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PHISH: 75 From 16 The Studio Cuts

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Phish in the studio

Often mailigned by fans and critics alike, Phish is the studio has provided some brilliant moments

For many, Phish is a live experience. When you want to introduce someone to the band, you don’t hand them Joy, you take them to a show. But this betrays the fact that, from the very beginning, they’ve managed to craft some truly outstanding studio recordings.

This list isn’t about what works best on stage. It’s about how the band used the studio as an instrument, how the music, the textures, and the interplay come alive in that space.

With 16 albums under their belt, it’s the perfect time to look back and rank the top 75 songs Phish ever laid down in a studio.

Methodology

I first pulled 137 songs off their 16 Studio LPs as follows:

Junta – 7

Lawn Boy – 8

Picture of Nectar – 11

Rift – 14

Hoist – 9

Billy Breathes – 13

Story of the Ghost – 12

Sikket – 4

Farmhouse – 12

Round Room – 7

Undermine – 6

Joy – 9

Fuego – 5

Big Boat – 8

Sigma – 8

EVOLVE – 6

Party Time was not included

The question here is easy:

If you heard this song on the radio without knowing who Phish was, would you

A) Change the channel

B) Listen to the song

C) Find the song after to listen again

All these songs would be in the C category.

My concern here is how well did they use the medium of the studio, not wanting to see a song live. It is how the music and instrumentation work together in that space, so you may find songs that don’t work as well live as constructed in the studio on this list.

One last Caveat to the reader, this is a list written through the eyes of one fan and is colored by when each LP was released in relation to my life.

75) Sing Monica – Fuego

One of the few songs on 2016’s Fuego that seems fully realized both musically and lyrically. Tom Marshall has written an incredibly punny lyric.

74) Farmhouse – Farmhouse

Built around a laid-back groove and simple, reflective lyrics, “Farmhouse” explores themes of isolation, communication, and gratitude. It is Nashville in its lyrical storytelling, while the rhythm guitar, syncopation, and overall pocket owe a nod to Bob Marley. It’s a genre-blending track, like much of Phish’s catalog.

74) Friday – Round Room

A tender standout from Round Room, Friday showcases Phish’s softer side, with heartfelt lyrics and a graceful, understated arrangement; Mike and Trey’s vocal interplay adds warmth and texture, giving the song a quiet emotional resonance that deepens with each listen.

73) The Name Is Slick – Siket Disc

One of two Siket Disc entries on our list, this might be the most satisfying cut from the experimental collection of Ghost session outtakes. What begins as a formless afterthought gradually locks into a loose, slow groove—driven by Gordon’s melodic lead and colored by McConnell’s ambient textures—offering a rare glimpse into Phish’s raw creative process.

72) Guelah Papyrus – Picture Of Nectar

A great glimpse into Phish as they began to move from the extended compositions of Junta and Lawn Boy to the more compact studio songs of Rift and beyond. An off-kilter drum beat anchors the intricate playing of Mike and Page while Anastasio imagines being a fly. The lyric is still cryptic, and the song is listed as being in 3 parts. definitely a turning point for the band.

71) Frankie Says – Story Of The Ghost

One of Story Of The Ghost’s greatest strengths is that Phish doesn’t extend every song beyond a basic verse-chorus-solo structure. They let them stand on their own. They embrace the studio with acoustic guitars and overdubs. And here, adding to the song’s depth, the slow tempo allows the vocals to almost float just above the music, helping Frankie make the list.

70) Time Turns Elastic – Joy

Steve Lillywhite returns to produce 2009’s Joy and captures the album’s centerpiece brilliantly. Like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer or early King Crimson this multi-part suite benefits from the studio, highlighting McConnell’s piano runs and the interweaving vocals.

69) Valdese – Evolve

Valdese brings a playful rockabilly flair to Evolve, standing out with its upbeat rhythm and tight arrangement. Clocking in under four minutes, it’s a compact, hooky track that shows Phish can still surprise with style shifts while keeping things crisp and fun.

68) Chalk Dust Torture – Picture Of Nectar

Often panned for the vocal effect Kevin Hamlin used, Chalkdust still makes our list for the concise punch it packs and stellar production. As for the vocal effect, it gets points here as the studio is a place to experiment. This is the song of a band that is barreling headlong into rock god status.

67) The Squirming Coil – Lawn Boy

This may have ranked higher had its placement on the album been different, but as an opening track, it falls flat. Also, this is not Trey’s strongest vocal performance with some weird effect, not helping matters. What it does have is Page shining, laying down a brilliant solo in the outro portion of the song.

66) Fee – Junta

Like Phish themselves Junta is a paradox and Fee exemplifies this. Fishman’s kick drum opens an album that is unpolished, yet refined, revealing a Caribbean beat propelling the story of a weasel. This is clearly a band that has put in some time honing their craft and are willing to use the studio as another instrument. The sound effects, the added percussion, and Trey singing the vocal through a pair of headphones taped to another microphone are why Fee makes the list.

65) Fuego – Fuego

Fuego makes the list for its sheer gall. The song seems to be a series of disjointed pieces that are intent on getting back to the extended compositions on Junta and Lawn Boy. Surprisingly it works, partly because it is a whole band composition and partly due to Bob Ezrin’s production.

64) Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan – Joy

Another meditation invoking the feeling of Anastasio’s excesses pitted against the redemption he found. The warm production accentuates the backbeat and its lockstep strut with Anastasio funky guitar lick.

63) Prince Caspian – Billy Breathes

With a bubbling intro gently easing us from Steep into the song, this is a great example of Phish exploring alternate arrangements in the studio. Using C S Lewis’s character from The Chronicles of Narnia the band creates a swirling soundscape that mirrors the rough water the singer imagines Prince Caspian on.

62) Undermind – Undermind

The title track to 2004s Undermind finds the band laying down a slick groove. Always pushing boundaries both musically and lyrically we find a song here that works by suggestion. The production highlights Anastasio’s airy guitar vs Page’s heavy organ as the rhythm section softly works the pocket.

61) Character Zero – Billy Breathes

Phish started writing big rock and roll songs on Billy Breathes, perhaps an influence of covering Quadrophenia. Here we find the band attempting to tighten the song, eliminating the extraneous and getting down to the nitty-gritty. Also, it’s placement as the second song gets points, kicking the energy from Free up another notch.

60) Seven Below – Round Room

Bryce Goggin ended up producing a band that was already imploding in the earliest stages of 2.0 but still coaxed the best from them. Seven Below is driven by Fishman’s loose 16th snare and ride over a syncopated bass drum. It lays the foundation for a cinematic soundscape, haunting as it plows forward to a monumental conclusion. This is Phish distilling the past few years to its dramatic essence.

59) Kill Devil Falls – Joy

Joy is an album celebrating rebirth. Kill Devil Falls offer a cautionary tale about the ease with which you can slip back into bad habits. The short rocker with Anastasio’s driving guitar is perfectly placed on the album, offering the listener a little breather between the bigger pieces.

58) Waste – Billy Breathes

One of Phish’s earlier ballads, the recording here is flawless. Anastasio’s rolling guitar lurks just below the surface while McConnell’s piano line could have been from Pink Floyd in 1969. This is a band embracing the studio to create an almost perfect album.

