Phish - do you like them?

[DesertDead]

Do you listen to Phish?  Do you go to their shows?

 

If not, why not?

 

Share any views you have on them.

 

DD

[Dead duck]

In 97 a security dude at a Deercreek campground told me that he hated the phish kids because there were always fights and theft when they came to town. I held on to that bad energy grudge for a long time. Then a buddy said he had free tix to see them at Deercreek in ‘21 and it was his birthday so I said what the hell. I had a good time. I’ll do the Deercreek run yearly and maybe a spare weekend run here or there. They are never gonna have me in tears like the Hunter poetry and Jerry licks, but I seem to have a good enough time. Luke likes going, Sammy still refuses. 🤣

[LangeradoSoul]

I was a teenager listening to the Grateful Dead in the early 90s, and a friend suggested I might like Phish, since I liked “alternative” music and the Grateful Dead. I bought “A Live One”, and got some live shows on tape, like 7/25/92. 
 

I liked it causally, but the whole humor in music thing doesn’t do it for me, so if you play me guitar solos and jams, I’d prefer that. 
 

After the 1998 Further Festival/ The Other Ones tour ended in shoreline, I did a smattering of Phish summer tour dates making my way back east. Haven’t gone to a show since 

 

pretty much ambivalent but occasionally listen to select concert jams of theirs from 1992-1998

[chuckvegas]

I certainly do not begrudge them their channel 29 on Sirius but I miss Jam On.

[2muchfun]

I just do not enjoy jam band genre being whimsical.

[LangeradoSoul]

3 hours ago, 2muchfun said:

I just do not enjoy jam band genre being whimsical.

Totally agreed. Also, the entire jam band genre seems completely derivative of Phish

[BrotherEsau]

Just got back from seeing their 3 night run in Hollywood. Phish is kind of like black licorice. Not everyone likes it but those that do really do.

They take me to similar places that the Deads music does. First saw them in 1992 in Vermont. 30 years and 31 shows later I'm probably more into them now than I ever have been.

The bands love of the Dead is well documented. On the other side of the coin I know a lot of heads that can't stand Phish. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

[Greg from Chestertown]

 Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That being said, when I have steak, I have Filet Mignon. I have managed to never hear a single Phish tune. 43 years in and I’m still searching through the Grateful Dead archives. Maybe after I get through all of that but for now, river roll, roll, roll. 

[Ammagamalin Crew]

A younger friend of mine was trying to turn me on to them in 1993 when I thought it was whimsical compared to being 10 yrs into dead shows. They played the Cincinnati zoo that year and it was way overcrowded compared to the week before when I took my sister to her first Emmylou show at the same venue. I was turning to ELH right about them cause dead shows were getting crowded. Phish continued to play Cincy moving to the coliseum and doing two night stands where my touring Dead friend talked me into going. It started to get better at a Blossom show when I was wearing my Zeppelin 77 shirt and they ripped a Good Times Bad Times for an encore. Those Deercreek shows 2021 and 2022 had the best shakedown setup and security was super kind. The band has gotten better. Trey and Mike have been able to stay together for Phish and do their own bands on the side. I'm not into the salsa jams but when they opened the third night at Deercreek, tour closer, with While My Guitar Gently Weeps it was quite the celebration. Damn shame they are doing Burgettsburg instead of DC this year , but we're going and finally got pavilion seats for both nights in the lottery. That lawn in Alpine last year was rough.  

[Brian NJ]

No

[Mango]

i have a bunch of friends who are super into Phish. i've warmed to them over the years, even went to a show on the beach in AC a couple years back. I had fun...nothing particularly profound about it for me.

 

the people i talk to who love Phish always harp on the same thing- they take the jams places the dead never did. and sure, it's true. Doesn't mean I like the places, or that they have any particular depth to me. it's all wild and crazy, party music. Long jams, yes- but if you skip ahead 10 minutes in a jam it very well may sound exactly the same. Boring jams IMO. Not at all Mutative like the GD. Not at all deep or sweet. Horrible singing IMO. Not a fan of Trey. I do like the rest of the band decently enough, esp the keyboard player.

 

I'm happy people love Phish. I don't. I'd rather go to a SCI show anyday, however their jams are pretty boring to me too.

 

In the realm of "jam" music the GD is enough for me. There are many other great types of music I'd rather listen to than Phish or other jambands.

