So many artists spend their lives toiling on the road and in the studio, working their fingers to the os and leaving their personal lives in ruin as they become a victim of their own success. That's the reason why Phish, i of the hardest working acts of our time, took an eight hundred and fifteen day break at the turn of the century. The band toured relentlessly from their inception in 1983 until October 7, 2000, where they embarked on a hiatus that was gut-wrenching for most, if not all, of their hard core fans.

As Neil Strauss wrote on Oct 10th of 2000:

"Phish has not broken up for good, the ring's direction says. But it is breaking upwardly for a while, leaving a gaping hole in the lives of the thousands of fans who follow the band from city to metropolis. No concerts are booked, no albums are scheduled, and band members program to become their divide means. "The plan," said the group's spokeswoman, "is that at that place is no plan."

When Phish announced their return in belatedly 2002, fans didn't know what to await.  As excited as we were, in that location was a fright that they may have lost something in the hiatus.  Just on February 28, 2003, at the tail end of their first full tour as a freshly reunited band,  Phish performed a boggling concert in New York that included an awe-inspiring rendition of i of their almost-loved tunes.  Hi, my name is Amar and welcome to Anatomy of a Jam.  This is the Nassau Tweezer.

Bred From Apprehensive Beginnings

The start performance of the song, which dorsum in its early on days, was known every bit "Tweezer so cold", happened on March 28, 1990 at Denison University in Ohio.  Tweezer was a collaboration between all four members, a spontaneous riff rock jam that took shape during soundchecks, and evolved along with the band and its diehard followers.  Trey dedicated this performance to the Beta Intramural Hockey Team at Denison Academy, as a solace for watching their flavour get downwards in the tubes that same mean solar day.

Tweezer is a frenetic dejection-based melody that combines techniques drawn from both hair metal and funk. It has been a fan favorite for nearly thirty years, as well every bit a vehicle for some of the bands nearly fiercely innovative improvisations.

Here, nosotros accept a archetype 12 bar dejection in A.  We run across that we have three groups of 4 confined that comprise the unabridged form.  The form existence  this set of chords, played from start to finish and repeated for the elapsing of the song.

One of my favorite descriptions of the 12 bar grade comes from Miche Braden:

"A dejection, especially if you deal with a 12-bar [blues], is set up up similar a joke.  You lot repeat the line twice and then you've got the punchline at the terminate."

Let'due south accept a wait at very literal case of this thought, hither's one of Bessie Smith's verses from Empty Bed Blues:

He used to melt up my cabbage, and make it nice and hot

He used to cook up my cabbage, and make it overnice and hot

When he put the bacon in, well, he overflowed my pot

Miche  goes on:

"Its a happy music, it truly is.  It's merely that some of the discipline affair of the Dejection sometimes had that sad feeling, but truly, it is not a sad music."

The Wackiest 32 Bar Blues You'll Ever Hear?

Tweezer, which easily is on the happier side of the spectrum, takes a 32 bar blues form.

Here, nosotros have eight bars of the I chord, 4 of the Four chord, and that section repeats twice. Then nosotros finally get to 8 bars of the V chord, which acts every bit that lyrical and stylistic punchline.

The song starts with Trey Anastasio'due south iconic guitar intro.

Some classic rock fans merits that Trey was inspired to write the riff afterwards hearing Time Out past Joe Walsh

Yet Pantera fans are adamant that Anastasio ripped the lick off of Killers.

The Tweezer guitar riff uses all of the notes of the A pocket-size pentatonic scale. "Pent" meaning five and "tonic" significant tones, or notes. This five notation calibration in the primal of A, has the notes A C D East M.

The pentatonic scale has been found in every type of music across the world. Every bit Howard Goodall said in the BBC documentary, How Music Works:

"Every music system in the world shares these 5 notes in common. They're so fundamental equanimous or performed anywhere on the planet, that it seems, like our instinct for language, that they were pre installed in us when we were born."

