jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Fewer movies than usual because I’m working on several top secret plans for world domination, we’re still catching up with The Wire, and my obsession with Daniel Plainview shows no signs of abating. (Check out the new entries in the contest.) The notable exception was Etgar Keret’s Jellyfish, a sweet film that plays like minor-key Israeli version of Magnolia. I also tried to talk Marcy into watching Southland Tales, hoping that Richard Kelly’s sophomore disaster might improve upon second viewing. The answer was a resounding no — we didn’t make it past the 15-minute mark.

It’s been a good week for concerts, though. I never blogged about the March 19 benefit for Scotty Hard, a cause that brought all the champions of the downtown groove scene to the Highline Ballroom. My personal highlight was an outrageous and all-too-brief set by elusive dub god Bill Laswell, accompanied by Bernie Worrell. This weekend, Ratdog was back at the Beacon — unlike the Rolling Stones, they’re a band that actually belongs there. I missed Thursday’s sit-ins by Jimmy Herring, Warren Haynes, and Steve Molitz, but witnessed Friday’s ups (Tomorrow Never Knows! Hard Rain!) and downs (ridiculous sound problems during The Weight), as well as Saturday’s just-about perfect four hours of rock’n roll heaven. And now you’ll have to excuse me while I retire to my favorite secure undisclosed location.

The Wire. Season 3. ****
There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****
Jellyfish/Meduzot. Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, 2007. ***
Southland Tales. Richard Kelly, 2007. *

Ratdog
4/4/08 Beacon Theatre, New York NY
I: Jam > Playin’ in the Band > Tomorrow Never Knows > Tennessee Jed, Sitting in Limbo > West L.A. Fadeaway, Even So > October Queen > The Deep End > Big Railroad Blues
II: K.C. Moan, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, The Weight, Eyes of the World, The River Song > Stuff > Dear Prudence > China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
E: Casey Jones

4/5/08 Beacon Theatre, New York NY
I: Jam > Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Maggie’s Farm, Row Jimmy, Dark Star > Weather Report Suite > Let It Grow
II: You Win Again, City Girls, Victim or the Crime, Lazy River Road > Jack Straw > Dark Star > Stuff, Days Between > Two Djinn > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower
E: One More Saturday Night

From The Last Waltz to Shine a Light, most concert movies leave me wishing for a more democratic, inclusive view — even if they’re not directed by Martin Scorsese. Instead of focusing on faces and fingers, I find myself longing for wide shots, audience shots, the view of the stage and crowd as a whole. The usual approach implies that the camera is somehow superior to the regular flesh-and-blood attendee because it has VIP access to the close-ups. But the concert isn’t just in the guitarist’s fingers, and in my experience, the best bands know how to make the music fit the space and all the people in it. At the very best shows, it doesn’t matter where your seats are, or if you’re standing half a mile away.

More than any other band I’ve seen, Phish completely owned any place they found themselves in, from sweaty pubs to summer sheds, hockey rinks, Indian reservations, abandoned military bases, Madison Square Garden, and the top of air traffic control towers. There’s ample proof of this in a motherlode of videos I stumbled upon last night.

Among the stash of 300+ handheld clips (think Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That!) uploaded by YouTube user silverchair97, I want to draw your attention to a few choice tunes that emphasize the spectacular lighting design by Chris Kuroda, famous for improvising along with the band on the light board and sometimes referred to by fans as CK5 — the fifth member of Phish. (Once upon a time in downtown Prague, Kuroda paid Marcy a compliment — but that’s a story for another post.)

Who needs closeups of Mick Jagger’s cracked face (or Bono in 3D) when you can feast your eyes on Kuroda’s work, which manages to meld the sound, the crowd, and the stage into an oozing vessel of rock’n roll that can be appreciated from any angle?

Also Sprach Zarathustra (as always, a cover of the Deodato disco version from the Being There soundtrack rather than the Richard Strauss original Kubrick used in 2001):

The Velvet Underground’s Rock’n Roll in two parts:

The alien mothership has landed in this infamous jam out of Twist, from the Island Tour:

.. and a few more after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

From 1989 to 2001, the Wetlands Preserve flourished just off of New York’s Houston Street. Founded by a Deadhead, the club attracted rising bands in the burgeoning “jam bands” scene, along with ska and hip-hop acts, while maintaining an activism center that held “eco-saloons” and launched inventive street theater protests. Dean Budnick’s Wetlands Preserved, produced by second and final owner Peter Shapiro, is a heartfelt tribute to a joyous anomaly in New York’s nightlife scene that eventually surrendered to Tribeca’s increasing gentrification in the days following September 11.

Continue reading my review of Wetlands Preserved, opening March 14, on About.com.

Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Nightclub. Dean Budnick, 2006. ***

And here’s a video to go along with it: Ann Marie Calhoun and her brother Joe cover Phish’s “Stash” [via Andy Gadiel]:

I’ll take bubbly pop over self-righteous posturing any day, so we’ll lead this post off with the Pet Shop Boys’ brilliant cover of “Where the Streets Have No Name” (with a touch of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”)

With that out of the way, my review of U2 3D is now up at UGO: “You’ll thrill to the sight of a hundred thousand stoked fans! You’ll duck from under Bono’s flying sweat! You’ll read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — in 3D!”

• My review of U2 3D 

U2 3D. Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington, 2008. ***

I solemnly swear not to post about Phish’s Fall tour of 1997 again until, say, 2017, but today marks the tenth anniversary of the show that capped it all, when the udder ball exploded in Madison Square Garden, and it’s worth one last huzzah. The culmination of a remarkable tour and a no less remarkable holiday run, the three-set show featured a strange thing hanging from the rafters which was used to project trippy animation of cheese, olive loaf, and the New Year’s countdown. At midnight, it disgorged giant balloons.

Musically, the band had a hard time topping the previous night, with its bust-out of Allan Toussaint’s Sneakin’ Sally and the greatest encore in Phishtory, which supposedly cost them hundreds of thousands in MSG overtime fees. Still, between Emotional Rescue, a segue-happy second set, and Also Sprach Zarathustra > Auld Lang Syne > Tweezer for midnight (and Page crooning New York, New York to finish it off), 12/31/97 was a spectacular time. You can download the entire run for free; the incredibly funky 12/29 is also available from LivePhish.

Here’s the NYE97 clip from Bittersweet Motel. If you squint, you can make me out dancing like a fool somewhere in the 300s on the far right when the ball bursts.

And that’s enough nostalgia for now — I’ll spend the rest of the day looking forward. So, happy 2008 one and all. Perhaps I’ll see you tonight at the ReBirth? Either way — Prost Neujahr!

Previously:

• Phish Destroys America
• Down By the River
• Izabella

These are bittersweet days for the nostalgic Phish fan. The tenth anniversary of the legendary Fall tour of 1997 is bringing a few things into sharp relief: how lost we are with Trey in rehab and Mike in hiding, how we still haven’t gotten over Coventry, and how embarrassed we still are by just how much we love this band. Mike was right: they had another 21 years in them, easily. That’s the bitter part.

And the sweet part? As always, the music. I’ve been embroiled in a fiendish listening orgy, making my way through the tour set by set, often dropping everything I was doing to stand in awe of the continuously developing sound and earth-shaking improvisation. Since they first graduated to arenas in 1994, Phish had perfected its tension-and-release jamming for big venues, but it wasn’t until the low-pressure European tour of 1997 that they discovered new spaces and rhythms in the music — a style that came to be known variously as cow funk, intergalactic space funk, and porno funk. Whatever you call it, it was groovy and psychedelic and very, very tasty. Bow-chicka-wow-wow!

At the time, that magnificent noise, sometimes driving, rising, sometimes standing still in imperceptibly morphing waves, sounded like the future to me: this was the mothership. Now it comes heavy with nostalgia for a season when I was setting off on a road trip from the Deep South to New York City with a new haircut and a brand-new girlfriend, a promising writer with a funny name and an even funnier sensibility. I met my future Schwiegereltern, saw movies that never made it to Mississippi, and crashed the Mayflower Hotel with Andy Gadiel’s crew for an epic holiday run at the Garden — only the first of four memorable New Year’s Eves I spent with Phish. Ten years later, the band is gone but the girl’s still with me.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be listening to a lot more Fall 97, and I doubt I’ll be able to resist posting about it again. For now, here are a few tunes from the beginning of the tour, sorted by ascending dankness: Black-Eyed Katy is friendly enough, but anyone except the hettiest brahs might get hurt listening to Tweezer and Run Like an Antelope. (These are all audience recordings, which accounts for the somewhat muffled quality. Just turn it up. If you dig any of this, I highly recommend Live Phish 11, the official release of 11/17/97 Denver.)

From 11/13/97 Las Vegas, Black-Eyed Katy, a new song that defined the tour and later, with added lyrics, became The Moma Dance.

[audio:Phish-BlackEyedKaty-971113.mp3]

Gumbo from 11/14/97 Salt Lake City

[audio:Phish-Gumbo-971114.mp3]

Timber Ho! from 11/16/97 Denver

[audio:Phish-TimberHo.mp3]

The half-hour Tweezer that opened 11/17/97 Denver, and a cover of Jimi Hendrix’ Fire. Again, you can get this in soundboard quality on Live Phish 11.

[audio:Phish-Fire-971117.mp3]

[audio:Phish-Tweezer-971117.mp3]

Also Sprach Zarathustra and Run Like An Antelope from 11/19/97 Champaign

[audio:Phish-AlsoSprachZarathustra-971119.mp3]

[audio:Phish-Antelope-971119.mp3]

• More from This Month in Phish History
• Download every show from Fall 1997
• Setlists from the tour so far after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

All week, I’ve been checking back on PhilLesh.net, hoping for the promised photos from the show, reasoning that you can’t possibly post about Ryan Adams’ birthday party without at least one good shot of Ryan’s green knit pom pom hat. I’ll update if any hat photos ever surface; in the meantime, my own camera-phone shot of Phil seen through my friend Walter’s white shock of late-era Garcia hair will have to suffice.

