Phishing in Hampton, VA

(Fred in the red hat and Jewel front and center, front page picture of the Hampton Daily Press Saturday March 7, 2009 - Love this picture!)

I know I'm a few days late on this - chalk it up to an attack of The Ick (awww, just like old times) - but I must interrupt the regularly scheduled programming (which for me is usually silence, is it not?) to gush about this last weekend, a weekend I heretofore dub: The Best Weekend Ever In The History Of The Whole Wide World or, BWE for short.

Okay, cut to the chase - if you didn't know already, Phish is my favorite band. Now, sometimes, I will say The Beatles are my favorite band because I believe they are Rock-n-Roll's quintessential Adam & Eve (don't give me that Elvis crap!) and I *so* appreciate their existence but to be completely honest: Phish is my favorite band. Phish shaped my mid-to-late twenties and early thirties as no other non-child-of-my-body entity possibly could have.

In 2004, when Trey announced they were kaput, I was bereft. What the hell would I do with my summers, how would I ever again enjoy music? I couldn't make every show they played after The Announcement but I certainly did my best! If they were going to make me say goodbye, I wasn't going to miss it.

Their last shows, in Coventry, VT, were a debacle. As if God mourned their goodbye as much as we did, the endless summer rains leading up to the festival so drenched the former cow pasture that non-economy sized cars were in danger of becoming mired in the festival for good. Saturday morning, a day after we pulled in and set up camp, I was awakened by The Announcement Part Deux on The Bunny, Phish's festival radio station: if your car hadn't yet left the highway, you weren't going to be able to drive in. The grounds were either puddle or mud, or both - it was by sheer luck that Jason spotted a hill when we pulled into our area Thursday night/Friday morning at 1 a.m. and forced me to help tote our gear up that hill to set up camp. The area behind our rental car - a non-economy sized car - glistened in the sun, as water will, and with my tendency towards laziness, our tent and gear would have been submerged in that, as many of our neighbors were. Thank God for sensible husbands!

The music at Coventry matched the conditions; the members of Phish mourned as we did, the end of this livelihood. Together, the fans and the band had enjoyed many years and the end wasn't just tearful on our side of the stage. I still have very strong emotions at the memory of Page cracking and breaking into a sob in the middle of Wading in the Velvet Sea. And when Mike and Trey handed their one-man trampolines out into the audience - the depth of the sadness that still hits me is kind of surprising even to me, especially given the events of this past weekend.

So. On October 1st, 2008, The Announcement Part Trois: We are coming back.

Getting tickets to the Hampton shows for March 6-8 was a little like getting your name called in the NFL draft. Good luck with that one. We did not have good luck. We were denied "mail" order (quotes around mail because it hasn't been Mail order since, like 2000?) and the TicketMaster onsale was a joke. If you didn't have 6 computers running consecutively on separate T3 lines, you didn't stand a chance. Or if you were a broker. That almost undid me.

So I failed to get tickets to Hampton and I was again, bereft. I couldn't miss the reunion show; I hadn't missed the first reunion show, how on earth could I stand to miss this one?! But, without a solution and multiple thousands of extra dollars and the lack of morals required to buy from a broker, it certainly seemed as though Hampton would go off without me. And in the meantime, Jason made other plans to help run an art show for Jim Pollock (Phish's main poster artist) for that weekend in Miami and it really seemed to be the end of the dream.

Then in January, I got a PM from a friend on a non-Phish message board who had managed to get 2 3-day passes to the shows. Turns out she and her husband couldn't make the shows and they wanted to offer me the tickets for only slightly above face before taking them to eBay.

Well, you can imagine what I did. I'm not even sure I got through the entire contents of the PM before yelling out a hearty Hell Yes!

