10 ms·

The Business of Phish

96 points by nthitz 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- andrewljohnson 13y ago
  I always thought dead heads and phish heads were in it for the drugs and sex, and the music set the beat. I guess that describes a lot of religions though.
  - dankoss 13y ago
    Having seen Dave 3-4 times now, I can say his fanbase seems similar.
  - timdev2 13y ago
    Honestly, you can say that about a lot of popular music. Disco, anyone?
aviswanathan 13y ago
I think Phish's style is really similar to the Allman Brothers' back in their heyday. Although I doubt they profited massively from it, Live At Fillmore East is a jam rocker's dream album. This article brings up an interesting thought: back in the '60s and '70s when most rock bands extended improvisations into their concerts (Led Zep, Hendrix, Floyd, etc.), did none of them think of recording and distributing each live show as a standalone piece like Phish? Or were they perhaps already 'mainstream enough'?
- timdev2 13y ago
  At some point, probably in the 70s, Frank Zappa began obsessively multi-tracking nearly-all performances (at significant cost back then). This led to a bunch of interesting output, including things like compositions based on an improvised guitar solo, separated from it's original backing, and placed in a completely different harmonic context. Also, lots of straight-up live compilations (with some overdubs), chiefly the You Can't Do That On Stage Any More (YCDTOSA) series, which is a six volume set of double-CDs. For most people, back in those days, getting a sufficiently high-quality recording of a live show was prohibitively expensive. Like Phish, Zappa was very much a cottage industry, unmolested by mainstream music industry stuff after the very early days.
- Jgrubb 13y ago
  Two things.. The Allman's Fillmore album (iirc) was their first #1 album, released within weeks of Dwayne's death. That album more or less cemented their financial viability to this day. Recording live shows was not the trivial matter back in the analog era that it is today. You basically needed a trucks worth of absurdly expensive and delicate equipment to be set up and torn down every night, whereas most bands that multitrack their shows today plug one cable into their digital soundboard and that's all there is to it. Also, Phish's isn't releasing multitracks on livephish, those are most likely 4 track blends of the stereo soundboard feed mixed with a pair of crowd mics.
moron4hire 13y ago
That was an incredibly long article. I like the (now I can't seem to figure out who it is from) quote, "I'm sorry this letter is so long, I didn't have time to make it shorter." There was a lot of history-of-the-band in the middle that didn't really feel absolutely necessary. It started to feel like a lot of fan self indulgence. That said, it did convey the very important lesson: don't go into debt. When talking about bands going on a meteoric rise, being pushed by their record labels, you're talking about bands going into debt to the record label. As long as you're not in debt, you don't have people banging on your door asking for money. And that's when you can do whatever you want to do, make things as good as you want to make them, and create something truly special. It sounds like that is what happened to Phish when they first broke up, instead they fell into a kind of perceived debt to their production staff. They weren't very interested in playing, but they couldn't do whatever it was they actually wanted to do, because they had people to pay. And based on my own experiences with debt, I can see how that feeling can lead to substance abuse. My own life has become so incredibly much happier now that I know I don't have that debt hanging over me. And it comes back whenever I have someone knocking on my door, saying I owe them money (i.e. taxes). So stay out of debt, kids. Whatever you do, stay out of debt. College isn't worth it. Believe me, people were starting to question whether or not college was worth the debt when I started 10 years ago, and the situation has certainly not improved over time.
- lpolovets 13y ago
  FYI, I believe that quote is from Blaise Pascal (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal#Sourced http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal#Sourced, 2nd bullet point)
  - Jgrubb 13y ago
    I thought it was Mark Twain.
    - lpolovets 13y ago
      I did a little more digging, and I think it was Pascal. Here's the most informative page that I found, which discusses the origin of the quote: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
gruseom 13y ago
Didn't Phish inherit the Deadheads after the Grateful Dead stopped performing? That's a unique situation and hardly a business model.
- fowkswe 13y ago
  This certainly helped, but they were already on their way. The jam band scene, as lame as it might have been, was a hot trend in the mid nineties into the early 2000's and I think Phish benefitted as much from this as they did Jerry's passing.
- EvanKelly 13y ago
  I'm not sure that's generally the case, though I'm sure it does happen. My dad and my uncles (all born in the 1950s and 1960s) were serious Deadheads. They've gone to over 100 Grateful Dead shows a piece. None of them really have any fondness for Phish, but I have no idea why. I know my anecdote can be countered by several of the opposite side, but as a laymen to jam music, I can definitely hear a very fundamental difference between Grateful Dead music and Phish music.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    Whom if anyone do they follow now?
    - EvanKelly 13y ago
      None of them are ardent followers of a particular band. I know they still go see Phil Lesh and Friends or The Dead when they come around, and I think they've been to a few Dark Star shows. They all had a heavy lean to the Blues/Country side of things, so they're all big fans of Steve Earle and the like. They all got together to go see Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan recently, and they all went to Van Morrison a while back. EDIT: I think it's important to note that my dad was so distraught by Jerry's passing that he took a day or two off of work and sat around listening to old shows on cassette tapes.
      - 13y ago
bratsche 13y ago