57) Birds of a Feather – Story Of The Ghost

Here we find Phish just giving us a taste of what Birds Of A Feather would become live. This is a good thing as it helps them to avoid the pitfalls of playing extended solos that distract from the song as a studio creation. With its lyrics giving a nod to the community the band has built, a rapid-fire drum beat, edgy guitar, and production reminiscent of Talking Heads Remain In Light, this is everything you want from studio Phish.

56) Bathtub Gin – Lawn Boy

Page McConnell takes this Susannah Goodman penned song and ads a wild free form intro. Perhaps the best sounding song on Lawn Boy, they seemed to nail the mix here and Trey’s voice complements instead of hindering the lyric like other songs on this album. The sound effects used here also complement and enhance the song, becoming a 5th instrument in the extended instrumental section.

55) Down with Disease – Hoist

The second track on Hoist is a bonafide Phish classic live and you could say the same about the studio version. By keeping it at 4 minutes we are given the bones of a song that can also stand on its own as a MTV video. The catchy rhythm gets started with Gordon’s memorable bass line before taking several left turns musically. The production is crisp and the addition of background singers puts this one over the top.

54) Dirt – Farmhouse

One of Phish’s darkest songs lyrically, where the singer seems to be contemplating suicide, is the most affecting thing they ever recorded. By adding strings courtesy of David Gusakov / violin, Laura Markowitz / violin, John Dunlop / cello, and Roy Feldman / viola, the song is given a strange majesty as if we are being lifted above the pain. Bryce Goggin captures the warmth of Anastasio’s string arrangement and allows the song to breathe.

53) Sample in a Jar – Hoist

Another radio-ready song off Hoist, Paul Fox did an amazing job smoothing out some of Phish’s inconsistencies in the studio and this is a great example. This is mostly due to the vocals, and how in sync they are, that lead to a climax with the whole band singing. It sounds a little dated today but is still a strong effort and worthy of repeated listenings.

52) Blaze On – Big Boat

Blaze On represents a shift in the band and Anastasio/Marshall’s songwriting. It is a quintessential blues-rock groove and is one of the few tracks on the album that comes alive in the studio. Much of Big Boat sounds sterile and phoned in by the band, largely due to Bob Ezrin’s production. Here is a band enjoying making music simply for the pleasure of it.

51) Contact – Junta

Fourteen songs written by Mike have appeared on studio albums but this is him at his absurdist best. With its quirky lyrics and simple rhythm, this is one of the standouts on Phish’s debut album.

50) Gotta Jibboo – Farmhouse

Phish have occasionally tried adding horns in the studio with excellent results. Farmhouse has several tracks employing this extra layer and Gotta Jiboo is taken to another level because of it. One of several Trey Anastasio Band songs that migrated to Phish for their Farmhouse album, it’s a great snapshot of the band trying to free itself from the Prog like compositions on their first 6 albums.

49) Split Open and Melt – Lawn Boy

Speaking of horns, Phish’s most famous foray into augmenting the band with horns came on the Summer 1991 tour with The Giant Country Horns. Here we find their lone studio appearance with Phish. This is one of Phish’s more challenging compositions and the almost free-jazz section after the vocals is the highlight with Mike shining. It would have been ranked higher, but, as with a lot of Lawn Boy, they felt the need to use a vocal effect that distracts more than enhances the lyric.

48) Theme from the Bottom – Billy Breathes

The longest track on Billy Breathes verges on being a bluesy ballad with the plantive piano and strong harmonies. That is until the instrumental break, here a case for letting Phish stretch it out a bit in the studio. The months of playing the song live served the studio version well and it may be one of their best group vocal performances.

47) Oblivion – Evolve

Oblivion rides a filthy groove that anchors the entire track, making the improvisation feel like a natural extension of an already-strong song rather than just the highlight. While the whole band shines, Page McConnell’s synth work breathes extra life into the track, and the polished mix delivers a version far crisper than any live recording. On Evolve, the critique of Phish studio albums improvisational magic getting lost in translation is refreshingly absent.

46) Magilla – Picture Of Nectar

If you didn’t know this was Phish, you could easily hear it as an unknown jazz standard. The years of playing songs like Take The A Train and Donna Lee really paid off in this Page McConnell composition. This may be the most swinging thing they ever laid down in the studio with the interplay between Mike and Page driving the song.

45) Lifeboy – Hoist

The lullaby feel to this Hoist standout is a great example of how bluegrass changed Phish’s vision while still keeping the quirky lyricism that defines Phish. Bela Fleck joins the band making this one of the most beautiful melodies Phish ever recorded. Another example of the studio as a chance to expand their pallet with guests and acoustic instrumentation.

44) It’s Ice – Rift

A heavy and unnerving listen, Page seals another vocal victory. He sings a little deeper and perfectly highlights the desperation found in the lyric. One of the most complex songs Phish had written at this point and they execute flawlessly. Songs like this are why Rift has the most entries on this list.

43) Miss You – Big Boat

Written for his sister who passed, Anastasio conveys weariness, sadness, and even anger in this Big Boat ballad. Bob Ezrin did a great job capturing the spirit of the song, making it warm, but detached, with a plaintive solo from Trey punctuating the song. This could be an outtake from an early 70s Stones album and is one of Big Boat’s shining moments.

42) Light – Joy

With Steve Lillywhite back behind the controls, Joy attempts to be Billy Breathes part two. It doesn’t really recapture the previous album’s mood, but Light captures youthful spirit tempered with the wisdom of age. With its formless intro resolving into the song proper mimicking the lyrics looking from a chaotic past to a brighter future.

41) My Friend, My Friend – Rift

Rift is a very dark album that touches on madness in most of its 15 songs, and My Friend may be the darkest. Starting off as an edgy composed piece with Anastasio shining on acoustic guitar, it slips into an almost paranoid groove. The clarity achieved on this cacophonic composition, nurturing the disjointed groove, and a chorus at the song’s climax, are why this makes the cut.

40) Llama – Picture Of Nectar

One of the few Gamehendge related songs that made it to vinyl, this one does what a great album opener does, sets the tone. Fast-paced with pounding drums, slap bass, and heavy organ, this is the sound of a band with newfound confidence. After being signed to a major label the band finally had the cash to make an album right. What we got was uneven, but this teems with potential.

39) Shade – Sigma Oasis

With an opening reminiscent of The Band, Trey and company deliver one of their most intimate ballads. His vocal performance is warm with producer Vance Powell giving the band space that Bob Ezrin didn’t on Fuego or Big Boat. The instrumentation is beautiful and contemplative, demonstrating Phish’s mastery of emotional content.

38) 46 Days – Round Room

Playful, but intimidatingly intense at the same time, 46 Days steamrolls the listener with a grinding funk-blues groove. A classic Phish lyric referencing a member of their extended family, the phrasing is conversational, with a whiff of grace in the crushing audio assault. McConnell’s organ, captured expertly by Bryce Groggin, propels the song to Anastasio’s blistering solo.