The opening riff is simply the scale descending, but Trey leverages two open up strings of the guitar. Every bit luck would take information technology, these open cord notes are already within the A small-scale scale, so the riff fits neatly on the guitar.

Afterward 4-8 repetitions of the guitar intro, the rest of the band comes in. Fish drops in with the song's signature funk beat. Folio's syncopated stabs add together an infectious groove underneath Anastasio's guitar riff. Wynton Marsalis once said that the blues tin can often exist characterized by the mixing of major and minor sounds. Page's major and ascendant chords, played over Anastasio's small-scale riff, are what requite Tweezer that indelibly bluesy audio.

The real hero of this section is Mike Gordon's aggressively percussive slap bass line.

Slap bass is a technique pioneered by one of the greatest electric bass players of all time, Larry Graham, on Sly and the Family Stone's Cheers (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).

Graham said that he adult this technique as a kid, playing in his mother's band. For unknown reasons, Ms. Graham had decided to fire the ring'southward drummer, possibly in an effort to increment the take-home pay of the remaining members.

In Larry's words:

"I started thumping the strings with my pollex for not having the bass drum, and plucking my finger to brand up for not having that backbeat on the snare drum. So it's kinda like playing the drums on the bass."

Perhaps a lesser bassist would just pluck this bassline.  But Mike'southward slap technique adds heaps of attitude.

Mike, like trey, Restricts himself to the notes of the A modest pentatonic scale. The open strings on a iv string bass besides happen to take notes that are already within the A small pentatonic scale.

Throwing a Heady Nod to the fourscore's

When the band gets into the D7, the Four chord, Mike and Trey take a chip of a stylistic left plow.  They don't actually play chords in the traditional sense, in the way that yous'd typically hear in a blues or stone song.  Rather, they play a synchronized harmonized lick that spells out a D9 chord.

This lick, The Tweezer Tap, gets its proper noun from an advanced lead guitar technique popularized past Eddie Van Halen in the late 70s.

Although Eddie was not the first role player to use two handed tapping, he created a phenomenon with his stylistic approach to the technique at the stop of Eruption, the get-go track on Van Halen'due south debut release.   This approach was and so unique that, within a few years, every atomic number 82 guitar player in spandex was trying to cop it, provided they could even effigy it out in the showtime place.  It quickly became 1 of the defining sounds for the entire genre.

As Trey told Guitar World Magazine in the Baronial 2000 issue about Tweezer:

"At the get-go of the verse section, I play a fretboard tapping lick.  First I fret an A note with my index finger, and I hammer on to a c note with my pinkie.  The C is bent one half step upwardly to C#, and, while belongings the bend, I "tap" the same cord backside the ninth fret with the eye finger of my right hand. The bend, which is executed with the left mitt, is then released while the "tapped" note is nevertheless held. Mike harmonizes this lick with a similar lick on the bass.  That'southward our nod to the Eighties!"

Coincidentally, Tweezer got its start on the very last dark of that decade, on 12/31/89, when the band spontaneously began to compose it during soundcheck that very evening.

The grade of Tweezer has stayed fairly consistent over the concluding few decades.  Nosotros have our guitar intro, so the form repeats twice.  Subsequently that, nosotros accept a short mini-jam then the full jam.

Long Island…More Than Only Brooklyn'southward Fart Trail

There are few moments in the song, before the jam officially starts, that set the Nassau Tweezer apart from other version played before or since. Two and a half minutes in, nosotros accept a massive glow stick war, which is a spontaneous ritual where the audience arcs glowsticks as a sign of celebration and excitement. This might audio pointless to the uninitiated, simply a glow stick war has been known to cause an exponential boost in the energy of the room, as evidenced by the oversupply'due south reaction Xxx seconds subsequently, nosotros accept another glow stick state of war that was fifty-fifty bigger in magnitude than the first. At this point the vibe in the arena was absolutely explosive. But at 4 minutes, disaster strikes.

