Bandsplain - Phish with Rob Mitchum

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

Writer Rob Mitchum takes Yasi deep into the world of one of the most dedicated, enduring, and (some may say) mysterious fandoms of all time: Phish Heads. Follow Rob Mitchum on Twitter at @robmitchum and subscribe to his Grateful Dead podcast, 36 From the Vault, on Spotify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like Bansplain? Hello, like that catchy song said, this is Bansplaine, and I'm your host Yassi Salick. This is a show where I invite music experts on to explain cult bands and their fandoms to me, for better or for worse. Today we're going to talk about fish. Maybe you, like me, thought you knew what fish sounded like, but don't actually know what fish

sounds like. Here's what fish sounds like. Today we're joined by fish expert, Rob Mitchum. Welcome to the show, Rob. Yeah, thanks for having me and giving me the opportunity to talk about fish, which is one of my favorite things to do. Well, can you tell us a little bit first about yourself and your background? Sure. So I'm a science writer and I'm a music writer. I wrote for many years for pitchfork, mostly about indie rock. Pitchfork was a site where fish was pretty much, forbidden topic. So I kept this part of my personality secret for about a decade. But yeah, I've written album reviews and content reviews for a number of different publications, including uncut and relics and some other places. Amazing. But you kept your fish love secret from all your co-workers from many, even your science co-workers? Yeah, for basically the entirety of the 2000s. I wouldn't talk

too much. Oh, it's just, it was just like embarrassing all around to like any human being, even someone that didn't care about music. You were like, we can't talk about this. Exactly. Very much, you know, on topic with the premise of this show, right? I didn't even, uh, I, I told my wife about it, but nobody else, uh, because it was considered to be so uncool that it would ruin my credibility at pitchfork if I talked too much about fish. Well, clearly like everything uncool has become cool again. So I don't know if that's just like a cyclical thing or, We've run out of cool things. So now we've gone back to mine the uncool things. But why don't you start out again because I know nothing here. Can you tell me about Fish? Like who are they?

Give me some like biographical info. Sure. So Fish formed in Vermont in 1983. And for all but the first couple years, they've been the same for people. Guitarist, Trey Anastasio, bassist, Mike Gordon, keyboardist Paige McConnell and drummer John Fishman, which is where they got the eye-rolling name. Since they formed, they started out playing in dorm room cafeterias, but they grew to selling out arenas by 1994 and then grew even bigger selling out these massive festivals that drew nearly 100,000 fans to remote locations in Maine and Florida.

And these festivals, by the way, even though they sort of set the format for the modern rock festival, Fish was the only band performing at these events. So they are probably one of the biggest bands in the country that most people have never even heard of. And I'm here to set the record straight on that today. So you're saying fish walked so that Coachella could run? Basically, yeah.

I mean, the whole idea for Bonaroo came from the Fish Festivals in the 90s. The guys who started Bonarue were inspired by these late 90s fish festivals. So everything that has come in the wake of Coachella and Bonaroo, you can trace back to fish. So I can send my strongly awarded letters to fish about how unbearable music festivals are and how like someone hoodwinked me into thinking that I want to pay $180 to go stand in mud. Well, if you like fish and you go to a fish festival, they're pretty great. Okay, all right, Rob. You know exactly what you're getting. Listen, we're on our way.

Okay. We're starting out. I'm open-minded. And before this started, we did talk a little bit about David Matthews and his band and how I am a fan there, which, you know, tangentially, I think, related to fish in some ways. I don't know, maybe. Yeah, they were definitely colleagues and peers in this sort of like early to mid-90s jam band scene and they played together a handful of times. Oh my God. Colleagues is the best thing because I literally just pictured them all like sitting in like office cubicles with their like 17 piece like brass and horn section. So good. Okay, well, Fish.

You know, in my mind, by the way, Fish started in like the 60s. I literally have such a little understanding. And yes, thank you for noticing. I did do zero research. Why don't you take me, like, usually I would ask like, okay, what's a song that everybody might know

or most people might know? But I don't, I know for a fact, there's no song I know. But like, what would be, the song to start with with Fish. Right. For the lay people. So Fish over the course of the 90s made several runs at trying to be a commercial band

and trying to have a hit single in part because they saw the Dave Matthews band doing it and they saw a blues traveler doing it. So they were like, hey, we want to do a hit single too. Probably the closest they came was almost accidental. And that was a track from their live album, which is called a live one. Another bad pun. Sorry about that. But the first track is called Bouncing Around the Room, which was, it was a few years old by the time it appeared on the live album.

But I think it was the track that probably got the most radio play, as people were starting to say, hey, who is this band Fish that I've never heard of, but that can sell out Madison Square Garden. So you heard this song around the radio a lot, and I know a lot of Fish fans were afraid that it was going to become the big hit single and bring a bunch of new people who didn't understand fish to the scene. So when you say radio, what kind of radio are we talking? Are we talking terrestrial mainstream radio? Or are we talking like college pirate radio? Right. So this is the mid-90s when it's sort of like just past the grunge era. Right. When alternative rock started to get a little crunchier. And there was this sort of like 90s hippie movement. So you had blues traveler. Shout out hooty and the blowfish. Another yossy favorite. Who do you probably the leaders of that whole scene? Yeah.

