though my hunt for an easy website design tool and time to make an AWESOME personal/professional website continue to fall through (it's been what, 2 years now?), i've finally found a convenient and non-stupid way to re-up all of my old sessions and records for download.
all hail mediafire!
okay, now i seriously have to go write my exams.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
mint medley session available for free download and consumption!
so in defiance of my coming exams, i found myself staying home saturday afternoon and setting up a recording space in my bathroom. i'd been toying with the idea of using the bathroom to record any guitar-based songs lindsey would want to put on her album, but i'd never actually tested the room to see what it sounded like. so, i decided to take an hour or three and see what a song or two of mine sounded like in there, sung from different parts of the room, sung with the mics shifted around, with the shower curtain open or closed, etc.
by 8pm i had recorded 14 songs.
so, i thought it would be fitting to post them online as a soundcloud session before i disappear into the abyss for three weeks. there aren't any new songs here (i'm mostly working on poems right now, and usually those flesh out into songs eventually, but none have yet), but there are a lot of new covers. here's the whole setlist:
1. Angel From Montgomery (John Prine cover)
2. Damn Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains) (Ryan Adams cover)
3. Dusty Roads
4. The Melody
5. Albuquerque (Neil Young cover)
6. Bob Dylan's 49th Beard (Jeff Tweedy cover)
7. Palace
8. Ripple (Grateful Dead cover)
9. Forget the Flowers (Wilco cover)
10. Hey Sue
11. Sample in a Jar (Phish cover)
12. Box Full of Letters (Wilco cover)
13. Better to Be Loved > Jam > Millie > Shelter From the Storm (Bob Dylan) > Millie
14. Via Chicago (Wilco cover)
and here's the soundcloud widget:
Mint Medley Session by lazyblazers
by 8pm i had recorded 14 songs.
so, i thought it would be fitting to post them online as a soundcloud session before i disappear into the abyss for three weeks. there aren't any new songs here (i'm mostly working on poems right now, and usually those flesh out into songs eventually, but none have yet), but there are a lot of new covers. here's the whole setlist:
1. Angel From Montgomery (John Prine cover)
2. Damn Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains) (Ryan Adams cover)
3. Dusty Roads
4. The Melody
5. Albuquerque (Neil Young cover)
6. Bob Dylan's 49th Beard (Jeff Tweedy cover)
7. Palace
8. Ripple (Grateful Dead cover)
9. Forget the Flowers (Wilco cover)
10. Hey Sue
11. Sample in a Jar (Phish cover)
12. Box Full of Letters (Wilco cover)
13. Better to Be Loved > Jam > Millie > Shelter From the Storm (Bob Dylan) > Millie
14. Via Chicago (Wilco cover)
and here's the soundcloud widget:
Mint Medley Session by lazyblazers
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
i accidentally wrote my biography
so today i was responding to a student's email, trying to dispense sage advice about professionalization, when i realized i'd just written basically my entire life story of the last five years. so i just thought i'd post it here in case anyone cared. it's not especially interestingly written (or interesting in content), but ctrl + v is so easy, why not?
----------------------
Of course, all of that isn't to say that studying something like Chaucer or Shakespeare is worthless; I still think a lot of that stuff is fascinating. That travel writing class I took ended in a class backpacking trip to the Selway river that was (instead of just a fun way to end the semester) a really logical extension of the books we'd been reading and all the stuff we'd been studying. When I realized that I could still study lit theory and actually back up that study not with the words of dead white guys but by writing about my own experiences in the woods and in cities and during cross-country trips and that kind of thing, it wasn't a hard decision to switch my focus :)
----------------------
As far as the professional stuff goes, I actually got my MA here at WSU (in Pullman). I started my Bachelor's at Kent State University in Ohio, which is about an hour from where I grew up, and I was a computer science and programming major for a few years. It's sort of a cliche story, but basically what ended up happening was that I realized I didn't like my major and all of my elective classes that I had to take to graduate ended up being English classes, as I realized more and more that those were the classes I really liked. That was a bit surprising to me, since I had actually been a terrible English student in high school.
Anyway, I changed my major and graduated with a BA in English and a really crappy book that I had had to write for my undergrad thesis.
As everybody says, there's not a whole lot that you can do with a BA in English (there are some things, but I didn't want to do any of them), so I quit school for a few years and just worked normal minimum-wage type jobs before applying to grad school and ending up at WSU. I picked WSU because they give assistantships to all of their incoming English graduate students. Basically it's a deal where they pay your tuition and you teach introductory writing classes for them while you get your degree. I really liked the idea of getting to work while going to grad school instead of just sitting around reading books all day (ironic, considering what I'm doing right now), so I came here.
I finished the MA in 2007 and missed getting in the Ph.D program by one person, so I stayed on and taught as a faculty instructor for a year and then started the Ph.D program two years ago. So, yeah, I've been an English major all the way through, which in some ways is a really good thing, but also can be a bad thing, I think, especially as doing interdisciplinary work gets more popular.
