MFF'S SIGNED POSTER AUCTION
HUNGERTHON 2015 AUCTIONS PHISH NYE RUN TIX TO END HUNGER
Hungerthon is an annual Thanksgiving radio tradition started in 1975 by WhyHunger to raise awareness about hunger and poverty and to invest in long-term solutions that help people in need in communities across America. To support this important cause, Phish has generously donated a pair of tickets for the four-show NYE run to the Hungerthon Charity Auction. While you're getting stuffed this fine Thanksgiving day, why not satisfy your hunger for New Year's tickets and bid generously.
Several other Phish-related charity auctions are currently underway at Charitybuzz, so check these out and bid high while doing good:
- Trey has donated a pair of Phish tickets and pre-show party passes for the 1/1/16 MSG show, to benefit the David Lynch Foundation.
- Win a lunch with RLM Manager Patrick Jordan (who manages Phish, Trey, Ween and more), to benefit HeadCount.
- Win a lunch with SiriusXM Jam On host Jonathan Schwartz (host of Gone Phishin'), to benefit HeadCount.
- Win a lunch with talent buyer Don Strasburg (the force behind Phish's shows at Red Rocks and Dick's), to benefit HeadCount.
- And for the big one...win a lunch with Andy Gadiel, founder of Andy Gadiel's Phish Page, to benefit HeadCount.
These auctions all end soon. You guys know the drill: bid early, bid often, and support some really great causes!
YOUNG COMPOSER'S PHISH MEDLEY
@FrodoPiano is a 12-year-old composer who grew up listening to lots of Phish, thanks to parents who are fans. That exposure inspired an arrangement of 22 Phish songs (plus a reprise) in a mammoth 269-measure medley, his 45th posted score. You can hear and watch the arrangement here (or visit the host page to read his introduction), followed by a short Q&A with the prolific songsmith.
How many Phish shows have you seen, and what was the first?
I have seen Phish some six times, and I have seen Trey with an orchestra twice, at the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. My first concert was on November 1, 2009. When I was younger, I listened to Rift a lot, as my dad had a copy that he kept in the car, so you could almost say I “grew up with it,” which might be why I am a bit biased toward it. ;)
What’s your favorite Phish song, and why?
I don’t want to sound cliche, but my favorite has to be "Divided Sky". It has so many movements, with so many great themes, and I love all of them. (It was also apparently the song my mother wanted to hear instantly after I was born, so maybe that means something …) My favorite albums, though, are Junta and Rift.
How long have you been composing, and why do you enjoy it?
Well, first of all, I’d like to make clear that I certainly did not compose this, and all writing credits go to the members of Phish, respectively. However, I do compose regularly, and I have been for … say … 4-5 years now. I really like it because there are so many possibilities, and so many different concepts and ideas to explore. For example, I just learned about polyrhythms, so I just did an “experiment” to see how they worked within a piece, and that turned into my 6th prelude! I actually compose more than I arrange, and I’m now working on a piece called "Sinfonia Pangaea", one called "Song of Life", and the score for a friend’s game, of which the opening piece is called "Solitaire."
You’ve also written a seven-movement suite, somewhat inspired perhaps by Holst’s “The Planets.” Can you tell us about that?
Yeah, somewhat going off the idea of The Planets (which I love, and have seen in concert), and The Four Seasons, I decided to write a suite entitled The Days of the Week. At first, I realized that the seven days could correspond with the seven musical modes (Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aiolian, Phrygian, and Locrian), but I decided against it, both to give myself more compositional freedom, and to prevent writing in Locrian, what with “resolving” to a diminished chord being … difficult. If you want to check that out, it’s here, and my favorite movements are "Wednesday" and "Friday."
What role has music education played in your life?
Music has, among other things, given me something to think about. There are so many different concepts in theory, and they’re so thought-provoking that you could spend ages just thinking about them. Also, if I’m ever stressed, I can just start snapping out a cool rhythm (or polyrhythm), or come up with a new theme or concept for a piece. It’s also just a lot of fun! Composing, for me, is a great outlet for creativity, because there are always new … possibilities, and new ideas that can be made reality through composing. I have also played piano for almost 6 years, and I just started playing the oboe.
