Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

This was written before Phish’s return to the stage.   I wrote this for Professor Jnan Blau as he would have a testimony of one of his Michigan Tech students before he left to go teach on the West Coast.  For those of you who don’t know, Jnan Blau wrote his dissertation on Phish and Phish’s culture.   He has served as one of the most influencial individuals I have encountered in my lifetime, and I am looking forward to meeting him out on the West Coast one day to see Phish with him.   I cannot thank him enough for his insight as an academic mentor, as well as a good friend.

Testimony from a Post Phish Phan

Eartha Kitt, singer of one of the most popular Christmas songs ever, “Santa Baby” once said,  “I am learning all the time.   The tombstone will be my diploma.”  I couldn’t agree more, especially in the realm of music.   I feel I am constantly learning music, from the past, and from the here and now.     The better part of my academic studies for the last year has reinforced my ability to analyze and critique music, something that I have always done on my own, but felt a bit ashamed to share with anyone else.   Analyzing and critiquing music is something that I have always done carefully, looking at the artist, their appeals as musicians to their fans and to themselves.  I look through time to see  how they have evolved during the course of their musical career.
Music is a phenomenon that I cannot live without, something I experience and love more each and every day, something that makes me appreciate life as I feel so insignificant to the complexity of musical sounds and patterns that strike my ears.  I would like to discuss one type of music in which I experience everyday and they go by the name of Phish.  This is a testimonial of the passion within one “Post Phish Phan.”
After only being on this planet for the last two decades, I feel I have inherited the sounds of music from many decades well before my time as well as a lot of music from the here and now.  To be on this planet for just over two decades and know that at fifty five years of age I will still be discovering a lot of new things with music; some pleasure and pain through many years of music evolving will keep my musical curriculum from remaining the same.
My involvement with the music industry as a listener cannot go without a great deal of gratitude to many individuals.   My high school and college friends, a high school teacher by the name of Earl Brogan, and most recently, a college professor by the name of Jnan Blau have helped me be as fortunate as I am to know so many different genres of music that the popular music industry doesn’t necessarily promote.

Learning Music as a Complex Composition
My great group of high school friends, most of which I no longer have connections with, made it possible for me to appreciate music as being a complex marvel.  By trying to form a band and realizing how hard it is duplicate songs by our favorite artists and bands gave us all a great sense of appreciation for the musicians we tried to be like.
Jamming every Tuesday night in a garage was both frustrating and fun for us, as it proved worthy for us to try to make the sounds that we grew up listening to.  We thought we could emulate the sounds of other bands after only a little while of rehearsing, only to find out how much time and consideration goes into making a completed composition of music.  After two years of jamming out in a garage, we failed to develop a distinct sound, and only played covers of three chord punk songs, something we hardly felt worthy of doing. We as a group, did not like the idea of playing covers, as we didn’t feel worthy of living up to the standards of the original song.   Through these experiences, we realized how much time and dedication goes into writing one song, let alone making a whole album.  A capstone of our playing days ended with a High School senior project in which a friend and I wrote and recorded a political song that gave us an A in the class and a round of applause when we presented it.   These are memories that cannot be erased from making me the musical listener I am today.
I was also an avid music listener as I was growing up in high school, and if I was not jamming with a few friends, I was certainly listening to music, exploring many different sounds.  I must give thanks for my High School history and composition teacher, Earl Brogan, who gave me the open-mindedness to listen to other types of music aside from the heavy metal and punk rock that I listened to growing up.   Without him exposing me to different genres of music from here in the United States, as well as across the world, I would not be the diverse music listener that I am today.   My junior year of High School in the spring of 2004, Mr. Brogan introduced me to Phish, a band I have only heard of at that point, but have not listened to.  I was quick to stereotype Phish as a hippie band that was trying to recapture what The Grateful Dead did.

Becoming a Phish Phan
Mr. Brogan burnt me “Billy Breathes” which was Phish’s album from 1996.   I went home, listened to the album repeatedly.  I would argue that “Billy Breathes” created a turning point in my life, especially in the way in which I listen to music.  This album was in “my rotation” of albums for the next year(by rotation, I had a 50 disc CD player in which some albums never left the player).  I considered “Billy Breathes” to be the most complete and beautiful album by a rock band from beginning to end since Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.”
It wasn’t more than a few months later in which Mr. Brogan burnt me another Phish album,  “Story of the Ghost” which was arguably their most funk-oriented album, at least I would argue so.   It was at this time in which I went and purchased their newest album, which I had no idea would be their last, “Undermind.”   As I was growing to become a fan of Phish and their music, Mr. Brogan broke the news to me that they were dismembering as a band.   This was not as devastating to me as it was to most Phish Phans.  I was not aware of their live music, highly improvisational and experiential ways of conducting a great show to fans, and how important that was to their success.   I was becoming fan of Phish through studio albums.
It was not until after Phish’s final departure at Coventry in which I was aware of their music as a live act.  I lived on Phish’s ability to do covers when I first discovered Phish, as I was not acclimated to the idea of long and complex compositions that were improvised.  Hearing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Getting’ Jiggy With It” is what fascinated me, not the bands ability to improvise.   The amount of risk the band took to make or break a cover of a classic song in front of fifty thousand people is was struck me as absolutely amazing.
I feel as if I had to learn to appreciate improvised music, especially from Phish.  I would argue, that an improvised song that runs fifteen minutes in length is much easier to grow adapted to when it is heard live in person, as opposed to on an Ipod, computer, or stereo.  I certainly feel that it is a lot harder, for a Post Phish Phan, such as myself to appreciate the improvised music, and extended jamming in the realm of my own home.

