MarcO

I recall a delicious veggie burrito I had there once. It was very very good, or may have just seemed that way beacuse I was very very baked.

Aaron - great avatar, dude!

Scottie - long time no see. Hope you have a great one!! Happy Birthday buddy!

new Elektra press release:

Round Room represents Phish’s first work together since going on hiatus in October 2000. It is a documentary of Phish performing twelve new songs at an early peak of freshness and discovery. The album essentially places Phish fans in the room with the band as they rediscover their unique chemistry.

Round Room’s twelve songs were winnowed down from twenty, most of which Phish cut during a few charmed nights in October after two weeks of rehearsal. They laid down a bevy of new tunes with the notion of revisiting the material in the spring, when they would convene to record a “proper” album. But the versions they recorded sounded so fresh and definitive that they couldn’t see how further work would improve them. The group’s mantra became “don’t fix, don’t tamper.”

“There was something nice about hearing the first time we played together in two years captured on tape,” says guitarist Trey Anastasio. “If there was any work done on the album, it was at not editing. Instead of perfection, they endeavored to preserve the vibe and feeling of those early takes. “You can hear that’s the first stuff we played,” he adds. “There is a lot of emotion involved, to my ear.”

Indeed, the musical conversations that unfold over the course of the jam-packed 78-minute disc include five lengthy songs - “Pebbles and Marbles,” “Walls of the Cave,” “Waves,” “46 Days” and “Seven Below” - that open up into improvisational forays. “That’s five big jams on one album, which is really different for us,” notes keyboardist Page McConnell. “There are some great, tight little songs, too.”

Round Room was recorded with producer Bryce Goggin at Trey’s Barn studio outside the band’s hometown of Burlington, Vermont. Ten of the songs were written by Anastasio with longtime lyricist and collaborator Tom Marshall, and two (“Round Room,” “Mock Song”) came from bassist Mike Gordon, whose friend Joe Linitz contributed lyrics for the title track.

Gordon particularly likes the fact that the songs were committed to tape soon after the band learned them. “To make an album so close to the moment of conception is pretty cool,” he says. “Because we’re still discovering the songs, I think our sense of wonder comes out. It doesn’t surprise me that there would be good stuff in that moment. There are many sections in these songs – like the cycling chords at the end of “Friday” – that remind me how the band is close to my emotional center.”

The fact that Round Room came together so quickly is a testament to Phish’s uncanny musical telepathy and accelerated learning curve. Eager to resume their four-way collaboration, they got right down to work. The group isolated itself from everyone outside the band, even crew and management, for the first few weeks. “They weren’t pushing us away,” says manager John Paluska. “They were more like, ‘You know what? We just need to go be the four of us, like we were in 1984 when nobody cared.”

If there were any concerns that the group might have lost a beat after two years apart, they vanished the moment they started playing. “We ripped right into it,” says Anastasio. “It was all new and fresh, and that was important ‘cause that’s what we wanted. The thing that struck me was that lots of life had gone by, but there was still continuity to it. It’s just nice to be back with your buddies, you know?”

One liberating aspect of the project was the shared sense that they had nothing to lose or to prove, enabling them to be exactly who they are - maybe more so than ever before. “I’d gotten to the point where I thought Phish is a really special thing, and if it’s meant to keep going, it will,” says drummer Jon Fishman. “By the time we got to the studio, we were all in that state of mind: ‘Hey, if it doesn’t work out we can go home in three hours, so let’s see what happens.’ What happened was ‘Pebbles and Marbles’” - the extraordinary ten-minute epic that opens the album - “and we went, ‘Whoa!’ The whole album was like that.”

“We’ve reached a point in our career where we don’t have to do a lot that’s a waste of time or isn’t on our path,” says Gordon. “It’s great to be able to say, ‘We like this music and if we like it, people will hear us liking it and feed on that energy.’”

McConnell savored the challenge of learning so many new songs, some of which are quite compositionally complex. “We were trying to commit stuff to memory or to tape and learn this huge volume of material,” he explains. “And I love that! I absolutely love rehearsal and learning new songs. Just working my brain in that way again was so much fun.”

