SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-LivePhish 11.14.95 University of Central Florida Arena, Orlando FL (1995).
I have a number of these LivePhish discs. They are universally solid releases (all from soundboards, I believe, which, have they really been recording all of their shows since like forever?). And it’s fun to hear Phish totally jam out on a few of their more meandering songs.
One of the most interesting aspects of the series is that they almost always throw in a cover song (on Halloween, they cover an entire album by another band).
I haven’t really mentioned any of these releases because there’s usually not much to say about them: you either like Phish live or you don’t. But this one is notable for being particularly odd.
They do an a cappella song in the first set–typically if they do an a capella track it is as an encore or the intro of the second set, but this one is right there in the beginning.
The end of the set also had the only instance (of the shows that I have) where Trey explains the audience chess match. Many of the recordings open up set two with an audience chess move. In this case, Trey explains that they have been playing chess with the audience at each show. Phish is white, the audience is black and anyone who wants to just has to go to the Greenpeace booth to play a move…I have no idea how they would choose who gets to play the final decision.
There’s some other odd things in the show. “The Divided Sky” features one of the prettiest solos that Trey plays. In this show there is a very long pause between the end of the first half of the solo and the beginning of the second. The crowd cheers quite a bit during the pause, but we the listeners, have no idea what happened.
And then there is the extra long rendition of “Stash.” It’s broken into three sections. The first one features a fun audience response guitar solo. And in this instance, he plays it in a much more staccato style. The middle one features a bizarre percussion type solo. And the third features a rendition of “Dog Faced Boy” which is not sung to the appropriate music, rather, the keyboards just play simple, unrelated chords while Trey sings.
Set two ends with a wonderful rendition of “You Enjoy Myself” that ends in their bizarro screaming and grunting. You’ll get funny looks listening to that loudly.
So this set is a good one, and it stands out as unique among the others for being so darn bizarre.
[READ: June 27, 2010] The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To
I’m always bummed to read a prepub after it gets published. Sigh.
Sarah told me that I’d love this book and she was correct. It’s about a misfit high school boy who draws pictures and draws them really well. Despite this talent, he is not lauded by the cool kids in his class (the kid who draws licensed characters holding joints is lauded by the cool kids).
He’s also kind of defensive about his drawing, because he gets tired of people asking him what he’s drawing. Especially when they think that he’s just doodling. But then one day Eric Lederer asks him what he’s drawing. He and Eric have never talked. In fact, he doesn’t think anyone talks to Eric. Eric’s THAT kind of weird.
And what our narrator realizes is especially weird about Eric is that he is standing really really still: “No one stands this awkwardly sure of themselves except characters in my drawings staring straight ahead with their arms at their sides” (8). And with that awesome detail I fell in love with the book. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 