The Phish Factor
I've never liked Phish. Well, except for the song "David Bowie" which still tickles my funny bone. Otherwise I nod off or shift uncomfortably in my seat when a guitar solo reaches the two minute mark. There are better things I could do with the twenty, thirty, or (gasp!) forty-five minutes required to soak in all that electric noodling.
That said, Phish is also my favorite rock band. They embrace technology when others fight it. They understand the empowering nature of self-publishing, mixing, and personalization. They get the fact that if you give the fans what they want, instead of fighting them, your respect, adulation, and thus ticket / album sales will return ten-fold.
To the bohemian purist (oxymoron?), it probably smacks of filthy corporate synergy, but to provide the service you have to use something, and I'd bet those thousands of fans that burned CD-Rs from a library of 150 live tracks couldn't care less. I could be overreaching, but I would doubt any Apple competitor - if they were smart enough to provide a similar service - would ever have allowed the burning booth's sign to look like a Chinese restaurant, sans any corporate insignia.
Comments
Agreed. Hate the music. Love the attitude.
An article in today's New York Times impresses me with their embrace of wi-fi and other technological wonders. Makes wish I liked their music so I could enjoy the experience.
Posted by: smooth_j at August 7, 2003 6:39 PM
I've slowly started to appreciate the live noodling stuff, but try listening to an album, if you haven't already. The songs are 3, 4, 5 minutes, the solos are humane, and the songs are often pretty good.
Then they take the same song and blow it out into a hour long noodle-fest, and it's a little harder to get into. But take my word for it -- they're actually pretty good without all the noodling.
Posted by: Jon Bell at August 8, 2003 11:22 AM
Something not getting in all the talk of the live shows being made available and the sweet use of WiFi during the shows is that about a month ago Phish.com was redesigned taking it from a huge Flash site to a much more streamlined site based on valid XHTML+CSS+JS (with hardly a table in site!
(disclaimer: I was part of the team that worked on it)
Posted by: Chris at August 9, 2003 2:02 PM
