I Survived A Phish Show

Not sure if it's been posted or not. It's pretty annoying, but worth seeing what the hipsters have to say, I guess.

Vice is a hipster magazine. if anything you should check out the vice travel guide videos. they do some crazy shit!

The line about "holding hands during Suskind, or whatever" made me laugh.

Overall, pointless article.

I think it's really great. The guy clearly loved the show when he was there, was able to figure what was great about the band (combination of the Dead and Yes is pretty accurate) and a great time. Many folks here must have had the experience of being unsure if they liked something after coming down of drugs (not necessarily Phish). Imagine what would have happened if he'd been to one of the better shows of the tour? Still, I think he'll come back.

I got as far as seeing it was written by a guy named Dick Corvette. Didn't make it any further.

@RovingReporter said:

Whatever this is really about, it's a fun read. I laughed a couple of times while reading it. Remember, not everyone is obsessive about Phish, and it seems at times the writer really enjoyed the show. His description of a few things were spot on. In fact, I'd say this dude has a new appreciation for the band.

Oh well.

I don't think he left with an appreciation for the band so much as an appreciation for molly. He even says at the end that you need drugs to appreciate phish.

I liked how he said at the end of the show he was devout. We've all experienced that at some point, right? I remember in the lot after my first (and only) GD show, I was ready to quit my job, blow-off college and hit the road with the Dead.

Another Phish article from Vice

Phish Stoner Story

By Steve Heisler

If there was a Family Feud category called “Name something about Phish,” I’m 99 percent sure the number one answer would be “stoner.” Phish, a four-person jam band that’s been around, off and on, since the mid-80s, has basically cornered the market on the kind of transient concert-hopping and psychedelic weed-smokery not seen since The Grateful Dead; people seem to really like chilling the f*** out and listening to Trey Anastasio noodle around on guitar for an uninterrupted 38 minutes. Hell, when Phish played Fenway Park in 2009, Boston police decided not to arrest anyone for marijuana use, and “could not say how many citations were issued” likely because there weren’t many. Even the cops know pot and Phish are forever entwined, like the letters Q and U.

When I was younger, though, I was like that word Qi that people always play in Words With Friends. I was a huge Phish fan, but as far from a stoner as they came. I wasn’t merely anti-drug; drugs terrified me. In fact, I once turned down the advances of a really cute and popular girl because she did drugs. And I told her it was because she did drugs! And I even called them “drugs!"

While I was doing everything I could to isolate myself from my peers, I was finding myself drawn to Phish, a band that fostered its own community. Songs had been listened to so often that when I’d mention a favorite minute-long section of “Divided Sky” to a friend, he’d know exactly what I was talking about. Yes, that’s true for almost all music, but Phish begged listeners to search for nuance. Its songs include improvisational solos longer than the entirety of The Beatles’ debut Please Please Me, which morph each time they’re played at live shows.

But there came a point when the nuances seemed too nuanced. No matter how many versions of “You Enjoy Myself” I found, Phish’s epic multipart concerto that contains sparse lyrics like, “Boy, man, washyofecesdrymetofirenze," I just couldn’t spot enough of the differences. I really tried. For almost two years. My Phish-loving friends could, though, and every time I fell short, it drove more of a wedge between myself and the music. No longer would I be taking any jobs at a Borders solely so I could buy the Hampton Comes Alive box set at a discount.

Still, when I finally went to upload all my old CDs to my computer, I found multiple Phish albums, more than any other band. And that was when I was terrified of pot, a drug I now regularly partake in and have no problem with. If I liked Phish that much when I was sober, would I like Phish a whole lot more under the influence of a drug that makes all music seem particularly awesome? After many rounds of “testing,” the answer’s, “Yes for a really short time, then no, no, no…”

At first pot makes Phish’s music feel like it did when I first heard it. Pumping their studio albums into my headphones, Junta, Billy Breathes and Hoist, I remember how unintimidating the songs can be. Tracks like “Fee” and “Julius” kick off their respective albums with a little harmony, a few hooks, and restrained solos that make me think I’d overblown how indulgent Phish can be. These songs were my gateway drugs back in the day, and now, knowing what else is out there, they seem hollow and premature. Years of soberly listening to these sterile versions have hardwired their progressions into my brain. There are no surprises to be found listening to mediocre attempts at pop songs, and my pot-addled brain demands I immediately move on to the next song, then the next, and so on.

“Live recordings: Now that’s the stuff,” is a real thought I have, baked out of my mind. I immediately fire up “The Mango Song” off Hampton Comes Alive, which has a guitar solo at the end that I remember thinking was pretty rad, way better than the produced version (spoken like a true Phish fan). Under the influence, it’s sublime. Without the confines of a studio, this and other songs are allowed to breathe. The pot melts the music with the crowd, creating the sensation I’d imagine a baby feels when listening to a white noise machine.

I spend a ton of time laying on my couch letting it wash over me, really hearing every note. I start to see the math of which notes go where so the music swells and shifts just when I’m getting bored. Well, not so much “bored” as my mind’s wandering around, as it’s wont to do when baked. During a particularly long stretch of “Taste,” I’m thinking about how dumb text messages are when some staccato electric guitar warbling, a descriptor I thought of while stoned, brings the song to its conclusion. Suddenly, it seems, I’m having the most profound thought about text messages in the history of thoughts about text messages.

It’s as if Phish writes their songs as stoner Mad Libs for your brain. Whatever mood you’re in, there’s a song for that, or at least one that your malleable mind can bend to fit. I find that, despite my skepticism, I’m enjoying my place in the Phish headspace, my life now scored with a pleasing backing track. It’s easy to get into a groove, and the smallest interruptions feel huge. I queue up a few live albums on Spotify, and even the commercials are enough to piss me off. I want to simply be, and any distraction, however fleeting, is THE BIGGEST DISTRACTION EVER!

There comes a point where I start making demands. If a song’s not doing it for me, and I see there’s 18 minutes left, I’ll skip it. Then skip another one, and so on. After a few days I give up on unfamiliar songs entirely, my less than patient stoner brain sticking to what I already know is going to be a hit. “Bouncing Around The Room” from A Live One comes into heavy rotation because it’s a) live, and b) four minutes long. Sometimes I’ll dip into the proceeding “Stash," at 12 minutes, only because I know I’m going to like it before it starts. Otherwise, I have reached the point where really long songs are intimidating. What the hell makes “Tweezer” so important that it has to be half-an-hour long, and include a reprise?

I’m reminded of why I gave up on Phish in the first place, and it’s like I’m living that whole two-year process in one week of fast forward. Their music is inoffensive and inviting, sometimes meaningful in a way I can’t quite qualify, like the TV show Modern Family. But after enough time, Phish’s repetition and self-seriousness (sample lyrics: “Take the highway…through the great…DIVIDE!”) leaves me feeling empty, like the TV show Modern Family.

Pot creates the illusion of profundity, though, and I can imagine if THC had wired my brain to Phish, I’d have far more nostalgia for my hemp necklace heyday. But introducing pot so late into the Phish game is like trying to teach a robot how to love when it was built merely to maim. I’m not saying it’s impossible for there to be some stone-cold sober Phish-heads out there; I’m just saying, even with pot, what’s done is done. We’re not talking about mushrooms, after all.

http://www.vice.com/read/phish-stoner-story

I wouldnt mind him going to shows and one show by one show, take something different and write about it. seems like he is open to take anything anyone says should be taken...ummm i dunno about that tho def not good advice for the youth.

proof that phish rages when not on drugs = tune into kernal forbins turntable replay of archives and continue doing your work

Who is purity ring? Stopped reading after paragraph 3...

That was a helluva selfing right there.

"haven't ever heard of..." some band that I think is just about to release their first album.
Sick burn, brah.

*sigh* no to that c*** molly; lucy is what you want for phish. (look at the offical logo upside down if you didn't know)

Another thing, I've been to 26 Phish shows and have been sober for 2/3 of them. That being said, I love getting f***ed up and enjoy taking drugs recreationally, but I enjoy Phish sober more than f***ed up. Of course there is a certain time when on just the right amount of LSD, all the stars align perfectly and I remember how much I love Phish.

People have to realize, when I DO take drugs at Phish, it's not to enhance the music, it's to enhance THE DRUGS.

I saw dc> av pretty damn sober. Well..beer n weed..bunk/dried out acid (didn't do shit)...n maybe a Lil MDMA the last night...but for the most part, I was sober n I f***in loved it.

I enjoyed it. He went to the show, call it lazy journalism if you want but how many of these "phish bashing" article writers actually commit to going to a show and giving them an ounce of an honest listen. And I don't even think this was necessarily a bashing article. The band isn't for everyone, but at least he had a great time, on drugs or not on drugs it doesn't really matter.

I mean, he didn't rely too hard on cliches, and didn't write too much like a hipster. Seemed to give them a decent chance, I mean he did write about some positives.

(FTR, I skimmed it)

OK, I read the article twice. The first time I was sober. The second time I was on acid. Waaaaaaay better the second time! You just can't enjoy reading Dick Corvette unless you are on acid.