Here is the follow-up to the archival Phish cover story we ran last week.
Before Phish’s summer 2003 tour, Trey Anastasio suggested that each band member come up with five CDs that he wanted to turn the other guys onto. The goal was for all 20 albums to be downloaded onto each band member’s iPod, to help generate fresh musical ideas. This being Phish, of course, the idea got talked about a lot, but the lists never got completed and the albums never were downloaded. Not willing to let a good idea die, however, we offer a sampling of each band member’s selections, with their reasons for the choice.
TREY ANASTASIO

Brian Eno, Another Green World : This was my other hope for the Halloween album, though since we came back from the tour I’ve also rediscovered Before and After Science, and in the family wagon my wife Sue has been listening to Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy with the kids. All those Eno albums remain great.

The Mills Brothers, The Millenium Collection : I picked this one because I’ve been listening to it a lot. The Mills Brothers are incredible. We do those four-part a cappella songs sometimes, and I wanted the guys to hear the masters and maybe inject a little soul into the proceedings. I also thought that maybe we could do “Up a Lazy River.”

West Side Story: The Original Soundtrack Recording : The greatest orchestration ever, to my mind, and something I have always loved. When I did the orchestration for the Youth Symphony version of “Guyute,” I looked at the score to West Side Story and stole ideas, so that got me more into it. There’s a version with Leonard Bernstein conducting that’s amazing, if you can get your hands on it.

Bob Dylan and the Band, The Basement Tapes : I spent the entire tour listening to this. I think I like it better than anything Dylan or the Band did separately. If we had done Halloween this year, I was going to argue heavily for this album.

MIKE GORDON

Gillian Welch, Revival : I’ve really gotten into Gillian Welch; while we were on tour I kept playing her albums. Time (the Revelator) is the album people rave about, and I also like the one she put out this year, called Soul Journey. Her music hits home with me for some reason. She’s connected with the roots music that I like, but so unpretentiously and with such emotion. I feel weird hearing myself say that because I feel like I don’t really look for music that has emotion. I look for music that has a groove. But this just moves me.

Leo Kottke, Standing in My Shoes : Even though it was a few years back (1997), this album really inspired me. It has drum machine tracks and loops that David Z put together.

JON FISHMAN

The Band, Greatest Hits : The Band’s highs were like a career’s worth of highs in each song, but their lows were total garbage, like a bad garage band. So for me the Band really are a greatest hits package, because there’s a lot of stuff that just wasn’t that great in my humble opinion. Every song on here – " Tears of Rage," “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Stage Fright,” “Ophelia” – is unbelievable. Robbie Robertson was on a par with the best of them as far as lyrics go; one of the greatest musical storytellers of all time.

Samul Nori, Record of Changes : This one is hard to find, but it’s key. I heard it on National Public Radio, and at first I thought if was some kind of Sun Ra thing. Samul Nori is a South Korean percussion trio, and this record is all gongs and bells and wild-sounding Asian drums. They don’t use gamelan instruments, but the metallic sounds are sort of similar. But it also sounds like someone thrashing away, really going at it, with mixing bowls in the kitchen sink. There’s like three songs on the whole record. It’s one of my favorite albums of all time, one of those things where you get settled in, light a few candles, make a fire, drink a couple of glasses or wine or smoke a joint, and just sit back and let it rip.

PAGE MCCONNELL

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle : Part of this exercise was to encourage people to hear things they otherwise might not listen to. So one of the reasons I picked this one is that Fishman has had an aversion to Bruce Springsteen and I wanted him to hear this. It’s one of my favorite albums. I like the grooves and the energy. Springsteen was still hungry and aspiring at that point (1973), and you can feel it. For that reason, I might just as well have included Greetings From Asbury Park.

The Bill Evans Trio, Explorations : One of the reasons I started getting into jazz, both listening to it and playing it, was the stuff Bill Evans did with Miles Davis on Kind of Blue. He’s in such a different league than I am, but I was intrigued by his playing. Throughout all of his work, the melody is so important. I really like piano or keyboard trios; part of the reason I put Vida Blue together is that I wanted to have a different kind of keyboard trio. The way Evans approached the jazz piano trio – the roles of the drums and the bass – was really inventive in terms of what was going on in the early Sixties, when this album came out.