From that point on, everything fell magically into place: Jason's art show plans in Miami fell through due to the cancellation of the Langerado Festival scheduled the same weekend as Phish's Hampton shows (you had to know that was going to be a problem!) so his anguish at possibly missing the first night (aka The Show) disappeared. Then he came up with a plan to have the art show anyway - in Hampton. Which then resulted in a free hotel room within walking distance of the venue. We found very inexpensive airline tickets to Norfolk, VA from Southwest Airlines. And my boss gave her approval for me to take off the Friday of the first show, asking only that I be back the Monday after the last show (another coworker in my 5-person department had already scheduled off for that Friday and Monday so getting even one of the days off was a gift).

By the time we had reached the seats our friends Jim & Kate saved for us Friday night, we were trembling with equal parts excitement and exhaustion. Jason had spent a hectic three weeks planning an art show from scratch and I had spent three weeks listening to his woes and trying to add insightful advice when I had it. And gotten four hours sleep the night before due to tapas and a Tea Leaf Green show with a friend. But mostly excitement.

Then the moment came: pre-show music faded quickly out, lights instantly down, the moment I had waited for for so long and been so lucky enough to get to experience when others, just as deserving or even moreso than I, were not as lucky. I had my phone out so that some of them could at least know the first song back practically when I did.

Fluffhead. Frickin' Fluffhead. NO WAY! How apropos. How long had people been clamoring for a Fluffhead and apparently, Phish had been listening. I quickly texted the name off and began a very long night of dancing. I had made a deal with myself that I wouldn't sit while Phish was onstage Friday night. Saturday and Sunday weren't part of the deal but my ass had no business cuddling up with a seat at the first show back. And I kept that promise to myself. They played a nearly two-hour first set, which sorely tested the promise, but the music selection and lack of Type II Phish jamming certainly helped. 17 songs were played in that two hours and I tried a mnemonic device to remember them all without the aid of paper or pen but eventually failed. I can remember a little bit still, though:

Fluff divided the chalkdust sample from his stash - aaaaaand that's where I decided to stop being a geek and just enjoy the moment (Fluffhead, Divided Sky, Chalkdust Torture, Sample in a Jar, Stash)

So, anyway, who knew buildings sweated? By the end of the show, the first time I ventured away from our seats up high Page-side, every surface of The Coliseum was moist, if not downright puddled. I avoided falling on my ass the entire weekend long (contributing, of course, to the BWE designation). I can't even do that in real life! Phish is magic. Okay, well lots of other people fell so maybe Phish's magic only extends to me and those with me. Fact is, I stayed upright all three nights and I count that as a resume-worthy achievement.

That first night back at the hotel, we (Jason, Jim & I) further plotted the poster show the next day. The hard work had already been done with the help of our friends Fred, Jewel, Jim M. and his wife Kate who all arrived in Hampton Thursday and could spare the time to help Jason set the stage and plan. But we still needed to plan Jim's room and so, stayed up till 3 a.m. doing so. Leaving us approximately 4 hours of sleep before we had to get up to finish setting up and run the show.

Due to the invisible partner's negligence, Jason had to take on the role of overseer of the whole show so I stepped in to assist Jim in his room. Luckily enough, the questions I fielded that day were ones I knew the answers to and we weren't in need of the particular insight that Jason or another person might have had on some of the pieces. My primary job was simply to take the money and keep the table full of prints, and I like to think I did an excellent job on the first, though I was remiss on the second (I forgot about the stash in the portfolio behind the cardboard until two hours before the show was over). Other than that, though, it was a very successful day for all the artists involved.

The show wrapped up late, as we knew it would, so we had to rush to break down Jim's room in order to get to the show on time with a little time to rest between - we had all been on our feet since 8:30 that morning. We made it in time, we found seats with some friends who had a nearly head-on view of the stage, and I enjoyed much of Saturday night's show sitting down, without any guilt. It was a great show and there were several parts I couldn't help but stand and dance, but there were several parts that made it easier for me to justify sitting down and resting my very tired feet.