I really like Phish a lot, as my coworkers will attest since I have shitloads of their live shows filling up my iTunes album list. They're really one of the best live bands going now, definitely one of the best live bands of all time. As the article says, their studio albums aren't that interesting. Especially after you've had a taste of their live shows. It's not just them, though. Once you start getting into live music more, everyone's studio albums sound bland. Go listen to Led Zeppelin's "How The West Was Won" (3 CD set made from a live show in LA around 1971 or so).. after that the Led Zeppelin studio albums just aren't as good as they used to be. Same goes for almost every band that I've heard live, or that I've heard live recordings of. I think that's what Phish really has going for themselves, business-wise. Most bands you hear on the radio aren't really that good at their instruments, but with recording technology you really don't need to be that good. That's why you've got some artists who basically exist because they've got the right look. But Phish can go out there and perform 60 live shows in a year and feel confident enough in the performance that within a few hours the show will be available for download from livephish.com, and they can do this because they're actually really good musicians. They're able to fill this desire for good quality, energetic, live performances instead of bland studio recordings in a way that no other band has ever been able (or even tried) to do before.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  >Most bands you hear on the radio aren't really that good at their instruments, but with recording technology you really don't need to be that good. That's why you've got some artists who basically exist because they've got the right look. I would beg and steal to have a world where mainstream artists were actually _good at music_ again.
  - GuiA 13y ago
    Your great grandparents said that, your grand parents said that, your parents said that, your children will say that, and so will your grandchildren.
    - whatusername 13y ago
bratsche 13y ago
This article kind of reminds me that there was a piece on NPR a few months ago about Nickelback, and how despite the fact that every person I know hates that band apparently they're wildly successful from a business perspective. The main guy in the band basically treats it entirely like a business, they're very efficient in how they run their tours, etc. http://www.npr.org/2012/11/10/164858831/love-to-hate-nickelback-jokes-on-you http://www.npr.org/2012/11/10/164858831/love-to-hate-nickelb...
- sswezey 13y ago
  To be fair, that article is just a link to a Businessweek article which goes more in-depth: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-08/genius-the-nickelback-story http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-08/genius-the-n...
  - bratsche 13y ago
    Oh, I didn't even know that. I heard them talking about it on NPR a few months ago so I did a quick Google search specifically for NPR and Nickelback and that was the link it gave me.
papaver 13y ago
thats the magic of jam bands. its amazing getting lost in a jam, feeling the transition from one song to another, forgetting the bad has been playing non-stop for the last 30 minutes. its the newness that is most attractive for me. its the closest live music that comes to dj's spinning live. you don't know what your gonna get till its time. its sad to see this type of music dwindle away when it was so rampant during the 60's. its magical feeling the energy from a band that can talk to each other through their music. its the same magic that happens between basketball players when they are in the zone and can pass the ball without looking to their team members. magical.
- dos1 13y ago
  Hippy :) I kid of course. I've never been able to get in to the jam bands. Many of my friends love Phish, the Dead, Umphrey's McGee, The Big Wu etc etc. I've tried to get in to their music, but every time they do those long jams I get bored. What's interesting though is that I love a good solid 20 minute epic trance tune. It's basically the same thing, so I'm not really sure why I prefer electronic "jam" music over more traditional jam bands.
  - opminion 13y ago
    There is also the whole world of Jazz.
redwood 13y ago
It feels wrong to write a long piece on Phish without mentioning LSD. Phish continued the legacy of the grateful dead and inherited much of the 'family's cultural traits and people... And an undeniably big part of that family was always acid. It's not that you needed to be on it to enjoy their (great) music, or that the band was always on it... Rather it's that it's always consistently available in their circle and this allows countless people to get turned on to a whole new part of life through their relationship with going to a show. This helps makes many people's first Phish show one of their peak life experiences.
northband 13y ago
I'm hoping to make a pilgrimage to the Gorge this year. I'm happy to see this article here on Hacker News as Phish has been a central point in my life for going on 20 years.
logn 13y ago
I attribute part of their success to an attitude they brought to their work. They were extremely serious about their music, about their shows, and about the fans. But they didn't take themselves seriously. Trey pretty much sums all of this up well in one of their documentaries. With this attitude of theirs they also came on the scene at a good time. In the mid 90s, grunge rock was dying or dead, and the serious bands such as Nirvana gave way to materialistic hip hop, commercial rock, and (remember?) swing. Phish, at least for me, filled the void of grunge rock and opened me up to a whole new world of music. I could get really into Phish because I knew they approached their music with such care. It's hard to invest time in appreciating something and studying it when you have doubt that there's actually no substance or skill underneath, at least when it's not the most approachable material. Phish really never disappointed in that regard. Further, it's hard to overstate the genius of two people in Phish: Trey and their lyricist Tom. Trey is not only incredibly skilled, he has an enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm powered directly by the crowd. If you watch him play, he's so tuned in to everything around him, you can feel that he's not really focused on the guitar (the physical aspect or the theory). It's not a challenge for him to manipulate it which lets him focus on playing with the rest of the band and the crowd which he does so well. The best analogy I see is what a touch typist experiences with the keyboard. You really don't think about typing. Now imagine being able to type messages live to people and every character you type is truly thrilling and enjoyable to your audience, and oh you can write in rhymed iambic pentameter without trying. And Tom's lyrics I think are simply fantastic. Round Room I think really shows his true excellence. He can craft together 3 or 4 meaning and themes at once without making it seem like a big stretch. And he has such a soothing tone it sounds like a children's book sometimes, but the meaning is really almost beyond the realm of being able to consciously analyze it, yet not reaching the level of absurd.
cju 13y ago
A nice (and shorter) article from Marco Arment on Phish: http://www.marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish http://www.marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish

96 points by nthitz 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

andrewljohnson 13y ago
I always thought dead heads and phish heads were in it for the drugs and sex, and the music set the beat. I guess that describes a lot of religions though.
- dankoss 13y ago
  Having seen Dave 3-4 times now, I can say his fanbase seems similar.
- timdev2 13y ago
  Honestly, you can say that about a lot of popular music. Disco, anyone?

aviswanathan 13y ago

I think Phish's style is really similar to the Allman Brothers' back in their heyday. Although I doubt they profited massively from it, Live At Fillmore East is a jam rocker's dream album. This article brings up an interesting thought: back in the '60s and '70s when most rock bands extended improvisations into their concerts (Led Zep, Hendrix, Floyd, etc.), did none of them think of recording and distributing each live show as a standalone piece like Phish? Or were they perhaps already 'mainstream enough'?

timdev2 13y ago
At some point, probably in the 70s, Frank Zappa began obsessively multi-tracking nearly-all performances (at significant cost back then). This led to a bunch of interesting output, including things like compositions based on an improvised guitar solo, separated from it's original backing, and placed in a completely different harmonic context. Also, lots of straight-up live compilations (with some overdubs), chiefly the You Can't Do That On Stage Any More (YCDTOSA) series, which is a six volume set of double-CDs. For most people, back in those days, getting a sufficiently high-quality recording of a live show was prohibitively expensive. Like Phish, Zappa was very much a cottage industry, unmolested by mainstream music industry stuff after the very early days.
Jgrubb 13y ago
Two things.. The Allman's Fillmore album (iirc) was their first #1 album, released within weeks of Dwayne's death. That album more or less cemented their financial viability to this day. Recording live shows was not the trivial matter back in the analog era that it is today. You basically needed a trucks worth of absurdly expensive and delicate equipment to be set up and torn down every night, whereas most bands that multitrack their shows today plug one cable into their digital soundboard and that's all there is to it. Also, Phish's isn't releasing multitracks on livephish, those are most likely 4 track blends of the stereo soundboard feed mixed with a pair of crowd mics.

