From the Twitter:“#Phish is playing some crappy Little Feat album for Halloween and I wasted over $1000 to see the shitty album. Fuckers” –THE_RICK
Since 1994, every time that a Phish concert falls on Halloween, they put on a musical costume by playing one of their favorite albums in its entirety. To date they have played The Beatles’ White Album, The Who’s Quadrophenia, The Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, Velvet Underground’s Loaded, and The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. They also surprised the hell out of an under attended Salt Lake City crowd with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon just two days after playing Loaded in Vegas in 1998.
So far Phish has chosen some heavy hitting crowd pleasers. Any fan not thrilled to witness any of those albums performed live would be insane. However, I recall that there was a ton of online negativity and WTF sentiment in regards to Loaded. After all it was 1998, still three years before the massive VU revival brought on by The Strokes and other NYC & LA bands. At the time I remember that I wasn’t too familiar with Velvet Underground’s final proper and Lou Reed fronted album either. I had heard and loved “Heroin” and various other tracks but never dove into their catalogue. Thankfully, Phish hipped me to the Velvets before the hipster vampires began to feed and made Loaded one my absolute favorites.
Fast forward to this year. When early spoilers were tweeted last Sunday that Phish would cover Little Feat’s Waiting for Columbus I thought that they had finally made a horrible decision and were about to completely alienate the majority of their fan base. Little Feat? Nope. Never listened to them and never thought that I would. Obviously, based on the tweet at the top of the page, I wasn’t the only one that felt that way. I had never been more grateful to have not been at a Phish show.
But that feeling was temporary.
They did it again. Waiting for Columbus makes sense on so many levels and Phish played the hell out of it. The influence that it had on Trey, Page, Mike and Fish is so incredibly noticeable that if you walked into Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall unaware of Phish’s Halloween history, you would’ve believed it to be their own. It’s funky. It’s fun. And it is all around fantastic!
No kidding, I have since listened to Waiting for Columbus in its entirety or in pieces, every day since Halloween. Seriously! if you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and check it out.
BLONDE ON BLONDE 