Post Phish Passion
One might ask, why would someone who has never saw Phish, or experienced Phish prior to their dismemberment, have such passion for the band?  Why would I collect Phish books, all their live albums, live downloads, attempt to collect bootlegs, and read statistics about the band?   Why do I think they are the greatest band of the 80’s and 90’s, so much to say that they are the best thing to happen to the music industry since the British invasion?   These are all questions I have been asked by those who I have tried to get to enjoy Phish, their music, their Phans, and their Phenomena, in the way that I do.
I think Phish, musically and culturally is something that you have to grow accustomed to even for me, who did not experience the musical culture first hand.  Phish is not something people become acclimated to by listening to once or twice.   Phish is much more complex than that on both musical and cultural levels.   I think growing accustomed to Phish grows in many different ways for a Post Phish Phan such as myself.
Covers, which I explained earlier, was my first reason for liking Phish.   The songs they played, in which I heard on the radio and was accustomed to, is what ultimately made me appreciate Phish as a live act.  The covers might not have been done well, but the amount of energy they brought to playing those covers is what made me want to explore further.   I later realized that the energy they brought to their covers also was carried over into their originals, and into their fans, and that this was a huge phenomenon that the music industry is only able to see once in a great while.  The consistency of energy is something I felt through stereo speakers at home, and did not have to be at a Phish show to experience.

Phish Original Compositions
Now a days, Phish originals even hold a deeper place in my heart, bringing me aesthetic, completed, and complex compositions that bring me to places musically that no other band has ever brought me before.   Whether this is through lyrical narrative in the land of “Gamehendge” or through their improvisational melodies that builds an emotion that very few bands can replicate, most certainly Phish holds a deep place in my heart.   All music has some emotional characteristic to it, but I feel the emotional ups and downs through improvisational song and segues much more with Phish than any other band that I have listened to.

Phish As A History Lesson
Politically speaking, there are a lot of bands out there that don’t really look back at the history of music, and give credit where credit is due, and this is another reason why me being a Post Phish Phan I feel a lot of passion.   Bands such as Coldplay and U2, who will say themselves that they are the best band ever, or the biggest band in the world, hardly ever give recognition to those who were in the music scene before them.   That is not to say that these kinds of bands should play covers of others, but it is to say that they should give recognition to those artists that influenced them to be the artists they are today.   With all due respect to Coldplay and U2, as I do enjoy their music, this is something where I feel Phish has always done very well, give recognition to those musicians who helped put them where they are today, while staying humble about their growth to stardom.
The history of music is important to me, as I became more familiar with bands of thirty to sixty years ago by listening to Phish.  Songs that never heard, that I thought were Phish originals, introduced me to bands such as “The Surfaris,” “Ween,” “The Who,” and “The Velvet Underground.”
My passion has grown knowing that I’m not by any means crazy or an obsessed loner for liking Phish as much as I do, as I’m not near as passionate as many Phans, but I do also think that Phans such as myself hold a different type of passion that is built in a different realm than those who have experienced the band during their tenure.
My passion for Phish has not degraded at all over my five years of listening to them as a band, in fact, it has grown.   I hold a lot of hope that Phish will one day get together, and that I will be able to experience what Phans before me have had the opportunity to experience.   As long as I continue to hold that hope, and hold on to the memories through album listening, watching video, and conversing with other Phans, my passion will be preserved, and continue to grow. The passion I have as a Phish Phan will remain with me forever, the hope that I will be able to see them live in concert once and for all.

I went on a Bob Dylan jag this afternoon.   His playlists on my compressed version of my iTunes library consists of very few artists, those in which I most admire obviously went back onto my library first(since my recent crash of multimedia on my hard drive).    I decided to explore Dylan on YouTube, something I haven’t done in a while, and I stumbled across these.

Figured I’d share what is the most influential musician of the last 50 years.

The Rolling Stones