By: Chris Beach @WelshSwimmer
I never had a lot of Grateful Dead or Phish tapes. Hell, my family didn’t even have a TV until I was 12. By the time I realized I loved the Dead, CD’s had taken over. My 13th birthday brought a gift I had asked for in the spirit of true optimism; something I never actually thought my parents would buy me. A CD/Tape/radio combo with the detachable side speakers. So sick, I couldn’t believe it was mine. Dad and I ran out to the local Media Play and I purchased the Wayne’s World soundtrack. My first CD. “Bohemian Rhapsody” sprang forth and I was smitten.
I miss CDs. The inserts, the decision to come home from school and rearrange them in some completely random way, all of it. They now live in a giant tote in my basement, along with my children’s Skylanders and many, many hundreds of dollars in DVDs. I throw one on in my car every once and awhile. I still have the Wayne’s World soundtrack.
At this point, I’m sure many of you are wondering what the hell I am talking about and what this has to do with anything. Patience. This love of organizing CDs morphed when I went to college and discovered ethernet connections and mp3s. My first “external hard drive” was a mini disc player. I was blown away that I could store that many songs on one mini disc. I had Without A Net, String Cheese Incident 10/31/98 and Phish 2/20/93 playing on loop for most of freshman year. I’m sure I drove my roomates insane. The discovery of the O.G. nugs website and the Live Music Archive was the end of me ever being a normal music consumer again. My desire to stockpile music has only grown over the years.
Fast forward to 2015, I was at work and needed something to listen to, so I tweeted about it. My friend @phreak80 answered with Aqueous. I threw on “Willy Is 40,” and I have not looked back.
We all have our insecurities about things; some insecurities are about important things like, “am I a good parent?” And some are dumb like, “am I as good a jam-band fan as this other random person?” I’d say that anyone who engages in social media surrounding this community likely experiences these incredibly taxing and stupid internal discussions on some level. This insecurity in myself is currently manifesting itself in the form of a question: “Am I am somehow over-inflating how much I love Aqueous to appear hip?” You may laugh, my wife certainly does, but this constant questioning has lead me to a very emphatic answer regarding Aqueous: I fucking love this band.
I have not loved a band as much as I love Aqueous since I really got into Phish back in high school. When nugs finally started to put Aqueous soundboards up, I poured over the soundboards from 2017, every show deepening my love. The first chance I had to see them live was 12/15/17 at Woodlands Tavern in Columbus. I was blown away even more than I thought I would be. I hung around after the show and then made an ass of myself telling the band how much I loved them (would not be the first time). 2018 brought more brilliance from The Whale and the chance to see them three times. Hearing the band’s sound and complex improvisations grow over the last two years to the thundering herd of sonic destruction you see on display in the 12/13/18 “Median,” the crushing 4 song second set from 12/15/18, or the 2018 New Years run has given me incredible joy.
About a month ago, I was looking for a show on the always-incredible Phish spreadsheet and wondered how many pre-2017 Aqueous shows were on Live Music Archive. After a cursory search of LMA I realized that mining the archive for these shows, organizing them and sharing them was something that needed to happen. This project allowed me to bring together my love of cataloging music, sharing music with the people, and Aqueous.
It is my incredible pleasure to give to you The Aqueous Project.
Currently, the spreadsheet consists of 82 Aqueous shows from 2011-2016 broken down by year. All of the shows were originally posted on Live Music Archive but are now hosted on my MediaFire account. At this time the file tagging is still the same as it appeared on LMA but I will begin to re-tag for consistency’s sake when I complete all the initial uploads. The pages for 2017 and 2018 are currently under construction.
The spreadsheet contains the following information for each show: venue, city, state, type of file, source and taper information, and whether or not the show is a Soundboard or Matrix (a combination of soundboard and audience recording) recording. The majority of shows are 16 or 24 bit FLAC files; a couple of the shows only had VBR mp3 options. A hyperlink to the setlist at aqueousband.com as well as a hyperlink to the MediaFire download are also listed on the spreadsheet. Tapers are the lifeblood of this community so I wanted to make sure that their information was prominently displayed as they did all of the actual work. When there were multiple recordings, I listened to all of them and made a decision on which I thought was the better recording.
This was a labor of love. My goal for this project has been twofold. One: bring Aqueous to the masses. You should listen to this band; everyone should. They fucking rule. Two: give my fellow insane Aqueous fans easy access to the beginnings of the band we love so much.
If you have any questions, or more shows to add, or just want to geek out about the band, hit me up on twitter @welshswimmer or email me at aqueousisrad@gmail.com. See you out there.