Yeah. And then you had like, you know, 10,000 maniacs and Sir McLaughlin and the Lilifair crew. And so a lot of people that were doing alternative rock, but that was a little bit hippie, a little bit classic rock, a little bit folk rock. And the Spin Doctors was another band from the same scene that had a huge hit. Huge fan. Fish was friends with all these bands.

Two huge hits, Rob. Spin Doctors had two huge hits. Okay. Please do not try to overwrite Spin Doctors history. Okay, so those were their homies, is what you're saying, all those bands. Yep, a lot of these bands played together in clubs before they got big. The Horde Festival started in the early 90s, and Fish was on the Horde Festival a couple times. So I think there was, Fish was feeling the pressure to have their big breakthrough hits,

and they tried it a couple different ways. And this was the closest they got, but still was not as successful crossover like those other bands. So this is bouncing around the room from Fish's live album, A Live One. So that was bouncing around the room from a live one, which is the Fish Live album they put out in 1995. I have a lot of questions. Yes, go ahead. Okay, number one, is that song about drugs? Probably not, possibly.

What else could it possibly be about? Fish were not a big, druggy band at that point. They were later, but not at that point. Okay, we need to get more bouncing around the room. There was some crystal talk, some something about pyramids, I believe. What else? It's just general psychedelic language. Okay, general psychedelic language, not at all connected to psychedelic items, drugs,

schedule B or C or whatever. Okay, okay, noted. Number two, why a live version to go to radio? Okay, did they have a normal version of this song on a recorded album? There was, yes. It was on an album called Lawnboy, which was very independently released early on in their career and didn't sell a whole ton. A live one, I believe, is still their best-selling album, which tells you a lot about Fish. Namely, that they are a much better live band than they are a studio band, which is part of why they never did have this sort of radio

commercial breakthrough. But fish songs are almost uniformly better live than they are in the studio. And if you want the purest fish experience, you're going to want to go into the live the live recordings, not the studio recordings. Okay, we're getting into the pure fish experience a little down the line. Tell me about this song in terms of like how well representative it is of fish's Uvr as a whole. Yeah, I said uvr.

Well, it's a lot shorter and tighter than your typical fish song. Fish songs tend to be very long, which made this format a little difficult because I wanted to pick all these long songs, but I didn't want to lose everybody's interest with, you know, 5-20-minute tracks. Bouncing around the room is one of their shortest songs. But one way that it really does reflect what's special about fish is that, as you can probably tell, listening to it. All four members sing as part of the song. And it's what the, the composition of the song is such that all four members are contributing small parts to a greater hole, right? It almost sort of turns into like a row, row, row your boat round at the end. But even musically,

all the parts that everybody is playing sort of interconnects and form like a cohesive hole in a really interesting way, which is sort of Fish's philosophy for everything, particularly in how they approach improvisation, which is not about taking solos so much as it is about having this four-way, ongoing conversation. Which we might call jamming. We can call it jamming. Jamming, you know, it's one of these terms that is, you know, in some sense, diminutive, but there's not a better word for it.

Improvisation, I guess, is the like hoity-to-to-y intellectual term for it. But they call it jamming. We can call it jamming. I call it jamming. Let's call it jamming. Okay. I will say I was inspired in the sense that, you know, I also can't sing very well. And I've always, you know, let it stop me.

But I've been noticing more and more. It doesn't stop other people, namely men. So why should it stop me? I would say that vocals are the thing that they are least good at. And they've gotten somewhat better in some dimensions over the years. but yeah, I mean, the best parts of fish are when they're not singing. Let's put it that way. Let's continue on our fish journey, our fish in the fish river, the pond of fish, the flowing waters of fish.

Yeah, it's hard to avoid aquatic metaphors when you're talking about fish. I'm really sorry, okay, I'm only human. All right, Rob, you know, you were not born into this world knowing and loving fish, I assume. So tell me how you discovered this glorious band. Are you from the East Coast? No, I'm from the Midwest. I've always lived in the Midwest. Yeah, Fish.

Fish's main center of fandom is definitely New England, the Northeast, you know, Vermont and surrounding cities. But I was in the Midwest in the mid-90s in high school. I had gotten really into trading bootlegs in the early days of the Internet, mostly like grunge bands, alternative rock bands. And like what kind? What bands? Like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and

