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the ghost pines
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Sabbatical Project Preface Draft (1/4)
So, I know I haven't been posting any trip reports or jam write-ups lately, and while I sincerely doubt the lack of my words is leaving a significant hole in your life, I wanted to explain why and share something slightly different in this post.
Basically, I've switched tacks within the last month from the "reading" phase of my sabbatical project to the "writing" phase, and while taking an hour of my day to write about something fun online after reading dense theory books for 4-6 hours became a welcome diversion over the last few months, taking an hour of my day to write about something fun online after already writing for 4-6 hours that day is...less welcome.
So, while I have lots of thoughts on my recent trips to the Deschutes River canyon and to the snowy rim of the Mountain Lakes caldera, and there are always more Goose jams to write about, all that stuff's been sitting in my Drafts folder for awhile because once I write for work all day I kind of just don't want to look at screens anymore.
That said, I thought it might be fun to share a bit of what I have been writing lately. I don't have a publisher for this project yet (and may never, who knows?) so there's no legal issue with sharing it for free...and it's just a first draft anyway. I have no idea if there will be a finished project (i.e., a full book) or if it will ever be published, but what I proposed for my sabbatical was that I finish a book proposal by the end of the year, and that typically includes an introduction and two example chapters. So I am writing at least that much, and hopefully carrying on beyond that from there.
For now, what I have is a sort of preface, laying out a little about me and where I'm coming from, including a few gestures toward what the book is going to be about. Again, this is a first draft, and it may well be that none of it will end up anywhere. But for now I'm happy with it and have moved on to working on the first chapter, which is about halfway done. I suppose I'll share that too once it's fit to be read.
I'm breaking the preface into four parts here, just in case anyone actually reads it and doesn't necessarily want to have to deal with one monster post containing all the text. So, here's the first part!
As I sit here at my desk, beginning to write the first draft of a preface for this book about summits and circumnavigations, lines and circles, I can’t help but be aware of one particular circle: Earth’s circle around the sun. My home office – a luxury born of necessity, back when COVID-19 shut down campuses but not classes – has one west-facing window, and there is a brief period of time every clear-weather day – longest in summer, nearly non-existent in winter – when the sun lifts itself above the roof of my neighbor’s house and shines through the maze of coleus standing rapt on my side of the window to heat the northwest corner of this room to an almost intolerable temperature. The air temperature on the bottom floor of my house is currently sixty-eight degrees, and the outside temperature is fifty-five. Out of curiosity, I put a small thermometer on the window sill, directly in the sunlight, and the mercury immediately jumps to almost ninety degrees.
Suffice to say that it’s difficult to sit here at four o’clock in the afternoon on a clear April day and not think about the sun. I am that seemingly rare person who would always rather be a little too cold than a little too hot, but I didn’t put my desk in this corner of the room as some idiosyncratic form of self-flagellation. I put it here initially, during COVID-19 lockdown, out of a conscious desire to be able to see the birds as they sang to welcome another spring, unknowingly, blessedly immune. Post-lockdown, I resumed doing most of my work on campus, but on the occasional day that I do work from home, I find that I enjoy having the sun to remind me of the Earth’s rhythms from the other side of the pane of glass that keeps me sealed in this human-made, climate-controlled room – a room that ostensibly exists to distract and protect me from those very same rhythms.
Today, as the sun shines in through the window, it heats up the wet dirt that my recently-watered coleus are growing in, and, briefly – until my nose becomes accustomed to it – the smell of humus fills the room. It’s a smell that has brought me comfort for as long as I can remember, dating back to my early childhood days in Ohio, playing in the backyard after summer rainstorms that you could almost set your watch by. I’d always imagined this to be an idiosyncratic reaction until I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass thirty-five years after those first memories of rain and dirt and learned that the smell of humus releases oxytocin, “the same chemical that promotes bonding between mother and child, between lovers” (236). This is one of those wonderful facts that science can “teach” us but is really just reminding us of something we’ve known all along: of course we’re bonded to the Earth as we’re bonded to our mothers, our partners, our children: it’s the dirt that will embrace all of us last, and most finally, after all.
The very word “human” even reflects this truth, as it originates from the Proto-Indo-European root word “*dhghem-,” meaning “earth.” Thus, we literally call ourselves “earthlings,” people “of the earth,” and yet we still so easily forget the truth of something so elemental, so foundational to our existence on this planet as our relationship to dirt. And, as this corner of my office falls back into shade for another day, the Earth spinning me away from the sun, the sun spinning the Earth toward another Oregon spring – circles within circles – I find myself wondering, not for the first time: why?
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This week's whole set was really fun, but I declined to post the entire thing due to a few…umm…let's say "weird" asides between songs.
Instead, here's "Amie," a song I've barely played since I wrote it in 2016, but that I've suddenly recently come to really enjoy. This was only my second time (I think) playing it on a livestream in the new "fast" arrangement, and midway through it took off into an odd staccato jam featuring an octave shifter and some whammy pedal before returning to the song's vocal outro after a bit of a jaunt.
Setlist and notes for the whole set below:
4/25/24 - Livestream
Take Me Home, Country Roads (John Denver) *
Autumnsong &
Neal, Joan, and Me &^!
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) Jam >
Not California &^
Emerald Downs
Birdsong/Bright Lights -> %$
Jezebel ->
Birdsong ->
Bright Lights Jam ->
Jezebel ->
Bright Lights
Insomnia Song (Love Song For a Film) #
Amie $
Acteon’s Groove > @
Machine Of The Universe -> !
Molly *&&
Ways To Fly (Part II) $
Invocation ->
I Still Miss Someone (Johnny Cash) -> $
Invocation Jam Reprise ->
Invocation
The Gambler (Kenny Rodgers) > %%
Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) (Bob Dylan) $$
*Slow version
& w/ Harmonica
^ Featured a harmonica “solo” played over guitar loops
% Played as a medley of Birdsong and the instrumental Bright Lights
$ Fast version
# Looper version
@ w/ Hand In Hand “fake out” intro
! w/ Molly teases
** w/ Jessica (Allman Bros.) teases
&& w/ Acteon’s Groove ending
^^ Brief reprise of the earlier loop jam out of Invocation
%% Performed “unplugged”
$$ Badass transition
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This week's whole set was really fun, but I declined to post the entire thing due to a few…umm…let's say "weird" asides between songs.
