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Reviews of the Phish Companion
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Reviews of the Phish Companion
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Here we will collect as many reviews of Phish Companion as we possibly can. If you discover any reviews that we do not have below, please send the text with proper attribution to dan@www.phish.net. Thanks, and enjoy the reviews!
Feeling flat? None too sharp? Jazz up life with a music book Jimmy Durante advised us to start each day with a song, but why not start with a music book instead? ... If you want to listen to music while you read, here are two books that give you the opportunity: "The Phish Companion: A Guide to the Band and Their Music" (Miller Freeman Books, 913 pages, $22.95) covers the 17-year history of the band. It includes a full discography, song histories, concert set lists, interviews with band members, photos and a compact disc with three songs from the mid-'80s: "I Didn't Know," "Halley's Comet," and "Snootable Sunshine." -Robert Armstrong
Gone Phishin' Ever since Phish, the enigmatic Grateful Dead-esque jam band, went on hiatus this fall after 17 years of touring, its phans have felt bereft. Some business executives are so hooked on the quirky group that they privately admit to having rescheduled meetings in order to catch performances. Until Phish gets back onstage, here's a temporary phix: The Phish Companion (Miller Freeman, $23), an encyclopedic archive of every known set list, beginning with the first gig in 1983 (where a hockey stick doubled as the microphone stand) to last October's finale, featuring a Japanese version of "The Meatstick," a Macarena-esque song and dance. Want to know how many shows the band performed that fell on a Tuesday? (It was 109.) Its most-performed song? ("You Enjoy Myself," 454 times.) "Gamehendge" - a musical fable performed so seldom it has achieved Holy Grail status - is here revealed to be lead singer Trey Anastasio's thesis from his senior year in college. To order, call 800-848-5594. -Joshua Levine
The Phish Companion Will Turns The Fans On The Phish Companion: A Guide to the Band and Their Music (Miller Freeman Books, 2000) is the most comprehensive, accurate, and fun-to-read reference ever published on the innovative rock group Phish - the biggest cult band in America. The 915-page tome provides the most complete information publicly available about every (and I mean every) aspect of Phish's 17-year history, songs, shows and minute trivia. Also included [sic] is a music CD with the "Nancy Tracks" (3 songs). The Phish Companion was compiled by the Mockingbird Foundation, and proceeds will go to support music education for children. So its a worthwhile cause and a great band. You can't beat it so go buy it - especially if you're into Phish. If not, then get into the group. They're well worth the listen.
The gift of words and pictures about music Elsewhere in rock, few books are encyclopedic as The Phish Companion: A Guide to the Band and Their Music (Miller Freeman Books, $22.95). The 928-page paperback covers and cross-references set lists, albums, taping info, jargon and minute detail on the huge cult band that recently announced a temporary hiatus from touring. Exhaustive and authoritative, the book covers everything from the first shows at Goddard College in Vermont, where the jam band formed, to the band's Oct. 7 show at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, Calif. The reference book and fond appreciation by many Phish fans was produced by the Mockingbird Foundation, which plans to use proceeds to benefit childhood music education programs. By the time fans plow through this, the band might be ready to get back on the road again.