Walking out of the Saturday night show, we stumbled upon a scene straight out of a nightmare: a group called the Nitrous Mafia from Philadelphia has lately become a gritty fixture at concerts and festival in the East and Midwest. They have backpack versions of nitrous tanks and can pick up and set down shop on an empty patch of earth and everywhere they land, wastoids follow. Saturday night, we chose the wrong path back and ended up walking right through a crowd of balloon-sucking shufflers, hisses of tanks and carnie calls snaking out into our path from the left and right. Jason grabbed my hand and veered us off the path and out of the uselessness and into some streetlights and we both made a mental note not to walk that way again. Wah-wahs make people dangerous.

Nearing our hotel, we met up with Jim and all expressed our great hunger so we ventured over to the Waffle House in our hotel parking lot and ended the day with some late night grease.

The next morning, we -gasp!- slept in. It was awesome. The bed in the hotel was very comfy. And yea, we did have to wake up to an alarm but not one set for two or four hours later. We managed to get a good seven to eight hours sleep and that was juuuuuuuuust fine.

We met our friends Fred & Jewel at the tavern across the street for lunch and ended up running into just about everyone else we knew, to boot. There we made our plan. Jason and Jim would go sell Jim's remaining prints in the parking lot and Fred, Jewel and I would go grab a spot in line and go for great seats. After I ran back to the room to get some necessities, we walked over.

By Sunday, the security working the lines had their job down. Friday it was pure chaos, Saturday, it was approaching some semblance of order and Sunday it was a no-brainer. We joined the left-most line and enjoyed a warm day in the shade.

Once it got close to doors opening, the order began to disintegrate a little. People from the back or people who hadn't been in line at all, attempted to move forward and circumvent those of us who had been waiting but we were ready. We heckled, jeered and outright blocked most of the rudeness coming forth. But when it came right down to it, trying to get good seats at a Phish show is no different than trying to get home in rush hour in a timely manner - you have to be out for yourself and you have to be willing to move past the slow people in order to get what you desire. I grabbed a guy I knew had been in front of me in line and told him I didn't mean to cut him off so he better keep moving but everyone else, especially the group of kids who successfully cut in ahead of us, I swept past. In this day and age, niceness is a luxury if you ever want to succeed. Sad but true.

And thanks to this attitude, both Jewel and I found perfect seats and it was up to Fred to choose which ones were more perfect. Jewel's seats won but I got the story:

Running in I saw a whole front row in the lowest seating Page-side and one large, shirtless guy guarding it. Now, chances are, he was trying to save the whole row, but it couldn't hurt to try, right? So I run down there and when he sees me, he pushes his hairy chest out and bumbles over.

"These are saved!" he bellows.

"You're saving a whole row?"

"They're saved! Move on."

"No, it's a whole row."

"I've been here since 2:30, get out!"

"Doors just opened, Dude. You obviously haven't been here since 2:30."

You can see where this is going. I'm like a little Yorkshire Terrier who thinks she's a German Shepherd; it makes life interesting. I'm not afraid of a fight because I'm not afraid of a little pain. That night, the only thing I was even slightly afraid of was getting mediocre seats when I'd had them the last two nights. That's what finally got me out of there with a "You're a fucking asshole you Goddamn prick, hope you fall headfirst - can't be any worse, right?" thrown over my shoulder loudly for good measure.

To his credit, he didn't chase me and kick my ass - the seats were that good!

So, Jewel's super spectacular seats were close enough that Jason & I could finally see the band's faces (Fred & Jewel had Rail first night so they enjoyed the seats). I do wish we'd put more effort into good seats on Friday night but at least we got them Sunday. At least I got the chance to see just how much fun the guys were having and how sincere their thanks was. All the joy we felt out in the audience, Trey and Page and Mike and Fish felt onstage.

