Music Ruined My Life - Phish and The Bet

I got into music at a younger age than most. I didn't question whether or not it wasn't completely normal to have pretty well defined taste in music when I was 9, and why would I? It seemed normal to me, and when I was playing with my friends riding bikes or lighting shit on fire, we didn't discuss Raising Hell, EPMD or anything music-related. We just wanted to jump our bikes off haphazardly-constructed ramps, play basketball and catch the ice cream man when he came around.

I realized I was a bit different a few years later when I got made fun of for listening to rap at my new school after my family moved a dozen towns over. Then in 7th grade, it became more obvious when the whole 2 Live Crew controversy was going on as the PMRC shit was jumping off, and "Banned in the USA" came out. I had this really progressive literature teacher and he gave us an assignment that I was all over. He asked us to write a paper as if we were writing it to Congress as to why we thought our favorite band shouldn't be censored. So he went around the room asking us to tell him who we were writing about. I don't remember anyone's answer except for mine and the kid who would become my best friend. I said Public Enemy, and he said C&C Music Factory. I made fun of him for it, but the explanation he gave made sense. He just didn't have an interest in music and it was the only thing he could think of at the time. Three years later, Nathan was hanging out with the stoner kids and listening to this awful band named Phish.

I had signed off on all non-hip hop genres way before this, so the thought of my best friend listening to the absolute worst shit in the world bothered me. I had no idea why anyone would want to sit there and listen to that crap, and I thought I never would. As we finished high school, Nathan went from being kind of a nerd to a socially-accepted cool guy with long hair, and I was the same as when I went in. Hip hop, Jordans, reading The Source every month, and not expanding my horizons at all. I went through my first couple years of college and Nathan and I wound up renting a house with a few of our other friends. One day, and I don't know what happened to me other than the fact that I was constantly high and exposed to this awful hippie music, I actually admitted to liking a Phish song and it KILLED me. Then I liked another, and another, and... before I knew it, I was familiar with about a dozen of their songs. But by this time, Nathan had already been to dozens of shows and I was just a noob. So we made a deal... I was going to take him to a hip hop show, and I agreed to go see Phish. The hip hop show came first. We both had a great time and my friend loved it much to my surprise. And then it was my turn....

We got to "the lot" and instantaneously I felt way out of place. Dirty white kids with dreads in shitty old vans, rich-looking white kids with dreads in Range Rovers, a bunch of bearded longhairs rocking patchwork pants, and a whole gang of hairy hippie girls wearing homemade shirts plus a bunch of other random misfits. I got out of the car and this chick came up yelling "GOO BALLS!" and I shook my head. I had absolutely no business being there. I had no idea what the Fuck a goo ball was and I definitely didn't look like anyone else I saw. After observing these freaks in their natural habitat with Nathan being my tour guide, we went inside the venue and sat down in our seats. The place was packed and smoky as hell. I was baked out of my mind and way out of my element, then the lights went down. The crowd went nuts and Phish launched into their first song, one which I was not familiar with (they have a reprtoire of over 1,000 songs, literally, so the odds of them playing anything I already knew and liked were stacked against me) but it didn't even matter....

I'll never forget, vividly, for the rest of my life, the first time I took my eyes off the stage to look around and realize that every single person in that arena was dancing. Every single one! I had never seen anything like it before. We stood there and nodded our heads at hip hop shows, and that was about it. It was at that exact moment that it hit me like a ton of bricks. The reason why my best friend got into this band, and would leave for weeks at a time in summer to follow them was because they were fucking amazing. I knew absolutely nothing of musicianship up until that point, but came out of that one experience changed for good.

From that point on, I was a Phish fan. The more I listened to them and saw them the more I loved them. It was like a drug in the most literal sense. There was nothing that could match the feeling of being there, no matter what they were playing or where they were. The world could be crumbling to pieces outside and I simply wouldn't give a Fuck, and neither could anyone else there. I never experimented with club drugs, but because I never took ecstasy doesn't mean I don't know what euphoria feels like. It has nothing to do with wearing candy neclaces and dehydrating yourself with a bunch of sweaty douchebags. To me, it has everything to do with the completely silent part of The Divided Sky about six minutes in or the beginning of Maze right before everyone goes apeshit.

There is also the ever-present collective anticipation of "what are they going to do next?"... only to find out it's a song you've been chasing for years and upon the first note, you celebrate like the Cubs just won the World Series. Dancing your ass off and not giving a shit about what anyone thinks, because nobody cares. Some people go for the drugs and the scene (those are usually the dirty hippies trying to sell you drugs and NOT planning on actually seeing the show), and the rest of us go for the music. To watch four absolute virtuosos get on stage every night, flying by the seat of their pants without a pre-planned setlist, improvising transitions between songs, busting out shit they haven't played in a decade, and melting faces. A lot of people go through a Phish phase, or have the "they were better when I used to go see them back in 19XX" attitude, but I don't have either. I love this band and always will.

A lot of time has gone by since that day. The band went on hiatus for a couple years, then hit rock bottom and broke up, then got back together and somehow found a way to satisfy themselves again and have been playing their asses off for the last few years. Nathan moved to southern California several years ago where he regularly attends hip hop shows with his beautiful (and Phish-fan converted) girlfriend. I haven't seen him but once since Phish's Festival 8 in 2009 where we camped and saw them for three days at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, the same spot they have Coachella every year. It was three of the best days of my life, and I should have thanked Nathan for it then but probably didn't even think about it.

There's always the next show...