Smashy Pumpkins, those types of bands. The big three. Exactly. And there were, you know, tapes to be found online and you would trade them through the mail in the old fashioned days and padded envelopes. But, you know, it wasn't like you could hear every show and the shows that you could get were usually somebody

like recording with a, you know, tape recorder in their pockets. And so they were very poor quality. Soon enough, I discovered that there were these bands, you know, like the Grateful Dead, or like fish, that taping was like part of the culture. There were tapers sections at these concerts. People taped every show that these bands played, and there were these huge communities online

that would swap tapes, and you could get hundreds, even thousands of shows this way. So this really appealed to me first as just like a collection opportunity. Like I was really into the process of sending away tapes and getting tapes back. But from there, I really started following. in love with fish. And it turned out to be a really good time to get into fish because this is like late 95, early 96, which is right after Jerry Garcia died. So the Grateful Dead had been... There was a hole in the market is what you're saying. Exactly. And you had all these other jam bands

that had had big radio success, but Fish was the one that really took the mantle of the Grateful Dead after they went off the road. They were the one that played all the, you know, the big arenas in the Northeast. They played all the big amphithe of their sheds throughout the country. People went on tour and followed fish around just the same way they did The Grateful Dead. So even though fish doesn't really sound like the Grateful Dead, which is a misnomer that I think a lot of people have, they were the ones that carried this culture forward. So I got really into collecting their tapes and started going to their shows. And like we said at the start, I had a little period where I got out of fish or kept my fish obsession secret, but have gotten back into them. So to date, I've seen 72 shows, 72 fish shows.

Which is not a lot, right? For like, within like, people would look down on you. Yeah, compared to a lot of fish fans, especially ones that I've been seeing them since the mid-90s like me, you know, anything under than 100, you're still in sort of beginner territory. So the fact that I'm still in double digits is a great shame. Step it up, Rob. Okay, let me ask you, do you feel like fish would not have been able to become this like preeminent, follow around the country jam band, you know, spiritual

takers of the mantle, as you said, of Grateful Dead without the internet? No, I think that's a great point. They were one of the first bands to really latch onto the internet as a way to build their community. There's a site called FishNet, which still exists today, fish.net, which was actually started by fans of the band, but the band would use it to disseminate information to their fans. So here's the upcoming tour dates, or here's an album that's coming out, or we're going to do a vote for this special concert and we'll run it through this website. There was also news groups at the time.

There was one called Rec Music Fish, which is kind of like an early message board. And that's where we would trade tapes. Like I discovered that logging on through America online and finding that news group and trading tapes with other fans and then meeting other fans and, you know, building it out that way. So Fish, you know, because they never had this mainstream success, built their following entirely through word of mouth. and they just happened to come up right at the perfect time where word of mouth became a thing that could be enhanced by the internet. So the dead also were a big word of mouth ban, but they had to do it through newsletters

and actual people talking to each other, whereas Fish was always kind of on the leading edge of how bands use the internet to build their community. So they were one of the first bands to live stream shows. They were one of the first bands to sell audio of their shows right after it was played. So there's a whole long list of things that, you know,

ways that the internet is totally interconnected with with fish. Are fish communists? Their drummer is a huge Bernie Sanders supporter. He has a, so their drummer wears a dress. This is one of the things that people find strange and off-putting about fish. All the time.

Even now in this year of our Lord Harry Styles on the cover of Vogue and a dress, People find it off-putting? Well, he is like a 55-year-old man now or something like that. That's ages. Yes. All men should be able to wear dresses as far as I'm concerned. He finds it very freeing while he's playing drums, which is a very practical reason to wear a dress.

I would assume, yeah, you're sitting. It's like sweaty and gross. Sure. You want to have a little breeze. So typically he wears a donut pattern dress. You've probably seen these sort of donut pattern clothing items that people wear to sort of secretly announce that they are fish fans to others. I almost wore my bandana.

Rob, this might shock you. but I have not. Oh, is that what's happening here? No, I didn't know the secret coding language of fish fans is donut print. Donut prints, clothing items. Now you'll see it. You'll see it out there and you'll thank me. But so he typically wears a donut print dress, but he has a Bernie Sanders dress. The rest of the band is very like, they don't like to talk about politics. Don't us, don't tell. Yeah. Okay, well, Rob, tell me, why don't you talk about maybe a song that you discovered in the, these early forums, listservs or whatever, that like, you know, I'm still wrapping my mind around how you went from Nirvana to like, hell yeah, fucking this band rules about a fish song. So I want to hear what a sample of a song that you heard that you were like, yes.

So I picked what I think is one of the best fish songs, which is not always the same thing as like the best fish songs to see. And we'll get into that later. But this is a song called Free, which is from an album called Billy Breeze. Billy Breaves came out in 1996, so this is right around the time that I started getting into Fish. It's one of their best studio albums. I'm pretty down on a lot of their studio work, but Billy Breeze is a really interesting one. It's got kind of like a Beatles white album feel to it.

It's got some sort of abstract studio experiment stuff instead of just trying to be like we're a live band playing in a studio. But Free has a really great guitar riff. has a really catchy melody for a fish song. It doesn't get into really weird stuff or really complicated sort of pragy stuff like a lot of their material. And I remember this one was released to radio as well. And I'm like, maybe this is going to be a song that helps them earn a bigger audience. And that didn't really happen. But it still is a very good song and a song that I think would attract people to listening to more of the band. So this is free from Billy Breeze. So that was free from their 1996 album, Billy Breeves.

And yes, you actually have a question for you. Sure. Does fish sound like you expected fish to sound like? No, okay, that's, thank you so much for asking this question because I was just thinking while I was listening to this song, that controversial opinion, they sound like red hot chili peppers light a bit here. I think it's the slap into bass. Do you know what I'm saying?

