critical cap, have shown some fleeting struggles amid sprawling rhythmic experimentation heretofore unseen in Phish 3.0. The struggles seem to be twofold: 1) an occasional lyrical messiness (largely on the part of our redheaded charioteer, Trey Anastasio, who I will normally personalize in this blog as "Trey"), and 2) an unnerving hesitation among one or another of the band members to unhook the latch between an exploding jam, and a song's seemingly premature conclusion.

Number 1 occurred last night in "Stash," which is strange since it's one of the band's most-performed songs. Number 2 hasn't happened within the last four shows I've seen, but can be heard most recently in the 11/22/09 Syracuse shows, which, despite its majestic bigness, occasionally finds one or two band members yanking the reins, when one or the other is deep in the groove and marching on without intent to cease. But, as unnerving as that is to hear, as a phan intrigued and eager for some seriously deep and advanced jamming, it is brimming with promise. It is for me, anyway.

The odd-seeming blend of both analytical and psycho-emotional approaches is probably one of the reasons I like Phish so much, in addition to being one of the reasons Jesse Jarnow and I, despite our differences, are able to remain fellow phans and phriends. Watching Jesse scribbling furiously in his big, curlicued scrawl, into his perpetual, everpresent, mashed up little notebook, although numb with fury, deep down there was a respect for our differences. However we may express it on any given night, we are passionate about Phish. There's a fear that occupies my being that I've been unsuccessfully trying to evict for years, a homunculus residing deep inside (alongside that broad, elemental, fearless comprehension I mentioned) that wants me to believe Jesse's method of discourse is somehow more valuable than mine.

Hanging out at the Relix Holiday Party, I felt like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, or any of a dozen movies about the dude or gal who gets hit by a car or a piano or something, and ends up in a coma, or stranded on a desert island for a decade, and comes back all amnesia-wracked and conflicted, to the world they once knew. Yeah...that sounds about right. The welter of old, vaguely-recognizable faces and voices, posters from shows and magazine covers with dates like 2002 and 2004 -- a few of the years I was "gone" -- lent an eerie cast to my already-extant sense of dis-ease.

And then there was Jesse, who, five years ago, managed to throw the ice water of his blunt reviews in the face of a Phish perhaps in a great deal of emotionally wrenching denial, about its future as a reputable, respectable touring unit. Dubious street cred, perhaps (which is certainly how he wore it when we first sat down and reconnoitered in July), it is impressive in its power to impact the band's self-analysis. He swanned about the party easily, chatting with the folks with whom he was a fixture, damnable to some at a time, but now, kind of a hero, for helping, perhaps, to impose a period of necessary exile on the band. Maybe Phish had to die to be reborn, and none among them were strong enough to cut the cord...and who can blame them?

Me? I'm just freaking out. Phish has been in my city for several days, during which my life purpose has (somewhat by request, but still shockingly) been reassigned. I'm glad, in a way, that my life has been transformed right at the end of Phish tour, because I'll have some space to process it all in the coming weeks, a naturally reflective Winter time of darkness and spiritual hibernation. Last night's show featured very, very emotionally indescribable moments for me, hence some frustration resulting from another friend's a) insistence upon dissecting it, and b) my own inability (or unwillingness) to exercise my critical abilities upon it in any substantial way. It was my first Phish show as a really free woman: for all the good and bad of that, there's really no quantifying it, none at all, at least not where The Phish Experience is concerned.

We were hanging out with this old-time Deadhead guy last night. After Jesse had finished tweeting the setlist out, he asked the dude how long he'd have to wait back in the day to finally lay eyes on a Dead setlist. The guy sorta shrugged and said something like, "Meh! I...I didn't really care that much about it. Maybe someone would tape it, and write the setlist down on it..." He gestured, and trailed off.

"So, if they played 'Dark Star', you wouldn't, like, want to know about it?" Jesse inquired, quizzically amused. I looked at the Deadhead guy, nodding and goading him triumphantly.