37) Stash – Picture Of Nectar

Latin tinged Prog sums up one of Phish’s most adventurous studio recordings. Anastasio’s propulsive guitar line rides uneasily over Fishman’s roiled beat. Kevin Hamlin captures the intricacies of the composition and gives it a brilliant sheen.

36) I Always Wanted It This Way – Big Boat

Coming on like a track from some forgotten New Wave band, I Always Wanted It This Way, turns live weaknesses into strengths. Sit back, imagine yourself at a high school dance in a John Hughes movie. Enjoy the synth leads and up-tempo beat while McConnell sings half-intelligibly about recapturing a lost love. This makes the list for being like nothing else in the Phish catalog.

35) Foam – Junta

This a hard song to play and the fact that Phish makes it sound so effortless is a free pass onto this list. Gordon’s slap/pop bass dominates as Anastasio weaves in and out of McConnell’s runs. Fishman also steps up with a variation of an Afro-Cuban cáscara beat crossed with a bit of clave. Gordon Hookailo gets a shout out for the incredible clarity he got on this one, even as the band descends into a mad frenzy towards the song’s end.

34) Bouncing Around the Room – Lawn Boy

Their most radio-ready hit that never launched. Had this song been on Picture Of Nectar, we may have seen a different trajectory for the band. This was the first volley toward the intricate vocal arrangements of Billy Breathes and Story Of The Ghost. The knock here is that the recording sounds flat, but not enough to exclude its importance over the arc of their studio output.

33) Monsters – Evolve

The dark and moody “Monsters” channels strong Ronnie James Dio via Crazy Horse vibes, pairing brooding guitar work with introspective lyrics. It feels destined to become a welcome breather during especially intense sets moving forward.

32) Cavern – Picture Of Nectar

In typical Phish fashion, they craft a song with a big rock and roll feel and tell the tale of an anti-hero. The genesis of the lyrics, as an exercise in writing songs by email between Tom Marshall and Scott Herman, gives us lyrics that demand repeated listenings. It is a strange, even disjointed story, which adds to the allure of the studio version. Everyone steps up in this compact, no-nonsense reading of the song. Album producer Kevin Hamlin, again, gives a masterclass in studio wizardry.

31) Free – Billy Breathes

This is Phish’s highest-charting single, rising up to #24 on the Alternative Radio charts in 1996. It opened the Bill Breathes album and was a single, it made a statement, marking a shift toward a more spacious, textured studio sound for Phish. The shredding guitar and knife-like precision of the beat make this an old school fan favorite and always welcome, either live or in the studio.

30) Roggae – Story Of The Ghost

Many of Phish’s best studio vocal performances occur when the band uses layering to create a deep warm sound, this is a perfect example. Each voice is introduced in the opening couplet and then weaved in and out of each other as the song builds. With its gentle reggae leaning combined with an almost country twang, this is one of Phish’s most beautiful studio cuts.

29) First Tube – Farmhouse

A bass-driven juggernaut, this is another TAB song co-opted by Phish for the Farmhouse album. A full-on rocker that is expertly executed. Completely different from the rest of the album it jumps from the speaker, technically flawless in the production. Nominated for a Grammy, it is Phish at their San Francisco Psychedelic best to start a new millennium.

28) Reba – Lawn Boy

With more money and better studios, Phish’s Lawn Boy was a jump both sonically and stylistically. Reba shines on an album full of heavy hitters with Fishman driving the song. This was a great summation of Phish in 1990, intricate with self-deprecating in the lyrics. The knock, another case of overproduction on the vocals.

27) The Horse/Silent in the Morning – Rift

Almost inseparable, Horse and Silent in the Morning have to be included together. Anastasio’s plaintive ballad Horse leads up to the closing track of 1993’s Rift where Page McConnell provides a calm after the chaos that proceeded. Behind a beautiful soundtrack, we find a resolution and awkward end to a nightmare night. Horse is that pre-conscious state and Silent in the Morning is a distillation of the 1000 images we have seen, leaving us with hope.

26) A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing – Undermind

We all love a good song about mermaids. The dissonant intro breaks into waves that mimic the dark lyrics reminiscent of Homer’s Odyssey. Page’s vocal effect highlights Trey’s plaintive plea and his piano adds an ominous counterpoint. This track is a distillation of the internal strife of the band at this time. This is late 70s stoner rock at it’s best.

25) David Bowie – Junta

One of Phish’s most loved songs is preserved here like a blueprint for some of Phish’s most ambitious recordings. The crispness of the recording, from the opening high hat to Discipline era King Crimson runs, is amazing as this was a first album and self-produced. The knock here is the unnecessary sound effects that clutter the extended instrumental section.

24) Steam – Sigma Oasis

Raw and uncompromising with cryptic lyrics, this is everything Junta wanted to be. The opening seems to rise like the steam of the song’s title before we are given one of Tom Marshalls most relatable myth/story-type lyrics. The band is obviously comfortable in the song and it seems to move along effortlessly. The addition of background singers and the effects on Anastasio’s voice are the payoff for years of failed attempts at similar tricks in the studio.

23) You Enjoy Myself – Junta

If one song is most associated with Phish, it’s You Enjoy Myself. Here we find it in an awkward place on the album, the second song in, and flat compared to live versions. That’s not to say it still isn’t a strong studio cut, keeping it under 10 minutes while staying true to the spirit of the song. Gordon steps it up for the funk break down, pacing the band to the song’s thrilling conclusion.

22) Sand – Farmhouse

Phish made full use of the studio on this Trey Anastasio Band song from 2000’s Farmhouse. The post-production touches make this one shine, giving Trey’s voice and the misty background vocals an ominous sound. With no real solo to speak of this is one of their most interesting studio cuts, feeling almost like something you’d hear on a Chemical Brothers album.

21) Waves – Round Room

Bryce Goggin gave Phish a lot of space on Round Room, coaxing moments of greatness like this gentle zephyr of a song. The lyrics are secondary, providing brief moments of rest before heading back out to the simple majesty of the band’s playing while Anastasio lays down a mix of old school fuzz funk peppered with Hendrix flourishes.

20) Thread – Sigma Oasis

While Everything’s Right suffers from its length, Thread makes use of every minute to amazing effect. A companion piece to Steam and Part 3 of a trilogy that includes the unreleased Epitaph, it is a Prog Metal masterpiece. Anastasio angrily hammers away on his guitar, summoning the spirit of Hendrix, Zappa and Fripp into an extended solo that is prog, metal and punk, sometimes in a single run. McConnell pounds a repetitive figure on his piano as the rhythm section barely holds the song together until for a few brief seconds they find the original riff to end the song. Again, Vance Powell deftly takes the raw power of live Phish and crafts it into one of Phish’s strongest studio performances.

19) Brian and Robert – Story Of The Ghost

Well composed, well-executed, and concise, everything Phish is said to shy away from, is found here. As close as Phish ever got to a Beach Boys vocal performance with beautiful harmonies swirling over lyrics reminiscent of God Only Knows. This is paired against a simple accompaniment floating along to Anastasio’s almost atonal drone, similar to the Robert in the title’s Frippertronics.

