#ripcords

The first is that Phish is once again willing and able to produce thrilling, complete jams on a scale that they haven’t in a decade. They are venturing towards that unknown, dangerous space where failure is an accepted, even desired aspect of their entire enterprise. It is likely that Phish was either not willing or able to immediately access this space upon their return to the stage in 2009. 3.0 has been the real #SlowBuild.

What we learn from this is that Phish is once again at the cutting edge of improvisational rock and roll. The true progressive artist does not fear failure, instead they embrace its likelihood. “Try again, Fail again, Fail better” as Samuel Beckett once wrote, an artistic philosophy that underpinned his entire Nobel-winning career. One cannot innovate and continually delve into the “new” without such failures; for proof of this we can look at jams such as Alpharetta’s “Piper,” the Gorge “Crosseyed and Painless,” and even Dick’s “Chalkdust Torture,” artworks that thrill and delight, but are more than just decoration. They are difficult pieces of art whose beauty may not be immediately evident, in the same way that a difficult novel requires re-reading or a modernist painting confounds our internal aesthetic compass.

Over the past few years, and at an accelerating clip, Phish reconnected to their avant-garde sensibility, the same thread that carried them through their previous career peaks. It is ALWAYS when Phish is most innovative that their artistic production is greatest and most significant. The excitement of pushing boundaries, in the process of their own evolution, streams through their entire catalog, enlivening entire sets, shows and tours.

The second, related lesson of the “Tahoe Tweezer” is that when Phish decides to “stretch their legs” in an improvisatory moment, it is likely to sound far different than the longer jams of their past. This is due to several factors none more pronounced than, as a whole, the individual band members are far better musicians today than ever before. Their capability to both listen and co-create together in real time is also unparalleled in rock and roll history, and beyond.

Last year we saw the band jamming in a predominantly “Cubist” style; they would cycle through their various jamming styles within a single jam. A typical 2012 jam might see Phish work through a funk section, a hopped-up Calypso portion, a blissy interstitial, a dip back into the “Storage” shed, before being polished off with a retro-bluesy rock peak or a Metally-outro (such as in Dick’s 12 “Light,” 12/28/12’s “Tweezer” or 12/30/12’s “Carini).

There are two evolutionary leaps in 2013’s jamming style compared with 2012’s. The first is Phish’s uncanny ability to develop musical ideas together. The second, related progression is Phish’s showcased interest in simultaneously intuiting and crafting the distinct musical environment necessary to carry those initial ideas to fruition. Though these innovations are best exemplified in the latter jams of tour, Phish was clearly working through this, amidst other artistic concerns (such as revivifying their older jam vehicles), from the tour’s kickoff in Bangor. One need only to listen to the 07/06 “Carini,” 07/16 “Chalk Dust,” or 07/22 “DWD” to understand this stylistic growth. The Gorge's "Crosseyed and Painless" and "Undermind," preceding Tahoe by only a few days cannot be ignored either as those jams were pregnant with kinetic evolution. You can hear the band growing together, adjusting to new frontiers of musical interplay, the groundwork was being laid for a new intra-tour plateau.

The “Tahoe Tweezer” contains multiple unique peaks and importantly each of those peaks occurs within the “correct” musical space for that specific peak. This is a major evolution from the manner in which the band “peaked” their jams in the 90’s and early 2000’s when they were most likely to inhabit minimalist groove spaces for long stretches of time, in order to unearth compelling musical ideas. But they very often could not, and perhaps didn’t even recognize the need, to develop those ideas in a specific musical space.

But just as we shouldn’t judge 2013 by 1997’s standards, it would be reductive to judge 1997 based on Phish’s current abilities. How outrageous might 1997 have been if Phish had the ability, as they do now, to cycle through all the musical styles they innovated over the years in a single jam, using each style to fit their musical ideas into? In fact, 1997 was just the beginning of Phish's last great growth spurt. All the sonic grounds they would discover and employ in their music from then on were of course not available to them. Those spaces are exceptionally available today.

In the mid-to-late ‘90’s and into the 2000’s, Phish was still mapping their stylistic topography. The bands most furtive era in this regard is undoubtedly 1997-2000 as they used their bedrock foundation of funk through which they could carefully, painstakingly add new layers, sounds and musical spaces. Hence the molasses funk of Europe 1997 which gave way to the hyper (cow) funk of Fall which in turn modulated into a maximalist style in 1998. Phish then mixed in an ambient sensibility with Lemonwheel’s “Ambient Set” breaking things down all over again, only to add even more layers during 99’s techno-futurist run up to Cypress.