"...welllll, I mean, it would be good that they did. But...I dunno, it wasn't really about that, so much..."

I interrupted pointedly, making a sort of globe-like structure with my hands, "It was about the EXPERIENCE, right? The totality of the continuum?" The Deadhead guy looked at me like even I was thinking too much into it.

I'm at a crossroads. I've been here before, but I was younger then, and had less faith in the world and its people, in myself, and my ability to function within it successfully. Now, all I have is art, and craft, love, and faith. The way of others' inquiry may be to launch missiles of assesment towards an object of analysis, but (or so it would seem with Phish, now, in this blog) my method is a holistic experiencing of the shit and Shinola of phandom, where and when the mood strikes, for no particular reason, other than to expose, to myself...myself. Phish is, and has been, an exceptional mirror.

My evolution has traveled along with theirs, their catastrophes occurred right alongside my own, and now, I can only assume their triumphant return and growing pains in (undoubtedly) again evolving as a band of respectability, innovation, scrupulous artistry and artistic perseverance, will reflect my own soul-adventure. And, like Phish, I will not put in one granule less than everything I've got into it.

So far this run, I've walked the streets of this town not sure of my worth, nor talking very much, feeling very profound, and indeed thinking I might need to secure the help of a neurologist. I've seen the light between me and my mind, and felt painful, incomprehensible memories falling behind, incinerating in the white hot heat of an evolving now, captured, perhaps, in a blinding Kuroda moment. I have wondered, incidentally, how one may cheer for Chris Kuroda, without seeming a little strange...and so I just do it quietly, to myself. I've waded, resplendent, in a sparkling velvet sea, through doubt and sadness, and have then been pulled through the darkness of a bleeding sky, through time elastic, to catch afire and have all my cares get blown away as I get my reggae woman boogie on.

So, once again, it's time to get up so that I can show up to get down. I'm free to be who I want to be, and to see (if only seeing) through the clarity of my mind to the bottom of my heart, Phish grinning back up at me. Maybe tonight I'll discover the Grand Unified Theory, and why Phish has destroyed it. I know whatever happens, I'll be sore tomorrow, just in time to do it all over again, six hours south of here. So be it.

[All photos from 12/3/09 @ MSG. Check out the full flickr photo set here.]

Turning Pro Again: Weirdness Abounds in Gotham

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:49:00 +0000

Hey hey, my my. In haste yesterday afternoon, I accidentally posted my next installment before it was done. Sorry about that, for those in the audience. The haste might have had something to do with a few key distractions. First, I was trying with all my 17th Level magic-user skills to cast my "cloak of invisibility in mind and body," and hustle out of work early to pre-show dinner with Jesse, before the the big phirst night at MSG. Second, and in rather large part related to the first, and the general rash of dissatisfaction, angst, frustration and (sure) exile I was feeling in my life as a desk-bound wage-earner, my boss decided do me a grand favor by planting his foot in my ass and giving me the ol' Donald Trump-style heave-ho.

That's right folks: my boss finally did for me what I couldn't do for myself, and fired me. Who can blame him, really? Scant weeks after being desert-rotisseried on two vacation days at Festival 8, I asked for a couple *more* days off for New Year's Eve (yep, Miami), then kicked the can off the cliff by asking if his silence in responding was because the answer was "no"...these are the acts of a person captured by a certain passion.

In rediscovering my true calling, my B-Job charade just couldn't keep pace with my waning attention. Jeesh. Don't get me wrong: saying things like "true calling (though more true than most things I can believe are true) feels so crazy and scary I can barely stand it. But, blogging as I have been on my iPhone from a cabin in the Poconos, the subway, parks and restaurants, lying on my back in a minivan in Albany (when I said I'd take a nap), in the dermatologist's office, wandering the streets of Philadelphia, and, of course (much to the detriment of my strict ethical standards) AT WORK...it was starting to get a little untenable.