Instead, here's one of my favorite parts, which I had written down as "Birdsong ~ Jezebel" on the setlist, but which turned into something more complicated and stranger when I realized I had only pulled out half the words to "Jezebel" and had to find the other half mid-performance.
Setlist and notes for the whole set (including the details of this medley) below:
4/25/24 - Livestream
Take Me Home, Country Roads (John Denver) *
Autumnsong &
Neal, Joan, and Me &^!
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) Jam >
Not California &^
Emerald Downs
Birdsong/Bright Lights -> %$
Jezebel ->
Birdsong ->
Bright Lights Jam ->
Jezebel ->
Bright Lights
Insomnia Song (Love Song For a Film) #
Amie $
Acteon's Groove > @
Machine Of The Universe -> !
Molly *&&
Ways To Fly (Part II) $
Invocation ->
I Still Miss Someone (Johnny Cash) -> $
Invocation Jam Reprise ->
Invocation
The Gambler (Kenny Rodgers) > %%
Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) (Bob Dylan) $$
*Slow version
& w/ Harmonica
^ Featured a harmonica "solo" played over guitar loops
% Played as a medley of Birdsong and the instrumental Bright Lights
$ Fast version
# Looper version
@ w/ Hand In Hand "fake out" intro
! w/ Molly teases
** w/ Jessica (Allman Bros.) teases
&& w/ Acteon's Groove ending
^^ Brief reprise of the earlier loop jam out of Invocation
%% Performed "unplugged"
$$ Badass transition
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I really liked this set, largely because it was the second week in a row that I played over two hours without really falling on back much on what I think of as my "usual" songs. Even the ones I did play, I mixed up a bit ("Note" and "Sunshine" were the fast arrangements instead of the slow arrangements, "Ghosts" and "Fear" segued into other songs, etc.).
The highlight for me was this cover of Mason Jennings' "Hospitals and Jails," which is a great song by itself, and this time through served as a sandwich for the "Echo Head Jam," which has become this specific two-chord looper jam that I've been dropping into songs here and there for the last few months. I thought this take on it came it even better than usual. So here it is!
Setlist and notes:
Maps
Dusty Roads
I Love You (Or The Mountains)
Note To Self *
Southern Pacifica (Josh Ritter)
Sunshine *!
Box Full Of Letters (Wilco) ->
Montana >
Box Full Of Letters
Fear ->
Peggy-O (Traditional) ?
Ghosts Of The Highway ->
Dreams
Hospitals and Jails (Mason Jennings) ->
Echo Head Jam >
Hospitals and Jails
Neal's Jam ->
Blackbird Girl ->
Palace -> #
Jam ->
Prince Caspian (Phish) ->
Palace
The Whales (Goose) @
* Fast version
! w/ Harmonica
? Slow version
# Super-classy segue
@ First time played
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I started this set a half-hour early (for fun), and so it ended up being two-and-a-half hours long instead of the usual two hours. It was a pretty weird (and fun) setlist, featuring a few things I don't play that often: "Badlands," "Ice On The Mountain," "Amie," (which I hadn't played in at least two years), and the second-ever version of "China Cat Supernova."
As you can tell from the setlist, more than a few of these performances were a little rough. What stood out as the highlight of the set was this sequence, which started off with a extra-loose version of "Machine," which ended on a mostly-successful segue into the fast version of "Idyll." Rather than ending directly, "Idyll" moved into a weird, one-chord jam with some chimey, looped guitars (hence the name "Chimes Jam"), which ended by dropping into a cover of John Prine's "Bruised Orange," the first version of that song to feature a jam as well as a "standalone" harmonica solo, which I played sans guitar while a number of guitar loops were running.
Fun times! See you next week! Setlist and notes:
4/12/24 Livestream *
Ride
Badlands ^
Birdsong %@
Birdsong $
The Melody
Machine of the Universe >
Idyll -> $
Chimes Jam ->
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow) (John Prine) ^
Kurzweil Transmissions #@
Kurzweil Transmissions #
Amie $
Country Disappeared (Wilco)
Society (Jerry Hannan) ^
Ice on the Mountain
One More Cup of Coffee (Bob Dylan) >
China Cat Supernova ->
A Western Sun (Goose)
Sometimes
When U Love Somebody (Fruit Bats) -> $
I Know You Rider (The Grateful Dead) %
* This was a 2.5 hour set that started early
^ w/ Harmonica
% Slow version
$ Fast version
# Looper version
@ Aborted
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Alright, so I am going to stop posting for the day here in just a minute, but I wanted to get this one off my plate (out of my Drafts folder) while I still have a million fluid ounces of coffee in my veins.
So, Goose played a four-show run at the Capitol Theatre this past week, and it was awesome (over the web; I wasn't there in person). Originally, after switching drummers at the end of last year, they weren't slated to play any shows until June of this year, and while six months off the road might be pretty typical for today's big-name rock and pop acts, it's fairly unusual for a jam band, especially one that's currently shooting up the ladder in terms of popularity.
But then there was the new drummer announcement and the attendant rehearsal jams, which I've written a bit about already. And then there was Ted Tapes 2024, a new album that dropped with essentially no warning in February. Then, a mere three weeks and change before the band planned to hit the stage, they announced a four-show run at the Capitol Theatre in April, as a way of introducing their new drummer and new-ish sound.
As I said above, this run was fantastic. The band sounds great, and is clearly having a ton of fun playing alongside Cotter Ellis, the new drummer. There were moments when I missed Ben's playing, for sure, but the story at the end of the day is New Drummer Good, and also Old Drummer Good. Maybe I'll further process my feelings on that point later, and if so, maybe I'll blog about it. Maybe I'll keep it to myself.
