I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Live Phish Downloads 8.13.93 UNH Fieldhouse, Durham, NH (2007).

Despite the Phish tour ending in May, the picked up again just three months later.

“Lengthwise” starts of a capella.  Guitars slowly come in as washes and then “Llama” rocks out with some great blasts and a lengthy keyboard solo from Page.

“Makisupa Policeman” is fun with a few screams from Fish.  This version really highlights the reggae aspects.  There’s a trippy middle section with twinkling pianos that segues into a terrific version of “Foam.”

When it’s over you hear someone shout “Stash?” before they launch into a 12 minute “Stash.”  There’s some unusual soloing in the middle which Trey calls the “Friday the 13^th” jam.  And then he introduces the “butt with protruding arms” (Fish) to play the washboard. It’s “Ginseng Sullivan” which was performed acoustic with Trey on acoustic guitar and Fish on “Madonna” washboard

Then comes a 15 minute “Fluffhead.”  It opens with some lovely acoustic guitars. Later during part of the jam they chant “just a bundle of joy” several times.

It’s followed by the short “My Mind’s Got a Mind of It’s Own” in a very honkey-tonk style.

It’s followed by a very pretty “Horn” that segues into a 20 minute “David Bowie.”  Fish starts the hi-hats while Trey plays a whole bunch of riffs first—like “My Favorite Things” and “Beat It.”  Trey also teases “The Mango Song” and “Magilla.”   The song starts properly about 4 minutes in.  The jam goes in all different direction, a slow section, then a fast and rocking jamming.  There’s some whistling and then a very jazzy hi-hat section.  The end is super fast with a wicked guitar solo.  It’s a great set-ender.

Set two opens with”Buried Alive,” a fast short song that segues into a lovely “Rift” and a relatively slow “Bathtub Gin.”  The bass is particularly chunky during “Gin” and then the song slows completely to give Mike a little funky slap bass action.  “Bathtub Gin” which runs to 15 minutes, includes, among other things, a “Weekapaug Groove” jam.  There’s a groovy keyboard solo with shouts of “Ole!”

There’s a bit of an awkward transition into “Ya Mar” but once they get going its smooth sailing especially when Trey shouts, “just Leo and the drums” and they break it down to just keys and drums. This segues into “Mike’s Song,” but Mike has fun by still singing “Ya Mar” and it seems to mess everyone up until they catch on and go with it.  The 12 minute “Mike’s Song” includes teases of Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold”

“Lifebuoy” is very pretty and there’s a brief “Oh Key Pah” before they launch in to a show ending “Suzy Greenberg.”  For an encore they do a very quiet (unmic’d) a capella “Amazing Grace.”  The notes say that the song was performed “without microphones and is inaudible on the DAT and cassette soundboards. To present the entire performance, an additional audience source provided by Kevin Shapiro and Judd Nudelman was used.”  Mostly you hear a lot of people SHHHHing (why do people whoop during quiet moments like this?). But they follow it with a rocking “Highway to Hell” (which sounds a lot like AC/DC’s version.)

The rest of the disc includes some soundcheck stuff.  A goofy version of “Love Me Two Times” with them trying to sound like Jim Morrison.  The 1 minute Indiana Sound check jam is fun.  And then the final track is nearly 9 minutes of them setting up the washboard for “Ginseng Sullivan.”  It’s interesting if you care about their recording process, but it’s tech more talk than music.

So this set list is pretty similar to the show in May.  There’s a lot if duplication.  And yet, according to the essay by Kevin Shapiro,

 Summer 1993 was a time when each show somehow surpassed the last.  This show is legendary among Phishheads based almost entirely on the second set!  Instantly famous for its mind-melting (or is it mind-melding?) Bathtub Gin > Ya Mar and Mike’s Song > Lifebuoy … The entire show is risky and magical in so many ways.   [It had] already been accepted as legendary and literally begs for release…. Without them, the catalog – some would even say the fan experience – is simply incomplete.

