SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-sets one and three (MGM Grand Garden Arena, Friday 10 31, 2014).
The previous Ghost Box posts explored Phish’s Set two of their 2014 Halloween show. But the rest of the night was perfectly suited to Halloween as well.
The band wore white tuxedos and white face paint.
Phish played a night of songs perfectly suited to Halloween. A rousing spirited “Buried Alive” is followed by a slow moody “Ghost.” “Ghost” had a lot of fuzzy dirty clavinet in the middle section. It was followed by “Scent Of A Mule,” which features the Halloween related lyric:
She said, “I hate laser beams
And you never done see me askin’
For a UFO
In Tomahawk County”
A little guy from the UFO
Came on out and said his name was Joe
She said, “Come on over for some lemonade
There’s some wild piano soloing and then
an interesting “Mule Duel” segment spotlighting Mike and Trey. Mike utilized a synth effect, which drove the crowd wild, while Trey threw in dark and droning notes of his own. The interesting section of the Mule Duel climaxed with Mike and Trey holding their instruments in the air and rubbing them against each other, which made for quite a wild scene.
There’s some sci-fi sounding menace which seems to migrate into a kind of Yiddish melody until the song returns to the main melody again.
It as followed by a quick and fun “Sample In A Jar” which segues into a 12-minute “Reba” (a perfect Halloween song, indeed). There’s a wailing solo just before the whistling coda. It was followed by an intense “46 Days” (Taste the fear/For the devil’s drawing near) with some great mid-song soloing. And then the perfect Halloween song: “Big Black Furry Creatures From Mars.” The verses were really heavy and chaotic (musical nonsense from everyone as the noise crescendoed). The song was particularly long at almost 3 and a half minutes.
Page then showed off lounge skills with a fun “Lawn Boy.” He took the lead mic and wished everyone a Happy Halloween and praised the great costumes. Then after giving Mike a quick solo he had Fish do a very quick drum solo (he didn’t seem like he wanted to). Next came another great Halloween song: “I Saw It Again”
When I wake in the night
(when I wake up in the night I’m pulled from my dreams)
Well, when something’s not right
I try not to look
(but the curtains pull open its breathing I hear)
For there is the shape
That I fear
And I’m fully woken
I saw it again
It had a great menacing feel to it with Trey’s wah wah adding extra sounds and the guys adding screams and cries during the choruses. A funky “Tube” was next [You’re a portrait of your past / There’s a mummy in the cabinet / Are there no more arrows left?]. The set ended with a sprightly “Wolfman’s Brother.” That opening piano note really snapped the darkness out of that previous ending.
Set two, was, of course the Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House [narration by Laura Olsher; Sound Effects by Walt Disney Sound Effects Group].
The third set pretty much eschews the Halloween motif. “Punch You In The Eye” kicked it off with a 9 minute jam. Then came a jaunty cover of TV on the Radio’s “Golden Age.” Midway through, Page jumped over to his Wurlitzer electric piano as Fish altered his beat ever so slightly over the course of the 11-minute song. There were a few times when it seemed the jam had petered out, but Page kept the keys going until Trey played the opening riff of “Tweezer.” “Tweezer” was only 10 minutes long, but mid song they made a turn towards a bright, dreamy chord progression and eventually landed on a bright “Heavy Things.”
The expertly executed segue between the two is well worth the re-listen.
The 11 minute “Guyute” seems a but slow, but the end riffing part is really fast and intense and the slow last verse is quite menacing. Although it comes out of that song bouncy once again and sets the stage for an 18 minute “Sand.” There’s some great soloing from Trey and some cool funky keys from Page.
Just when “Sand” had hit its peak, the band pulled back and embarked on a second jam. McConnell took the lead on “Sand”s second jam as it seemed the band never wanted to stop playing the song. As Page milked the clavinet, Trey delivered thick, dirty riffs.
There were a few funk breaks (with Mike’s watery bass) and at each pause the crowd responded with a “whoo!” Near the end of the song, the band started rocking out some heavy chords (with whooos as needed). And while the band jammed those chords, Trey started playing a riff that sounded suspiciously like “Tweezer Reprise.” I love when the band is playing basically two songs at once. Eventually they all joined in for a spirited run through of the song.
The roof nearly came off the MGM Grand Arena by the time “Tweezer Reprise” came to a close as the clock approached 1 a.m. local time.
For the encore, they played Leonard Cohen’s “Is This What You Wanted,” sung by Mike. It’s interesting to hear this done not but Cohen whose voice is so distinctive. The song contains the lines “And is this what you wanted, To live in a house that is haunted, By the ghost of you and me?” which fits the haunted house theme perfectly. Despite thematic choice, it’s not an especially rousing encore. Which is why the band had one more Halloween song in mind.
Page came out with his keytar, [“which once was owned by James Brown,”] for The Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein.” It sounded great and Page’s keytar had some fantastic old-school sounds that fit the Halloween theme perfectly.
The band played for almost four hours that night. Now that is a treat!
[READ: October 26, 2017] “Hallowe’en in a Suburb”
Just in time for Halloween, from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar comes The Ghost Box.
This is a nifty little box (with a magnetic opening) that contains 11 stories for Halloween. It is lovingly described thusly:
A collection of chilly, spooky, hair-raising-y stories to get you in that Hallowe’en spirit, edited and introduced by comedian and horror aficionado Patton Oswalt.
There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, on the inside cover, one “window” of the 11 boxes is “folded.” I am taking that as a suggested order.
Tucked into the bottom of the box is an orange rectangle with the poem “Hallowe’en in a Suburb” by H.P. Lovecraft.
Typically I don’t find poems to be particularly scary. It’s hard to make rhymes scary. But Lovecraft does his creepiness pretty well. This one is written in English Quintain style (A-B-A-B-B).
This poem is more a disturbingly supernatural description of the suburbs around Halloween. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: BLUE OYSTER CULT-“Joan Crawford” (1983).
Most people include “Don’t Fear the Reaper” on their Halloween playlist, but for me, “Joan Crawfford” is far creepier.
I Just Read About That... 