So they opened that night with one of my favorite songs, a tongue-in-cheek older tune called Sanity and closed with one of my favorite songs, Tweezer Reprise, a call-back to the first night when they played Tweezer. By the time the last song finished, I was finished. I can't imagine having the energy I had in my younger days to go from show to show, spending all day in a car and all night at a show. Those were many, many years ago.

So, after three days and thirteen hours of sleep (4+7+2=Oy), what I hoped would be a good time but not the same as it ever was, was a BWE and I can't wait to go back. Farewell paycheck, farewell vacation days. I hope you saw enough of me in the last four-and-a-half years, Family 'cause if they ain't coming to your town, I'm probably not either.

The Boys are Back.

(my husband's video of the making of the official poster and some of the lot scene, including Pollock miracling a birthday phan)

2 Sleeps Till ...

... Hampton.

Oddly, I?ve been hoping lately that when I see Phish in two days, I will not be as impressed as I know I really will be. Meaning, I hope I am pretty Meh about the whole thing. I could surely use all the money and vacation I will continue to spend on this band for other things. Sans Phish, I could release myself from the chains of debt or afford a larger, more convenient home or go someplace fabulous every year for vacation.

I estimate, very roughly, that I have spent over $25,000 seeing this band. When you count the tickets, the plane fares, the hotels, the gas, the rental cars, the purchases in Lot ... it comes up to an insane amount of money that could have been a down payment on a condo back when I was single and prices were reasonable.

The reason Phish is back, of course, is that they want my money. Phish's return isn't quite so noble as missing the music ... they need the money. Times are tough for us all, even the rock stars. And you know what ... I'm going to end up beefing up their bank accounts because what do I need with my hard-earned money? Food? It goes right through me. A roof over my head? Why - summer's coming and I have a large tent. Why shouldn't I invest my portfolio in a prospect so promising as Phish?

I know, I?m aghast at my cynicism too. What is Debbi talking about? She Loves Phish. And I do, I really, really do. But 4 ? years ago, I said goodbye to them and hello to all the other really cool things I could do with my life. I got married in Jamaica, we bought a condo, I got a new, awesome job ? hell, I got a cat! And in that time, I have also managed to visit my family on my own schedule rather than around Phish?s tour dates in the area. When I told my parents that Phish had announced their return, I could hear in their voices a resignation: they knew they would soon be relegated to decreased visitations. What kind of daughter am I?

But let?s face it, I?m not going to get the change I kind of want because you know what I most wanted in these 4 ? years without Phish when I could have been embracing so many other non-musical things? Phish?s return.

Clearly, I am my own worst enemy.

2 More Days!

Me Music Part II

Having had my eyes opened by The Dead and how much fun really great, live music can be, the next summer I joined my friends in getting tickets to see the Jamband heir apparent, Phish for one show at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. We had all been listening to Phish for a few years thanks to the intriguing cover art on Rift, but most of us hadn?t yet seen them live and I wanted to have an experience like the one I?d had with the Dead at Soldier Field.

Alpine Valley is a ski slope in the winter and the trek between the parking lot and pavilion seats is steep ? down into the show, back up at the end when your energy has been completely drained from dancing through two sets. My friend and I were just leaving the beer platform at the border of lawn and pavilion seating when the band took the stage, and I have the most wonderfully vivid memories of taking long, smooth strides down the steep slope to our seats to the beginning notes of My Friend, My Friend.

At the end of the night, after having had the single best time to that point in my life, I realized that the Grateful Dead was just a very wonderful warm-up act for me. I came home from the concert completely rejuvenated and ready to hop on tour.

At the time, I lived in a three-bedroom with three friends from college, one of whom has a fascination with all things shaman. He had a set of animal medicine cards and profiled each of us with them, much as a Tarot reader profiles a client.

