And I realize I’m talking about Phish in the past tense even though they’re still together — let’s just say I’m very, very skeptical as to whether they’ll ever release another LP proper of any merit, based on recent experiences with them. Along these lines, it’s funny to think about what their relationship must be like with their label — I envision them like sending in the album with a used condom after not having conversed with the A&R for like seven months, to then get a fudged check back in the mail with their names misspelled on it.
And, of course, I realize that studio albums are neither of these bands’ forte. Well, check that — they’re not SUPPOSED to be. Studio albums, for each fan base applicable here, are the enemy, the mark of the establishment, with the live show where the art truly goes to flourish, to grow and to thumb its nose at all that is extant and conventional. There’s a never-ending hippie pulling you to the show… and the cute girls with dreadlocks in long skirts.
And that’s ok but I think part of the reason Phish took me longer to get into than GD was their very live show, which tends to be almost invariably peppered with at least some mediocrity. Belied by clunkers like “AC/DC Bag”; “Slave to the Traffic Light”; “Carini”; “Mike’s Song”; “Simple” and “Harry Hood”; almost each of which is overlong, aimless and a pinnacle of pointless, endless noodling on their instruments, is that, da**, these guys can really write a song. I’m even going to go so far as to say Phish’s strength is their studio album, sure to be followed by the longest uttering of the word “Duuuuuuude” in recorded history, of course.
I’ll just relay to you a little synopsis of my night’s activities tonight, anyway. Basically, I got off work, because the guys I’m working with finally realize that I’m way overworked. I got to go home a whole hour and a half early, feeling ugly, feeling like the girls at all the bars I go to are sick of me, going straight home with nothing to say, nothing to think and nothing to feel. Eventually, sitting here a couple miles south of South Bend, I got to thinking about what defines me, and one thing, honestly, is Phish, and the whole jam band upbringing I had here in this town, including the band I was in in high school which covered several Bob Marley songs with my own Talking-Heads-style (nowhere near as good) rhythm guitar parts interpolated therein and Dave Matthews’ “So Much to Say,” among others.
Lately The Story of the Ghost (1997) has been a go-to Phish studio album for me so I went ahead and threw that on on Spotify listening on my Mac on Spotty Premium (they could jack the price up monthly from $10 to $100 and I’d still subscribe to it without question). I let the title track “Ghost” start playing, started marveling about the lines “His answer came in actions / He never spoke a word / Or maybe I laid down the phone / Before he could be heard”, and considered doing a post all alone about that song, which, truthfully, I still might. I got to “Birds of a Feather” and recounted how I’ve always loved this track and that wah-wah-laden guitar solo that seems so keen within Trey Anastacio’s apparent penchant for weaving many different notes through one toggling of the pedal, the pedal’s emission very slow, rather than rapid and per note, which is the typical convention ordained by Jimi Hendrix et. al. I made it through “Meat” and once again decided it was the funkiest thing Phish ever laid down, which, depending who you ask, might be saying a lot. I got through the trippy existentialism of “Shafty,” the psychedelic perfection of “Water in the Sky” and “Wading in the Velvet Sea” which partially justifies its being the most streamed track on this album with the guitar solo. Then I saw the Hoist logo on Phish’s page and was like da** if I don’t feel like putting on Hoist next… I mean we’re used to listening to this band in two-hour segements, right?
And that takes us to right now — I have put Hoist on and once again pled to my creator up in the cosmos, as I’m sure many fans have: “Did ‘Julius’ really HAPPEN?” Now, I think, by way of the above rhetoric, I’ve made what might start to act as the embryo of an argument that Phish’s studio albums are actually better than their live albums, part of which might have to do with lyrics. One thing that will bolster this argument, then, is an entrance of the track “Waste” from their ’96 album Billy Breathes. Basically, what’s so beautiful to me about “Waste,” on the albeit generally soaring and superb album Billy Breathes, is that it just plays to me like such a coming of age for singer/guitarist Trey Anastacio, and has the personal earnestness and warmth of a greater singer/songwriter track like “Old Man” by Neil Young. Basically, Anastacio is listing all these different careers he doesn’t want to do: “Don’t wanna be an actor / Pretending on the stage / Don’t wanna be a writer / With my thoughts all on the page… Don’t wanna be anything where my life’s an open book”. The song, far from being some cheesy denouement of faked semantic closure, ends in phenomenal unrest and chaos: “If I could be / Wasting my time with you… Come waste your time with me”. It’s a song that, lyrically, just shirks so many cliches as to make it charming in a way, and foments to a climax with naught but another malady, an important technique in rock songwriting as it allows a mission for the music itself and doesn’t just lyrically vanquish all the demons (which would hence theoretically leave the music extraneous and ineffectual). That, and Billy Breathes is completely classic all in all, with beautiful psych-rock etudes like “Taste”; “Talk”; “Free” and “Prince Caspian” all making for an unique and memorable listening experience, with Anastacio’s shrill, assertive guitar typically foremost within the mix.
Now, any Grateful Dead fan, including me, will tell you that their studio albums pale in comparison to their live albums, where the sound is all mixed in one messy ball and their concert penchant for synchronicity and exciting improvisation comes to the fore. Just personally, I’d rate so, so many Grateful Dead live albums in front of any of their studio albums — Dead Set, Europe ’72, Live/Dead, Pacific Northwest ’73-’74: Believe it if You Need it, Truckin’ up to Buffalo, Wake of the Flood, etc., and I’m sure I’m not alone within Deadheadworld in this disposition. Now, I should, however, temper this discourse with the startling revelation I’ve recently come upon by way of the graphic novel Grateful Dead Origins which is that Anthem of the Sun (1968) is a document in psychedelic rock that’s utterly astonishing and cannot be described with words. There’s this great part of the book where Jerry Garcia’s sitting in the studio all stoned and asking “How can we make it sound more purple?” and the book also gets into how the Dead went way over their studio budget on the Anthem of the Sun sessions. Well, why does music mean anything? It should be about how much the artist him or herself put into it, right? Along these lines, that “Waste” track by Phish I talked about again represents a sort of sacrifice on the part of the artist, I think or at least it plays as just as much, hence giving it that kind of gravity that makes you really sink into your chair and forget about all the turmoils of your day. And boy did I need that, today, and get it.
Anyway, here’s my little Madden rankings of Phish and Dead albums, hoping this will help get you squared away. Anything Madden this time of year is good, right? This post has been brought to you by tough-actin’ Tinactin.
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1 Grateful Dead – Anthem of the Sun (98)
2 Phish – Billy Breathes (96)
3 Phish – The Story of the Ghost (95)
4 Phish – Rift (95)
5 Jerry Garcia – Garcia (94)
6 Phish – A Picture of Nectar (94)
7 Grateful Dead – American Beauty (93)
8 Phish – Farmhouse (93)
9 Phish – Hoist (93)
10 Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead (92)
11 Grateful Dead – Shakedown Street (91)
12 Phish – Lawn Boy (91)
13 Grateful Dead – In the Dark (87)
14 Grateful Dead – Terrapin Station (85)