My girlfriend is part of a cult. Phish fans are dedicated to a scary point.
Last weekend, I had the chance to see two back-to-back Phish concerts in Boston. Getting tickets was a month long process, because to even get the opportunity to buy tickets you have to enter a lottery. Barring that, you can either shell out extra money to scalpers or resort to Cash or Trade, an online network where “phans” sell tickets for face value or trade them for tickets for another show. Take that, “The Man.”
With tickets finally in hand, we departed for America, land of four lane toll highways, absurdly low liquor prices and freedom. As we
passed through New Hampshire, a friendly sign informed us that we weren’t legally obligated to wear our seatbelts. They really take their state motto of “Live free or die” to heart.
The excitement built as we got closer and our GPS couldn’t take the pressure. According to our techno-companion, we arrived in Massachusetts spinning rapidly down the wrong side of the highway. At our hotel, a smelly unshaved man intuited from my own face-fuzz that I, too, was going to the show. He told me, “It’s like a Mecca, man.”
We had one last obstacle to overcome before the concert: Shakedown Street. The travelling tent village full of merchants, artisans,
unlicensed food vendors and drug dealers who follow the band around hoping to capitalize on its pilgrims. Had I not already been told to not eat the “steet meat”, I would have probably gorged myself to the point of death by indigestion. Those homemade burritos had to be dosed with either salmonella or hallucinogenics, but that didn’t stop them from looking delicious.
I expected there to be drugs, but I was surprised at what I saw. On various street corners surrounding the venue, sketchy men with unmarked tanks lurked. If you were so inclined you could fork over some money (or, as our American cousins call them, “dollars”) to be rewarded with a balloon full of mysterious gas. Many people were and the streets were littered with discarded balloons.
The concert is harder to describe. Four middle-aged men sauntered onstage, fairly conservatively dressed aside from drummer, who always performs in a pink and blue doughnut-patterned muumuu. We were then treated to hours of “phunk.” If you like intricate, fifteen-minutes-plus jams that go in directions you couldn’t anticipate then this is the band for you. Certain songs had cues for the audience to chant back or perform certain dances. It sounds tacky, but it was magical. This concert had a more intense “vibe” than any other I’ve been to, and I’ve been to more than a few.
The twenty-plus years of touring, intense fans and drugs all combined to create a strange atmosphere. More important, though, is the band’s devotion to fans. Phish never performs the same song two nights in a row, that simply wouldn’t be fair. And if you want to quantify what draws people to this band, you could even say that they never play the same song the same way more than once. It’s easy to look at some phans and decide that it’s all about drugs, but that would discredit the dedication and musical talent of four men who have earned their insane following.
My girlfriend doesn’t do drugs, but after a Phish concert she could probably fool you into thinking she was tripping balls. Even now, when I ask her how to describe the show, she says “I haven’t even swallowed it yet, I’m still digesting.”
I think I understand the phenomena a little bit better, but I don’t expect to be huffing shit out of balloons any time soon. Then again, maybe I’m just a prude.