I actually did my MA thesis on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales...up until about 2007 I was obsessed with pretty much anything written in English before 1500 or so. Then, I think I just got sick of it. I'd been working on the same topic for about five years at that point and I think it just got old. Fortunately, around that time I took a great class here at WSU from two fantastic professors. The class was about the history of travel writing, and it really got me thinking about a lot of things, but primarily it got me thinking about how literary theory and all the wordplay and academic argument that goes with higher education in English literature can actually be paired with real-world concerns. I mean, the stereotypical idea of the English professor is someone who spends all their time reading a bunch of made-up stories by dead white guys and writing articles that explain what those dead white guys meant to say. Now, I'd be lying if I said that I don't enjoy doing that from time to time, but what drove me away from Chaucer in the end was the fact that I couldn't really see how studying it mattered to anyone other than me. I guess ending up at ecocriticism was just a logical progression from there.
I really love ecocriticism because it's so innately connected to real-world concerns, and politics, and policies, and how real people and real cities and real countries live their lives. You can look at something like Carson's Silent Spring and see really easily how that book mattered to our society in really obvious ways, and from there it's easy to see how studying that impact as a graduate student can be important.
Friday, September 17, 2010
RIDESHARE: Wilco 02.01.1997
this one got off to a less-than-auspicious start. i had chosen the disc because it was marked "07.02.01" (i mark CDs in euro-style dating for ease of sorting), and i wanted to hear an '07 show because i love the rawer versions of the sky blue sky songs.
so imagine my surprise when i popped the first disc in and it started in the midst of "misunderstood", then continued through five more being there-era songs. it took about that long for me to realize that i must have forgotten to put the leg on that first "0", making it "97" instead of "07".
so here's the set i got.
much like the phish show i just reviewed, this one taught me the error of my ways, in a sense. i generally don't like bennett-era wilco that much, and have never understood why so many wilco fans insist that the late 90s were the peak of the band. this might be because i really just don't like jay bennett's playing (which is a rant for another day), but for whatever reason, while i occasionally like to put on early, "raw" wilco, i come away with the impression that, for as fun as they are, they really aren't that good.
this show was good.
like i said above, for some reason "misunderstood" cuts in about 2 minutes into the song, and actually the first few songs are a bit unlistenable because someone keeps fiddling (either the sound dude or the taper) with the volume levels and tweedy's voice is nearly inaudible. however, things pick up.
this show's version of "that's not the issue" is one of those versions where it literally sounds to me like all the members of the band are stoned out of their minds and banging on their instruments erratically and totally failing at staying in any time signature or scale; yet, at the same time i'm a little afraid that they're just playing in a scale or something that i'm not familiar with and i'm not cool enough to get it. anyway, this song was sort of a disaster.
everything else is pure being there wilco. loud, clashing guitars, wild alternation between screamed and whispered lyrics, and more feedback than you can shake your pickups at.
things really start to get off the chain when the band finishes "passenger side", only to launch immediately into a "punk" version of the same song. after that, madness ensues, including two versions of "box full of letters", three uncle tupelo songs ("we've been had", "gun", and "the long cut"), which oddly sound like three of the most well-rehearsed songs of the night. the last few songs, including the final "dreamer in my dreams" run around 10 minutes apiece simply because the band never stops banging on guitars, drums, and piano long enough to stop the song and move on to the next one.
this show had an undeniable energy to it, and underneath that the band showed a real ability to not just devolve into screaming and strumming - the nuances of the songs often still come through despite the volume and the reverb. the focus here is being there; if you love that record, you'll love this show. i actually want to go back and listen to the record this weekend now, thanks to this show. though i doubt i'll ever think than any wilco is better than '06 - present wilco, i see the appeal of this kind of show now. i might grab another one from this era to review for next week.
so imagine my surprise when i popped the first disc in and it started in the midst of "misunderstood", then continued through five more being there-era songs. it took about that long for me to realize that i must have forgotten to put the leg on that first "0", making it "97" instead of "07".
so here's the set i got.
much like the phish show i just reviewed, this one taught me the error of my ways, in a sense. i generally don't like bennett-era wilco that much, and have never understood why so many wilco fans insist that the late 90s were the peak of the band. this might be because i really just don't like jay bennett's playing (which is a rant for another day), but for whatever reason, while i occasionally like to put on early, "raw" wilco, i come away with the impression that, for as fun as they are, they really aren't that good.
this show was good.
like i said above, for some reason "misunderstood" cuts in about 2 minutes into the song, and actually the first few songs are a bit unlistenable because someone keeps fiddling (either the sound dude or the taper) with the volume levels and tweedy's voice is nearly inaudible. however, things pick up.
this show's version of "that's not the issue" is one of those versions where it literally sounds to me like all the members of the band are stoned out of their minds and banging on their instruments erratically and totally failing at staying in any time signature or scale; yet, at the same time i'm a little afraid that they're just playing in a scale or something that i'm not familiar with and i'm not cool enough to get it. anyway, this song was sort of a disaster.
everything else is pure being there wilco. loud, clashing guitars, wild alternation between screamed and whispered lyrics, and more feedback than you can shake your pickups at.
things really start to get off the chain when the band finishes "passenger side", only to launch immediately into a "punk" version of the same song. after that, madness ensues, including two versions of "box full of letters", three uncle tupelo songs ("we've been had", "gun", and "the long cut"), which oddly sound like three of the most well-rehearsed songs of the night. the last few songs, including the final "dreamer in my dreams" run around 10 minutes apiece simply because the band never stops banging on guitars, drums, and piano long enough to stop the song and move on to the next one.
this show had an undeniable energy to it, and underneath that the band showed a real ability to not just devolve into screaming and strumming - the nuances of the songs often still come through despite the volume and the reverb. the focus here is being there; if you love that record, you'll love this show. i actually want to go back and listen to the record this weekend now, thanks to this show. though i doubt i'll ever think than any wilco is better than '06 - present wilco, i see the appeal of this kind of show now. i might grab another one from this era to review for next week.