18) What’s The Use – Siket Disc

At over 11 minutes, this may not seem to fit into our parameters, but the genesis of the Siket Disc that it comes from tells another story. Taken from jam sessions for the Story Of The Ghost album, John Siket and Page McConnell created a series of collages and soundscapes, some more successful than others, to create an album that echoes Eno or Fripp from the late 70s. This dreamy cut, built on Gordon’s lumbering bass and the raw, antagonistic guitar of Anastasio is as close to no-wave as the band ever got.

17) Tweezer – Picture Of Nectar

Tweezer has become a monster jam vehicle for Phish, sometimes stretching for 30+ minutes, and they attempt to catch that spirit on vinyl with mixed results. At a little over 8 minutes, they take the basic riff and get into some interesting improvisation as a sampler of the song’s potential, but it never feels like they gel. The importance of the song in their catalog demands its presence on this list.

16) Backwards Down the Number Line – Joy

Phish in their triumphant return opened 2009’s Joy with an arena rock anthem as only they can. An ode to old friendships and platonic love, it is Tom Marshal’s most pure and transparent lyrics. The acoustic guitar is prominent in the mix with McConnell’s piano fills happily bubbling underneath.

15) Rift – Rift

Rift may be the most perfectly placed song on any Phish album, opening its namesake with a quasi-back story that sets the stage for a series of nightmarish dreams until we reach the final track. The production showcases the hyperactive guitar which seems equal parts Free Jazz, Prog, and Cowpunk which Anastasio and McConnell bounce back and forth over.

14) Julius – Hoist

When Phish uses the studio correctly, to augment and flesh out songs, they have had great results. Here, horns, courtesy of Tower Of Power, punctuate Anastasio’s simple riff that switches from acoustic to electric and back during the song. Also, the addition of members of Sly Stone’s band adds to the big production Stax like quality of the vocals and overall recording.

13) Taste – Billy Breathes

This is a song that went through multiple incarnations live before being set as it appears on Billy Breathes. It is a little Prog, a little Zappa, and a little XTC, who Lillywhite had also worked with, swirling along with unintelligible lyrics. On a technical level, there is a great separation between Fishman’s drums and Page’s piano as they build on Gordon’s bass. Steve Lilywhite, again, adds a deep warmth with his production, coaxing the best from the band.

12) Fluffhead – Junta

Several times during their career Phish has taken a few disparate musical thoughts and combined them into a longer song. This may be the most successful of these attempts. The juxtaposition of Gordon’s bass and the acoustic combination of Anastasio’s guitar and McConnel’s piano creates a unique dynamic. It really is amazing this is from a debut album. The only knock is the ending falls a little flat without a wild adoring crowd and CK5 white lights pushing the energy higher.

11) Fast Enough for You – Rift

Sad, sparse, and full of raw nerves, Phish’s first foray into a ‘meaningful’ song is brilliantly placed as the second song on Rift. Sitting as a calm before the coming storm that emerges as it ends. Each instrument is given space to breathe and the song has a country feel, courtesy of Gordon Stone’s pedal steel, drawing out the bittersweet sentiment of the lyrics. This recording shows a band with the potential to break free of the jam band label, feeling like it would be as comfortable on a Wilco album as a Phish album.

10) Pebbles and Marbles – Round Room

This one marked a shift in the band’s take on a composed piece, borrowing from an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer interpretation of the American songbook. The excessive aspects of the band serve them well here, making the sum of the parts greater than any individual performance. The post-Prog tone they had begun experimenting with in 2.0 is preserved here for posterity and it is one of the best things they recorded post 1.0.

9) The Line – Fuego

If Phish was ever going to write a hit for Adult Alternative Radio this was it. Weirdly inspirational lyrics that have an inverted zen with a tight melody. Bob Ezrin captures the finely tuned pop sensibility of the song and the execution has a slinky lightness that is pensive, like the singer baring his soul. This is another of the long list of studio cuts driven by McConnell’s piano, punctuating the songs last 2 minutes brilliantly. The strength of this cut lies in what it is often panned for, being a song that leaves no room for improvisation, existing best encapsulated on a mediocre album where it can shine.

8) Scents and Subtle Sounds – Undermind

Phish brought in Indie veteran Tchad Blake to produce Undermind with mixed results. The album is all over the place and many of the songs seem like notes more than realized visions. This is the exception, with Fishman’s hi-hat and snare rolls propelling the song while Anastasio’s guitar comes in dirty before releasing to the gentle melody of the lyrics. They also keep it short, adding to the song’s punch.

7) Petrichor – Big Boat

Remember this is about the studio and nowhere does Bob Ezrin’s heavy hand serve the band better than on Big Boat’s closing number Petrichor. It sounds like a lost Peter Gabriel era Genesis song, with all the same quirky brilliance. The coolness of Ezrin’s production heightens the feeling of a rain-filled world found in the lyrics. This production philosophy also helps capture the subtleties of the composed parts and creates a clear separation between the layers of instruments. It is a glimpse of what could be possible with the right producer behind the helm for the right song. As for live, well……

6) Run Like an Antelope – Lawn Boy

Of all the extended compositions on the Lawn Boy album, this proto-prog rave-up seems to work best. The songs only lyrics start at 8 minutes in, leaving Anastasio and company plenty of time to explore the basic structure. They weave through several moods at a more and more accelerated pace that sees the band become unhinged as if total chaos is imminent before a beautifully weird blow-out leads to the minimal lyrics. This is the standout cut on Lawn Boy, providing an invaluable glimpse into early Phish.

5) If I Could – Hoist

Fresh off their bluegrass crash course with the Rev. Jeff Moser, Phish put their learning to good use with Alisson Kraus on this gospel-like ballad. Perhaps Anastasio’s most affecting lyric, written for first fan Amy Skelton, shows a deftness and maturity not usually found with Phish lyrics. The musical depth is built on McConnell’s swelling organ and honky-tonk piano. Kraus’s vocals, full of hopeful weariness, provides the perfect counterpoint to Anastasio’s vocal phrasing. It ends in a glorious rush of strings, letting the world know Phish is more than just a jam band.

4) Maze – Rift

From one of their strongest studio efforts, Barry Beckett captures evil Phish like no one else did until 2020’s Sigma Oasis. This is the first nightmare we encounter in Rift’s song cycle and the band plays with a frantic, interlocking madness like some experimental-jazz/metal demon. The longest song on Rift, Maze, gives the band plenty of time to explore the jazzy darkness. Anastasio and Gordon are in synchronized lockstep over McConnell’s Hammond Organ and Fishman’s frantic hi-hat, while the lyrics recount the paranoia found in the music.

3) Ghost – Story Of The Ghost

Eno’s influence is all over this one, sounding like something constructed from the cutting room floor of Talking Heads Remain In Light sessions. The beauty here is the lyrics drive the song before Mike Gordon’s bass makes a statement of its own. Anastasio’s guitar provides washes of ambiance proving the musical intelligence of the band. This album marked a shift for the band musically on many levels, most notably the addition of slow-burning funk grooves like this.

