A Live One

"You know what this list really needs? A live Phish album." Please.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (Disney, 2003). Timestamp: 1 hour, 33 minutes, 40 seconds.

Phish has always sounded like incredibly intricate, highly technical children's music to me.

4/10. I always try to believe the best of people, so I have to assume that whoever added this was trying to add a Reel Big Fish album to the list, but due to an honest misunderstanding we ended up with a real big Phish album instead.

Ok so what kind of sick FUCK, after sitting through 3 years of albums that generally go too long, then chooses a 2-hour live album to foist on everyone else? Bad form. Also, this jam band stuff really didn't do it for me today. 2/5.

All I knew about Phish was the culture around their concerts and I’ve always kind of assumed they were a bit of a joke-y band, but this music kind of rocked.

Fun plus exhaustion minus interest. There are touches of dynamic range, neat solo work, and strangeness throughout, but it's truly an undifferentiated bag of directionless jams. Notable as a seminal recording, I guess, but long long long.

Not into Phish much at all, they are talented but the super long jam band thing ain’t my cup of tea. Also 2hrs oof.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Phish gave the deadheads somewhere to go so they're not just out wandering the streets, but 2+ hours of pointless canoodling? No thank you. I'm sure it would be fun to see them live, but listening to this is not fun. 2 stars.

I really can't fathom listening to all of these stellar albums and thinking this album belongs among them.

I love Phish and this is from the era that I discovered them. I'm not big on convincing people why something I love is good, if you don't get it, it's okay, if you hate it, that's fine too. I will say that Trey, Gordo, Page and Fishman are four of the best musicians working today and this band is tight as fuck. A lot of people feel that their studio material is vastly inferior to their live stuff but I think that's over-stating it, they actually have some pretty great studio albums (Rift, A Picture of Nectar, Hoist, Billy Breathes and The Story of the Ghost are all good) that are maybe a better starting point than this. But this is kind of like Phish's Europe '72 (if you'll excuse me for making an over used comparison to the Dead) in that it's not a recreation of the live Phish experience but a good compilation of great performances from a certain period in the band's career. When I first heard this it was soon after my first show (it literally was released a week later) which had blown my mind and I was hungry for more. Eventually, I got into tape trading (the band allowed people to record their shows and some tapers would make copies for anyone who sent them blank cassettes and postage, this is a more fair comparison to the Dead who's fans pioneered this early form of viral marketing) but for a time this was my only way to hear live music, on demand from my new favorite band and hear great versions of Harry Hood, Gumbo, Chalkdust Torture, You Enjoy Myself and The Squirming Coil.

Phish has been on my “I should probably listen to this” list for a long time, but I’ve never got around to it. And I mostly didn’t want to. The window for getting high and jamming out is largely behind me. I have had some exposure to The Grateful Dead and it didn’t take, so I kind of wondered if jam bands could be my jam. I also feel a bit intimidated trying to figure out where to jump in on a band who has been around a long time - especially since everything I heard was the live performances were where it was at with Phish. I put this on and Phish was an instant hit with me! Bouncing Around The Room immediately drew me in being interesting and accessible, and as the album played on I was constantly wowed by what was going on. A real crazy moment for me was the sudden and incredible a cappella jam at the end of You Enjoy Myself. Then they launch into Chalkdust Torture and tear it up on the instruments… absolutely fantastic! These guys rock! I love hearing them really playing with music in interesting and fun ways. I am surprised at how much I love this album… I really thought a 2+ hour listen to a jam band would be too much. I think now I’ll venture into the Phish recordings further and find a lot more to love. What a miss that Phish didn’t make the original list!

Incredibly long album. But it's with good, funky and sometimes jazzy music.

It's...fine I guess. Nothing remarkable, and I don't think I'll ever re-listen to this ever again. Phish just does nothing for me. Very talented and the recording is super crisp for a live album. Just not into their music or jam bands in general. I found myself skipping around the 15+ minute tracks searching for interesting licks and sections. My favorite tracks were the "normal" (5 min) tracks, but I couldn't name them if I tried because this album was forgettable to me. Not hating if you like this band or genre. I totally understand why they're relatively popular (although I imagine their core audience is rapidly approaching retirement age). Super talented musicians.

