California Soul

Intro

Leaving Austin and heading to Dallas with my main man Kim at the wheel so figured this was a good time to try and play catch-up on finks phish adventures, California Soul edition. 

Flew from Portland into San Jose for the Shoreline show. Per the norm and one of the enjoyable aspects of tour life, at the airport I saw a bunch of phans and friends. It's always fun to kill airport time exchanging phish tales. It's also nice to have pham to sit next to on the Southwest Airlines GA Floor. Big ups to southwest for being a critical player that gets it done in my tour life. 

Valerie and Joe picked me up at the airport. In a circle is getting smaller all the time kind of way, separately Joe was also picking up Reiko who was on the same flight. She is part of the Japhan crew - one of my favorite phish crews. It takes an even higher level of dedication to travel from Japan to follow the Phish from Vermont. They are also some of the nicest people in our scene, always making positive contributions (for example yasu streaming for the masses), quiet at shows and like me sound whores. 

At the airport going from San Jose to LA everyone seemed to be wearing phish gear or soccer kits. The soccer jerseys were for the Man U vs Barca game that night in San Jose. Had I known I might have tried to squeeze it in but it really wasn't realistic. Our flight for phish was at least 80% heads and very festive. Normally on SWA when you see flight attendants walking down the aisle with a tray of drinks there might be one or two alcoholic drinks. This tray was the opposite - one or two non alcoholic drinks. While taxiing, southwest played farmhouse. Heady. 

Activity Summary

Not a ton to report here although Valerie and I attempted to go on a hike at the Stevens Creek trail. Uber dropped us off and somehow we ended up in the middle of a NASA research facility. We escaped that and ended up taking a tour of the google campus - my second corporate campus visit of tour. It was pretty much what you would expect including these google colored bicycles that you can just grab and ride. Apparently they have something like a 50% annual "attrition" on these bikes. 

Grinds & Suds

Orchard country kitchen. Pretty unique spot in San Jose. Had a bunch of different tapas that were all tasty. Fun meal, good company and conversation even if I was exhausted. 

3 Weavers Brewery. Awesome brewery in a funky location, close to airport and not far from the venue. They had a guy making weird food using auto tools (hard to explain) but I never tried it. The beer I had was delicious however. 

Sports Page. Old school huge sports bar with tons of activities pretty close to shoreline. We ended up having post show drinks here. Apparently linkdin bought the property and is trying to close the bar but the citizens fought back. Cool spot for pre or post show hang if you are ever at shoreline. 

Tee Shirt Time 

For shoreline the shirt was a no-brainier.... I rocked my San Francisco Garcia shirt. It is black and orange and it looks like the giants logo but says Garcia in the font and has Jerry's handprint on the back. This shirt was a give away at grateful dead day (another reason why the Giants are the best organization in baseball) at AT&T ballpark. I didn't go to the game but the Jedi was able to score 2 shirts and 2 posters - one for me and one for pops. I was getting a lot of dap for the shirt. I had no idea how hot an item the shirt was until one guy offered me $200 for the shirt...I politely declined. Very pleased with this shirt selection. 

For Los Angeles I wore my belly up 40th anniversary shirt. The belly up is my favorite venue in San Diego and the forum is as close as we were going to get to my hometown this year. Easy call. 

Phishing Report

7/24/15 Shoreline

Valerie, Joe, Joe's friend Derek (first time for phish) and I had some awesome seats in the lower level of the bowl. Ended up sitting right behind ryan kerrigan - great artist in the phish community. I bring this up because as soon as the show started he did a super quick and awesome doodle of the stage, lights, etc. I asked him about after the show (please people shut the fuck up when the band is playing, California was Chatty Cathy). He told me he gives himself 90 seconds to quickly sketch something every show and then puts it away. 

Phish opened with the line. You could almost hear the disappointment in the crowd. Interesting to me that they love most of the songs on fuego... but give no love to wombat (the tune that saved Halloween's energy IMO). 

Standard moma next, always enjoy getting down to black eyed Katie's mom. KDF, Yarmouth road (always a set killer for me) followed. Was having fun but standard first set fair. Undermind, one of my favorite phish tunes (a list that's probably 50 songs deep at this point), followed and while it was good it also stayed pretty much in the box. Free was next. The shirt always comes off for this tune as homage to carmine. Note that I kept good tabs on it as I had already been offered the $200. 

At this point in the set it appeared we were heading to standard first set and, following Bend, possibly another underwhelming show. Then came reba to save the day...while not flawless (especially the whistle but always enjoy when they make the effort) it was very well executed and set the stage for a really fun and tight, if short, 46 days.

I had suggested a few months back that Shoreline would be the spot they would drop some grateful dead. Bay Area, GD50, in the house that bill graham built as a stealie, for the dead. While I was wrong (and it is appearing more and more likely that I will be wrong in thinking that the boys would play some GD), they opened the set with blaze on - the tune I initially thought was a dead tune. I think playing a new phish number that sounds a bit dead was their way of paying homage to the dead. That and the very apparent rider teases in light. Anyway was cool to hear this song again. As I said in the last post, jar said this is a jimmy buffet song. I think it's more accurate to call it Phish's cheeseburger in paradise. Anyway this was a well done tune (Trey's playing is pristine) and it was really interesting and exciting that phish opened up the second set with a new tune. In previous years phish seemed to have a tendency to open up second sets with covers but now it seems as if they are swapping out their own new tunes for the covers. While I miss me some golden age and rock n roll, I think this is a great thing. If you aren't evolving you are standing still and the rest of the world is surging ahead. 

