The Time I Almost Saw Phish at Madison Square Garden

 The strangest men used to hit on me when I worked retail in New York City. Always some crusty weirdo in a Dead & Co tee shirt buying used Talking Heads concert tees that weren’t even vintage, trying to chat me up about a good place to eat that’s close to Brooklyn Steel, of all places. These are men who have no problems spending six hours in a car to see a band with a dumb name play at the Fillmore. Ravers like me don’t do that shit. We travel for music, don’t get me wrong, but the festival scene is more about getting laid and doing drugs than it is about seeing a particular DJ. Besides, there’s a perfectly good, disgusting health-hazard of a venue right around the corner from my apartment where I can dance for 12 hours. Sit in a car for what?

None of these men are my particular flavor, but a good time is a good time all the same. Who am I to judge? People at these shows find enjoyment in lining up outside for an hour before the opener comes out to get posters, and they chat amongst themselves during what they call “set break,” because I’m told playing bass for that long is tiring. I find this oddly unsettling. How anyone expects to fall in love without music blaring in the background all throughout the night is a foreign concept to me. 12 hours in a car to see a mediocre jam band play for two hours can be tolerable, but only if you’re trying to get something out of it in the end. I’m confused about what that end is, because I was promised it would be different than the one I got. 

Photo taken from Reddit (I don't really know it's a meme I found long ago)

I’m told there’s a deep connection amongst jam band fans, whether you listen to Pigeons Playing Ping Pong or follow around the Disco Biscuits, or will pay thousands of dollars to see a sold out Phish show, there’s a sense of loyalty amongst the crowd. They will live and die for the Dead and for all the fans who come with it. Everyone at the spot where a guitar is involved are looking for something more serious than a quick fuck in the trenches of a techno club. They want a good moment to last forever, so they’re no good at saying goodbye. They return to the same venue, follow the same bands who play the same songs they always do, and they do the same drugs they always have with the crowd they’ve known since they started listening to Steeley Dan in college. None of those boys know when to leave well enough alone. There’s an everlasting love involved, but the love was never directed towards me no matter how hard I tried. There’s too much history in the jam band scene, and not a lot of room for me. 

I once found myself in a car to Pittsburgh from New York City to see Goose one night. I tolerated the whole kit and caboodle that comes with traveling to see a show amongst a crowd that isn’t my own because I wanted to find that everlasting love the guy I was seeing at the time told me was abundant in the scene. I’m used to short little bursts of ecstasy from dance music. I don’t put on a thong bikini that says sexy bitch so I can stand around waiting for some sort of action to happen. I do it because I want to party, to makeout with strangers, go home with them, wake up in a hotel I don’t remember going back to, and do it all again the next night because I like chasing highs I can’t recreate, going home with men I can’t date because they live in a different state, listening to sets I’ll never get to hear again because DJ’s don’t play songs, they make music that fits with the vibe of the crowd, and that changes every night even if the real party people have been there for a full 24 hours. Dance music is temporary. A night at the club can stretch until morning, but the crowd comes and goes in waves. You have to come to terms with saying goodbye when you’re a raver. 

Photo taken by my Ultra Miami guy of the night ;)

I got my hopes up going to that show because I thought it meant I’ve finally found the last stop, a place where I could breathe and rest and wouldn’t have to run to the next set at a different club because I got kicked out of the one I was at earlier in the night. I figured the guy I was seeing and I would keep it going, find that deep connection everyone who listens to Phish knows of when they’re camped out at Bonnaroo. I was enthralled by the amount of tears I saw being shed during a song that said “you say it looks like rain today but all I see is sunshine.” Humans, naturally, tend to trap themselves in a prison of their own making, and it dawned on me while drinking tea in my living room, thinking back to that concert, where everyone was crying and I was waiting for the crowd to disperse so I could smoke a cigarette, there’s a part of myself I must not really like if I’m doing things like sitting in a car waiting for this guy I’m fucking to fall in love with me, waiting for the music to come back on, waiting for the one lyric during a 10 minute song that might make me cry, too. This isn’t the club, we’re not just dancing, we’re trying to fall in love. Those tears were being shed for the one girl they lost their hold on who listens to Dogs in a Pile. Or maybe they were crying because they found that place I was looking for all along. Who am I to say? I can’t even tolerate one song by the Grateful Dead. 

My days at the club are numbered, but my days riding around in a car listening to Steeley Dan on the way to a show I don’t belong at seem to multiply. I keep falling for the wrong guy. Coming back from that awful show in Pittsburgh, I gave him head while I was driving, but I didn’t get a kiss goodbye. Want to go to another show at Webster Hall next week? He asked. Typical. Those heart breaking boys never know how to make it end the way I need it to. 

The last straw? When that guy I spent all that time on, waited patiently for months for, said Phish was coming to Madison Square Garden. I said that we should go. He said he’d happily go as long as I was buying. I wish I listened to what he was really saying. I would be the one to pay the price of trying to fall in love at a Phish show.