I don?t recall each of the individual animals that made up my profile ? perhaps *pt* does? ? but the reading as a whole was pretty spot-on in many ways and my totem animal, the Lizard, was damn accurate for who I was at that time. The card reads as such:

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Lizard sat lolling in the shadow of a big rock, shading himself from the desert sun. Snake crawled by, looking for some shadow to coil up in and rest. Snake watched Lizard for awhile as Lizard's eyeballs went side to side behind his enormous closed lids. Snake hissed to get Lizard's attention. Slowly Lizard's dreaming eyes opened and he saw Snake.
"Snake! You scared me! What do you want?" Lizard cried.
Snake spit his answer from his forked tongue. "Lizard, you are always getting the best shadow spots in the heat of the day. This is the only big rock for miles. Why don't you share your shade with me?"
Lizard thought for a moment, then agreed. "Snake, you can share my shade spot, but you have to go to the other side of the rock and you must promise not to interrupt me."
Snake was getting annoyed. He hissed, "How could I bother you Lizard? All you are doing is sleeping."
Lizard smiled knowingly. "Oh Snake, you are such a silly serpent. I'm not sleeping. I'm dreaming."
Snake wanted to know what the difference was, so Lizard explained. "Dreaming is going into the future, Snake. I go to where future lives. You see, that is why I know you won't eat me today. I dreamed you and I know you're full of mouse."
Snake was taken aback. "Why Lizard, you're exactly right. I wondered why you said you would share your rock."
Lizard laughed to himself. "Snake," he said, "you are looking for shade and I am looking for shadow. Shadow is where the dreams live."
Lizard medicine is the shadow side of reality where your dreams are reviewed before you decide to manifest them physically. Lizard could have created getting eaten by Snake if he had so desired.

Lizard is the medicine of dreamers. Whether dreamers smoke you or dream you, dreamers can always help you see the shadow. This shadow can be your fears, your hopes, or the very thing you are resisting, but it is always following you around like an obedient dog.
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Not long after the Phish concert at Alpine Valley, during the days of my roommate T blasting Phish everyday for a couple of hours after work, I first heard the song The Lizards. This was one of the songs comprising Gamehenge, a rock epic written by the lead guitarist for his college thesis.

Not surprisingly, given the elevated levels of my ego, I quickly adopted this song as My Song. Of course, in doing so, I had to ignore lines such as:

The Lizards were a race of people
Practically extinct from doing things
Smart people don?t do

Which isn?t at all difficult to do when the band stops singing and starts into the melody of the last third of the song. Like Harry Hood, like Divided Sky, like so many other songs they have written that don?t depend on the 3-refrain formula, the melody makes the entire song. Whereas the Dead excelled in poetry, Trey Anastasio?s gift is clearly in the notes between the poetry.

I have the most amazing time behind closed eyes at those moments.

The song is one of the rarer songs to catch at a show but I have lucked out and caught it twice, once at a show I brought my Mom to, which I thought was very nice of them. While I don?t feel much like a Lizard anymore, I still feel like the song is My Song and if they were to bust it out at the upcoming Hampton shows next weekend (starting a week from today EEEEEEEEEEEE), I would count myself even luckier than I already am.

Me Music Part I

I don't know if this is something unique to me and my overwhelming narcissism or if most people think about themselves this much, but I have a tendency to adopt songs that speak to me, that mean Me to me. They are my identity songs.

Throughout high school and into college, my identity pretty much escaped me. I adopted songs but they merely defined the amorphous shadow that teenagers still in flux tend to be. From Bruce Springsteen to The Beatles to Depeche Mode, I found plenty of songs I identified with, but no songs that necessarily identified me.

Once my identity really started to solidify and I looked more and more like the person I have eventually become, a completely different kind of music than I had previously enjoyed stepped forward and actually has taken quite a predominant role in molding my adulthood. Thus, no surprise, many of the songs of this genre have become the music I want to walk down the street to.

If I had to choose one definitive action that turned my ears to this other sound, I would have to choose my ill-fated membership to Columbia Records. Don't laugh, this is real, and you know you had the same ill-fated membership!