A lot of slap into bass. Slap into bass. I'm coming around a little like this is not what I thought they were going to sound like. Also, this doesn't sound like the other song, so I'm a little confused. It's the singing voice so far that's throwing me off because he does sound like a man who might ghost me on Raya, the dating app. So that's where I'm right now having a sticking point. But no, they don't sound like what I thought they were going to sound like. Yeah, and I think I said this before, but I think this is an important point that I would like to make.

if you remember nothing else from listening to this episode. All I'm going to remember is donut dress. The donut dress. But yes, make whatever point you'd like. But fish does not sound like the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead were an influence on fish, but it was mostly in terms of like the format of what they do, which is go out and play 100 shows a year

and play two set, very long shows that feature a lot of improvisation. But they're not drawing from the same influences at all. And that makes sense because fish, the guys in fish are like 20, 25 years younger than the guys in the Grateful Dead. So where the Grateful Dead were drawing from a lot of like early 20th century influences like jazz and folk and country, fish is more like the Dead if instead they were drawing from classic rock or from funk music

or from post-punk. Yeah, like what kind of artists were fish inspired by like name names? Yeah, so fish very early on, they were huge Prague nerds. I think they're number one. influence is probably Frank Zappa. And they also like Genesis and yes and bands of that sort. But they were also guys that were growing up in the, or they were in college age in the early 80s. So they were interested in stuff like XTC or the Talking Heads or like post Velvet Underground Lou Reed. And they also, they grew up on Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Hendricks and The Who

and all these, you know, the big 70s classic rock bands. So instead of drawing from these more older traditional forms of music and turning it into something new. They're combining a lot of the sort of boomer Generation X touchstones into their sort of own fusion music and then expanding those artists through improvisation. Okay. That's actually really interesting to know because I won't lie to you. I did in my mind think that they sounded like the Grateful Dead. And if we're being honest, I don't have a strong working understanding of what the Grateful Dead sounds like either. So just a big fuzzy space in my brain where these bands live, but now it is replaced with donut dress.

You know, Rob, what I'd love to know is you talked a couple times earlier about how you've had to hide or in the past. I think clearly now you do not hide this since we got you on since me asking Twitter, who is the preeminent fish journalist of our time and you were recommended like 10 times. So you're clearly not secretive about it anymore. But you did hide your love of this band. And what do you, why did you feel like you had to do this for so long? And also like in like a bigger more meta question is like,

why do you think they were perceived as so uncool? Right. So the thing with Fish is that they have a sense of humor, which is in a lot of ways the worst thing you can have if you want to be perceived as a cool band, right? Like, cool bands are ironic and, you know, detached and dark. Fish are none of these things. They are really goofy and silly sometimes, and that scares people off who are sort of invested in this image of music as their, you know, key to coolness. So some of the strange, silly things that Fish do, for instance, is they have a rock opera that was Trey, the guitarist's

senior thesis in college. And it is about like a race of lizard people and an evil tyrants and a magical book. I mean, it is like, you know, real Dungeons and Dragons stuff that right away, you're clearing out most of your audience just once you start singing about that. They have a secret language that they use live. They don't use it as much anymore, but they did this a lot in the 90s where they'll play a little musical riff and that instructs people in the audience to take particular actions. Like they'll play a little snippet of the Simpsons.

theme and everybody's supposed to yell dough like Homer Simpson or they'll play three little notes and everybody's supposed to like drop down to the floor of the venue. So they are, we're talking about a cult band here and cult is the right word probably because there are all these little you know, pieces of knowledge that only people that are super into the band get, right? And so it's very intimidating the outsiders who don't understand, you know, what is this band doing? It takes a lot of research and experience with fish to understand all of the things that they might be doing. But they'll, so they jump around on trampolines for some of their songs. They have like choreographed dance routines they always do for one particular song where the guitarist and

bass player jump onto trampolines. They do set lists where they spell out secret messages with the first word of every song in the set list. So as you're writing down the set list, you are given a secret message from the band. If you look like acrostic style vertically, they do these big New Year's Eve gags where they bring in professional choreographers and dancers. They'll have moving stages sometimes. And most famously, I guess, they fly around in a flying hot dog. It's a giant hot dog that they can all sit in like seats and bring portable instruments. And they all fly around the venue.

They've done this three times now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. A flying hot dog. Are we talking about like an aviation device, like an aircraft? It does not actually fly on its own. It's suspended from wires, but they rigged it up so that it could fly around. The Boston Garden was the first place they used it in 1994.

Flying hot dog. Okay. Flying hot dog. Right. So I'm sure a lot of our listeners are thinking this is like the corneest shit they've ever heard in their life. But it's actually like part of what I love about fish because it has kept them so vital and so unpredictable over now 37 years of their career. And they keep doing weird pranks now. a lot of these things started in the 80s and 90s when they were, you know, young and silly and just trying to make a name for themselves on the road. But they have done things in the last couple of years that have been really interesting along these lines. Like in 2017, they did what was called the Baker's Dozen concert run at Madison Square Garden.