The Skinny: Phish phacts Know a Phish Phanatic who's depressed about the band's recently announced hiatus? Cheer him up with "The Phish Companion: A Guide to the Band and Their Music," a book that chronicles the where, how, and when of every Phish song ever played. Trace the path of your favorite song. Look up a concert you attended and check the set list. Read the history and evolution of each Phish song. Brush up on your Phish terminology. It even comes [sic] with a "not sold separately" three-song CD. Thousands of fans contributed to this thick tome of Phish facts, verified and compiled by the Mockingbird Foundation, a nonprofit group of Phish fans. And it doesn't miss a beat: It's got fan testimonials and show reviews, a subjective list of the best song versions, guest artists (Sarah McLachlan? Steve Wright?? Kid Rock???), scientific charts and graphs, statistics, and maps. These people are seriously obsessed! Proceeds from the book ($22.95, Miller Freeman Books) will be donated to charities supporting music education for children. -Katie Johnston
Hey Shoppers: Consider the Gift of Words and Pictures About Music Still need gift ideas? Following are some books for the music lovers on your list: "The Phish Companion: A Guide to the Band and their Music" (Miller Freeman Books, $ 22.95) - The 928-page paperback covers and cross-references set lists, albums, taping info, jargon and minute detail on the huge cult band that recently announced a temporary hiatus for touring. Exhaustive and authoritative, the book covers everything from the first shows at Goddard College in Vermont, where the jam band formed, to the band's Oct. 7 show at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, Calif. The reference book and fond appreciation by many Phish fans was produced by the Mockingbird Foundation, which plans to use proceeds to benefit childhood music education programs. By the time fans plow through this, the band might be ready to get back on the road again. -news services
A serenade by this year's crop of music books: Random Ramblings "The Phish Companion", The Mockingbird Foundation.
-Jim Catalano
Gift Books Just as the group's reputation obliterates all others in rock, "The Beatles Anthology" (Chronicle, $65) eclipses all other books in the pop music field this season. ... Elsewhere in rock, few books are as encyclopedic as "The Phish Companion: A Guide to the Band and their Music" (Miller Freeman Books, $22.95). The 928-page paperback covers and cross-references set lists, albums, taping info, jargon and minute detail on the huge cult band that recently announced a temporary hiatus for touring. Exhaustive and authoritative, the book covers everything from the first shows at Goddard College in Vermont, where the jam band formed, to the band's Oct. 7 show at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, Calif. The jam-packed reference book and fond appreciation by many Phish fans was produced by the Mockingbird Foundation, which plans to use proceeds to benefit childhood music education programs. By the time fans plow through this, the band may well be ready to get back on the road again. ... -Courant Arts Staff
Looking for some real music geeks? Go Phish Whatever our personal passions happen to be, they all hold the power to turn us into the comic-book guy from The Simpsons on occasion. There's a point where love for career or hobby or creative pursuit teeters over into obsessive trainspotting, where enjoyment or appreciation of the Thing That Gives You Pleasure simply for what it is gets replaced by an anal-retentive focus on minutiae and trivia. Nothing really wrong with that, of course. Sometimes, an anal-retentive focus on minutiae and trivia can be a passion in itself. And, hey, as long as you're not gonna jabber on about it over dinner or while sitting next to me on a six-hour transcontinental flight, we don't have a problem. It's usually those public displays of passion, though, that make you wonder if people have completely lost sight of why they developed their passions in the first place. Does the audiophile who spends days in his meticulously designed media room perfecting the speaker placement for his $75,000 sound system really hear any of the music he's amassed on DAT? Did that guy encased in his custom-made Klingon outfit really get into Star Trek because it would someday provide him with an opportunity to discuss the relative number of times Sulu and Chekhov occupied the captain's chair during the original series' three-year run? Do loud-mouthed connoisseurs of beer, wine and pot derive any pleasure from their libations other than being insufferable bores at parties? Guess passion makes you do strange things Committed music geeks - and I am enough of one to have made music geekdom my profession - are among the worst offenders. Whether we find it transporting, uplifting, soothing, inspirational, galvanizing, cathartic or whatever, ultimately, music is just fun. Whatever you take from it, it's still, at heart, a source of enjoyment. Yet rarely has so much quasi-scientific scrutiny been applied to such an intangible entity. We're often so busy collecting, cataloguing, mixing, taping, ranking and generally dissecting our enormous record collections that we don't so much listen to music anymore as process it. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to The Phish Companion. This exhaustive, encyclopedic ``guide to the band and their music'' landed on my desk this week to relative indifference. It's nothing personal - I've just never quite been able to ``feel'' Phish the way the post-Dead jam-band crowd does, and find the kind of endless, indulgent and painfully earnest jazz-like noodling favoured by that movement a tad wearisome. But, man, this thing is out of control - more than 900 pages (!) of graphs, maps and statistical charts detailing every physical and musical movement made by the New England troupe over the last 17 years (well, not every movement: We're spared calendrical enumeration of each member's trips to the toilet). Wanna know how many times Phish has performed Neil Diamond's ``Cracklin' Rosie'' throughout its career? It's here (48, for the record), cross-referenced with the locality and date of each show, which song preceded it in the set, which song succeeded it in the set, the percentage of Phish shows in which it appeared, the number of Phish shows since it last appeared and on and on and on. Plus, you get a little critical insight into how the song fits into Phish lore. Apparently, ``Cracklin' Rosie'' was ``in regular and steady rotation throughout all of 1992 and 1993,'' but has become ``a rarity in the modern Phish era.'' Drummer Jon ``Fish'' Fishman even saw fit to invent a set of ``Cracklin' Rosie Cymbals'' (``Two small cymbals, one with the letter `B' and the other with the letters `AH,' would merge as one to signal the famous `BAH, bah bah bah bah' chorus'') specifically for use during the song. Oh, and if you want a decent bootleg version of the tune, try finding a tape from Dec. 29, 1994 - but, ``of course, all of you have the version on 12/29/94 by virtue of its appearance in the same set as the monumental and indispensable Providence `David Bowie.' '' Hang on, I'm a little dizzy. Every music fanatic gets hung up on completism and little details - if anyone out there's holding onto early My Bloody Valentine recordings made before Kevin Shields started singing, by the way, give me a shout - but the extent to which The Phish Companion takes this obsession is truly baffling. What possible use is there in knowing that Phish hasn't played ``F--- Your Face'' in its last 1,097 shows? And surely even the most devout ``Phish-head'' would blanch at such pointless, graphically rendered observations as: ``Oddly, what seems most closely related to sales is the length of the title: Sales were strongest for earlier albums with shorter titles, and dropped off with the wordiness of recent titles.'' All this sports-like quantification seems a bit of an anathema to the Phish tribe - which has the image of a beardie-weirdie mob of loved-up ``freedom'' dancers - doesn't it? Guess passion makes you do strange things. I'll leave you, though, with something a friend said to me once at a rave where I wouldn't stop nattering about the tunes emanating from the DJ booth: ``Look, I don't care what f---in' track it is - I just wanna listen to the music and dance.'' -Ben Rayner
Latest food for Phish fans comes in the form of a book If you have any interest in the jam band Phish, "The Phish Companion" (Miller Freeman Press) belongs at the top of your Christmas wish list. The book is the brainchild of the Mockingbird Foundation, a collective of Phish fans who wanted to raise money for charities using their love of all things Phish. They sent out the word to Phish fans all around the country for information on set lists, trivia, concert reviews, and everything else they can think of. The result is an amazing 915-page compendium that has the set lists and comments for every single show Phish fans played, plus club shows in the band's early days, side projects and guest appearances. There are statistical charts here that would shame a fantasy baseball fan, including a breakdown of how many times Phish played a given song in a given year. The book also traces the inspiration, inception, and development of a lot of the band's most beloved songs. It's a rich bounty of details. For example, Madison Phish fans may know that a naked man ran onstage during the band's 1998 show at the Kohl Center. But did you know that they referenced the streaker in the lyrics to "Carini" at several subsequent shows? Or that Phish's first documented appearance in Madison was at the Barrymore Theatre in 1990 (although some sources argue it was at Great Hall)? Or that Phish played Milwaukee on the night of the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase, and weaved O.J. references into several songs? Or that... Oh, just feed your obsession and buy the book. Proceeds from sales of "The Phish Companion" will support music education for children.