RIDESHARE: Phish 06.18.1994
so last week i tacitly suggested that maybe '94 phish was not nearly as good as it gets credit for. then i listened to this show the next day and it slapped me across the mouth for my impertinence.
good god. there are bands who can be more technically proficient live than '94 phish, there are bands that can improvise better than '94 phish. but there is no band i've ever heard in my life that can do both at the same time so well as this era of this band. i'd forgotten, and was immediately reminded why people have complained about phish live for 15 years. because they never have been and never will be as flat-out good as they were then. does that mean that they're not worth listening to now? of course not. this summer '94 tour was like catching lightning in a bottle; it's so good you feel like there must be some sort of mystical, ghostly force that decided to infuse the band's instruments with the power to play the music of the cosmos.
no, seriously, it's so good it's driving me to a fucking histrionic breakdown.
anyway, here's the set.
to avoid just bellowing superlatives for ten paragraphs, i'll just hit the really, really high points:
- "rift". this version of "rift" is amazing, and amazingly fast.
- this "AC/DC bag" was so exciting that i broke into spontaneous horn-jamming:
- the entire second half of the first set has no particular standout, but is pretty much the epitome of the improv/technical brilliance i was ranting about above. every song boomerangs out into places you don't expect, with everyone still hitting every note, and then when the do wrap back around to the typical parts of the songs, they do so with a speed and a skill that's rare even for phish.
- maybe my favorite part of this show is the opening of the second set. i very keys-heavy "peaches en regalia", followed by a "bowie" that takes about six minutes to even get started due to three distinct but equally brilliant improv jams the band breaks out in sequence. then, when "bowie" finally hits in earnest, it's one of the best versions i've heard yet, with a groove in the middle that needs to be heard to be believed.
- the other highlight of the second set is "you enjoy myself". for a phish song i've probably heard a few hundred times by now, this version did a great job of throwing in some curves that i still didn't expect, and made a great closing case for this being one of the best shows i've ever heard.
- the encore is simple, short, and perfect in terms of song selection. what else would you end a show like this with besides "tweeprise"?
good god. there are bands who can be more technically proficient live than '94 phish, there are bands that can improvise better than '94 phish. but there is no band i've ever heard in my life that can do both at the same time so well as this era of this band. i'd forgotten, and was immediately reminded why people have complained about phish live for 15 years. because they never have been and never will be as flat-out good as they were then. does that mean that they're not worth listening to now? of course not. this summer '94 tour was like catching lightning in a bottle; it's so good you feel like there must be some sort of mystical, ghostly force that decided to infuse the band's instruments with the power to play the music of the cosmos.
no, seriously, it's so good it's driving me to a fucking histrionic breakdown.
anyway, here's the set.
to avoid just bellowing superlatives for ten paragraphs, i'll just hit the really, really high points:
- "rift". this version of "rift" is amazing, and amazingly fast.
- this "AC/DC bag" was so exciting that i broke into spontaneous horn-jamming:
- the entire second half of the first set has no particular standout, but is pretty much the epitome of the improv/technical brilliance i was ranting about above. every song boomerangs out into places you don't expect, with everyone still hitting every note, and then when the do wrap back around to the typical parts of the songs, they do so with a speed and a skill that's rare even for phish.
- maybe my favorite part of this show is the opening of the second set. i very keys-heavy "peaches en regalia", followed by a "bowie" that takes about six minutes to even get started due to three distinct but equally brilliant improv jams the band breaks out in sequence. then, when "bowie" finally hits in earnest, it's one of the best versions i've heard yet, with a groove in the middle that needs to be heard to be believed.
- the other highlight of the second set is "you enjoy myself". for a phish song i've probably heard a few hundred times by now, this version did a great job of throwing in some curves that i still didn't expect, and made a great closing case for this being one of the best shows i've ever heard.
- the encore is simple, short, and perfect in terms of song selection. what else would you end a show like this with besides "tweeprise"?
Monday, September 13, 2010
new (old) poem
i actually wrote a new poem today. which is not a huge deal, but it also sort of is because i haven't written literally anything new in at least a year, maybe more like a year and a half.
unfortunately for you, i'm not going to post my new poem yet, as i want to look at it in the morning and see if it makes any sense at all, and then i'll pass it along.
however, i've finally gotten this other older poem to a point where i can read it out loud and not feel like it absolutely sucks, so i'm calling it officially finished. so i'll distract you with it while i continue to work on the new one. cheers!
-------------
three peaces
I
talking can terraform
can flatten the tangled
topography of the mind
into flat verdance
i can see what’s coming miles away
nothing jumps out
nobody screams
and even at night the shadows stretch under the moon
but at least i can see the tips of them.