But back to the “Tahoe Tweezer.” The first peak, a minor key fusillade occurring around the 17th minute, is beholden to a major key glimmering that Mike, Fish and Trey develop in unison during the 12th minute. The next five minutes involves the simultaneous discovery and creation of the necessary musical environment to see that seed of an idea take root and eventually sprout. They pivot keys, dynamics, techniques, tonalities and tempos in order to get there. And they do so as one. This is musical genius. It’s, as @waxbanks intuited several weeks ago, “the new form.” It’s “Life During Wartime.” How apropos.

The second peak is a Trey-led, Page-accented space with an contagious flow that awakens and primes the collective crowd energy. After some standard vamping and tightening, Trey enters with a delicate phrase in the 23rd minute (22:35 on official recordings) that both continues and extends this motif. Doing what he is perhaps more adept at than any other guitarist, Trey turns the phrase around, exploring the underside of it, beholding it for his partners. Boldly, Fishman steps up to support him while Mike engages a thick, whompy envelope filter evening out the total sound spreading out the group dynamic like a good schmear.

This leads directly to Trey’s three solo peaks. But even though they are Trey-dominated peaks, he made them with us. This moment could not exist anywhere else but then, in the 28th minute of a West Coast “Tweezer.” Phish, and specifically Trey, created that environment likely without any foreknowledge of what was about to occur. The jam had already been pristine to that point. Did Phish ever think they’d be here again? In the 28th minute of a jam with the tank full and the pistons immaculately firing. And with the best yet to come? No. Never. Not ever.

And yet there we were in a parking lot in Tahoe in the middle of a week, mid-summer, the year 2013, America, the Gorge, Chicago and the East Coast still visible in the rearview mirror and San Francisco just a few hundred miles down the road. And Dick’s beyond that. And then Fall Tour. And then and then and then...

Recognizing something is happening and having the wherewithal to get out of “IT’s” way is just one of seemingly minuscule creative decisions that paid enormous dividends for Phish in Tahoe. At least 90 seconds before the “Woo’s” began you can hear Trey coaxing out the necessary rhythmic pause. This peak, this glorious, body-shimmering peak sees Trey just grab completely ahold of, just like we want him to, exactly as we all need him to, playing directly into our guitar g-d fantasies we all share. The fantasies that Trey showed us were OK to have, fantasies that could and would and should have the happy ending we all deserve. He wanted us to be happy. He really really wanted us to be happy.

He grabs it, of the music, and of the enormous crowd energy, of his whole life, and he annihilates it. And then he does it again. And again. Each time spilling the energy built into a raucous guitar-driven peak that sounds like the culmination of something we’ve all been building towards since 2009, since 2004, since 1983, since. With us, for us, because of us.

And borrowing a page from 2012’s playbook, the last and final peak of “Tahoe Tweezer” embraces a retro-bluesy feel as Phish returns to the body and soul of “Tweezer.” Much like 12/28/12’s “Tweezer” or Dick’s ‘12 “Light,” the last moments of “Tahoe Tweezer” have that concluding quality, a concise closing argument for Phish to show us, once and for all, just what it is they find when they feel comfortable to step so deeply, so thoroughly, into the freezer.

Trey Anastasio changed the course of Rock and Roll. He did it in 1983. He did it in 1988. He did it in 1993 and again in 1995, 1997, and perhaps never more so than on the millennial New Year. He did it again in Virginia in 2009 and at Dick’s in 2012. And most recently he did it in Tahoe smack dab in the middle of Phish’s 30th year together.

Lastly, and perhaps most intriguingly, the enduring lesson of the “Tahoe Tweezer” may be a bit uncomfortable for all of us, no matter which side of the “jam length” fence you happen to come down on: “What if the Tahoe Tweezer just isn’t that great? What if it’s just long? And what if its length is what we are so attracted to, even more so than its specific musical qualities?”

What if the lasting effect of the “Tweezer” from Tahoe was that it forced a confrontation with Phish’s past? If the “Tahoe Tweezer” is simply a very good long jam, as opposed to “the best thing the band’s ever done,” (or something close to it) perhaps this would send us all back to the drawing board as it were, reconsidering the very framework we use to judge Phish’s career.

We would have to go back through Phish’s catalog, re-listening to the bands’ commonly-agreed upon “best jams” as well as our personal favorites with a refreshed criteria and renewed sensibility. We might have to re-evaluate everything we think we know and feel about Phish’s jams. What is a jam? What makes a jam beautiful? What makes a jam important or relevant to their career as opposed to a jam that is merely beautiful or decorous?

Now that we have a contemporary template of what a great and long jam sounds like today we can more effectively compare and contrast Phish today with Phish then. What would we hear? Would we hear a band in much fuller control of their group sound? Would we hear a band with a directional focus that far outpaces the “best” jams from the 90’s and early 2000’s? Or would we remain steadfast that ‘95, ‘97, ‘99 or ‘03 contained “the best.”

