May 27, 2004 by A.S. Van Dorston

I picked up a book by Denise Sullivan called Rip It Up! Rock & Roll Rulebreakers. It’s not that well written, total fangirl stuff, but here’s an interesting tidbit:

Weymouth reports hearing tapes of Phish performing Remain in Light in its entirety. “David thought it was going to be impossible for us to do Remain in Light because it’d been done piecemeal–Brian Eno would play one bass note on the one and then David Byrne would play one bass note on the three and they thought it was going to take all these different people to play the stuff when in fact, the band Phish did a perfect replication of that record with what, six people?”

“Nevertheless, to do a song like ‘Crosseyed and Painless,’ there are like three guitar parts, and it’s just impossible to do them all at the same time,” says Harrison flatly.

“If you listen to Phish, they actually did it,” says Frantz. “I don’t know how they did it. I wasn’t at the show, I just have a tape of it, but I was surprised because I thought, like you, they can’t do it. It’s weird. Just really good guitarists, I guess.”

Is this some sort of secret influence amongst hippie jam bands? If I request “Crosseyed and Painless” at my local street fair, will the hippies pull it off with no hesitation? I looked it up, and here’s the gig — 10/31/96 Omni Coliseum, Atlanta, GA. I’ll have to track down a CD.

Also, I’m looking for Jerry Harrison’s post-Remain In Light project, The Red And The Black. I had a few songs on tape, and always meant to buy it when it was reissued in ’96, but never got around to it. Now the only two copies I can find are being sold at $115+ on Gemm. No trace on Slsk, ebay, half, djangos, nowhere. Help?

With all the Remain In Light talk, I was re-listening to all the related projects of that era.

Brian Eno & David Byrne * My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (Sire) 81
Jerry Harrison * The Red And The Black (Sire) 81
Tom Tom Club (Sire) Oct 81
David Byrne * The Catherine Wheel (Sire) Dec 81

Also, it’s known that Byrne and Eno stole former Can leader Holger Czukay’s ideas of layering voice samples and radio broadcasts over ethnic rhythms (he played the tapes for them before his album was released)

Holger Czukay * Moveis (Mute) 80

Posted in: Rants