II
the edge of the shore
water running
into
and up
and over the pebbles
pulling them
pushing them
they roll as they rest in that
interminable but
gentle grasp
fireflies at the edges of this scene
at the edges of my fingers
fighting off
cold darkness indefinition
all at once
giving form to everything
while also being cowed by it
the stars are coldhardbright
they eat enough of the sky that
i almost feel like i can grab them
but i won’t
even the utmost beauty
perhaps especially
the utmost beauty
seems perilous to touch out here
i stretch out on the rocks
a million peas with a mattress hidden underneath
from this angle the sky is splintered
by the spidery fingers of a birch tree
leaning out over the beach
from the closest green spot to
the fringe
the edge
the fire’s light
is almost invisible
but i can see the smoke
curling
around the tips of my toes.
III
the moon’s loud enough that it’s night
but not it's night enough to sleep
the riverbed
long since abandoned by anything that could have given it that name
lies
dappling the moonlight into a thousand shades
rose, for love (?)
pearl, for age
silver, for time
blue, for the sky
which is still blue even when it’s too dark to tell.
unfortunately for you, i'm not going to post my new poem yet, as i want to look at it in the morning and see if it makes any sense at all, and then i'll pass it along.
however, i've finally gotten this other older poem to a point where i can read it out loud and not feel like it absolutely sucks, so i'm calling it officially finished. so i'll distract you with it while i continue to work on the new one. cheers!
-------------
three peaces
I
talking can terraform
can flatten the tangled
topography of the mind
into flat verdance
i can see what’s coming miles away
nothing jumps out
nobody screams
and even at night the shadows stretch under the moon
but at least i can see the tips of them.
II
the edge of the shore
water running
into
and up
and over the pebbles
pulling them
pushing them
they roll as they rest in that
interminable but
gentle grasp
fireflies at the edges of this scene
at the edges of my fingers
fighting off
cold darkness indefinition
all at once
giving form to everything
while also being cowed by it
the stars are coldhardbright
they eat enough of the sky that
i almost feel like i can grab them
but i won’t
even the utmost beauty
perhaps especially
the utmost beauty
seems perilous to touch out here
i stretch out on the rocks
a million peas with a mattress hidden underneath
from this angle the sky is splintered
by the spidery fingers of a birch tree
leaning out over the beach
from the closest green spot to
the fringe
the edge
the fire’s light
is almost invisible
but i can see the smoke
curling
around the tips of my toes.
III
the moon’s loud enough that it’s night
but not it's night enough to sleep
the riverbed
long since abandoned by anything that could have given it that name
lies
dappling the moonlight into a thousand shades
rose, for love (?)
pearl, for age
silver, for time
blue, for the sky
which is still blue even when it’s too dark to tell.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
RIDESHARE - Wilco 02.24.2005
wow, tuesday was a good day for in-the-car music. it suppose my luck was cosmically meant to balance out the fact that every other aspect of my life was totally and randomly ruined and obliterated yesterday.
as he types, still-drying black fingernail polish dripping onto the keys.
so, on tuesday i pulled a near-perfect ghost is born-era wilco soundboard, and an incredibly varied yet gorgeous '94 phish show. i'll be reviewing the phish later, as i still have one disc left to listen to.
setlist for wilco is here.
so usually what current-era wilco does is center their main set around whatever newer material they're most excited about at the time, and then they follow that with two encores (the definitely-two-encores-all-the-time thing is something i've never really understood, but oh well) that revisit a lot of older, being there-era songs (for all the "old school" fans who apparently want all their wilco to sound exactly the same). that formula normally makes a great show all by itself, but here they twist that formula a bit, and to great effect.
the main set is almost all ghost is born material, and it's played with a mix of screeching, crunchy big guitars and that harrowing screaming noise jamming that the band really started scaling back in '07-'08. '05-'06 is probably my favorite for the band (was there something in the air in 2006?), so i guess i'm biased here, but in this show they play the ghost tracks enough like the studio arrangements to communicate the songs' subtle details while deviating (mostly by making the guitars a little heavier) from those arrangements just enough to make things interesting.
interspersed perfectly with the ghost songs are a few old, toned-down staples, that after the torrents of noise and crunch come like breaths of folky-fresh air. "should have been in love", "always in love", and "shot in the arm" fill in nicely in this role. the main set closes with "reservations" coming out of an absolutely harrowing "poor places" jam, and then segues into an exceptional "spiders".
the first encore goes by pretty much as expected, save for a "misunderstood" that's worth noting, as it's played with the amount of intense noise and dissonance present on the amazing album version, which is something i've rarely heard from '98-'03 wilco.
the second encore is seven songs long, and includes a rendition of "bob dylan's beard" and covers of "comment" and a note-for-note-perfect "don't fear the reaper".
i'm just going to leave it at that. because that's amazing.
on a scale of 1 to 10, this show, like my fender hot rod deluxe amp, goes up to 12.
as he types, still-drying black fingernail polish dripping onto the keys.
so, on tuesday i pulled a near-perfect ghost is born-era wilco soundboard, and an incredibly varied yet gorgeous '94 phish show. i'll be reviewing the phish later, as i still have one disc left to listen to.