2) The Divided Sky – Junta

One of Phish’s crowning achievements, the opening track on side 2 of Junta, Anastasio’s most perfectly composed piece, is captured in all it’s glory, showcasing Trey Anastasio’s intricate writing and the band’s early symphonic sensibility. It unfolds in distinct sections, each having a different flavor, most notably the palindrome section. The intricate composition’s production on Junta sees Anastasio, Gordon, and McConnell fully interlock creating a lush soundscape over Fishman’s steady hand. This is Phish at their meandering psychedelic best, a masterclass in tension and release that remains a cornerstone of their legacy.

1) Billy Breathes – Billy Breathes

The culmination of everything they had learned in the studio, this one is Beatlesque, and Steve Lillywhite was their George Martin. Written about Anastasio’s newborn daughter, it has a timeless quality like a lazy afternoon. The heart-warming vocal communicates the depth of his love for Billy over the sparse instrumentation, where the spaces between the notes shine as much as the notes themselves. The production is intimate and restrained, allowing each element to breathe, and showcasing a level of emotional maturity rarely heard in Phish’s catalog. It is a moment of quiet beauty that stands in contrast to the band’s more exploratory tendencies, making it their most enduring and personal studio achievements.

Sting Goes Rogue or The Audacity of Dream of the Blue Turtles

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It takes guts to walk away from the biggest band in the world. It takes defiance to then make an album that seemed designed to confuse everyone from the record company to the critics to the fans. That is exactly what Sting did in 1985. On his solo debut, “The Dream Of The Blue Turtles,” he made a statement of intent that was equal parts refusal and provocation.

Looking back it was a fascinating gamble. There was no easing into a post-Police identity, no transitional record, no pussyfooting. He followed his instinct and assembled a band of jazz assassins to make, what is at first listen, a pop record that revealed so much more just below the surface.

The opener, “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,” is pure pop poetry, bright and bouncy, with a great hook, but listen closer. Lyrically it is a clean break from the possessive paranoia of “Every Breath You Take.” Musically, the rhythm doesn’t sit still, the groove breathes and flexes; the band orbits each other refusing to lock into place. This made the critics and record company uneasy because it was too slick for jazz and too fidgety for pop. They were all shouting, “What is this album supposed to be?”

Sting doesn’t give an easy answer, and ultimately just pushed a answer further away the deeper you get into the album.

“Russians” barely qualifies as a song in the pop sense. It is piercing, frozen in the Cold war, set to a borrowed piece of classical music and delivered with unflinching seriousness. The words pleading for common humanity, something so simple that at the time was seen as radical. The critics again were flinching at what seemed like gravitas coming from the pop reggae guy.

“Russians” is followed by “Children’s Crusade,” and the jazz ambitions are front and center. It asks a lot; dense, intricate, rich chords and an open structure. It’s heavy and doesn’t offer the listener an immediate reward, requiring instead engagement. The critics hated it because it didn’t distill it’s subject matter into a neat digestible slogan.

But it isn’t all like that, toward the end of side two we get “Moon Over Bourbon Street,” which gives us resolve and clarity for everything that came before. It is moody like a lot of the album. Narrative driven and atmospheric, the music serves the story instead of vice-a-versa. Branford Marsalis sax paints the edges, almost haunting them and you are carried away on the melody before being pulled in by the lyric. It all make sense now, Sting’s ambition coming through and the sense that he can inhabit many world’s at once.

He had built something at the intersection of rock and jazz that wasn’t quite the solo album anyone expected. In 1985 this was unheard of; jazz phrasing, pop hooks, and a political conscious with no critical framework. The critics said “Pick a lane,” Sting built an overpass.

And there is your disconnect: the record companies wanted continuity, the ‘new’ Police, critics wanted him all in or all out of the jazz tradition. What the fans embraced was an artist in transition: experimenting, overreaching, occasionally borrowing, but moving toward something new.

The fans were all that mattered in the end. The album sold millions and the songs have endured. The questions about genre and identity have been washed away. Sting could lead a virtuoso band, blur boundaries and still hit the pop charts.

We had the privilage of watching an artist morph into his next stage. That’s why “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” still holds it’s own where a Police rip off probably wouldn’t.

Watching A Panel Discussion On The Work Of Frank O’Hara

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Frank O’Hara thought he was a funny guy. He did this, then he did that, and he told you about it. Now we have panels dissecting each word as if his poems were dead; a post mortem where they declare today is devoid of such brilliance. They don’t realize poetry is not dead, it’s just not in their classrooms and textbooks.

There seems to be a disconnect and I think it starts with a faulty supposition, the notion creation of a poem is Idea> Artist> Text. Here, the artist is expressing or reproducing systems and the material text is almost a byproduct. From a small sample size of poets, me, I find this so off-base. Any idea I sit down with is quickly hi-jacked by the storm of thought and feeling that force themselves into language once I put pen to paper. The process should be framed Artist> Text> Idea. Here, meaning through making, not before, the medium – word, sound, form – shapes thought.

Frank was gay, the critics and academics make sure every word he wrote reflects that. They tell using fifty cent words that roll out like a jingle of jumble and jargon. They don’t see, poems should be, just be, fill space between the first cup of coffee and the long walk back up stairs to get dressed for another day at what you call ‘job.’ Don’t pay attention when the voices from the university shout “You missed the point” because you didn’t look at it the right way.

I like Frank, have since I first read him in the mid eighties. Today I learned he was gay. Does it change ‘having a coke with you’ if the speaker is speaking to another man? No, I still love it for the tone, the rhythm, the power of new love it captures. Do I read it differently? No, because my purpose as a reader is to allow myself to feel, to frame those words through the lens of my own experience. It teaches me I am not alone, that others have felt what I do and through image manifested in language take me back to personal experience.

Perhaps the critics and the academics need to come out of the mildewy halls of university that are draped with wrath, where whispers are overheard of the poet being dead, and step into the light. Close their eyes and listen, understanding is optional. They should get back to the basics, get lost in the image, bathe in the rhythm and and let the prosody swell in their loins. Touch that cold dark place where wonder once swelled at the word. Shot out of a cannon into the continuum. Poems live in that liminal space and let you commune with god.

Connecticut’s Finest: Residual Groove

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Residual Groove creates the kind of music that conjures late night vinyl, incense, and black lights pouring from under the door at the coolest afterparty you’ve ever been to. It’s smoky, half-remembered funk and soulful rock riffs, some weird cross between nostalgia and infinite possibility, that they stretch over stadium sized hooks you didn’t know you needed. It’s as if the band was born on the edge of a late night jam session that never stopped.

The grooves are intimate and dangerous in the best way. You lean in. The bass becomes a heartbeat. The drums an urgent pulse that makes the night come alive. The keys wash over the foundation, swirling like a whirlpool over your skin. And then the guitar sneaks in, slinky and sharp, like a lost riff.

Then there are the vocals floating above it all. Almost ethereal filling the space like a whispered secret, full of emotion. It changes your mood, you want to dance and cry and kiss a stranger all at once. This is how the great bands do it; perfectly raw, wildly human, and moving with an effortless precision.

It’s music that insists on connection, calling you to walk with it through a landscape painted in neon and reverb. Around every corner there is a promise of something electric. It’s music you feel in your bones as you transverse that liminal space between dreams and memory.