After college, I moved back to San Francisco and in with my Mom. Most of my college friends had moved on to Chicago but I wanted to finally live in San Francisco as a sentient being, having been whisked away to Tulsa, OK in the middle of the night when I was a mere four months old. Okay, maybe whisked is a little dramatic and perhaps it was in broad daylight, but the fact of the matter is, my whole childhood in Tulsa was spent yearning to be in San Francisco. And after college, I had my chance and I took it.

I quickly became seduced by repeated tear-outs in magazines and newspapers offering 13 CDs for a penny. A Penny! Good lord, do you KNOW how valuable an offer that is?! I was on my own (separated from my peers) and bereft of their combined music collections and had spent my teenage years becoming dulled to my Mom's music collection. God damn, I needed fresh blood! So I sent in the card with 13 CDs checked off and anxiously awaited the new infusion of tunes.

When choosing my 13 CDs, I ran out of must-haves around #10 and began just picking things that seemed like they might have promise. Deadicated: A Tribute to the Grateful Dead was one such choice. I hadn't been a Grateful Dead fan at all; I strongly dislike the song Truckin' which of course is one of the few Dead songs that made it to radio. I was generally meh about Touch of Grey when I saw the video on MTV. I had nothing really pulling me toward the Dead other than a need to fill out my 13 CDs for a penny, so I checked it off.

Most of the CDs I received in that shipment are gone now: given away or traded for better ones. Deadicated, The Smiths' Greatest Hits and the Indigo Girls' self-titled album are the only three that remain. Oddly enough, The Dead and The Girls are two that were throw-away choices for me - I really wanted The Smiths' album because it reminded me of high school.

Turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire Deadicated CD and gained a healthy new respect for the band. The one song that stood out to me, the one I fell in love with before ever even hearing The Dead sing it, is Cassidy. The poetry in Cassidy simply knocks me over.

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I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream
I can tell by the mark he left you were in his dream
Oh, child of countless trees
Oh, child of boundless seas
What you are and what you're meant to be
Speaks his name, though you were born to be
Born to me, Cassidy

Lost now on a country mile in his Cadillac
I can tell by the way you smile he is rolling back
Come wash the night time clean
Come grow the scorched ground green
Blow the horn and tap the tambourine
Close the gap on the dark years in between
You and me, Cassidy

Quick beats of an icy heart
Catch-cold draws a coffin cart
There he goes and now here she starts
Hear her cry

Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly

Faring you well now
Let your life proceed by its own design
Nothing can tell now
Let your words be yours, I'm done with mine

Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly

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The song is about Neal Cassady who was on his way out of this world ("There he goes...") and Cassidy Law, the newborn daughter of one of the Merry Pranksters, on her way in ("...and now here she starts") and is absolutely brilliant poetry that just makes my head and heart soar like the seabirds.

The irony is, of course, that this throw-away CD choice put a musical fork in the road that I have followed wholeheartedly ever since. Two months after I moved to Chicago, after two years in San Francisco (I whisked myself away, this time), I went to my first Dead concert: 7/9/1995. When tickets went on sale, I hadn't yet found a job and the money I'd moved out there with was dwindling away much faster than I had expected, so of course I made the extremely logical decision to buy a ticket and join my friend who had jobs. I'm nothing if not logical.

After the amazing concert, I experienced a flood of understanding that in this universe music would be enormously significant to me and that this band was The One and I should endeavor to see them as much as humanly and financially possible. Unfortunately, my first Dead show was the last Dead show with Jerry. I had a job by this point, less than a month later, and I remember leaving for the day and walking home crying to So Many Roads playing on repeat.

I have only heard Cassidy live one time, despite the number of Dead and Dead side project shows I've seen. For our wedding party, my husband asked the two guitarists/singers entertaining everyone if they would learn to play Cassidy for me. They played a wonderful rendition that brought happy tears to my eyes and loved the song so much, they continued to play it for themselves at future shows.

(to be continued ...)