Three Fish are a band that are very hard to classify. Their music is somewhat psychedelic, Middle East-influenced indie rock. The members are Robbi Rob, Jeff Ament (more famously a member of Pearl Jam), and Richard Stuverud.
Discography
- Three Fish (1996)
- Solitude
- Song For A Dead Girl
- Silence At The Bottom
- The Intelligent Fish
- Zagreb
- All Messed Up
- Here In The Darkness
- If Miles Were Alive
- The Half Intelligent Fish
- Strangers In My Head
- A Lovely Meander
- Elusive Ones
- Build
- Stupid Fish
- Can I Come Along?
- The Easy Way
- Secret Place
- Laced
- The Quiet Table (1999)
- Shiva And The Astronaut
- Tremor Void
- Myth Of Abdou
- Once In A Day
- Half Long
- Timeless
- Hummingbird
- My Only Foe
- Transporting
- Found A Window
- Resonate
- Chaintreuse
'The Three Fish' is also a traditional story from the Fables of Bidpai, which is narrated along to an acoustic guitar in tracks 4, 9 and 14 of the first album. The story goes as follows (note that in some tellings of the tale, the 'half-intelligent fish' is called 'clever', and the 'intelligent fish' is 'wise' - so the story tells an extra story about the differences between intelligence and wisdom):
This is the story of the lake and the three fish that were in it.
One of them intelligent, another half intelligent, and the third... stupid.
Some fishermen came to the edge of the lake with nets, and the three fish saw them.
The intelligent fish decided at once to make the long and difficult trip to the ocean.
He thought:
"I won't consult with these two others.
They will only weaken my resolve -
because they love this place so - they call it home.
And the ignorance will keep them here."
And so the intelligent fish made its whole length a moving footprint and like a deer that
dogs chase suffered greatly on its way.
But finally made it to the edgeless safety of the sea.
The half-intelligent fish thought:
"My guide is gone.
I should have gone with him.
But I didn't and now I've lost my chance to escape.
I wish... that I... had gone with him."
So the half-intelligent fish mourned the absence of his guide for a while and then thought
to himself:
"What can I do to save myself from these men and their nets?
Perhaps if I pretend to be dead.
I'll belly up on the surface and float like a weed floats...
just giving myself totally to the water -
to die before I die."
So he did that.
And so he bobbed up and down -
hopeless -
within the arms reach of a fisherman.
"Look at this! The biggest fish of all is dead!"
One of the men lifted him up by the tail, spat on him and threw him on the ground.
He rolled over and over and slid secretly near the water...
And then back in.
Meanwhile the third fish - the dumb one - was agitatedly jumping about,
trying to escape with agility and cleverness.
The net of course finally closed around him.
And as he laid there in the terrible frying pan he thought:
"I'll get out of this!
I'll never live again in the limits of a lake.
Next time - next time the ocean -
I'll make the infinite ocean my home.
The infinite my home."