The New Phone Book's Here

You've done this. You've gotten together with your friends and decided on some elaborate plan. Maybe you'd start a new business. Maybe you'd run for office. Maybe you'd start a school in England to teach magic. In 1996, a group of people I knew had our plan. We were going to write the definitive book on Phish. While The Phishing Manual was good (Hi Dean), it never purported to be a complete guide. The Phish Book was fascinating, but was more about the people in the band than the music that they produced. The focus of The Pharmers Almanac was directed too much towards the scene for our tastes; it made a good yearbook, but what we wanted was an encyclopedia. It took four years, but the book is now in my hands, and I couldn't be more proud.

The journey from idea to book was not an easy one. The cliche about not wanting to see laws or sausage being made also applies for books. I could tell some stories here about the inevitable conflicts that will happen when strong willed perfectionists work together or detail the time that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and started attacking the setlist group (they were right, I was wrong), but then Ellis would probably kill me and I wouldn't be able to deliver this column to you next month.

To be honest, I no longer remember what the exact reasoning for our most important decision was. I suppose if you ask all of the original board members, they'd come up with a different reason why we decided to give all of our proceeds to charity. Personally, for me, I had two reasons. One is that, to be an encyclopedia, we'd need as much information as we could possibly get. How could we ask people to help us with our research if we were going to make money off of their help? The other reason - a much more compelling one - is that it just seemed wrong. I have received many offers to place ads on Phish Stats, but it never seemed right to make money off of something that I was doing as a gift to the community. By giving our royalties to charity, not only would we be able to give something to the Phish community in the form of our book, we'd be able to give something to the world outside of Phish.

Years passed. Setlist information was collected. Perl scripts were written to generate stats. Other sections were being written without my knowledge. Finally October 2000 came. I was given the deadline for my stats section; it would be due two days after the final fall tour show. Those days are a blur in my memory. First the was the emotional impact of the last Phish show (for a while), then there was the long drive home; somehow I ended up with the Shoreline to Eugene portion of the drive. When I did get home, it was Yom Kippur. So really, I had the period from the end of my fast to midnight to get the stats section done. I'm amazed that no errors ensued from this rush; you have to appreciate the splendor of automation scripts[1].

Work done, there was only one question on the mind of the Mockingbird Board members. When will we get our books? In late November, we were told that our copies were shipped. I spent the entire day after Thanksgiving in my apartment, waiting excitedly for the book... until I found out at 3 PM that UPS wasn't delivering that day. When I still didn't have a copy the following Thursday, I called MFI and ordered a second copy sent super-duper-incredibly-fast-hyperspeed shipping. It arrived on Friday. My other copy came on Monday. Oh well, it's for charity.

My biggest fear about this book was that I would be expecting too much. I knew the setlist file was good, but I had already seen it. Would it be a disappointment? As much fun as it would be to leave you in suspense, I'll answer with an emphatic "No." While, I knew a lot about the setlist and stats sections, the other parts of the book were a mystery to me. Yes I knew there was a section of the book called "Song Histories." What I didn't know was that it would be the real centerpiece of the book. Funny, intelligent, and informative, I was only upset that I didn't help to write any of them myself.

This is not a book to be read cover to cover per se. It's a book to be read near your tape collection. The day I got it, I was flipping through the show reviews, read the one for Quadrophenia, and was inspired to put the show in. While listening to it, I noticed a few lines from "Substitute" playing. I was on IRC at the time, so I asked a Who fan there if that appeared in the studio version. She didn't remember it being there. The next morning, I woke up and thought, "Hey I have a book now; let's look this up." Under the entry for "Is It In My Head," the book mentions that:
(1) The quote is from "The Kids Are Alright," not "Substitute."
(2) The quote does appear on the Who's album
and
(3) Phish actually recorded a studio version of this song to play over the PA at that moment. (I'd love to get a copy of that.)

Maybe it's unfair to judge a book on that, but first impressions are hard to shake. I wanted some incredibly obscure fact, checked and there it was. I'm finding it's enriching my Phish listening experience; I'm checking out old and new recordings to discover details that I never knew were there. For just one more example, "The Moma Dance" song history has a lyrical analysis of the song. While I have never seen it before myself, Martin Acaster manages to find a life affirming message there, a counter to "Wading in the Velvet Sea."

I'm still not sure that i buy it, but right after reading that, I ran to my cd player to find a version. I put in 9/23/00, listened to "Come on Baby, Let's Go Downtown," and had to look that up. It's a circle, alright, but not a vicious one.

If I can have one complaint about the book, it's that it's reaffirming my love for this band. Instead of taking the hiatus with good grace, I'm being blown away by just how good a band they were. The photos remind me of the festivals that they threw. The text (including of Jesse Jarnow's Tour Journals - first seen on Jambands) causes me to load up my cd player with Phish. While writing this today I caught myself thinking, "Is there anything better than the return to the 'Down With Disease' theme after a long jam?" Seconds ago, with my music on shuffle play, I heard the opening chords of "Piper", saw "PH 123199 8" on the display, and screamed, "YES!"

If this is the effect having a Phish encyclopedia has on a fan, one can only hope that the copies we mailed to the band will have the same effect on them, and the hiatus will be short. As for other fans, I can't promise it will make the break seem shorter, but I can suggest that The Phish Companion will remind you why you cared about this band in the first place.

