Pink Talking Fish: The Wall

[JKL2000]

Now I've heard of everything when it comes to tribute bands. A band that does a full show of The Wall, as well as Talking Heads and Phish songs! From their website: "Pink Floyd, The Talking Heads and Phish are all more than just bands... they are Phenomenons. Their creations have artistically inspired people and their mindblowing live performances have brought people together to form a special sense of community around the love for their favorite band."

Yeah, I've heard a lot about those Heads-heads. Not! Funny.

Never heard of this band before, but they're playing in Port Chester, NY next month. Anyone ever seen them?

Anyone in the NY area ever parked at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY and if so, how was the parking? It seems like a crazy quilt of small municipal parking lots. Trying to get some advice. "Get there early" seems to be one good idea.

Actually, the band's setlists look like fun - obviously they don't always do The Wall, and they play more than those three bands:

https://www.phantasytour.com/bands/p...-fish/setlists

[happytheman]

Now I've heard of everything when it comes to tribute bands. A band that does a full show of The Wall, as well as Talking Heads and Phish songs! From their website: "Pink Floyd, The Talking Heads and Phish are all more than just bands... they are Phenomenons. Their creations have artistically inspired people and their mindblowing live performances have brought people together to form a special sense of community around the love for their favorite band."

Yeah, I've heard a lot about those Heads-heads. Not! Funny.

Never heard of this band before, but they're playing in Port Chester, NY next month. Anyone ever seen them?

Anyone in the NY area ever parked at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY and if so, how was the parking? It seems like a crazy quilt of small municipal parking lots. Trying to get some advice. "Get there early" seems to be one good idea.

Actually, the band's setlists look like fun - obviously they don't always do The Wall, and they play more than those three bands:

https://www.phantasytour.com/bands/p...-fish/setlists

We saw them last fall locally (central Va.) I made it thru the first set.. to my ears nothing spectacular.. I went simply because my wife had won tickets from our local NPR station..

[Dan Marsh]

I've seen them twice....I think what they do is fucking awesome!

[JKL2000]

I’m at this show now. Apparently they’re live streaming on their FB page. Consider the Source opening now!

[JKL2000]

So this was an amazing show! I was happy to go for the first time to a venue I'd never been to before, a pretty easy half-hour drive away, no tolls, no New Jersey. The Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY (it was rainy and foggy, but few trucks fortunately).They have a lot of jam bands, tribute bands, and classic rock/prog from what I can tell (Dixie Dregs are there next month). For some reason a lot of Dominican, Mexican, and Peruvian restaurants in the immediate vicinity. Had some great mussel ceviche before the show.

Consider the Source opened and played for about 45-50 minutes (they played at ProgDay one year). Sort of a big room for them, the sound was a little muddy, The guitar player plays only a double-neck, one neck is used to trigger synth sounds including Mellotron. And the bass player kicks - one of the faster bass players I've seen. Cool stuff.

Pink Talking Fish's set was about 3 1/2 hrs! Worked much better live than it sounds on paper. They played all of The Wall, with Phish and Talking Heads covers interspersed. I know, as if The Wall needs to be more bloated! But they also jammed on a few of the Floyd songs, which overall gave The Wall a more psychedelic feel and played off the disco-ey beats to lead into the other songs. The three songs from the Wall that were given the best workouts - Young Lust, Comfortably Numb, and Run Like Hell - worked really well, and you could see how those song had possibly influenced jam bands, as they led very naturally into and out of the other band's songs very well. Young Lust led into Phish's Wilson, Comfortably Numb led into Talking Heads' Slippery People, and then Phish's Run Like an Antelope led into Run Like Hell and that ran into Talking Heads' What a Day That Was.

The Talking Heads songs were the ones I was most worried about. When I listen to Heads albums now they seem a bit underwhelming musically, but the long psychedelic workouts work amazingly well, as though Hawkwind was covering a Talking Heads song and really getting into it. In fact, IMO the Heads songs were the best part of the show. The Phish numbers were the least interesting to me, as I'm less familiar with Phish than the other two bands, and IMO Phish isn't exactly screaming out to be covered by another jam band. But there was less Phish Talking Heads or Floyd. Also, one song was a cover of Phish's cover of TV on the Radio's Golden Age.

The band had two female backing singers who were great, and also took leads on a couple of songs such as singing the parts of the wife and mother in The Trial. And there were projected graphics on a screen and on the theater walls all night, a little primitive, but especially effective during the Talking Heads songs where they had multiple images of David Byrne doing his wacky duck walk, and weird dances.

Even if this had just been a performance of The Wall it would have been worth it. The band was very good, and had a few guests from other jam bands I didn't know of. It made me wonder what it was like when Floyd themselves performed The Trial live - did Roger do all the vocals parts? Pink Talking Fish split it up, with a different band member doing each part, and they were all great. There were a few other special effects and bits throughout, a few copped from the album directly, and a few done by the band, like the guitarist sang through a megaphone during Waiting for the Worms and was wearing a long, leather nazi-type coat. And they used a little footage from the Wall movie, pyschedelicized, which worked pretty well but probably violates something or other. I'll definitely try to catch one of their "regular" shows where they play music from other Floyd albums. This was an intense and intensive introduction to the band! It was interesting to look at the crowd, which was a lot of people just like us, but also a lot of people maybe 10-15 years younger who seemed pretty into The Wall but if clearly had an even more nostalgic feel for them, and maybe they don't see it as an album from Floyd's waning the way many of us do, but as their ultimate statement. And then Talking Heads seemed a bit more of their day, and Phish perhaps even more so. It was nice to see Floyd rolled up into the jam band-fans world and embraced in this way.

Here's a list of the non-Floyd songs they did - the Heads numbers were a little less obvious than what I expected!:

Burning Down the House (TH)
Wilson (Phish)
Big Black Furry Creature from Mars (Phish
Psycho Killer (TH)
Golden Age (Phish cover of TV on the Radio)
The Great Curve (TH)
Maze (Phish
Slippery People (TH)
Run Like an Antelope (Phish
What a Day that Was (TH)
Loving Cup (Stones)

Here are a few photos:

Consider the Source:



Pink Talking Fish (the drummer is the nerdy looking guy with the red tie and baseball cap, but he was excellent, and sang the part of Pink during The Trial):

[JKL2000]

Hey SteveSly, they're playing Bell's Eccentric Café in Kalamazoo March 18th! They're doing a bunch of shows in the Midwest in March. And the West Coast in April and May. I thought they were from the NYC area, but now I think they're from the Boston area.

[JKL2000]

Bump, goddamit!