setlist for wilco is here.
so usually what current-era wilco does is center their main set around whatever newer material they're most excited about at the time, and then they follow that with two encores (the definitely-two-encores-all-the-time thing is something i've never really understood, but oh well) that revisit a lot of older, being there-era songs (for all the "old school" fans who apparently want all their wilco to sound exactly the same). that formula normally makes a great show all by itself, but here they twist that formula a bit, and to great effect.
the main set is almost all ghost is born material, and it's played with a mix of screeching, crunchy big guitars and that harrowing screaming noise jamming that the band really started scaling back in '07-'08. '05-'06 is probably my favorite for the band (was there something in the air in 2006?), so i guess i'm biased here, but in this show they play the ghost tracks enough like the studio arrangements to communicate the songs' subtle details while deviating (mostly by making the guitars a little heavier) from those arrangements just enough to make things interesting.
interspersed perfectly with the ghost songs are a few old, toned-down staples, that after the torrents of noise and crunch come like breaths of folky-fresh air. "should have been in love", "always in love", and "shot in the arm" fill in nicely in this role. the main set closes with "reservations" coming out of an absolutely harrowing "poor places" jam, and then segues into an exceptional "spiders".
the first encore goes by pretty much as expected, save for a "misunderstood" that's worth noting, as it's played with the amount of intense noise and dissonance present on the amazing album version, which is something i've rarely heard from '98-'03 wilco.
the second encore is seven songs long, and includes a rendition of "bob dylan's beard" and covers of "comment" and a note-for-note-perfect "don't fear the reaper".
i'm just going to leave it at that. because that's amazing.
on a scale of 1 to 10, this show, like my fender hot rod deluxe amp, goes up to 12.
Monday, September 6, 2010
RIDESHARE - Phish 04.17.1994
more phish!
for last thursday's drive, i took a trip back to what's generally thought of as the phish golden age: 1994. this is the time when the band (at least in the popular view) had melded together their pre-1994 shredding skills with a new, occasionally more measured and experimental approach, and had, on top of that recently started road-testing a ton of songs that would eventually go on to become phish live staples. interestingly, this show turned out to be about as far from the quintessential '94 phish show as i could have gotten.
setlist here.
so, last time, if you'll recall, i unilaterally decided to declare that phish shows could be split up into two types. this show, out of sheer spite, i'm sure, decided to go dramatically against my proclamation. the setlist was varied, the performances were varied, and everything was, by and large, excellent...though by the end of the show the one significant thing missing was any sense of "flow" (to use an English 101 student term). if i had played this show and then had someone tell me it was actually a mixtape, i wouldn't have been surprised.
the show opened with "loving cup", which is odd in and of itself. "foam" is always a welcome sight, and this version ended too soon. easily one of the highlights of the first set. "divided sky" as the fourth song of the show just confused me. it felt really early to have to digest a 15-minute-plus monster, and the band sounded like they felt the same way. there were no mistakes, per se, but the jamming sort of circled itself over and over for about ten minutes and then we moved on to "mound". similarly to "simple", i pretty much ALWAYS love "mound", and this version was no exception. the "down with disease" > "if i could" run was the best part of the first set. i'm one of the few (apparently) who can't get enough of "if i could", and this particular jam carried that ethereal, almost-but-not-quite-cheesy punch better than most. the transition to "my sweet one" was pretty brilliant, but the rest of the first set itself was nothing to write home (or on your blog) about.
i'd like to reiterate the comments i made last time about "bowie". this version was no different for me: i love it, but i don't know why. "wolfman's" > "uncle pen" was the highlight of the second set for me. a long, drawn-out funky jam following "bowie" was a perfect juxtaposition, and then following that with the tight, composed bluegrass of "uncle pen" made a great one-two (-three?) punch. from there on out, though, the second set (and the encore) were a bit confusing. they were an eclectic mix of pre-1994 and "new" songs, and it really just sounded like the band wasn't really comfortable with getting those two sides of their sound to cohere yet. especially, the encore, which should have some aspect (i think, anyway) of a coda or reprise or just a straight-up balls-out facemelt to it, was pretty flat. "cracklin' rosie" is always fun to hear, but it's never going to make anyone pump their fist in the air. "hold your head up" was actually just page playing the organ riff through once, which lead directly into a pretty by-the-numbers version of "bold as love". and that was that.
overall, and interesting setlist and a few great moments, but there's not much to recommend this show over, say, the previous ones i've reviewed on here. definitely check out the "if i could", though. it's good stuff.
on a scale between a compsognathus and a tyrannosaurus, this one's definitely a styracosaurus.
for last thursday's drive, i took a trip back to what's generally thought of as the phish golden age: 1994. this is the time when the band (at least in the popular view) had melded together their pre-1994 shredding skills with a new, occasionally more measured and experimental approach, and had, on top of that recently started road-testing a ton of songs that would eventually go on to become phish live staples. interestingly, this show turned out to be about as far from the quintessential '94 phish show as i could have gotten.
setlist here.