See the interview 04/02/26 at 7E: https://www.youtube.com/live/AyC3gNzMmY0

Awake in the Static or The Prelude to a Renaissance

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There is an energy out there, a strange tension in the air. It’s not jubilant or even hopeful, hanging just below the surface. Think when a band is between songs, time hangs for a minute, the amps hum, the mic crackles, and no one is sure what will happen next. The one thing you are sure of, something is coming. It’s not over, there will be another song.

Culture is dead, or dying in real time, is the narrative we are being sold. It’s a TikTok take; the doom scroll version of something more nuanced. Just spend some real time with music or books, find places where people still argue about poetry like life depended on it, and you find another story. The death of culture is more a metamorphosis, unsightly and awkward but inescapable, than the end of all culture.

This is the counter rhythm to the noise, rumbling underneath the algorithm sludge, uncanny-valley AI, and endless disposable content. It is fragmented, not a movement yet. Scenes. Rouge signals.

People are reading. Not the clout seeking “I Read 50 Books This Year” you see on Facebook, something deeper, slower, stranger. People stumbling onto Dostoevsky at 2 a.m. like a secret society was hiding. People arguing about Melville like he just dropped his latest masterpiece a week ago. People digging deep into Virginia Woolf not because some institution said it was cannon, but because the words feed your soul, the sentences oxygen when you come up from your screen.

This is how culture shifts start, in bedrooms and libraries, a little unhinged, obsessive, personal.

Writing is back too; nobody is waiting for permission. There are voices speaking everywhere, on Substack, in indie ‘zines, at readings in backrooms of bars and coffee shops. You can still see the gatekeepers holding on, but their grip is tentative at best, less gods and more a final vestige of the old way.

People are defiant, creating art not because anyone asked but because they refuse to be erased. They are making messy things, uneven things, human things. They are carving a space where none was offered.

That human part matters more than it has in a long time. The AI backlash is real and growing, but unharnessed. People talk about ‘voice’ like it is something that needs to be protected at all costs. The beauty in imperfection is what we crave. Remember disco, the inhuman polish, and everyone suddenly wanting distortion again? People wanted something alive and before long there was punk and hip hop.

People want meaning. They are starved for it and they look back to the things that have stood for centuries like myth and mysticism. Anything that carries weight in a world full of pseudo profundity and off the rails conspiracy theories. It is that desire to feel awe and that the world isn’t just content, that there is depth, texture, even mystery.

Even these three hour podcasts that seem completely self indulgent or essays that find a hundred side roads before coming to something like a conclusion is a rebellion against compression. They are refusing the mantra of easily digestible, quick, and efficient; against the idea everything needs to fit in a scrollable box. Take it as a sign people are willing to try stretching their attention spans and pushing their brains toward capacity again.

All it will take to bring all these pieces together is an artistic breakthrough, a figure who steps out of the noise and pulls it all into focus; someone to make the meaning of this moment obvious. We are still compiling half-formed ideas that may never land in late night rehearsals and scattered jam sessions. It is prelude.

And that is what a renaissance looks like if you rewind to the decade before it’s start. There is no inevitability. It’s confusion, false starts, and people trying things that don’t work. They are arguing about what matters, the sense the old ways are done with only a notion of what will replace them.

You can call it collapse because we are in that murky middle between that past and future. Or you can put down your device, take a deep breath and realize there is something completely different going on. Somewhere just below the noise culture is turning up; awkwardly, imperfectly, maybe even badly, but real. When that spark finally catches fire it’s going to matter.

How Disco Stole The Soul: Disco and the End of The Sound Of Philadelphia

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There was a time when The Sound of Philadelphia ruled the airwaves with elegance; a lush soul symphony where they wore their hearts on their sleeves and in the span of one four-minute song you could go from heartbreak to hope.

They called it TSOP, the brainchild of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff. It was a hit factory that rivaled Detroit and Memphis. A hit factory that was a cathedral built on the tightest rhythm sections and elegant string charts. It preached the gospel of love. Love Train was a sermon. If You Don’t Know Me By Now was dressing up in your Sunday finest for emotional devastation. Their de facto theme song TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia) offered salvation and was the blueprint for sleek instrumental glide. Philly soul was a complete package, it had something to say.

Everything was good, and Philadelphia International Records was racking up the hits, but things were quickly changing. DJs in nightclubs wanted longer grooves and started looping certain songs to keep the dance floor packed. These songs were all the same, beat forward, the kind that became the backbone for disco.

The door had been cracked opened and disco crashed the house party: the furniture got rearranged, the lights were turned up, and the band was replaced with an endless, uninterrupted beat.

Disco first showed up like the guy someone knew. Everyone said he was cool. Turns out he was the guy who was yelling “The party is just starting” at three in the morning when everyone else had gone home. All of a sudden Do It Any Way You Wanna was being looped by a DJ and the song was now serving the groove instead of vice versa.

The church had been infiltrated and corrupted by disco. There was no going back.

There is one rule in disco, keep the bodies moving. Emotional depth had no place in a cocaine fueled delirium. The message became optional and any depth was cool if you fit in with the pulse, the four-on-the-floor that flies forward with no detours allowed.

Disco had conquered the dance floor, the music had flattened, slowly at first with the stories fading into slogans. Then the transformation quickened as white people discovered disco through movies like Saturday Night Fever and groups like The Bee Gees. The people in charge over at the record companies had their blinders removed and disco became big business. The Bee Gees became the face of the genre, making disco a generic universal vibe that had grandma dancing in the kitchen with the pre-teen kids. Every song on the radio had a mirror ball makeover in the late seventies.

The vocals too, they ended up riding the groove from the backseat, barely looking at the road. In Philly you had voices like Teddy Pendergrass who could break you down in real time, the notes pouring out like a confession from the depth of your soul. With Disco it was an endless chorus that was there to echo the beat.

The record companies loved it. They always love a formula. It was efficient, predictable, a groove that never changed. It is the kind of thing you could build a bank on. The songs got longer, slicker, and interchangeable. There was no band anymore, just a DJ, and they needed continuity and an endless stream of hits.

No more messy, human emotion driving songs. That was the domain of TSOP and Philadelphia International Records. Disco didn’t breathe or hesitate or get into a slow burn, those hallmarks were now a liability to profitability.

As with anything that is co-opted by mainstream culture and can be exploited by the suits running the record labels and radio stations, disco crashed. It burned bright, but burned fast. Remember Disco Demolition Nights? That was backlash coming quick and cancelling a whole glittery jacked-up culture.

Part of the wreckage was The Sound Of Philadelphia and the idea music could be a hit and be sophisticated and deeply felt all at once. The orchestra had packed up and left by the back door. TSOP wasn’t coming back either.

Disco has been rehabilitated through the warm lens of nostalgia, forgetting that in its short life it killed the Sound Of Philadelphia. A death that was far from merciful; more like 4 shots in the stomach and being left on the side of the road. It was seductive at first, then slowly the rhythm was turned into a beat that was so loud you couldn’t hear the heart underneath.

