Construction Ahead

Just a quick post to say that at least for the near future I'm going to stop writing an essay-style review for each show that I listen to and that these blog posts are instead just going to serve as archives for my live tweets about each show.

I've really enjoyed the live tweeting aspect of these reviews since I started doing them six or so months ago, and as I've tried with each review to both tweet during the show and do a long write-up after the show, I've come to realize two things: a) the essay-style reviews have come to resemble a summary of the impressions I've already tweeted and b) it takes too damn long to write both types of review for each and every show and it's actually making me want to listen to new shows less, knowing that afterward I have to take thirty minutes to write up an essay about it.

So, for now at least, I'm just going to paste the content of my tweets into each post, and probably include a paragraph or so of impressions and the occasional video. But I think getting rid of the full-on essay reviews will make me enjoy this a lot more and make me way more likely to keep reviewing in the future.

Blatant Self-Promotion!

When I first started this blog, I was typing up show notes in Wordpad or Gedit while I listened to each show. Lately, I've started doing the same thing using Twitter instead. Unfortunately, this seems to have confused my Twitter followers, 90% of whom are academics who could care less about live music.

So, it seemed like a good plan for a number of reasons to create a second Twitter account, just to post my review notes and other Phish-related thoughts on. If you're interested in following, you can find my profile at www.twitter.com/saxscraper. My username is just @saxcraper.

I'm Still Alive...

In case anyone out there in the internet-aether was wondering, I'm still alive and haven't given up on my Phish 3.0 reviewing project. I spent a lot of June getting ready to move from Washington to Oregon with the missus and start a new job, then the beginning of July actually moving and settling into our new place. Then I was lucky enough to be able to do the entire west coast summer run in person and just got back from the Hollywood Bowl a few days ago. After the absolutely incredible level of playing I witnesses over eight nights, it's honestly difficult to go back and listen to, well, really, anything the band played prior to this last month (except maybe some '97 funk or '99 space). I just keep listening to the last eight shows on repeat and haven't had much time for anything else.

Anyway, I'll likely write up my thoughts (briefly soon, and then later on on a per-show basis in detail). Those'll go up on my other blog but'll also likely end up here and on phish.net. Then I'll get back to reviewing 2009, starting with 11/18!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I bet you thought that was a Bowie reference.

As you might have noticed, the blog has changed dramatically in terms of appearance and functionality. I woke up this morning and saw that I still haven't received the specifics of my first assignment for my new employer, and so I decided to use the three-hour window of free time that had suddenly opened to Do Stuff To The Blog To Make It Better. Hopefully it worked. Here are the probably-painfully-obvious-but-important changes:

1. There is an actual picture of Phish playing a concert in the background of the blog, instead of that shitty stock photo I had up before. Blogger still, mystifyingly, requires that all background images be under 300k in size while suggesting that you upload an image that is at least 1800 x 1600. So I shrunk down a massive photo and then compressed it until it was 299k in size. So it's a little grainy, but Google is silly and I couldn't make a better-resolution background because SAD.

2. I changed the template and color scheme of the entire blog. Now it's blue and grey instead of that eye-watering red/orange/white combination I had going before. Also, the "Dynamic" template is gone, as most of the options it provided looked like total unnavigable shit. Instead, I've chosen to make this blog look and work suspiciously like my other blog.

3. Now there's an easy-to-find list on the sidebar that helps you read by tour, just above the archive of all of my posts thus far.

4. Maybe most importantly, there's now a list of "Favorite Sources" in the sidebar. In most posts thus far, I've been including Phish.net links, and YouTube videos where possible. The sources list doesn't include all the channels I've used videos from, but it does list a few of the best and most comprehensive. As there aren't a lot of videos from '09 to choose from (and many that do exist have embedding turned off, or were cut up oddly because of YouTube's old 10-minute limit), I've also started using PhishTracks links to stream songs I want readers to be able to hear ASAP, so there's a link to there as well. Basically, I wanted to give credit to the people whose work I've been resharing, and this list seemed like the best way to accomplish that.

And now, since I've already posted "Changes," I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't include "Wolfman" also:

Which of course then makes it mandatory to include this, as well:

See? Everything eventually leads back to Phish.

Incidentally...

...I do realize that this blog looks like shit. I'm hoping to fancy it up a bit sometime in the next few weeks, but for now I'm just focusing on delivering the text and video in as uncomplicated a format as possible.

Hoping to listen to 8/11 Toyota Park tomorrow. Apparently it's the debut of "Windy City"!