so, last time, if you'll recall, i unilaterally decided to declare that phish shows could be split up into two types. this show, out of sheer spite, i'm sure, decided to go dramatically against my proclamation. the setlist was varied, the performances were varied, and everything was, by and large, excellent...though by the end of the show the one significant thing missing was any sense of "flow" (to use an English 101 student term). if i had played this show and then had someone tell me it was actually a mixtape, i wouldn't have been surprised.
the show opened with "loving cup", which is odd in and of itself. "foam" is always a welcome sight, and this version ended too soon. easily one of the highlights of the first set. "divided sky" as the fourth song of the show just confused me. it felt really early to have to digest a 15-minute-plus monster, and the band sounded like they felt the same way. there were no mistakes, per se, but the jamming sort of circled itself over and over for about ten minutes and then we moved on to "mound". similarly to "simple", i pretty much ALWAYS love "mound", and this version was no exception. the "down with disease" > "if i could" run was the best part of the first set. i'm one of the few (apparently) who can't get enough of "if i could", and this particular jam carried that ethereal, almost-but-not-quite-cheesy punch better than most. the transition to "my sweet one" was pretty brilliant, but the rest of the first set itself was nothing to write home (or on your blog) about.
i'd like to reiterate the comments i made last time about "bowie". this version was no different for me: i love it, but i don't know why. "wolfman's" > "uncle pen" was the highlight of the second set for me. a long, drawn-out funky jam following "bowie" was a perfect juxtaposition, and then following that with the tight, composed bluegrass of "uncle pen" made a great one-two (-three?) punch. from there on out, though, the second set (and the encore) were a bit confusing. they were an eclectic mix of pre-1994 and "new" songs, and it really just sounded like the band wasn't really comfortable with getting those two sides of their sound to cohere yet. especially, the encore, which should have some aspect (i think, anyway) of a coda or reprise or just a straight-up balls-out facemelt to it, was pretty flat. "cracklin' rosie" is always fun to hear, but it's never going to make anyone pump their fist in the air. "hold your head up" was actually just page playing the organ riff through once, which lead directly into a pretty by-the-numbers version of "bold as love". and that was that.
overall, and interesting setlist and a few great moments, but there's not much to recommend this show over, say, the previous ones i've reviewed on here. definitely check out the "if i could", though. it's good stuff.
on a scale between a compsognathus and a tyrannosaurus, this one's definitely a styracosaurus.
RIDESHARE - Wilco 11.02.02
finally, something that's not phish. i've been on a bit of a phish kick lately because that's just what happens to me during late summer for some weird, probably evolutionary reason. my phish hormones start raging and i want to eat bacteria cultures and use my own dreadlocks for clothes. but none of that happens in this universe, because this is the clean-person universe.
well, now that it's fall (at least i'm wearing a hoodie indoors and not sweating), wilco will likely take over. especially because i have to get my wilco fix vicariously this year thanks to the fact that they're not touring the US this fall, leaving with my no choice but to constantly play "the lonely 1" on loop every night while tearing my tweedy posters off the wall, throwing them across the room, and then falling asleep hours later cradling them to my tearstained face and mumbling apologies.
god, i've been reading cracked.com too much.
amidst the blathering, have thee a setlist!
i picked an '02 show to listen to on a cold, dark day because i figured it would be mellow and it seemed to suit the proceedings. little did i know that i'd chosen quite literally the show that plato saw the shadow of on the wall of the cave and he knew he was looking at "mellow".
wilco shows, as is to be expected, generally don't deviate as greatly from one another as phish shows tend to, simply because the songs are mostly pop-rock songs of under four minutes in length. as such, i probably won't talk much about specific tracks in wilco show reviews, but more just about the show in general.
this show started pretty interestingly, with "hesitating beauty" sort of lazily fading in from silence, followed by "one by one". things got about as rollicking as they would ever get with "sunken treasure", and then there was an early pre-ghost is born version of "less than you think", which was pretty much just who i presume to be jay bennett on the keys while tweedy sung over it. pretty great, and lacking the 15 minutes of distortion from the studio version of that track. another highlight was the "war on war"/"kamera" combination...these songs are both mid-tempo slow-rockers in general, and they sound almost indistinguishable if you just have them on in the background, but for some reason i love them both and love hearing them back-to-back even more.
the highlight of the show (maybe) for me was a brief and totally unexpected wilco jam which took place first at the beginning of "how to fight loneliness", then led out of it in the form of a segue into "not for the season", which itself concluded with an epic, multi-minute kotche drum shower.
"poor places" and "reservations" made a good pair of closing songs for the main set, as the static from one led appropriately into the naked-sounding piano chords of the second. after a closing bit of noise-jamming, the encore started with "misunderstood" and continued to be a pretty normal wilco encore, aside from the general mellowness. it's funny how the one thing that always stays the same about wilco is their encore(s). you know you're going to get tons of loud being there songs. it was nice to hear "red-eyed and blue" and "far, far away".
overall this show was very slow and "chill" (as the kids say), and also the soundboard feed is mixed in such a way that often all you can hear is the cymbals, keys, and tweedy's voice, so a lot of times even when the band is clearly playing like they're rocking an arena, it sounds like you're listening to them play on only a piano to a small crowd in a small barn. not bad, but potentially disappointing, depending on what you expect.