Anyway, the band has only shared two videos from the run so far, one of a huge improvisational sequence at the heart of their night two show, wherein they played their 2016 album Moon Cabin in its entirety to mark the eclipse that had happened earlier in the day (and then proceeded to drop the show recording with this insane cover art). I will write about this later. Maybe tomorrow.
The other video is the one linked at the top of this post, which comes from set two of the final night of the run and features a sit-in by three members of Vampire Weekend (yay!), as Goose covers the new VW song "Gen-X Cops" from their just-released album (woo!) and the classic VW tune "Cape Cod (Kwassa Kwassa)" (whoa!), the latter of which turns into a thirty-plus-minute jam (huh?).
And as it turns out, not everything needs to be a jam. Sometimes, the real thirty-minute jams are the friends we make along the way.
So. As you know, the thing I do on this here blog with regard to jams is to write lots about them in exacting, weird-and-maybe-pointless detail. I am not going to do this for this jam, however. Mostly because -- and I mean this as respectfully as possible -- the Vampire Weekend guys are just not jam band musicians, and while they are having fun up there on stage during the jam (except maybe Ezra, who just looks sort of lost throughout), none of them with the exception of the drummer (whose name I don't know and certainly have no way to look up or learn) really adds anything to this jam or contributes at all to its direction. It's basically most of Vampire Weekend just hanging out on stage as Goose drags them through a long, multipart jam.
There are certainly parts where Rick in particular very obviously intentionally makes room for the VW guys to take over, but they just...don't? And there are parts where the VW bassist tries to engage with Trevor in a dueling-basses sort of thing, and Trevor just...doesn't engage? And for some reason the VW drummer doesn't replace Cotter, the new guy, on his kit, but instead replaces Jeff, which means Jeff is stuck playing a third electric guitar, which can literally never be heard during the entire performance. And all of these things add to something that in a lot of ways is just really, really not interesting as a result. To be clear, there are also parts where the Goose guys just do a big ol' heap of Goose-y jamming, and it's good, but there's, like, these three other guys on stage while it's happening, and it's just sort of weird.
I'm not trying to throw shade at the VW guys here. I love Vampire Weekend (Father Of The Bride is one of my favorite albums by anyone in the last ten years), but as much as they are clearly influenced by jam bands as a genre and likely Goose in particular, they themselves are definitely not a jam band. And that kind of high-energy, long-form improvisation isn't something you can just jump on stage and do one day after never really doing it much previously. So, it's not their fault, per se, but it's also just sort of a mixed bag of music for a half-hour-plus as a result.
In the end, I wanted to share it because it's neat to see these two bands collaborating again, but it's a bit too much of a mess for me to be interested in going through the whole thing with my usual fine-toothed comb.
Next up, though, is the aforementioned Moon Cabin monster jam. For today, though, I'm going to step away from the keyboard and do something else for awhile...
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Okay, it's Sunday, I'm having fun, and I've had a lot of coffee, so I'm going to do one more of these. This one will be a little different than usual, and likely shorter, though, because I'm covering an Orebolo video for the first time!
For anyone not in the know, Orebolo is an acoustic side-project-y thing that features three of the members of Goose: Rick and Peter (who both sing and play guitar in Goose already) and Jeff (who plays percussion and occasionally sings in Goose, but plays the upright bass and sings in Orebolo). They play mostly Goose songs and cover a few of the songs Goose covers, but they also have a bit of their repertoire (both originals and covers). Long story short, though it's a little reductive, I like to think of them as acoustic Goose: a side project that provides a different take on the band's songbook that allows the lyrics, melodies, and harmonies of the songs to shine through more due to the acoustic instruments and (relative) lack of long-form jamming. As a good example of them Doing Their Thing, you can check out this take on Radiohead rarity "True Love Waits" from the 2/10/24 Capitol Theatre show.
Even Orebolo jams from time to time, though, and while those jams aren't the twenty-plus minute behemoths that are the tentpoles of most Goose shows these days, the more these three guys play together in this configuration, the more interesting their improvisation gets. Personally, I think some of the charm of an Orebolo show is that you get to hear a bunch of songs, and I certainly don't tune in hoping to hear a twenty-minute "Madhuvan" or anything like that; however, during their most recent three-show run this February, there were a few songs that featured some really compelling improvisation, and wouldn't you know it: one of them got posted to their YouTube channel!
This is Orebolo's take on "Thatch" from 2/10/24, a song that is so groove-based, and so funky when Goose plays it that I was surprised to hear Orebolo not only make it their own, but also create a jam out of it that is one of my favorites by anyone in 2024 so far.
Again, there just physically aren't as many instruments going here as you'd hear during a Goose (or Phish, etc.) show, and the jamming isn't quite as complex in a technical sense, so I'm not sure how much I'll have to say about it, but I wanted to share this in the spirit of thinking/writing about something a little different than the usual.
Before I get going, if you're interested in a comparison of "Thatch" as it's played by both bands, here's a video/write-up I did awhile back of the Amsterdam "Thatch" from Goose.
So, this Orebolo version might not have the full-rock-band groove of Goose's take, but Jeff's early hammering on the upright bass (and the crowd's appreciative reaction) are more than "good enough" as an alternative.
It's not part of the jam, per se, but the little instrumental break in the middle of the song proper is great, and a good example of the "usual" extent of an Orebolo jam.
Fortunately for us, they ultimately decide to take "Thatch" for a full-on (acoustic) ride, starting at 5:53 with a quiet breakdown. At first, Peter and Rick hold down the fort rhythmically as Jeff goes nuts on the bass, moving the melody forward. I like Rick's little nod here, as if to say "Yeah man, go for it."
Soon, Peter adds in a repeating little blues figure, and then he and Jeff are trading the melody back and forth while Rick plays some ridiculous rhythm guitar to keep things chugging along. There's a brief moment of tension and then a release at 6:48 that moves things along to the next portion of the jam, which features Peter playing rhythm while Jeff and Rick both improvise some melodic content.
