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A Tiny Space to Move and Breathe
A Tiny Space to Move and Breathe is one writer/fan's impassioned, idiosyncratic, detailed, persnickety, personal, lyrical, scattered, loving, weird, joyful, desparate, and above all rather long celebration of the music and moment of Fall 97: a band, a tour, a guy, and a bucketload of concert recordings. If you're a longtime fan, welcome back to the mountaintop. If you're new to Phish, all the better: Wax Banks wants to show you what the noise is about.
- GenresMusic
206 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 4, 2013
At times it's stream-of-consciousness style got away from me a bit, but I'm willing to reckon that might be a flaw with me rather than a flaw in the book. I can't imagine anyone who isn't a diehard Phish fan making it through the first 30 pages or so, but being a diehard Phish fan I found it largely enjoyable and sometimes delightful.
Oddly, despite being a book about how the author thinks Fall '97 was the peak for Phish musically (which is a gross oversimplification of what he says in the book, but it's my review so fuck you I'll say what I like) more than anything it put into words (many words) why exactly I don't go in for Fall '97 the way a lot of fans do. I find it more interesting than necessarily great to listen to (with many exceptions, it's a great tour, just not my favorite).
Oddly, despite being a book about how the author thinks Fall '97 was the peak for Phish musically (which is a gross oversimplification of what he says in the book, but it's my review so fuck you I'll say what I like) more than anything it put into words (many words) why exactly I don't go in for Fall '97 the way a lot of fans do. I find it more interesting than necessarily great to listen to (with many exceptions, it's a great tour, just not my favorite).
October 20, 2014
A Tiny Space to Move and Breathe
Random thoughts in no particular order:
Walter gets an "A" for effort for this book. Expressing the inexpressible is, by definition, impossible. The Fall 1997 Phish show was not the most important thing that ever happened, but it felt like it at the time.
With a book like this, one expects a certain degree of narcissistic pretention. But he lays it on pretty thick (especially in the first half).
Those who can so flippantly blow off the apostle Paul (p. 79) probably need to (re-?)read Romans.
He seems to uncritically accept a rather specific but hypothetical and unprovable hypothesis about the origins of the Pentateuch one page after lauding the benefits of constant skepticism.
"[You] become what you love" (p. 180) parallels Psalm 115:8 ("Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them").
Walter Banks: "My desire to talk about Tweezer > Izabella > Twist > Piper isn't motivated by some notion that you, Reader(s) would benefit from my think-by-think recap; I'm not talking though my favourite set because it's great, I'm sharing my pleasure in this music, and *the sharing is a big part of what 'favourite' actually means* - it's the outward face of my love for the music, the measure I abide by." Asterisks mine. I loved this quote. It reminded me of C. S. Lewis from Reflections on the Psalms: "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation."
He basically doesn't write about the last five shows, which seemed a little lazy. I felt the same way when I read A Walk in the Woods, a book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, when I realized that the author didn't actually walk the whole thing.
"In all its imperfection, this music is perfect to me." P. 142. Loved it!
Thanks for writing this, Walter.
Random thoughts in no particular order:
Walter gets an "A" for effort for this book. Expressing the inexpressible is, by definition, impossible. The Fall 1997 Phish show was not the most important thing that ever happened, but it felt like it at the time.
With a book like this, one expects a certain degree of narcissistic pretention. But he lays it on pretty thick (especially in the first half).
Those who can so flippantly blow off the apostle Paul (p. 79) probably need to (re-?)read Romans.
He seems to uncritically accept a rather specific but hypothetical and unprovable hypothesis about the origins of the Pentateuch one page after lauding the benefits of constant skepticism.
"[You] become what you love" (p. 180) parallels Psalm 115:8 ("Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them").
Walter Banks: "My desire to talk about Tweezer > Izabella > Twist > Piper isn't motivated by some notion that you, Reader(s) would benefit from my think-by-think recap; I'm not talking though my favourite set because it's great, I'm sharing my pleasure in this music, and *the sharing is a big part of what 'favourite' actually means* - it's the outward face of my love for the music, the measure I abide by." Asterisks mine. I loved this quote. It reminded me of C. S. Lewis from Reflections on the Psalms: "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation."
He basically doesn't write about the last five shows, which seemed a little lazy. I felt the same way when I read A Walk in the Woods, a book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, when I realized that the author didn't actually walk the whole thing.
"In all its imperfection, this music is perfect to me." P. 142. Loved it!
Thanks for writing this, Walter.
July 23, 2016
Read significant portions of this amorphous and lengthy dissertation on the esteemed Fall 1997 Phish tour while listening to audience recordings of the actual shows. Much like an actual show experience, select portions of the book were articulated beautifully and very often humorously. For example, the sections on the Hampton and Hartford shows resonated with me. However, if I wasn't hyper present while reading, much of the content flew through my head without sticking. Perhaps that is commentary more about me than the book. Anyway, a worthwhile read for any book-loving Phish fan. Not recommended for noobs.
December 20, 2015
Points for enthusiasm and energy, but otherwise a total mess. Obnoxious fan wankery at its worst. Barely any discussion of the music plus lengthy I guess journal excerpts? equals a lot of pages to skim. And then at the end, he ignores the last third of the tour he's supposedly writing a book about. Anyway, no one not dangerously obsessed with Phish would or should even know this exists, let alone try to read it, but if you are one of the obsessed, the author's new book on A Live One as part of the 33 1/3 series is actually very good (and is the reason I tried this older work).
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews