Phish's Cultural Impact and Influence

Phish General
#1

Hey…new to the board here and wanted to start a thread that I’ve been mulling over the last week or so.

Last week I watched the three-part documentary on Dylan on PBS. As an aside, even if you are not a fan of Dylan, it is a great piece. Scorcese unearthed some ridiculous and obscure footage of Dylan and ‘the scene’. Really amazing stuff. Anyway, it got me thinking.

Dylan’s influence, both musically and culturally, is so profound and wide ranging it is hard to imagine another musician/artist duplicating (or even coming close to) it in our respective lifetimes. That said…what is (or will be) Phish’s mark when it is all said and done? Considering any possible reunion tours, shows, albums, or appearances down the road…what will they be remembered for and how will they be remembered say twenty, thirty even fifty years from now?

Pause for a moment and think back on their career thus far…and everything that it has encompassed. Their influence is staggering when you consider the lack of commercial attention from the media until the last few years.

If you think of what they’ve created along their journey…the Halloween musical costumes, developing a new way to practice improv, the reinvention of themselves and their music on an almost nightly basis (not to mention year to year complete transformation in their sound), the music festival scene as we have come to know it, the use of the internet as a tool/portal/resource, Big Cypress, etc.

It made me think of the line of people outside their Island Tour release party in NYC this summer looking for extras. Looking for extras to a party celebrating the release of music that most of us had worn out on those old 90 minute Maxells before livephish. Once inside, people danced wildly (myself included) to taped video and audio of selected shows. I overheard someone say, “These people are crazy, they think this is real.” The person next to him responded, “That’s because it is!”

Maybe we’ll have to wait decades to really know their impact on American culture but if you could put it into words…how would you?

#2

I think there’s a sad-but-true thing to acknowledge about the Dead and Phish: there is still a stigma attached to their music, and likely always will be. Mention either band, and everyone says “oh that hippie jam band.” It is impossible at this point to convince the world otherwise.
I was thinking the other day about how most scenes experience resurgences every so often. If you look at the Dead in their day and the bands that surrounded them, well, after 20 or so years, they were without a doubt the biggest, best known, and the torch bearers. Phish was like a rebirth of the jam scene, but at the same time, they were their own thing. I think so many jam bands are content to ride the coattails of Phish and not try to push things further–as, I feel, Phish did for the Dead.
I think their cultural impact will be felt more and more as time goes on, even though I think it’ll be a much more underground impact than the Dead. Everyone instantly knows the iconic Grateful Dead stuff–the Bears, the Skull with the red and blue and the lightning bolt, some of the album covers, ‘Touch of Grey’ and other hit songs. I don’t think that Phish will ever be quite so recognizable in the mainstream. If you mention Gamehendge in a crowded room, you’re likely to get stares of confusion. The classic Phish logo is somewhat known, but it also says Phish right on it, so I don’t think it can count.
Anyway I’m rambling, but I think that musically Phish will prove a greater influence than the Dead, at least in terms of how to approach live music and improvisation.

#3

Welcome…I would just first like to point out that PBS actually aired the documentary as a two part series, but I digress.

Okay, now this part I have to take issue with…and maybe some of this has been said already, and I don’t want this to turn into a Dead/Phish debate because I love them both too much to ever choose. But those second, third and fourth points could be handed a lot more to the Dead than Phish. The Dead, before Trey ever played a guitar had developed a completely unique way to “practice improv” that Phish took a lot from. The reinvention of their music on a nightly basis and festival like atmosphere at their concerts was also a staple of Dead shows long before phish was around…The use of the internet, again the first newsgroup on the internet was about the Grateful Dead, and pimarily used for the same reasons Phans use it (ie. trading, finding out about the tour, etc)… Big Cypress is hard one to argue with, other than to say that the Dead, Allman Brothers and the Band, in 1973 played the largest show ever in America up until that point, Watkins Glen…I know it’s not the same, but it drew 600,000 people out into the middle of nowhere kind of. The musical costume thing can be seen as coming a lot more from WSP notorious Halloween shows prior to '94.

My point: I don’t think any of this is the reason why phish will have a lasting impact, because those are not characteristics (as I’ve shown) that are completely heterogeneous to phish…what will make phish have a lasting effect is their songs and their fans…the same can, I believe be said for the Dead. I don’t know if I can say that either band will have a bigger musical impact, other than to say that Garcia’s songs are covered world wide and in every genre of music (from country, to jazz, to blues, to reggae), but time is the only thing that will show if the Dead or Phish will have a larger impact…BTW Phish has also covered the Dead…

#4

I believe that the most indelible impact made by the band was the style of composition. Even songs with long jams like Reba were mixed with defined composition and free-jaming. It is as if a classical composer was given only a piano, guitar, bass, and a drum set and told: Go! I think that Phish songs really evolve as they progress. Such as pebbles and marbles or YEM, where each part is quite different from the opening rift to the chorus to jam to the end. This may be attributed to previous songs like ‘Layla’ or ‘a day in the life’, but Phish took this and did it live with many of their songs show after show, year after year, and added a good amount of variation every time they played them. Another amazing part of all of this, is that they married nearly every genre of music, and still somehow made it beautiful. I guess I never really dug the dead all that much, too slow and spaced-out at points to hold my attention, so I am biased.
All I know is, whether you can put a name to it or not, the boys really did something different… and whether this can be construed as impressionist or not, it is really fucking cool.