I feel gross for having written "melodic content" as a way to describe music, but I'm leaving it in to self-flagellate publicly.
Jeff moves to the bow, which rules, and Rick responds by arpeggiating at a speed that frankly makes me jealous. If there can be such a thing as an ambient jam with only acoustic instruments, I think we're approaching that here.
Completely ignorant of context, I have no idea why Rick says "Yeah!" into his mic here, but I like to think he was just really into it.
This section of the jam builds until about 8:40, when the tension breaks, much to the joy of the audience. The jam actually continues in a similar vein after this, albeit with Rick and Peter playing interlocking melodies while Jeff takes a more traditional rhythm-bass role, but it feels like a sort of "outro" to the previous build, at least initially.
Around 9:30, the energy starts to build again, in large part thanks to Jeff just ripping the bass. Rick lays down some amazing melodic playing at 10:00, and that slowly brings the jam back down to a simmer...until Rick signals moving to the conclusion of "Thatch" proper at 11:00.
Again, maybe it's not the multi-stage intergalactic exploration that I usually cover here, but I like this jam a lot for the fact that it doesn't rely on straight-up shredding at really any point, there's a lot of wonderful interplay between all three players, and, frankly, these three Orebolo shows have been the main thing I've found myself going back and listening to a bunch over the last couple of months even with all the new Goose content that's come down the pipe lately. They're that good.
MAYBE I SHOULD JUST WRITE ABOUT OREBOLO ONLY FROM NOW ON IF I LOVE THEM SO MUCH
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What is the line that gets included in every single movie trailer for the concluding movie of every series these days? "THIS IS THE END" or something like that?
Well, THIS IS THE END. At least of me covering this particular Phish run. I feel like I've been watching these shows and writing about them for way more than seven nights, but that's probably because I only watch like one show a week because for 95% of my waking hours I prefer to be a) not sitting on a couch and b) not tripping absolute balls to the point I forget what my hands are.
To be clear, I love that 5%. I just want to keep it at 5%.
Anyway, of course the final show of this monumental run (better pound-for-pound than the Baker's Dozen, don't @ me) ends with "Harry Hood." Because "Hood" has been my favorite Phish song since I started seeing shows in 2009, and it is therefore, in my humble opinion, the absolutely perfect choice for putting a huge exclamation point at the end of this (or any) run of shows.
I'll hold off from giving you some long run-down on the song's history for now; suffice to say that it's one of the band's oldest compositions, and though it's frankly pretty weird compositionally (shocking, right?!), what blows my mind every time despite hearing versions of it for twenty-five years now is the way the jam builds up toward the D-A-G resolution that both climaxes and concludes the song. The build is always different, but it's always wonderful, in part because you always know where you're going to land, no matter how you get there. You are always going to feel good about "Hood."
That said, this 8/5 take is a pretty, pretty great version of the tune. I have an extremely extensive and extremely nerdy mental list of my own favorite versions from the band's history (right now I'm partial to 8/7/09, the first version I ever saw live), and this one is up there somewhere.
The song always begins with this kind-of-off-kilter reggae-style introduction. It's my pet theory that the longer the introduction, the more likely you are to get a top-tier "Hood." This is the equivalent of making a wish before throwing a penny into a fountain, but whatever. This intro is pretty long and features Fishman's sample pad and all kinds of weird Robot Noises from Trey, and the following jam is amazing, so clearly I'm objectively right.
I could spend an entire post pointing out the sections of the composed part of "Hood" that are amazing, and explaining why I love them all...but I won't. Instead, I'll just say that the build that starts at 3:49 is one of my absolute favorite things to experience surrounded by a crowd of Phish fans. The video, of course, does not capture the crowd energy here at all (and it's possible that the MSG fans were just dead at this point, but I doubt it) so you'll just have to take my word for it.
The composed portion of the song ends at 5:46, and the band starts, as usual, from an almost complete breakdown of sound, building to what will eventually be the best key change in all of rock music.
I love how this version stays quiet for quite a while, with Page's organ playing in particular standing out in the midst of an onslaught of delicacy. Fishman, also, continues to be an alien...but in this case, a gentle, soft-spoken alien.
I could literally listen to the first few minutes of this jam on loop every day for the rest of my life.
There's a point where Mike kind of takes over and plays a little out of the box, and it's really nice.
At 8:30, it feels like (I think?) Trey moves the band into a minor key space, but the patient build continues even as the tone of the music becomes a bit more sinister.
The jam gets a bit more effects-heavy starting at 9:10, and Trey starts playing with some kind of reverse-guitar effect that always makes me think of Revolution-era Beatles. This is super-awesome. I am re-digging it. An ambient jam in a "Hood" is a rare thing these days, and this one hovers in that space for quite a long time.
The alien-call tone that Trey deploys at 10:45 is just crazy. As a guitarist, I have no idea how you play a guitar that's making that sound and make it sound like anything coherent, and yet he's leading this space jam with it.
The lights at this point are just wonderful. Starting at 11:40 or so, Mike's playing becomes circular, almost mantra-like, as he holds the melodic center in place while everyone else ranges outward, crashing around in the margins.
By 12:00, we've started to resolve into something that's a bit more straightforward, a more "typical" Phish jam, inasmuch as there is such a thing. Page plays a riff that Trey picks up on, and then they start bouncing back and forth between each other as the speed and the tension builds. The lights intensify in tandem with the music. I think I hear Trey play a "Wingsuit" tease.
My absolute fucking favorite thing about this particular "Hood" happens at 13:12, when Page starts playing the song's closing riff in D as the rest of the band continues, briefly, the jam that had been building to that point. This is something you likely only notice if you've listened to hundreds of "Hood"s in your life and do dorky shit like write blog posts about Phish jams OR you're one of the four guys in the band, but it's an amazing few moments where the song sits between the chaotic build and the joyous resolution, and it is both and neither at the same time.
Trey works his way toward the resolution until he hits it at 13:30, fifteen seconds or so after Page, and then the whole band just explodes into the song's outro.
