As many of you are aware, the Mockingbird Foundation has produced two volumes of The Phish Companion to date with a third volume on its way. In other words, my collaborators and I are to some standard or another fairly accomplished in the field of literary works about the band Phish. Although these works are predominantly fact based, there is a certain amount of leeway that is inherent in writing about the art of another. Art, whether it be visual, auditory, theatrical, or literary, can be experienced both objectively and subjectively. It is almost impossible to separate one from the other. Add social media to the mix and stir in a little bit of the natural tendency toward competition and the whole notion of crowdsourcing the quality of a given piece of art tends to become far too personal and self-serving. I therefore find myself in a predicament as I attempt to launch what will become a sporadic yet semi-irregular blog series wherein I am tasked with providing a literary review for another author’s work that is somehow related to the music of the band Phish.

Read more...

As you all undoubtedly know, today marks a huge milestone in the Phish world. So, in celebration of the 1,274th day since MJM Part 01, here's the 168th edition of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! Per usual, this week's winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!

Hint: In a way, the mystery jam is relevant to the actual Phish milestone celebrated yesterday.

Answer: First-time winner @tomwom51 wins his first MJM by IDing the 12/31/02 Walls of the Cave. Coming shortly: MJM #169.

The holiday season is just around the corner, you probably know a Phish fan who hasn't heard this great all-for-charity double-album tribute, and the more we sell, the more grants we'll be able to make...

Read more...

Welcome to part 167 of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! (Give or take fifteen hours.) As usual, this week's winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. Because of the upcoming holiday, a hint will be posted at 10:00am ET Wednesday if necessary, with the answer to follow at 5:00pm ET Wednesday. Good luck!

Answer: The contestants extend their winning streak to six, as @eyesworld89 wins his first MJM by being familiar with the 3/8/09 Down with Disease. Check back in later today for MJM #168.

After a short, revitalizing hiatus -- taken to avoid becoming a charicature of itself, or worse yet, a nostalgia act -- Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday is back! And as with MJM #165, this one's brought to you by the MJM OG himself, @RabeldyNugs. As usual, this week's winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!

Answer: @mcgrupp81 wins his fourth MJM by IDing the Bowie-esque 12/9/97 Simple. Great job!

From the editors: We'd like to welcome Mike Hamad (@mikehamad) creator of the amazing @phishmaps to the blog today. Mike has a fantastic post digging into a musician's viewpoint of Wingsuit and its connections to other music you are already familiar with. We hope you enjoy it!

When songs are grouped together, I sometimes hear connections.

What I hear before and after one song, or a segment of a song, influences the way I hear that music. I think a lot of people listen this way, and probably a lot of Phish fans. We’re always talking about sets, pacing, song selection, vibes that carry over from one jam to another, whole weekends, tours, years, and so on. Everything affects the experience of everything else, musical and otherwise.

I hear a few connections, spread out all over the place, in Wingsuit. Did they intend this? Who knows. Brains make connections composers didn’t intend us to hear all the time. Composers are pretty good at creating cool accidents; in a sense, all they really do is create the conditions under which we experience a piece of music, right? The rest is up to us, to take from it what we will.

Some of the connections I hear have to do with melody, and some with harmony. (I think there are probably some lyrical connections that should be discussed as well, and they've probably all been pointed out anyway.) It's tough to talk about this stuff without getting a little technical, and that sucks. But I'll try to make it tolerable if and when I say jargon-y stuff.

Read more...

And we're back! Did you miss us? Let's go right after the elephant in the room, shall we?

Below the fold, you can use your thumbs to tell us what Wingsuit tunes you think most deserve a permanent home on the new album and in the repertoire. The staff here definitely has our own favorites, but this is about you, so get in there and get dirty. The action's in the comments...

Read more...

If you’re Phish, Halloween is a high-pressure gig. But what about the act of drawing the curtain on a tour like this one? Before we delve into AC3, let’s put it into context.

Before tonight, the tour consisted of 11 shows in 14 days. Those 11 shows produced no fewer than 8 essential jams. By “essential,” I mean that someday your roommate at the seniors home is going to doze off listening to you gush about them for the millionth time. Two of these jams were “Tweezer” (Hampton and Hartford), and two of them were “Carini” (Hampton and AC). Of the remaining four, three of them deserve mention in any conversation about all-time versions: the Hartford “Golden Age,” the Reading “Disease,” and the AC “Twist.” Rounding out the list is a behemoth in its own right: the Worcester “Drowned.”

Not too shabby -- and that’s barely the half of it.

Read more...

Wow. Are we having fun, yet, Phish fans? Holy moly! On Thursday, Phish set down one of the ballsiest, boldest, most innovative creative offerings of their storied thirty year career. The pressure is off and we are rounding the home stretch on what is arguably the best tour of the post-breakup era. Check that: in my opinion, we are easily, definitively, by a large measure witnessing the most consistently excellent, innovative, paradigm-breaking tour since the 1990s… we’re in the thick of artistic explosion that belongs in the discussion with August ‘93, December ‘95, summer and fall ‘97, or any other tour or era that you want to include in the conversation.

Given the magnitude and power of what is happening in the moment – and because I’ve been living a little large and am time pressured, again, sigh – I’m going to let these last few weeks settle and offer some hopefully coherent and reflective thoughts soon. So I’ve Tom Sawyer’d this recap with the help of my friends. Twenty plus years into this journey, and I’m as thrilled and jacked up about this band as I’ve ever been… the vibe reminds me of the afterglow of Big Cypress. This is it. Let go, enjoy it… take a look around you, give a good look to the people around you. There is a lot of love in the air, embrace it, give yourself to the moment. Music is the BEST!

