original phish tunes that evoke emotional response?

Phish General
#1

i introduced my gf to the velvet underground loaded album and she has taken to the song “oh sweet nuthin”. right after this she told me to find her a phish song which conveys the same kind of emotional response and i was having a hard time finding one. i mean, there’s no question they are one of the best bands of all time, but their recorded material seems to tend towards the “let’s put out some music and polish it up on tour” as opposed to “let’s put out the best possible songs we can on the album and change them up a bit at the show” school of thought. so, can anyone come up with a song off of an album that compares with the type of songs she is looking for?

btw, i’m working on getting her to a show this summer. i told her if she can see them live and still not like phish very much i’ll stop pestering her about listening to them. so if anyone has a couple spare tix for the saturday berkeley show they’d be willing to send me just let me know :slight_smile:

#2

Maybe Waste?

#3

Tela

#4

If I Could always does it for me.

#5

Fast Enough For You
Lifeboy
Billy Breathes
Dirt
Bug

#6

It depends. Is she looking for lyrics that move her? Or is she more of the person that responds the tonality of the music itself? For the former, I would consider showing her some of the newer stuff (Party Time album especially) as it is much more lyrically driven. You could always show her some of the ballads (Billy Breathes, FEFY, Bug, etc). If she just gets off on that transcendent feeling from the music/jams, I would recommend The Went Gin, 12/1/95 DWD, 11/23/97 BEK, an amazing version of Hood (plenty of those to pick from), 12/31/95 Reba, 12/30/99 LUOLMA; basically any of the big ones.

#7

i’ve tried to introduce her to live performances but she’s not quite interested. she’s more into the lyrics than the jams anyway. i don’t have the party time album but i’ll try to check it out

#8

Oh man I had a couple of good ones when I saw the thread title, but if it’s about lyrics and studio output, I got nothin. Seriously, try to get her to check out 10.21.95 Reba and 6.18.94 Divided Sky.

#9

yes, hence my problem getting her to properly convert to listening to phish :slight_smile:

#10

Oh Sweet Nothin! 10/31/1998 :wink:

#11

I might disagree with you to a certain extent on this one. Plenty of their material, especially pre-hiatus, had been worked out on the road for multiple years before it was recorded. The last three, not so much. However two of them (Joy and Round Room) are some of my favorite Phish studio efforts.

All that aside though, try the album Billy Breathes. I’ve found that one to be very accessible to people who haven’t heard much Phish or aren’t into them much.

#12

Fast Enough For You and Dirt

#13

Waste
FEFY

#14

Talk.

#15

phish lyrics don’t tend to provoke an emotional response… at least initially… it seems to take a bit to get past some of the quirkiness… or, as an old man once said about phish music when I played it for him… this music is ahh queer. :stuck_out_tongue:

Thunderhead and waves have moved me before… thunderheads lyrics are pointedly affective… if you think about them. …but you would just look down instead and wait till foggy skies abate and vapor clouds all dissipate… realizing the one of your affection no longer cares about you… thats damn sad and waves follows the theme with describing the emotional investment we have in another and the power and movement of that connection… then, of course, you could play her The Connection which is possibly the greatest phish song ever. :mrgreen:

#16

Strange Design
Billy Breathes
Tela
Horn
FEFY
Lifeboy
TMWSIY
Velvet Sea
Talk
Mountains in the Mist

…at least those do it for me

#17

dog faced boy
Joy

contact…jk on that one.

#18

FRIDAY, ALL OF THESE DREAMS, ANYTHING BUT ME.

As for non round-room songs, there are the obvious: Waste, If I could, Fast enough, etc.
I really do believe that they hit their stride of “tenderness” on RR, that is for now…

#19

i’m not really looking for “tenderness”, and she isn’t really into that kind of song. the thing is, like goldphish says, is that there is a quirkiness to even their most “serious” songs and it’s incredibly difficult to find a song that has lyrics that are compelling and interesting to an average non-phan. it also seems like if someone is not already a fan of the jam genre that they have a hard time relating to the music in general.

phish doesn’t seem to have many raw, honest songs even though they have songs which have well-written lyrics and melodies. the joy album is the closest they’ve come that i can find and this is after 25+ years of being musicians. phish is very good at creating a mood with their music, but they’re not so good at writing lyrics people can relate to for the most part, and i think this is where the difficulty comes in trying to find a song that can bring people to tears with its simple beauty. i’ve been following phish since 97 and i can honestly say i don’t think i’ve ever had that reaction to one of their songs, live or studio version.

#20

brian and robert