We at Phish.net were greatly saddened to hear of the untimely death of phan Harris Wittels, host of the hilarious Analyze Phish podcast and writer for Parks and Recreation (among many other comedic endeavors). To remember him, we turned to Nathan Rabin, author of You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me, a memoir of his experiences following Phish and the Insane Clown Posse. Nathan appeared on Episode 7 of Analyze Phish to discuss his book and attempt to help Harris convince co-host Scott Auckerman of Phish's greatness. He is the former head writer for The A.V. Club and currently a staff writer at The Dissolve.
Remembering Harris Wittels
By Nathan Rabin (@nathanrabin)
At the age of 30, Harris Wittels had the kind of credits men twice his age would be proud to claim. He’d written for three of the best, most groundbreaking and beloved sitcoms of the past twenty years in The Sarah Silverman Program, Eastbound & Down and Parks & Recreation, where he was an Executive Producer and could be found in some episodes wearing a Phish tee shirt and playing a hapless guy named Harris.
Harris was an essential part of the Comedy Bang Bang podcast before fusing two of his great loves: podcasting and Phish, into his brilliant podcast Analyze Phish. As if all that weren’t impressive enough for one lifetime he was also a gifted stand-up comedian, talented drummer with Don’t Stop Or We’ll Die, a columnist at Grantland, the coiner of the term of Humblebrag and the author of the book spun off the column.
Yet Harris was so much more than the sum of his incredible credits that it felt maddening and reductive to see obituary headlines that referred to him as a Parks & Recreation producer or Humblebrag coiner because the whole of Wittels was so much greater than the sum of its remarkable parts.
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On Tuesday, February 3, 2015, the improvisational rock community lost a brilliant and generous man in Eric Vandercar. While commuting home from work to his wife, his teenage son, and young daughter, Eric’s northbound train hit a car at a crossing in Westchester County, NY. It was the deadliest train crash in the history of the Metro-North line, which is the second most-ridden commuter railroad in America (second only to the Long Island Rail Road).
For several decades, Eric taped and circulated the shows of many bands, including Phish, Grateful Dead, moe., Spin Doctors, The Radiators, and others. Copies of several hundred of the shows that he taped circulate on the Live Music Archive, for example. His love of the music so many of us share in common cannot be overstated. And his generosity in circulating that music was, and continues to be, both magnificent and inspiring.
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A "Triple Nipple" refers to any show in which Phish plays all three* of their original songs that refer to nipples**: "Fee", "Punch You in the Eye", and "The Sloth". They've been an item of amusement for decades. But even the FAQ's Triple Nipple page has until recently had the numbers wrong.
Corrected numbers reveal something that's long been elusive, partly because we didn't even know to look for it: There have only been two such shows, such that the next one will be the one, the only, Third Triple Nipple - the cubed cube, the apex of nubbin allusion, the supernumerary of supernumerary shows.
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"If life were easy, and not so fast, I wouldn’t think about the past.” That is to say, if the years did not fly by so quickly, we might not have to take the occasional moment to reflect upon what it is about the people, places, and events of days gone by that shape our current perceptions of ourselves. ...
When the
prophet Ezekiel had his vision in the Valley of the Bones foretelling the resurrection of Israel, he likely did not have the Phish New Year’s Eve 2014
suck to blow gag in mind. Neither could he have imagined the circuitous path that would lead to his prophecy being transformed into the song Phish selected to preface the gag which culminated in a giant Fishman balloon releasing a golden shower of confetti on the crowd gathered below. ...
The following reflections on the Miami New Year’s Run come to us from an old time Phish fan who last saw the band on July 26, 1992, at the Big Birch Concert Pavilion in Patterson, NY. On that date in 1992, Phish played a 1-set, 7-song opener for Santana. To underscore the significant gap in time between shows, the last time the writer saw Phish, more than 22 years and 1011 Phish performances ago, Bill Clinton had not yet been elected President. The writer is a musician and bard himself, and here are his unedited reflections on seeing Phish for the first time in 22 years:
"When I think of Phish, I think of phar out melodies and a phuriously phunky rhythm section. If I could I surely would dance till the lights came up and when they did I would shout out loud "Whoo Hoo!". Phunking all right!
Phish is the little band that could. Trey, Page, Michael and Jon, old buds who formed and forged their sound in the little old state of Vermont. They stuck together through the turbulence and turmoil and learned how to make magic. It always begins with a little love, some sweet nectar and a dream.
Now my love does not eat meat, so I am going Phishing. Won't you join me?
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Until last fall, every announced tour brought a common lament: "West Coast screwed again." But the data has a different refrain: While the West Coast gets plenty of love, it's the band's home turf that gets routinely shafted - and moreso across the band's history.
The mantra "follow the line going south" did not emerge in lyrics or tour patterns until 1987, following four years solely in New England. By 2014, Phish had abandoned Patriots territory - but they still played Seahawks city.
And last fall was hardly an anomaly. There have been more shows in Pacific states than New England ones in 12 of 23 periods - including 1997 and 2004, in particular. New England has even fallen behind non-US shows in six periods!
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As far as we know, Phish didn't play any Monday shows their first two years. And except for some regular gigs in 1988, Monday (and the first half of the week) remained less likely to have a show for most of their history. I know, you're not surprised... But there are two interesting twists in the pattern.