My friends became baffles for increasingly tearful rants about wanting to be freed from the shackles of my quotidian imprisonment. Then (dramatic chords) Fall Tour began. On V-T00R, I pushed the envelope of sleep further into my wee night owl hours, making for dire complexity when the sun arose...namely, "snooze abuse." Things just started getting more and more awkward.

An elaborate Excel spreadsheet was concocted to track tour plans, needs, travel and expenses. Fifteen Firefox browser tabs were open at home and work with routine locations everpresent: Phish.net (setlists), ZZYZX's PhishStats (song frequencies), TripAdvisor.com (cars, hotels, flights, oh my), Craigslist & Gruvr.com (tickets), Gmail (endless communiques), and the inevitable Blogger "Edit Posts" window. Another window would contain three tabs I'd occasionally use for work; intranet, client portal, ticketing system/knowledgebase...

I'm good at pretty much everything I put my mind to. But I got a pretty humbling lesson in the power of passion in these past three months. When the soul (whatever that is) has a calling, it must heed it, and when it doesn't suffering results. I was doing the perfectly logical, seemingly most "sensible" and "adult" thing to do, by showing up to my job, and trying to stay focused. But in so doing, I was trying to push the rain back into the sky. My left/right brain talents for textual craft and technical acumen were at odds, and couldn't resolve in the way I tried to force them to in my office. Something had to give.

I've said it here a million times: Phish has led the charge of my soul's creative force, which, on ice for six and a half years, is now back with a bold, shiny vengeance. Yes, you're damn right I'm terrified. The fear of being a starving artist alone in a brutal city is what's kept me running *from* my truth. I've lived as a perpetually broke urban nomad for almost 7 years, since my life fell apart in 2003, due to poor coping skills, depression and self-medication with non-medicinal substances. Yeah, I'm pretty much completely sick of running on fumes, which is why I was trying to subsidize the dream with what became a nightmare.

I didn't get fired because of Phish, nor is Phish gonna solve all my problems. I got fired because a door to my past opened up into my future, and the magnetic force on the other side of that door sucked me through. My boss...he probably has no hate. He knows what I've been doing, and has seen me trying my best despite being torn in many directions.

And I don't know how it's all gonna pan out. Oh my god, what a creepy feeling. But I do know that, thanks entirely to Phish and the initial inspiration they've provided, I'm a lot less afraid now to let writing about music (and, sure, lots of other stuff) take its proper place in my waking activities, and maybe to try making a living doing this thing I love (and am good at), with the extra added bonus of knowing my way around servers and switches, Macs and PCs alike.

Now, I have little choice but to place my whole life in the hands of the forces I HAVE to believe are guiding me towards my calling. I stood in the swaying, pulsating throng at MSG last night, once again in the company of heroes of creative endeavor, whose passion, focus and resolve is continuing to propel them on a daily path of transformation and rediscovery. Broken shackles clattering around my dancing ankles, I waved my arms and hair and screamed and leapt...I really, finally feel free, because for all the terror and doubt, I know I can't control the uncontrollable. I can't push the sunlight of my spirit back into space anymore. Cute boys told me they liked my style and how I dance; one gave me a tall cup of ice water and demanded a kiss on the cheek (compliance!); but I kept my faithful post Page-side and raged like a woman whose job was now to provide this beloved scene with her 100% vibe.

If you ask me, despite the diminishing decimals in my poor, haggard bank account, the timing is just right. Oh yeah. "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." I found the Phellowship table the minute I walked into MSG, found my people, and told the tale of my termination/liberation. My phriends trickled in one by one, from Albany and Jones Beach, Philly & Festival 8...I offered rides to Charlottesville Saturday with the money I tried hard to legitimately earn and quickly burned as fuel for this potent preoccupation...

