intellectual properties

crying

so the vegas phish rumours are true – April 15-17th, the same fucking weekend of my firm’s annual environmental mediation training seminar that i’m coordinating. THE ONE WEEKEND I CAN’T GO. it’s something that i ALWAYS look forward to not just because of the band and how much i love them, but because so many of my friends gather for the event from the midwest and east coast and it’s such a wonderful community thing. i just had to endure the pain of not going to NYE and having to hear all about it, and now this. right in my own backyard.

and i thought yesterday sucked.

playing the odds

the phish rumours are flying around again…. waiting for the spring/summer/fall tours to be announced. every year this happens, and almost always it’s a bunch of crap and no one calls it right. currently the most prominent rumour is phish will be playing Vegas April 16-17th. this really sucks. the annual training course on environmental negotiation that i’m in charge of is the 15th and 16th. if i could get a flight out of oakland at 7:30 friday night…. would i make it in time for the show? probably not, but i could hit saturday night at least. damn. if it’s true, this is my punishment for my new jacket i think.

however, there are ALSO rumours of a spring run in Hawaii and/or a two day festival in Reno. now THOSE would be awesome. phish + hawaii or mountains = perfect weekend, either way.

another one bites the dust

ohhhh how incredibly jealous i am of friends who were in Miami last night for THIS. i haven’t really been paying much attention to the setlists because i figure they’re just gonna bring me down, but DAMN. Sand and Bathtub Gin>2001 is enough to make set one alone. and then L.A. Woman> Birds of a Feather> L.A. Woman>Makisupa Policeman??? that’s awesome. and OH MAN! We Want the Funk> P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)> Tear the Roof off the Sucker> One Nation Under a Groove “Love Fest”>and back into Makisupa Policeman with George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic? seriously – it doesn’t get much better than that, and then to follow up with an a capella version of Touch Me probably would have made even Jim Morrison smile until it hurt. and, finally, While My Guitar Gently Weeps for an encore is just sick.

i am so jealous i could cry. i’m not sure how tonight could top that (for my setlist preferences, anyway) unless Robert Plant comes out to sing some Zep tunes and thereby avoiding Trey butchering the vocals as usual, but i’m sure it will still be phenomenal.

as for us, not being in Miami and all, we’ll instead be attending the NYE carnival known as the Anon Salon Sea of Dreams 2004 here in SF, wherein we will be seeing Sound Tribe Sector 9, who some of you readers know is simply not one of my favorite bands (although i haven’t seen them since february 2001, which was almost 3 years ago, so maybe they’ve gotten better since then. who knows), along with a whole circus of other acts, including more than 20 DJs over the course of the night as well as Burning Man-style acrobatics, fire dancers, belly dancers, and a myriad of other performers. i myself, along with vera and a slew of others (now including jen!), will be dancing our asses off and hooping to our hearts’ content.

it should be a great way to bring in ’04, and then i have to wake up on time tomorrow to go and watch the Rose Bowl (Go Blue!) with other UMich friends who are in town.

i suppose i’ll have a long post later today or perhaps tomorrow reflecting on ’03, but for now, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing – whether in your pajamas watching the Ball Drop with ole’ Dick Clark or tripping your ass off in Miami, have a wonderful NYE.

cheddar x.1

i’m finally going to participate in a cheddar X, because it was apparently inspired by me.

choose a favorite band and answer the questions using song titles by that band. I am not going to name the band I’m using, so see if you can guess (no cheating by using Google to figure it out!) who the band is. here goes…..

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ranking phish

a recent email discussion involved people giving their listening order for phish albums; a.k.a. ranking your favorites. some people have ranked newer (1995-2002) albums over the old school (1989-1994) ones, and in fact didn’t even include junta on their list, which is one of my favorite albums of all time by ANYONE.

and i say… WHAT?

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news of the weird

so not only did mike gordon lead a young girl to a boat shed to photograph her without thinking that it might look suspicious to some people, he then got beat up by the girl’s Hells Angel dad: “The Hell’s Angels, who detained Gordon for police, were not, the sources say, gentle with sensitive areas of the rock star’s body.”

WTF, dude. use your brain.

