I'm going to the first Phish show in a half decade tomorrow night. In high school, if you'd told me I'd ever go that long without catching a show, I'd have laughed in your phace.
I have a complicated relationship with jam. I, like many, adopted Widespread, String Cheese, et al. in the wake of Phish's hiatus as substitute good times, but quickly found myself being pulled more and more (and more) towards indie and altcountry. Though over time I listened to less and less "jam" as a genre, I still identified it as my favorite when people asked what kind of music I liked. And I believed that.
I used to regularly defend jam to Sony colleagues (where I worked in alternative music--jam was a joke to those guys.) "It's loose and interpretive," I'd say. "It's for people on acid," they'd retort. This would go on a bit until I was relieved of defendor duty by someone mentioning a band everyone could universally hate no matter what, like Nickelback.
I still saw every Trey show I could (highlights for me being his 2002 "Boogie on Reggae Woman" duet with Dave Matthews at Richmond's historic Landmark Theater and his conducting the Nashville Chamber Orchestra--complete with fireworks--at Bonnaroo 2006.)
When the boys reunited in 2009, the first three gigs were mere minutes from my house (at Hampton Coliseum). I had friends travel from all across the country to this. I tried to buy tickets but couldn't get them. I wasn't going to pay over price. My husband isn't a fan. Blah blah blah. Besides, by then my iPod was stacked with more and more new acts and my loyalties had long shifted to Radiohead as my #1.
Yet every time I got to talking with someone who likes Phish, or I randomly heard a song, I'd get warm inside and would immediately be doing a dance on the inside (on the outside too sometimes.) And I met new Phisheads. 21st Century ones who are in their 30s and have jobs like "eye doctor" and "stockbroker"...people who can't stand Disco Biscuits and all that janky prescription drug mess that comes with their fans. People who remember Hampton Comes Alive and Lemonwheel and Big freakin' Cypress and are excited to still see the whimsy and love and smiles that fans bring to the shows. In fact, just last night I ran into someone I attended the first Bonnaroo with ten years ago (now divorced and re-engaged and living in Lexington, KY) in town for the show. I hear stories like this often...the high school reunion vibe of the parking lot.
Weirdly enough, I just saw Widespread Panic last Sunday. They played a little over three hours and I left about halfway through the show. The first hour was exciting in a nostalgia sort of way...like "when I was younger I, too, got stoned and threw glowsticks in the air while twirling to this southern rock jam." But the music got repetetive and there wasn't a lot of inspiration coming from the stage. And certainly no Mike Gordon guitar riffs. As I realized this and gathered my things, a smile came over my face with the knowledge that in one week I'd be in a similar space/scenario but not enjoying it on the merits of reliving youth but on the merits of pure, undiluted enjoyment.
And as I sit here listening to "Birds of a Feather" live from November 1998, my foot involuntarily taps and I headnod in anticpation of tomorrow night's show. Unlike any other jamband (and many other bands of other ilk), I regularly and vividly remember the first time I heard many Phish songs. "Birds" was at the Virginia Beach Ampitheater in the summer of 1998. The lyrics made more sense to me than anything, which naturally had nothing to do with a certain sugarcube and subsequent Trojan War being played out via morphing clouds as I lay faceup on the grassy hillside.
"Can I live while I'm young?" are great, screamed,classic lyrics from "Chalkdust Torture" and I always think of The Beatles' "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" when "Funky Bitch" starts. And on and on.
In the end, I was right and wrong. I'm not a jam fan. I'm just a music fan who happens to like Phish---a lot. Stay tuned for my review of the show, coming soon to AltDaily.
