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Phix in Toronto


Chewie

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i check out phix.com or whategver their site is a whiiiile back,, and they have dozens of tunes to download,,, and the ones i got were all fucking right on man,, i was impressed,,, all the changes, all the sections, they dont skimp on the details at all. the guitar solos arent up to treys.

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Isn't it obvious what they sound like? They sound like Phish.

Interesting that a band that's never been on the radio can play their first T.O. gig at the Opera House.

Sure hope GTB or JSB or Jomomma or BNB aren't playing in Toronto that night!

Do they do original Phish setlists? Wouldn't want to see anybody rip-off dso.

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quote:

Originally posted by secondtube:

i think they are just a phish cover band.

i think you'll have a different opinion after the show!

these boys are out of Colorado and do a FINE job of playing Phish tunes

John from Dark Star Orchestra has sat in with them on occasion, and what i heard sounded GREAT!

and no Velvet, they're not ripping off anyone...they're playing the music they love, at smaller venues, for less coin

i'm all about The Phix, but have no intentions of ever seeing Phish again...

i've been hoping they'd make it up here

i'll be there if i'm still around this province in March

have a listen here

From Martyr's, Chicago IL, 4/26/03

Featuring John Kadlecik of the Dark Star Orchestra on Guitar

Tweezer

The Wedge

Scarlet Begonias

Fire on the Mountain

Eyes of the World

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from jambands.com

It is rare to find rock music that can be quantified. The Phix qualify. There is a right and wrong with their music -- which is Phish's music, give or take a few layers of meaning. One could watch them and really evaluate objectively if they were doing it, y'know, right. The moments before they took the stage were oddly uncomfortable, and I found myself realizing just how much of Phish's music is wrapped up - justified, somehow - by their own particular mythology and history. To remove those factors from the performance would on, one level, leave only the music behind. But it would also leave a gaping hole to really see how Phish's music worked.

"The first great Beatle innovation was familiarity with the names of every member of an entire (four-man) group," Richard Meltzer wrote in the Aesthetics of Rock. Something similar might be said for Phish, who let their collective charisma organically develop each band member into some sort of archetype: the leader, the mysterious weird one, the silent one, the wily greasy prankster (for starters). With this charisma conveniently removed, the logic that led to many of Phish's decisions also disappears. Buh-bye surreal comedic sensibility, hullo bare skeleton of an empty ritual.

Yeah, so, like they opened with "Down With Disease", and soon meaningless arcana was passing my lips, talking to an old show-going buddy whose similar sense of morbidity brought him to B.B.'s. "'Trey' didn't do the pick swipes in between the verses on 'Disease'! 'Mike' isn't playing with a pick! They didn't do the 'Landlady' dance" So it goes, and so it went. And, after a while, it felt dirty.

Actually, that's a lie. It felt dirty very quickly.

For starters, they played everything too fast (which, I suppose, is keeping in line with the idea that they're paying tribute to Phish's club days). But it wasn't just that they played the songs too fast, it's that they just played the songs, period. People off the street weren't expected to appreciate the Phix objectively. Audience members were expected to not just have Phish as a reference point, but to have Phish and their history as reference points.

The question of a Phish cover band is an interesting one, especially since Phish's more interesting material is pretty damn challenging to play. To their credit, The Phix played it with great aplomb, even confidence. Trey" did well, fucking up far less than the actual Trey did for the last several years of Phish's career on songs like "Lizards", "You Enjoy Myself", "Rift", "Stash", and others. Still, the delivery felt rather lifeless. For every note he got right, he'd screw something up like the big, long sustained emotional note at the peak of "You Enjoy Myself" (where "Trey" instead played one medium-length note, followed by a bunch of squealy bends)."

That out of the way, as a friend is fond of saying: if you're good enough to cover "You Enjoy Myself", you shouldn't be covering "You Enjoy Myself", you should be writing your own shit.Word. By refusing to introduce their own material, Phix's shtick is one of pure sentimentality. And maybe it's fun. I've never tried necrophilia either. I mean, I guess I did have some amount of fun watching The Phix. It was hard not to. It was perverse and guilty, though. I still can't really believe I went.

They covered some of Phish's covers, too -- Norman Blake's "Ginseng Sullivan", Ween's "Roses Are Free" (actually sticking closer to the Ween arrangement than Phish), and the Stones' "Loving Cup". "Ginseng Sullivan" sounded considerably off, and - as hideously suburban as Phish sometimes are - it quickly became obvious just how much bluegrass they really did absorb. It might be said that that was the case for everything The Phix played: they got the tree just fine, they were just completely clueless when it came to the ornamentation.

When "Page" began the intro to "Loving Cup", I bailed. What with the size of the places Phish used to play, it was never convenient to actually make a point and split as soon as "Loving Cup" started. They'd be halfway through the song by the time I got to the door. The Phix served to solve that problem easily. I was on the street before they hit the first chorus.

save your coin.

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i typed phix review in google, and that was the only one i could find, aside from the ones on their own website.

its from jambands.com, so take it for what its worth. its from a kid who comes in with a sour taste already in his mouth.

he trashes phix while at the same time attempting to trash phish. its pretty lame.

but its all i could find, as i said above.

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