oh kee pah

photo via this week on lot

Happy happy oh my friend! TWoL is one year old! Thank you to everyone for your continued support and encouragement, it means more than you know!

This week we have some old friends back to discuss the wrap up of leg 2 of Phish Summer Tour and the upcoming Fall 2010 Tour. Our guests are Scotty who runs YEMblog and also does work for Hidden Track on Glide Magazine, and an old favorite…Noob Laura! Although she might not be a Noob anymore, you’ll have to listen to find out the details.

Bringing some positivity to the Phish scene there was an announcement today that the Mockingbird Foundation and The Mimi Fishman Foundation has raised over $1 million dollars! Glad to see things like that a making some “mainstream” news instead of the JB jumper.

photo via techie talk

Longtime grandMA user Chris Kuroda, who’s marking his 22nd year as the lighting designer for the rock band Phish, has taken a pair of grandMA2 full-size consoles along on the musicians’ cross-country summer tour. Lighting programmer Andrew Giffin suggested using the grandMA2 for lighting control, and Kuroda reports that the two desks have been “a 100 percent complete and utter success. They’ve been incredibly wonderful – I’m very happy with them.”

Giffin was convinced that the grandMA2’s flexibility would be perfect for lighting Phish, a band known for musical improvisation, extended jams and performing a totally unique show each time it appears.

“Phish is a jam band. There’s no set list and you never know what song is coming next, so you have to pay attention,” Kuroda explains. “We need to program the lighting so we can grab anything very quickly. So I have the grandMA2 broken up into two worlds: one is a punter mode than runs on the fly and follows the music as it goes, and the other is a cue stack. Sometimes we’re changing cue times by hundredths of a second, and the grandMA2 gives me the flexibility to respond to these complicated requests better and easier than anything else.”

In a story that we’re sure won’t get as much play as the Jones Beach Jumper, two incredible organizations founded and operated by Phish fans – The Mockingbird Foundation and The Mimi Fishman Foundation – have announced today that they have raised and distributed a combined $1,000,000 for charity. Not only should each board member of those organizations be extremely proud of themselves, but so should every Phish fan that has contributed to these most worthy causes.

Unlike many non-profits, both foundations are run on an all-volunteer basis with no salaries, paid staff or offices. As such, you can rest assured that nearly all of the money collected goes right to the people who need it

photo via dog gone blog

It was just months ago that we were awaiting summer tour with no idea what was in store for us. Now here we are months later with a pile of highlights and memories that will be ingrained in our minds for years. I figured it would be the perfect time to go back and revisit some of the many highlights from the summer in one fluid audio post. As there are simply too many highlights to include in a single two hour listening session, I have chosen jams with the most transcendent moments.

photo via xanbo

Relix: Phish has always covered a range of artists. But last fall and this summer the band has placed a special emphasis on covering more contemporary songs including those by Neutral Milk Hotel, Tom Waits, TV on the Radio, Rage Against the Machine and MGMT. Can you talk about your decision to cover some of these acts more associated with the modern indie/alternative rock world versus the band’s more typical, classic rock covers?

Big Red: One of the other things that’s also really exciting now in my house is that I have a daughter going into eighth grade and a daughter going into tenth grade. And that was exactly the age I was when I really started to get serious about my love for music. And I can see it happening to them and they listen to stuff that I don’t listen to. It’s an incredible gift. I can kind of poke my head past their door and occasionally they’ll be playing something. My younger daughter got into Paramore and she took me to the Paramore concert at Webster Hall and I thought it was an incredible concert. I really liked the whole band. I loved the drummer and I thought the band was tight, the guitar players are tight and obviously the singer’s just fantastic. You know, I never would have gone to see those guys if my daughter wasn’t into it. I can see the world through their eyes a little bit, it’s exciting.

photo via mr. miner's phish thoughts

Following the blistering opening, the band took a musical step sideways into a rock pattern that retained roots in “Disease,” but simultaneously drifted from the song’s structure. Mike comped Trey’s lines with eclectic rhythms as Page infused the music with dirty clav hits. After Trey peaked his high-octane shred-fest, Phish began to darken the piece without losing their fire hose intensity. Trey began slicing the air with snarling rhythm licks while Mike’s creativity blossomed into the foreground. This is the first of several junctures that Mike pushes this “Disease” jam further into the unknown, eventually resulting in an effortless and filthy segue into “What’s The Use?” In each instance, the entire band hopped on Mike’s new direction, this time molding their musical play-doh into spacier realms.