January 18, 2011

As we reported last week, JEMP Records put out three releases from Phish’s Summer Tour 2010 today via iTunes and through select record stores. Live Phish engineer Jon Altschiller’s original live mixes have been lovingly remastered by Fred Kevorkian for these new releases.

Our friends at JEMP have provided us some remastered tracks to share, so you can sample the quality of these releases. They also sent a few blurbs about each performance written by Phish archivist Kevin Shapiro to give a little background on these shows.

Show #1 = 06/27/2010 – Merriweather Post Pavilion

• Sample: Meatstick > I Saw It Again

Kevin Shapiro on 6/27/10: On Sunday June 27, 2010, Phish played their sixth headline show (since 1998) at Merriweather Post Pavilion and the second show of a two-night stand to a hot, sticky summer crowd.  Merriweather Post is a wooden-roofed music amphitheater designed by Frank Gehry with excellent acoustics and a capacity of about 19,000.  The band opened set one with “Walfredo” which includes lyrics about Phish’s first visit to the venue opening for Santana in 1992.  This rarity, performed only a half dozen times and for the first time in a decade, began a string of breakouts.  The number two spot featured Bob Marley’s “Mellow Mood” (played for the first time since 2003’s IT festival), “Divided Sky” and 2010’s first “Tela”.  A couple more covers, Clifton Chenier’s Bayou swinging “My Soul” and Norman Blake’s “Ginseng Sullivan”, were clustered mid-set along with “Sample In A Jar.”  Set one wrapped up with “Brian And Robert” – bookended by Phish classics “Bathtub Gin” and “Run Like An Antelope”, the latter of which contained teases of “Brian And Robert.”  Set two was a seamless affair rooted in the show’s theme song, “Saw It Again” (also played at Merriweather for the first time since IT).  This playful set hinged on exploratory playing and transitions like “Meatstick” > “Saw It Again” > “Piper” > “Ghost” which, like the rest of the set included deft teases of “Saw It Again”.  Phish sealed the fate of this uncommon set by weaving their debut of the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” back into “Saw It Again”.  The remainder of the show: “Contact”, “You Enjoy Myself” (with teases of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”) and Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” also included multiple nods to “Saw it Again” among its sonic treasures.

READ ON for samples of the other two releases…

Legendary rocker Bruce Springsteen made a surprise appearance this past weekend at the annual Light of Day benefit concert in Asbury Park. Among the tunes Springsteen performed was the Nebraska

[Originally Published: September 28, 2010]

The Wind Will Carry Us, a poem, a moment and after that—nothing.
Behind this window the night is trembling, and the earth stands still in its course, vague things lie behind this window, you and I, uneasy…

And it is the window, the view out there, one is forever focused upon—this space we seek, to see the soul within in a moment of independence, a moment of pure clarity, which in any life is but a fleeting glimpse of eternity before, again, one drifts inwards, into that reserved area of mystery we all occupy at one point. Indeed, the wind beckons.

We ponder the Great Unknown. Only, sometimes, as the saying goes, it ponders us, too. We ruminate over a true landmark in independent cinema marking its 40th anniversary in 2010 with a remastered-print screening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on October 27. And thus, we celebrate Barbara Loden’s searing vision of the iconoclastic soul on a road trip through a season in hell in this edition of Hidden Flick, Wanda.

The late Loden was married to famed and controversial director Elia Kazan. She was an actress in a few traditional Hollywood productions before writing, directing, and starring as the title character in the 1970 film about a woman who gives up her children to her husband after a rather abrupt and quick divorce. With only the clothes on her body, a purse and a few dollars, Wanda takes to the open highway, and never quite looks back. Wanda is always moving forward. But, in many respects, despite her bold departure from her family, Wanda still clings to the ideal of the man who can make it all happen for her. To her slow realization, she learns that men are just as fucked up as women. READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…