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Guyute Was the Ugly Pig

I'm going to the first Phish show in a half decade tomorrow night. In high school, if you'd told me I'd ever go that long without catching a show, I'd have laughed in your phace.

I have a complicated relationship with jam. I, like many, adopted Widespread, String Cheese, et al. in the wake of Phish's hiatus as substitute good times, but quickly found myself being pulled more and more (and more) towards indie and altcountry. Though over time I listened to less and less "jam" as a genre, I still identified it as my favorite when people asked what kind of music I liked. And I believed that.

I used to regularly defend jam to Sony colleagues (where I worked in alternative music--jam was a joke to those guys.) "It's loose and interpretive," I'd say. "It's for people on acid," they'd retort. This would go on a bit until I was relieved of defendor duty by someone mentioning a band everyone could universally hate no matter what, like Nickelback.

I still saw every Trey show I could (highlights for me being his 2002 "Boogie on Reggae Woman" duet with Dave Matthews at Richmond's historic Landmark Theater and his conducting the Nashville Chamber Orchestra--complete with fireworks--at Bonnaroo 2006.)

When the boys reunited in 2009, the first three gigs were mere minutes from my house (at Hampton Coliseum). I had friends travel from all across the country to this. I tried to buy tickets but couldn't get them. I wasn't going to pay over price. My husband isn't a fan. Blah blah blah. Besides, by then my iPod was stacked with more and more new acts and my loyalties had long shifted to Radiohead as my #1.

Yet every time I got to talking with someone who likes Phish, or I randomly heard a song, I'd get warm inside and would immediately be doing a dance on the inside (on the outside too sometimes.) And I met new Phisheads. 21st Century ones who are in their 30s and have jobs like "eye doctor" and "stockbroker"...people who can't stand Disco Biscuits and all that janky prescription drug mess that comes with their fans. People who remember Hampton Comes Alive and Lemonwheel and Big freakin' Cypress and are excited to still see the whimsy and love and smiles that fans bring to the shows. In fact, just last night I ran into someone I attended the first Bonnaroo with ten years ago (now divorced and re-engaged and living in Lexington, KY) in town for the show. I hear stories like this often...the high school reunion vibe of the parking lot.

Weirdly enough, I just saw Widespread Panic last Sunday. They played a little over three hours and I left about halfway through the show. The first hour was exciting in a nostalgia sort of way...like "when I was younger I, too, got stoned and threw glowsticks in the air while twirling to this southern rock jam." But the music got repetetive and there wasn't a lot of inspiration coming from the stage. And certainly no Mike Gordon guitar riffs. As I realized this and gathered my things, a smile came over my face with the knowledge that in one week I'd be in a similar space/scenario but not enjoying it on the merits of reliving youth but on the merits of pure, undiluted enjoyment.


And as I sit here listening to "Birds of a Feather" live from November 1998, my foot involuntarily taps and I headnod in anticpation of tomorrow night's show. Unlike any other jamband (and many other bands of other ilk), I regularly and vividly remember the first time I heard many Phish songs. "Birds" was at the Virginia Beach Ampitheater in the summer of 1998. The lyrics made more sense to me than anything, which naturally had nothing to do with a certain sugarcube and subsequent Trojan War being played out via morphing clouds as I lay faceup on the grassy hillside.

"Can I live while I'm young?" are great, screamed,classic lyrics from "Chalkdust Torture" and I always think of The Beatles' "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" when "Funky Bitch" starts. And on and on.

In the end, I was right and wrong. I'm not a jam fan. I'm just a music fan who happens to like Phish---a lot. Stay tuned for my review of the show, coming soon to AltDaily.

HalloRoo

Halloween Idea #15

While attending Bonnaroo over the weekend, I had the greatest idea for a Halloween costume: Bonnaroo Attendee. Having just survived another music festival myself, I definitely have the wardrobe ready to go.