The shows? Phenomenal. After Halloween’s cover extravaganza, Tuesday’s sets mingled classic rock standards — Dixie Down, Brown Sugar, Revolution — with Grateful Dead warhorses like Deal and Shakedown, and seeing Phil drop Other One bombs from the rail was bone-shatteringly good. I was just beginning to miss the ballads when Death Don’t Have No Mercy, sung by Jackie Greene, provided a rare treat, topped off by a sweet, sweet Brokedown Palace for which I happened to be the audience member closest to Phil. A deeply satisfying concert, as good as anything I’d ever hope to see from anybody who didn’t use to be in my favorite band.

But Monday was the real reason I’ll keep on coming back as long as this music is getting played. After a first set loaded with primal late-sixties Dead grooves enhanced by Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin on sax, the second set was pure Deadhead heaven. It happened to be Ryan Adams‘ birthday, reason enough for Phil to splurge and extend the show until after 1am for four hours of music filled with some of the best tunes in the Dead catalog, played with vigor, love, and inventiveness.

An informal poll conducted on the way out confirmed what we already knew: “That was profound” and “Wharf Rat dominated my skull.” Walter, who’d come in from Düsseldorf to see Phil for the first time since 1994, could hardly have picked a better time–if you’re going to take a transatlantic flight to a rock concert, this was the night. Two more shows this weekend top off what by all accounts has been a stellar 11-night run. Thank you, Phil.

Phil Lesh and Friends, Nokia Theater, 11/5/07
Set 1 (with Steve Berlin)
Brown-Eyed Women, The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion), Viola Lee Blues > Operator> Viola Lee Blues> Next Time You See Me> Viola Lee Blues, Chest Fever, Sugaree
Set 2 (with Ryan Adams)
Happy Birthday Ryan, Eyes of the World> Scarlet Begonias> China Cat Sunflower> Bird Song, Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad, Ripple, I Know You Rider> Uncle John’s Band> Dark Star> Franklin’s Tower> Dark Star
Encore: Wharf Rat

Phil Lesh and Friends, Nokia Theater, 11/6/07
Set 1: Bertha> Deal, Big River, Gone Wanderin’, Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Cosmic Charlie
Set 2: Brown Sugar> Shakedown Street> Revolution, Beat It On Down The Line> Cryptical Envelopment> The Other One> Death Don’t Have No Mercy> The Other One> Brokedown Palace
Encore: Not Fade Away

Tunes
For your listening enjoyment, audience recordings of Monday’s skull-dominating Wharf Rat encore, Tuesday’s Revolution, and Death Don’t Have No Mercy. Torrents for the Nokia run are up at etree.org in flac format, but if you’d rather grab mp3s, you can download 10/31 (312 MB), 11/5 (247 MB), and  11/6 (229 MB) while the bandwidth lasts.

[audio:WharfRat-071105.mp3]

[audio:Revolution-071106.mp3]

[audio:DeathDont-071106.mp3]

YouTube has a pro-shot clip from the 2005 Jammys, when Ryan first came out as a Deadhead, also with Wharf Rat. If you squint, you can spot me in the audience. Carefully, this clip is brutally cut at the ten minute mark — and Ryan’s not wearing any green knit hats, either.

At muckworld, we’re so bleeding edge that some of what we do goes straight from experimental to museum piece, without ever hitting that crucial middle phase of widespread success. Der Brennende Busch, an German-language online lit mag I founded and edited sometime in the last century, has been archived at Deutsches Literatur Archiv Marbach — you can now search for and dig through the proto-blog design, artwork by Dusty Domino, and a collection of stories, essays, poems, and multimedia pieces I’m still proud of.

Speaking of art work: my uncle-in-law Frank Ettenberg, an artist living and working in Vienna, sent along this painting, which I liked quite a bit. It’s called ‘Sea Swoosh’, approx 8 x 10″, acrylic on enameled composition board, and you can click it to enlarge. Frank’s portfolio.

Finally, news from everybody’s favorite red-headed guitar hero, Trey Anastasio. After his recent run-in with the law, Trey’s been holed up at an upstate rehab facility, but he just came out of hiding last Saturday to play a show with the latest incarnation of Phil and Friends. Every song on the setlist somehow referred to his troubles, but the extended arrest joke suddenly gave way to naked sentiment with the second-set appearance of the heavyweight Garcia ballad “Wharf Rat.”

You can download the whole show via bittorrent or watch some shaky videos. Let’s hope Trey gets to go on another furlough when Phil comes to the City next week for an 11-night-run at the Nokia, starting on Halloween. Here’s “Friend of the Devil” from Glens Falls: