Concepts We'll Ponder by Jenkins, Stephanie C.; Dollar, Natalie J.; Reason, Dana;

Short description:

"This book examine Phish's music and culture by exploring ""phan"" identity, complexities of famous jams, concerts as healing sites, show ratings, and more."

Long description:

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Concepts We'll Ponder: Identity, Improvisation, and Community in the Phish Experience launches the rapidly growing field of Phish Studies by revealing how the band's music and culture offer meaningful insights that extend beyond concert grounds into broader social, cultural, and political phenomena. Emerging from the inaugural Phish Studies Conference at Oregon State University, its sixteen innovative essays embody an ethos of serious play; the essays adopt creativity, joy, and improvisation as tools for scholarly inquiry.

Distinctively interdisciplinary, the collection draws from diverse disciplines including musicology, communications, statistics, and philosophy. By blending academic methods with passionate ""phan"" encyclopedic knowledge, the authors of this volume challenge traditional hierarchies between fan/scholar, personal/professional, and high/low culture. They explore ""phan"" identity, decode the complexities of famous jams, examine concerts as healing spaces, analyze show ratings, and more. In their examinations of the ""Camden Chalk Dust,"" ""Colonel Forbin's Ascent,"" and the ""Phish Chicks"" community, and beyond, these scholars invite readers to treat Phish as an ""intellectual playground"" and explore the significance of the Phish experience.

Table of Contents:

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Forward by Benjy Eisen
Acknowledgments
Editors' Introduction
Stephanie Jenkins

How I'm Forced To Learn: Methodologies

Chapter 1: We Are Aphicionados! We Are Vernacular Theorists! A Critical Reconsideration and Anti-Hegemonic Recasting of Phish, Phandon, and Fan Praxis
Jnan Blau

Chapter 2: Read The Book: Experiencing Philosophy in the Classroom with Phish
Stephanie C. Jenkins

Companions On This Ride: Phish Fan Community and Identity

Chapter 3: I Strive to Convey What You Strive to Condone': Phish Scene Identity and
Understanding America
Elizabeth A. Yeager

Chapter 4: A Cultural Rhetorical Model of Identity for Dispersed
Communities: Case of Jam Band Communities
Natalie J. Dollar, Nicholas Dahl, & Alexa Tawzer

Chapter 5: Donuts, Dresses and Phish: The Effects of Trademark Law on the Production of Culture Inside and Outside of the Phish Scene
Daniel W. Dylan

Chapter 6: Phish Fan's Performance of Resistance, Recuperation, and Reiteration
Christina L. Allaback

We're All in This Together: Gender and Accessibility in the Phish Community

Chapter 7: Inside this Silent Scene, All Are Free: An Assessment of Accessibility Issues Facing Deaf/Hard of Hearing (HoH) Fans at Phish Concerts
Joel Gershon

Chapter 8: You Were the Song That My Soul Understood: Personal Connections Through Shared Discourse in Facebook Community, Phish Chicks
Denise Goldman

Healing The Symptoms

Chapter 9: From the Concert to the Couch: Phish and the Therapeutic Alliance
Isaac Slone

Chapter 10: Community Through the Phellowship: A Support Group of Phans who Choose to Remain Sober
John Boatner

Shiny Music That Descends From Overhead: The Significance of Musical Structure and Improvisation

Chapter 11: On the Persistence of the Groove: Structural Fog and Jouissance in a 'Split Open and Melt' Jam
Stephen Reale

Chapter 12: 'Up the Mountain': The Compositional Use of the Arpeggiated Augmented Triad in Anastasio's 'Colonel Forbin's Ascent'
Julie Viscardi-Smalley

Chapter 13: The Camden 'Chalk Dust Torture' as a Model for Understanding Improvisational Aesthetics
Jacob A. Cohen

Chapter 14: An Ethnographic & Feminist Listen-In: Riffing on Phish Through the Influences of Improvised Music Histories and Collective Practices
Dana Reason


Do You Have to Count Them?: Setlists and Ratings
Chapter 15: A Graph-Theoretic Approach to Setlist Structure Analysis
Matthew Sottile

Chapter 16: ""Waiting, Calculating:"" Phish Setlists and Fans' Show Ratings
Paul Jakus