...but wait, there's more! it's not a "pre"occupation anymore. Now, it's where I'm at. A tall dude from Boulder came up to me after I shared my tale of "whoa" with my phellowship. He told me about a year ago, he willed his job away (hahah!) and it's been the best thing he's ever done, and he's having the time of his life young, sober, happy and phree! I practically cried, thanking him and cranking his hand up and down, my beanpole angel of Christmas Future. It's gonna be okay. It's here, and I'm no longer a traffic light slave. It's green-means-go all the way. And damn, its a crapshoot, but it sure feels good.

So, forthcoming from the free fingers of the fancifully Phixated, Syracuse, Albany and beyond, the end of tour, beginning anew, and more exciting new adventures in the life of a full-time phan. Hey, it's a living. Kids, don't try this at home. But if you're lucky, have a good safety net, some encouragement and a healthy dose of wanderlust, save yourself a decade of indecision and try it on the road.

Finally, a favorite scene (from fellow erstwhile music-scribe Cameron Crowe's seminal '80s romance, "Say Anything"):

STUCK UP ACCOUNTANT:

So Lloyd, you graduated Lakeside, right?

LLOYD:

Yes sir.

ACCOUNTANT

What are you going to do now?

DIANE COURT'S DAD, JIM:

Yeah Lloyd. What are your plans for the future?

LLOYD:

Spend as much time as possible with Diane before she leaves.

JIM:

Seriously, Lloyd.

LLOYD:

I'm totally and completely serious.

JIM:

No, really.

LLOYD:

You mean like career? Uh, I don't know. I've...I've thought about this quite a bit, sir, and I'd have to say considering what's waiting out there for me, I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or... process anything sold, bought or processed, or repair anything sold, bought or processed, you know, as a career, I don't want to do that. So, uh, my father's in the army; he wants me to join, but I can't work for that corporation. So what I've been doing lately is kickboxing, which is really a, uh, new sport, but I think it's got a good future. As far as career longevity goes, I don't really know, because, you know, you can't really tell. Your training sticks as a fighter, you know, but it's no good, you know...you have to be great, but I can't really tell if I'm great until I've had a couple of pro fights. But I haven't been knocked out yet. I don't know. I can't figure it all out tonight, sir; I'm just going to hang with your daughter."

Bringin' the Noise, Bringin' the Phun(k): Albany 2009, Night 1

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:40:00 +0000

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

-- Berthold Auerbach

I'll just come right out and start by saying It Happened Last Night. From where I was standing (Section 130, Row J, Seat 6, lower level, slightly left of center on the back wall -- amazing sound), it seemed that Phish is back. Or rather, I'm back with Phish...? Or...egghhh...

How to encapsulate? Obviously, schlepping my mortal coil all over Bob's green planet indicates at least a passing interest in sticking with the newly reconnected synchronous sound unit. But the analogies of growth, fertility, perserverance and trust can't be overstated. A wise person once said that one only gets out of the Phish music experience what one puts into it. Be it an overall new understanding of that basic, universal truth, or be it sheer, blunt friction through repitition, the spark caught the tinder and the payoff came last night.

Philly II was a night of orgasmic preoccupation for me.

[Ed. Note 11/30/09: After the fact, I thought about censoring myself in the previous sentence. But if I can't be honest about the sensual pyrotechnics that seeing Live Phish can set off in me, the value of honesty as a virtue to me would be diminished. Sure, I've been accused of honesty to a fault. I wonder constantly to what extent I need be honest about the intricacies of my phan experience. Either way, I'm not saying I sacked up with any of 'em, just that being where I was seated that night put me in a place of particular as-yet-untold ecstasy, which may or may not have had something to do with proximity to the band, during a show, which sorta *does something* to me. I've tried to be conservative about physio-emotional analysis of my Phish experience, because it could easily be misinterpreted, misconstrued, and/or disruptive to my reputation. But for crying out loud...I'm a human being! You should see the amount of male ejaculatory commentary in Hoodstream.com chat about Phish, that's way more controversial than one sentence about my submission to abstract climactic alchemy, in a damn good seat, at a damn good show. Don't even get me started on that; we'd need a semester of Sociology lectures.]