Martin Acaster: We sat in my truck and listened to the show on the street corner outside the WOW Hall in Eugene while waiting for our daughter to emerge from the squealariffic and sweaty Hoodie Allen show feasting on cold pizza and chugging amp energy drinks. On the ride down from Portland "Under Pressure" came on the radio and I thought to myself… this would be a really cool song for Phish to play someday. You can imagine the holy shit chills I experienced during “Twist.” The band knows what I am thinking even when I am 3000 miles away. I chuckled at the “Halley's” > “Tube” juxtaposition… since they are now essentially the same song. Heard “Wombat” teases all over the place. That groove is so infectious. The Bush Kush freakout reminded me a lot of something Ed Zeppelin used to do on a couple of Dread Zeppelin tracks. Another winner… the Phish from Vermont is truly en Fuego.

Read more...

Like most of you I suspect, I spent the bulk of Halloween day embroiled in the grand mystery of what album Phish was going to cover during the second set of the first of three nights at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. When the doors finally opened and the Phishbill was in hand, I was stunned and excited. Phish would not be donning a musical costume for this Halloween. They would be performing a live debut of their new album Wingsuit in celebration of their continued vitality as a band after 30 years together. Rather than a tired classic rock cover that couldn’t possibly please everyone, they were with great bravery going to take maximum risk in hope of the ever elusive maximum reward. The only question remaining at that point was whether Wingsuit would be a trick or a treat. That conundrum persists.

Read more...

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I thought it might be fun to celebrate tonight’s show with another poem. In keeping with the occasion, though, this one is quite a bit more dark, so I hope you enjoy this Phishy re-imagining of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.”

Also, in the spirit of the Reading food drive, Worlds That Inspire Community Service Organization is making a push to get donations of winter gloves for the homeless in New York City via NYC Rescue Mission. Look for more information on this later this morning, but bring a good pair of gloves for donation to Boardwalk Hall tonight and pitch in for a great cause!

See you in AC!

Read more...

Coming off the heels of a particularly strong three show stretch, the question coming into last night's show in Reading, was could Phish sustain the momentum, or were we in for a relative letdown, much like last week's Rochester show? Looking at what had been played over the last few shows, it looked like we were due for a "Disease," "Piper," and "Hood" centric second set (we went two for three), with the show-before-Halloween factor lurking as the wildcard. Would Reading deliver?

Read more...

Phish Fall Tour makes a stop in Reading, PA tonight. According to the 2011 US Census, Reading at the time was the nation's poorest city, with over 40% of its residents living at or below the poverty line. It has since lost that title to Camden, NJ but remains one of our nation's most impoverished places. Phish fans can help, thanks to the efforts of .net user @YorkVilleBeerLover. See the forum thread that got it off the ground here.

The Greater Berks Food Bank will have donation bins right inside the venue entrance, so make a quick stop at the grocery store before you hit the lot and bring some canned food donations! It's cheap, it's easy, and it helps those who need it.

Things that are acceptable include any unopened, non-perishable food items (canned, boxed, bagged, bottled) as well as unopened personal hygiene items (soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste).

They cannot accept the following items:

• Home-made foods (canned jellies, canned vegetables, cookies, etc.)
• Expired, opened, or damaged items (damage that would affect the quality or safety of the product – rusted cans, cans with dents along the rims, bagged items with tears, etc.)
• Items with no labels

If you are not going, read this post after the gig, or otherwise can't help at the show but want to donate cash, you can do that here.

Spread the word and hopefully we can show the city of Reading that Phish fans want to make a difference.

Read more...

Fans attending the shows in Atlantic City this week should be advised of the following Public Safety Notice from Boardwalk Hall:

For fans attending any of the 2013 Phish concerts at Boardwalk Hall, please make a note of the following information:

* There will be a strict no bag policy for these shows. No bags of any kind will be permitted into the arena.
* Public parking at Boardwalk Hall will not available from 10/30 through 11/3.
* One 20 oz. factory sealed or empty plastic water bottle per person will be permitted.

Read more...

by guest writer Jake Cohen (@smoothatonalsnd)

As I was taking the train up from Grand Central through Connecticut Sunday afternoon, the sunny autumn day was punctuated by the news that Lou Reed, Velvet Underground founder, noise rock pioneer, occasional hit songwriter, and denizen of the downtown avant-garde, had died at age 71. There are many artists of that era whose deaths would be a devastating blow to me personally; while Lou Reed wasn’t really in that pantheon, I felt strangely sad and affected nonetheless, as though an epoch of rock and roll was somehow ended. I wondered what Velvet Underground tunes Phish would play that night, and secretly hoped we’d hear my favorite VU tune, “Venus in Furs.”

Phish owes a lot to Lou Reed. Obviously there’s the matter of the band’s 1998 Halloween album, the Velvet Underground’s 1970 masterpiece Loaded. Yet it’s hard to imagine the “Storage Jam” from SuperBall without Metal Machine Music coming first. So when Phish returned to the Hartford Civic Center after 14 years, continuing their fall theme of re-christening the old haunts of their late 90s indoor tours, everyone was expecting some kind of tribute to the late master – maybe a reprise of the Dick’s appearance of “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’,” maybe a “Sweet Jane” or “Who Loves the Sun” bustout. I was still caught off guard by the rollicking “Rock and Roll” to open the show, the first time it had done so since 12/29/98.

Read more...