Never listened to Phish before and now I've listened to over 2 hours of it. I liked it more than I expected. It sounded at times like Barenaked Ladies, a band that I like a lot that is nowhere on the real list (or, so far, on the user list). But I'm still not sure I "get" it.

It certainly sounds like Phish live

I really liked about half of it.

Yeah, Phish deserves a mention, but man 2 hours is a whole barrel of Phish I didn't need.

Phish workflow breakdown: Step 1: Strap on guitars and go wild: Wiiieeee wieeeeeeehhh, widily widily wieeeeehhhhh! Step 2: Repeat until timestamp of 2 hr 11 min has been reached. Step 3: Job well done. Step 4: Move on.

I know I have to give every album a fair chance, but this was making too much demand on my ears. Endless jams are just not my cup of tea.

The person that chose this album for the list is either one of two things: a person who loves phish and most likely several drugs as well or an absolute sicko who wants to watch people suffer listening to a 2 hour live jam sesh after completing a list of albums where so many of them also sucked. I was not on drugs and most definitely suffered. 2.5/10

Un peu long mais vraiment ça rock. J'avais entendu parler de l'album mais jamais écouté au complet. Je suis pas sdecu. 4

Lengthy, and live, but better than a bunch of the nonsense on the main list. Kudos to whoever suggested it, and thanks for giving me a whole band I knew only by name but who I will now explore (when I have a minute!)

Never actually listened to any Phish at length. I've got nothing against this, solid jam-bandy rock, and some interesting material in the lyrics.

A two-hour-plus jam session that went on forever, with a few potential great tunes here and there

Meh

2 hours live??? Music is OK, but: two hours? No...

You can’t tell me this isn’t the drug-fueled, adult-facing front for The Wiggles

Terrible

Phish appear to be proficient musicians, and the crowd seemed to be enjoying the performances, but this did nothing for me. Lots of long, meandering jams as intros and outros to not very memorable songs. As an example, 4 minutes into 'You Enjoy Myself' I was starting to get bored of the track, only to discover it had another 17 minutes left to run. Fair play if you enjoy the musicianship, but as a musically-challenged person with things to do, this was not for me. Rating: 1.5 Playlist track: Bouncing Around the Room Date listened: 23/07/24

Some good bits amongst the meandering, over long jams. There's pleasant pop, jazz, funk rock, light rock, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s styles. But way, way too long. For fans only.

For a live album, this was recorded very well. Phish sound great and the musicianship is outstanding. The biggest drawback of course is that this album is over two hours long. Despite that, it wasn’t as much of a slog as I was expecting. I’m generally not a fan of jam bands, but this was much more tolerable than most.

It's 2 hours of live Phish. Buckle up, it's all of the trappings of a concert without any of the common extracurriculars associated with Phish.

Mr. President, a second two-hour long live album has hit the user-submitted albums. Okay, you know what, fuck it. I AM in the mood for this today. Bring it on. (2 hours later) That was not so bad. Wish more of this was as psychedelic as "Stash" and spent less time on pointless noodling like the entirety of "You Enjoy Myself" and "Tweezer" (the two longest songs, ugh). Still, I'm really surprised it kept my attention all the way through.

inoffensive but uninspiring

I have a history of being forced to listen to Phish live albums, so I approached this one with the same trepidation you would have calling a family member you didn't want to speak to. I can agree that the members of Phish are incredibly good musicians, but I feel they cross over into the border of "guitar wanking" pretty hard. It's a blur, but there's a track on here that starts out that is, genuinely, technically complex, but doesn't make for actually decent music (in my opinion). I think the live version of "Tweezer" is what everyone who hates jam bands hates about jam bands: it's longer than a sitcom episode (with commercials!), and really could've been wrapped up about eight minutes in. I audibly said, "Oh, fuck off," when I looked at the runtime and found I was eleven minutes in. On the opposite side of the coin, "You Enjoy Myself" is what I can see people enjoy about jam bands: peaks and valleys, but a solid, rising closing to put a nice bow on it. I walk away the same on Phish: the people who are into them are very, very into them, and I am not one of those people. Favorite tracks: "You Enjoy Myself", "Stash"