Why did you arrange for this particular dectet, and for what other ensembles have you arranged or composed?
To be honest, I don’t completely know. I guess I just wanted woodwinds, and I chose some, and came out with this double wind quintet (with handclaps, because no performance of "Stash" is complete without handclaps). The bassoons are extremely versatile, and, in this case, work great as Mike’s part, throughout the medley. Other than that, different instruments get the melody throughout the medley, sometimes multiple kinds of instruments, sometimes just one. However, whenever an instrument gets a melody, both of the players of that instrument get the same part. In fact, only in certain harmonic cases do the two players of each instrument get a different part than their “counterpart.” Some instances of this are "Divided Sky," "Rift," "The Lizards," etc. Other ensembles I have arranged for include a piano with a violin and a cello, a piano with two violins, a piano duet, and solo piano. I have composed for many ensembles, including: solo piano; piano four hands (that’s four hands on one piano); violin and orchestra; oboe and bassoon; solo oboe; brass sextet; string quartet; guitars and an accordion; along with other small ensembles.
What songs did you not include, and why?
Well, that’s a long (and, in some cases, unfortunate) list, but there are good reasons behind most choices. The most common reason, of course, is that I can’t include every Phish song - that would take hours of music. Another reason is that some songs didn’t really … fit anywhere very well, and by the time I was wrapping the medley up, they just weren’t there. The third reason is something some of you may have noticed already - there’s no percussion! This was, frankly, an odd choice on my part, but I prefer, in general, composing with very little percussion, which typically doesn’t pose much of a problem. Now, for an arrangement of Phish songs, this gets a bit tricky, and on some songs, typically the “rock-ier” songs, this got a bit too tricky, so I left some out. Now for some reason, while I was arranging the medley, I completely forgot about "Fee," which would have worked, and now I’m really mad at myself.
What other adjustments did you have to make without a drummer?
Let’s face it - Fishman is amazing, and none of the songs sounded as good without him. But, both by choosing (mostly) more melodic songs and by laying down a clear rhythm with the bassoons, it wasn’t too hard to get a beat in there. As for the handclaps, you can’t do "Stash" without handclaps, and I decided to use them in "Mound" too. On the topic of "Mound," it provided a new problem in terms of rhythm, because of its polyrhythmic intro, which happened to be all I used. It’s just a simple 3:4 polyrhythm, but without a percussion section to lay down a beat, I had trouble keeping it sounding like a polyrhythm, and not just a time change. "First Tube" also has a polyrhythm, but that one wasn’t as hard to lay down.
You mention choosing more melodic songs. What can you say about what that excludes - songs you’d otherwise like to arrange, how you’d describe them, and where Phish’s arrangements lean, if anywhere?
This excludes, as I said, the “rock-ier” songs, meaning the songs that are more rock-and-roll(-ish), or more Fishman-heavy. This might include "Chalk Dust Torture," "Run Like an Antelope," "Weekapaug Groove," (dare I say) "Meatstick," etc., which unfortunately are some of Phish’s greatest songs, but would not be a good use of precious time in this arrangement, because they wouldn’t sound nearly as good with only woodwinds. Some of these might be fun to arrange if I added, maybe, some percussion/brass, and maybe strings or keyboards for fun.
Are there any Phish songs you would NOT want to arrange, or that you think are beyond re-arrangement, either by a woodwind dectet or otherwise?
Well, that’s a difficult question, but the one answer that comes to me is "Also Sprach Zarathustra." This is simply because it was arranged to be a Phish song, so to re-arrange it would be silly.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I know, this MIDI patch sounds awful, but hey, if one of you knows a woodwind dectet who’d like to play this, go ahead! (Just credit me.) :)
Shouldn’t you be playing with a ball or getting a job instead of poking a keyboard?
No.
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 199
Welcome to the 199th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. The 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!
