As you all undoubtedly know, today marks a huge milestone in the Phish world. So, in celebration of the 1,274th day since MJM Part 01, here's the 168th edition of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! Per usual, this week's winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!
Hint: In a way, the mystery jam is relevant to the actual Phish milestone celebrated yesterday.
The holiday season is just around the corner, you probably know a Phish fan who hasn't heard this great all-for-charity double-album tribute, and the more we sell, the more grants we'll be able to make...
Welcome to part 167 of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! (Give or take fifteen hours.) As usual, this week's winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. Because of the upcoming holiday, a hint will be posted at 10:00am ET Wednesday if necessary, with the answer to follow at 5:00pm ET Wednesday. Good luck!
Answer: The contestants extend their winning streak to six, as @eyesworld89 wins his first MJM by being familiar with the 3/8/09 Down with Disease. Check back in later today for MJM #168.
“As through this world you travel, you'll meet some funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.” So begins Woodie Guthrie’s 1939 The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd. Ma Joad, in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, suggests that Pretty Boy Floyd was a victim – motivated by a punishing Depression and the madness and meanness of those around him, he fell into a life of crime more by necessity than inherent evil. “I believe you've killed me, so you can go rot in hell” said Channing Tatum to his assumed killer Melvin Purvis as Pretty Boy Floyd in 2009’s Public Enemies. ...
One of the most frequent topics addressed by Tom Marshall is the frustration often inherent in communication. Words can encounter interference (“Waves,” “Water In the Sky”) or they can simply be missed (“Sample In a Jar,” “Anything But Me”). Sometimes you want to speak but you can’t (“Talk,” “Sleep”), and sometimes you want someone to speak, but they won’t (“Curlew’s Call”). But communication is a double-edged sword. Childhood sayings about sticks and stones aside, words can hurt. In fact, sometimes what is left unsaid can be just as painful, such as in the exquisitely pensive composition “Flock of Words.”...
After a short, revitalizing hiatus -- taken to avoid becoming a charicature of itself, or worse yet, a nostalgia act -- Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday is back! And as with MJM #165, this one's brought to you by the MJM OG himself, @RabeldyNugs. As usual, this week's winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!
The life of the common red wiggler worm seems simple upon first observation. A typical day in the compost heap for the red wiggler consists of drawing organic material into its gaping maw with the aid of a protractible pharynx. Effectively swallowed, the unwitting organic matter passes into the crop, where it is briefly stored before moving into the gizzard. There, it is smashed and ground into smaller and smaller pieces until sliding into the intestine where digestive juices dissolve and extract the useful energy. Ultimately the red wiggler disposes of the “useless” waste as a tubular cast of its sphincter. Of course what is useless as an energy source to the worm is very useful as fertile soil for the farmer. The farmer uses the enriched soil to grow new vegetables. Many of these vegetables in turn end up back in the compost heap to provide energy for the worm. The entire process is microcosm of the never-ending cycle of life and the exchange of energy....
An anagram is a new word or phrase created by rearranging the letters in a word. This simple linguistic tool has been used throughout history as a means of encrypting secret messages. When applied to a person’s name, the anagram can provide strange insight either into their character or the anagramaticist’s feelings toward them. In “Twist” the victim of this analysis is the too often absent beloved of the protagonist. Apparently, neither is happy with the resulting anagrams....
From the editors: We'd like to welcome Mike Hamad (@mikehamad) creator of the amazing @phishmaps to the blog today. Mike has a fantastic post digging into a musician's viewpoint of Wingsuit and its connections to other music you are already familiar with. We hope you enjoy it!
When songs are grouped together, I sometimes hear connections.
What I hear before and after one song, or a segment of a song, influences the way I hear that music. I think a lot of people listen this way, and probably a lot of Phish fans. We’re always talking about sets, pacing, song selection, vibes that carry over from one jam to another, whole weekends, tours, years, and so on. Everything affects the experience of everything else, musical and otherwise.
I hear a few connections, spread out all over the place, in Wingsuit. Did they intend this? Who knows. Brains make connections composers didn’t intend us to hear all the time. Composers are pretty good at creating cool accidents; in a sense, all they really do is create the conditions under which we experience a piece of music, right? The rest is up to us, to take from it what we will.
Some of the connections I hear have to do with melody, and some with harmony. (I think there are probably some lyrical connections that should be discussed as well, and they've probably all been pointed out anyway.) It's tough to talk about this stuff without getting a little technical, and that sucks. But I'll try to make it tolerable if and when I say jargon-y stuff.
Trey Anastasio’s 2012 release, Traveler, is often described stylistically as “jamband meets indie,” owing to the collaboration with famed indie producer Peter Katis, Kori Gardner (Mates of State), Bryan Devendorf and Matt Berninger (The National). In contrast, “Architect” reaches for a different sensibility entirely and blends elements foreign to many Phish fans – a dash of adult contemporary, and a not so subtle nod to a “higher power” and specifically how that outlook manifests in twelve-step programs. Perhaps an equal-time counter-weight to “Bug,” “Architect” drips in higher power themes, an outlook that (among other things) suggests an individual’s control over the course of life’s events is nothing more than an illusion. The “Architect” in question needn’t be God, but rather any power greater than one’s self....
“Corona” begins with an admission: No matter what the goal, at some point along the way we “stumble on and fall down hard.” Humans are fallible, so failure is an inescapable reality. The question is, how do we handle adversity? When everything seems lost, what will give us strength? The song’s lyrics describe the sun expanding, the atmosphere and oceans burning away, the stars going out, and the arrival of Judgement Day. So when all is dark and the future is uncertain, “how you gonna see me? How you gonna know?”...
And we're back! Did you miss us? Let's go right after the elephant in the room, shall we?
