Disease supreme anybody? I remember there being some vitriolic debate as to the intentions of the band on that one. It's labelled as a jam now on the setlist page and it strikes me as a good compromise between outright intent of a tease and a complete denial of no recognition.

I really love this kind of debate because it underscores the aesthetic process between the original impetus of the art and the context in which it is received by a community. I guess the idea for me is that once the music is heard it ceases to be an indivisible artifact but becomes a fluid source for responses from the audience. This is especially true for live music, to the point that even having an audience changes the music while it is being created. We phish fans are so used to this concept by now, but take a step back and think about that! Art is being created before our very eyes and ears and our response is a participation with it so much so that it actually changes, fuels, instigates that fluid art to new forms at the very moment of creation. That is still mind-boggling to me from a philosophic point of view.

Further though, after it is over and once it has been archived, that participation continues and is evidenced by the threads on the posts in this blog. Art has the capacity to change each individual at the subjective level to the point where it exists as a process between the source and the individuals receiving it. This capacity for change is to me the difference between creating things and creating art. The desk that I sit at was created by someone yet it has no intrinsic artistic value; I use it as equipment. However, a phish show moves us. Even if its not the best show and even if only has moments, it still moves us.

The best art seems to be that which is holds watershed resonance within a culture. It is that which changes what the perceived parameters are for what art itself can be, and how it can be. I would argue that the phish community is undoubtedly a culture onto its own. Those shows that change how the culture perceives the band are moments that transcend the pre-limitations we unconsciously place on the forms that that music can take. This is part of the experiential truth of art, a sea change where chaos is embraced and entirely new forms of communication enter the flow of the collected phish consciousness. Phish jams themselves are a microcosm of this, and the best ones echo the human process: striving against chaos to create form, embracing chaos to create the new, and the resurgence of the vitality of life to celebrate the process itself.

The Roadrunner tease and the Disease controversy are snapshots of the ongoing process of the ethotic transmutation of phish art. They acknowledge the very factual state of the historicity of art as that which has prior signposts and antecedents of musical form and reference. Simply, phish did not bubble out of a vacuum; their communication has reference to prior artistic communication. This resonates with the band creating art, or any art being created for that matter, that must respond to past forms. Long lasting artists must strive to break into the new, and must also bear the considerable weight of past works. The weight of freedom then is a double edged sword: to seek the new out of the ashes and glue of the old, and to carry that weight beyond chaos and into new forms.

The teases and jams seem to take on more significance within this doubled greater context. Teases of other artists works (usually not Fishman covers!) are an acknowledgement of this prior context, and to me seem to represent an acceptance of the bear fact that much of what can be done has already been done. It is a reflection of the world at large within the world phish has created, and an immediate signpost recognizing this fact. Yet, phish will not be denied. They play. Playfully, and I suggest we all go read the lyrics to playin in the band again. The debate on whether or not a tease is actually a tease, to me, references a myriad of hermeneutic interchanges between past and present, present and future, and source and receptors. While striving against the known echoes of the past, they can either give in and play on the themes of the artistic-cultural macrocosm or they can refuse the embrace and shift against the inviting and known themes of the past. To highlight the idea of context once again, this striving against (Roadrunner or any song) is in itself a response to the song that could be teased. So it is still the source for the music played whether they play it or not. The jam, then, is received by the community which creates the art's full manifestation and here we go arguing about the supreme jam or the roadrunner tease.

Intentionality is a debate for another day.