night two was the awesome. not that there weren't issues, but the overall effect was a lot more positive than night one. which is odd, because i originally remembered thinking the two nights were of pretty equal quality. but through the "magic" of reliving the shows via recording, i've now decided night two was far better. for whatever that's worth.
anyway, i came into night two having felt that the previous night was one of the best concert-going nights of my life, but also wondering if i could physically (and mentally) take 3 more hours of phish again this soon. the band started off with "mango song", which was pretty much the weirdest opener in the universe and it was so confusing that it took me until the next song, "chalkdust torture", to adjust. fortunately, they almost always blow this song out of the water, and they did here as well. kind of feel like they should have switched the order of these two in the setlist...
next was "middle of the road", which is apparently a mike gordon tune. this was a neat little song, and i hate to sound bitchy, but at this point, i was getting a little sick of first-set songs i didn't know or had never heard. i guess after waiting to hear the band live for 8 years and knowing and loving pretty much all of the 250+ songs they play, it was a little frustrating to hear at least 4-5 songs i didn't even know where there were so many songs i wanted to hear.
next was "tweezer", and as much as i usually love this song, after the first few minutes (with the notable exception of the island tour version) it usually devolves into a serviceable but unremarkable jam. no different this time. it was solidly played, but not nearly as exploratory or interesting as a lot of the late-set jams from night one.
next was "driver"...now, i love "driver", but again, i felt the same way i felt about "sleep" the first night. why play this if you're not in a room with 5 people and an acoustic guitar? i felt like i was at a DMB encore, where a solo acoustic performance is considered some sort of reverential occurrence, for some reason. i guess i just don't get it.
next was "twenty years later". another song i'd never heard, and another sort of workmanlike rendition (much like "joy" from the first night). at this point i'm loving the show, of course (it's still my virgin phish experience), but getting a little leery that if things continue as-is song-selection-wise for much longer, i might go home a little disappointed. fortunately, the next two songs are "ya mar" and "it's ice". "ya mar" is a pretty run-of-the-mill song, technically, but it such a fun, bouncy tune (and the crowd was obviously more familiar with it than a lot of the songs thus far that night) that it was just the right song to get everyone bouncing around and screaming and whatnot again. "it's ice" was a perfect counterpoint: a short, but technically complicated and interesting song that led beautifully into...
..."wolfman's brother". where the first night made me a believer in "down with disease", night two was all about the "wolfman". i've never liked this song much either, however, this night changed my mind. a great near-20-minute funk version, complete with the best glowstick war in the universe, and i still can't help but grin when i listen to the tape of this. great, great moment.
first set ended strong with "character zero" > "run like an antelope". the crowd responded to "antelope" like we'd been waiting since the beginning of the night to jump up and down screaming like maniacs when trey demanded that we "run like an antelope, out of control!"
where i liked second night, first set better than first night, first set, the second night second set was part great, part not-so-great (though it ended on a high note). first we got a 20 minute cover of velvet underground's "rock n roll", which was really fun and unexpected. next was "makisupa policeman", which included a jam where trey and mike switched instruments for a few minutes. then came "alaska", a song which i've desperately tried to like time and time again and just cannot. i'm sorry. then there was "the wedge", which is always a nice pop-ish gem, followed (finally) by "YEM". honestly, i was hoping all weekend for "divided sky", so the opening notes of "YEM" were a little disappointing for me. nonetheless; it was a great version of the song, with an excellent five minute vocal jam at the end.
the closing combination of "backwards down the number line > piper > grind" was fun, but at that point i think all the standing, dancing, heat, and contact high was wearing on me and i sort of felt like we were just waiting for the encore. "backwards" is not a high-energy song by any means, and the transition to "piper" was a little wonky. "grind" was cute, but singing a cappella is about as far from rock as you can get :)
fortunately, the encore was a great (nay, perfect!) way to end a two-night stand: "good times bad times" and "tweezer (reprise)". the encore thus made sure that we were all screaming like mad(wo)men by the end.
ultimately, it was a more enjoyable weekend than i had even hoped, and more than lived up to my live phish expectations. was it the best phish show i've ever heard? no, but the fact that i was finally actually there in the flesh more than made up for some of the lacking technical proficiencies. on the recording, things don't stand up quite as well. the high points and the intensity come across a lot less, and the glitchy playing stands out more. i feel like the recordings do a good job (for better or worse) illustrating the semi-episodic nature of both nights: the good and bad seemed to come in chunks...so i suppose in a way having a recording is nice because i can skip the parts i don't necessarily feel like i need to hear again.
i hope they tour again next summer because i'll totally be there...
