So yeah, I was saying.....man that was a great experience. Even though it took 25 hours in the car to get there, and it was all muddy, and you don't even want to go near the "bathroom facilities," I would drop everything and go again if I had the opportunity.
We got in the gates at 6:30 am on Saturday. We were lucky because we took little county roads through Vermont instead of the interstate 91, which EVERYONE took - and got backed up 50 miles in traffic. A lot of people were turned away. It was so slow getting in. The ground was so muddy that they had to have tractors tow cars through the mud. People were getting stuck all over the place, even trucks & SUVs. Also, they only had one entrance open, so 70,000 people had to all get in through the same door. (Actually other roads were open, but no one knew about them, one of my friends found one by accident and his total travel time was only 3 hours!!) When we finally got in, we pulled into the nearest camp area and drove up a little hill..this was a smart move because with all the rain and mud, high ground is going to be the driest place. We set up our tents (2 of them) and had a tarp over both of them, with a table and chairs underneath. It was a really nice set-up. Once we were set up, we cooked some food, met up with some friends, some of us took naps - all in preparation for the big show that was supposed to start at 5.
It really went on around 6 or 6:30, and Phish opened with
Walls of the Cave, a newer song off of Round Room and one of the best songs on that album. A great song to kick off the festival with! That went into
Runaway Jim, an old classic that everyone loved, and then into
Gotta Jibboo, another great song. Then the band stopped playing for a few seconds, and I was listening for what was coming next, when lo and behold I hear the beautiful opening arpeggios of
You Enjoy Myself! They rocked this one!! In the middle of the jam part, Trey and Mike got onto trampolines and were doing this synchronized jumping dance on stage!! LOL it was great! In that set they also played
Axilla, which I'd been dying to hear live,
Fire, an awesome Hendrix cover, and
Run Like An Antelope, one of my favorite Phish songs.....they really jammed this one out, it had a reggae feel for some parts, and lyricist Tom Marshall came out to "sing" the lines to the song, the first lyrics he ever wrote for the band. The next set opened with
AC/DC Bag, which was phenomenal. The jam part contained some Chalkdust Torture teases, and I remember drawing exclamation points next to the song name on my setlist pad because I was loving the song so much!! We also got a rare treat in
Halley's Comet, which is one of my favorite Phish songs and one of the rarest played songs also. That was followed by
Ya Mar, a fan favorite reggae cover, where Mike had the coolest bass solo I've ever heard! Then Trey went into a speech, talking about his memories from the last 20 years and such. It was actually kind of hard to hear the speech because we were far up on this hill and people were talking
After the speech they played an awesome
David Bowie, with tons of teases at the end, finished off by
Character Zero. Set III was really cool, with
Free and
Stash highlighting the middle of the set. They both were played very differently, Trey seemed to be going for a sort of minimalist approach. Really cool sounding songs. The
Harry Hood encore was perfect to end the night. The Saturday show was a lot of fun. Getting back to the tent wasn't.
The mud was so bad there.....and on the way back to the tent, at night, it was even worse. Seriously, at some points it was so deep it would sink a person somewhere between their calf and ankle. So many shoes were lost or abandoned. Whole areas were just pure mud....actually not pure mud, I have no idea what else was mixed in there and I really don't want to know...I just knew to stay away from the mud near the "facilities." Anyway, it took about an hour to get back, trudging through the mud in a crowd of 70,000 isnt the fastest way to travel. We felt like cattle....I'll tell you, that feeling made me realize how blessed I am to live somewhere with indoor plumbing, cleanliness, carpets, clean water, air conditioning etc - so many people have NONE of that... so we got lost for a while around the camping area, our maps were pretty bad, then most of us went back to the tent and passed out. This was at 2am after the car ride from hell and then an awesome show.
We were very lucky that the whole weekend it did not rain. 4 inches of rain on Thursday night/Friday had caused the endless mud. If there was more mud, I really cant even begin to imagine how people would have functioned. On Sunday it was just beautiful, I woke up early and visited some friends who were at different campsites. Then came the show. Sunday's show was definitely better than Saturday's. Sure I got a lot of my favorite songs Saturday, but Phish was just on fire all the time on Sunday night. On Saturday some of the jams tended to go nowhere, but Sunday was more tightly knit.
I ended up missing the first 4 songs of Sundays show. People got lost on the way over, it was a rough trip over to the stage!! I am very upset!!!! Especially that I missed
Reba, which I've been dying to hear. Anyway, I came in when they started
Carini, a cool song, sometimes a little too heavy for me but I like it nonetheless. The
Wolfman's Brother of the first set was so funky...a nice long jam, just fantastic! Set II might have been my favorite. The
Down with Disease set opener was perfect to get the mood going. At this point it was dark, and the funkiness and spaciness and darkness of the sky came together and prompted a glowstick war. What is a glowstick war? One of the coolest parts about Phish concerts!!! When the DWD jam began, someone in the middle of the crowd took about 30 glowrings and threw them up in the air. This kicked it off, and within seconds you saw glowrings and glowsticks being thrown up everywhere! When one of them lands, you pick it up and throw it somewhere else - and the war spreads throughout the whole crowd, with red, green, blue, yellow and orange lights shooting around everywhere. You look up and its like some sort of beautiful cosmic event. Its the coolest thing! I even saw what looked like giant fireballs - big red glowballs - flying through the air. Just amazing, and perfect with the jam!! A glowstick made its way to the stage and Trey picked it up and started playing his guitar with it!!!! I love Phish!! After DWD the band went into
Velvet Sea, an absolutely beautiful song, during which Page (he sings that song) started crying.
It was so emotional....man I wish I could describe it as well as I felt it...then came
Glide, a rare song that I love - which had really meaningful lyrics for where we were - "We're glad glad glad that you're alive! We're glad glad glad that you arrived!!" Really really cool!! After that there was another speech, and then the unmistakable bassline of
Split Open and Melt, which they rocked. That jam was followed by
Ghost, a really funky song, and another glowstick war!!
Set III opened up gently with
Fast Enough for You, a really beautiful song (good to listen to if you just got dumped) Then came
Seven Below, one of their better new songs, and they jammed it right into
Simple, a song which really sums up the band. It was just perfect! Then they went into
Piper (and another glowstick war) and then this improv jam called the "
Bruno jam" which they dedicated to one of the lighting or sound guys named Bruno. It was hilarious. That was followed by the
Dickie song, after another guy who works for them. Then......the pounding bassline that signifies
Wilson!! Wilson was energy packed, and then they went into a jam which mellowed out a bit and turned into
Slave to the Traffic Light, a beautifully appropriate song for Coventry
. After Slave there were tons of fireworks, which were sooooo beautiful, then Trey came out to make a last speech, about the Coventry area, and how he loves it, and how he wrote this beautiful song while he was living in the Coventry area -
The Curtain With. Trey was crying while he was giving the speech, the whole thing was so emotional...
Then they played Curtain, it was just perfect. Bittersweet. "Please please have no regrets!" is one of the lines, again, beautifully appropriate. Then it was over. We waited around hoping the band would come back on, but when its over its over, and you have to accept it. I'm sad right know knowing that Phish is over, it was just such a wonderful wonderful wonderful experience. Thank you Phish!!!!!!
