Phish: The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony
[purchase]
Phish: Guelah Papyrus
[purchase]
Phish: Gotta Jibboo
[purchase]
Notorious for choosing words for their mouthfeel, rhythm, and sound rather than any specific meaning, long-standing jamband kingpins Phish have an entire catalog of songs with both titles and lyrics that make little sense - starting with "Fee" and "You Enjoy Myself", the first and second tracks on their 1988 debut (the second of these being mostly an instrumental based on an especially heavy LSD experience in Italy, with the sole lyrics "Boy! … Man! … God! … Shit!...wash Uffizi, drive me to Firenze.").
Here's three favorites from the quartet, presented in the order of their release: the bouncy improvisational gin-joint jamjazz of The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony, the sweet and groovy Guelah Papyrus, and the trippy horns-and-all funkjam of Gotta Jibboo, a song which apocryphally takes the second word in its title from the invented name which lead singer Trey Anastasio's pre-literate firstborn gave to her milk and juice.
Ironically - or perhaps not so - the term "jibboo" has nonetheless come to be used as a slang term for marijuana in many hidden recesses of user culture, which says just about everything about the community that would follow these awesome musicians to the end of the earth.