They played 13 consecutive shows, sold out every one of them. And over those 13 shows, they didn't repeat a single song once. So they played a totally different set list for the entire 13 show run. So that was really cool. And then there was a Halloween show in 2018. Now Fish has this Halloween tradition where they cover another band's album. So they've used that to cover the Beatles White album. They cover the Who's Quadrophenia.

They covered the Talking Heads Remain in Light. They've covered a whole bunch of other bands albums. But for 2018, they made up a fake band called Kesvat Vox. It's a Scandinavian prog rock band And they covered this band on Halloween They made up a fake biography All the they But they basically they wrote an entire new album of songs

In the guise of this other band And then premiered it for their audience By pretending that it was a cover So it's a really interesting set I have a song from it here to play It sounds like very very strange music But it was the kind of like fun unexpected thing that you get from fish that, you know, no other band would do something like that.

And certainly they wouldn't do that four decades into their career. So this song is called Turtle in the Clouds. And this is, you know, one of the things they did. So they made up this Scandinavian prog rock band. And then all of the lyrics are kind of like, if you put something in Google Translate and then sent it back to English, then you get that weird sort of secondhand game of telephone translation. So all the lyrics in this song are very much in that vein, like intentionally mistranslated lyrics. And it's from, you can find it on Spotify as an album called Kazvat Voxed, colon I Rock Live. It's actually just the Halloween set from 2018 where they played this fake album. Okay, let's hear it. All right, that was Turtle in the Clouds from their Kazvod Voxed, I rock,

sort of album. that they did live. That was the one I was least, I was most hesitant to play for you because of how strange it is, but you have to appreciate it in the context of the joke that they were playing. But it's also like a sign that, you know, even as recently as two years ago, they were still doing this weird stuff and still introducing new songs into their catalog, which is, I think, rare for a band that has been around for as long as they have. They have not sort of rested on their laurels and become an oldie's act by any means. I have to say I did disassociate somewhere in there, but I can hear the talking heads influence.

Yes, I understand what you're saying, and I can see why their fan base is so devoted, considering that, like you said, they're getting back what they put in from the band. I want to talk about this fan base. What does it look like? like take me to like a fish show. What is the makeup of the crowd? What's the like general age range? What's the vibe?

So the fish fan base is very white and very male. You don't you don't say. And you're telling me that they're very white and male. I don't believe it. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. There's no getting around it. And it's also, I think a lot of people around my age,

people in their late 30s, early 40s, who got into the band in the 90s and have stayed with the band. I haven't really seen it catching on with a huge number of younger people. Certainly not in the way that the dead did in the 90s. Or even now. Right. The dead keep coming back.

And they had, you know, obviously they started in the 60s and they had these sort of like bursts of new fans constantly coming in, which I don't think has happened so much with Fish. And I think, you know, a lot of the things we've talked about are the reason why. They're just kind of a tough fan to get into. But yeah, the fan base is aging, I would say, but not, you know, it's not super old.

It's like a lot of, it's a lot of dads out on their vacation from the kids. Can I tell you what I picture? And this might just be a more of like a late 90s vision. But I just picture a lot of white guys in Abercrombian Fitch. clothing, like in New Jersey. I think so... On asset. Yeah, there's definitely more of a preppy vibe from the fish crowd than a hippie vibe, I think.

And honestly, in the late 90s, it kind of crossed over in weird ways with like the rave scene. Oh, sure. I think due to shared drug interests, I would say, is that you got a lot of crossover, especially at these fish festivals, which were not that far off from big electronic music festivals that you might see today.

That's a wonderful place for us to get into when did the drugs come in? Because these people are on drugs, the people that listen to them are on drugs. I will not accept any other explanation. So tell me, when did they become known for like, that's the place you go

and do a bunch of drugs? I think this is, again, late 90s, and I think it's a little bit because of the fact that the Grateful Dead went off the road. And of course, there was a huge drug scene that followed the Grateful Dead, particularly in the 90s, there were a lot of people who just went to those shows to party and do drugs in the parking lot, and they didn't really care about the music. Some of that scene just like jumped onto the Fish Bandwagon as soon as the Grateful Dead were gone. The band themselves, they'll talk very openly about this, started getting more into drugs in the late 90s.

Trey Anastasio got so deep into drugs that he was actually arrested in the 2000s and went to drug court and did a house arrest rehab program. Now he is very outspoken about his sobriety and about treatment center. What was he arrested for? He, I believe, had opiates on him, prescription opiates that he did not have a prescription for. That's not the fish drug vibe. that's a whole different vibe. Well, that's what he was caught with, but there were a lot of other things, you know, at other moments in time, I'm sure. So, I mean, things, the music definitely changed as things got drugier.

And to be honest, those late 90s years are my favorite years of fish. I'm always, you know, very hesitant to ascribe any of that to, you know, what drugs the band was on particularly, because, like, that's kind of dark. But I think, they did sort of loosen up as a band over the late 90s and produced some of their most interesting music at what seems like the time that they were party in the hardest, so to speak. I bristle at the idea that you have to be on drugs to appreciate fish, though. I think there's a lot to like about fish, and particularly because they are, the Grateful Dead are a much drugier band to me.

