The demand appears to be there..

The worst part about Phish is the vocals, which are atrocious. Everything else is just well-executed bleh.

I first heard about them in the early '90s. I saw them on a talk show, probably Letterman, and the thing happened where the audience erupted before the band was fully introduced. I was already into Rush and Primus (not bad for a 13 year old..) and was up for getting weird/progressive/whatever. What came out was a very basic G-C-D boogie woogie thing, goober singer smiling the whole time, not really any discernible choruses just verse/solo break/repeat. 4 minutes of that and the audience erupted again. I felt like Homer Simpson hitting the TV when the comedian told terrible jokes to uproarious laughter: "stupid TV. Be. More. Funny.."

I've since seen a bunch of live footage and heard bits of the records, and it wasn't unlike the above but they would add 'entertaining' bits like busting out a theremin or whatever. Literally a guy going "woooooOOOOoooo" in front of 30,000 people and again.. huge applause.

I recently watched that Anastasio documentary out of (by now) morbid curiosity I guess. Aside from it starting out with "I always bring sheet music to the band" ( ) they seem like friendly, positive guys. TOO positive. *plays something basic on the piano* "wow that is AMAZING, this is new territory for me". *shows the drummer, plops a basic beat behind it* "WOW that sounds so fucking cool!". "Hey maybe I should harmonize that lyric.. the one about the sea being a soul of love" "Fuck yeah, that sounds GREAT".. etc. I had to turn it off after 30 minutes. Maybe I'll resume it if I'm ever under laughing gas or something..

Crap.

Looked up some random thing. Sounds ok. When they start doing whakka whakka it's a little lame and yeah the singer is bad, but whatever. Not amazing, not terribly upsetting.

I, too, was a teenager starting to figure out what music I liked when I first heard Phish. I thought enough of them that I bought their first few albums. Never saw them live.

I very much admire their longevity as a band and many of the things they’ve done (Halloween shows in particular). As people, they seem fine.

As an adult, I don’t find their music to be exciting, but I do like them better than their predecessors, so I’m gonna say NC.

In the early-aughts I was listening to the local alt-rock station while driving my mom back from chemo. They were playing an unfamiliar-sounding song and I was somewhat bopping along to it. Vocals were kind of chill but resonated nicely, the groove was adequate, and overall the song felt slightly cosmic. Minutes later the radio jock called it for "Birds of a Feather" by Phish and I thought to myself: well ain't that some shit. Jam bands in general seem to play with groove via a textbook approach: you hit the drum here while the bass gets plucked this way while aqueous guitars flow through the mix. It feels studied and not stank. I'm sure Phish has some decent tunes that if I were to hear them unknowingly I might be receptive, and that's were it really starts, doesn't it? You hear something naked without context only using your experiences with how certain sounds sound. Or maybe I'm being super diplomatic because as I age I don't give a shit. In the past I would have immediately crapped on them like Dave Matthews Band's tour bus cruising over a Chicago bridge onto a passenger sightseeing ship below, but there are more worthy adversaries. I'm subjected to modern (t)rap music daily and my ears have no time for that bullshit.

penningtron wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:39 am I recently watched that Anastasio documentary out of (by now) morbid curiosity I guess. Aside from it starting out with "I always bring sheet music to the band" ( ) they seem like friendly, positive guys. TOO positive. *plays something basic on the piano* "wow that is AMAZING, this is new territory for me". *shows the drummer, plops a basic beat behind it* "WOW that sounds so fucking cool!". "Hey maybe I should harmonize that lyric.. the one about the sea being a soul of love" "Fuck yeah, that sounds GREAT".. etc. I had to turn it off after 30 minutes. Maybe I'll resume it if I'm ever under laughing gas or something..

It's weird, right? I talked about this in another thread, but I watched that movie kinda scratching my head the whole time. That song they're working on is the most banal, boring thing imaginable and they're like WOW this is GREAT! And I'm like HOW? There's nothing to it, that song is made out of air. They're clearly smart guys but they talk like dumb guys. Or maybe that's how people who've done tons of drugs end up talking, I don't know. But it was weird.

I'll give them a n/c because they've always just done their own thing and been successful at it, so respect for that. I find them far more tolerable than the dead. Trey can play a fine guitar solo now and again. "A Picture of Nectar" is listenable. That's all I've got.

jfv wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 9:32 amAs an adult, I don’t find their music to be exciting

This shit is like Raffi for adults

As a swede, bands like Phish and Dave Matthews band and Hootie&the blowfly and even Grateful Dead ( who I dig up to a point) feels like such distictly american phenomenons who never even remotely registered here that I almost feel like an interloper having an opinion, kind of like asking a white dude how he feels about contemporary congolese rhumba or something... anyway, when I first *read* about Phish and their vibe, I expected them to sound like Hawkwind or local heroes Träd, gräs och stenar or something...sadly, that was not at all what they sounded like... crap I guess but probably better than pearl jam; at leat the vocals weren't yarling

ChudFusk wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 4:04 pm

jfv wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 9:32 amAs an adult, I don’t find their music to be exciting

This shit is like Raffi for adults

Word. It lulls them into a collective ketamine haze.