Halloween 2014: The BLACK ALBUM
Is THIS What We Wanted?
Well, thanks for asking Mike. Yes, indeed, this is exactly what many, if not nearly all of us, wanted. But it’s also a question we’ve returned to again and again since the end of that remarkable tour-closing Phish run.
Phish finished their at times uneven Fall Tour about as strongly as they could have with 5 bravura performances in San Francisco and then Vegas. It was this Phish that we hoped would show up in Washington and California. Alas, sometimes. you get what you need.
And yet, with what the band was able to produce not only on All Hallows Eve, but throughout their triumphant return to Las Vegas, it’s difficult to stay aggravated at them for too long. Jam junkies — those who live and die by Phish’s extended improvisations — may feel unfulfilled by the number of keeper selections that would otherwise keep their anxieties at bay in this brief off-season. But with the achievement on Halloween, it is exceedingly difficult for the majority of Phish fans to express much, if any, frustration at all.
The warm waves and sultry nights of Miami beckon us. Your wait is Short.
But, to return for a second to Mike’s question, from his tasteful and poignant Leonard Cohen cover he selected to close out the band’s Halloween show, “Is this what we wanted?”
In order to effectively answer his question, we first have to have a clear picture of what exactly it is we “got.”
- What we got was a revisionist art rock interpretation of an obscure cultural phenomenon.
- What we got was brilliantly produced — and executed — music theatre kitsch.
- What we got was a band flexing its creative muscles yet again.
- What we got was a band successfully negotiating their own Halloween tradition with another masterful pivot.
- What we got was a handful of absolutely filthy new Phish grooves to dance to.
- What we got was possibly the finest Halloween performance of Phish’s entire career.
I am sure this list can be added to, another mark of the overall beauty of the evening. An immersive experience like Chilling, Thrilling is an open ended invitation for fans of all kinds to define it in their own ways. Wide open canvas. A blank space.
The predominant impression in our heads was one of theatrics. This was Phish — as we said before — flexing their creative muscles, pulling together wildly disparate strands of their ever-expanding artistic sensibilities and capabilities, and crafting a unique one of a kind experience. Part dinner theater, part Broadway, part rock opera. Add in costumes, makeup, choreography, set direction and SUPERB lighting and you’ve got yourself a pretty heady set. Or do we call these “Acts” now? That’s a great question for future thinking.
The other thing that continually struck us was the conceit of using an undead Esther — on its own a funny little throwback to Esther’s death in Vegas in 2000 (“She dies, She’s dead”) as Narrator. As Phish is a band with a long history of similar narrations, this was turning things “upside down.” 20 years later as it were. If Halloween 1994 was was The White Album. This was the BLACK ALBUM. This was Phish LISTENING.
The structure here is really fascinating to us. Esther emerges from her crypt before and after every song to tell a story. Just a little sketch. An impression. Esther was imagining an environment for Phish to inhabit, musically. Not just inhabit, build on, make, create. Here are words, now you interpret for us Phish, take this image, scene, mood, and create for us. The real time component of this plays a part, for even if the music was composed previously, as it most definitely was, at least in some respects, the theatrical element of the evening required a suspension of disbelief. We were asked to accept that this was all happening right then and there, not that it was some choreographed or “staged” happening. This positive tension imbued the Halloween set (act) with added vigor.
It was also jarring.
Not knowing what to make of the stage at first, with the callback to the Storage Jam. The band is in there right? Can you see them though? Just a silhouette. These questions were answered over time but certainly added to the deliciously spooky vibe inside the room. In a sense, Phish reset our understanding of them, of our expectations, yet again, something that, as we’ve seen over the past few years, and indeed over the course of their career, they continually like to do, whether through Halloweens, Improv Sets, NYE gags and the like.
The dream of Phish creating entire musical landscapes or “stories” in real time, with nothing more than a prompt from a “narrator,” became real for us.
In traditional literary theory, this device is called “Diegesis,” defined as “the telling of the story by a narrator. The narrator may speak as a particular character or may be the invisible narrator or even the all-knowing narrator who speaks from “outside” in the form of commenting on the action or the characters.”
This is how Esther functioned for the band on Halloween, at once both a shadow, or “Ghost,” of their own storied catalog, but also as all-knowing, omnipresent storyteller, instructor. Back from the dead to command Phish? Who was really in charge on Halloween after all? Was this a ritual of some kind?
Let’s not forget the additional layer of the “Buried Alive > Ghost” show opener. Perhaps by summoning Esther in their latest alchemical experiment, Phish was relinquishing control to the spirits of Halloween. Eventually revealing themselves as what? An undead, zombie rock band in White Tie — the most formal attire there is? Or their own ghosts from Vegas runs of the past. Was this an exorcism? The Grateful UnDead?
Did Phish find themselves shipwrecked somewhere in the underworld (or is it “Undermind”) forced to play for their salvation? Or doomed to narrate, like Scheherazade in 1001 Nights, in order to spare their souls?
Food for thought. If nothing comes down…
But let’s switch for a moment into the music itself: it seems to us that Phish used Esther’s story prompts as showcases for what they do absolutely better than anyone, which is make us dance. That is, when Phish is called upon to “make music” the first, middle and last thing they do, is groove. Phish thinks, acts, breathes in groove. It is who they are. And it is what they are. They are just rhythmic gentlemen who like nothing more to lock into one another as a start, and then use that base to create. It is their mode, when all else is distilled. And for many, this truth will harken back to the heady pre-Kardashian days of the 90’s when apathy reigned supreme and Phish first emerged as “The Whitest Funk Band in America.”
We heard someone smart say that one of the reasons they so enjoyed Chilling, Thrilling compared to Wingsuit simply came down to how danceable the sets were. The Chilling, Thrilling set was nothing if not imminently danceable. The comparisons really should stop there though as Wingsuit and Chilling, Thrilling are vastly different experiments and node points that have really very little to say about one another. To us, they were each successful in their own ways. We loved Wingsuit at the time, and have been fervent supporters of Fuego and its attendant material. We’ve enjoyed watching songs like Wombat, 555, Waiting All Night, Winterqueen and Wingsuit mature in the bands rotation over the course of the year. And that’s to say nothing of Fuego which every time out redounds back on the idea that Phish is on Fire. Indeed, Phish has been “on fire” since 2012, if not a touch earlier. Which is just another way of saying Phish is just Phish again. Which is always true. Or never. Or both.
But is this what the band wants? To be onstage, playing just the jams, for their own salvation? If they give us exactly what we want, does that mean they are our prisoners? Are they captive to us? And if so is that healthy? Is Phish OK?
Do we decide the bands fate? And if so, what is our responsibility to them? And we’ll leave you with one last question…is Phish only about jams? Or is the twinned combination of songs and jams that makes the enterprise whole, and that keeps everyones needs satisfied? Phish took the biggest risk of their career last Halloween, playing an album of new songs, live. Their experience with Wingsuit seems to have invigorated the band, as new material often does for touring acts.
When Mike asks if we want to “live in a house that is haunted, by the ghost of you and me,” he very well could be asking the fan base if we truly prefer to go backwards, perhaps to 1999 or 2004, when long-extended jamming was their primary mode. Let’s not forget what both of those year’s portended for Phish’s future.
We must always work to balance what we want from Phish with what they want, and need. This time, we got to dance. And for that, we are, as always Gratefully unDead.