Wow, bold statement. Their concerts almost feel tailored to their. drug experience in some ways, whereas Fish is a much, like, busier band, a much more aggressive band in a lot of ways. And I think that it's not necessarily like music to score an acid trip by. I mean, I know a lot of people who have done acid at Fish shows and they said it was great, but they don't go as hand in hand as I think it would with a lot of other music. So we found some people that were willing to go on record to talk about Fish, and we cut them into a little montage for you to listen to.

Check it out. Fish is pretty much the perfect band to nerd out over. I like to make the analogy between fish and sports. People are deeply, deeply in love with sports, and they're also deeply in love with fish. You can go on a website and see exactly how many times they've played each of their songs when they first debuted, how they've changed over the years.

It's insane. It is like stats for sports. but for music. My first show was in a very small gymnasium in upstate New York, and I was immediately hooked. I first learned about fish when I was a camper at a Jewish summer camp. My counselors put on the song contact. I listened and immediately was captured. I fell in love with so many different things.

The music, the fun that the band would have on stage, the fact that each show was just different and each song sounded different every night. Because they're improvising. Something happens. on stage between these four music nerds that couldn't happen and wouldn't happen any other time. And also the fans. It was just sort of an overwhelming sense of being part of something, part of something that was different. I mean, what other band is going to give you donuts when you when you show up to Madison Square Garden? It's a widespread phenomenon for Jews to have

learned about and to connect to fish through Jewish summer camp. There's a massive Jewish fan base that finds deep meaning and spirituality through the music and through the concert experience. All of the things they've brought me, the love, the support, the camaraderie, the fun, the joy, you know, just being able to set my soul free. You know, this is why I love the bandfish. If you like it, you like it, and if you don't like it, you got to respect it. They've been doing it for a long time, and they do it with a lot of heart. Yeah, I mean, I think you really hear the dichotomy there that you can,

enjoy fish in this sort of spiritual sense, but also in the very analytical sense, where you're, like, swapping statistics about what shows you went to or how long it's been since I last played this song or, you know, arguing about what the best show is or whether last night was better than the night before and all these things. And I think, you know, it's not an either-or proposition either. Like, I definitely can fall into both camps. And a lot of my struggle when I'm at fish shows is trying to turn off the analytical part of my mind so that I can access sort of the spiritual in the moment experience. But, you know, I enjoy doing both.

And what I write about the band, I try and, you know, engage both elements of fandom. I'm not sure that there's too many other bands that really satisfy both those things, to be honest. I mean, if you're a big enough fan of any band, I'm sure you get in the weeds with set-less statistics and things like that. But the fact that they, you know,

sort of satisfy both like an emotional level and a, you know, a scientific fandom level is something that's really special about a band like fish. Yeah, just like Lana Del Rey. That's a different conversation. I won't go there. If we had to have another artist that I think we could compare. Just kidding.

Tell me then, let's talk about like, what's the fan favorite? Like, you know, four out of five white dads say this is the best fish song. Right. So it's a tricky question, and I'll explain why. And it's also why it's tricky to do this format for fish. It's because when you get really into fish, you don't necessarily like songs for the song themselves. You like songs for their potential for jamming. It's like when you look into the abyss and the abyss looks back at you. Sort of like that, yes. Okay. So the favorite fish songs are the ones that are very open-ended and lead to, different types of improvisation from version to version. So this is the thing, the important thing to know about fish. So no fish, though, is the same.

They play a different set list every night. So when you go to a fish show, you don't want to expect, hey, I want to hear my favorite song because they have 400 songs at this point, and they're going to play 20 to 30 songs. And so the odds of you catching your favorite song tend to be pretty low. Let me jump in really quickly. Yeah. Because I'm just at a loss.

How did they write so many songs? why did they write so many songs? Like, when did they have time to write so many songs? If they're playing 30 songs a night every day of the year, like, explain. Yes. So one clarification is that those 400 songs are not all fish songs. They do a ton of covers. One way to get into fish is that they are, in my opinion,

the world's greatest cover band, because they cover music from all, of music. They're very good musicians, so they do it very well. And when you go to a show, typically they're going to play, I would say, you know, five covers as part of those 20 to 30 songs. Sometimes it's even more. Have they done any rap music covers? Unfortunately, yes. Name names, Rob. We need some context. You can go on your Spotify account and find an album called Hampton, Alive where they perform getting jiggy with it.

If you really want to hear what that sounds like. I mean, obviously they were doing it very tongue and cheek, but they did do it. They have had Jay-Z perform with them. They've had Kid Rock perform with them, very unfortunately. You know what? Let's hear a snippet of Fish performing getting jiggy with it. I do have to give you a context on this too, okay? Real quick.