First, the distribution of shows across the week became more even throughout the 90s. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were played 2-3 times as often from '89 to '94. But by '97, Wednesday was just as common as Saturday; and by 2000, even Monday tied with Saturday! Gone were the days of booking weekend gigs at clubs in college towns; Phish could play anywhere, any night of the week.
But since the breakup, weekend shows are, once again, twice as likely as Monday. And now, even Thursdays are slipping away. The aggregate pattern now is fewer weeks, and 5 shows in each of them: Tues/Wed and Fri/Sat/Sun. (Two coming graphs will delve more into the related shift towards multiple-night runs in each venue.)
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Already, rumors are spinning about various stops on an anticipated summer 2015 tour. Wherever it's stopped, and whenever it's announced (likely on a Tuesday, late February?), it's almost certain to happen: Phish 3.0 is all about the summer tour.
For most of this chart, each row shows a calendar year (Jan 1 to Dec 31), with a vertical blue sliver for each Phish show. Three heatmaps summarize those 32 years: The darker blue the sliver, the more shows occurred on that day of the year. In all rows (the 32 years and the heatmaps), dates without shows stay white.
The top multi-colored row is based on a sum across all 32 years, and shows that Phish shows have historically been distributed roughly evenly across the calendar year, with only three exceptions: There have never been shows most January days, several days around the start of the school year, and the third week of December. But glance down the chart (where each row is a different year) and see both noticeable gaps and shifts in where they happened.
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“Tube” is the musical version of a
quickie. Time is a-wastin’ so let’s get down to business.
“Tube” is the first component of the quasi-official “Tube Trilogy” along with “
First Tube” and
TAB’s “
Last Tube,” though it should not be confused with the apparently unrelated “
Tube Top Flop” from TAB or “
Fresh Tube” from Page’s
Vida Blue project. The original “Tube” combines quirky Fishman-penned lyrics that reference asteroids crashing, tigers in lily patches, and even singer
Robert Palmer (though few can decipher the ending lyrics well enough to know what he is doing!) with a fast, shuffle-style verse and a groovy jam in the middle. ...
Anyone living in the Northeast US over the last few decades is likely familiar with the
Hood dairy company's advertising campaigns and it's signature character, Harry Hood. The little animated milkman in the fridge would proudly rattle on about his company’s dairy products when the "unsuspecting" folks opened their icebox doors. ...
The Mockingbird Foundation is proud to announce a new
program recognizing key supporters of its core mission through a new annual
process.
Many people beyond the Foundation's formal structure
invest significant time, care, and effort into building and improving the
Foundation's intellectual property, services, relationships, and grant
funds. They have coordinated or administered events for the Foundation,
represented the Foundation in some official capacity, or otherwise helped
fulfill the Foundation's mission in some exceptional manner. As an all
volunteer organization, these individuals provide critical, direct or
indirect support of our greater goal: the furthering of music and arts
education for children.
In recognition of past work on behalf of
or to benefit the Foundation, the board will identify Mockingbird
Ambassadors each November. The longterm intent is to identify perhaps five
such Ambassadors each year. However, the inaugural cohort is a larger
group, of ten individuals each overdue for a public expression of our
appreciation, debt, and support.
The 2015 Mockingbird Ambassadors
are:
It is our
honor to have each of them serve as Mockingbird Ambassadors for 2015.
Unconfirmed rumors surrounding a spring tour (mini tour, small club dates, etc) used to circulate every year, but in 1998 those rumors thankfully proved true. “
The Island Tour” came as briefly as it went, but it drenched the east coast with a handful of new tunes, and thus (in the days before LivePhish, Twitter etc) a handful of new arguments over their correct titles. Debates over the burgeoning threat of the new world order or the possibility of invasion by sentient beings from another plane of existence take a distant back seat to a roomful of passionate fans deconstructing the name of a new Phish tune from sparsely gathered lyrics after its debut. “That girl in the Gamehendge Ranger shirt said that song was “Relax,” but the kid with every backstage pass around her neck says it’s called “
Roggae”…”...
"Free" was one of six Phish originals that debuted at the Lowell benefit concert on
5/16/95. Fans quickly took to the song, which tells of a man who contemplates throwing his wife from the boat on which they sail. In fact, a minor lyrical change from earlier versions was released on the
Billy Breathes version of the song and all subsequent live performances; this change from “as we go sliding by” to “as the ship goes sliding by” cemented the song’s imagery....
LivePhish.com has announced a new service, LivePhish+, which will allow
access to the entire LivePhish catalog on demand.
From plus.livephish.com:
LivePhish+
gives you unlimited access to the entire LivePhish catalog, including the
latest shows, archive releases, studio albums and side projects. Sign up
for a free 10-day trial, and then continue your LivePhish+ subscription for
$9.99/month or $99.99/year. Non-subscribers may continue to use the new
LivePhish App to stream shows in your Stash as well as Featured Shows
rotating on a regular basis.
More information on the service
is available through plus.livephish.com/faq.html.
Walk the narrow streets of Amsterdam, and it is hard to travel very far before seeing some tribute to
Bob Marley. Given the obvious admiration members of Phish have demonstrated toward Bob Marley it was no great surprise for them to debut a Marley cover during their second ever visit to Amsterdam. “Soul Shakedown Party” opened Phish’s appearance at Amsterdam’s historic
Paradiso on
2/17/97. After one more appearance on
2/20/97 in Milan, Italy, the song then went back into mothballs, gone and seemingly forgotten before even one performance on American soil....
In Memoriam: Harris Wittels
