Hold Your Head Up

• Performances
• History
• Jam Chart
• Artist
  • Phish
  • Fish
  • Mike
  • Page
  • Trey
  • All

Originally Performed By	Argent
Original Album	All Together Now (1974)
Appears On
Also Known As	HYHU
Vocals	Instrumental
Phish Debut	1987-08-21
Last Played	2023-07-29
Current Gap	64
Historian	Mark Toscano

History

Though the band has never actually played this song in full, it remains a staple of their live repertoire. It all started during band practice early on in Phish’s career. Knowing that Fishman hated this Argent song, Trey, Mike, and Page would start playing it just when they were about to get down to some serious practicing. Although the three of them found it hilariously funny, Fish apparently did not, and he would often storm out of band practice. In a live context, the song first appeared during the “Mike’s Song” jam on 8/21/87, and then again on 5/14/88. The following year, on 10/1/89, the band performed the first official Argent torment of Fish as he took center stage to perform “If I Only Had a Brain.” Fish hated it, the band started doing it regularly, and the rest is history. The song was briefly replaced by a similarly arranged version of Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice” during part of 1992, but the Argent tune eventually returned, apparently the winner of the “Fishman’s Most Hated Song” award. Actually, the version of “Hold Your Head Up” they play is usually nothing more than a few bars of the original tune’s verse and chorus on organ, bass, and Trey on drums. Sometimes it has been jammed out like the aforementioned 8/21/87, but most memorably so on 5/7/94, during which Trey turned the drums back over to Fish after “Purple Rain” without ever letting the beat drop.

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