Lol the people here are such babies about Phish. Phish is a band that wasn’t on the original list at all. They deserved to have *exactly* one slot on there, and this is probably the best one to represent their whole deal, given the live-experience tape sharing schtick they had going on during their peak. It's got the arpeggios, it's got the distinctive guitar sound, it's got the white guy funk passages. The arrangements are complex and varied enough to pass the 2+ hour length of this *way* faster than a lot of the 75-minute entries from normal 90s bands. Sorry you guys met an annoying hippy once.

I am incredibly impressed at the beautiful musicality and orchestration of these songs for a jam band.

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: Bouncing around the room

Okay, then. So, this was fine, not a bad album per se. It's well executed as live albums go and the musicianship is solid. It's one of the better live albums I have heard, production-wise. And I get it that Phish is one of those bands that's better experienced through their live music. But you know what, for all the apparent talent the band has, only a true believer would want to sit through 2+ hours of them. If you're not already a fan, this album will absolutely not win you over. Much of it ended up being a blur in the end. Fave Songs: Bouncing Around the Room, Gumbo, Montana

After to listening to the first half, i thought i was going to be okay with Phish. Unfortunately then you hit Tweezer and eventually Harry Hood, and it is exactly the jam band noodling that is a pretty strong turnoff. Still, there's enough here that is just a cool rock album that was interesting, but there are also some dark corners that i don't want to visit again.

This surprised me

Freakin hippies! This had some highs & lows for me...Surely would have had more highs if I was more high whilst listening buh dum tss

These lads certainly have the sauce when it comed to live jams. It’s just a bit much at once, you know?

I know Phish is known for their concerts but that doesn’t mean they need to be on this list.

some of this was great. But it is also quite long.

30 minutes long song is a little bit excessive

This is a band that people discover and then turn into their entire personality. We get it, you went to college and smoked some weed! The Grateful Dead is far superior as jam bands go, but Phish is prolific and do inspire a cult following in the same way. I just can't listen to over 2 hours of people clapping for someone farting into a trumpet.

Jam rock, jazz fusion. Al principio gusta, luego aburre. Mucho. Un 2.

I listened to this for the entirety of one balatro run then tapped out. Didn’t need to listen to another hour of some of the blandest music ever. I get why the Grateful Dead has a huge live following but I don’t really get this. Like it doesn’t sound bad and would probably be fun to hear live but idk man, listening to it on my couch sucked.

Oh no. It's a live album. A double disk live album. It's listenable, but a single disc, with all the songs half the length woulve been a lot less of a chore.

I’ll accept a Phish album on the list, but not a 2 hour live album. Not sure if this suggestion is some sort of sick joke.

