Harry Hood (song)

"Harry Hood" is a song that was commonly performed live by the American jam band, Phish, although it never appeared on a studio album. It is one of Phish's most frequently performed songs, featured in 258 live performances since its debut on October 30, 1985.

Background

"Harry Hood" refers to the Hood Dairy Co., a New England dairy company based in Boston. While the band was living with Brian Long in Burlington, Vermont next to a Hood milk plant, "Harry Hood" was the company mascot of the Hood Milk Co., and this character was featured in a 1970s television commercial in which people opened their refrigerator to find Harry Hood standing inside. The lyric "Where do you go when the lights go out?" most likely refers to this advertisement, and to the automatic light in a refrigerator. A "Mr. Minor" is also mentioned in the song, a reference to a previous tenant of the house. Letters containing the message, "Thank you, Mr. Minor" continued to show up at the house during the band's stay there.

The song opens with a reggae section prominently featuring the bass, then moves through several contrasting themes before culminating in an improvised section over a I-V-IV chord progression.

"Harry Hood" is infamous among the band's fans for its association with the spontaneous emergence of "glowstick wars," a Phish-created audience and band interaction in which multicolored glowsticks were tossed in dazzling, arching parabolas from all points in the crowd, such as during the 1997 "Great Went" performance featured in the film Bittersweet Motel.

The final "Harry Hood" was perfomed on the rocks in the front of the stage at Coventry. The rocks were placed in an effort to help control the massive flooding which turned the Coventry event into a muddy mess. Trey noted that the band was much further away, and that in order to start a conversation among fans who would presumably return to their campsites and discuss whether or not the proximity of the band to the stage effected the "Flowage of the notes" - Anastasio Coventry 2004..

External links

* http://www.phish.net/faq/harry.html
* http://www.ihoz.com/raw.htm