#5

I think when people look back and hear the name “Phish” in 20 or 30 years, there will be one of two reactions. I think music people (and by that I mean people who buy vinyl, go to concerts, read industry mags, books, etc.) will appreciate Phish’s contributions to music, understand how they built a commercial empire through a largely grass-roots method, and toured like hell, and became successful by doing stuff nobody else was doing. Basically, they’ll get it.
The other reaction will be of ignorance, either complete or partial. I think the hippie stigma will kind of fade with time, and to the ignorant (and when I say ignorant, I mean “not having knowledge” so it’s not a malicious term) Phish will just be this sea of something maybe they know about, but nothing of. For instance they may know that Phish was a band by seeing an album in a record store, but nothing else. I think the vast majority of people will be in the second category, which is sad.

I guess that means their legacy will remain with music-types. Or maybe they’ll be like Wyld Stallyns from “Bill & Ted” and their music will bring peace to the galaxy eons after we’re all dead and gone. It could happen.

#6

There would be no Bonaroo if not for Phish. The Clifford Ball, Great Went, Big Cypress, etc. were pretty revolutionary events.

#7

I think with Phish, none of their stuff looks/seems overtly “hippie” outside of the old school Phish logo. The Grateful Dead’s stuff looks/seems “hippie” out the wazoo. If you showed someone ‘Billy Breathes’ or ‘Farmhouse’ 20 years from now, they wouldn’t necessarily say “oh it’s some dumb hippie jam band.”

#8

^ I don’t think they’ll be judged on their album covers, however…but if they do, I think they Dead will outlive Phish for sure…You can say if you want that Terrapin Station just seems like some dumb hippie jam band, but unless you knew their history first, you probably wouldn’t assume that those guys are hippies…I take it when you say “showed someone” you mean show them they album cover…right? I hardly think that is where the Dead or Phish’s legacy lies…

#9

Well people will judge a band based on appearances of the band themselves and their albums/artwork. When you’ve got songs like “China Cat Sunflower” and artwork like the entire Dick’s Picks series has, that is going to weigh on people’s opinions of them. You have to remember we’re talking about the general public here, not people who are going to listen to music blindly and then judge it.

#10

I know the album cover is the first thing some people see…but I had no notion of the Dead as some “dumb hippie jam rock” band before I got into them…if anything I thought it was going to be dark menacing music simply because of the name…and you say Grateful Dead to most people who haven’t heard of them (which is most people) and they think they are like some dark metal band or something…If you thought they were just some “dumb hippie jam band” before you heard them, or even after, it’s only because you have had people tell you that…because you can’t listen to any Dead album and really come to that conclusion on your own, unless you listen to a lot of dumb hippie jam music…The first Dead I heard was Anthem and then Workingmans, and the two albums are so completely different from each other that I had no idea which sounded like the REAL Grateful Dead…turns out I’m still trying (300 recorded shows later) what the Grateful Dead really sound like…anyways…I agree that Phish can’t be seen as a “dumb hippie jam band”, but I can’t see the Dead at all as that either.

#11

Show Trading culture will exist forever I think and every band will have fans… Outside of that in twenty years Phish will be remebered, probably Widespread Panic… SCI, moe., Leftover Salmon, Umphreys McGee… probably not. Just my perception.

#12

^ I bet Cheese will be remembered.

Phish will never be a household name like Elvis or the Beatles… but would we really want that? I think Phish will be remembered by the people who care, and those who need to find it, will. There will always be someone like me out there to make sure that everyone who rides in my car gets to hear Antelope at least once…

#13

There are plenty of record collector types who will seek out obscure artifacts from every music era… someone will eventually obsessively seek out every post-Phish jam-band just like the people who spend their lives seeking out Chocloate Watch Band LP’s.

I think about the San Francisco scene of the '60s. Most people know who the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother are. Maybe they’ve heard Quicksilver Messenger Service or Moby Grape, if they are into the Dead or something. If they are obsessive psyche freaks (me, maybe) they are trying to find some H.P. Lovecraft records or something. Eventhough Quicksilver was probably just as influential in that music scene as the Dead, I don’t expect them to go into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which, of course, doesn’t mean shit).

As far as influence goes Phish will never be a band like the Velvet Underground, Television or Captain Beefheart that are “ahead of their time” and only make more sense to people as time goes on. Phish has not left much room to add to their aesthetic, and most people that try just sound like imitators. They are more like Led Zepplin who only gets more misunderstood as time goes on and more and more artists rip them off.

#14

bingo.

#15

:nerd:

#16

I don’t know if this necessarily has any cultural impact, but Phish’s whole ethos of always pushing themselves has a lot of universal implications. I am sure they could have been content with just writing songs like YEM and Reba playing them over and over again straightforwardly with no variation, yet they weren’t/aren’t. They continually worked at finding new ways to explore the frameworks of which they had such beautifully crafted. From this exploration, they often found even more alluring landscapes. This is where their greatness has always lied.

Pushing yourself forward without the fear failing will lead you to these new, awesome places.