As nosotros enter the first pause, Trey accidentally lets loose a wave of ear piercing feedback that was and then excruciating, half of the arena covered their ears out of pure reflex. The entire band even stops playing in response, admitting briefly. I'll spare you the pain of playing it in this video. I've been to hundreds of concerts in my life and I've never heard feedback that painful, particularly from a ring with as much alive experience as Phish. Perhaps in an effort to remain truthful to the document, this vicious shreik made information technology onto both the official soundboard released to fans after the show, equally well as the remastered release by Kevorian. Uh, thanks. I guess?

Moments later on, y'all tin hear Trey lasso his effects dorsum in, and he makes it back in just in time for the first downbeat of the main riff.

Shortly later, we go to the kickoff jam section of Tweezer. After the band sings the terminal line of lyrics, "Look who's in the freezer, uncle ebeneezer," they launch into a short department of improvisation that is full of tension. This mini-jam, is typically atonal, meaning that it lacks a tonal middle or primal. It is not major, or minor, information technology is no longer in the key of A, or whatsoever key for that matter.

The tag, or the phrase that propels the ring into the next department, falls on the responsibility of Fishman. He plays a drum fill that brings anybody back to the main riff.

In the 2/28/03 version, Trey purposely overshoots the landing and doesn't lock in at the aforementioned time the ring does. Instead, he improvises a dazzling lick that does an infrequent job of raising the excitement in the room.

This effect, which my friends and I take always called the "hadron collider," is a bit of a magic fob. Trey loops a short phrase so pitch bends and fourth dimension shifts it gradually, giving u.s.a. this beautiful and swirling quality.

Putting the Fish in Phish

At the five minute 25 2d mark, the jam officially starts. Meaning, every annotation played from here on out is collectively improvised. They don't even know how they're going to stop the song. The plan, is that there is no program. At the beginning of this jam, Fish comes in with a solid quarter annotation feel accentuated on his wood block. Trey immediately starts a lyrical pentatonic- based solo, starting moderately quietly and ramping up the intensity with every passing 4 bars.

At the 6 infinitesimal 11 second mark, Folio shits his chordal arroyo to accent the Dorian flavor of Trey's solo.

Dorian is known as the 2nd style of the major scale.

Roughly 20 seconds later on after folio comes in, nosotros have the moment that shapes the jam moving forward. It's the seed that allows the jam to bloom from a performance that is typical, to good, to legendary. This happens when Fishman improvises a beautifully intricate vanquish where he accentuates 32nd notes on his ride cymbal.

Every Phish fan has a moment where they're watching the band live and realize "Oh yeah, this is why the ring is named subsequently the drummer." This was that moment for 18-year sometime me.

A infinitesimal later, we have our third glow stick war, and one of the last ones that's clearly aural in this operation.

At vii:22, Trey plays phone call and response with himself.

Over the next couple minutes, the band wanders. This is 1 of the biggest struggles for not-phish fans to understand. Almost of us, when we listen to our favorite music, are used to the experience of every moment being a transcendent one. From Bob Dylan's original All Along the Watchtower to Childish Gambino'southward Redbone, we're used to our favorite songs being a journey where every moment matters, where every note is essential and as meaningful every bit the last.

A Phish jam is closer to a hike in the wood. You mayhap have a path that doesn't necessarily seem attractive or exciting. But at the end of the trail, you finish upwardly on a beautiful overlook that yous would have never discovered, had information technology not been for the seemingly boring turn you took a half mile back.

The wandering that we feel in this role leads to a brief lull in the jam at the 8:fifty mark, where page introduces his classic hovering synthesizer sound. A few seconds afterward, Fish drops back into his intricate ride cymbal trounce, which causes an emotional shift in the jam.

Fish's beat is a bit of enigma, it'due south rather quiet but it still grooves and is incredibly danceable. Although his rhythm is clear, information technology has a bit of a mysterious vibe that permeates the adjacent few minutes of the jam.

At this point, Trey is property a note and isn't really playing a lot. I vividly call back him existence in a moment of deep focus. He's absorbing and listening to everything that's going on around him.

Ego, Thine Enemy

Ii weeks before this performance, I had picked up a copy of Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery at the McGill academy bookstore. Trey's moment of focus directly reminded me of a quote from the book, where the author is talking about improvising music while in an egoless, meditative country of mind, which he dubs the Inner Space. Werner states:

"The Inner Space is the place where joy, pleasure and fulfillment worldly and otherwise are available in unlimited supply. Acceptance of these gifts allows the flow to increase. Performances given from this state are said to be greatly inspired, leaving their audiences profoundly moved. A concert given past a performer who has attained this state is regarded as an consequence non to be missed.

When Miles Davis approached the microphone, he focused himself into that infinite before playing the first note. In that location would oftentimes be long silences betwixt his phrases. In that time, you lot could see and feel him re-centering himself. That is very rare in jazz musicians today. That practice has the paradoxical effect of heightening people's sensation and increasing the intensity of the moment."

Werner continues,

"The highest land a musician can be in is a selfless state. Merely as a river bed receives the great waters, we receive inspiring ideas. For many, condign such a channel is picayune more than a myth or wishful thinking. Artists often have trouble getting out of their own way, and they must therefore struggle. They are often swept away by a river of mental and emotional activeness. They are drowning in feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, and anxiety – the battle is mistaken for a holy war and romanticized.

Only the struggle is merely with their ego…When I ask people which musician showtime attracted them to music, they often mention i who transcended these limitations. In the hands of such people, music has the potential of changing lives. Even when novices become to their concerts, they feel something opening inside."

Phish take their own terminology for their state of egoless improvisation, called 'the hose.' This thought took shape when the band was opening for Santana in the Summer of 1992. Two years later, in an interview with NPR Trey said:

"We actually have exercises that nosotros practice, where we work on improving our improvising as a group. It gets rid of the ego. It's an exercise to become rid of the ego. And the more that we do it the more than we notice that our improvisations are less concerned with showing off flashy solos or whatever, and more concerned with making a grouping audio. In that location's a feeling that we always talk virtually. When we went out with Santana, he had brought upwardly this thing about the Hose. … where the music is similar water rushing through you and as a musician your function is really like that of a hose. And, and well his thing is that the audience is like a sea of flowers, you know, and you're watering the audience. Merely the concept of music going through you lot, that yous're not really creating it, that what you're doing is — the best matter that you can do is get out of the style. So, when you are in a room full of people, at that place'due south this kind of group vibe that seems to get rolling sometimes."

Mike Gordon continues where Trey left off –

"It gets — Information technology actually starts to seem similar Information technology's not the audition or the ring. This Thing that gets rolling is It's Ain Thing. When things are going really well, and a jam has taken off, there's this feeling of motility that is created by the rhythm. And at that point my bass that I'm playing feels similar this sortof vehicle, or like a hitch for me to concord on to, similar someone would hold on to a um … Similar if you lot were on a — I was thinking if you were on a ski lift, mayhap. A chair lift. Or just something that would hook you on to the move that'south going, and pull you lot along with it."

Let the Music Cascade Through You

The note that Trey holds at the 9 infinitesimal mark is the moment when the water starts rushing through that hose. Although there'due south no surviving video of this operation, I recollect the moment similar information technology happened this morning. The audition could run into him slow downward and really centre himself. He entered that moment of deep listening, and he spontaneously pours out this gorgeous improvised solo that perfectly matches the dark, placidity intensity of Fish's drumbeat. Let'south take a listen, and pay close attention to the manner Page'south lines wrap around trey's like vine creeping around an Oak in effortless, natural chat.

Fans accept argued for decades what makes a jam hose-y or not. I'm sure many wouldn't find this moment special, just for me, and many others, it remains a perfect encapsulation of the catharsis that Phish has been providing us for years. Although this jam is just getting started, we have a bit of conflict. Trey steps on his wah pedal in a frantic manner, which is sometimes a betoken that a jam may be catastrophe its course. Fish hears that and responds by hitting his People's republic of china crash cymbal, which we've heard him use as a "ok, wrap it upwardly b," bespeak.

Trey decides to keep going and superimposes a new chord progression by playing Am – One thousand – D. Perhaps this was in an attempt to shift the jam into a new harmony, or perhaps it was merely a cool sound that he wanted to explore. Bank check out the way that Mike hears Trey's new harmony and matches it perfectly, while Fish is actually hammering that Mainland china crash cymbal.

Regardless of these clashes, they collectively determine to keep the jam going, possibly mostly due to Trey's insistence. We have a few more seconds of wandering as the band collectively finds ideas and searches.

Around the 12:twoscore mark, Trey catches feedback and holds a D chord, allowing for another one of those centering moments where the hose starts to rear its psychedelic caput. As Trey holds this chord, we hear Page improvising using a D major sound. Now, we tin can hear the jam outset to turn Type II. This tweezer jam started in an A dorian mode, and we see the ring shifting to the key of D based on Trey'south chords and Page'due south lines.

Feel the (Slow) Burn

Trey starts repeating a D major arpeggio followed past a Chiliad major arpeggio, hinting a harmonic shift to a new progression involving the chords D and G. There's no question that the other members can hear this change, but they don't jump to address the chords instantly. Let'due south listen as the band adopts a deadening-burn arroyo and takes their time in addressing Trey's implied chords. They patiently develop their harmonic backdrop as Trey digitally pitch bends his notes up into the stratosphere, giving way to a euphoric crest propelled by Fish's delicate breakbeats.

This tiptop starts to peter out around the xvi:22 marker and seems like information technology could end correct there. Trey comes in with some other beautiful lick and keeps the jam going. Fish drops in and out of double time at 17:16 as the band has ditched the D – G progression and decides to weave back and forth between D mixolydian and D dorian, driven past Page's harmony and Trey's lines.

Phish collectively groove and wander, until they notice themselves in a syncopated round funk groove initiated by Fishman around the nineteen:00 mark. Listen how Trey plays in an effort to re-create the drums and completely nails it. Fish and so continues to hop in and out of double time every bit the rest of the band grooves along with him.

The ring searches and wanders some more than, until Trey starts playing the chords D – F – G and dorsum to D. In the key of D, this is a I – bIII – 4 – I progression. Before, we saw that Trey gently played arpeggios and allowed the band to catch up with him and develop a new harmony. Here, he throws finesse out the window and becomes a ability chord caveman that beats everyone over the head with this new progression.

Trey then rips through blues licks every bit the band sails through the final of the jam's peaks. The point to current of air information technology down also comes from Trey, who digitally bends betwixt the root and b7th (the notes D and C) to allow the rest of the band knows that it's time to country the plane.

Although the jam is over, the band isn't done improvising, as we watch them spend the next few minutes splattering paint onto their canvas. Trey leaves us with a pitch bended loop, slowly decaying into oblivion as the audience is left speechless in its wake.

It'due south Never Also Late

When I walked out of Nassau Coliseum on the night of February 28, 2003, something in me had changed.

As Kenny Werner said, a meridian musical experience can positively modify the way you lot meet the world, and that'southward exactly what Phish did for me that solar day.

I felt like I had been allow in on some big catholic secret subsequently having lived eighteen years in darkness, a slave to a mind languishing on autopilot. Afterwards that performance, I learned that every moment, regardless of your past, is an opportunity to completely reinvent yourself. And that the answer is always in front of us, around united states, or by and large, within us. Nosotros just have to shut our eyes…and listen.