This book (translated as I am an Other) was created by Walter Ego (great name) and is written in English (not Ego’s native langauge).

This is a collection of drawings and short essays all in praise of failure, inadequacy and unprofessionalism.

Ego draws simple stick figure line drawings and aphorisms to celebrate insecurity.

I’m including the About This Book and About This Author statements because they really do give a good sense of what the book is all about:

About this book:

This book is a praise of failure and refusal. It goes against the paradigm to think positive and to present adequate and speaks about doubt, insecurity and weakness. In between of constant refusal but still not being able to realize oneself, we can meet Walter Ego. While taking a look into the abyss of his emotional state, he shares his drawings and notes that have come up during this process of radical self inquiry. His story does not have a thread running through it connecting all its parts. His story has gaps and blank spaces to be filled again with new questions instead of answers. In that sense this book can be read as a palimpsest again and again, while retelling his permanent search for a way out without having a clear destination. This can go on forever until it all falls apart into fragments of the anti-hero who tries to withdraw and is never able to arrive. In the end it deals with his overall strive toward the ability to love and to wish. His struggle is carried by a melancholic undertone, at some times subtle at others humorous, always intertwining with poetic and philosophical moments, shaped by a tireless longing for a resistive way of life beyond its instrumentality.Walter Ego; the name says it all: “I fuck me up to save me. This is not a program!”

About the author

Walter Ego grew up in a very small provincial village of Austria close to the Danube. He enjoyed being taught catholic and proletarian ideas mixed with rough farmers habits. He escaped to the city of Vienna when he was older. Later he started to study art at the department of PsychoConceptualArtPractices because he had no permission for other universities. He finished some years ago. Never won a price, nor got any stipendia or fellowship, neither did a residency.  He has never been outside of Europe nor could he refer to longer residencies in other countries. That he has no gallery must probably not be mentioned. He is doing therapy now. A fortune teller is currently telling him that he thinks too much. Occasionally he appears in public but he prefers to disappear and wander in emptiness lost in time without time.
Walter Ego is many: Petz, Prof. Haselmayer, Papa, Pedrito, Peter Haselmayer, Petrus, …

So what’s the book like then?

Well, the cover art is a pretty decent indication of the quality of work inside.  In the introduction, Ego says that when he was nine he wished for a stuffed gorilla for Christmas.  But his parents gave him an orange bear instead. And from that point on he stopped wishing.  He still felt bad about not getting it, so he started drawing. He drew the gorilla all the time and it reminded him that he was allowed to wish for things. He says he felt the gorilla becoming him and him becoming more like the gorilla.

And so we get drawings of a simplified gorilla with a statement “I am an artefact of disappointed wishes.”

Or the gorilla with a sad face saying “I’m not depressed… I’m just fleeing happiness so it doesn’t escape.”

Sitting on a chair: “I thought I have no wish but that was one already”

You get the idea.

Interspersed with these pictures are small texts.  Some of them look like poems.  Like: “When I am high / I am shy. When I drink / I stink.”

Or more complicated ones like

When I have been to the mental
hospital I met a guy.
He asked, “Which country?”
I said, ” I am a foreigner in my own
country.  I am a country side.”
“Why are you here?,” he said.
“Borderline syndrome.”
He said, “Welcome at home.”

Ego’s English is surprisingly sophisticated for someone who is not a native speaker.  His word choices are sometimes spectacular.  Even if he sometime gets very simple phrasing wrong.  And, he has the constant problem of typing “loose” when he means “lose,” but then many native English speakers do, too.

The book also contains some simple but thoughtful aphorisms like:

“When I concentrate on what I am– I forget what I could be.”

Some of the texts are longer–some a page, a couple more than one page–they’re all a little more substantive but might go on a bit too long.   The one about being unemployed is four pages long and is pretty good but seems to get lost near the end.

By the end of the book the drawings get more sophisticated but the message remains the same.