this was a show that absolutely epitomizes that just-post-YHF era brooding wilco sound for me. subtract a few style points for all of jay bennett's "i'm soloing even though it's the verse because i don't respect the fact that a song has to have some level of inherent structure because i'm so different", and you have an otherwise great winter '02 show. on a rating scale based on the first five numbers of the fibonacci sequence, this show is a 2.
well, now that it's fall (at least i'm wearing a hoodie indoors and not sweating), wilco will likely take over. especially because i have to get my wilco fix vicariously this year thanks to the fact that they're not touring the US this fall, leaving with my no choice but to constantly play "the lonely 1" on loop every night while tearing my tweedy posters off the wall, throwing them across the room, and then falling asleep hours later cradling them to my tearstained face and mumbling apologies.
god, i've been reading cracked.com too much.
amidst the blathering, have thee a setlist!
i picked an '02 show to listen to on a cold, dark day because i figured it would be mellow and it seemed to suit the proceedings. little did i know that i'd chosen quite literally the show that plato saw the shadow of on the wall of the cave and he knew he was looking at "mellow".
wilco shows, as is to be expected, generally don't deviate as greatly from one another as phish shows tend to, simply because the songs are mostly pop-rock songs of under four minutes in length. as such, i probably won't talk much about specific tracks in wilco show reviews, but more just about the show in general.
this show started pretty interestingly, with "hesitating beauty" sort of lazily fading in from silence, followed by "one by one". things got about as rollicking as they would ever get with "sunken treasure", and then there was an early pre-ghost is born version of "less than you think", which was pretty much just who i presume to be jay bennett on the keys while tweedy sung over it. pretty great, and lacking the 15 minutes of distortion from the studio version of that track. another highlight was the "war on war"/"kamera" combination...these songs are both mid-tempo slow-rockers in general, and they sound almost indistinguishable if you just have them on in the background, but for some reason i love them both and love hearing them back-to-back even more.
the highlight of the show (maybe) for me was a brief and totally unexpected wilco jam which took place first at the beginning of "how to fight loneliness", then led out of it in the form of a segue into "not for the season", which itself concluded with an epic, multi-minute kotche drum shower.
"poor places" and "reservations" made a good pair of closing songs for the main set, as the static from one led appropriately into the naked-sounding piano chords of the second. after a closing bit of noise-jamming, the encore started with "misunderstood" and continued to be a pretty normal wilco encore, aside from the general mellowness. it's funny how the one thing that always stays the same about wilco is their encore(s). you know you're going to get tons of loud being there songs. it was nice to hear "red-eyed and blue" and "far, far away".
overall this show was very slow and "chill" (as the kids say), and also the soundboard feed is mixed in such a way that often all you can hear is the cymbals, keys, and tweedy's voice, so a lot of times even when the band is clearly playing like they're rocking an arena, it sounds like you're listening to them play on only a piano to a small crowd in a small barn. not bad, but potentially disappointing, depending on what you expect.
this was a show that absolutely epitomizes that just-post-YHF era brooding wilco sound for me. subtract a few style points for all of jay bennett's "i'm soloing even though it's the verse because i don't respect the fact that a song has to have some level of inherent structure because i'm so different", and you have an otherwise great winter '02 show. on a rating scale based on the first five numbers of the fibonacci sequence, this show is a 2.
Friday, September 3, 2010
RIDESHARE - Phish 07.26.98
RIDESHARE: Phish 07.26.98
i spun this one on tuesday, so i need to do it quick, lest i forget.
i've really been feeling the 97-98 phish lately; something about the wide open spaces of a drive through the southeastern washington desert lends itself to spacey, 30-minute
versions of “also sprach zarathustra”. or the other way around. or something.
anyway, setlist here.
on a five-star scale where zero is a pepperoni pizza and five is a five-cheese pizza, this show would be a three-and-a-half cheese pizza.
the highs were high and the lows weren't low...let's just say there were a few times throughout the show where i caught myself realizing that i hadn't been listening for twenty minutes because i was subconsciously finding the scrub brush more engaging than the music.
"birds of a feather" is a great song and a great opener, and this version was no different...though maybe it was a sign of the show's overall "too little of a good thing" feel in that this "birds" clocked in at about six minutes, about ten minutes shorter than usual. then comes "better believe it baby", which i've heard a number of times already in various TAB shows and, no matter who plays it, i never like it. same thing here. rarely will i just not like a phish song (rather than just a particular night's interpretation of it), but that's the case with this clunker. and it came on while i was puttering through colfax, no less.
there's something that draws me to "bowie". i love the speed and precision of the intro section, especially in earlier years' shows, but then everything always just goes to shit for me in the middle. i don't know why. compared to other phish jams, i always find "bowie" jams to be loud, screechy, hard to follow and generally unpleasant...but the wait up to that last second pay-off somehow always makes me forget the middle section and want to bounce out of my seat (or car) at the end. this one was no different. the "frankie" > "reba" mashup is nicely mellow and hypnotic, while i was a bit let down by the first set closer of "funky bitch" (another one of those few phish songs i just don't like) and "good times bad times", which followed the zeppelin version a little too closely to be interesting.
the second set was marked by some pretty incredibly covers. it opens with "la grange", which i didn't even know that phish ever played, and their version was wonderfully faithful to the zz top original, albeit with a hectic blues-rock jam in the middle. this version of "you enjoy myself" takes a few extra minutes to get started, which i actually really liked...it was interesting to hear them jam out the beginning of the song a bit longer. "albuquerque" was another song that i didn't know phish had ever covered, and as the song started i immediately thought to myself "hmm, this sounds like a neil young song". and then it was and i was all "yeah!" and the guitar was all "skeedly deedly deedly!" and my car was all "vrooooom!"
so there's that.