Answer: Congrats to @yunkfunk for nailing this one within an hour of my posting it, collecting his fifth win by correctly identifying the outro to Horn from 6/20/97. Have a safe and happy holiday this week, and we'll be back next week with our 200th MJM! It'll be an MJM extravaganza, with extra difficulty and extra prizes. Stay tuned...
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 198
Welcome to the 198th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. The 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!
Quick note: One of my first orders of business as MJM host was to add MJM achievement badges for all past winners. Due to the MJM being started on the old Tumblr page (pre standard .net usernames), username changes since winning, and spelling mistakes, I may not have correctly added all past winners' badges. If you've won but don't see the badge in your achievements, please PM me with the MJM you won (see results below).
Update: No hint needed this week.
Answer: Congrats to our sixth seven-time MJM winner, @mcgrupp81, who correctly identified this week's MJM as Mike's Song from 4/24/92 at the Roseland Theater in Portland, OR. With his seventh win, he joins @RabeldyNugs, @pauly, @ghostboogie, @bl002e, and @PersnicketyJim as MJM emeriti, and is henceforth prohibited from participating in the MJM as an active competitor. With 100+ codes to give away and six Hall-of-Famers on the shelf (and yours truly stuck at six wins on this side of the fence), the competition for free Phish downloads is suddenly wide open. Maybe the blog might stand a chance now... See you next week!
"A LIVE ONE" THE BOOK
“...I just had a long phone conversation with Trey. ... he'd like to ask the net to do him a favor...
So, the favor is this: if you have the time to do it, please consider constructing the Phish double live CD that you would like to hear. Please bear in mind that this CD should be interesting to people who have never heard Phish before, as well as those who have been listening to them for years. Please remember to consider that versions of songs from lesser-known shows may be as good as, or better than, versions of the same songs from well-known shows such as Halloween and NYE.
The format is two 70-minute CDs ("CD1" and "CD2"). Consider the transitions between songs, and the pace and dramatic flow of the order in which the songs occur on each CD. ... We're not saying that the net's compilation will become the live CD, by any means; but the band will listen to it with open ears, and if they like it, they will seriously consider the suggestions it makes. –Shelly”
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I have been reading Wally’s musings on Phish and music and other topics since the 1990s, and to this day I’m still in disbelief that the band released the Bangor Tweezer on ALO. I am not a disinterested spectator. –charlie)
CD: What in particular about Phish inspired --and continued to motivate-- you in writing this book?
WH: Love, right?
I've been obsessed with different music before: Herbie Hancock, Ornette and his descendants, tango music (and dance), electric Miles, film scores, Kid A, Andrew Bird, Achtung Baby, They Might Be Giants. I've gone through periods where I couldn't live without particular musicians -- John Coltrane especially, and a period where I listened to almost nothing but the Dead.
But I've only ever loved a small number of musicians. What I feel for Phish, beyond what I feel about their music, I can only call love.
That's half of it. But then because the center of our shared fandom, the music itself, is so particular -- the improvisatory method so finicky, the compositional voice so admirably catholic, the humour (still) so absurd, the band/audience connection so deep, the worldview so specific yet so open and welcoming -- I still find writing about Phish a compelling challenge. There's this specific thing they do that no one else has ever done in quite the same way, and even now they're exploring new areas of that art! That's so rare. I keep wanting to write something that's equal to the power of their best music.
Oh! Also the thought of making MOUNTAINS OF MONEY.
Did you learn anything new about Phish's music, or even your own musical perspectives, in writing “A Live One”?
WH: They were even better in the mid-90s than I remembered -- and I had some pretty great memories.
The project was a huge learning experience -- that's one reason I took it on. As personal as it necessarily is, there's a lot less of ME and MY story in there than there might have been.
I learned a bunch about the roots of the band, their inspirations. Only recently have I begun to appreciate how Weird (and disreputable!) some of Phish's early influences were. I'd barely heard any Beefheart before starting my research listening for the book, for instance, and didn't realize how much his painstakingly detailed private visionary weirdness anticipated Trey's and Phish's, though Trey was savvy and sociable enough to build a democratic band, which cuts against his privatizing impulses.