- Inclusion of this Phish live album in the list - PROS AND CONS Pros: if really you want to mention the American cult phenomenon that Phish is in this list, you might as well include a live performance. As far as I know, their studio albums have by-the-book production values, and apparently, there are essential tracks in their repertoire that the band only play live. Plus, the coming-of-age-like cult phenomenon around the band was more centered around their concerts than any other communal experience their music can elicit. Hence this inclusion, I guess... The first half of the first disc is not unpleasant. "Bouncing Around The Room" (especially its final chorus supported by tapping solos on the guitar) and "Gumbo" are memorable for sure. And you can sense that for folks wishing to partake in the live experience, there's something fun going on. Cons : Starting with the second half of the first disc, a question surges, however: what's the frigging point? Sure, the players are very good at their trade and the music is often quote-unquote "good". Yet the let's-throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach soon yields to listener fatigue no matter what it is that it is going on on a purely musical level. Besides, clichés abound so much in those performances that it feels like you're working in a Kodak laboratory. Jazzy flourishes, dad-rock guitar solos, quite tame hard-rock boogies, funky rhythms, reggae winks, inoffensive vocal parts, more off-kilter (yet also lengthy and gratuitous) atonal dirges... The whole sounds a little like Steely Dan on steroids, albeit without the sly undertones and the ultra crisp production values. Or like an eighties-sounding Grateful Dead without the hippie utopian ethos and a bag of mainstream stylistic tricks instead. Rarely have I listened to music where the stakes are seemingly so... low. This thing manages to sound both bloated and naive-as-fuck. And as a consequence, your emotional response may become as equally stilted and perfunctory. Worse, the fans loudly expressing their knowledge of the songs and which part they should sing after some cues from the band give you the feeling that you're not part of their club, and that unless you sign on a proverbial paper proclaiming you a member of the Phish fanbase until the end of your days, you'll *never* get what is so exciting about the band. Well, lemme tell you this: I'm not excited listening to this record, only mildly amused. Which is OK, I guess. But not more than that. Jam bands... Some of them are 100% oblivious of the difference between craft and genuine art. Sure, I imagine that it's because Phish actually don't care about the "pretensions" of art that they are so refreshing for their target audience. Good for them. Why should the rest of the world care, however? I might come off as pretentious myself, but I feel like I'm either too old or too young at heart to have time for any of... this. And with a double-album to boot, it's not the most convenient manner to feel welcomed to the "club" anyway... Looks like the cons far outweigh the pros for me. Wish I could have written a shorter review, once again. The record is already long enough. So I'm gonna stop here - both listening and writing -- just as the noodling on the unbearable "Tweezers" goes on forever. Skipped the end of it, actually. "What is a band without a saxophone?" asks Phish on the song that follows, the aptly-named "Simple". *My* question is rather this one: "What is a jam band without a clear-cut *vision*?". Give me a hundred records by King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard instead (they'll soon reach that number of albums anyway, ha ha). With their relentless drive and unhinged energy, King Gizzard can elicit all sorts of cinematic pictures in my head, at least. In comparison, Phish is just stale and cutesy. The only image they can trigger in my brain is: "jam band noodling on stage". Good music can be much more evocative than this, don't you think? 2/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 7/10 for more general purposes. ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 3 Albums from the users list I *might* include in mine later on: 6 Albums from the users list I won't include in mine: 6 (including this one)

An absolute whale of a live album at over 2 hours, apparently cut down from an original selection of 560 takes from across an entire tour I appreciate its ambition and I’m sure the shows would have been a hell of an experience, but the lack of memorable hooks makes the psychedelic jams feel quite redundant. The soloing is impressive and even hypnotic at times but the tunes they’re structured around just have no impact, so there’s no real sense of tension and release - it all just meanders, and meanders for far too long Also I was very disappointed to read on the wiki page that the album title was just due to fans asking when they would record ‘a live one’. I thought it was an actually quite inspired fish pun on catching ‘a live one’ - alas

Pish. Is it really talent if you don't use it to good effect. Just middle of the road jams. And 2 hours of it? I would have given 2*s, but 2 hours... Man...

Lots and lots of solos and other musical muscle performance. It lacks soul, integrity, good songs and the attempts to be humorous are not appealing.

He was better as the lead singer of Marillion.

Such a shame. A live album. As mentioned before, these tend to be a "best of" that's interspersed with background noise that isn't what the artists intended.

Truth be told: I did not listen to this whole album, nor did I expect to. I cannot listen to this wanky jam band stuff. I gave it about 30 minutes and then skimmed the rest. It's pretty much everything I thought it would be. I know people who live for this stuff. That's fine. Just keep it far, far away from me.

I’m sorry but this is where I put my foot down. We’re through the looking glass, in the aftermath of 1001 albums. I’ve listened to a lot of shit at this point, I absolutely do not have the interest or stomach for a Phish live album, two hours long to boot. I’ve simply got better things to hear. Respectfully, this pick is asking too much. Feels like I’m being trolled. At a great personal expense, I did listen, and I will keep one song because the musicianship is strong. But this is still an evil choice.