moron4hire 13y ago

That was an incredibly long article. I like the (now I can't seem to figure out who it is from) quote, "I'm sorry this letter is so long, I didn't have time to make it shorter." There was a lot of history-of-the-band in the middle that didn't really feel absolutely necessary. It started to feel like a lot of fan self indulgence. That said, it did convey the very important lesson: don't go into debt. When talking about bands going on a meteoric rise, being pushed by their record labels, you're talking about bands going into debt to the record label. As long as you're not in debt, you don't have people banging on your door asking for money. And that's when you can do whatever you want to do, make things as good as you want to make them, and create something truly special. It sounds like that is what happened to Phish when they first broke up, instead they fell into a kind of perceived debt to their production staff. They weren't very interested in playing, but they couldn't do whatever it was they actually wanted to do, because they had people to pay. And based on my own experiences with debt, I can see how that feeling can lead to substance abuse. My own life has become so incredibly much happier now that I know I don't have that debt hanging over me. And it comes back whenever I have someone knocking on my door, saying I owe them money (i.e. taxes). So stay out of debt, kids. Whatever you do, stay out of debt. College isn't worth it. Believe me, people were starting to question whether or not college was worth the debt when I started 10 years ago, and the situation has certainly not improved over time.

lpolovets 13y ago
FYI, I believe that quote is from Blaise Pascal (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal#Sourced http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal#Sourced, 2nd bullet point)
- Jgrubb 13y ago
  I thought it was Mark Twain.
  - lpolovets 13y ago
    I did a little more digging, and I think it was Pascal. Here's the most informative page that I found, which discusses the origin of the quote: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

gruseom 13y ago

Didn't Phish inherit the Deadheads after the Grateful Dead stopped performing? That's a unique situation and hardly a business model.

fowkswe 13y ago
This certainly helped, but they were already on their way. The jam band scene, as lame as it might have been, was a hot trend in the mid nineties into the early 2000's and I think Phish benefitted as much from this as they did Jerry's passing.
EvanKelly 13y ago
I'm not sure that's generally the case, though I'm sure it does happen. My dad and my uncles (all born in the 1950s and 1960s) were serious Deadheads. They've gone to over 100 Grateful Dead shows a piece. None of them really have any fondness for Phish, but I have no idea why. I know my anecdote can be countered by several of the opposite side, but as a laymen to jam music, I can definitely hear a very fundamental difference between Grateful Dead music and Phish music.
- gruseom 13y ago
  Whom if anyone do they follow now?
  - EvanKelly 13y ago
    None of them are ardent followers of a particular band. I know they still go see Phil Lesh and Friends or The Dead when they come around, and I think they've been to a few Dark Star shows. They all had a heavy lean to the Blues/Country side of things, so they're all big fans of Steve Earle and the like. They all got together to go see Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan recently, and they all went to Van Morrison a while back. EDIT: I think it's important to note that my dad was so distraught by Jerry's passing that he took a day or two off of work and sat around listening to old shows on cassette tapes.
    - 13y ago

bratsche 13y ago

I really like Phish a lot, as my coworkers will attest since I have shitloads of their live shows filling up my iTunes album list. They're really one of the best live bands going now, definitely one of the best live bands of all time. As the article says, their studio albums aren't that interesting. Especially after you've had a taste of their live shows. It's not just them, though. Once you start getting into live music more, everyone's studio albums sound bland. Go listen to Led Zeppelin's "How The West Was Won" (3 CD set made from a live show in LA around 1971 or so).. after that the Led Zeppelin studio albums just aren't as good as they used to be. Same goes for almost every band that I've heard live, or that I've heard live recordings of. I think that's what Phish really has going for themselves, business-wise. Most bands you hear on the radio aren't really that good at their instruments, but with recording technology you really don't need to be that good. That's why you've got some artists who basically exist because they've got the right look. But Phish can go out there and perform 60 live shows in a year and feel confident enough in the performance that within a few hours the show will be available for download from livephish.com, and they can do this because they're actually really good musicians. They're able to fill this desire for good quality, energetic, live performances instead of bland studio recordings in a way that no other band has ever been able (or even tried) to do before.