"You can feel good about Hood," indeed.
We get an absolutely nuts noise climax at the end, but hey, these guys just played seven sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden. They're allowed a victory lap.
There will definitely be more Phish write-ups in the future...I'm trying to find time to watch their Mexico run from February, and as I write this their four-show stand at Las Vegas's Sphere is just a few days away. So, yeah.
For now, though, I'm going to pivot to some other stuff (mostly Goose, as you likely guessed).
I also bought tickets for Phish's four-day Labor Day run in Denver in part because of how much fun I had watching and writing about these shows. So...that's exciting.
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As we (I) speed toward the dramatic conclusion of Phish's seven-night MSG run from July/August of 2023, it's time to consider "Prince Caspian." Why is he afloat upon the waves, anyway? And how does he stay afloat, with stumps instead of feet? So many questions.
Perhaps the most important question of all, though, is "Why did Phish share this 'Prince Caspian' video on YouTube instead of literally any portion of the "Tweezer" -> "Guy Forget" -> "Tweezer" > "What's the Use?" > "Scents and Subtle Sounds" -> "Tweezer" -> "Everything's Right" segment from the second set?", which was easily my favorite consistent hour-plus of Phish music in a long time.
My suspicion, after experiencing years of questionably-chosen show "highlights" from this band, is that they choose to post videos of the parts of the show they like the best, rather than what they think the fans will like best. Probably a good move, actually, considering that 95% of hardcore Phish fans seem to hate Phish anyway.
Well, with that theory in mind, let's see what Phish might have enjoyed about Phish's performance of "Prince Caspian" from 8/5/23!
"Caspian" has a bit of a bad reputation in the modern era, as it has a tendency to a) not get jammed out, and b) get dropped into sets at precisely the perfect time for ruining the flow completely. Of course, there are a few notable exceptions to this (I'm looking at you, Magnaball "Caspian"), but generally speaking I understand the groans that typically accompany the song starting up even though I think it's fundamentally a great song off of a great album (Billy Breathes).
All that said, the 8/5 version is a rare standalone take, which sort of insulates it from flow-ruining status (yes, "officially" it's a > out of "Divided Sky," but it's about as non-segue-y a segue as you can get). And, of course it gets jammed out, or else we wouldn't be here!
"Caspian" is a short tune, even by Phish-let's-just-get-to-the-jam-already standards: by 2:30, we're moving into the jam, with Trey starting off by playing around with the song's melody line a little bit and keeping things "Type I." This section is pretty straightforward as Phish jams go, but nobody told Fishman that, apparently, because he's just all over the place on the drums, and dragging the beat in cool ways as if we aren't three minutes into a two-and-a-half-minute-rock song.
Trey changes tone and starts injecting some tension into the jam at 4:20, but the band as a whole is reluctant at first to leave the "Caspian" structure. At 4:54, Trey deploys his octave shifter, which, in case you're interested, is one of the things that makes me happiest in the world. It's just such a goofy sound, but he somehow manages to always deploy it in the exact right circumstance so as to keep it from being ridiculous [citation needed from basically any one of the many incredible 1999-2000 Phish jams].
The octave shifter seems to pull the rest of the band out of "Caspian," and we're on to a sort of call-and-response...alien mating song?
Around 5:40, Trey asserts some bluesy influence over the proceedings, and the band slowly turns away from alien soundscapes toward something more recognizably human. The chunky, stop/start nature of the jam continues, though.
Then, at 6:45, Trey's guitar transforms into a...Transformer? He used this super-chunky, super-distorted effect a bunch in 2021, when I last saw them live, and I love it. It is the weirdest. Everyone in the band seems to like it, too, as they unite behind the riff he's playing and we change gears again. This section of the jam makes me think of the "Split Open and Melt" from earlier in the run, except it makes you want to dance instead of making you afraid that you've gotten sucked into a black hole.
Also, what is Fishman playing here? I mean, seriously, what is this guy?!
Eventually, the lights get weird too, and it's hard for me not to just laugh at how strange and unique and wonderful this band can get. Like...what is happening at 8:40?!
Trey changes keys at 9:10, and the rest of the band exits the alien dance party on a dime to follow him into a somewhat more mellow space. I love what Page is doing on the piano here, especially contrasted with the fact that Mike is still playing his comically effects-heavy bass.
This (return to?) blues-heavy jamming features another brief stop/start section, and then Trey decides it's Space Robot Time again at 10:35. And I am laughing out loud in this coffee shop relistening to this.
I don't want to give Trey all the credit here: Page's weird skirling organ melodies are as much a part of this jam as anything else, and once again: what the fuck is Fishman?!
We kinda-sorta exit the Robot Jam for more blues at 11:30, though again Mike seems reluctant to revert to a normal-sounding bass right away.
Somewhere in there, the band pulls off an incredibly smooth transition into more straight-ahead rock-and-roll territory, and by 13:00, Trey is shredding over top of what would be a really standard (if great) blues vamp if Fishman were not an absolute alien.
You like guitar loops?! You like guitar peaks?! Trey has you covered starting around 13:45 and continuing until MSG catches on fire.
WHO THINKS "CASPIAN" SUCKS NOW, FOOLS?!
The crowd absolutely losing their minds at 15:10 is a great moment, and then Trey engineers some weird noise-rock, complete with Full Band Moaning...you know, just because.
If I have one gripe about this "Caspian," it's that this weird keening section only last a minute or so (yeah, weird thing to complain about, I suppose) before it gives way to a nice transition into "NICU," which is not part of the video, but was the song they played next!
So...that was fun. One more Phish jam to cover, and then I'm off for a bit to pastures that, while not necessarily greener, are certainly different!
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Third in my catch-up-on-Phish-jams series is "Mike's Song" from 8/4/23.
Although I try to keep from going too far down the rabbit hole of song/band history in my Phish posts (mostly because there's just so darn much of it at this point), "Mike's" needs a brief preamble regarding the history of its so-called "second jam" before I write about the 8/4/23 version.