Blaze on was a perfect tee up for the jam of the summer.... Twist -> Light. The way they slow down the blaze on and drop into the twist is super solid. Phish released this ophishally. If you haven't heard this yet check it out. My immediate thought was that this is one of the best jams phish has dropped in 3.0 and the twist belongs in the fukuoka discussion for best ever. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PW9DztoU3fA. This jam does an amazing job of transitioning from dark to light and back again multiple times. Really dug this part of the show. For me, blaze on through light is easily the best section of tour this far (through Austin). 

Joy slowed down and after that 45 minutes didn't bother me as much as it normally does... I recognize it's poor phish manners to diss joy. The bend hood followed in shoreline. Good hood but not quite up to par compared to some of the bigger recent vintages but a solid and fun tune. Standard cavern to close out the set. 

Our first "normal" encore in Zero closed out a pretty solid show that included 45 mins of phish straight balling. 

7/25/15. The Forum

The fabulous forum! Home to many championships and some awesome phish shows. Valentine's Day at the forum remains the start one of my favorite 2.0 underrated runs (including Vegas). Once again I set up a huge crew of 30+ people with tickets together in section 111. I read a quote about golf that was something along the lines of the three things that matter to most golfers are (1) where you play, (2) how you play and (3) who you play with and frankly the first two don't matter. To me this somewhat applies to phish...the most important factor in a show is the people you are there with. Having 30+ buddies rocking phish together meant that where and how weren't as important (although as a phish nerd and this blog would indicate, how the boys plays clearly matters to me). It also doesn't hurt to have access to the food, drink, bathrooms and phish cake provided by the forum club. Interestingly the people that run the forum club, normally a super hot spot for the Hollywood types to hang for shows, said they didn't have that many requests for phish from celebrities. Not that popular with the Hollywood crowd I guess although valerie did see Seth green hanging out. 

One of only two indoor shows this summer and right away you could tell that Phish meant business by opening with Martian monster. The explosion from the crowd was awesome. Maybe due to the freshness I felt like Vegas was a much better version but enjoyed an awesome halloween song opening the LA throw down. They then played an early first set DWD...we were due for this song however it was such a highlight from last year I didn't think they would play it again at the forum. 

After these two monsters we were set up for an epic first set...and instead we got a dose of standard first set material. More stuff from fuego, got to yell cheesecake after heavy things, solid limb by limb and then the phish shenanigans during ya mar (second cover of tour). Again no real jam out of fuego. Walls of the cave served its high energy first set closer role and we were done. Started with a serious bang, lost me a bit after that however. 

The second set opened with No Man. I really dig this funky tune and jam. Reminds me a little of wombat (perhaps why we aren't getting any wombat lately), I come to phish to dance my ass off and no man (or woman) can resist dancing to this tune. This version is dope and this song is set up for greatness. Phish loves this song, we love this song... we are going to hear this at least 3 more times this summer. 

We then finally got our first carini since last fall in San Diego. Is carini a southern Californian thing? I love me some carini and while this was solid it was somewhat ripcorded for tweezer. The tweezer was just starting to get good when treyDD kicked in again and we moved into My friend my friend. On paper Carini->tweezer is my jam, something every Phan would want to hear. While these were good they weren't great or anything special. 

The my friend was a bit of a struggle for the band. Roggae is one of my favorite mellow phish tunes so I didn't mind the placement much. Then backwards started and before it even got going I told Valerie that after the show we will hear people say yes we got numberline but the jam was awesome. Well that's exactly what happened but this jam truly was special. I am not a fan of getting numberlined but this was probably the second best jam of the night. Being right next to Stardog, the biggest numberline supporter out there, also enhanced my enjoyment of this version. 

Speaking of being next to specific song supporters, it was awesome being close to Gormley, the slaveologist, for an awesome version of the tune. Slave is a song I will always love, especially more so because when I took my pops to phish this was his favorite song of the night. Ironically part of our crew included the fleets who brought Marc's dad to his first show. He had a great time and couldn't decide if he liked the music or the friends more. 

YEM closed out a great night of phish. All of the elements were in place (people, phish, location) to make this a really fun end to the California sun. 

DJ Phink

We took a party bus back to San Diego after the show. I wasn't controlling the music and didn't like what they played so Valerie and I listened to a mix that I have. A couple of cool tunes from that mix:

California soul - Marlena shaw

Ageispolis and heliospin - aphex twin

Mykonos - fleet foxes

Intro - the xx

Touch me I am going to scream part 2 - mmj

Lost ya - boom box

Summary

Loved the two California shows, they were bomb. Overall start to finish forum was a better show but the start of the shoreline second set is why I do what I do. See you on the road.