Disco celebrated specticle. TSOP testified; about love, about struggle, about community. Then it got steamrolled into a smooth, shiny, easy to sell piece of gold.

Tedeschi Trucks Band March 18th 2026 Review and Recap

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There are bands that play songs, and then there are bands that play time. It is stretched, bent, allowed to breathe until a four minute song becomes a whole emotional weather system. Tedeschi Trucks Band are that band, the , one whose shows are like walking into a Southern soul revival where the sermon comes down in distorted guitars, screaming brass, and gritty vocals.

Last night at the Beacon in NYC, midway through their 10 show residency, this was on full display. From the opening tune Hear My Dear thru to the Space Captain encore, Derek Trucks played slide so liquid it seemed to be melting the frets. He plays like other people breathe, with an unconscious inevitability, like there is no difference between the instrument and the hands holding it.

Standing next to Derek is his partner and the true gravitational center of the band, Susan Tedeschi. When she steps up to the mic the room shifts, warming and welcoming you. She sings in that rare liminal space between gospel confession and beer soaked barroom blues, a rare combination of tenderness and grit. Even the covers feel like she owns them, they become her joys and heartbreaks.

Susan is complimented by Mike Mattison, who took the lead several times during the night including a down and dirty take on Dylan’s Down In The Flood, and keyboard wizard Gabe Dixon whose vocals add an angelic feel. And they are just two of this musical juggernaut.

Tedeschi Trucks band are different from most jam adjacent acts, both in the professionalism and huge sound with the dozen musicians on stage. Horns, back ground singers, and dual drummers, the band becomes a soul soaked mini orchestra under the influence of the Allman Brothers Band.

The night’s set list was a strong mix of covers, originals, and new tunes. Hero, with their producer Mike Dandelion on bass, was the strongest of the new material. It’s “I’m not your hero / I’m not a zero” chorus hits hard and Susan brings it home with her vocal performance.

The horns added punch comes on like the ghost of Stax records. Blind Faith’s Had To Cry Today took on a whole new life. The rhythm section churning in a patient groove, letting the moment swell and build, right before it all locks in and there is a collective exhale.

Nels Cline came out toward the end of the recently added Loving Cup and stayed through Sleepy John Estes’ Leaving Trunk and Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Volunteered Slavery. It became an extended blues work out stretching twenty minutes. Trucks and Cline traded solos, moving deftly from quiet to a spiral of sound that sounded as if it was defying gravity, while the band raged behind them.

That is where the magic lies, whether taking disparate covers and making them feel brand new or their ever expanding catalog of originals, they take the entire history of American music and make it alive.

The band closed with Matthew Moore’s Space Captain and we all swayed as one. It burned slow in our souls, the chorus of “Learning to live together” ringing in our ears as we spilled out into the cold night, warm for the brilliance we had been bathed in.

They may play Southern rock, blues and soul, but what they really do is play the moment those sounds collide. It reminds you why live music matters when a band like Tedeschi Trucks walk on stage and make life a little bit better.

Set list: Hear My Dear, Fall In, Little by Little, Last Night in the Rain, Until You Remember, Down in the Flood, Isaac/Kebbi Jam, Let Me Get By, Hero*, Tangled Up in Blue, Had to Cry Today, Soul Sweet Song, The Sky Is Crying, Looking for Answers, Loving Cup**> Leaving Trunk**> Volunteered Slavery** E: Space Captain (* With Mike Elizondo on bass) (** With Nels Cline on guitar)

Side One, Side Two, and the Death of Discipline or How Streaming Killed The LP

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Listening to a record is ritual. You gently remove the vinyl from the sleeve, place it on the turntable and lower the tone arm. Twenty minutes later you lift it, flip the record and play side two.

Side one had the big opener, the one with the hook, and the radio single. Side two you’d get a little deeper, vulnerable or weird, and often find magic. It was a formula, one created by the constraints of the medium of the music’s reproduction, the LP, as much as the song length. The format directed decisions made by the musicians when deciding what would make the final cut.

There is beauty in this discipline. Twenty-three minutes maximum per side. You had a physical boundary, a hard stop. You had to earn each side. There were ruthless choices to be made. “Does this song deserve a larger audience?” “Does it belong on side one or is it a B-side for a single?” “Does it earn its spot or is this other one better?”

The ultimate editor was time, pitting songs against each other.

This dynamic made the greatest albums. They wouldn’t exist without it. It was a death match in the studio, every song fighting for a spot. Then came the sequencing and another fight. Track one, side one had to kick in your teeth while the side one closer had to make you want to flip the record and once you did you needed to find a warm welcome back.

Things were good, then there was something new, the compact disc, and the Pandora’s box it opened.

74 minute, pushing double LP space. All of a sudden artists had an extra 29 minutes or so. It was heralded as freedom. It was also marketed like freedom: musicians could give the fans everything.

Sadly, they did.

Editing? Optional. That tight ten song LP? Sixteen tracks of sprawl. Songs that would have been on the cutting room floor in 1979 were now Track 14, neatly sandwiched between a remix and a moody acoustic demo no one quite believed in. There was a bad case of bloat. Continuity disappeared with the death of Side One and Side Two. It was no longer a journey, it became a fall down a rabbit hole.

Then just as quickly things shifted again. Enter the internet and the emptying of Pandora’s box.

Time limits? That’s funny. No sides. No runtime. No physical format to provide some guardrail, some limit, some voice to say “Maybe cut this one.” You can upload everything now: half-baked demos, that jam that sounded good in the moment, the song you wrote taking a dump in under twelve minutes because you got to feed the algorithm. It was no longer about making an album, but producing output.

The art of keeping things locked in the vault had become extinct.

That is the problem, constraints make mediocre art great. Twenty minutes or so per side, you think like a storyteller. Every note must contribute something to the albums flow; you cut a decent song in favor of a great one. The fate of a song becomes argued like it is a life or death decision.

And it was.

There is a difference between a good album and the ones we call masterpieces and that is determined, often, by what we never heard. There are miles of tape in dusty studio storerooms holding thousands of hours of okay tracks that lost the argument. Thank God it happened and they died so the album could live.

That is the crux of the matter, there isn’t necessarily too much music, it is there is too little editing. We don’t need to hear every idea a band has, we need the ones that they fought to keep.

This is something vinyl knows.

That’s why we’re still flipping the record.

The Poetry-Industrial Complex: Who Decides What Poetry Is?

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You can hear it in barrooms and coffee shops, that old gripe that poetry is run by gatekeepers. The real stuff, the guttural, late night truth, doesn’t live in magazines of MFA workshops. It lives on the street, in the unfiltered voices whose rhythm is a jackhammer that reveals diamonds.

And they would be right.

There is a strange little ecosystem, a poetry-industrial complex so to speak. It is made of small magazines, university presses, and workshop networks. It follows fashion and rewards proximity.

The right editor at the right reading and you might get the nod. That old cliché about who you know has become the invisible submission guide. If you want recognition, and who doesn’t, this is the sanctioned road, the tried true way of carefully crafted, worked over until nothing unpredictable survives poetry forged in workshops. It can be electric, but it is more often than not so well behaved it loses its truth.