Below the fold, you can use your thumbs to tell us what Wingsuit tunes you think most deserve a permanent home on the new album and in the repertoire. The staff here definitely has our own favorites, but this is about you, so get in there and get dirty. The action's in the comments...
Think of it this way: If you’re a band that has recently gained a reputation for being a nostalgia act, perhaps the ultimate musical costume is an array of new songs which look to the future instead of the past. Instead of celebrating your history, ditch the idea of re-working a classic and play an album that doesn’t yet exist. By playing potential songs from a new album, Wingsuit, Phish found a way to simultaneously acknowledge where they’ve been and celebrate where they’re going, while confounding expectations and including the fans in a way they have never done before....
If you’re Phish, Halloween is a high-pressure gig. But what about the act of drawing the curtain on a tour like this one? Before we delve into AC3, let’s put it into context.
Before tonight, the tour consisted of 11 shows in 14 days. Those 11 shows produced no fewer than 8 essential jams. By “essential,” I mean that someday your roommate at the seniors home is going to doze off listening to you gush about them for the millionth time. Two of these jams were “Tweezer” (Hampton and Hartford), and two of them were “Carini” (Hampton and AC). Of the remaining four, three of them deserve mention in any conversation about all-time versions: the Hartford “Golden Age,” the Reading “Disease,” and the AC “Twist.” Rounding out the list is a behemoth in its own right: the Worcester “Drowned.”
Not too shabby -- and that’s barely the half of it.
Wow. Are we having fun, yet, Phish fans? Holy moly! On Thursday, Phish set down one of the ballsiest, boldest, most innovative creative offerings of their storied thirty year career. The pressure is off and we are rounding the home stretch on what is arguably the best tour of the post-breakup era. Check that: in my opinion, we are easily, definitively, by a large measure witnessing the most consistently excellent, innovative, paradigm-breaking tour since the 1990s… we’re in the thick of artistic explosion that belongs in the discussion with August ‘93, December ‘95, summer and fall ‘97, or any other tour or era that you want to include in the conversation.
Given the magnitude and power of what is happening in the moment – and because I’ve been living a little large and am time pressured, again, sigh – I’m going to let these last few weeks settle and offer some hopefully coherent and reflective thoughts soon. So I’ve Tom Sawyer’d this recap with the help of my friends. Twenty plus years into this journey, and I’m as thrilled and jacked up about this band as I’ve ever been… the vibe reminds me of the afterglow of Big Cypress. This is it. Let go, enjoy it… take a look around you, give a good look to the people around you. There is a lot of love in the air, embrace it, give yourself to the moment. Music is the BEST!
Martin Acaster: We sat in my truck and listened to the show on the street corner outside the WOW Hall in Eugene while waiting for our daughter to emerge from the squealariffic and sweaty Hoodie Allen show feasting on cold pizza and chugging amp energy drinks. On the ride down from Portland "Under Pressure" came on the radio and I thought to myself… this would be a really cool song for Phish to play someday. You can imagine the holy shit chills I experienced during “Twist.” The band knows what I am thinking even when I am 3000 miles away. I chuckled at the “Halley's” > “Tube” juxtaposition… since they are now essentially the same song. Heard “Wombat” teases all over the place. That groove is so infectious. The Bush Kush freakout reminded me a lot of something Ed Zeppelin used to do on a couple of Dread Zeppelin tracks. Another winner… the Phish from Vermont is truly en Fuego.
Like most of you I suspect, I spent the bulk of Halloween day embroiled in the grand mystery of what album Phish was going to cover during the second set of the first of three nights at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. When the doors finally opened and the Phishbill was in hand, I was stunned and excited. Phish would not be donning a musical costume for this Halloween. They would be performing a live debut of their new album Wingsuit in celebration of their continued vitality as a band after 30 years together. Rather than a tired classic rock cover that couldn’t possibly please everyone, they were with great bravery going to take maximum risk in hope of the ever elusive maximum reward. The only question remaining at that point was whether Wingsuit would be a trick or a treat. That conundrum persists.
I thought it might be fun to celebrate tonight’s show with another poem. In keeping with the occasion, though, this one is quite a bit more dark, so I hope you enjoy this Phishy re-imagining of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.”
Also, in the spirit of the Reading food drive, Worlds That Inspire Community Service Organization is making a push to get donations of winter gloves for the homeless in New York City via NYC Rescue Mission. Look for more information on this later this morning, but bring a good pair of gloves for donation to Boardwalk Hall tonight and pitch in for a great cause!
Phish
will once again conclude the year with four shows at Madison Square
Garden!
The lottery for tickets is underway now, here, and the lottery window ends
on October 7 at noon e.t. Tickets to the general public go on sale on
October 12th at noon e.t.
Phish has announced a
12-night Fall tour, kicking off with a three-night stand at the Mothership
in Hampton. Continuing north, Phish will make a long-awaited return to
the Glens Falls Civic Center. The run ends with three nights at the
Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall, the first night falling on Halloween (three
years after the Little Feat costume).
As noted on Phish.com, an
online ticket request period for the tour is currently underway at http://tickets.phish.com and will
end on Sunday, August 4th at 11:59PM ET. Tickets will go on sale to the
general public beginning August 8th and continue through the
10th.
It should be noted that no mention of an event on December
2nd to celebrate the band's actual 30th Anniversary has been made.
10/18 thru 10/20 Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, Virginia
10/22 Blue Cross Arena, Rochester, New York
10/23 Glens Falls
Civic Center, Glens Falls, New York
10/25 & 10/26 DCU Center,
Worcester, Massachusetts
10/27 XL Center, Hartford, Connecticut
10/29 Sovereign Center, Reading, Pennsylvania
10/31 thru
11/02 Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey
Mystery Jam Monday Part 168
