A LIVE ONE

At particular evening I dropped by at our local book store (the big one) here in Jakarta and as usual I went straight to either novel, leadership / management topics or - what else man? - music! Yeah .. I saw at "Performers" section a book about PHISH, a very thick and very big one (I think it's about A4 size). So I asked the bookstore waiter to open the plastic strap and have me a look what is inside. Wow! I was amazed on how the content of the book was telling all nitty-gritty things about a band which - I swear! - had never heard the music yet at all. I had heard it before from some of my prog mates down here but never got interested with the band at all because they could not answer my question: is it symphonic? Is it neo prog? Is it prog met? Or what ? They simple say: "It's hard to categorize .".

About couple of weeks ago my prog guru, Andy Julias, introduced me this live album from Phish. The first spin of the CD I had only one word comment: "confused". It's not that the music is too complex or indigestible , rather I was confused on what category I should put this kind of music into? Nevermind, I don't really care, at the end music that counts. So I tried to have some more spins. It has everything - you name it: rock, jazz, pop, disco, funk. Yes, everything is lumped together into the music of Phish. And I found something interesting about this album: the guitar player who seems to be the mastermind "Trey Anastasio" plays his guitar wonderfully with heavy influences from Santana, Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix. I really enjoy his guitar playing style. The other great musician is the keyboard player Page McConnell.

Musically, the style that Phish plays is basically like a jamming music but with a structured approach and excellent harmony. You will hear the virtuosities of musicians involved in this album through various solo especially guitar and keyboards. The only problem, probably, is the repetitive music segments that may create a boring experience. Good example is "You Enjoy Myself" that consumes 20:57 minutes featuring long guitar work but with some repetitive chords that may be boring for most of us.

Overall, it's a very good live album especially if you enjoy long guitar solo and keyboard work. Trey Anastasio is one of Top 100 guitar player according to Guitar World magazine. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

To those who say that the true genius of Phish lies in their live concerts, this is documentation to prove that hypothesis. As good as many of these songs may be as studio recordings, it's in the live performances that the band takes them as far as they can possibly go. Foe example, Stash on "A Picture Of Nectar" is a wonderful song, but stretched out another five minutes, with the band jamming away in eerie synchonization, it becomes a masterpiece. The same can be said even more about Tweezer, a slightly longer but somewhat inconsequential song on the same album which here travels far into space and becomes a thirty minute epic by the time it finds it's way back home.

It's just too bad that it was around this time that the Phishheads, Deadheads, and whateverelseheads made it just about impossible to get to a Phish concert. I'm glad I was able to see them play many times before they got to that point.

By the way, my copy is an advance release CD from Elektra, coming out over a month before the release date. At this point, the album was titles "Phish Live". But it's the same album.