What Is Pants?

So, today I wore this new t-shirt for the first time:

It’s a shirt that falls into the “if you know you know” category. If you know who the four members of the band Phish are, then you’ll get the t-shirt. If you don’t, you won’t.

I know the band Phish has its detractors, some of whom are quite vocal. I personally have a hunch that most of those people haven’t spent enough time with the band’s music to really pass judgment, but I could be wrong. I understand that some people aren’t into jamming; that’s fine, but it ignores the fact that there are over a dozen brilliant studio albums that have very little jamming on them at all. Some people take issue with the fact that they are…dorky white guys, I guess? Or that they play some of the music that they play (songs like “Boogie On Reggae Woman” by Stevie Wonder) EVEN THOUGH they are dorky white guys? But that complaint just gives me pause in regards to what other people believe about music…It’s really not okay with you for a dorky white guy to sing a song like that? I’m kind of a dorky white guy and I’VE covered a Stevie Wonder song before. Is that not okay with you??

I think the thing about the criticisms leveled at this band that bewilders me the most is that they seem to be rooted in the idea that Phish is just “one thing”; they are “that Phish thing that I don’t like” and not anything else. We like to pigeonhole artists…we like to think we have it sussed out, in terms of genre, or vibe, or whatever, and that way we can make our decisions about whether to pay attention to it anymore and move on. Certainly our culture seems to prefer things like that; the approach to publicity and such in the music world revolves around being able to succinctly describe what you do in a way that people can quickly digest. But Phish have never been that. They are a little of a lot of things mixed together. I have always thought that Dr. Pants was a bit that way, too.

OR, even if you don’t think about Dr. Pants being that way (it depends on how you define it…if you define it as the 4-piece rock band that did a lot of live gigging around OKC from around 2006-2013, then maybe there’s an argument to the contrary), I would argue that MY musical makeup, from a songwriting/composition standpoint, is a little bit of a lot of things. I just haven’t always exhibited that outwardly to the degree that it was true on the inside. I am starting to, though, or I am planning on starting to. There are musical projects coming down the pike that are very different from what has come before (or will seem different). The first of them is OBJECTIONABLE OBJECT, an album of 8 short(ish) electronic compositions that I wrote in the fall of 2019 and winter of 2020. It’s going to be released on June 5th, and you’ll be seeing and hearing more about it soon. It’s only one of several projects I have planned, and I hope that you’ll all keep an open mind towards it.

The songs/pieces on the album do not have individual titles, but here is a sneak preview of one of them:

OBJECTIONABLE OBJECT will be released June 5th via Bandcamp, and June 19th on streaming services.