[1]I tempted fate didn't I. Three days after I wrote this column it came to my attention that my automation scripts weren't 100% perfect. They were 99.9% perfect. That might be good enough for some things, but I was devistated. I spent 12 hours this week comparing a 200 page document with a 3 megabyte text file to give line by line changes for the 50 or so lines that were different.

Extra Special Bonus Column

My employers forced me into a Secret Santa program this year. Having no idea what to get the person, I made the Hanukkah Fun Pack, consisting of some dreidels, some gelt, some M&M's, a koosh ball, and the following text. I sent the text to some people and they demanded that I post it here. Enjoy.

The Hanukkah Fun Pack

What is Hanukkah?

Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah, Hanuka, and pretty much any other way you can arrange h's, a's, n's and k's to make that sound) commemorates a military victory over the Greek empire some 2400 years ago. After the Maccabees (aka "The Good Guys") defeated the Greeks (aka "The Bad Guys"), they went to light the everlasting light in the synagogue. Despite having only enough oil to last one day, somehow the light remained lit for the entire 8 days that it took to get some more.

Why Should I Care?

Beats me. Never a major holiday, Hanukkah only really took importance in the 19th century. Frustrated with hearing their kids whining about not getting any Christmas presents, people noticed a holiday located conveniently close to Christmas. Not only was the timing helpful but, unlike most Jewish Holidays, this one didn't even require you to dwell on your failings for 10 days, or do a sundown to sundown fast, or eat all of your meals outside, or not eat bread for 8 days. In fact, this one could even be described as fun. Rabbis poured over the Talmud, figuring that having a fun holiday must be against Jewish law somehow. They were pursuing an investigation over a digression inspired by some 15th century debate over whether killing a snake that wandered into your tent on the Sabbath counted as "work," when someone reminded them of Purim. While Hanukkah is enjoyable, it doesn't hold a candle (that's a little holiday humor there, laugh ok?) to Purim - what with the story involving oral sex and rampaging hordes of angry Jews, the encouragements to go out and get drunk, and kids given noisemakers and told to be really loud and annoying.

Wait a second! You said "fun." Is there any actual enjoyment here?

Well kind of. The celebration of Hanukkah revolves around three things - fire, grease, and gambling.

Fire: The most ritualistic aspect of the holiday involves lighting a menorah for 8 days. No menorah was included in this Fun Pack because:

(1) They tend to be expensive.
(2) If you knocked over the Menorah and burned down Concur, everyone would end up blaming me most likely.
(3) There's an annoyingly complicated special way that you have to light the candles.

Despite their absence here, Menorahs do provide many happy memories. For example, there was the time when my parents left the house, leaving me in charge of the menorah lighting. I then decided to show some basic candle tricks to my brother (including the "flaming ball of wax" trick). Ok, when they got home, I did have some questions to answer - such as, "Why is there wax all over this table?" - but any excuse to play with candles is a good thing.

Grease: Since one of the major parts of the Hanukkah story involves oil burning longer than it should, an aspect of celebration involves eating food fried in oil (traditionally potato pancakes, but I like to push this rule). How often can you say, "I'm eating these Jo-Jos for religious reasons." Eight days of Onion Rings and Mozerella Sticks. That's my idea of a holiday.

Gambling: This is the biggie. You may have noticed many tops inside this package. These are known as dreidels. Each side has a Hebrew letter on it. The letters are the first letter of each word in the phrase "A Great Miracle Happened Here." While some people question whether misestimating the amount of oil you have really qualifies as "great miracle" - it clearly doesn't match up well with - say - the birth of a savior - the phrase does sound better than "A New Measuring Device Was Needed Here."

The way the dreidel works is simple. You start out with a pot of M&Ms or Gelt or something in the middle. You spin the dreidel and see what side comes up.

If gimmel comes up, that means Get... you get the entire contents of the pot.

If hey comes up, that means Half... you get half of what is in there.

If nun comes up, that means Nothing... nothing happens.

If shin comes up, that means Shit, I have to put one back.

I thought about being a dreidel hustler who would wait until the pot got really big and then say, "No, you must have misheard me. THIS one is gimmel," when I spun. Instead though, here is a little ascii hebrew letter guide:

             .
\     |    /          ----------
 \    |   /                    |
  --------            |        |
                      |        |
  SHIN                  Hey


-----------            ---------
          |                    |
          |                    |
          |                    |
-----------            ---------\
   NUN                  gimmel   \

Look for the tail there for gimmel

Now you can tell this game is made for kids, because it's all about getting lots of M&M's and rarely about giving them back. The question becomes, what do you do with your dreidels when you're sick of candy. One thing is to do stupid dreidel tricks. My favorite is the spin the dreidel on its head trick, but the bounce and then spin trick is also cool... when I can get it to work.

Other games (such as high stakes dreidel gambling and strip dreidel) are to be played at your own risk. Know your limits. If you find yourself dreidelling uncontrollably, please call the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling Hotline number at 1-800-547-6133.

What if I think this whole Hanukkah thing is kind of lame?

See that koosh ball in there? Play with it.