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First off, I told a friend that Sam and I had gone to see Phish and he asked me if we had caught anything so, no, we did not go fishing. We went to see the band, Phish, at Climate Pledge Arena.
Phish fits solidly in a sub-category of rock music that we’ll call the jam band. Jam bands produce studio albums like any other artist but when they perform the songs live in concert they tend to use the studio version of the song as a loose framework for the live performance with extended instrumental solos and whatnot interspersed. Sometimes the songs run together and they might combine a couple of different songs into an extended jam. Phish doesn’t normally have an opening band and their shows are typically around the three hour mark, with an intermission in the middle. Whereas most artists tend to stick to the same setlist for every show with minimal variation, you’ll never hear Phish play the same song two nights in a row. That kind of answers why Sam and I went to see them both nights they played in Seattle. There were effectively four sets of music spread over the two nights with no repeated songs. I’d say the vast majority of the audience went to both nights.
Now, in other comments I’ve said that I really appreciate songwriters whose lyrics tell a story. Phish certainly has some songs that fit that description but if we’re being honest, at least from my perspective, most Phish lyrics tend to be a sort of word salad as if they just put a bunch of meaningless words together that sound kind of cool. So, for example, the full lyrics to the song “Piper” are, “Piper, piper, the red, red worm. woke last night to the sound of the storm. her words were the words I sailed upon.”. That’s the song in it’s entirety. There’s not much there but Phish can turn it into a 15 minute jam session when they play it live, the vast majority of which is instrumental (obviously). I suppose if you want to find meaning in the lyrics then that’s fine but I imagine Phish cares more about the music itself than whether the lyrics have any meaning.
The show was livestreamed and Sam was reading some of the comments as the show progressed and one comment was something along the lines of “we’ve reached the point where the light show is better than the band”. It’s a funny comment but not entirely untrue. At this point the sound and lighting technicians are very much a part of the band and for groups like Phish are integral to the performance. In the case of Phish there are no pyrotechnics or anything but the lighting is endlessly imaginative. Thousands of led’s on panels that are endlessly moving and transforming into different colors and shapes. This little clip from Saturday night is just a sample of one song. The whole show was like this. It’s shocking how far lighting has progressed in just the last ten or fifteen years. It’s a bit surprising to me that they can put on this kind of thing and still take home any money.
Sometimes the people you meet make or break an experience. This was especially true on Friday night. It’s no secret that many of the people at these shows may be enjoying a bit more than the music alone. On Friday night we were sitting next to a group of 8-10 people who were together who most definitely fit into this category.
There’s an interesting series on Netflix about psychedelic substances and how up until the war on drugs started in the 70’s, LSD, psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and other certain drugs with psychoactive properties had been undergoing research studies for their ability to help people with things such as PTSD. In the 50’s and 60’s even the US military was conducting experiments with LSD, with some pretty amusing footage to prove it. This research was all shut down starting with the Nixon administration due to the proliferation of the drugs being used outside of clinical settings with corresponding mounting protests against the Vietnam war which Nixon in part blamed on drug usage, at least that’s the position taken in the Netflix series, and it certainly seems reasonable on some level. Anyway, that research is starting again and is legal now in some places. The research is carefully done in a manner where patients are closely monitored in protected surroundings though, which is quite different from a concert with 17,000 strangers who have no interest in your wellbeing, but people are people. You get where this is going.
Anyway, before the concert started I overheard the group talking about mushrooms and struck up a conversation with one of them. It turns out most of them had come up from Eugene and one of this guy’s relatives had been a consultant on one of the Netflix shows. They are growing their own mushrooms and apparently it’s no easy task. You have to have the perfect soil, humidity, light and so on. Their air filter alone cost over $1,500. They then dry and grind the mushrooms and put the powder into capsules.
At this point I was interested to see the effects on the different individuals so at the first intermission we talked to one guy and he said he was having a great experience. I was a bit surprised in that if I hadn’t known he had taken mushrooms I would have never suspected. He was clear and coherent. That was certainly not the case for all of them. They kept switching seats with each other and in the second half of the show I ended up next to a guy who acted more like I expected. This gentleman became fascinated by my beard and called me the wizard. He kept getting closer to me and finally was overcome with the urge to reach over and flick my beard. Repeatedly. For the next half hour or so, much to Sam’s amusement. I finally figured out that he was seeing some sort of spores or colors coming out of my beard. He was in love with the world and at least had the decency to ask me if he could give me a hug.
Now, I could have gotten upset or indignant and told him to knock it off or switch seats or something. Maybe it would have turned from him calling me a wizard into a devil, I don’t know. Frankly though, at this point, being clear headed, I’d rather take some responsibility for these guys. A couple of them didn’t look so good and although I was sure they would be fine eventually I didn’t want anything happening to them while they were around me. I asked my good friend, the finder of wizards, if his friends were ok and he said yes, but he was clearly in no condition to make that call so I gently asked him to confirm that with them and they all agreed they were fine (despite the fact a couple of them looked like they might throw up at any minute). Luckily by the end of the show they all were starting to behave a bit more normally but I still sincerely hope an Uber was in their future and they weren’t intending to drive.
The next night was considerably more mundane from the human interest standpoint. I’m not sure what it was but glow sticks seemed to be a thing at both shows. Another reddit comment remarked that it might be called Climate Pledge Arena but based on the number of glow sticks being tossed around, the shows certainly were anything but carbon neutral. People in the upper decks periodically would take handfuls of glow sticks and toss them down onto the lower levels. Thousands of glow sticks. A gal in the row in front of us spent most of the show tinkering with glow sticks and an assortment of different connectors creating glow stick flowers, heart shaped glasses (which she then proceeded to lose one of the arms to but nevertheless still kept trying to wear them off and on the entire show) and bracelets. Why? IDK.
So, there you have it. Observing people is endlessly fascinating to me and I could go on about how I view all this behavior as a type of escapism from everyday life and in some fashion ultimately an attempt to fill a hole in the soul left by a lack of a relationship with their Creator, but for now I’ll leave it as an entertaining couple of evenings.