Academia asks the poet to translate them self into something publishable, full of language theory, perfect iambs and workshop norms.

But there is another side, another scene, like the pirate station you can find if you turn the dial just a little and let the static bleed. It is the poems that spill out from the feedback of an open mic night on a half broken PA. It is the words that fill the backs of junk mail and little notebooks walking home from a 10 hour shift.

These verses don’t care if they’re publishable. They stick like a song you can’t shake. Think Patti Smith with three chords and a confession that hits like a sledgehammer, or Gil Scott-Heron detonating thought bombs mid-line.

The poetry that refuses to ask permission to exist. The defiant poetry that shows up and dares you to look away.

The problem is that no one sees these poems. The system that decides who gets published also works as a system to filter voices. The record kept is incomplete, magazines are archives of what a small insulated group thinks is poetry. People who I am sure are trying to, imperfectly, make sense of what matters, but only hear echoes.

Not making this into some mustache twirling villain situation. It is just the system doing what it does, narrowing. That is where the tension swirls, somewhere between saying what matters and having the poem be something that might last.

You end up with a disconnect. Poets smoothing the edges of their voice to get in the door or refusing to compromise and risk their voice being unheard.

Poetry isn’t owned by magazines or collected anthologies of the ‘best new poets,’ but magazines do act like a style book defining what is considered a poem at the current moment. The real stuff, the messy, unrepeatable, blood and sweat poetry happens elsewhere, off the page.

If you listen close, somewhere between a whisper and a scream, you can hear it, where nobody’s asking for credentials to have your voice heard.

Counterculture in Collapse: FM Radio, Cultural Upheaval, and the Foundations of Punk Rock

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The alienation and social unrest found in the three chord hopped up music called Punk didn’t just appear in New York in the mid seventies. Long before CBGB’s became the epicenter for a new music there were bands pushing back against the corporatization of Rock and Roll. The polished, radio friendly sounds of bands like The Beach Boys, Beatles, Elvis and Motown had become passé while songs like “Louie Louie” by The Kingsman were pushing boundaries. The barely intelligible “Louie Louie” was actually considered subversive with the FBI investigating Richard Berry in February 1964 over complaints the lyrics were obscene. Nothing came of it, but the point was made; rock and roll was dangerous.

These new sounds were played fast and loud for a disenfranchised youth audience, fueling the dreams of hundreds of kids in high school rock bands pounding away on 2nd hand guitars. If you knew 3 chords and could play for 2 and a half minutes you could do this rock and roll thing. Groups like The Monks “I Hate You,” The Count Five “Psychotic Reaction” and The Sonics “Psycho” stripped back all the gloss and pomp. It was attitude over virtuosity. Teen angst unrestrained and amplified through a blown speaker. They were playing by their own set of rules.

You can say it started in 1955 when a new sound came across American radio. Sonny Burgess “Red Headed Woman,” Billy Lee Riley “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll,” Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” and of course Jerry Lee Lewis “Great Balls Of Fire” were all attitude and wild showmanship. They were pushing boundaries with their shows, lyrics and primal beat. In 1958 Link Wray upped the game, releasing “Rumble,” a down and dirty instrumental that Iggy Pop said inspired him to join a band. From this even rawer sounds like Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs “Wooly Bully”, The Kingsman’s “Louie Louie” and The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” entered the mainstream consciousness, further pushing the idea of what rock and roll was.

It was even happening in the heart of Motown where Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith together with Rob Tyner, Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson started what would become the first cornerstone of Punk Rock’s foundation, The MC5. It was 1964 and the folkie movement had gained steam with the likes of Bob Dylan and Phil Oakes making protest music with acoustic instruments. It was there that the idea that you could protest with electric instruments just as easily was planted and over the next few years the band got tighter, began writing songs and by the late 60s were waiting for a chance to be released on the world.

American popular culture in 1967 took a 180 with what was known as the Summer of Love. A media construct to try and explain what was happening socially, musically and culturally in SF. Bands played long free form shows at various reclaimed ballrooms around the city and a reevaluation of what could and couldn’t be done within the context of a rock and roll show started. Sex and drugs were no longer seen as taboo and a new way of thinking was born. Sadly, the Utopia that was being sold didn’t last long and by 1968 the whole thing had become a shitshow.

A big factor in the decline of the SF scene was the rise of FM radio. KSAN in San Francisco had become a model for the wild west that was FM radio, playing deep album cuts, unknown bands and live performances, but what started as a means to share new sounds and a new philosophy to a larger audience was co-opted in 1968 by big media conglomerates to sell records. FM stations began to pop in small town America and bands like the Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service, whose long jams were favored on these formats, became stars. There was also an unintended consequence, it opened people’s minds and the kids began flocking to San Francisco to take part in free love, music and drugs. The problem was this perceived ‘unlimited freedom’ led down some dark roads and the Summer of love was over as quickly as it began in a haze of bad drugs and broken dreams. As FM became co-opted by the industry, a new underground energy sought to reclaim rock for the disaffected, paving the way for punk’s DIY ethos.

At the same time anger over the Vietnam war had begun to stoke serious upheaval in middle American. Children were pitted against parents and friends against neighbors, the Tet Offensive showed America losing a war they shouldn’t have been in, RFK and MLK were assassinated and the Democratic National Convention fell into chaos with cops beating kids in the streets. The call to peace and love began to fall on deaf ears with the daily assault of images of the war on television and the time was right for the MC 5. They became the soundtrack for the violence the country witnessed at the 1968 Democratic Convention and had found their voice.

By 1969 the SF scene had completely collapsed with the Hell’s Angels killing a concert goer at Altamont Speedway while The Rolling Stones played Sympathy For The Devil. Out of the ashes came the MC5’s seminal release Kick Out The Jams and they provided a much needed foil in American music to the sounds on the radio that had grown from a counterculture movement to a pop cliche. Recorded live at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom on October 30 and 31, 1968, it preached something radically different, embracing their militant activism of their manager, the poet, John Sinclair. They were throwing a different kind of Party.

The music they played was similar in some ways to the SF sound in as much as it was loose and favored longer solos, but it was differentiated by the intense edge of the songs, raw and unpolished, overtly political and not shying away from inciting violence. Because they were, in the end, a reaction against and the next logical step to the SF counterculture. Sadly, they didn’t find a mass market and even after getting a big feature in Rolling Stone, never were more than an underground band. By 1972 were done. Their influence continues to this day, but at the time it left the underground with a void waiting to be filled.

Flower power had become a tourist trap, a glittering corpse of failed idealism, and bands like the MC5 appeared to fill the void. Slick production and love and light lyrics gave way to music that could punch you in the gut; three chords and maximum noise with lyrics rooted in a spit in the face of authority manifesto fueled by casual nihilism.

From the smoke filled basements in Detroit the sound of kids who were sick of the charade called FM radio with it’s sixties idealism appeared. It answered the call for unpolished, raw, uncut music. It wasn’t polite. It wasn’t pretty. It was a musical middle finger to a society that had failed the youth with the promise of freedom and instead delivering disappointment. They answered with a revolution made up of amps, sneakers, and sneers.