Philly II was followed by massive amounts of tryptophan with friends in the Catskills on Thanksgiving. And Friday, post-poultry-fest, Phish tripped up phans, sending us careening into revelatory, revolutionary bliss at the Times Union Center in Albany last night. They pushed an overstuffed envelope of old-style, hardwired synergy, with highlights such as:

-- Consistent, individual standout performances

-- Intriguing newer tunes, particularly from 2004's hope-among-ruin requiem, "Undermind"

-- Refreshing bustouts ("My Mind's Got a Mind of Its Own," last played 6/24/04, and Little Feat's "On Your Way Down," last played 7/30/03)

-- TWO debuts: the joyously propellant reggae jaunt, "Tomorrow's Song," both an "Undermind" debut AND a Fishman-credited tune (!!!), and,

-- A couple of jaw-dropping, genre-flipping departures, first in the second debut of TV on the Radio cover, the optimistically-oriented uplift, "Golden Age", and a perhaps gentler lean into My Bloody Valentine-esque mega-mono-chord noise onslaught, capping the jam out of "Light".

The mellow mood in the Times Union Center only supplemented the simmering crockpot of Friday night cheer, and the undeniable frenzy of an indoor, Upstate NY Phish show. It's possible something about being in the pocket of the Northeast, womb of their origins, plopped the fellas along a transverse continuum of their history, causing a simultaneous forward/backwards/in-the-moment glance that resulted in one of the shows this year that can really boast several key, vibe-locking moments: for me, it was the first show since the reunion that I felt, at turns, that:

1) Phish is f'in BACK. This is PHISH. At their best, they overarch their separate selves in unified rhythm, and pierce the mundane invisibility of a world of strangers with their uniquely magnetic personalities

2) I was finally able to NOT think, and finally able, for the first time this year, during the reunion, and (particularly, amazingly) as a sober phan, to be taken away by the music -- which is funny, since a bunch of us realized over Denny's that a few of the first set's songs were distinctly about mental processes -- hah!

At one point during the ecstatic "Harry Hood" outro jam, things were so satisfying on so many levels I said to a friend, "I'm ready for this set to go on another half-hour!!" Whaddya know, like a rocket from the core of the Earth, I was treated (and I do mean treated, near-medicinally) to a stunning Page McConnell siege. They blasted out of "Harry" into "Suzy Greenberg" (to whit I also remarked Page had swung from Beethoven to Booker T), then helped the crowd to a rich serving of "The Squirming Coil" ending with a 4-minute Page outro. I don't even know how to express my feelings about all that, without revealing way too much about the innermost workings of my mind-body matrix. 'Nuff said.

Either way, it's coming up on 6:30PM, and it's time to go out angling for another ticket. Hoping for another lower level tonight, and will be succumbing (perhaps awkwardly) to participating in various, errr, "machinations," in order to facilitate some more visual stimulation for the phans on the homefront. You can check out the first night's stills here, and a few video experiments, the second set "My Friend, My Friend", and a slice of "It's Ice". Not perfect, but definitely the product of a few times around the rock-shot block, and an excellent (almost over-powerful) camera, the Sony CyberShot H50.

All around, I'm happy to report, a fun, fresh and funky night of laughs and damn phine Phish. Saw old phriends (like college pal, Doug Loeb, a/k/a "Lawn Boy," the dude that used to walk around in a costume of AstroTurf handing out candy back in the day), and new sober pals keeping me clear and clean to shoot through these phine new tubes. And I just got a text from good ol' Nile (who now goes by Mike Z, that chameleon), wondering if I'm going to Albany II. Why yes, Mikey, I am. You taught me to likey, and I still really do. It may only be getting better.