I LOVE "SIMPLE". that's probably pretty clear by now.
after "simple" was a great version of hendrix's "bold as love" and the show closes with four solid (there's that word again) but not really outstanding songs.
i'm going to go out on a limb and say that most phish shows i listen to or attend fall into one of two categories:
1) band starts out strong, falters near the end of the first set, tries too hard at the beginning of the second set, ends on a great note after recovering
2) band starts slow, slaughters everything for the end of the first set and the beginning of the second, and then ends the show on a decent, but not impressive note.
the first gorge show from last year was definitely a Type 1 show for me, while the second gorge show and this year's blossom show were both Type 2. this tape definitely epitomizes the Type 2.
i spun this one on tuesday, so i need to do it quick, lest i forget.
i've really been feeling the 97-98 phish lately; something about the wide open spaces of a drive through the southeastern washington desert lends itself to spacey, 30-minute
versions of “also sprach zarathustra”. or the other way around. or something.
anyway, setlist here.
on a five-star scale where zero is a pepperoni pizza and five is a five-cheese pizza, this show would be a three-and-a-half cheese pizza.
the highs were high and the lows weren't low...let's just say there were a few times throughout the show where i caught myself realizing that i hadn't been listening for twenty minutes because i was subconsciously finding the scrub brush more engaging than the music.
"birds of a feather" is a great song and a great opener, and this version was no different...though maybe it was a sign of the show's overall "too little of a good thing" feel in that this "birds" clocked in at about six minutes, about ten minutes shorter than usual. then comes "better believe it baby", which i've heard a number of times already in various TAB shows and, no matter who plays it, i never like it. same thing here. rarely will i just not like a phish song (rather than just a particular night's interpretation of it), but that's the case with this clunker. and it came on while i was puttering through colfax, no less.
there's something that draws me to "bowie". i love the speed and precision of the intro section, especially in earlier years' shows, but then everything always just goes to shit for me in the middle. i don't know why. compared to other phish jams, i always find "bowie" jams to be loud, screechy, hard to follow and generally unpleasant...but the wait up to that last second pay-off somehow always makes me forget the middle section and want to bounce out of my seat (or car) at the end. this one was no different. the "frankie" > "reba" mashup is nicely mellow and hypnotic, while i was a bit let down by the first set closer of "funky bitch" (another one of those few phish songs i just don't like) and "good times bad times", which followed the zeppelin version a little too closely to be interesting.
the second set was marked by some pretty incredibly covers. it opens with "la grange", which i didn't even know that phish ever played, and their version was wonderfully faithful to the zz top original, albeit with a hectic blues-rock jam in the middle. this version of "you enjoy myself" takes a few extra minutes to get started, which i actually really liked...it was interesting to hear them jam out the beginning of the song a bit longer. "albuquerque" was another song that i didn't know phish had ever covered, and as the song started i immediately thought to myself "hmm, this sounds like a neil young song". and then it was and i was all "yeah!" and the guitar was all "skeedly deedly deedly!" and my car was all "vrooooom!"
so there's that.
I LOVE "SIMPLE". that's probably pretty clear by now.
after "simple" was a great version of hendrix's "bold as love" and the show closes with four solid (there's that word again) but not really outstanding songs.
i'm going to go out on a limb and say that most phish shows i listen to or attend fall into one of two categories:
1) band starts out strong, falters near the end of the first set, tries too hard at the beginning of the second set, ends on a great note after recovering
2) band starts slow, slaughters everything for the end of the first set and the beginning of the second, and then ends the show on a decent, but not impressive note.
the first gorge show from last year was definitely a Type 1 show for me, while the second gorge show and this year's blossom show were both Type 2. this tape definitely epitomizes the Type 2.
The Best Road Trip Slideshow Ever
so i just set up this cool new facebook/twitter/blog linky-thing, and it seems to be working. on the off chance that it actually is, and to indirectly celebrate my 1200th post and 140,000 miles on my car, i thought i would post The Best Road Trip Slideshow Ever.
test post!
pretend i'm saying something interesting!
or, just check out this photograph of a monkey playing football:
or, just check out this photograph of a monkey playing football:
divided christmas sky traveler
i was just remembering the other afternoon how freaking blown away i was when i first started listening to phish and was SURE i'd heard the middle part of "divided sky" before. eventually i figured out that john popper used phish's melody for his "christmas song", which has listened to every christmas obsessively for almost a decade prior. incidentally, it's the best christmas song ever, pretty much. evidence of awesomeness and synchronicity below.
full blues traveler song:
the relevant part of "divided sky" starts around 4:15:
full blues traveler song:
the relevant part of "divided sky" starts around 4:15:
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