Somewhat ironically, Anastasio notes that despite all the media and fan ballyhoo over the hiatus, Round Room comes just two years after the release of Farmhouse, Phish’s previous studio album, in 2000. “Let’s say we hadn’t taken the hiatus,” laughs Anastasio. “When you look at it, we probably aren’t that far off the normal schedule of releasing another Phish album. Someday, it’s not even going to look like we took a hiatus!”

But they did, and everything and nothing has changed. They each pursued highly rewarding individual projects - Anastasio with his solo band and Oysterhead, Gordon as a filmmaker (Rising Low) and in collaboration with guitarist Leo Kottke, McConnell as leader of the trio Vida Blue, and Fishman as drummer for Pork Tornado and the Jazz Mandolin Project - and gained valuable life experiences outside of Phish. At the same time, they found that the chemistry and camaraderie were still there when they reassembled. What’s new, they all agree, is their “heightened appreciation” for Phish and commitment to its forward movement.

“We’re back, simple as that,” says McConnell. “We went away and came back recharged, which was the goal.”

EEG 12/02

Somebody, somewhere, knows the whole sordid story of the fall of the King Of Pop, and when that person finally lays that story down on print, I'm booking a week off work, loading up on Scotch and sitting down to read.

Now *that's* a story I won't be able to help but read!!

Not a tune but a disc:

Vince Guaraldi Trio - "Charlie Brown Christmas"

a classic!

Rob Stoner.... he he...

Fat Cats? Sunday???

...and just can't fucking wait to get home?? I am dying here. I want my bed. An hour-and-a-half to go.....

as long as they strip while playing....

...and what about *me*, Hair Cut? what about *my* question???

How about having the bands strip while playing???

Also Steve - are you and the Mighty T going to be at the Judge for Doug Feaver tonight?

Let me know.... I have a present for T (sorry dude.)

Anyone?? Anyone wanna take a crack at this maniacal statement? C'mon.... it'll be fun!

Any US freaks out there.... happy Thanksgiving and thank you for Jerry Garcia!

Agreed. For me, there's nothing more torturous than listening to a cover band try to perform replicas of the original versions. It's almost always embarassing. Reinterpretation is key.

Dude - I'd rather you decide. You've heard 'em, please just throw me a couple of shows that you think are particularly good so I may have a sample of what they are up to. Feel free to wait until the tour's done. I don't care about setlists - in the grand Grateful Dead tradition, it's not what they play, it's how they play it! I'm keeping an open mind.... I want to hear them.

Thanks though!! Just let me know when I can come see you to get them and I'll swing by. Cheers!

(Now, pls. go download "Idiot Wind" from Dylan's Blood on The Tracks album - actually the whole album is insanely good - for a sample of one of the 20th centuries finest voices and songwriters!!)

Northernheads drives me absolutely batty.

Uh.... because his is the most bountiful, compelling and consistent catalogue in the history of popular music and one that has been and will forever be tirelessly reinterpreted.

imho, of course!

wha??

just a nice garden salad.

thanks.

First show (I think): Pink Floyd @ Exhibition Stadium, Toronto - Summer 1987

(Actually, the first pseudo concert I attended was by a Pink Floyd cover band called Clearlight at Highland Secondary School Gym in Dundas - I think I was in Grade 6. Strangely, they encored with Aqualung!)

Best show: Phish @ Big Cypress, FL 12/30-31/99 (I consider it all one long show - the best weekend of my life!)

and, if I may add, Most Influential (and therefore one of the best) Show: Grateful Dead 3/22/90 Copps (life has not been the same since)

a runner-up for best show I've seen: Dave Matthews Band 5-11-96 (don't laugh, this was a seriously great concert, I was very surprised) - also have very pleasant memories of JGB at Buffalo War Memorial in 1993, another winner!

So far, my favorite is "If the Phone's Not Ringing, It's Me".

Find Them Here

"If Whiskey Were a Woman, I'd Be Married By Now"....