[LangeradoSoul]

"There are many other great types of music I'd rather listen to than Phish or other jambands"

Absolutely

[Island Bro]

I do think they are extremely talented musicians and a tightness to the band that I can appreciate but their music never hooked me…lacking in some sort of depth and/or soul. I’m glad so many people enjoy them, but not my thing.

 

Agree with Mango that String Cheese actually does something for me and can fully enjoy what they have to offer and the dance culture around that band though my live hits of that have been limited.

Overall,,would rather go catch a really hot funk band for non GD music experience 

[LangeradoSoul]

When I was touring full time, Summer 2001 was my only time I really caught SCI. The summer tour tangled a bit with Phil's tour and I coordinated a few of their dates in the West/Midwest in the midst of Phil tour to make traveling easier. The SCI shows in Colorado & midwest in Summer 2001 were fun-the audience was really young and different than Phil tour, and we were some of the only vendors for many of those shows-not too unlike DSO shows.

[BillK522]

SCI filled the need for a few years

after Jerry.  I saw them at the 

Funnel in Baltimore probably in

97/98  They headlined a multi

band bill and there were about

40 people left when they took

the stage.  A couple years later

they were filling mid sized arenas.

 

Praise DSO.

[Rude]

Saw them in 96 in Louisville trying to find a band to replace the dead. They didn’t and a really weak setlist didn’t help. Saw them a few years ago and it was a great time. The crowd is nowhere near as cool as a dead or panic crowd. You’d think it would be similar but it’s really not. Panic fans wear more dead attire than panic attire but at phish it was like no one was a deadhead or at least we were the only ones repping dead tees(I usually go DSO shirts at any deadco or panic to represent). I think that’s why we gravitate to panic more. Their fans are like us and we are almost felt out of place at phish. 
 

on that note, I really like Junta. That’s a show off album. I still play it at least several times a year. Their drummer was so creative on that album. 

[chuckvegas]

This is pretty damn heartfelt, I think. The crowd reaction is beautiful. Like the comments say, goosebumps.

 

 

[Vic81]

Yeaa chuck i do like that crowd reaction of terrapin and the cover itself. I’ve seen phish maybe 5 or 6 times. And a long time ago, early 00’s…nothing since then. Just never did it for me. Trey seems like a  real cool dude and super talented, I do love the bands love for the dead, trey especially. On a side note I watched some of GD 50 and didn’t really enjoy Trey in that spot at all. but phish we’ll they just don’t come close of being in the  same realm of the GD to me. 
 

Totally different jams, lyrics and overall vibe. 
a bunch of  times throughout my life if I  get in a Grateful Dead convo with people it sometimes leads to the question , do I like phish? Mostly  phish fans and I guess they assume that if you’re into the dead you automatically like phish. My answer is No I don’t I don’t like phish

but Bouncing Around the room was always a good one. 

[Greg from Chestertown]

They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones who do what they do.

[Tea]

First show I saw was at a student union (Denison College) 1990.  I was marveling at how much people were losing their minds over the show.  It was alright - fitness trampolines on stage was a bit of a twist.  This one fan kept trying to explain to me the land of Gamehenge and it’s epic genius.  Made me think of Dungeons and Dragons for some reason.

 

I saw them a few times when the Dead weren’t touring.  It was fun but it was in such contrast to what I loved about the GD that I always left a bit musically unsatisfied .  NYE 92-93 @ Northeastern U, Clifford Ball (‘96?), and Hampton 1998 were the only ones i saw that were great.  Undeniable talent though.

[Dead duck]

Phish is a person you bang for fun. A little skanky, but fun. GD is marriage material. Lol

[Rude]

1 minute ago, Dead duck said:

Phish is a person you bang for fun. A little skanky, but fun. GD is marriage material. Lol

umm so we have to see GD, but we really want to see phish?

[chuckvegas]

I think one factor in the current Phish situation is that we are so far removed from Jerry and the GD that the new generation of fans for both bands don’t have the cross pollination that occurred during the ‘90s and early ‘00s. People are more in their respective scenes and those have diverged significantly.

 

c’est la vie.

[DesertDead]

Thanks to all involved for the OT discussion.  I enjoy learning from others’ point of view.

 

I think I am most surprised by yours, Greg, in that you have never even LISTENED to a Phish song in your life.  That in itself is fascinating to me.
 

