Gone Phishin'

I'm not even going to acknowledge how I've been absent for entirely too long.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about how I went to see Phish this weekend.

As I've mentioned before, I am not a Phish Phan. Jamie is and because of this I go with him to Phish shows (I've now been to four, plus a Trey show). Why? Because I don't particularly mind Phish, and Jamie comes with me to all sorts of stuff I'm sure he would prefer not to. So, Saturday and Sunday night were spent at Phish.

Here's the thing at Phish, nothing happens very quickly.

The tickets said the shows (both nights) started at 7:30, which of course really means 8:15ish. I know that, everyone should know that, but it didn't matter. We had to be in the lot by 4 (which was a compromise since the lots opened at 3:30). So what do you do for 4+ hours in a parking lot waiting for a show to start? I don't know.

What I did, was I did a lot of people watching.

A lot.

So much.

More than anyone could ever want to do.

But, boy was it a lot of fun.

I saw old people, young people, fat people, naked people, people drinking, people doing drugs, people selling drugs, people looking for drugs, people wanting to buy tickets, people wanting to sell me tickets, weird people, normal people, sober people, the opposite of sober people, dogs, babies, people selling clothes, people selling pictures, people selling t-shirts, people selling grilled cheese sandwiches, and people selling pipes.

There was so much people watching.

So, eventually we get to get up from our tailgating home and go into the show. Which is nice because we have seats. Except that no one sits down at a Phish show.

Here's the thing about going to concerts. I like to hear songs that I know. Not the whole show, but every few songs it's nice to hear something that sounds familiar. At these shows, for me anyway, I didn't know a single song, save for a couple of covers and one of the five Phish songs I actually do know.

But that was OK because the crowd was so electric that it didn't matter. Plus, you can still people watch from standing in front of your seat.

I saw a guy pass out and the fire rescue team had to come get him. I was scared for him but he probably had too much fun in the lot beforehand. It's one of those cases when you expect to see a kid passed out from making stupid decisions. This guy maybe made stupid decisions too, but he was an older, somewhat well dressed dude.

Everyone is entitled to having too much fun at a Phish show.

Then something really weird happened. Phish covered a Rage Against the Machine song. I only know it was RATM because the song is on Guitar Hero. This got me thinking, how many other people only know this song because of Guitar Hero? Probably a lot.

Going home was fun too, because the lot was still alive with energy. Apparently all those people that couldn't find someone to sell them tickets just hung out in the lot during the show keeping the party going.

Also, Phish had played North Carolina before coming to Atlanta so all these people had the super, illegal, kind of fireworks you can only get from leaving the state of Georgia. So there were all these fireworks going off, and they were being shot up from every direction and it looked super cool. It was very abstract and somewhat chaotic, but in those moments, it made all the sense in the world.

I'm not going to say that I won't ever go to a Phish show again, I probably won't do two shows in a row though.

I just hope Jamie is ready for two very loud, very rockin nights in November with The Black Crowes.