First and foremost, the "second jam" in "Mike's" is what it sounds like: a second jam that comes after the first jam. Basically, the song debuted in 1985 (I'm very old) and by 1987, the band was playing it regularly with two built-in jam segments: the first came after most of the song and ended in a composed reprise-of-sorts of the song proper, from which the second (often-but-not-always weirder) jam would emerge. This was more or less the way the song was played (with occasional exceptions) from '87 until '00, and then, after the band's first hiatus at the end of that year, "Mike's" came back, but the second jam didn't.
Accordingly, it became a sort of white whale for the fan base from that point on, me included: I saw a number of versions of the song in person between 2009 and 2015, and each time I was on tenterhooks at the end, hoping that this time would be the time that they would break into the second jam once again after all these years.
To be clear, there's nothing particularly special about the second jam. It's just more jamming, but, sometimes these things take on a life of their own, as you likely understand if you've ever been a fan of anything.
Well, I'm still chasing my own personal second jam in 2024, but back in 2015, after fifteen years (and apparently caused by a note a fan got to Trey reminding him about the second jam, which somehow Trey had completely forgotten ever existed), the band finally played the second jam again, on 8/4/15. And there was much rejoicing across the land.
Since then, it pops up occasionally, though most "Mike's" are still "normal" or "modern-day" versions, with only one jam.
The 8/4/23 version, of course, has the second jam. And I'm not ashamed to say that, watching the webcast, I leapt off the couch in excitement when it became clear what was happening.
Also, this whole performance is just really good. Like, probably my favorite jam of the entire seven-night run. I'll try to do it justice here.
So, "Mike's Song" is written (surprise!) by Mike Gordon, the band's bassist, but it starts with one of my all-time favorite Trey riffs. Go figure. Mike's voice is a bit of an acquired taste, but for what it's worth, I have fully acquired it at this point.
The first jam starts with one of my favorite key changes in music, at 2:50. Initially, as is typical, it gets going mostly with Mike ripping away on the bass and Page on the clavinet. Trey adds some spacey effects in the background, as he is wont to do.
Trey starts to assert himself a bit more at 3:50, and Page moves over to the electric piano. There's some great Page and Trey interplay here while Mike continues to throw down variations on the "Mike's Song" melody. Around 4:50, Page switches to a brighter organ sound and we're in somewhat more typical Trey-shredding territory briefly. By 5:45, though, Trey gets bored of this and we're back to something more collaborative. In a brief preview of the madness to come, Trey plays with his looper a bit at 6:35, but then ditches it for more straight-ahead playing. This builds to a big ol' guitar peak at 7:30, and the band rides that energy until the key change at 8:02, which is the transition back into the coda/reprise/whatever that is the "end" of "Mike's Song."
If you're a huge dork like me, this stop-start bit of shredding from Trey is where you wait with baited breath every time to see if they're going to drop into the second jam or not.
And at 8:40, they do.
I love that the camera gives a crowd shot at 8:50, because you can literally see hundreds and hear thousands of people reacting to the realization that this is going to be that kind of "Mike's Song."
The band immediately drops into a distorted sort of funk jam, with Trey laying all sorts of weird looped effects over the top of the music. Shortly after, he and Page start doing a stop/start kind of thing while Mike takes over driving for a bit. It feels like everyone locks in together really tightly at 10:00, and from there was get some of the one-brain-eight-arms kind of improvisation that makes me love Phish so much. At some point in there, Fishman switches to a backbeat from the more straightforward rock beat he'd been playing.
By 11:45, they're playing what I imagine the elevator music in the Wonkavator sounds like.
By 12:15, if you were in Madison Square Garden seeing this live, I imagine your body just suddenly started dancing whether you consciously told it to or not.
Trey starts playing something that's closer to a standard melody starting at 13:00, but that doesn't significantly change the groove, which just keeps chugging along. This is what (I think) I called "Mad Circus jamming" in my setlist notes.
Trey does that thing at 14:37 where he just throws out a riff that would be the heart of anyone else's best-selling single, plays it twice, and moves on. Page picks up the idea, and plays with it for a few bars, but then we're off onto new things. Like Trey piling a bunch of goddamn guitar lines on top of each other like a Jenga tower and proceeding to not only jam with his bandmates, but also copies of his seconds-ago past self. This is some brain-destroying improvisation. The lighting director is up to the task of displaying what's happening visually, by which I mean the lights during this section are amazing.
We briefly slow things down a bit at 17:00, when Trey starts chording, and everyone else sits back a bit, taking a breather (it seems) and seeing where things are going next. The move seems triggered by Trey and Mike, who combine to push the jam in a slightly bluesier direction. The clav makes a murky, distorted appearance.
Eventually, Trey starts chording something that sounds a bit like "Not Fade Away," which draws the band briefly into a fairly normal, three-chord jam...but then at 19:14, Trey decides that we're all going up the mountain together because what would this "Mike's" be without a hideously beautiful peak that makes your heart explode with joy/dread?!
We actually reach the top of the peak pretty quickly, but the band keeps it going for an amazingly long time without losing momentum. Bits and pieces of the "Not Fade Away"-ish feel pop in here and there, interspersed with absolute guitar madness that starts to sound almost Allman Brothers-y at points.
I love in particular the bit at 21:39 where Trey starts trilling on the high note, confetti streams in from the right of the frame, and then we switch cameras to see a shit-ton of confetti and bubbles (?) coming from the crowd in front of the stage.
As if there isn't already enough madness, Trey loops a few versions of himself peaking the jam over top of each other, and then, perhaps sensing that we've maybe had too much fun, the band transitions back into the coda/reprise/whatever of "Mike's Song" starting at 22:24. This isn't actually typical, as far as I know, after the second jam. But apparently Trey really wanted to play this part again after kind of mucking it up the first time.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I did this version of "Mike's" justice, but what makes it great for me is that middle section that is all just flow and groove and...frankly, difficult to dissect and describe clinically as such.