Feb 13, 2010
phish @ the gorge re-review (finally)
last weekend, i finally listened to the tapes of the phish gorge shows that i saw this summer, and since i never got around to doing an "official" review at the time, i thought i'd merge a review of the live experience and the recording re-listen. you know. for the hell of it. because i'm not buried under tons of writing for work. oh, wait. yes i am.
anyway, here goes.
night one started off with "down with disease", which was, a bit ironically, one of my least favorite phish songs. imagine my wry amusement when, after seeing phish walk out on stage live for the first time after waiting for 8 years and through a long hiatus, they start playing one of the few songs in their repertoire that i actively dislike. two minutes later, though, i was converted. it was that immediately that i knew that their "reunion" tour was less a gimmick and more a serious attempt to extend the band's legacy. the whole band was pitch-perfect throughout the song, and my first experience with the phish crowd jumping around and dancing joyously will now always be punctuated by trey's guitar riff during the song's first interlude. i remember being dimly aware that i bounced up and down that i was grinning like a giddy idiot already and that i had approximately 6 more hours of phish to go. clearly, i'm a bit biased towards this particular performance of this particular song, but on the recording, it also sounded great.
next up was "ocelot" and "pebbles and marbles". i'm pretty neutral when it comes to "ocelot". it was a solid performance, but whatever. "pebbles and marbles", on the other hand, is one of my favorite phish tunes, and it was the first of a few moments during the show that i was concerned that the boys might have bitten off more than they could chew by choosing such an ambitious setlist. it was great to hear the tune live, but it was a little rough, and on recording, without the crowd's ambiance and excitement, it's downright painful. the band had a lot of trouble with this one.
"possum", as usual, was energetic and a good, solid, simple jamming song to get things back on track, but then it was followed by "sleep". now, i have nothing against "sleep", it's a great, neat little song. but why play it for thousands of people at an amphitheatre? we had made it pretty clear we were there to rock, and yet we get a lead out of the blistering solo at the end of "possum" into "sleep"?
next was "destiny unbound", which i didn't really know (apparently this makes me not a real phish fan). not much to say about this one. "stash" was great, and included a pretty extended, unique jam. unfortunately, its main riff is so distinct that when the notes get flubbed a bit, it really sort of hurts the song for me (it's sort of like trey biffing the arpeggios at the beginning of "YEM"; it's just sort of naturally wince-evoking). yeah, so that happened. and on tape the band's sort-of struggling with parts of the song is even more obvious. fortunately, next up was "sneakin' sally > cavern", which was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. great vocal jam at the end of "sally", straight into the almost-pop of "cavern". live, at the end of the first set i was still absolutely pumped and ready to hear 10-15 more songs i'd never heard in person. on tape, i'm not remembering the show quite as fondly as i maybe once did. a few great moments, but also a few slip-ups at important points in important songs = pretty mediocre first phish set.
set two started with "moma dance > light > taste", a really great start that alleviated most of my discomfort over certain parts of the first set. "moma dance" was a great way to ease into the second set, getting the crowd grooving and letting the band stretch its jamming legs without taking on anything too orchestrated or convoluted. i love "light", especially when it gets the extended intro treatment like it got on this night, and "taste" is pretty much always great.
we had a few seconds to recover from this run of songs before "fluffhead", which is the one song i really wanted to hear and never expected to get to. the band ripped through this one wonderfully, and it's one of the major highlights for me to have on tape and to be able to listen to over and over again. "joy" was next. this was my first time hearing the song, and it's a cute, schmaltzy phish-pop song. not bad, not wonderful. just a good, solid song.
the closing run of the second set was a long "bathtub gin" and "harry hood", followed by a "slave to the traffic light" encore. by itself, this might not have been anything special, but following on the heels of a set that already featured "fluffhead" and extended takes on "moma" and "light", this basically meant a set two/encore run that added up to a handful of songs and about 2 hours of music. phish brought the jam during this part of the show, and hit all the right notes during the composed bits of "fluffhead", "harry", and "slave". neither of those last two have ever really been my favorite phish songs either, but i was converted, especially to "harry", on this particular night. the second set ending with the band climaxing their "harry" jam by belting out the "you can feel good! good! good about hood!" was a pretty epic, great-concert-memory moment.
the band's intensity and their artistry shows through a lot more on the second set recording than on the first, and at the very least i'll be playing the crap out of the back half of this show for a long time.
i'll do a review of the second night as a separate entry, so as not to prolong the typing madness.
anyway, here goes.
