GONE PHISHIN': Blogging will be unusually light through Monday because I'm leaving soon to head up to Maine for IT, the two-day music festival being put on by the band "IT." I may bring my laptop and attempt some WiFi blogging, but that's iffy.
It's funny, that I keep going to these Phish shows. I like their music, but I wouldn't put them among my 40 favorite bands. I'm far from a countercultural character of any kind; I don't have a beard, I practice a decidely non-leftist politics, own not a single tie-dyed T-shirt, don't secretly wish I'd grown up the '60s, and don't really like to do drugs. I'm 25, which will likely put me in the oldest 10% of the crowd at IT; I'm also gainfully employed, and have never quit high school, college, or a job in order to follow Phish on tour.
So what brings this unlikely member into the Phish cult? I think it's that Phish shows are a true community experience, the sort of thing that bonds people together in the way few other current cultural phenomena are able- and I'm heading up there with three close friends, all of whom I've seen Phish with before. The previous Phish festival I went to, at Big Cypress in Florida in 1999, took place just a few months after the Woodstock '99 debacle, and was marred by none of the violence or rioting of its predecessor. Not to mention, Phish plays the sort of mellow music that's condusive to 70,000 people, together in a field, just chilling out.
This weekend may very well be my last-ever Phish show- I'm getting a little old for it, and besides, I find it sort of hard to justify that I've seen Phish five times in my life and Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan only once each. But I'm very much looking forward to a hell of a good time up in Maine with the rest of Phish Nation. If anyone reading this is planning on heading up, shoot me an e-mail; plans are already in the works for a mini-Blogger Bash.