Alive II just bit the dust...
I\'d be severely dissapointed if it was any of the following albums:
AC/DC | Back In Black
Boston | Boston
Chicago | The Chicago Transit Authority
Devo | Freedom of Choice
Elton John | Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
MGMT | Oracular Spectacular
Minutemen | Double Nickels On The Dime
Modern Lovers | The Modern Lovers
Pixies | Come On Pilgrim
Prince | Purple Rain
Rolling Stones | Exile on Main Street
Rolling Stones | Sticky Fingers
T.Rex | Electric Warrior
Television | Marquee Moon
I couldn\'t agree more. Every one of these would suck as the Halloween set. And most of them are perfectly good if not awesome albums in their own right...but that doesn\'t mean they\'d be good for Phish to cover on Halloween.
I predicted Led Zep IV, hey, it got axed, what can you do? I thought it was a good guess.
I won\'t take any more guesses, but I will just say that of the remaining albums, nothing would be better than Radiohead Kid A. The things Phish could do with that album are beyond imagination.
And in addition to the fact that it would sound incredible, do you know why I love this choice? Because it would challenge Phish. They would really have to extend themselves to do this album justice. Back in Black? Exile on Main Street? Please. Phish could learn these albums in an hour. That doesn\'t make them bad albums, they\'re fine albums, but come on. And even with Zappa...yes, the composition is as challenging as it gets...but Phish is built to play Zappa. They\'re not that far removed from Zappa in general, and Phish is totally capable of learning all the tricky parts. But Radiohead? Radiohead has several things going for them that make them a daunting task, and make Kid A the album most likely to make Trey sit the band down and say "Guys, what the heck are we gonna do with this?"
First, Radiohead challenges Phish\'s greatest weakness: vocal soul. A lot of bands have this quality, but most of them don\'t deliver this in the context of music that would kick ass for Phish. Second, Radiohead still exists, which, in my mind, makes the pick much more controversial. Every album Phish has ever covered was by defunct bands with dead members. It takes a lot more cahones to answer to an existing band. Which leads me to my final point, which is that Radiohead presents an interesting conundrum: If they do it, it
has to be spectacular, moreso than any other album on the list. They can\'t justify the set by simply getting all the notes right, like they could with Zappa. They can\'t justify the set by blowing the doors off every song like they could with Led Zep I or AC/DC. They can\'t sneak out the back door by making a mockery out of it like they could with Thriller or KISS. They would have to get it right, and they would have to rock it out, and they would have to make it unique, and they would have to answer to the original artist. These are the goals no matter what album they choose, but I don\'t think any other album
demands all 4 of these elements the way Kid A does.
What are the real odds that Kid A happens? The official Wolf line is 1000:1. But that\'s what I would have them do if I had the choice.
