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YEMSG watch, Fish goes metal, and one man's shot at Phish Twitter redemption

A good late summer/early fall afternoon to you and yes, it’s another bacon that I’m makin’, no-salad ballad, bread and cheese sitch’, the Jam Sandwich.

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Let’s get it started.

Lights.

🎉 YEMSG Watch

Big-time concert promoter Ron Delsener reportedly told The Beatles XM channel he’s got four nights of Phish at MSG coming up.

Oh?

That, coupled with the bathroom attendant scoops and what Trey’s daughter put on Instagram (a photo of MSG w/ something like a “see you soon bb” caption, though she later walked it back) sure has everyone cracking their knuckles for that soon-to-come announcement > lotto miracle or nightmare > Ticketmaster fails > Cash or Trade hustle cycle.

Let’s get it going.

Oh, sidebar, Delsener once described his career’s favorite bookings:

The Halloween celebrations that Frank Zappa did at the Palladium; David Bowie’s debut concert at Carnegie Hall on the Ziggy Stardust Tour in 1972. I had a hard job getting him in there because they said, “You can’t put a transvestite on the stage.” Bob Dylan when he went electric at Forest Hills Stadium; The Beatles at Forest Hills, before Shea Stadium.

🎩 Cover boy

Vida Blue is on Relix:

Page called that “real sweet.”

A new track is on Page’s Instagram:

👹 Tweeter Reprise

Over the last few months I’ve had a Tweetdeck filter set up where I see basically every tweet someone sends that mentions “Phish.”

It’s entertaining. I’ve also noticed that anytime a random person slams the band in one way or another, we phans flock to their mentions to defend them (see nug, lil). We can be a nasty bunch, but we’re kind, too.

For a new feature, I thought we’d revisit one of those Phish tweets and give the tweeter a chance to redeem themselves — or double down and blow the roof off.

This week’s guest: Ryan Broderick. The BuzzFeed writer, who also has a very awesome Substack, Garbage Day, tweeted last week: “Tool are just Phish for redditors.”

He made the comment in a thread about the feud between fans of Tool and Taylor Swift. The two artists were battling for #1 in on Billboard 100, and hey, Tool won. Wombat Matt called him an “asshat.”

So Ryan, what gives?

I tweeted about the Swifties fighting with Tool fans and the Tool fans immediately started dunking on the Taylor Swift fans. Most Taylor Swift fans are younger women or queer people and the Tool fans appear to be almost exclusively middle-aged men.

All of their tweets were super condescending and misogynist. I wanted to make it really clear that I think Tool stinks. So I tweeted that Tool was the worst band ever. Which really made things even more annoying in my mentions. Like it's been a full weekend and I've still got Tool fans tweeting dumb nonsense at me.

Anyways, this is all prologue to tweeting about Phish. I decided if my mentions were a trashfire, I might as well go for broke. I was trying to think of good way to dunk on Tool and was going to go with "Metallica for incels" but that seemed Too Much and I needed like a mathier band to compare them to, so I settled on "Phish for redditors," which seemed less mean and more accurate from a musical perspective — long songs, dense lyrics, offbeat time signatures, etc.

And that's pretty much it!

The reaction from Tool fans has been insanely embarrassing and confirmed all my feelings about that band and their incredibly annoying fanbase.

Phish fans are much nicer lol.

Thank you, Ryan. Now everyone, since we’re cool, go check out his Substack.

The new Under the Scales welcomes comedian Scott Aukerman. He cohosted the beloved Analyze Phish as Harris Wittels tried to turn him onto Phish.

Give it a listen.

JamBase gives us a rundown:

Tom and RJ recently spoke with Scott at Earwolf’s studios in Los Angeles. Marshall revealed Analyze Phish helped spark Tom to launch Under The Scales and eventually Osiris. The trio discussed Aukerman’s career, which started as a writer for Mr. Show and founder of the podcast/television show Comedy Bang! Bang!. Next, Scott talked about his friendship with Harris and the start of Analyze Phish. A few clips from the Phish-related podcast were played and Aukerman shared his take on how Wittels went about introducing him to Phish. Scott went on to ask Tom about the lyrics to the Phish classic “Bouncing Around The Room.”

🏒The hockey writer Jason Botchford passed away last May. He was a massive phan, and the band knew it — Phish Inc. sent the family a Pollock postcard wishing them “nothing but love and light.”

🎙️A reader slammed Westword’s review of Dick’s N1, saying in a letter to the editor, “This review was so stream-of-consciousness all over the place that for a second there I thought I was reading a Trump speech.”

🤘Jon Fishman provides a narration on metal band Cattle Decapitation’s upcoming album, Death Atlas. What, awesome. Says vocalist Travis Ryan: “Jon is a big fan of the band and we were happy to have him come on board with the narration, as well as a quote off the top of his head that was inspired by the beautiful area he lives in, and recorded under the Maine night sky.” [Pic via their Facebook]