The Joy of Phish, Pt. 2
Oh, hi.
For a refresher on how we got here, you can re-read the TinyLetter archive of Pt. 1. I’m trying to figure out how to make the new What Is Neil Doing Archive on Buttondown work, but so far no luck.
It’s notable that I didn’t even attend my first Phish concert. My mom(!) and I had tickets to see them 8/12/98 near Syracuse, but a major life event got in the way: On August 9th, I was at home and about to call a hotel to find a room for us for after the show but I felt unwell. I decided to lie down. The feeling didn’t pass. I realized I was having chest pains and a shortness of breath. I mentioned this to Mom, who appropriately freaked out and rushed me to the doctor’s office. My left lung had, for the second time in its teenage life, spontaneously collapsed by about 20%. The ER doctors informed me that, no, I would not be at a Phish concert on Wednesday, as I would be in surgery that day to fix this situation. (It turns out this would not fix the situation permanently, as I’d end up in the hospital again a few times that fall, but this issue is about Phish, not case studies in pulmonology.)
I’d eventually get to my first shows during Summer tour 2003, at a venue I now think of as BB&T Pavilion but it hasn’t been that since 2022. In between, though, I had yet another missed opportunity to see the band: as Summer tour 2000 wound down, they stopped at Merriweather Post Pavilion, a short drive from Baltimore where I’d just started college. I was proudly wearing a brand new red Phish hat but I hadn’t gotten organized to get a ticket, and I had class the next morning, so I didn’t even try to get to the concert. Not even two weeks later, the band announced they would start a hiatus. That hiatus ended up lasting for several years, making it a little awkward to wear a hat daily for a band that was in a murky, messy state of existence. People who knew me in college but don’t see me often ask if I still wear that hat. It’s awfully raggedy and so I only wear it when I’m in Baltimore.
In 2013 I bought tickets to two shows that were right after my repatriation: a night in my old Rochester followed by a night in scenic Reading. But in the days leading up I was hit with waves of anxiety and logistics. I didn’t have a car. I hadn’t figured out where I was staying. I skipped the Rochester show and then borrowed my roommates’ car for the overnight to Reading. A recent discussion on Reddit’s main Phish board leads me to understand that Rochester had been a total dud of a show, literally some fans’ worst of all time, so bullet dodged! Fast forward most of a decade, and I had plans to see a summer show on the Atlantic City beach with two of my best dudes. But Dave got COVID, and Kelsey was very sick and so the plan was effectively scrapped. (We had also just seen 2 nights at The Mann, so it wasn’t like I was starved for Phish that summer.) All these feel like they came at particularly challenging inflection points in my life, so I (mostly) don’t beat myself up over them. I do wish I’d thrown caution to the wind and tried to see that 2000 show, though.
But in between all those misses were a lot of hits, and not just as live experiences. I spent the late '90s shuffling my CD player between the Phish album Lawnboy, Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese, Widespread Panic’s Bombs & Butterflies, Medeski Martin and Wood’s Shackman, in addition to my tapemania. I got to see the band near Rochester in 2010 the night before I flew to The Netherlands for a soft launch of my postdoc job. That 2022 Atlantic City experience surely couldn’t have compared to a parallel night in 2021, when Dave & Pat & I noodle-danced on the sand and ate hoagies and slept in a ludicrously overpriced decrepit hotel. People often ask if Kelsey also likes Phish, and it’s most accurate to say “Kelsey likes that I like Phish.” She came, jetlagged, to a summer 2018 show with me in Camden, and snoozed in the rain. That was her first and, so far, only show. For a recent Christmas, she gifted me a LivePhish subscription--so now I can stream high quality concert recordings on-demand from the band and their side projects. It’s far beyond what I first experienced with tapes or RealAudio.
It's about time to wrap all this up for many reasons, not the least of which being I’ve been chipping away at this for a good four months. I’m grateful to Phish for hipping me to jazz before the swing revival hit, for providing me a model for improv ensembles, for getting me to interrogate what I think a song has to include, and for letting me have fun with music in a combination of ways that other acts touch on but rarely in such a potent combination. It’s wild to look back and think of my own history of the band overlapping with the transitions from analog to digital in music distribution, the rise of high-speed internet, my soul of music interests broadly, and my own maturation as a young adult.
Was this fun? Did we like the listicles in previous newsletters better? What will I overanalyze next!?! Why haven’t I listened to Analyze Phish by Harris Wittels?!? Have you forgotten that you wanted to think about Talking Heads, whom I thanked in my dissertation defense for their seminal film Stop Making Sense? Wow! I can’t wait for the next newsletter, which as I’ve mentioned will come through Buttondown! I have so many ideas about what to write that aren’t noodle music!
What was I DOING in October and November?
Reading:
Kelsey & I listened to the serially-released audiobook version of Murder on Sex Island, which I had the pleasure of sharing thoughts on via Broad Street Review. I considered, as I often do, questions to ask family members and the music of CVS. Also, do you know where you're at? I don't.
Eating:
In Portland in October, we delighted in Pip's donuts and Higgins's local fare. On the recommendation of the Randwiches Discord, we devoured breakfast sandwiches from Fried Egg I'm In Love. A road trip got us to the massive sandwiches of Sugar Hill on the way back from the shore. Back home, I found myself at Grandma’s Philly, Asian Fusion for takeout , Westmont Diner for breakfast, Sally for pizza, and Cry Baby Pasta for a Sunday night family dinner.
Beating:
Fall is always a good time for the R.E.M. album Up. I blanketed myself in Bright Eyes and The Books. A rewatch of She’s The Man got me listening to the soundtrack which is better than it has any right to be. Bandcamp was getting messy, so I started downloading what I've bought there, everything from standup by friends to Beatles mashups. My friend Kai asked for music to listen to, so I started sending them some links when I thought of seminal albums. I've sent at least a couple dozen and keep adding to the list.
Deleting:
My notes say "basement stuff" and "USB cables." Exciting?
Retreating:
While we were in Portland, we hiked Horsetail Falls and Wahkeena Falls, plus we explored Witch's Castle. We did some light birdwatching at Okehocking Preserve. We found some creepy abandoned structures and graffiti in Rancocas State Park. My friend Marion and I trekked through Bartram's Garden.
Meeting
I've recently been on episodes of Rotten Treasure and Most Unusual. In March, I'll compete in Guess My Blood Sugar at Plays & Players and One Liner Madness at Johnny Brenda's.
Time is like Jello,
Neil