Would need:

-Wellington rain boots caked in mud
-Band t-shirt with strategic cut outs revealing an ironically 90s bikini top
-Bandana and oversized sunglasses
-Wristband
-Map/schedule
-Happily dazed look
-Spray tan or fake sunburn
-(Kudos to my friend Norm for providing this idea): iPod in pocket with creepy whisper announcing "molly. molly. molly. shrooms. molly" over and over again in a hushed, yet frantically needy manner.

Only five months to go!

PS: I get to don my Daria idea next month! My friend is having a 90s theme party so I'm excited to dig into the blog's costume vault for ideas! I'll post pics afterwards, for sure.

Singled Out

I recently watched Tom Ford's directorial debut A Single Man. The film was quietly strong and surprisingly masculine. While Ford's day job as a fashion designer did him no harm in styling and framing some gorgeous shots throughout the film, I must say his eye is only half the package. He hit the nail on the head with this story of a suicidal man's perceived last day on Earth, allowing the viewer to experience (along with main character George Falconer) the vivid, clear beauty of "the normal day." Here are some of my favorite shots from the film.

Spreading Like Wildfire

I recently wrote a review of my faves Today the Moon Tomorrow the Sun's new album Wildfire. The local paper just pulled it in, which is kind of awesome. Hopefully more people fall in love with these dudes as a result. 

Covered

A picture says a thousand words, or so the saying goes. It's a special feat when said picture is supposed to accentuate an actual thousand words, as is the case in magazine publishing. Here are some of the most memorable magazine covers in history, whose imagery has far surpassed the stories inside.

Above, the 1980 Rolling Stone cover, featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono, photographed by Annie Leibovitz hours before Lennon was shot and killed in New York City. It's a striking image, but knowing the awful times that lay just beyond the camera's click makes it most memorable and poignant.

Less tragic is the 1997 Time cover where Ellen DeGenerses comes out of the closet, though there was an immediate backlash. She lost her top-rated sitcom around a year later. I so clearly remember seeing this issue at the grocery store and kind of being bewildered--both about the hooplah surrounding someone's personal life and at the negative reactions surrounding the announcement. There's still a long way to go in terms of acceptance for all people, but looking at this cover, it's easy to measure the growth in tolerance over the last fifteen years.

I wasn't alive in the proverbial summer of '69 so I don't actually remember this cover. However, I'm both a photography and travel nut, so to think about Neil Armstrong carrying a camera to the moon to shoot this picture of his partner Buzz Aldrin absolutely stuns me. Technology at its very best.

Here's another one I clearly remember. Cindy Crawford posing as George Washington on the inaugural issue of George magazine, the brainchild of John F. Kennedy, Jr. In a pre-blog world, the concept of morphing politics and pop culture was revitalizing, especially to those of us far removed from urban epicenters. And Cindy Crawford--you couldn't ask for a more precise representation of "cover model" in the 1990s. I wonder what amazing things this publication would have done (and evolved into) had JFK Jr. lived.

I just found this image today. It's by Roy Lichtenstein and was done in 1968 shortly after the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Merging pop art and in-your-face opinion, it's hard for me to understand how over 40 years later I still wake up to multiple stories of gun violence every single day. 

I also remember a big brouhaha over this 1991 Vanity Fair cover. People were up in arms at the audacity a pregnant woman would have in exposing her body while in such an "unsexy" shape. Kudos to both Moore and Vanity Fair for having the foresight to recognize the beauty and balls behind this image.

I don't necessarily remember when this issue of National Geographic came out. I just don't remember a time where I wasn't familiar with it. This Afghan girls' striking eyes on an otherwise calm face gave more humanity to "the other" than more commonly used pictures of carnage and landscape. This was taken 26 years ago and we're still watching Afghan's young and old suffer so much brutality. 

Tattoo Trailer

The Hollywood version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is coming this December. I was skeptical when I first heard about this, having loved the original Swedish version so dearly. However, if it lives up to the trailer above, I'll totally stand corrected. And how 'bout that soundtrack? Karen O teaming up with Trent Reznor for a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" straight outta 2011. I can't wait to hear more of it.