So, my previous plan of listening to everything in my iTunes in artist-alphabetical order is progressing nicely. I broke my way into the C’s this morning and listened to a whole bunch of Cake, which was fun.
Therefore, I’m obviously going to scrap it and listen to a buttload of Phish.
Whaaaaa…???
Actually, I’m just going to take a break. The reason being that Phish is playing their first live show in almost 5 years a week from today, and I was perusing phishhook.com and came across a three-page discussion of people trying to guess what the first song they’ll play will be. As I was reading this, I realized again what I love most about Phish: anything is possible. They could quite literally play anything as their first song. It may be something from their own extensive catalog; it may be one of the many covers they’ve been known to play; it may be a brand new song; or it may be 10 minutes of them chewing on cardboard. (That last one is a metaphor).
With most bands, they generally play the same set over and over on any given tour. They may switch out a song or two from show to show to keep things relatively fresh, but mostly, it’s the same. With “jam bands”, the setlist is different from night-to-night, and, obviously during songs, or after songs, there’s often a lot of jamming (improvisation), usually conforming to some pattern, like they have some songs that are open-ended, and so they jam out the ending for 10 or 40 minutes.
Phish takes that a step further, in my opinion, and it’s mostly because of their talent. Sure, there are a lot of shows that start out with Punch You In The Eye, and there are a lot (and I mean a LOT) of encores that end with Tweezer Reprise, but there’s always a chance that they’re going to play something that you never would have expected. For example, in 1999, I saw them play at Alpine Valley, and they opened the show with Guyute, followed by Fluffhead (in itself, kind of a rare thing), both of which are very constructed songs, with lots of parts, some of which include improvisational elements, but prior to that show, Fluffhead always ended the same way. For some reason, at that particular show, it ended slightly differently, which led to a completely off-the-cuff improvised jam that lasted a good 20 minutes. At that same show, they played a 4 song encore, two of which were songs that hadn’t been played in a long, long time (one of them had been almost 10 years). And it’s not like this was some special show, celebrating an anniversary or some landmark event. It was just a regular stop on their summer tour. And, honestly, most of the show was really sloppy. But those couple shining moments more than made up for it.
The real point, though, is the unknown. I love that when I go to a Phish show, there’s a possibility that just about anything can happen. Not a theoretical “well-the-world-could-end-today” kind of “anything-can-happen”, but more of “holy-crap-that-guy-at-the-counter-is-literally-insane” kind of “anything-can-happen”. Except, you know, without the imminent threat of death. Phish is mostly about fun, after all.
Anyway, after thinking about all of this, my new listening plan is to listen to nothing but Phish for the next week. Woo Phish!
Also, I’m super-excited to bring my wife to her first (and second) Phish show this summer. Wooo Phish!