night one started off with "down with disease", which was, a bit ironically, one of my least favorite phish songs. imagine my wry amusement when, after seeing phish walk out on stage live for the first time after waiting for 8 years and through a long hiatus, they start playing one of the few songs in their repertoire that i actively dislike. two minutes later, though, i was converted. it was that immediately that i knew that their "reunion" tour was less a gimmick and more a serious attempt to extend the band's legacy. the whole band was pitch-perfect throughout the song, and my first experience with the phish crowd jumping around and dancing joyously will now always be punctuated by trey's guitar riff during the song's first interlude. i remember being dimly aware that i bounced up and down that i was grinning like a giddy idiot already and that i had approximately 6 more hours of phish to go. clearly, i'm a bit biased towards this particular performance of this particular song, but on the recording, it also sounded great.
next up was "ocelot" and "pebbles and marbles". i'm pretty neutral when it comes to "ocelot". it was a solid performance, but whatever. "pebbles and marbles", on the other hand, is one of my favorite phish tunes, and it was the first of a few moments during the show that i was concerned that the boys might have bitten off more than they could chew by choosing such an ambitious setlist. it was great to hear the tune live, but it was a little rough, and on recording, without the crowd's ambiance and excitement, it's downright painful. the band had a lot of trouble with this one.
"possum", as usual, was energetic and a good, solid, simple jamming song to get things back on track, but then it was followed by "sleep". now, i have nothing against "sleep", it's a great, neat little song. but why play it for thousands of people at an amphitheatre? we had made it pretty clear we were there to rock, and yet we get a lead out of the blistering solo at the end of "possum" into "sleep"?
next was "destiny unbound", which i didn't really know (apparently this makes me not a real phish fan). not much to say about this one. "stash" was great, and included a pretty extended, unique jam. unfortunately, its main riff is so distinct that when the notes get flubbed a bit, it really sort of hurts the song for me (it's sort of like trey biffing the arpeggios at the beginning of "YEM"; it's just sort of naturally wince-evoking). yeah, so that happened. and on tape the band's sort-of struggling with parts of the song is even more obvious. fortunately, next up was "sneakin' sally > cavern", which was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. great vocal jam at the end of "sally", straight into the almost-pop of "cavern". live, at the end of the first set i was still absolutely pumped and ready to hear 10-15 more songs i'd never heard in person. on tape, i'm not remembering the show quite as fondly as i maybe once did. a few great moments, but also a few slip-ups at important points in important songs = pretty mediocre first phish set.
set two started with "moma dance > light > taste", a really great start that alleviated most of my discomfort over certain parts of the first set. "moma dance" was a great way to ease into the second set, getting the crowd grooving and letting the band stretch its jamming legs without taking on anything too orchestrated or convoluted. i love "light", especially when it gets the extended intro treatment like it got on this night, and "taste" is pretty much always great.
we had a few seconds to recover from this run of songs before "fluffhead", which is the one song i really wanted to hear and never expected to get to. the band ripped through this one wonderfully, and it's one of the major highlights for me to have on tape and to be able to listen to over and over again. "joy" was next. this was my first time hearing the song, and it's a cute, schmaltzy phish-pop song. not bad, not wonderful. just a good, solid song.
the closing run of the second set was a long "bathtub gin" and "harry hood", followed by a "slave to the traffic light" encore. by itself, this might not have been anything special, but following on the heels of a set that already featured "fluffhead" and extended takes on "moma" and "light", this basically meant a set two/encore run that added up to a handful of songs and about 2 hours of music. phish brought the jam during this part of the show, and hit all the right notes during the composed bits of "fluffhead", "harry", and "slave". neither of those last two have ever really been my favorite phish songs either, but i was converted, especially to "harry", on this particular night. the second set ending with the band climaxing their "harry" jam by belting out the "you can feel good! good! good about hood!" was a pretty epic, great-concert-memory moment.
the band's intensity and their artistry shows through a lot more on the second set recording than on the first, and at the very least i'll be playing the crap out of the back half of this show for a long time.
i'll do a review of the second night as a separate entry, so as not to prolong the typing madness.
Feb 7, 2010
Feb 2, 2010
teaching and learning
so i'm teaching a sort-of lit class for the first time this semester. and it's been great so far. i got to choose the books, and as per the class requirements, they all had to be books published recently. so i picked a lot of books that i simultaneously thought were interesting to talk about based on their own literary merits and were interesting in a cultural context. now not only do i have a class where we can talk about characterization, plot, setting, ethos, believability, immersion, etc., but also race/class/gender/place AND technology, apocalypse, wilderness, conservation, zombies, home, and all that jazz. so. it's a pretty thematically dense discussion class. and it's so fucking fun my eyes want to pop out. of course, they also want to pop out because it's at 9am and i have to get here three days a week before 7am to get prepped for class (they have to submit questions online every morning and i have to be able to read them all and draw up a class plan around them before class starts that day).
