My Left Toe
The Name is Slick
What’s the Use
Fish Bass
Quadraphonic Toppling
The Happy Whip and Dung Song
Insects
Title Track
Albert
'Reviewed by Ian Oakley.
| Track Listing: My Left Toe |
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OK I'm biased – Phish, to me, are the most important band of the 90s.
If you’re reading this and are not American you will be saying to yourself WHO…?
Well, Phish in America are currently in financial / ticket sales terms the biggest live act of them all.
People very simply describe their sound as "The Grateful Dead meet Frank Zappa" or "Or a melodic Grateful Dead". As a European approaching their music, although the Dead and Zappa influences are very apparent, you can however add other diverse influences such as The Allman Brothers / Hendrix/ Focus /early Genesis and Hawkwind. Each masters of their chosen instrument these people can just about play anything - What other band could, as a second set at one of their gigs, play a note perfect version of the whole of The Who's Quadrophenia only a week after starting to rehearse it? They have also covered the whole of the White Album as set 2 of a 3 set gig! - DW
The Siket Disc (named after the recording engineer John Siket) is a collection of instrumental jams left over from the recording sessions of Phish's last official release "The Story of the Ghost". It is also, in my opinion, a better album than "The Story of the Ghost".
Phish have taken a break from live performing over the past six months and their keyboardist, Page McConnell, has used some of this time to take the best of these live jams and edit them into the nine tracks we find on this CD.
'My Left Toe' finds Phish jamming around a recurring basic chord structure very reminiscent of the type of thing U2 and Brian Eno were doing on the Passengers CD or maybe even Ummgaumma era Pink Floyd.
'The Name is Slick' - choppy wah wah guitar – Late night smoky jazz club groove.
'What’s the Use' - the highlight of this release. Trey Anastasio keeping his lead guitar on the very verge of feedback comes up with a solo I can only describe as Fleetwood Macs Albatross meets Jimi Hendrix Third Stone from the Sun. Mike Gordons bass accompaniment is slow heavy and almost subsonic. Jon Fishmans percussion gentle and precise. Page McConnells piano work hypnotic and his synthesiser sweeps extremely spacey. I cannot believe that this is just a jam and not a piece of music they have been performing for years. An absolute delight.
'Fish Bass / Quadraphonic Toppling' (What a wonderful title)- soundscape experiments.
'The Happy Whip and Dung Song' – Sounds just like a mad psychedelic merry-go-round ride. Immaculate percussion work.
'Insects' – Yep that’s how I would describe it.
'Title Track' – Another soundscape that builds to a crescendo of all instruments – Imagine Hawkwind covering the end section of Day in the Life.
We end the CD on the delicate drifting guitar plucking of 'Albert'.
This CD is not a full commercial release and is only available from Phish themselves. You can buy over the net at the official Phish site http://www.phish.com/
Find out more about this band at http://www.phish.net/ - a huge site run by fans for fans.
If you are interested in hearing more of this band, other than The Siket Disc, I can wholeheartedly recommend the following CDs (all available at the official site for less including shipping than UK store prices): -
For progressive Rock lovers – Junta
Mainstream rock - Billy Breathes
Psychedelic / Improvised - A Live One
For a bit of everything (my favourite) – Lawn Boy
And also note that due to their wonderful policy of allowing fans to record concerts there is masses of Phish stuff out there on the net for free. All you need to do is download the music and a suitable MP3 player such as WINAMP.
Enjoy !