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scents and subtle sounds

allie posted the lyrics to “scents and subtle sounds“, and i like them. and so i’m posting them too. enjoy.

If you would only start to live one moment at a time,
You would, I think, be startled by the things that you would find.
Like scents you never noticed, and many subtle sounds.
Like colors in the landscape and textures on the town.
Then the winds would lift you up into the sky above.
Where you’d be treated to a view of everything you love.
And if the moment passes, you should try it once again
For if you do it right you’ll find the moment never ends.

If you would stop and notice that we number every day
But allow the many moments left uncounted slip away.
You dont have to count them, just enjoy them one by one
And things would take a different hue and sparkle in the sun.
The winds would lift you up into the sky above
Where you would see a trail of treasure, memories you love.
A rainbow record of the thoughts and moments you’ve enjoyed
Arcs behind the Earth as spectral colors in the void.

spring fever

allie’s Gorge reviews are making me really really really really hate sitting at my desk right now. long hot summer afternoons, sleeping in, a good buzz early in the day, warm starry nights filled with jamming music, hours of barefoot dancing, the trance, the people, the crowd, the lights, the smells, the sounds …. all of it makes me just want to get up and leave for somewhere else.

i hate coming up with a title

well, doesn’t look like i missed much as far as setlists go, although Maze and Bowie are both fantastic set closers, and it would have been nice to be up there at the gorge with all my friends in the hot eastern washington sun, chilling in the warm night air amonst the phreaks, but i can’t really complain i guess. the weather here has been GORGEOUS, and although i had to work most of the day today teaching english to the little chinese kids, it’s going to be a beautiful evening and i hope to get a hike in before sunset.

the moment ends

last night’s show definitely was not as good as wednesday’s … even though we had better seats, the vibe on the lawn the first night was actually way better than being down in the seats – more people having fun and dancing up there. and, on the lawn we could see the video screens – from our seats last night we couldn’t see anything.

after some hassles getting to the show that sucked and kind of ruined the mood going in, we didn’t get there until after it had started. Set I was alright – the first half of it didn’t do much for me (although i enjoy Reba), and Moma Dance had it’s moments, but it wasn’t until Antelope started that i really started enjoying the show … and yay! i got an Antelope! it was a pretty good one too … not the best i’ve ever heard, but it still rocked the end of that set. the set was SHORT – when they left the stage after Antelope, i was surprised that the set was over already.

Set II – wayyyyyy too slow to start off with. 46 days is decent i guess…. but the rest of it up until 2001 had me groaning. but you got a Divided Sky! some of you are thinking. it’s a good song and everything, but it was not the best one i’d ever heard by far, and it’s still pretty slow. they should have saved that one for the Gorge. i was getting pretty bummed and we all really wanted them to JAM … after Velvet Sea i just about gave up, but then came 2001 -> DWD, and that settled it. the end of the set was worthing sitting through the beginning of the set, i think it was 10:45 when set II ended, and we figured one more song for the encore and it’d be over. but then they came out with RIFT! – which i hadn’t heard in a long time, and that was a GREAT surprise, and then Char0 afterward! sweet!

so, the show was a total mixed bag. wednesday rocked pretty much all the way through, but last night was manic depressive. some of you out there got VERY long musical voicemails this morning too, didn’t you? free long distance rules!

one thing i was thinking about during the show, though, during Antelope i think, is that the one thing i dig most about Phish, when they’re really jamming hard, is that they can play a 27 minute Bathtub Gin or other 20+ minute songs, and instead of you sitting there wondering “when is this going to be over?”, when it IS over, you actually could have had more. there was more going on in the song – side melodies and rhythms and tangents – and if it would have gone on for 10 more minutes you would still have been grooving on it. most rock and jam bands just can’t do that – they stick to their 7 minutes and that’s it. most other jambands bore me too – sure, they can play a 27 minute song, but after about 10 or 12, i’m bored with it. phish definitely has the ability, on a good jam, to play it like it doesn’t have an ending, and you enjoy the whole ride, and when it’s over you wish they would have kept going. and even though sometimes i have to sit through songs like Velvet Sea that sound like lullabyes for children, it’s because of their ability to really step up and play some amazing stretches of music that i keep going back. until next time….