The Jim Pollock Cloudcast Goes Live, Language And Gnarly Wood

Listen to our latest episode with Jim Pollock by clicking here

Our latest cloudcast is all about Junta, Jim Pollock and the release on Record Store Day.  I sat down and talked with Jim in the first part of this cloudcast to discuss his ongoing process.  He opened up and shared details about his work.  It was informative and a total pleasure to have him on the show.  You can listen to our latest program by clicking on the player directly below.  Give it a spin and see what you think. We also threw in a “Wedge” because Jim loves the song.  I hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for part two of my full interview with Mr. Pollock and don’t forget to check out his website @ http://pollockprints.com/. This episode also includes my good friend Mr. Miner and his top pick for one of the most monumental versions of “David Bowie” to ever be played by the band during the sure fire era of the mid nineties.  Mixcloud also has an application for iphone users if you want to go mobile.  It’s great! Don’t forget to call the hotline @ 630-317-7033 and leave a message.  Send a shout out or any other outrageous blurb and we will use it on the show!  Enjoy the program.

A lot of fans already know the running joke about Phish and their lyrics.  The outside world and several of those within the fan base will tell you that the lyrics of Phish are secondary.  They are a means to an end. They will tell you that the lyrics are a throw away part of what the band is really all about.  You will be told that the lyrics are poorly written fillers to the lead up of the launch pads shooting off to improvisational genius.  A recording like Junta can be easily dismissed lyrically for what it offers by a number of people who are just looking to dive into the roots of some of the most prominent jam vehicles in the Phish library.  However, stories are being told that would otherwise not exist without the words being used in the songs.

Junta is an album that introduces Phish to the world as a band with instrumentation on the mind and at the forefront.  However, would we really think about “You Enjoy Myself ” the same way if those four hammer-over-the-psyche words were not expressed in the song in the way that they are presented?  This short phrase – Boy-Man-God-Shit can cause the brain to stir within the instrumentation and the listener is left to ponder the meaning of this statement as the instruments open the channel up even further.

It is this opening of the channel through instrumentation that allows the listener to ponder the meaning even deeper as the song plays and when it ends.  It ends.  It leaves our channel open and the words become something else in the myth and can transform the listener.  I remember being completely floored by these four simple words when I first realized my version of what was being said lyrically in the song.

The combination of these words and in this order shocked me at age seventeen.  I am convinced that the impact was even more profound because of the instrumentation of the song and the music that allowed my mind to wrap itself around the backdrop of the lyrics as the channel was allowed to easily open.  The instrumentation stands alone as a great escape in itself and the complex equation that fulfills this instrumental achievement is the same thing that opens the mind up to concentrate deeper on the multiple themes that one can use to shape their philosophy when these four words are uttered in succession within the larger musical idea.  This is how we get to One.  This is why I think that the lyrics of Phish are not to be discredited or ignored as a means to an end.  I believe they are equally important and valid within the song as the actual jam.

Junta introduces the band to the general public.  It’s primary goal is to exhibit the complexity and technicality of the band and their physical chops.  It was not produced in the same way that many albums are produced with an ideology of crafting an image or a focus on songs that would turn into priority radio singles upon release into the commercial world.  The album is not polished in the way that a lot of people are comfortable with in the music world and this is at the forefront of why Phish was able to achieve their status free of dominant image specifications and requirements brought on by the throngs that are constantly trying to tell us what to like and why to like it.  I am speculating here and do not claim to speak on behalf of the band or their intentions.  This blog will try to understand how the music can help us search for One but I do not know the individual intentions of the musicians…only the music.