There is absolutely nothing wrong, and in fact much correct, about truly enjoying--and believing to be "beautiful"--a jam predicated on a raw unconstructed noise space (1994-1995) or a long, stylistically consistent groove (1997-2000) or even the raw, embellishments common to 2.0’s best works. But to use that subjective preference as a weapon against improvisations that are decidedly not that in order to hammer home the idea that Phish lacks some power they once possessed, or that there art is inferior to what it once stood for, fails to even attempt an approach at an objective truth.

“Tahoe Tweezer” reveals Phish’s ability to easily extend jams as far as they like. Which also brings into sharp relief the very fact that over the past 5 years, they either haven’t wanted or have been unable to do so. It is likely a mixture of both. But its clear that until Tahoe, Phish’s musical goals were simply not what they used to be, and not what many want them to be. This is undeniable.

Anyone is free to judge Phish based on their own subjective criteria. Though we all know this, it bears constant repetition as its often the first victim in heat of the moment controversy and quick-fire debate online. We love and respect friends, and know so much more about them, when we hear that their personal preference is for the oozy-metallicism of 1999, or the manic-funk psychedelia of Fall 1997. Still others unabashedly declare the baroque embellishments of 2003 or the overwrought escapades of 2004 to be Phish's sonic apotheosis.

But no matter what personal preferences we bring into Phish, if we wish to effectively critique the band’s past, present or future, we have to do so within the parameters that Phish sets for themselves. We have to examine their music deeply in order to draw out what their precise musical goals are, to place them in their proper context and then use those lessons to critique their art. How it functions in the context of their career. This is where the fanbase's collective knowledge and connection to Phish’s career is essential. Not as a way to berate any era that isn’t our personal favorite, but to use that comprehension to draw out the goals Phish sets before themselves in the current era. Once that is done we can arrive at an acceptable framework to decide whether or not, for ourselves of course, but also together, Phish is staying true to their creative dictates. And whether or not they are succeeding as artists.

We can assume that Phish’s goals throughout 1997 were to fuse the rambunctious psychedelic noise-rock they had perfected up to 1995 with the groove-based minimalism of classic Funk. The genius innovation here of course was in using the Talking Heads album “Remain in Light” to catalyze an evolutionary pivot. These are the creative decisions that artists must be judged on. History has judged Phish’s decisions in late 1996 and 1997, and the art that resulted from those decisions, very well indeed.

In late 1997, Phish’s dominant mode veered towards extended groove-based jams the best of which they broke free from into more expansive musical vistas that in no way could have predicted before the experiment. Examples of these include the Great Went’s “Bathtub Gin,” Denver’s “Ghost,” Hampton’s “Halley’s Comet,” Auburn Hills’ “Tweezabella,” and MSG’s “ACDC Bag.” It’s not just about going Type 2. It’s where that Type 2 goes that defines Phish’s art.

Any attempt to critique current Phish while relying upon the vocabulary, framework or goal-set imported from another era is bound to fail. It’s just not relevant criticism. It’s subjective blathering.

What that means for today is that we have to critique 2013 Phish the way the music demands to be criticized. Luckily for us, Phish provides the very framework we require to understand their art, what systems its in dialogue with and what they are attempting to do with and through their performances. To extrapolate this thought just a touch further then, we can re-evaluate one of the central critiques leveled at modern Phish: they don’t jam as long as they used (because they either won't or can't) and therefore Phish isn't as great as they once were. "Tahoe Tweezer" upends this whole argument, effectively canceling it out.

But what about the dreaded “Ripcords?” Does the “Tahoe Tweezer” have anything valuable to say about this heinous, disrespectful term? Indeed it does. Whereas many see and use the term “ripcord” as a pejorative, we’ve always understood in exactly the opposite manner, as the ultimate sign of respect. For us, the only reason a jam would ever be aborted is because it wasn’t going anywhere. And Trey was proactively stepping in and saving both the band and their audience from less than the best the band had to offer. We believe that for the first few years of 3.0 Trey was exceptionally sensitive to re-occupying, even for a minute, the self-indulgent and ultimately destructive tendencies of the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s. Trey vowed to never ever let that happen again. And he didn’t. He was true to this vow.

“Tahoe Tweezer” proves Trey’s patience right all along. They were not ready to “go there” again, because to venture into that extra-liminal space is incredibly risky. Could you imagine a 32-minute jam in 2009? Personally, we’d rather not. Talking about pissing in the ears of your listeners...

Ultimately “Tahoe Tweezer” has, and will continue to serve, as a necessary recalibration upon the world of Phish criticism, thought and discussion. Phish dropped a giant nuclear bomb on their own timeline, effectively changing their history. They grabbed the markers that were once so firmly fixed on the late 90’s and mid 2000’s and repositioned them for all of us. And to that, there is really only one thing left to say…

WOO!