hkmurakami 13y ago
>Most bands you hear on the radio aren't really that good at their instruments, but with recording technology you really don't need to be that good. That's why you've got some artists who basically exist because they've got the right look. I would beg and steal to have a world where mainstream artists were actually _good at music_ again.
- GuiA 13y ago
  Your great grandparents said that, your grand parents said that, your parents said that, your children will say that, and so will your grandchildren.
  - whatusername 13y ago

bratsche 13y ago

This article kind of reminds me that there was a piece on NPR a few months ago about Nickelback, and how despite the fact that every person I know hates that band apparently they're wildly successful from a business perspective. The main guy in the band basically treats it entirely like a business, they're very efficient in how they run their tours, etc. http://www.npr.org/2012/11/10/164858831/love-to-hate-nickelback-jokes-on-you http://www.npr.org/2012/11/10/164858831/love-to-hate-nickelb...

sswezey 13y ago
To be fair, that article is just a link to a Businessweek article which goes more in-depth: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-08/genius-the-nickelback-story http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-08/genius-the-n...
- bratsche 13y ago
  Oh, I didn't even know that. I heard them talking about it on NPR a few months ago so I did a quick Google search specifically for NPR and Nickelback and that was the link it gave me.

papaver 13y ago

thats the magic of jam bands. its amazing getting lost in a jam, feeling the transition from one song to another, forgetting the bad has been playing non-stop for the last 30 minutes. its the newness that is most attractive for me. its the closest live music that comes to dj's spinning live. you don't know what your gonna get till its time. its sad to see this type of music dwindle away when it was so rampant during the 60's. its magical feeling the energy from a band that can talk to each other through their music. its the same magic that happens between basketball players when they are in the zone and can pass the ball without looking to their team members. magical.

dos1 13y ago
Hippy :) I kid of course. I've never been able to get in to the jam bands. Many of my friends love Phish, the Dead, Umphrey's McGee, The Big Wu etc etc. I've tried to get in to their music, but every time they do those long jams I get bored. What's interesting though is that I love a good solid 20 minute epic trance tune. It's basically the same thing, so I'm not really sure why I prefer electronic "jam" music over more traditional jam bands.
- opminion 13y ago
  There is also the whole world of Jazz.

redwood 13y ago

It feels wrong to write a long piece on Phish without mentioning LSD. Phish continued the legacy of the grateful dead and inherited much of the 'family's cultural traits and people... And an undeniably big part of that family was always acid. It's not that you needed to be on it to enjoy their (great) music, or that the band was always on it... Rather it's that it's always consistently available in their circle and this allows countless people to get turned on to a whole new part of life through their relationship with going to a show. This helps makes many people's first Phish show one of their peak life experiences.

northband 13y ago

I'm hoping to make a pilgrimage to the Gorge this year. I'm happy to see this article here on Hacker News as Phish has been a central point in my life for going on 20 years.

logn 13y ago

I attribute part of their success to an attitude they brought to their work. They were extremely serious about their music, about their shows, and about the fans. But they didn't take themselves seriously. Trey pretty much sums all of this up well in one of their documentaries. With this attitude of theirs they also came on the scene at a good time. In the mid 90s, grunge rock was dying or dead, and the serious bands such as Nirvana gave way to materialistic hip hop, commercial rock, and (remember?) swing. Phish, at least for me, filled the void of grunge rock and opened me up to a whole new world of music. I could get really into Phish because I knew they approached their music with such care. It's hard to invest time in appreciating something and studying it when you have doubt that there's actually no substance or skill underneath, at least when it's not the most approachable material. Phish really never disappointed in that regard. Further, it's hard to overstate the genius of two people in Phish: Trey and their lyricist Tom. Trey is not only incredibly skilled, he has an enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm powered directly by the crowd. If you watch him play, he's so tuned in to everything around him, you can feel that he's not really focused on the guitar (the physical aspect or the theory). It's not a challenge for him to manipulate it which lets him focus on playing with the rest of the band and the crowd which he does so well. The best analogy I see is what a touch typist experiences with the keyboard. You really don't think about typing. Now imagine being able to type messages live to people and every character you type is truly thrilling and enjoyable to your audience, and oh you can write in rhymed iambic pentameter without trying. And Tom's lyrics I think are simply fantastic. Round Room I think really shows his true excellence. He can craft together 3 or 4 meaning and themes at once without making it seem like a big stretch. And he has such a soothing tone it sounds like a children's book sometimes, but the meaning is really almost beyond the realm of being able to consciously analyze it, yet not reaching the level of absurd.

cju 13y ago

A nice (and shorter) article from Marco Arment on Phish: http://www.marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish http://www.marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish