Phish.net is a non-commercial project run by Phish fans and for Phish fans under the auspices of the all-volunteer, non-profit Mockingbird Foundation.
This project serves to compile, preserve, and protect encyclopedic information about Phish and their music.
Credits | Terms Of Use | Legal | DMCA
The Mockingbird Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Phish fans in 1996 to generate charitable proceeds from the Phish community.
And since we're entirely volunteer – with no office, salaries, or paid staff – administrative costs are less than 2% of revenues! So far, we've distributed over $2 million to support music education for children – hundreds of grants in all 50 states, with more on the way.
It also has to do with your terminology, which again is totally consistent with the way an improvising rock guitarist thinks about notes versus the way a classically-trained theorist does. What you call "jamming on the V chord" I would describe as "jamming on scale degree 5 in a D major scale." The difference is in the subtle significations of "V" versus "5." One connotes a scale degree and essentially melodic function, the other is a harmonic function (dominant), and essentially harmonic function. There is no phantom D major chord holding everything together in "Dark Star," it's "in A" as much as "Disease" is "in A." The fact that you jam on A mixolydian, and think of it as jamming on scale degree 5 in a D major pitch collection, does not take away from the "A-ness" of Disease's key.
I hope this makes sense and also doesn't come off as pretentious or derogatory! I'm a teacher, specifically a music history teacher, so it's difficult for me to talk about this stuff sometimes without sounding pedantic. But my point is that we all are hearing this the same way, but we're just using different terminology to describe it, and that terminology is most determined by what our introduction to music theory was. If your introduction to music theory is a typical classical music college course, then you're going to describe it differently than if your introduction to music theory is trying to understand how to work your way around a guitar to play improvisational rock music.