PHAREWELL MY PHRIEND

SUPERDEE'S PHISH PHINALE: BLOWIN' OFF SOME STEAM
Words and photos by SuperDee

Coventry, Vermont

It's over a week after Coventry and it's still quite painful to listen to my favorite band. I have had the MP3s downloaded for days now and have finally mustered up the courage to run through the six sets of the phinal Phish days in Vermont and tell you all my thoughts on the subject. Still fighting the tears and anxiety attacks, in searching for one word to sum up how I feel, it would have to be bittersweet.

Before we begin to retell the end, let's go back about 20 years to that little one-roomed cabin in West Charleston, Vermont, where a snot-nosed Trey spent a summer writing music for his new band called Phish. Was he just some crazy kid who isolated himself with only his dog in the middle of nowhere? At the time, was he escaping some reality that didn't quite fit with the world that he created in his mind? (Gamehendge IS a state of mind, after all.) Perhaps he saw a vision of 65,000 people dancing in a field in the next town over chanting the words from his song. Maybe he saw the beginning and then end right there in that cabin knowing that whatever comes and goes in life, to never have regrets.

Phish in the Hampton Muthaship singing "All of These Dreams"

"Tears of a Clown" at Great Woods with guest from audience

Phast phorward to the pharewell tour of two-thousand phour (sorry - getting a bit "ph" happy here). It was not a dead man's walk. I ventured to Hampton and the two shows at Great Woods before trekking up to the farmland in Vermont. For the most part, until the final show day in Vermont, the boys looked like they were having a blast. The Hampton show was a bit strange with the sets seemingly flip-flopped - the first set a five song heavy rager and the second set many mellow songs - and the general feeling was somber and dark. Both Great Woods shows had a wonderful spirit with lots of fun and games - bringing that girl on stage for "Tears of a Clown," the last vacuum solo ever with a vote about whether Fishman song makes or breaks a show - and great sets including unsuspectingly the last "Divided Sky," "Tweezer," and "2001." While this last run featured a parade of "last evers," there were a lot of firsts too: Trey saying "Play it Cactus" instead of "Play it Leo" in "Yamar" (and Mike proceeding to drop bombs at the call), the barrage of non-musical guests pulled out on stage at Coventry (the techs, Paluska, the Trey and Mike YOUR MOM jam).

Nice work, Kuroda!

The most amazing musical "first" I saw the band do this week was the duets between Mike and Trey. This was going on all week. Mike and Trey would end up practically nose-to-nose, eyes locked, just playing around each other's notes like young boys. It was something new but there was a nostalgic quality to it as I imagined the two talented, young, and weird guys from years ago in a small room enjoying the sounds that were coming out of each other. Speaking of Mike, I hear rumors of a WWMD [What Will Mike Do] club forming. I digress…

Coventry corn

Traveling along through the beautiful Northeast Kingdom of Vermont… Is there a more peaceful place in this universe? As a young super hero, I spent many a winter vacation in the softly rolling mountains and every time I crossed state lines, breathing was a little easier, life a bit slower, and the air somewhat magical. This mellow Vermont vibe was the perfect backdrop for the insanity that people went through to get into the festival. You've heard the stories: 15, 20, 39(!) hours of traffic with two kids in the car, huge farm tractors towing vehicles into the mud one-by-one, hurricanes and storms along the East Coast. One of the most inspiring things I saw was driving out of the festival on Monday morning and seeing Highway 91 littered with cars neatly parked on the grass shoulders and medians. Just what does one do when Phish gets on the radio and says that they are so sorry but they just cannot allow any more cars into the venue? Well, you get out of your car, put on those walkin' boots, and get yer ass to the show! The band was so touched by this and repeatedly thanked the hikers.

Ok, is it time to talk about the music yet? Botched riffs, wrong keys, missed lyrics, yes. Overrated? You're not gonna make me fall for that one again, bug! The beginning of "Reba" was pretty darn shaky, wasn't it? And oh how they screwed up that "Glide." Get this… WHO CARES?! What we witnessed was four men totally exposed which made the music we were hearing so real.

Everything was just perfect from where I was standing (and sinking in mud). Man, I even developed a relationship with the song "Friday." They were playing the music that was already there. In the recent Trey interview in Guitar World (which I recommend everyone read - especially those expecting a reunion tour in 5 years), Trey was describing the "sound of life" and how listening to that sound and playing it will cause people to respond because they are hearing it too. Trey tells GW, "And when I'm playing onstage, I find myself looking out, not usually into people's faces, but over their heads and up. And the endless possibilities, the depth of it all, occasionally will come to you." I can only imagine what the space above 65,000 heads at the concert field on these final days was like and what possibilities were made available.

Hood blimp at Great Woods

There was some absolute face-melting sickness too. In true Phestival style, jams were drawn out but this time it felt more like prolonging, as if they were trying to hard code each song into our souls for all time. Jam highlights for me would have to be the ones out of "Stash," "Drowned," "Down With Disease," and "Split Open and Melt." Difficult goodbyes were "David Bowie," "Taste," and "Mike's/Groove. Especially difficult was saying goodbye to "Harry Hood," "Reba," and "Slave to the Traffic Light." These songs are the musical equivalent of true love for me and to have them ripped away, never again to be experienced right there in the moment… well words cannot describe how disheartening that is. These songs became our friends through the years and tours; familiar yet unique and evolving every time we heard them.

From my words you may think I'm coming from a gloomy place but in truth, I really am hopeful and optimistic for the future. As I said in my high school yearbook when I was feeling sad and scared about leaving my friends on Long Island for the mysterious cornfields of Indiana, every end brings a new beginning. The post-Phish world will be exciting and fun and adventurous and nurturing. It will be all that Phish was because we learned how to live a certain way: not taking life too seriously while placing value on truly important intangible matters and doing it all with creative intelligence. We learned how to take care of our shoes as well as our phellow phriend. We learned how to surrender to the flow and live while we're young (even when we're getting older). We learned that you can live under the mainstream radar and still have a profound effect on this planet and its creatures. Would we have learned all of this without Phish? Perhaps. But the soundtrack would not have been nearly as kick-ass as it has been.

So, fine, life will move on after Phish. Life is great! There is fantastic music popping out of every small town and big city in the country. Time, money, and energy are now freed up for travel, family, and tons of other stuff that I don't know about yet. I'm happy for Trey, Mike, Page, and Jon that they were lucky enough to be in the center of our collective experience together through the years. I'm happy they got to say goodbye the way they wanted to and that they always had the upper hand in the decisions for their careers. I'm happy that they still have music in them and we will absolutely see them all again.

Yet still, when that "Curtain" came down, I closed my eyes and wished for just one more song…

SuperDee
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