In short, it is a goddamn journey and an excellent second "Mike's" jam.
And next time I will come back and write about two songs from 8/5 to round out the run!
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For some reason, the official Phish channel posted two videos apiece for the 8/4 and 8/5 shows. Initially, for my own sanity, I was only going to cover one video for each night. But, then I got stuck in writer's-block-hell while trying and failing to work on my sabbatical project and thought that writing about jams for a bit a) is still technically writing of a sort, and b) is probably the best way to round out my Friday afternoon at this point.
So, "46 Days." I don't actually remember this very well from my original watch of the full show (a few weeks ago at this point), but I did describe it in my initial notes as having an "Amazing, unique jam." Let's return to it and see if that judgment holds up to scrutiny, or if it was the drugs talking!
Unlike my previous write-up, this one starts "normally," with the song itself: "46 Days" in all it's bluesy, chunky, Round Room-era glory.
That said, it lasts about two minutes, and then we're immediately moving into a rumbling, drums-and-bass-heavy jam. Trey and Page are adding to the proceedings here, too, but at least initially they are playing in lower registers. I love how this section of the jam just sort of rumbles along as a result, the musical conversation between Trey and Page becoming more intense as it goes.
We change direction at 3:55 or so, modulating to a different (major?) key, and immediately Trey and Page both take more melodic control of the jam. I love what Trey starts playing at 4:45, and how Mike immediately moves to play off of his contribution. Before long, Page joins in and all three of them are doing this crazy melodic mind-meld which is just wonderful to hear.
The mind-meld uncouples a bit by 6:30, and this is a little bit more of an opportunity for Trey to take a solo and push the jam toward a peak, though it's not as if everyone else necessarily fades to the background here. In fact, Trey hits and holds a single note starting at 6:53 for about a minute, and though this might seem initially to be a sort of "show-off" move, I've often felt he uses this "trick" to let the rest of the band play while he essentially lays down a "backdrop" of that single note. It ends up feeling like an act of egoless-ness rather than the opposite. But maybe that's just me.
Regardless of the intent, Trey comes back from the held note at 7:50 to begin piling guitar loops on top of each other as the band builds energy toward a peak. Like most Phish jam peaks these days, this doesn't rely on one particular, fist-pumping high note, but instead is a rolling, major key blast of bliss before the band changes directions again at 9:05 and drops back into a darker jam in the key of "46 Days."
This sets up some pointed bluesy noodling from Trey before he leads the band back into "46 Days" proper to round things out.
While this is the second post in a row I've done on something that is not a huge, 20+ (or 30+) minute jam, one of the things I've really appreciated about post-COVID Phish so far is their willingness to regularly explore a number of interesting musical ideas in a jam without necessarily having to stretch it to enormous lengths. Sometimes that long exploration is warranted, and sometimes you're able to play a twelve-minute version of "46 Days" that might not catch anyone's attention "on paper" because of its "short" runtime, but that nonetheless has a lot of interesting things to say.
As a fan going on twenty-five years now, I'd definitely rather hear something like this "46 Days" over one of the many, many, many, jams from the 2010s that were 20+ minutes long, but took ten of those minutes to get anywhere actually interesting musically.
So, yeah. I'm glad I gave this a second listen. And next time I'm totally going to write about a much longer, much crazier jam. So there.
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Ha! I was going to write about my Thoughts and Feelings whilst on the road and instead I just did Midwestern self-abnegation stuff and didn't talk about my emotions with anyone! And now here I am over a month later just writing about Phish again! I sure fooled you! I "win"!
Passive-aggressive, multidirectional cries for help aside, this jam is a weird one to cover, but it's the only one available on the official channel from the 8/2/23 show, so I'm going for it.
8/2 was a bit of a weird show in the broader context of this seven-show MSG run I've been covering in the sense that it was the first (and ended up being the only) show of the run that didn't completely blow me away. Four incredible New Year's run shows and four mind-boggling summer MSG shows drug me back to listening to Phish regularly (and convinced me to buy tickets for Denver this September without really having a plan to get there) and then there is this show, which is a show I would have been thrilled to see in person, but that lacks a certain...something that the previous eight shows all had. More flow and less jam in this one, methinks. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly not a bad show, but I'd put it on a slightly lower tier than the previous four if I was someone who "objectively" rated shows.
But I'm not, right? RIGHT?!
Anyway, I would have gone with "Blaze On" or "Carini" as the highlight of this show, but instead we've got a "Jam" -> "Meatstick" -> "It's Ice" sequence, where the "Jam" is technically out of a cover of the Apples In Stereo song "Energy," and "Meatstick" and "It's Ice" are neither of them jam vehicles, per se.
It's worth mentioning (and not to undersell this jam) that while they may have cut the "Energy" cover proper from this video to keep from having to worry about copyright and such, it was also a pretty roughly rendition of the tune, and the following jam was a fairly aimless for a bit before picking up speed en route to the segue to "Meatstick." So, with that all said, the video starts somewhere mid-jam...
...with Fishman playing a backbeat and Page leading the way over it on piano. Almost immediately, Trey and Page start playing off of each other, leading to a more cooperative jam that sounds pretty straightforward unless you listen to Mike, who is just going absolutely insane by himself over in the corner. He eventually steals the spotlight to the point where Trey and Page are both borrowing riffs from him, which is great.
Around 1:55, Trey switches to a more robotic tone and the jam coalesces around this descending riff that he, Page, and Mike each take turns playing and improvising around at various points. This bit of the jam is definitely less about any particular band member blasting off and more about interplay. At 3:20, Mike introduces a bit of tension into the proceedings, but we come out pretty quickly on the other side still in more or less the same sonic space.
Trey pushes out in front a bit at 4:05, which moves the jam into a more standard rock-and-roll direction, though Fish and Mike keep things interesting and a little dissonant. Then there's this great mind-melded drop into a bluesy breakdown that happens around 5:05...like, how do these guys all know how to do this at the same time?! Phish magic, I guess.
