NIGHT OF A THOUSAND SOLOS

It all starts on the A train on a Tuesday, when a guy in a hemp necklace, sandals, cargo shorts, and a shirt that says “Gamehendge” turns to me and my friend to ask how many shows we’ve been to this week. At first I wonder what a Phish fan, or rather a “Phan,” looks like and if I look like one, but then I realize my friend is wearing a Jerry Garcia shirt. The two go on and on about how one night they got “Divided Sky” and “holy shit they played 'Moonage Daydream’ the other night” and generally share excitement about things I am not aware of, until we approach the 34th Street station where he turns to us and says, “Never miss a Tuesday show.” I find out later it’s an old adage of Phishheads adapted from “Never miss a Sunday show,” which applies to everyday people who actually work and don’t make a life out of following a band. Unemployment has a mantra.

We arrive at Madison Square Garden for my firstever Phish gig and head directly to our seats—there are only a few minutes until it kicks off so we put a little hustle in our step. Despite the quickened pace, I notice that virtually every single person I see is either in the same uniform as our Gamehendge friend from the train or wearing a robe or muumuu, carrying a bubble gun, or looking like they just closed a merger—and almost all of them, literally 95 percent of the people I see, are white, male, and over 30. And besides the aforementioned corporate types, they all look like either they’ve never had a job in their life or they are immeasurably, disgustingly, filthy rich, which as I write this is kind of the same damn thing. Now, I’m no stranger to male-dominant crowds—I love metal, fer chrissakes—but even at Iron Maiden or Judas Priest or something even more bro-y like Rage Against the Machine there are at least a few girlfriends at the gig. Maybe there aren’t many of those around these parts.

I’ve had run-ins with fans of this band over the years. Phans are not my people, I’m pretty sure of that. So one of the main reasons I went to the show was because I got to watch from a bit of a “sterile environment”: a box suite. The idea being, if I were able to stay away from the Phans, how would I feel about the music? Would I like it more? Turns out the box at MSG was owned by a real estate conglomerate and filled to the hilt with men over 50 who were all prolific air guitarists and “bragged” openly about seeing them in ’96 when they played this cover or that cover. Oh, and I got asked for a weed pen by someone in a Titleist polo who could have been my dad. Nowhere is safe.

I sat down in my very comfortable seat, and unlike everyone else in the room, my lone stimulant was a Pepsi—no mushrooms, no LSD, no DMT, and as I said, no weed, just plain old sugar-injected caffeine to keep me alert and awake for the duration. It’s official: I am raw-dogging the Phish gig. The lights hit and the band launches into “Ghost" from their 1998 album The Story of the Ghost, and my companion starts to get all wavy, screams “I love this song!” and transforms into a person I didn’t know existed, doing a dance that is part wiggle with some spin moves thrown in there. I now realize that I am utterly and completely alone.

As the night progresses I decide that Phish are a really great band and I might even kinda sorta be really into them. At certain parts of their songs, they are particularly transcendent—approaching Dead-level musicianship and understanding of melody and drama. But for every amazing moment, there are a dozen in which they are totally and completely insufferable. Imagine, if you will, a grown man of almost Social Security age singing the following lyrics repeatedly:

Boy

Man

God

Shit

Boy man

Boy man

Wash uffitze drive me to firenze

Now add what I can only refer to as “clown music” and a pair of adults jumping on trampolines along with said shit lyrics. Not turned off yet? Use the wood block as a primary percussive instrument. Still not there? Finish the song with a four-part harmonizing beatbox for a minimum of three minutes. STILL!? I’ll offer my last point: The track is arguably their signature number, “You Enjoy Myself,” a title that is egregious on so many levels that it matches the song perfectly. I half expect the Muppet band to pop out at any moment and say, “Surprise! It was us all along.” At least the Muppets are funny.

The crowd (or maybe I’ll call them “the dudes ”) has fallen in line, and everyone’s doing either an extremely awkward dance, some form of wiggle/airguitar combo, or a sort of shuffle and accompanying shuck ’n’ jive but with finger guns. After all, how well can you dance in Birkenstocks anyway? Now, I'm no graceful hoofer, but my mind immediately goes to the description “a full dry heave set to music” from Seinfeld. It is clear that I am in a room of 20,000 people dancing who, for the most part, don’t know how to dance. The kind of guys who tell their girls, “I don’t dance,” knowing that their partners aren’t looking for an ace on the lighted floor, but for some intimacy. News flash to the ladies, if you want your double-left-footed over-30 white partner to dance, take him to see Phish. But be warned: You’ll never want to see him, or his shitty shuffle, ever again.

And real talk, that’s not dancing—blame the “performance enhancers.” The same enhancers that Phish hope will lead those real estate tycoons to applaud them when they say bullshit like “Clap your hands if you think your soul is free!” That line reminds me that not only am I dead sober, I am fully alert. It’s then and there that I realize that if this is it, if we have reached ground zero for drug music, I choose sobriety.

At several moments during the gig, the crowd is positively ROARING with delight; I hear deafening screams that I have never encountered at the Garden before. It was usually after Trey or Page had completed a long and involved solo, a meandering, messy, and discordant passage that takes the long way back to the original theme. Those moments are punctuated with a blast of white light on the crowd, as if we’re the studio audience at a taping for The Big Bang Theory and everyone needs a cue for when to laugh. I see it as more of a “thank God this solo is coming to an end” and applaud feverishly along with them. The band cycles through songs with irritating names like “The Wolfman’s Brother” and “Funky Bitch” and covers a wide array of artists like Lee Dorsey, TV on the Radio (seriously), and the Beatles (sorry, guys, Oasis do “Walrus” better, despite yours being a highlight).

So to the shock of probably no one, I hate Phish. But I think the grand irony here is that one of the reasons I despise them so deeply is that I truly do like them and they are actually an incredibly good band. When they are good, they are so, so good—really insanely adept and watchable and engaging and just plain fantastic live. Great songwriting and solos that truly remind me of seeing the Dead. And then for all that goodwill and excellence there’s a song where they’re beatboxing or jumping on a trampoline or singing lyrics that sound like they were written by a kindergarten art teacher doing Mad Libs on shatter. So all of that greatness is pissed away and we just come full circle to fucking irritating. I’ve heard people talk about how awesome Charles Manson’s music was—I never listened to it—but even if he was Mussorgsky or Jeff Lynne, he was still the mastermind behind a string of murders. Same logic applies here.

Hoping for understanding, I ask someone about their love for the band on the way out and get the following:

“I like their jams because they make me think about nothing and everything. I get super pensive and then when it comes back to the song it’s like being sucked back into reality. It’s beautiful.”

It’s called drugs, buddy. Listen to something else.