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The first annual UMBowl lived up to the hype this past Saturday night as Umphrey’s McGee gave the fans what they wanted over the course of four “quarters” at the intimate Lincoln Hall in Chicago. There were bust outs galore, debuts and reworked versions of old classics as well as plenty of mash-ups. Quarter one featured the band on acoustic performing songs that were voted on by attendees and webcast viewers including the first-ever live version of the Safety In Numbers cut The Weight Around, the first-ever acoustic take on Hurt Bird Bath and a completely out of left field cover of Interstate Love Song by the Stone Temple Pilots.

For the second quarter, the Chicago-based sextet improvised on themes provided by fans through text messages. Before the first round of improv keyboardist Joel Cummins asked fans to text in mashup ideas and the attendees and webcast viewers responded with a number of good ideas including Bathtub Gin & Juice, Ocean Billie Jean and Cemetery Walk This Way. The second category given by Cummins was “Numbers, Colors and Shapes” and the final one was “Make Us Laugh” which led to such texts as The Folk Prince of Bel-Air and Reggae Titties and Beer.

Furthur has launched a new website for its upcoming Furthur Festival and revealed some addition information about the three-day event. As previously reported, Furthur Festival will take place in Angels Camp, CA from May 28-30.

Throughout the weekend, the members of Furthur will perform six of the Grateful Dead’s most popular albums in their entirety. On Saturday the band will revisit American Beauty (Set I), Workingman’s Dead (Set II) and Anthem of the Sun (Set III), and on Sunday Furthur will reinterpret Blues for Allah (Set I), Aoxomoxoa (Set II) and Terrapin Station (Set III). Bassist Phil Lesh performed several of these albums in their entirety during his closing of the Warfield celebration. Furthur’s current lineup includes Lesh, guitarist Bob Weir, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti (The Dead, RatDog), drummer Joe Russo (Benevento – Russo Duo) and guitarist John Kadlecik (Dark Star Orchestra).

Furthur will also offer a public soundcheck on Friday night. In addition, the group promises that the Furthur’s core Grateful Dead members “will be jamming on several stages with some of their friends.” The weekend will also feature a spoken word stage boasting several Grateful Dead family members, “a trove” of iconic Grateful Dead memorabilia, a late night jam and rare recordings presented by Dead archivist David Lemieux.

This is nothing new, artists have been lifting chord progressions, rhythms, melodies, licks etc. for ages. Some are more apparent than others, and some go as far as copyright infringement. Many will remember the ordeal that occurred years ago when the Stones released “Has Anybody Seen My Baby”, only to find out later that Keith Richards had very obviously lifted the melody from K.D. Lang’s “Constant Craving”. Or as any educated music fan knows, Zeppelin blatantly stole “Whole Lotta Love” from the Small Faces’ “You Need Lovin’”. Or similarily the “Lemon Song”, which is direct lift off both Robert Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues” and Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killin’ Floor”. Some say that Robert Plant stole his entire singing style from Steve Marriot of the Small Faces.

While Phish are most often compared to the Dead, their music hardly resembles the Dead’s. Instead, Phish cited a much wider, and deeper, source of influences. All of these various artists contributed to Phish’s sound, or songwriting, in some way. We’ve talked about the influence Genesis had on Phish, and as many of you know, it was quite substantial. But there are others who have played a role in developing Phish’s sound, such as Zappa, Ravel, Jimi Hendrix, and even Leonard Berstein (West Side Story). Today, we take a look at some of these major influences, and their specific effects on Phish’s music.