I'm not sure if it's the mix through my headphones or what, but Mike continues to DOMINATE this section. The lights kick in in an especially trippy way next, as Trey continues a sort of bluesy build/jam that reminds me a bit of "46 Days."
At 6:54, Fishman finally switches over to a more unambiguously driving beat, and we're off for a bit on a straight (and great) blues vamp. This is making me reconsider my first take on this jam as being "fairly aimless." I mean, it's certainly not the weirdest or the most experimental jam in Phish history, but it's definitely got a swing to it.
The band smoothly switches tacks at 8:45 again here, to something funkier and spacier sounding, though Fish keeps driving with the drums in the background. Trey falls back to some chording, which allows Mike and Page (on the clav) to shine a bit more. Page, in particular, starts coaxing weirder and weirder tones out of his rig, and as much as I'd love for the jam that's happening at 9:35 to just keep going forever, he starts up the (knowledgeable fans insert the name of the correct synth here) that is irrevocably linked to one and only one song in the Phish canon: "Meatstick." And so, instead of more jam we get an excellent, clever segue into one of the weirdest songs Phish plays.
Meatstick starts at 10:05 or so, and continues until 14:25. Yes, the band is singing in Japanese during the second half of the song. And there's a choreographed dance. Obviously. Try to keep up!
At 14:25, Trey plays a little reprise of the song's melody for a minute, but the band pretty quickly and smoothly moves into another improvisatory space by 15:05. There's a darker, funkier tinge to this jam, and it almost feels like a continuation of where they were headed right before the segue into "Meatstick." Trey's lower-octave effects/playing here is something, if you like Evil Robot Funk (which I very much do, as you likely know by now). I love the build in crowd noise that happens about 16:15. It might well have been something specific happening off-camera that set the crowd off, but also sometimes thousands of people will all start cheering at once at a Phish show because we all experience the same wave of collective effervescence at the same time. So maybe it was that.
Trey keeps leading this new jam with variations on a particular riff until 17:45, when eagle-eared listeners will hear him start to play a variation on the opening riff from "It's Ice." That's where we're going, but the band is going to take an extremely smooth and well-executed segue to get there. How they end up at the beginning of the song proper at 18:32 is beyond me, but it's one of my favorite transitions I've heard in a long time.
"It's Ice" doesn't feature Japanese lyrics or dancing, but it's one of my favorite Phish songs from a composition standpoint. For any uninitiated who still read these screeds (thank you!), everything from 18:32 until XX is the composed portion of the song. There's a break, then, that the band will sometimes improvise at length within and sometime will...not.
In this case, they jam briefly, starting at 24:00. It's a return to the Robo-Funk of earlier, with Trey and Page riffing off of each other while Mike and Fish lay down a jazzy foundation. This section reminds me of a jauntier Pink Floyd, and features a few "Frankenstein" teases from Trey. It's short but sweet, dropping back into the song proper at 25:45.
From here, "It's Ice" wraps up, and that's it! Like I said at the top, sort of a weird one compared to most of the jams I've written about lately, but there are a few noteworthy bits of improvisation in there, and nobody does transitions like these but Phish. So, a memorable segment from 8/2 even if there's no "monster jam" in there.
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Great overnight trip into Mountain Lakes for some snow camping this past weekend! More photos from this and the previous weekend's Deschutes River trip as soon as I have time to write something about them!
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I recorded this video the other day for the heck of it while I was testing my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe to see if it was working again after a minor repair. There were a few parts I really enjoyed and I felt the need to post something to express contrition for not streaming this week, so here it is.
I've listed "the songs" below, but it's mostly just a list of chords that the series of jams were based on. I just picked up the guitar and played for forty-five minutes with no plan and no songs in mind and this is what came out (with the exception of playing "Tumble," which I did dig out the words for near the end).
The "Tau Ceti Jam" is so named because I just finished reading "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir, and I had to call it something.
Althea Jam -> ^
Echo Head Jam ->
Bright Lights
The Whales Jam %*
Twist (Phish) -> #
Tau Ceti Jam ->
Althea Jam ->
Tumble (Goose) ->
Althea Jam Reprise
^ Based on the opening chords of "Althea" (The Grateful Dead)
% Based on the outro chords of "The Whales" (Goose)
* w/ "The Whales" (Goose) outro vocals
# Opening riff only
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Once again, I am asking you to find something better to do with your Thursday night than watch me play music (not that that's a particularly hard thing to do).
I'm back in town after the last few weeks of travel (east coast visits, and, more recently, backpacking with Lindsey), but I have a chance to socialize with some friends tonight instead of playing, and I'm going to take it because those opportunities have been few and far between this year, thanks to my temporary status as a house-bound Basement Troll.
Anyway, I intend (again) to play next Thursday night. I've really enjoyed playing sets recently, especially since I've switched over to YouTube, and I don't want to get out of the habit/continue making excuses for not playing/practicing. Because it's fun.
I did play a 45-minute jam session this morning to test out the status of my on-again-off-again relationship with my Fender amp, and, knowing I likely wasn't going to play tonight, I recorded it. I don't know if anyone's interested in hearing that (no singing, really, just 45 minutes or so of improvising), but I'm uploading it to YouTube right now for posterity, so I'll post a link when it's done, just in case.
Enjoy whatever better thing you're doing with your time tonight 🙂
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Phish burnt down the Nassau Coliseum twenty-five years ago today. RIP.
(Yes, the video's only in 144p. It was taken in 1998.)
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I'm spending tonight getting ready for my first backpacking trip of the year (!!), so I won't have time to play a live set until next Thursday.
Please take one more clip from my "more-weird-than-good" set from last week, this one comprising a run of songs close to the end of the set, as a form of penance:
Better To Have Loved -> #
Angel From Montgomery (John Prine) ->
Better To Have Loved > #
Cassie’s Song >
California -> !
Casey Jones (The Grateful Dead) >
Montana !##
# Slow version
! w/ "Molly" teases
## w/ "Acteon's Groove" ending
See you next Thursday from 6-8. More than likely.
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