Phriday Phish

[R_of_G]

Steve's Friday Music threads (which I always love) inspired me to start one of my own.

I've decided to do a Phriday Phish Thread.

So here's the first installment, from the 1998 Farm Aid show. Apparently after this performance, Neil asked Phish to be his backing band for his 1999 tour but they declined. This number gives a hint of what might have been...

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[sunvalleylaw]

Cool! I had no awareness of that performance. Good find and post!

[R_of_G]

I figured it was a good one to start with as even those who may not be familiar with Phish are probably familiar with Neil and probably with that particular song of Neil's as well.

I still have that performance on VHS as we taped it when it first aired. We used to watch it every day.

Incidentally, the guitar Neil is playing in that video is Trey's old regular guitar which he used regularly prior to Paul Langeudoc making the brown one he is playing in that video.

[hubberjub]

I remember seeing this live on television ten years ago. Thanks for posting this. I cannot deny that I am a huge Phish fan.

[R_of_G]

I figured you'd like it Hub. I remember you saying previously that you were a fan.:D

That performance was a few months prior to my wife's first show [12/31/98]. Overall I thought 1998 was a pretty good year for Phish shows. Maybe not quite as good as the previous year but 97 is arguably the vintage to end all vintages (though I still think 94 is a very strong contender for that title). The 1997 holiday run though stands as the best ever. Those shows are legendary, particularly the funk-fest that is 12/30/97.

[R_of_G]

Here's one of the highlights of the afforementioned 12/30/97 show...

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97 was most assuredly the "Year of the Funk" (which was really kicked into gear by the Halloween performance of the Talking Heads' "Remain In Light" the previous October)

[tot_Ou_tard]

Excellent start to an excellent thread Rol'. They play like a Ka-Tet.

I first got into Phish in '92.

[R_of_G]

Excellent start to an excellent thread Rol'. They play like a Ka-Tet.

I first got into Phish in '92.

They are one from many. :D

I beat you to them by a couple of years, but I didn't see them for the first time until 1992. I saw some great shows in 92 though.

[hubberjub]

It's interesting that you posted Sneaking Sally because I've had a recent discovery. I did not know that it was a Robert Palmer song. I just found that out and have been loving this video. Forgive me for straying from the topic.
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[R_of_G]

No apologies necessary. Posting a version by the original artist of a song Phish covers will always be welcome in this thread. :D

I've found that by mixing in as many covers in their set lists as they do they expose a lot of fans to music they may not have known otherwise. What I've always loved about them is that they are one band where you truly never know what they're going to play from one minute to the next because any song they've ever heard is fair game to be covered. My brother and I used to be a bit obsessed with trying to guess the setlist with varying degrees of success. Yes, I was that guy.

[tot_Ou_tard]

Yes, I was that guy.
I knew a lot of those guys & loved them, but I come from a different universe.

But then I think that baseball is a mental illness disguised as a sport, with all the twitching & tapping the batters do & all the statistical obsession of the fans. :D

[R_of_G]

:)

Whenever they were on tour, we used to have a little pool between my wife, my brother, my best friend and myself to try and call the 1st set opener, 2nd set opener and encore every night. That was a fun game and kept us all following the setlists from each night as they were posted on the internet. I got to the point where if you'd name a date I could run down the entire setlist for you to a high degree of accuracy. What's scary is that a lot of that info is still in my memory. I met someone a few months ago who had no idea about my past obsession with Phish and we eventually got to talking about them. She said I saw them a couple of times in 1999 in Cincinnati. Before I knew what was happening, I wound up reciting for her the setlists of both shows she saw. It was like a magic trick.

I remember the reactions we'd get talking about this stuff in front of people who weren't into Phish and couldn't figure out what we were talking about because they were used to bands who played essentially the same set every night of any given tour. Sure, maybe they'd play a few in a different order or add a different cover here and there, but nothing like Phish where you could see four or five shows in a row without hearing a song repeated, or where the band has twice as many songs that have never been on any albums as they have officially released songs and yet the fans know every single one of them because we listen obsessively to tapes/cd's/downloads of shows.

I used to compulsively collect all shows with certain songs analyzing them to find the "best _______ ever". "Divided Sky" was by far the one I was the most obsessed with, but there were others as well.

I love that with Phish there are so many different levels of participation fans can choose for themselves ranging from just listening to full blown obsession.

[R_of_G]

A little 1997 era funk to start today...

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And then a nice Stones cover...

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[R_of_G]

A few different things for today's installment.

Cavern
(This is the first Phish song I ever heard)
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Split Open & Melt
(Another early favorite of mine)
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Julius
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Gumbo
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I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome
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Hello My Baby
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A Day In the Life
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[tot_Ou_tard]

Very tasty selection. Thanks RoG!

[R_of_G]

Glad you enjoyed Tot.
More to come next Friday. :D

[R_of_G]

Ok, so I missed last week. I had a one year old's birthday party to get ready for.

Anyway, Phriday Phish returns today with my absolute favorite song of theirs. This song has been an obsession of mine since I first heard it way back when and the melody line to the main theme is pretty much playing somewhere in my head at all times. I have been slowly but surely learning how to play parts of it over the last few years hoping to someday put the whole thing together. Right now I can play the main theme, which starts at about 5:20 of the first half of the video. I can play from that point through to about the 2:05 mark of the second half of the video. I can play some other pieces of the song here and there, but it's that part I've been concentrating on for the most part.

By the way, the guy who made the video cut it brutally in the middle of Trey's presentation of the theme but at least for part 2 he backed the video up about 30 seconds so you can pick it up without really missing anything.

Back when I obsessively collected Phish shows, I would seek out any show that had a "Divided Sky" in the setlist, analyzing and comparing them, always looking for the best version they ever played. What I found was that the best ones seemed to come either on Halloween or at The Gorge in Washington (where Trey always played it as the sun set). Halloween 1995 is among the most stellar versions ever, followed very closely by this one from Halloween 1994.

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[sunvalleylaw]

Thanks for picking out some stuff to share with us. I had heard some Phish, but not a ton. I limited myself due to the "jam band" label which I am not really into. Good to get exposed to some of their stuff. I was looking at the paper and came across this, and thought you might like it: http://www.thenewstribune.com/entertainment/story/777170.html