For Phish fans, news of the Vermont boys' decision to take an extended hiatus hits hard. Over the last 17 years, the band and its devoted audience have become an institution of inspired music and fan/band symbiosis. Phish freaks could count on hitting shows throughout the year: summer tour, fall tour, maybe a New Year's run. They could count on a steady output of new material, recorded or not. They could continue enjoying the ever-changing shades of the band's musical approach. But now with the band's understandable desire to take some time off, fans may need to find another outlet for their Phish-related jones. So comes a pair of books tailor-made for heads, each bound to help bummed fans cope. First off, there's The Pharmer's Almanac Volume 6 (524 pages, $18.95), the latest installation of a series started back in '95 by Phishhead Andy Bernstein and his friends. Like with its previous incarnations, the beef of Volume 6 is statistical information, show reviews submitted by fans, and an exhaustive chronology of set-lists spanning the band's career - this edition spans from the band's first gig in '83 at the University of Vermont to the group's "final" show this fall in Mountain View, California. In addition, this volume features in-depth profiles of every Phish side project; profiles of some of the more dedicated tape collectors/archivists; a complete database of venues/places played; info and photos of old Phish haunts around Burlington, Vermont; a piece on "The Evolution of Tom Marshall," focusing attention on the long-time Phish lyricist; and a look at lost set-lists that have surfaced since the last edition was released. This latest Almanac oozes with know-how as the guys behind this project have refined their ability to put so much information into one book. Then again, there's the Phish Companion ($22.95), compiled by the non-profit Mockingbird Foundation with proceeds set aside to support music education for children. At a whopping 924 pages, this book dwarfs the Almanac with its superior girth (and, um, karmic quality?). Divided into four main chunks of content including "The Band," "Songs," "Shows" and "Taping," the Companion covers much of the same territory as the Almanac with its requisite set-list chronology and hard-core stats, but attempts to one-up that book with a referential Phish dictionary and oodles of interesting fan essays with titles like "Billy Breathes - The Rock Opera" and "Dangerous Women in Phish's Music." Likely the most notable attention-grabber is a series of exclusive interviews with key members of the Phish family, including Tom Marshall, old-school Phish friend Aaron Wolfe (forever immortalized as a character in the legendary Gamehendge song-cycle), lighting wizard and resident fifth bandmember Chris Kuroda, official Phish tape archivist Kevin Shapiro and others. As a collaborative effort between the project's organizers and literally thousands of Phish fans who assisted in myriad ways from writing and editing to submitting original artwork, the Companion represents the Phish community at its generous and band-devoted best. Deciding which book to hunt down may be trying for heads. Then again, most diehards are likely to snatch a copy of each. After all, if nothing else, a break in touring means less money needed for concert tickets. So dig in - as the great and knowledgeable Icculus once said, "the sacred creed will be yours to devour, yours to seize and to obey. -Mark Watt
Imagine a book about a band that had performing for 17 years, with a fan base so selfless and dedicated that information about that band available online was compiled and distributed in print form, without anyone profiting at anyone else's expense. That band is Phish, and the book, The Phish Companion (Miller Freeman Books, $22.95), is the most amazing compendium and facts about a single musical group published to date. Imagine a Baseball Encyclopedia equivalent completely devoted to a musical group, and you begin to have an idea. The Grateful Dead may have been the first to encourage taping of sets, trading tapes, websites discussing the group and its concerts, but Phish, in this very comprehensive tome, has taken the concept into the 21st century. Starting with the birth of the band's four members in the 1960s and their biographies, the book covers the songs, the song history, the sets the band has played, the tapes, and an appendix full of statistics, charts and graphs. The finished product, which includes Phish's last shows at Shoreline in Mountain View, is a tribute both to the group's fans and the power of computers and the internet in a new century. But it's most of all a tribute to Phish, a band that's taking a year off the performance grind, but leaving behind this artifact [that] fans and curiosity seekers alike can examine, digest and savor, over and over. -George Powell
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