I learned a lot about punk and postpunk, in passing. I don't enjoy punk rock, but what I think of as the postpunk 'fusion' moment generated a ton of really interesting music. Trey's beloved Talking Heads, for one thing...
I realized that there's a (short) book to be written about the mid-80s Burlington music/arts scene and its relationship to other countercultures; I'm definitely not the person to write it, of course.
The biggest realization might be this: the music is way bigger, truer, more beautiful, than anything I have to say about it. You can see how that'd be a blow to a writer's ego, especially one with messianic pretensions. But maybe it's the start of a new, deeper understanding. I hope so.
Would you have written any sections of the book differently now that you've had time to reflect on the process after publishing?
WH: Most of it (sigh) -- but I can't trust my assessment of the book at this moment. I've been reading a lot of Greil Marcus lately, finally, and his approach to rock writing, in which every aesthetic gesture (however small) is understood as a weighty exchange in an ongoing Great American Mythic Conversation, is dangerously contagious, though wearying in large doses. It makes me want to go back to chapter 2, the long forerunners/contexts chapter that sets the stage for everything else in the book, and try to weave it together into something more continuous. Closer to the version in my head.
I'd definitely spend more time fine-tuning the chapter about 'whiteness.' (There is indeed a chapter about 'whiteness.' It's that kind of book. Why bite off only as much as you can chew, after all?) At the moment it veers a little too quickly to a defense of Phish's 'syncretism,' as opposed to 'appropriation,' and I'd wanna take more time before doing so -- think more about the roots of Phish's cultural politics. Well: I blinked.
Who are your favorite authors?
WH: John Crowley, Russell Hoban: fantasists at home with the heightened abstractions of myth-history and the most painfully intimate domestic portraiture -- and Crowley (who wrote Little, Big, an all-time great portrait of lifelong married love) works on a scale approaching that of...
...Thomas Pynchon: the best we've got, isn't he? He commands more registers, and engages with his material at more scales, than any other writer I know. Byron the Bulb? Jessica and Roger at the church? Oedipa putting on all those clothes in the hotel room? 'They fly toward grace'?! He can do everything, and is willing to try.
Douglas Hofstadter, Kenneth Hite: idiosyncratic practitioners of a kind of speculative nonfiction who demonstrate (in maximally different registers and domains) how to turn private obsessions into tools for playful creative thinking. Hofstadter is a CS/cogsci guy; Hite writes roleplaying games.
James Merrill, E.E. Cummings, Pablo Neruda: Merrill's Sandover is a 600-page visionary poem about talking to W.H. Auden and a host of angels through a ouija board. Harrowing, melancholy, regally ironic -- and incidentally a moving portrait of James and David's long marriage (in all but name). Cummings wrote maybe the funniest erotica I know -- and he was more concise than Christgau, for Christ's sake. Neruda's introduction to his 100 Sonnets is one of those perfect things; the rest of the book has seemingly limitless freedom-within-formalism that I hear in Piazzolla.
Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, P.G. Wodehouse: two angry sages and an elf.
Christopher Hitchens: My favourite pugilist. His dialectical arguments on behalf of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq -- from first principles which his colleagues at (e.g.) The Nation theoretically shared -- are still unsettling, even now. A signed copy of his book Letters to a Young Contrarian, which a fan of my old blog(!!) once sent me unprompted, is one of my prize possessions. And it's a beautiful, stirring book about thinking freely and enjoying life.
David Milch: One of my heroes. He has Hitchens's encyclopedic recall, Pynchon's ear for voices, Joss Whedon's command of dialogic rhythm, and Rumi's joyful spirit -- not to mention an improvisatory spirit worthy of, lemmeseehere, Trey Anastasio himself. Deadwood's dialogue is the best ever written for TV, which wouldn't matter if its characters weren't fully realized human beings. Sidebar: his Idea of the Writer lectures are available online, and -- forgive my evangelical zeal -- they can change your life.
All men, I know, on this list at least: one of my shortcomings.
Are you (considering) writing more books about Phish?
WH: Two's enough, I think! Even my 5-year-old son makes fun of 'daddy's Phish books.' Though Phish'll make a cameo in what I think/hope is my next project, which builds on chapter 2 of the 33-1/3 book. It's not primarily about music.
If you could ask a band member any question, who and what?
WH: I'd want to talk to them all about their practice regimen, how that's changed over the years; and about their understanding of changes in the band's music in the late 90s and early 21C. And I have a lot of questions for Page about how he understands his role in the band, since he's the one whose expertise is least obvious.
Will you be at any of the MSG shows?
WH: Doubtful. A nice thought, anyhow.
Thank you for your time, Wally! For more information about the 33⅓ book series, please visit Wikipedia. And to order Wally’s A Live One, please visit Amazon.
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 197
Welcome to the 197th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I'd like to thank @bl002e for all his hard work the past few years, attempting to stump us with some great jams across Phish's history. But he's moved on to bigger and better things now and has handed me the reins, so I'll be your new MJM host. I hope my work on the Jam Charts will help me stump you all -- I'm excited to start, and I won't let you guys down. That's right folks, MJM 3.0 is about to begin!
The 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. Though I don't envision doing this anytime soon, given we're approaching MJM #200, I am reserving the right to select different portions of jams that have previously appeared in the MJM. 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!
Tuesday update: No hint needed this week...
Answer: Congratulations and welcome to first-time winner and first-time poster, @trich12345, who came out of the woodwork and correctly guessed 9/17/99 "Viola Lee Blues" from Shoreline. Maybe he too figured that for my first MJM, I should choose a jam from my first show. Next week's MJM won't be so straightforward.
Clarification / Reminder: In the past, we have always revealed the MJM answer on Wednesday even if answered correctly on Monday or Tuesday, as some folks like to play even if they aren't the first to figure it out. If I can get spoiler tags working for the MJM, and if my schedule permits, I will post the correct answer behind a spoiler tag once it's been guessed correctly no matter when that happens. But if not, for future reference, when I say "No hint needed this week" that means that one of the comments contains the correct answer (I'll try to avoid hypercryptic metahints), and I'll post the answer Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. See you next week!
MIKE LA TICKET GIVEAWAY CONTEST #1
Phish.net is giving away two pairs of tickets to the Mike Gordon show at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on Friday, January 29, 2016, courtesy of the promoter, Goldenvoice. To make this giveaway a bit more fun than a lottery, we're going to have two contests for a pair of tickets each, one this week and one closer to the show in January.
Our experience with Mystery Jam Mondays is that the house usually loses, because some of you are so darned knowledgeable and quick with the right answer. So we've decided to make these contests a bit more difficult by asking about Mike's artistic endeavors other than his (or Phish's) music.
So, the winner of Contest #1 will the first person who correctly answers all four questions below (in the comments to this blog post, like the MJM contests) about Mike's literary work, from his story "Infantry" (Mike's Corner):
1. How many angry babies took the jet elevator to the 90th floor of the Hennison Building?
2. What did one stunned baby say when he saw Arthur Doubletrouble Hennison lying facedown on his desk, dead?
3. Did Alfred Buggyboo do it?
4. Who is Buggyboo?
Good luck!
JON FISHMAN TO INTRODUCE MISLEAD DOCUMENTARY IN VT
On Wednesday, October 21st, the Burlington Lead Program and The Lead Safe America Foundation (a 501©3 nonprofit for childhood lead poisoning prevention) are collaborating to host a free, open-to-the-public special engagement preview screening of the upcoming documentary feature film on childhood lead poisoning "MisLEAD: America's Secret Epidemic" in Burlington, Vermont at the Main Street Landing Filmhouse.
Jon Fishman will be introducing the film and speaking on the post-screening discussion panel as a local parent of a lead poisoned child.