Lot Nuggets: Albany 11/27/09

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:54:00 +0000

I'm standing here in the lot adjacent to the Times Union Center, eating a rather excellent, sorta crispy burrito (wheat tortilla, cheddar, black beans, salsa, and fresh spinach). It's 42 degrees and threatening rain. Here's what's on my mind:

-- Inspirational reading today said:

We don't ever have to wonder what our next right thought should be when we view all actions as symptoms of either the love or fear that's being felt. The guesswork is removed. Being hopeful for ourselves and one another is the remedy for all situations, large or small. It's the only solution that will promote peace.

Cultivating Hope, Karen Casey, 2009

Talk about ninja lot attitude. Walking around this tight, hectic, frosty lot, icy drizzle beginning to come down, I'm struck by how ridiculously naive I am. Over a decade of Phish shows, and residency on the post-Dead, Phish-fried, Bisco-fied counterculture, and it still occurs to me to tell the truth and deal straight, rather than cook schemes. This is how it was even when I wasn't sober! So, you can see why I rolled with phans and got my tix through people I knew, or friends of friends, and not places or things -- I figured at least that way I got a human connection, rather than a manufactured experience, and probably stood a better chance of not getting scammed, terrified as I was of the big, bad, never completely "kind" world...

The above-quoted life-stance is not easy to practice. It goes on to say, "The trust we need to develop to move on requires love, particularly for ourselves. It doesn't mean loving the unknown itself, which is never easy; it does mean trusting in our readiness to cultivate hope and the belief that all is well, that each fearful situation presents us with the opportunity to develop our ability to build that trust." My fear-based mind tells me that this method won't get me MSG tix, or Miami, or a boyfriend, or...see where I'm going with this? With some judicious studying of seating charts and a little good intention, I'll end up where I need to. The real problem is thinking I know where I need to end up. In the past, I'd knock the edges off that fear with mood-altering substances. Now, I try to practice acceptance.

The tickets I ended up finding are just off-center, Page-side, along the back of the arena. The folks I bought them from fell into my "don't freeze to death" time-limitation clause, right around 5:55PM when the sun was gone, and the hot carbon monoxide blast from the lot generator wasn't keeping me warm enough anymore (and, what's more, was stated to have the ability to possibly cause *actual death* on it's safety label). They were three nice, fresh-faced twentysomething kids, and I was clearly the fill-in for The Friend Who Bailed. Koo-koo! I gave them the half-face they wanted, and they said, "You'll be sitting near us! That's the bonus!" Interesting. I can live with that. I'm still getting used to the whole, "Embrace the light, not the darkness" concept. It's kinda working for me.

-- Thinking about what to write about on this blog, especially on tour, is a pain in the ass, especially when you're a petfectionist that thinks everyone's watching. The best thing about Phish reuniting and inspiring me to write a blog, is that I'm like the Chris Kuroda of Bloggers. Phish emerged, and summoned me through the forces of beingness, to expand and extract my art, and the only hindrance being exercised is that which I impose on myself...which can be, as I said, MANY.

Neil Armstrong didn't shoot from the womb to the Moon, although that would've been something to watch. Being, and writing, are enterprises I've given up trying to achieve perfection in, and the less I seek to master them, I think the more relaxed and surprised I'll be.

That said, hair is back, luggage is stowed, batteries are charged, I'm hydrated and rested and it's cool, cool business here in the Times Union Center. Albany is ready to put Phish back into a New York State of mind.

Happy Thanksgiving & I'm Glad to Be a Glide

noreply@blogger.com (Carol Wade) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:53:00 +0000

I am thankful for music. I'm thankful to Phish, for the show last night, and for whatever bountiful force led me to my seat at that show. It probably ranks right behind 8/7 and 8/8/09 as "Best Peak Phish Show Experiences," which reminds me of something I'm not shocked to remember, after all these years; when I'm close to this band, I am very happy.

I'm especially thankful that, even if I have no idea exactly what's going to happen over the next 10 days with Phish, no matter what, I will grow as a human being.

I offer you a picture, a song, and best wishes to you and yours for the holiday...

[The view from Section 122, Row 13, Seat 12: all Page, all the time.]

["Wide Awake in a Dream," Barry Biggs, 1980]