However,  it appears from my understanding that this band was not concerned with the accepted models and possibilities of extremely fleeting success in the music industry at the time by way of trying to be something that they were not when getting together to rehearse in the early years of Vermont.  It appears they were concerned with the craft.  Their search for One caused a ripple effect within American culture and began a journey for many people on their own mission to tap into the thing that wobbles even faster as we get closer to it.  They were musicians but they were also involved in a deeply rooted art form that many musicians fail to grasp or try to incorporate into their philosophy when learning an instrument and the math behind songwriting.  They were musicians and they were artists.  The distinction can be made between art and music and when the two actually become One then this is when channeling, ascension, rich personal growth and impossible-to-describe-in-a-blog development occurs between the creators and the individuals in reception of this One thing.  People have been trying to define this collaborative craft since the first time individuals acknowledged it was happening inside themselves on a cellular level.  We will continue to try to explain it with words that cannot serve it justice. At some point it is just something you have to feel to understand.

Junta is rooted in jamming more than probably any other studio album that they have released to date because that is what they were doing the most at the time.  They were finding their way and we are all blessed to have had this archive recorded into an official release that now enjoys platinum status.  Record Store Day is fast approaching and with it comes the vinyl release of this album.  I have been planning my strategy to acquire several copies of this master craft and will hopefully be able to fulfill this mission when the store doors open in a few weeks.  I’d love to hear what the other vinyl collectors are doing out there to prepare for this awesome day when we all come together to gobble up the goods.  Feel free to leave a comment and share your story with us at The Sloping Companion.

The biggest and most beautiful thing about Phish is that they were able to achieve their status and break into the mainstream while proceeding to mind fuck every record executive or marketing professional that thought they had the whole game figured out.  It is this fact that carries the band in and out of each town with their distinctively unique blend of freaky weirdness that we gladly embrace on every level.  The dominant structures want to fragment everything in the entertainment world and break everything down into very simple and marketable categories so that they can easily duplicate the method to maximize energy and profit.  This duplication makes it easier to sell garbage to future generations that gladly accept what they are given.  It makes the job and profitability of selling easier for the industry.

The art is essentially lost in order to duplicate simple concepts that eventually do not even resemble music on any level.  The industry spends less effort to really work for the craft and the consumers are lulled into a world where they use less of their individual mind and actually gladly request to be told what to think through this foul form of programming.  Then, an album like Junta comes along and destroys this entire mentality while striking an even more powerful chord in the people that know everything around them is essentially bullshit and regurgitated practices by people who have figured out only a small sliver of what makes sound…well….sound.

The search and acquisition for something so pure as Junta will create a deeper dedication for just one person than any number of albums may create for an even larger number of people.  Music is easily listened to one day and then forgotten the next.  However, I cannot remember anyone that has heard a studio “Esther” only to forget it months later and then to be banged over the head with the same idea that has only been packaged slightly differently for the zombie listening audience.  This shit sticks with you because it is not just music.  It is One.   These are the people that refuse to be lulled into sleep and these will be the same people that teach reverence to the future generations when discussing the Phish library while revitalizing the musical message each and every year.

It’s Spring in Gamhendge.  The wind is blowing and the grass is growing.  I had an epiphany the other night when I was trying to figure out a way to get more involved in the community as I am tethered to my home more and more as a parent and a professional adult.  I was watching a male crane build a nest for his female companion for about an hour and then it hit me.  I can’t just jet off on a whim anymore due to these familial obligations but I still have that itch to be dialed in regardless of how many shows I can attend at any given time.  I have begun a new project for the jamband community.  I have access to all these gnarly wooden pallets that we use in the  manufacturing industry.  Normally these would be thrown out because they are not deemed reusable to ship out due to the standards of the industry.

The recycled wood movement is huge right now and I started thinking about ways to reclaim and reuse this lost wood that would otherwise just be thrown out and junked.  The time is right to come home and start busting out projects for the community that would look nice in a home, dorm room or outdoors.  The running theme is rustic flow and I hope you stay tuned to check out what we have planned for the website.  I have teamed up with a good group of creative people and we are banging our heads together to come up with unique one-of-a-kind concepts that will be geared specifically towards the discerning jamband fan base.  There are a ton of people out there doing a lot of great work artistically but it dawned on me that large scale pieces are not in abundance on the Internet or at shows.

These items will be manufactured by The Sloping Companion and will then be for sale online or on ebay as an auction.  The funds raised from these pieces will go to The Mockingbird Foundation and will in turn help me fund my travels as I interview the masses about Phish and their passion for this band that has given us so much.  Twenty percent of all funds raised will continue to go to The Mockingbird Foundation. Here is a sneak peak of what The Sloping Companion is busting out this Spring.  What will come of these reclaimed pieces of wood?  What kind of creations will my team offer?  How can you help our mission?  Stay tuned and check back often.  We are busting shit out taboot taboot.  We will have many offerings.

This week I broke these pallets down, refashioned them to their frames and gave them a good sanding with both medium and fine sand paper.  They turned out looking like completely different pieces of wood.

I have an update on the sales of the Page’s House pins.  We are only two pin sales away from reaching our $240.00 goal.  We will be donating this money to The Mockingbird Foundation directly from the sales of these pins on the third Friday in May.  We are only two pin sales away as of today to reach the goal. Can you help?  We are pumped that there has  been such a good response.  If you would like to take us over the top then please click on the shop button at the top right of this page or click here to help out the cause.  The rest of the money goes to fund my cloudcast about Phish at www.mixcloud.com/robertchampion.  Every bit helps.  Take care of each other!

Jim Pollock – The Philler Interview – Part 1

Copyright Jason Kaczorowski
http://jasonkaczorowski.net/

Jim Pollock is a busy man these days in the world of concert art. It’s 2012 in this extremely bizarre month of March. The weather is antithetic as Jim and I venture off into Churchill Woods. A crane swoops in and lands on the edge of the water at the exact same moment that we pull into the parking lot. The weather outside is peaking at 80 degrees in the middle of March and the typical Spring transition is not happening on a local level. March is usually a month of constant second guesses with the weather in Chicagoland.  It’s uneasy and uncertain. However, in the case of long time Phish collaborator Jim Pollock, he has never been more sure of himself and his place in this world.

Junta is finally being released on vinyl for Record Store Day this coming April. Pollock explains that when he first developed the cover art for this seminal Phish album that it was sized to actually fit the cover for a vinyl record. Many years have passed since the first release of the work and it is with great excitement and a sense of closure that this classic piece of Phish art has finally made the way onto the medium in which it was originally intended. On Record Store Day, Phish will deliver Junta in it’s own special way as a Limited Edition Deluxe 3-LP vinyl set. The important thing to note is that if Phish is doing something with the word “deluxe” in it then you are most assuredly promised something distinctively Phish.

This is the first time Junta has ever been released on vinyl and myself and the other record collectors out there that are into Phish are eagerly awaiting April 21 so that we can listen in a way that we have never listened since our ears were first exposed to this masterful collection of otherwordly and distinguished compositions.

Junta is the first album that I heard when I was initially exposed to Phish.  Let’s tell the all too common tale one more time.  I was heading into my Junior year of High School when my best friend and I were just starting to figure out what we were into and what made our bells ring.  His older brother Jeff had come home that Summer from his first year of college.  Jeff sat us down and told us to shut the hell up and just listen to what he was about to play.  He wanted silence and he wanted these two greenhorns to pay close attention.  He was very adamant that we not say a word once he hit the play button.  He picked up a CD with this interesting artwork on the front.  We sat there and the two of us inspected it closely like it was some sort of ancient artifact brought back from an unknown universe.  Jeff had already established the importance of what we were about to witness and it was even more amplified by the fact that he had been to college and had been a part of a world that we had been fantasizing about for several years.  We inspected this CD over and over as Jeff made his way to the stereo.  It looked like the soundtrack to Robin Hood.  Was it the soundtrack to Robin Hood?  This was an album called Travelers and Thieves by the band Blues Traveler.  This would be the first step in a series of pivotal impressions that would cultivate my early adult life.

The style of harp being played by John Popper was something that was a completely new sound to me.  I had lived in the Chicago area my whole life and was very familiar with the blues and the way the harp played into this genre.  However, upon listening to this album I had quickly realized that this instrument was capable of sounding like something in a completely different family than the backdrop of an accompanying instrument like it can be in standard 12 bar blues.  This isn’t to say that I had never heard a blues musician solo on a harp.  This is just to say that this was nothing that I was comfortable with or knowledgeable of in the realm of music and I wanted more and I wanted it right away.

Then, it was almost like the entire mood of the room had changed.  I remember listening to “Ivory Tusk” and “Optimistic Thought” on the first spin and being completely intoxicated by the way the harp was able to sound like an electric guitar as in the role of a lead instrument that is able to drive the momentum of melody and theme.  We were listening.  Jason and I were listening and Jeff did not have to ask us a second time to shut up and pay attention.  It was his role as mentor and new found man of the world to bring back the relics of this uncontaminated essence of college life.  We were being let in on the secret and we were eavesdropping on a brave new world.  Reflecting on it is truly a sweet pain.  Rest easy Jason.  We all miss and love you.

Again, the mood had changed.  We listened to the songs and Jeff began to take on the presence of a priest or some wise shaman from Peru.  His entire face changed and he began to talk about another band.  The mood became very serious.  He had planted the seed and gained our respect that day.  Then, he pulled out another CD and the cover art was totally different on this one.  In fact, it made me very uncomfortable.

The CD was Junta and I remember looking at this jewel case like I was somehow looking at a lost version of a Shel Silverstein book.  It was weird and it didn’t make any sense to me.  Then again, I didn’t make much sense to me at the time.  Moreover, I didn’t make much sense to my social circles in school.  I easily migrated between the jocks,book worms, music geeks, creative kids, academics and the muslim student body that was beginning to grow in numbers in my hometown.  I fit in everywhere but I did not fit in anywhere inside and completely if that makes any sense to the reader.  I was comfortable with being uncomfortable.  This separated me from any one clique in school.  In fact, it was the driving force at that time.  The cover art of Junta made me uncomfortable but it was this feeling of discomfort that made me want to learn more.  I was comfortable with being uncomfortable.  I couldn’t really say that about most of my friends. There were a few exceptions.  Jason was one of those exceptions who has since passed in death and is no longer with us.  However, that bedroom where we sat and listened relives itself inside of me each day I get up to explore music.  That day relives itself each and every time I hear a “Fluffhead” or a “You Enjoy Myself” through my speakers or at a show.  That day was the day when I realized the potential of something far greater than what was playing on the radio or what I was playing in my Orchestra and Symphonic Band in high school.  This was something unsettling, vibratory and narrative in a brand new way for me.  This was exactly what I had been waiting for as a young musician.

I remember that Jeff first played us “Esther” and that it reaffirmed the weirdness that I had felt when I initially looked at the jewel case.  I didn’t know it at the time but Jeff was setting us up for the hook.  He started off with the accessible story of “Esther” and then followed it up with the more complicated compositions throughout the work.  The house of cards came crumbling down on that afternoon and in that bedroom that Jason and Jeff shared their entire life.  Everything that I  knew about listening and performing music had completely inverted within itself.  The rules that I had followed as a musician growing up suddenly became standard and commonplace.  I didn’t begin to hate that music or look down upon it in any way.  In fact, I began to revere and understand it even more through the years as important templates to a much larger concept of what it means to get a musical idea across.  The rules, regulations and math of music suddenly presented problems and situations that became uncharted territory and were completely life altering and not native.  Jeff was a shaman even if he had no clue as to what was happening inside of me on a cellular level.  Jeff was teaching me more about my spiritual road when it came to being an artist.  Many will laugh and disregard it on the periphery.  However,  it was one of the most metaphysically devotional moments of my 35 years on this planet. I type it all out now and the affinity for the ability to expose someone to something so new and in such an intimate way only rings stronger as I get the chance to teach other young people about this music.  Our bells had been rung on that day.  It was Junta.  It changed things.

