So, I can't stop listening to Akron/Family. From Brooklyn. Brooklyn! What a place that must be. I guess they'd be considered "freak folk" with some XTC or Beatles and some I dunno almost tribal chanting and beats or something. Can't figure it out, but it's quite beautiful. I can see myself going through a period of immersion with them like what happened with Ariel Pink earlier this year.Sometimes when I start liking bands like this I get afraid that it's too close to what Phish sounds like, a band that always leaves so little of an impression on me that my body, as a defensive mechanism, causes tiny black-outs, wipes out my memory for at least the day, and sometimes weeks thereafter, every time I hear their music.
My fear is that someday I will like a band that might allow someone to tell me "oh, if you like them, you'd definitely like Phish." By this point, see, my pride is too invested in not liking that band to ever let me get into them, I'm afraid. Getting even in their neighborhood would be too much for me to admit. But since I can't remember what they sound like, it's difficult for me to avoid their sound. As a general rule, I try to avoid bands where the members have non-ironic beards (except for Will Oldham) or wear knit hats like the guy in the lower left corner up above, because that's how I imagine most Phish fans to look. It's not a great system, though. You can imagine the stress I'm under. It's quite a pickle.
6 comments:
I loooove the song "I'll Be On The Water" from their first record.
Also, I think I read somewhere that they're in this sweet religious cult called "Ack" or something to that effect.
LOVE, DAVID
The main difference here is that phish is a more interesting band with better songs and more talent...and they are from vermont. Vermont!
Well, yes, Vermont goes a long way, but it's not enough for me, I guess.
That's the funny thing about this. I think they are talented and from Vermont and clever--like I always dug that Halloween show idea they had--I just didn't like the whole jamming thing. And after awhile of actively thinking you don't like a band, you have to swallow too much pride to change your mind. That's where I'm stuck.
My friend Joseph, for example, isn't going to know what to do with himself when he eventually realizes that the Beatles really aren't half bad.
Of course, I didn't intend this post to serve as a judgment of the music taste in general of Phish fans like yourself, though it probably reads that way.
But still, I have to wonder, why do Phish fans so readily agree that the band's studio albums stink? Am I supposed to believe that their "talent" only appears at their live shows?
Well, I'm not entirely sure that I've been represented fairly.
I like 'Here Comes the Sun' doo-doo-doodoo-doo
oh, well, it's not that the albums stink, it's just that they were always a live band first and foremost. The albums are just a sort of snapshot in time of songs they were writing at that time...but making albums was always secondary to touring. It's particularly their DIY approach to music and the music business and their originality that makes them so likeable. That said, I do understand how you've backed yourself into a corner and have no choice but to continue building your wall of ignorant disdain. I'm that way with what passes as "the blues" in today's music...and also with the Sippy Cups, to some extent. I was actually like that with phish until the first time I saw them live, and then I was converted.
My brother and I have gotten into fistfights over The Beatles.
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