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/547285018761183
Trailer: http://www.MisLEADMovie.com/
There is a second event on Friday October 23rd in Brattleboro, VT. Jon Fishman will also appear at that one. https://www.facebook.com/events/1692565317629494/
MODULATING JAMS OF SUMMER 2015 - PART 3
[Editor's Note: We welcome back phish.net contributor and musicologist Mike Hamad, who shares his thoughts on the "Modulating Jams of Summer 2015." Below is the last of three parts. Part 1; Part 2. -PZ]
Compound MODs: My Double Wants to Pull Me Down
Four jams this summer modulated twice before calling it quits. I’ve been referring to these jams as double – or compound – MODs. They function by simply combining two of any of the four MODs (III, IV, V and flat-VII) discussed previously. These also happen to be monster jams; technically, they are the four most harmonically adventurous jams of summer 2015.
Table 7 lists the four Compound MOD jams Phish played this summer:
Pathways: the 8/1 “Tweezer” jam was the only compound MOD III-III of the summer, moving from A min (5:52-9:51) > C maj (9:51-23:46) > min > E-flat maj (2:47), which led right into “Waiting All Night” (also in E-flat). Also notable: two simple MOD IIIs stuck together takes you a tritone distance (i.e. A > E-flat) from where you started.
After a long tonicization of F# (vi), the 8/8 “Disease” jam turns into a compound MOD IV-III jam, moving from A maj (4:44-10:46) > D maj (10:46-12:35) > min > F maj (12:35-14:27). This MOD IV is more the blissful type – more like a MOD III in spirit than a “gear-shifter,” as in the 8/22 “Caspian.”
The harmonic trajectory of the 8/12 “Twist” – a compound MOD IV-V jam – is from G min (2:27-6:03) > C maj (6:03-13:06) > G maj (13:06-22:42). It returns, in other words, to its starting key (G), but in a different mode. Several times during the jam, you can hear Mike try to return to the “Twist” motive, with little support from the others. The first MOD IV comes after an aborted tonicization of III; there’s often some searching that goes on before travel plans stick.
Finally, the Magnaball “Chalk Dust” (8/22) is a compound MOD IV-IV jam, one that keeps moving toward the flat-side of the circle of fifths: E min (6:08-7:34) > A maj (7:34-15:14) > D maj (15:14-18:55).
"Tweezer" – 8/1/15, Atlanta, GA
Honorable Mentions
Eight additional jams contain modulations that don’t hit the two-minute mark, usually to set up segues. Table 8 shows how long these MODs stayed there, and where they went. You’ll notice the subsequent songs (“segues into”) are all in the exact keys of these brief MODs. When I examined this group, it became clear that these weren’t true MODs; they’re more like ways of patching set segments together.
You may notice that the famous Nashville “Mike’s Song,” which marked the return of the second jam, didn’t even make it to Table 8. Each of the two separate jams, the first in F# minor and the second in F minor, as structural components; each begins and ends in the same key, without modulation. If one jam began in F# and moved to F, without being segmented by the band, it would be a different story.
Putting it all together
“Tweezer” -> “Caspian” nicely demonstrates two different approaches to the key of C major: the first, a sort of blissful settling-in (the MOD III in “Tweezer”) and the second, a ramping up toward an eventual peak (the MOD IV in “Caspian”). Yet, through it all, C major is C major is C major.
For many, the high point of the summer came at Magnaball during Saturday’s second set, with the 30-minute pairing of “Tweezer” and “Prince Caspian.” Taken as a single entity, “Tweezer” -> “Caspian” could be considered one monster compound MOD jam (III-V-IV, moving from A > C > G > C).
At 7:52 of “Tweezer” – a moment where the jam dips and blisses out (Page’s Rhodes is prominent, along with Trey’s ambient effects) – they modulate from A min > C maj (MOD III). Plenty of dissonance follows, up to around the nine-minute mark. Then, when fully committed to C major, the rest of the jam is all about introducing new chord progressions and staying on an upward dynamic slope. In the final minute Fishman all but drops out, and Trey tonicizes (“makes home”) G major (V in C), and that leads the way to “Caspian.”