This now Platinum studio effort will include a brand new Limited Edition hand carved and printed linoleum block poster by Jim, created specifically for this release. Not every edition will have this included so those that actually get their hands on one will certainly rejoice when they enter into the record store and see these marked copies waiting for them on the racks. 5,000 albums are set to hit the shelves on Record Store Day and only half will include this special installment from the man who has been there since the beginning as a creative collaborator with the band and as roommates with Page McConnell back in the college days of Goddard. I sat down with Jim and we talked about his process, his motivation and most importantly, the kind of underwear Page wore while lounging around the dorms at Goddard in Plainfield, Vermont.

Robert – What was it like going to Goddard all those years ago?

Jim – It was a very small campus. People lived in these small huts that were actually designed for the military. There were about ten rooms in each of these pre fab-huts and we all had our run of the place. My wife Esme was there and it was close quarters.

Robert – Tell us how you met your wife Esme. She is a well known author in her own right and is very active in the literary world. How did you get together?

Jim – We met at Goddard.

Robert – Was she originally from Vermont?

Jim – She was from Chicago. She actually just picked Goddard out of a hat and just wanted out of Chicago.

Robert – That’s a big switch. It was during this time when you were paired up as roommates with Page McConnell.

Jim – At one point we were living together in these huts. There were a bunch of us. Basically I was doing art work and had a lot of space for art work in a very precarious building called The Glass Building. They used to have a big glass studio there but it had long since become decrepit and there wasn’t too much there at Goddard. It had gone through the hey day in the early 70′s.

Robert – You had all your stuff spread out in that living environment. Did Page have a massive amount of gear laid out in the dorm or just a few things collected at the time?

Jim – Yeah. Usually he had a couple amps and a few keyboards. He had a Harmonium. We did this little act where he would play Harmonium and I would play the guitar. Everyone was very comfortable with each other. There was a radio station and we all had radio shows. It was fun.

Robert – What kind of stuff did you play on your show?

Jim – We played Rock. We played Lou Reed and odd punk. I was just finding this stuff and it was all new.

Robert – The artist melds well with the broadcaster. Both types of people are longing to get it out there and college radio stations offer that to people like you.

Jim – Yes. It was a very open format. I’m sure we crossed some FCC boundaries.

Robert – So what is your wife working on right now?

Jim – She actually became a school Librarian. She is working on her certification. Publishing is in this transitional phase. It’s a very difficult time for publishing with e-books coming out. There is a lot of price fixing and public cases that are holding up a lot of things.

Robert – Is she conjuring up any idea right now about the next big thing?

Jim – She actually just had one book come out called Fairly Fairy Tales. She has a Johnny Appleseed book coming out. She loses track because it takes so long. She worked on these years ago and then they come out and because of the way it’s done now there is less fanfare. They used to have her go out and speak on tours and stuff like that but now it is very bare bones so whatever she can do around here she does. It doesn’t disrupt her life like it did back then so now she can be back in a school setting which she really likes and it gives her a lot more motivation to talk about things. It’s hard when you are not in contact with an educational setting after being apart from it for so long.

Robert – Have the two of you ever collaborated on anything?

Jim – We did and we sent it around. Nothing ever came of it as of yet. Actually, we were thinking about publishing some limited stuff ourselves.

Robert – Did they decline it because it had too many creepy insect illustrations?

Jim – Right. It was scaring the children.

Stay tuned for more of my interview with Jim Pollock right here on The Philler.  I will be posting more excerpts from our talk and the next episode of my cloudcast will feature the entire interview.  We will also sit down and talk with Mr. Miner about his favorite live picks from Junta.  April is an exciting month for vinyl audiophiles.  We will be listening.  We will ring those bells.  Don’t forget to click follow on this blog to get all the updates,future interviews and cloudcasts of The Philler.  Take care of each other and we will see you next time.