So one thing that Fish does is their drummer, the one that wears a dress, Don't a print dress. Not every show, but occasionally he will come out and switch with Trey. Trey plays drums as well. And Fishman will do a song

where he is the lead vocalist. He is by far the worst singer in the band. So they all realize this, and so they give him the most preposterous cover songs possible. The other thing that he does, I should say, is when it comes to solo in his songs, he plays a vacuum cleaner. He holds the tube of a vacuum cleaner to his mouth

and lets it do suction and he changes the shape of his mouth to do different notes. And you love this. Yes, people go wild. People lose their minds over fishermen playing the vacuum cleaner. You personally love this. I love it as a old favorite in-joke that I share with my Friends Fish for 25 years now. Right. So that's getting jigger with it, which is, you know, not a serious cover, I would say. It was sort of a one-off joke, but Fish covers a wide spectrum of music. They've covered Richard Wagner. They've covered David Bowie. They've covered Bluegrass legend Bill Monroe. They've covered Duke Ellington songs. They do these Halloween cover albums where they cover entire albums by people like the Beatles or the talking heads or little

feet. But in general, the covers that Fish play are actually a really great way to first get into Fish because they're playing songs that you know. They're not playing one of their originals, which can, as we've learned, can be a little bit intimidating or obtuse for a new person to get into. So one thing I would recommend for somebody trying to get into Fish is to jump around some of these Halloween cover albums or find some other covers they've played songs that you like already and hear how Fish, you know, reproduces it, expands upon it, maybe jams on it a little bit in some cases, and give that a try. So one song that I picked out, which I think Fish, one of the best covers that Fish plays is the song Frankenstein by the Edgar Winter Group. I think the song has

gotten a little bit obscure now, but it used to be sort of a classic rock radio staple, and it's got like one of these famous classic rock riffs that everybody knows, I think because it was like a Beavis about Ed Reef or something like that. But listen to Fish's version. I picked one from a live album called Vegas 96 and see what you think. So that was Fish's cover of the song Frankenstein by the Edgar Winter Group, a song that is sort of equal parts hard rocking and silly, which is a good sort of mix for what Fish does best.

Okay, so what I'm hearing you say is that maybe one of the main things that Fish fans like about Fish is just being part of the club. Like they like that they're part of a club, that there's all these secret, you know, like you said, secret languages, secret commands, fun insider jokes. Like, what about musically? Like, what would you say after we get past donut dress and vacuum cleaner solo songs? What's like the main thing that you think Fish fans like musically about the band? I mean, the thing that you really are chasing.

when you become a big fish fan, are these improvisational moments at shows. So we talked about how the set list is different from show to show. There are a lot of songs that are jam vehicles, that every version of that song is different every time they play it. So typically they'll play like the main part of the song and then it will either have an open ending where they can improvise or there will be a jam section in the middle, and then they bring it back to a composed ending. So some songs are reliably going to be a very long version where the improvisational part is going to sound difference

every time you hear it. So there's a song called Tweezer. Tweezer is probably the consensus favorite fish song because Tweezer itself is a song that is ridiculous and it's like just three minutes long and it's basically just like a chant almost and one single guitar riff. But every time they play Tweezer, it could be a 10-minute, straightforward rock song,

or it could be a 20-minute psychedelic funk jam, or it could be a 30-minute sort of cosmic, spacey exploration. So you never know what you're going to get. You could get a mediocre version, which would be disappointing, but that's okay, because the next one you see could be the greatest version of Tweezer ever. And so that's why people go to so many shows, because they're always chasing that show where you're going to hear something that you've never heard before.

The band's going to play something that they've never played before. They're making up music in the moments. And it's just like, it's like watching your favorite team win a championship when you see this happen because everybody in the room can just feel, you know,

what an exciting, spontaneous moment of creativity this is. And people just lose their minds. Fish is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. You never know what you're going to get. That's true. I mean, and that's why it's so addictive.

It's like people say slot machines are addictive because of the unpredictability, right? Like you're going to win one out of ten times, but you never know when that's going to happen. So you keep pulling that handle to see when you're going to win the jackpot. Fish shows are the same way. Sometimes I've been to fish shows that I've never been to a fish show that I just absolutely hated. But I've been to fish shows where I've been like, that was okay. But then I've been to fish shows that were, I mean, my favorite concert of all time was a fish concert in 1997.

So I saw them just a few months before the pandemic hit. Right before New Year's Eve, 2019, it was one of the greatest. shows I've ever seen. It was at Madison Square Garden. They played a 30-minute tweezer, and it was, you know, outstanding. Everybody was, uh, thought that it was an instant classic, and it was amazing to see it happen right before my eyes. So that's what keeps me coming back and what keeps me listening to their shows. Rob, you need to do acid at every show because then you would never walk away saying that was just okay. For example, at Coachella one year, I was on so much mushrooms that I cried during the Boni Verre set. Cried. Like full sobbed. Okay, Rob, for Tweezer,

why don't we hear part of the, like, album version before it gets all wild and crazy kids on some live versions? Right. Yeah. So the song, Tweiser came out on their album, A Picture of Nectar, which is from 1991. So maybe we can play just a minute of that studio version. So you get the idea. Yes. It's basically that over and over again for four minutes.