It’s easy to understand that some people just do not like them, and I also get a bit of the haters with an air of competition with the Grateful Dead (“there can be only one” mentality haha), but since I know how much you all love GD and the greatest band playing GD music today, Dark Star Orchestra, I would humbly suggest that you at least just experience some Phish for yourself.  Not because Phish could ever “replace” GD/DSO, but because it is absolutely a derivative style whose primary influence is the music you so passionately adore.  Same with me, of course.

 

And caveat here that none of my views are intended to change anyone’s mind, but only to share in the event that someone finds it interesting.  I make no presumptions with this thread (although I did know going in what MC’s view was, given his parenthesized comment in his thread about partners digging our music; I didn’t want to hijack that thread but it did prompt me to start this one.  Thanks for that share, Tom.)

 

Like many of you, I had neither time nor interest in Phish while Garcia still roamed the Earth in human form.  I found their vibe sophomoric and I only have so much bandwidth for music in my day, and that time is either GD or JGB haha.  I tend to be an open-minded individual, but was definitely a skeptic when it came to Phish.  I had already been a huge Widespread Panic fan, so between the GD and them I was fully sated for awesome music.
 

But in 1996 I did see my first Phish show, and it was a party.  Different and therefore not as comfortable as the 93 Dead shows I attended lol, but similar.  I agree with a few of you that have found more similarities with WSP fans and Deadheads than with Phish.  I get that vibe as a general stereotype as well.

 

But generalized stereotypes don’t always apply, of course.  Over the years I have encountered plenty of kynd, like-minded spirits and proven Deadheads at Phish shows.  Some of which are huge DSO fans, like us.

 

So I saw a spattering of Phish shows in the late 90’s and early 00’s, then I got married and adulted for a while, only seeing GD-based bands, including of course DSO.  
 

I periodically listened to Phish but never took my time to attend their shows.  An itch I didn’t feel the need to scratch, if you will.

 

Fast forward to 2021, and for a variety of reasons,I did attend a show out here in PHX, 18 years after my last one.  It was a much more developed sound and therefore experience.  The band had obviously written new music and changed/gotten better (not to say that they weren’t talented all along in my view, because these are uber-talented musicians by any reasonable measure).  It was thick and funky and the space hit right.  So I subsequently deadicated more of my time to exploring their catalog, which obviously includes a vast span of live music, again influenced by the GD.

 

So again with zero presumptions in place, I will tell anyone brave enough to read this far that this recent Spring Tour of theirs was fantastic.  They played 8 shows between Seattle, Berkeley, and Los Angeles.  I went to the six California shows.  Berkeley with a dear old friend who happens to be a long-time taper that some of you may know.  Hollywood with a guy is as close to being a brother as you can get without being related.  Needless to say, we partied and boogied hard (albeit quietly in the taper section haha).

 

The following videos are from the Greek, one from each second set.  If you have a 4K screen and some way to get loud, I suggest you do so.

 

The Tweezer is 44 minutes and goes into Simple for another 19 or so.  These are not simply spectacular because of their length, but if you want to see how they have transformed, buckle in.  These songs are over 30 years old and they do have some of that goofy lyric thing happening (they are not Gamehendge, however).  But these both have jams that get to be QUITE different and are anything but playful.  Strongly recommend anyone here to party this Tweezer->Simple this weekend.  If you have not heard Phish lately, prepare to be surprised.  If you only watch one of these songs below, let it be the entire Tweezer.  Around the 25-minute mark is not bad lol.

 

The next offering is Fuego, a newer tune relative to the first two.  This also goes places, swampy and funky places.

 

From night 3 is Set Your Soul Free into What’s the Use?  If you are going to experience this, settle in for the entirety with an open mind.

 

None of this is Help/Slip/Frank, as no one else can ever supplant our first (only?) true love, but this is some quality and interesting music that is akin to GD in many ways.  And I think I’m reasonably qualified to say that this is not some ordinary “jam band”.

 

Interested in any reflections on any of what I’ve shared, and obviously these recent examples of what Phish is up to.

 

Peace

DD

 

 

 

 

[Tea]

Wow - that Tweezer is nutso!  It's more nuanced than I was expecting and the Shreddy parts were very well done.  Thanks for sharing, DD!  

 

Still feels like the difference between sex and making love but I like both - just one more than the other.  I've received solid advice on such matters