Here’s the sum up…A spur of the moment drive through the Mojave… Row upon row of Joshua trees and constant thoughts of that scene from The Good the Bad and the Ugly where Blondie is left in the desert by Tuco. What would I do? Find a way to cut open one of those cacti and drink the contents? Set up a trap to ensnare a jackrabbit? Fashion a parasol out of the bones, skin, and spiny remnants to shield my skin from the hellacious beating of the sun? We’re not so far removed from the brutality of nature as we would like to think. Shielded by the glass and steel of my trusty steed, I hurled through the high desert without danger, but that endless rocky terrain and total lack of water gave me adequate reason to ponder as I cracked open another ice cold Spindrift (lemon flavor) and turned up the juice on my latest musical obsession-Electriclarryland (1996) by the Butthole Surfers.

Reintroducing myself to Phish has been one of life’s little joys as of late. Fresh out of high school, and into my early twenties, I went to Phish concerts, many of them large festivals where I camped out in a tent with my homies and did business in a porto-potty, the latter of which became one reason why I stopped going to said festivals. Yes, sitting, hungover, in one of these plastic bacteria hives reeking of hundreds of other people’s excrement and whatever else in the middle of a summer heat wave, I decided I no longer wanted to do it. Although I enjoyed Phish’s music, I did not enjoy the scene itself. You know the drill here, lots of dirty hippie types, lost souls with nothing else to do after the death of Jerry. Young people panhandling for gas to put into their Range Rovers. None of these people ever did me any wrong, I just refused to equate myself with them, these wealthy kids with dreadlocks who had a way out and didn’t have a real job. It’s possible I was projecting some sort of self disgust onto them or that I just thought they smelled bad. But yes, maybe I secretly wanted to tour the country with Phish and never have to worry about money because I had a trust fund safety net.

When I think about Phish, there will always be a simultaneous pairing with my best friend and kindred spirit, Sean, who has been following the band since high school. Reconnecting with him was the primary reason I drove to Vegas as I hadn’t seen him since 2022. This is the great thing about seeing one of the oldest and bestest of pals after four years–It’s like we hung out just yesterday. That’s the best thing about the old ones, time does actually stand still in that moment even though when you look at each other after said time and you see a couple of old farts and not the smirky smart alecks of yesteryear. Less hair in some places, more hair in others. Our current lives, although completely different, still aligned on the things that mattered except a recent bomb he dropped where that he thought Episode 8 was better than Empire which is the ridiculous drivel of a moron with his head completely up his ass.

And this was a big part of the trip as well. Not feeling old, because I don’t, but seeing and cataloguing the passage of time, wondering what the hell happened and how it all happened so fast.

The Phish shows no longer include the contingent of grossness, or at least this show at the Sphere did not. Here’s an olfactory memory I can still conjure–the stink of body odor undercut by patchouli. The baked in scent of my hometown, Burlington, VT. Nope, this crowd was firmly middle class and above. Congenial and well behaved. Groomed, showered. Although Vegas is a swelter of trash and the constant corporate bombardment hinging upon the broken promise of the American Dream and the alcohol fueled idea of hitting it big, the Sphere itself was quite classy, clean, and the lines for the bathrooms non-existent.

This all was secondary, however, as I just wanted to hang out with Sean and feel like reliving some of the old times before children and multiple responsibilities weighed on me. You gotta let it hang out every once in a while or you’ll go mad like Jack at The Stanley Hotel.

When the music kicked on there was a transportation of body and soul. I had come down with a decent case of Enochlophobia back in 2007, or so I thought, at a Calexico concert in a packed bar in New York City back in the day and I remember being very anxious at a Patriot’s game in 2010, but I think it had more to do with being annoyed at the people around me rather than a fear of crowds. Who knows? At any rate, none of this factored into this recent foray. The lines to get in were easy, our seats were fine, everyone around us was tolerable to the point of almost not being there. The lights came down, the crowd cheered, the music started with a tune called “46 Days” which I had never heard in my life. I was unaware of any of their music past the album Farmhouse (2000).

And in the midst of the swirling of music and light in a weed and alcohol induced daze there was clarity. The first intense reaction was holy shit I don’t have a lot of this kind of fun in my life anymore and wish I did. The second was of Joanna. When I closed my eyes, she was there. Dancing along with me. Her hair and body whipping around in a siren’s serpentine dance. Although she would never attend a Phish show in a millions years or longer, she was there alongside me. My other half. My conscience and antagonist, my partner in crime and lover, the mother of my children.

In that haze of smoke and potent positive musical vibes, a healing process began. That of my own compunctions and hesitations. Mother Ayahuasca had reached her strict hand down to offer me a trip into truth. I had allowed the grumpy side of my personality to grab hold for too long, I taken my family for granted. Opportunities to get better were in front of me.

When I returned home the first thing I wanted was to hug all of them, even my annoying third wheel of a sister in law. And I did, except for her. There really is nothing like coming home to your kids who are happy to see you. This is what those who choose (for good reason) not to have hellspawn miss out on in life, that, and loving someone more than yourself. Something so precious you would die for.

So what is this human obsession with shows? With movies, music venues, sports? Bill Buford goes into some depth on the subject in his book, Among the Thugs, where he dissects all of this in the realm of Football Hooligans in England. To paraphrase his text after not having read it for a couple of decades, we, as humans, require the crowd, we get caught up in the crowd and en mass, we flow with it despite our best efforts to sometimes either avoid it or not fall into its slipstream. Without we become caught in the grip of loneliness and insanity but there is also madness in going too hard with the flow. The lesson is somewhere in the middle where it always is…

Your AI generated image for this post, #445, 4/30/26

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