That's the song. but because it is such like a simple and barely a song at all, that makes it one of their best platforms for launching off into whatever direction they want to go. So maybe I'll play you a snippet of one of the most famous tweezers that you can find on Spotify, which is from one of their most famous tours, Fall 1997. This is from the November 17th, 1997 show,

which they released as Live Fish Volume 11. So that's actually a pretty good example because you can hear how that second snippet that we heard, it had gone off into entirely new territory that wasn't really related back to the actual song tweezer at all anymore. It was a different chord progression, it was a different musical style. And that's what you get over these like 20, 30 minute jams

is that they just go in totally new directions from the starting point of the songs. So if this show is less about the songs in some regards, it's about like those spaces between the songs where they're basically writing new music as you watch on stage. Okay. 20 to 30 minute jams. I've got it.

Oh, Rob, I feel like we're reaching the end of our fish journey, the donut dress of our discontent is coming to a close. Are there any parting words, any last remarks that you want to make about fish and luring people into the fish pond. Yeah, so one thing I would like to emphasize is that fish has been constantly evolving over the course of their career.

So different areas of fish sound very different. And one nice thing about fish having all these live recordings out there, on Spotify, you can find dozens of full fish live shows from over the years. If you go to Fish fan sites, you can find audience recordings over a thousand shows you could listen to. Fish has their own service. where they put out soundboard recordings of every show

within hours of the end of the concert. But the thing I would tell people who are just getting into fish is to jump around to different years of the band because they sound very different based on what year you pick. So the way I usually describe it is that in the early 90s,

they were still very Prague-y, sort of jazz Prague geeks. But then in 94-95-ish, they started becoming this big arena rock band and they started becoming a little bit more sort of loud and aggressive and hard rock focused. Then they went into this like 97 period that we heard earlier in Tweezer where they got deeply into funk music, but sort of like a psychedelic version of funk that the fans called cow funk. And after that, they sort of unwound that sound into more spacey ambient territory through the rest of the 90s into 99 and 2000.

They're still playing today. They got back together in 2009. have played, you know, 40, 50 shows every year ever since when the pandemic is over. I'm sure they will go right back on the road. And every year brings something new with fish. So once again, you're saying fish is like a box of chocolates. And if you do not like the strawberry cream one, just keep rooting around, you might find one of those delicious ones with like the pecans and the caramel.

Right. Go for the hazelnut. Yeah. So that's just sort of my back of the envelope primer to fish. different eras. So I picked one. Yassi, you were nice enough to give me one long song to include at the end of the playlist. Yes, I allowed, I allowed for one meandering long jam. Right. Take us home. And we put it at the end of the playlist so that if you have decided fish is not for you or you want to bail out early, that's totally fine. I understand. Yeah, you have something to do maybe an appointment to get to.

But if you have 14 minutes, which is a modest length for a fish jam, I must say. I have included the Choctose Torture from Live Fish Volume 8. This was a show in 1999, July 10, 1999. So Chalkdose Torture is one of these sort of straightforward rockers that are in the fish catalog. They play it a lot. It doesn't always jam, but sometimes it does. It goes into entirely uncharted territory. And when it does, that is very exciting for fish and their fans.

This particular version is one of the fan-favored versions of Choctose Torture. It's also one of the band's favorite versions. They typically don't talk about what songs or shows they like best, but this is one that they've pulled from a couple times to demonstrate what they think is sort of the best example of what they do on stage. So just a quick guide to this song, you'll hear the actual song Chak Tas Torture first. It's about the first four minutes of the song. Then there's about five minutes of jamming, which is very typical for Chachdos.

does torture. It's sort of in the same zone that you would normally get from this song. And then there's another three minutes, starting about at the nine minute mark, that it just goes off in a totally new direction and it becomes just truly transcendent for those three minutes. So if you listen to that and you are unmoved, you gave it a try. Thanks for, you know, giving it a whirl. Fish is probably not for you. But if you think you might be fish curious, I think this is a good jam to show you what they're capable of. I thought you were going to say, if this doesn't move you, you're dead to me, but you're really a nice guy. Well, thank you so much, Rob, for taking the time to educate me and our listeners about fish. And I don't promise that I will walk away with

anything more than donut dress in my mind, but I have learned a lot today. All right, thanks for joining us. Why don't we take it out with chalk dust torture? If you like what you heard today, subscribe to Bansplain for more episodes, only on Spotify. Bansplain is a Spotify original series produced in partnership with Spoke Media. Special thanks to our Fish fans who provided their voices for this episode. Shout out Jamie Friedman, Oren Krollseldin, and our very own engineer, Will Short. And a big, big thanks to Rob Mitchum for taking us into the world of fish. Follow him on Twitter at Rob Mitchum.

This episode was produced and edited by Cody Hoffmuckle with help from Shareda Lynn Solis and Dylan Rupert. Our executive producers for spoke media are Aaliyah Tevacoleon, Heath Reynolds, and Janiel Kastner. Our executive producers for Spotify are Liz Gaetly, Gina Delvac, and me, Yossi Selig. Our catchy and gorgeous theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Kosentino and Jennifer Clavin,

and graciously recorded by Carlos Delagarza. Special thanks to Felipe Guillermo, Leah Edwards, Dana Meyerson, and the frame drawing of Dave Matthews I got on Deepop, whose spirit guides this entire show.