4:48 into “Caspian,” Trey and Page start flipping the mode from G maj > min, leading to what many hear as return to “Tweezer” (Charlie Dirksen called this “a ‘Tweezer’ jam in the key of ‘Fuckerpants’”). They jam in G minor for another nearly eight more minutes (4:48-12:20) before a scorching MOD IV into C major–the same C major we heard in “Tweezer,” only different, more fully alive, shifting into high gear the high gear of your soul.
"Tweezer" > "Prince Caspian" – 8/22/15, Watkins Glen, NY
Where do they go?
The reason I started looking into this stuff in the first place: while listening to the 9/6 “Carini” in real-time, I heard a move from E min > A maj (MOD IV) only seventeen seconds into the jam. That’s unusual.
Like others on Twitter at the time, I called “Tweezer” (A min). But that would have been too easy; six minutes (of A major) later, I realized: they aren’t going into “Tweezer.” That’s too much time in A (major or minor), assuming a long “Tweezer” jam would likely follow the song-part.
Which led to a general principle I’ve stumbled onto when segueing out of modulating jams. I call this the “non-jam-song exception”:
- if they’ve jammed for a long time in a certain key (i.e. A major in the example above), they generally are not going to segue into a jam song in the same key.
- they can (and often do), however, segue into a non-jam song (“Joy,” “Shade,” “My Friend,” “Waiting All Night,” “The Line,” “Bug,” “Dirt,” “Wading,” “Waste,” “Lizards” etc.). The modulating part of the jam, in these cases, is a sort of pre-jam, tacked on before a non-jam song.
Table 9 shows how modulating jams segue into non-jam songs in the same key:
Naturally, there are other exceptions – long, modulating jams that do segue into other jam songs in the same key.
- After a MOD flat-VII from G minor to F major, the 7/31 “Twist” gives us six long minutes in F major before a segue into “Back on the Train” – arguably a jam song – in the same key.
- As noted earlier, the 8/7 “Chalk Dust” serves up seven whole minutes in A maj before the subsequent (excellent) segue into “Tweezer,” a jam song that’s also in A. (I feel confident the E > A > E sandwich created by the two songs makes up for it.)
- The 8/21 “Ghost,” which moves from A min > C maj (MOD III) leads to a jam song – “Rock and Roll” – that’s also in C major. (Many people online expressed their displeasure with this segue.)
- Similarly, the 8/22 “Blaze On,” after modulating from C# > E maj, stays there for six-and-a-half minutes before segueing into “Possum,” (arguably) a jam song that’s also in E.
- The final set at Magnaball served up a whole lot of time in the same key: the 8/23 “Disease” moved from A maj > D maj (MOD III) and remained there for more than six minutes before segueing into “Scents and Subtle Sounds” (also in D, and arguably a jam song).
- The 9/6 “Chalk Dust” spent 8.5 minutes spent in G maj before segueing into “Twist” (in G minor).
Conclusion
Before we go touting the harmonic adventurousness of the summer 2015 tour, it’s important to remember the 7/13/14 “Chalk Dust,” which went all over the place: E min > D maj > F# min > E-flat > F > D-flat, before landing in B major (for “Light”). If you squish it all together within the space of an octave (and switch every flat to sharp), that’s C#-D-D#-E-F-F#, or the entire chromatic set between C#-F#. They spent time, in other words, in every tonal area in the span of a perfect fourth. That’s craziness. Nothing in 2015 even comes close.
You can – and should – enjoy Phish jams without thinking about or hearing modulations. For me, new keys and modes are like colors changing in front of my eyes. I can’t ignore them. They’re as real as anything else I experience at a show. It’s not something I can shut off.
But I’m happy knowing that very few other bands change keys and modes spontaneously during jams the way Phish does. (The Grateful Dead didn’t.) You can take the methodology I’ve outlined in this article and back it up through 3.0, to 2.0 and 1.0, as a way of measuring how truly exploratory this band was during a given era or tour. It’s a ton of work, but it’s totally worth it.
Phish.net
The Mockingbird Foundation