Musical Discovery

Phish video project

Everything is so easily acquired these days. Well maybe not these current specific days, but these times in general. For 3.0 Phish everything is available; soundboard audio, webcast, webcast rips, full show fan videos in HD quality. It’s all there for the taking and it must be a great time to be a younger phish fan. But along with every positive comes a negative. The current young fan will never get to experience the joy of finding a tape you’d never heard. Unless you were super motivated in the 90’s, (RMP, B&Ps, .net) tapes weren’t easy to come by. Most of my early tapes were acquired from my friends, i didn’t have a direct source of tapes yet. that changed when I got to college in fall 94. finally my world opened up and although i didn’t find every classic show right away, at least I now had a chance. I’d say the biggest tape score I can remember is the Roxy (nobody really needs the date on that right?) I read about this show in the pharmers almanac, and heard stories passed down from generation to generation about the legendary roxy show. Unfortunately I didn’t possess the motivation to pull off B&P’s online, so i was slave to whatever i found in person. one day in the spring of 95 i went to pick up some bud from a guy down the street. I was waiting in his living room, the first time i’d stepped into his house, when I saw the stack of tapes in the corner. I swear I saw it right away, staring back at me from a stack of 50 tapes…. two tapes clearly marked 2/20/93 set 1, 2/20/93 set 2. That was enough to send me through the roof. I immediately begged and pleaded to borrow them for a few hours so I could listen and dub (no high speed!). he reluctantly let leave with them, and true to my word i brought them back the next morning. I was beyond excited. And there was no let down here, the show absolutely lived up the hype. But the bigger point is the joy and discovery of a new show. Finding that tape from 93, which wasn’t even that long ago at the time, felt like a relic from another world. i think i might have been satisfied to just hold the tape all night and look at the setlist on the cover lol.

Unfortunately that’s an experience that is hard to come by these days. Not only does every 3.0 show exist in super high quality, but there are apps that allow easy access to every single show phish has ever played. hey you, 18 year old fan who just discovered phish, do you know about the roxy/bomb factory/big birch (insert any of 100 shows here), no? well here you go ::texts link:: have fun! it almost seems too easy in a way. not that i’m one of those “in my day things were tougher blah blah…” it’s not the convenience that is my issue, it’s the discovery! a new tape, new phish music, new sounds, new effects, new songs. each second led to another new discovery. and so often, once you had a tape memorized note for note, or even prior to that, my mind would drift and start to wonder what it looked like. surely it looked pretty much the same as every concert i’ve ever seen (big birch is just another rock show in a summer shed) but to actually see the way trey stares up into the rafters during a jam, or see mike shake/hit his bass (or whatever he does) during the disease intro, or the way kuroda runs his “searchlights” during the runrunrunrunrunrunrunrun part of antelope added a whole new element. suddenly sets i knew by heart (hello 10/31/94 I) were coming to life in front of my eyes. What a treat!

Which brings me to the current situation. approaching 50 consecutive nights of phish video streams. that number seems crazy! phish fans are nothing if not crazy, right? Besides being crazy, and bored, and drinking wine half of the nights, one of the main joys of these streams are the nightly musical discoveries. Most of the shows we’ve watched are fairly well known but the video element adds so much to the experience. It’s those discoveries that fueled my interest phish 25 years ago and in a strange way it’s happening again. Phish is such a visual band, a funny thing to say considering they just walk onstage and play, but there’s so much that goes along with the experience. Whether it’s watching trey jump around like a madman, actually seeing Mike stomp on the fight bell of approval, or seeing why the crowd cheered at a certain point on a tape (bc of CK lights, or trey catching a glow stick and throwing it back to the crowd) it all adds to the incredible music we’re watching and have heard for so many years.

So now I’m finishing this on Saturday 5/2, on the heels of our 50th night, and I can’t help but think of the experience we’ll all share tonight. The video discovery of 11/22/94! It’s a legendary show that obviously some people have seen, but that a whole lot more never even knew existed. To think that we’ll all be watching the monster version of ……. (no spoilers lol) brings a huge smile to my face. I can’t wait to discover what it all looked like as it went down :)

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