Understanding Phish: 002 - My Personal Experiences

The Early Days

I was 8 and my dad had an extensive, ever growing collection of CD's.  I was probably the only 8 year old who would ever ask their family to put on King Crimson.  I don't want to give myself too much credit as a young lad of the vibes, since I did break dance to Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer like a typical white kid, and even went to New Kids on the Block for my first ever concert.  Oh yeah, I was clairvoyant.

One day, I stumbled upon a CD with a orangeish ball with a face on the cover.  I had no idea what this CD would mean for me later in life, but I liked songs about having mangoes for hands and feet.  That just makes sense when you're a kid.  I remember liking it a lot, but never thought much about Phish again for a while.

I started working part time in middle school.  I didn't make much, but it was more than enough to start building the most ridiculous CD collection ever for an early teenager.  Every week I would buy and ingest a handful of new CDs after getting paid.  It was a terrible investment monetarily, but this curiosity led me to everything from classic rock, to blues, to jazz, to...you guessed it, Phish.

But before Phish, I had a multi-month stretch of learning about Jimi Hendrix from my pops, who no doubt is a legitimate expert on the matter.  He has 200+ extremely rare Hendrix CD's, that he acquired over many years.  He has things that I have never seen available in any form online either for purchase or download.  It's absolutely mind-blowing listening to a Jimi jam session that you know hardly anyone else in the world has ever heard.  I hope to get him on here someday and maybe he can share some of that knowledge with all of us here.

This period of life was crucial to appreciating music, particularly improvisational music.  Jimi did things that no one else has ever done or will ever do again with a guitar.  He also evolved rapidly over his very brief career.  His playing style, his band, his message, everything.  He was a self-taught genius, but learned much more once he started playing seriously.  By the end, he was playing with Miles Davis, Traffic, and had projects lined up with Cream, CSN&Y, and many, many more amazing talents.  Many people don't know this, but Jimi was on pace to become bigger than music itself.  Imagine Jimi playing with Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, or even Phish.  I cried after I realized all of this, but those tears dried as my curiosity for good improvisational music expanded.

I was properly re-introduced to Phish in 1998 with A Story of the Ghost.  This studio album helped to usher in an era of funk-fueled goodness for the band.  I couldn't help but be enthralled by this album, since although it had its quirks it was still far more engaging than whatever else was coming out at the time.  I went to the store on a mission and found exactly what I was looking for.

Game, Set, Match.

Hampton Comes Alive.  It was a box set of two shows and it was pretty expensive.  It was all I could get for a couple weeks, but that didn't matter once I put it on.  I felt alive, inspired, and a renewed sense of hope for what could replace what we lost with Jimi Hendrix.

It seems crazy to say, since even Trey admits that Jimi is the greatest of all time, but I would come to discover, and still to this day believe, that collectively, Phish's work is better than Jimi's work.  Of course, they have the unfair advantage of playing together for like 30+ years more together, and I am sure if Jimi amassed 30 years of material, this wouldn't even be a conversation.  But if we ignore Jimi's early departure, and look at the two simply on the merits of their work, Phish wins hands down, in my opinion.

Hampton Comes Alive led me down a new road in life.  It was no longer about buying CD's.  I mean I made sure to buy every Phish CD I could possibly find, but after I had gotten all of them, the thirst was still not quenched.  It was time to start downloading.

MP3's were just starting to become popular.  Napster was live, and there were other ways to download music.  I used FTP sites to find every Phish show I could.  I downloaded them, typed up the setlist, printed it out, and stuck them all together in my CD book.  I got a couple of my friends hooked and started giving them CD's of shows.  It grew and grew and I couldn't wait to see them live.

The problem was, I was still only 15 and I couldn't go yet.  No problem, I thought, I'll just have to wait a couple years and all will be OK.

The Hiatus

In 2000, for a number of reasons, Phish decided it was time to take a prolonged break.  They stopped playing together completely and no one knew when or if they would be getting back together.  I felt a sense of devastation and despair that I had never felt before.  My band...MY band, was no longer a thing, it was over.

They each started doing solo projects over the next few years.  And lo and behold, I was now old enough to see them.  In 2002, I went to my first Phish-affiliated concert, when I saw Trey's solo band in Mansfield.  They're a lot of fun, and Mike even came out and surprised everyone by playing a couple songs with Trey.  It was amazing seeing the two of them together and it gave me chills when I was there hearing the crowd react.

I went on to see Vida Blue a few times, Trey a few more times, and Mike with Leo Kottke.  I met all three of them and had them sign things and we chatted for a while.  Trey signed a guitar of mine and even played it for a bit, asking if he could have it for his tour bus.  I said "NO!" with a nervous laugh, since I had just paid a lot for it, but looking back, I should have for sure just given it to him.

Nearly three years pass, until one day, the announcement comes.

Phish is Back!!!

It was game time.  Every show we could go to.  Worcester 2003 kicked it off.  Nassau next.  Then, the festival, IT.  The people were amazing, the music was better than I could have ever imagined.  This was it!

