Pm'd you to join the contest!!
Basically, I would love to win any of the prizes for a multitude of reasons. I guess the main reason I would want to win a prize is because bitcoins are a magical thing. Various times over the past 3years, having btc in my possesion has given me great opportunities. For one, with these prizes, the bitcoins would definitely help me get to my current financial goal I have in mind. I'm trying to see my favorite band in the world this Halloween in Las Vegas. The bands name is Phish. They are fucking amazing. They are my Church I go to. Nothing in my life has made me more happy than those times I was at a Phish concert.
If you dont like Phish, thats fine. But if you call them tasteless music, the thing is that you're being a snob.
"Phish is, by any reasonable measure, a rather extraordinary American rock'n'roll band. This Vermont-based four-piece has had among the most unlikely, consistently entertaining, and inventive (not to mention successful) careers that I can name, despite being relegated to the fringes of the pop world. They have written a raft of terrific music, played thousands of concerts, performed highwire acts of improvisation in front of millions of fans, sold hundreds of thousands of records, and never had one hit song. Not one. You wanna talk about "alternative music"?
They built their career by, simply, playing concerts. Night after night, playing in front of people. They built a fanbase through word of mouth in those pre-internet late-1980s. Because they performed a different setlist every night, and because they improvised their way through their shows - this is the much-maligned "jamming," which is really just another word for spontaneous creative expression, so relax - people were encouraged to record their shows and trade them with friends. And I was changed.
Since, by its very nature, improvisation means unpredictability, it made sense to listen to as many versions of a particular song as I could find. It also made sense to see show after show, night after night. One evening's "Harry Hood" could be quite radically different in tone, mood, and affect than the next. As with any band, there would be "on" nights and "off" nights, but with an improv rock band you could also get "on" songs and "off" songs over the course of any given performance. And, since Phish (like their concert-focused forebears, The Grateful Dead - who, by the way, they actually sound nothing like) always played at least two complete 75-minute sets of music every show, they gave themselves the time and space to pick themselves up and try again if something didn't work.
It helps that the four men who have comprised Phish since their inception back in 1983 are such talented musicians. Jon Fishman (drums), Mike Gordon (bass), Page McConnell (pianos), and Trey Anastasio (guitar) are, each of them, blindingly virtuosic when they are on their game. But, surely, it is Anastasio who leads the charge, and his guitar - one of the most expressive, inventive, dynamic instruments I know - drives much of what you might hear on a typical evening.
Anastasio and his bandmates are masters of ebb and flow, of tension and release. They, like any good DJ, like any good electronica artist looking to send a rush through the dancing throng, have mastered the art of energy-building. Most, but certainly not all (for that would get tiresome), of the instrumental sections of their songs build from a quiet, peaceful segment through to a series of mini climaxes, rising up and then falling back, building again and then fading, climbing toward an inevitable peak that, by the time it is reached, the audience craves beyond reason. I have seen people practically melt down at such moments, seen them jumping up and down with tears streaking their faces, seen them beaming ear-to-ear even as they yelp through their ecstasy. (Yeah, a lot of people do drugs at Phish concerts. So what? I mean, really?)
But so this is why, for most of the past 30 years, Phish has served for many music nerds like me as a kind of antidote to the stale predictability of the "rock concert." I love live music. But I get so tired of the same thing, the same approach, the same "professionalism" (which too often looks like "boredom" on their faces as band members "do their jobs"). And then, I go see a Phish show, and get to watch these guys head out onstage with only a vague sense of where even the first song is going to take them, what notes they are going to find themselves playing, what energy they are going to pull out of the air, what the hell is going to happen.
I'm not saying Phish is inherently better than other bands (at all), or that the Phish concert experience is superior to the typical rock concert. But I am saying that a bad Phish concert is infinitely more interesting than a bad show by, say, Tiesto, Radiohead, Bassnectar, or Jay Z. Because even a bad Phish show is bound to offer at least a few moments of firecracker brilliance."