anyway, i'm having a lot of fun, and the students in class who enjoy talking and discussing seem to be enjoying themselves. now that i'm over the initial shock of the joy of teaching something i'm actually directly invested in (teaching comp is fun, but it has nothing to do with what i care about directly, and requires that i have an entire "comp" section in my brain that i switch over to each monday, wednesday, and friday), i'm starting to get that nagging doubt in the back of my head that i get every time i remember that nothing in life is perfect. maybe this is just my latent comp pedagogy reflex taking over my brain, but my fear is that i'm not actually teaching these students anything.
granted, the only real goal of this class as it was explained to me was to talk about reading and talk about how it is relevant and important in today's society (BOOOOOOOM!). and i feel like i'm definitely doing that. i guess i'm so used to the lecture model, the skill-teaching model of a class that i feel like a failure just going in, talking about reading, and enjoying myself. it feels too easy. at times, when i'm being easier on myself, i feel like maybe the learning that's taking place in a class like this is really just less tangible that it might be in a comp class (and that's less than it might be in a science class, and so on). i mean, i'm running this class pretty similarly to some of the seminars i've taken in grad school, and i learned more from the discussions in those classes than i have at pretty much any other time in my life (at least in a school environment).
i certainly lecture from time to time briefly about certain character archetypes, or certain literary techniques, and those kinds of things. but these students are all experienced readers. they infer these things if you hint at them. they don't need to learn what the hero's quest is. they can see it, and talk about it, and understand its value and also the value in deviating if you're a writer. i also have lots of small checks built into the class to make sure they're keeping up on the reading and paying attention in class (and two big checks in the form of a midterm and a final). but it's just strange. i've never taught a class like this, and it's odd to have a class that puts most of its value in discussion rather than lecture and regurgitation/revision. it's odd to think that students will come out of this class having read 8 new books, and that's (largely) it. when teaching comp 101 (and even 201), we sort of have this idea impressed upon us that we're the gateway to our students' ability to write at a college level, which in turn is the gateway to the rest of their entire future success. of course, that's aggrandizing and a little ridiculous in some ways, but i guess what i'm getting at is that with the impression we're giving as budding comp teachers, it's easy to convince yourself that you're doing god's work if you have an off day. there's not a lot of room for crisis of purpose. that's not the case anymore.
that said, we're finishing up talking about Snow Crash tomorrow and we'll be moving on to neil gaiman's American Gods on friday. can't wait.
anyway, i'm having a lot of fun, and the students in class who enjoy talking and discussing seem to be enjoying themselves. now that i'm over the initial shock of the joy of teaching something i'm actually directly invested in (teaching comp is fun, but it has nothing to do with what i care about directly, and requires that i have an entire "comp" section in my brain that i switch over to each monday, wednesday, and friday), i'm starting to get that nagging doubt in the back of my head that i get every time i remember that nothing in life is perfect. maybe this is just my latent comp pedagogy reflex taking over my brain, but my fear is that i'm not actually teaching these students anything.
granted, the only real goal of this class as it was explained to me was to talk about reading and talk about how it is relevant and important in today's society (BOOOOOOOM!). and i feel like i'm definitely doing that. i guess i'm so used to the lecture model, the skill-teaching model of a class that i feel like a failure just going in, talking about reading, and enjoying myself. it feels too easy. at times, when i'm being easier on myself, i feel like maybe the learning that's taking place in a class like this is really just less tangible that it might be in a comp class (and that's less than it might be in a science class, and so on). i mean, i'm running this class pretty similarly to some of the seminars i've taken in grad school, and i learned more from the discussions in those classes than i have at pretty much any other time in my life (at least in a school environment).
i certainly lecture from time to time briefly about certain character archetypes, or certain literary techniques, and those kinds of things. but these students are all experienced readers. they infer these things if you hint at them. they don't need to learn what the hero's quest is. they can see it, and talk about it, and understand its value and also the value in deviating if you're a writer. i also have lots of small checks built into the class to make sure they're keeping up on the reading and paying attention in class (and two big checks in the form of a midterm and a final). but it's just strange. i've never taught a class like this, and it's odd to have a class that puts most of its value in discussion rather than lecture and regurgitation/revision. it's odd to think that students will come out of this class having read 8 new books, and that's (largely) it. when teaching comp 101 (and even 201), we sort of have this idea impressed upon us that we're the gateway to our students' ability to write at a college level, which in turn is the gateway to the rest of their entire future success. of course, that's aggrandizing and a little ridiculous in some ways, but i guess what i'm getting at is that with the impression we're giving as budding comp teachers, it's easy to convince yourself that you're doing god's work if you have an off day. there's not a lot of room for crisis of purpose. that's not the case anymore.
that said, we're finishing up talking about Snow Crash tomorrow and we'll be moving on to neil gaiman's American Gods on friday. can't wait.
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