The second day of IT was at the time, the pinnacle of my life.  For the last set, my friends and I were determined to get up close.  We ended up maybe 10 or so people away from the stage.  It was good to start, but they struggled through one of the longest versions of 46 days ever, and after a weekend of partying, my friends were starting to drop like flies and head off to the back to "chill".  I couldn't believe it.  This can't be how this festival ends.  It wasn't.

Trey, singlehandedly, took over and injected the rest of the set with a steroid-laden shot of energy.  I vividly remember during Julius freaking out, jumping around, and yelling for joy.  I hugged everyone I could, we all were there for this.  This was an epic Phish moment in real time.  A real triumph in their history.  We stayed up all night, glowing with joy from what we experienced, knowing we had our first real taste of Phish live.

No so fast...

2004, saw its moments.  There were certainly some good shows, and again we saw a bunch of them.  This time we even went all the way down to Hampton, VA, where Hampton Comes Alive was recorded.  It wasn't the best show, but being in a place with so much Phish history tied to it was incredible.

This tour was different, though.  We were all sad.  Phish was breaking up.  This was it.  No hiatus this time.  They were calling it quits, never to return, and this was the last Phish tour the world was ever going to experience.

They were planning on ending the tour with a festival in Vermont, Coventry.  As the festival approached, the camp grounds were pounded with rain.  It became an absolute mud pit.  Cars lined up for over 20 miles trying to get towed in one at a time by tractors.

My friend and I were towards the back of the line, and it never moved.  We waited for 22 hours, until Mike came on the radio to apologize and say that due to the conditions, they couldn't allow any more cars into the festival.  People started leaving their cars in the highway, and started walking.  We couldn't do it.  We had too much stuff, it was too far, and the people in there were telling us how terrible it was.  We bailed and drove 7 hours home.

I'm glad we did, too.  I didn't want my last memories of Phish to be this show.  They were emotional, sloppy, and Trey was even clearly having issues with drugs.  It went down in possibly the worst fashion possible, and that was it.  That's the exclamation point for one of the greatest performing acts of all time.  A show, that most people couldn't even get into, and the ones that got in experienced one of the lowest points in Phish's history.  Devastation returned.

Branching Out

Phish was gone, and it was time to find new music.  I got into Medeski, Martin & Wood, Jon Scofield, Soulive, and old jazz.  Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane...I loved it all.  I even got extensively into underground hip hop, to the point where I started a very successful blog, that by the end had attracted over 100 thousand views in just 6 months.  It was a lot of fun, and I will surely do a hip hop series in the future as well, but something was brewing in Phish land, and that something was real good.

Reunion

A video came out online, of Phish playing together for the first time in nearly 5 years at the wedding of their manager, Brad Sands.  Brad is a pretty funny guy, who I met a couple times, and it was incredible to see Phish ripping through Julius at his wedding.  They were having fun!  They were smiling!  They were full of energy!  What is happening?!?!

Just a year or so earlier, Trey had been busted for possession of opiates in New York.  He cleaned up his act, and now leads a completely sober life.  Trey, all of a sudden, became Trey again.  The love of life, music, and family came roaring to the forefront of his life again and we were all about to reap the benefits.

I saw clips from their first show back, and the chills returned:

That crowd reaction to Fluffhead says everything you need to know about Phish, if you didn't know already.

I, however, was still jaded about how it ended last time.  I begrudgingly went to a show at Jones Beach, NY in 2009.  It was disappointing.  This wasn't the same Phish, that I knew and loved.  I didn't want to see a dad band go through the motions on stage, so clearly this wasn't for me anymore.

I passed on all sorts of opportunities to go to shows.  In 2010, a few friends and coworkers wouldn't stop talking about how good Phish was playing again.  I told them they were wrong and needed to listen to more 97-98 Phish, since I had just seen them last year and they weren't anywhere close to this level.  They insisted I was wrong and Phish was back.

My first real show back, was Mansfield, 2011.  This time, I had someone special with me.  We had fun, a lot of fun.  I immediately got tickets to their next festival, Superball.  @missjessica couldn't make it, but I was able to go with some friends.  It was just like old times, and there was no looking back now.

Since then, we've been to many more shows.  I was able to go to two New Year's shows at Madison Square Garden, the last one of which @missjessica was able to attend for her first New Year's show.  We also went to Magnaball, as I mentioned before.  We haven't been able to make any shows so far this year, but we have big plans for 2017 and can't wait to get back on the road with them.

Phish is special to us.  It's bigger than just the music.  They've introduced me to many good people on tour, they helped cement my relationship with my future wife, and they also have brought us joy just about every day we've been together.  We are a part of Phish, and you can be too.  Go see them live, if you haven't.  You won't be disappointed you did!

Jam of the Day

@daycrypter is a Phish fan from Australia.  He shared some tales of his adventures with Phish in 1998 and got me to re-discover this gem.  The second set of this show is amazing and displays exactly what Phish was all about in 1998.  Funk and energy!

http://phish.net/setlists/?d=1998-07-17

https://www.mediafire.com/?ma8lu7pdxx90r