Well, the Tweezer from 11-17-97 is an absolute masterpiece. I’m not sure if you would say they’re doing all three at once, but I think they cover at least I and II in there. In any case, it’s worth a listen.
What are you people talking about?
Help me too.
Type I - Not type II or III
Type II - Not type I or III
Type III- Not type I or II
There, that should just about clear it all up. 
Explanation: (I will have examples soon)
1) Jamming that is based around a fixed chord progression
2) Jamming that improvises chord progressions, rhythms,
and the whole structure of the music.
3) Porno-Funk (Cow Funk 97')I differentiate between I and II as: with I you can usually tell during the jam what song spawned the jam, but with II you can’t.
I don’t get the difference between II and III though.
This has always confused me as well, but maybe we can figure it out together. It might help if you can answer or correct the way I’m thinking about it…
Type I jamming? Like what happens at the end of Divided Sky, Fluff, Harry Hood, Slave?
Type II jamming? Like what happens inside Tweezers, DWDs, Bowies, Gins, Ghosts?
Type III jamming" just about any song in the late 97 time frame when that same gawd awful repetitive funk nonsense would show up?
What about the jamming that takes place inside Stash, and some of those jams during the all night set at BC? The ones where it almost becomes atonal altogether, the structure nearly becoming non-existent? Or the jams that follow songs and are really not associated with the previous song, like the wonderful little jam that followed Hood at the Keasey show at Darien Lakes in 97? It’s more just like mindless diddling with rhythms and sounds. And what about those mechanical sounds they can do, especially inside of Type II jams like the Bowie at 2/28/03? Are these jams all grouped under T-II?
^that’s pretty much how i understand it.
what about the big, crazy ambient space jams though? they’re a ‘type’ all their own too, i think.
p.s. no love for the phunk, eh Fone?
type II is when they switch keys. like in twist 3.8.09 around the 5:30 mark you can hear the key change.
Neil asked me the same question in the same way the night before the first show in Hampton as we sat up late drinking and talking Phish.
I don’t call that same repetitive stuff they tried to insert into every song over that late 97 period real funk. It was so forced and artificial to me.
But Phish can be be very funky on their own quite naturally, and when they are, I enjoy it muchly. Tube is good Phish funk, and it gets me going all the time. YEM has been known to funk out quite nicely.
They get into these funk rhythms as a dynamic of the song itself. What they were doing in 97 was taking a simple funk phrase and trying to put it inside Antelope, and Reba, and other songs where it just became a big buzzkill because of its familiarity and illplacement.
DISCLAIMER: I have no official basis of musical knowledge. I only know what sounds make me want to seek out the bathroom at any given point in a show.
I think type II is the only really ambiguous one. I like Fluffy’s definition, but there are still gray areas. For example: the Stash jam certainly branches away from the chord progression of the song, and can be long and unpredictable, and can at times not be recognizable as Stash. However, that section is almost “written” as such- the whole point of the section is to exploit that dimished chord for as long as possible with the goal of building maximum tension.
I personally don’t really consider a jam to be type II unless it sounds like they are not going to return to the song that they were playing (“city” jams, for example). Since the Stash jam (almost) always comes back to Stash, I would not consider it type II. To my ears, the one-chord jam songs like Tweezer, Ghost and ASZ do not venture into type II unless they depart from the original tonality or significantly depart from the original rhythmic feel.
IMO, type II is coolest when they either come back to the song that you forgot they were playing (7/13/03 Seven Below) or morph VERY gradually into another song (6/20/04 Ghost -> Twist).
Quintessential type III: Meat (which is highly overdue this summer if you ask me)
Last point: I think ambient jamming should be labelled as ambient, not type II.
So I went through that entire web page on “Types” and picked out some key points that we can bounce some ideas off of…
Interesting quotes:
On Type 3 Jamming—Some feel that this is not a “type” of jamming, but something closer to a genre, and that Types I and II jamming could occur within various contexts…
A version of a single Phish song might contain ALL THREE TYPES of jamming. The “experimental” Tweezers, like Bangor (11/2/94), Bozeman (11/28/94), Canandaigua (6/22/95), Mud Island (6/14/95), and Jones Beach (7/25/97 Bathtub Gin’s jam is basically a bit of Type II with a lot of Type I: this Gin jam is remarkable and stunning for Bathtub Gin, much unlike the Gin jams of olde (see also 8/13/93 Murat for example). Nevertheless, the Dallas Gin jam doesn’t explore new territory, really, and generally sticks to an upbeat, funky, untypically-Gin groove (that gets really fierce at times!!).
Almost every version of Bowie, Gin, Antelope, Tweezer, Stash, SOAM and Possum before 1993 contains Type I
If memory serves, and it probably doesn’t, the Twist Around from Phoenix might contain all three jamming types. (7/29/97) Ditto with the Ventua 7/30/97 Bowie, with the Cities in it. Possibly the Ghost from 7/3/97 Nurnberg as well…
You Enjoy Myself is usually Type I, but the 12/9/95 Albany version has some Type II, in the form of a “silent jam” and basically a quadruple jam segment (jam>silent jam>jam>vocal jam)
Suggested Jams:
5/25/98 “The Curtain With”
7/15/91 Mike;s
8/13/93 Bathtub Gin
8/14/93 Antelope etc.
12/30/93 Mike’s
5/4/94 Bomb Factory Tweezer
5/7/94 Tweezer etc.
11/2/94 Tweezer
11/12/94 DWD>Have Mercy>DWD
11/30/94 Antelopes
12/29/94 Bowie
6/22/95 Tweezer
10/31/95 YEM
12/12/95 Down with Disease
12/29/95 The Real Gin
7/9/97 YEM and Ghost
8/10/97 Cities
8/17/97 Bathtub Gin
11/27/97 60 min Runaway Jim
11/22/97 Halleys
11/28/97 Runaway Jim
12/30/97 AC/CC
7/29/98 & 11/9/98 Bathtub Gins “The PEAK of Phish funk”
8/3/98 mellow Gumbo
“Usually a long jam consists of a groove and soloists taking turns playing on top of it, and ther might be an harmonic structure, like in jazz where eveyrone’s playing over the chord changes of the song, or its free, and everyone’s going in all different directions.”"
– Trey Anastasio, 6/7/95
intersting stuff…
2-17-97 Carini is definately Type II. Very Nice.
for a quick example everyone can pick up on, i’d say get out your copy of “a live one”
chalkdust = type I
tweezer = type II
i’ve never really understood the need for the type III tag. even if it’s just a one chord funk jam, if it’s a building up tension/release type thing it could just be called type I funk jam. if it gets really weird and changes tempo or rhythm or something drastic then it could be called a type II funk jam.
i didn’t see this before my other post. that’s basically what i was trying to say.
haha…just goes to show how phish’s music caters to so many different tastes. i personally couldn’t get enough of the 97 phunk for YEARS. it was perfect to my ears, and hearing it evolve into the 98 version of itself and onward to the sonic walls of sound of 99 - 00 just blew me away. but yeah i hear ya. i can’t really get into most of the really frantic earlier jams (ie ALO Tweezer) i’ve heard. those sound too fractured and discombobulated to me.
i think it’s all stupid bullshit to tell you the truth.
Different strokes for different folks indeed. Nothing gets One going like some lovely Phish funk.
7.1.97 for some type II Stash jamming.
10.30.08 Stash and Tweezer have some really intense and gorgeous Type II if i remember correctly. they were totally locked in and creating some amazing music out of thin air.
^i mean 10.30.98 of course