In Dephense of Phish

[Editor's Note: We've been pretty, uh, harsh in our coverage of Phish. Last year, we ran an Op-Ed called "Phish Has Been a Band for 30 Years and Has Sucked the Whole Time" where we called Phish "Vermont's Pied Pipers of stoner Wookie trash," and referred to their fans as "harmless enough, if you consider the vegetarian, cross-dressing sons of chemical biologists with names like 'Murph-nugget' harmless." After that, we ran a follow-up story making fun of the people who hated on us for running the original piece. Because we believe in life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of pageviews, we've handed the keys of Noisey to our friend Brandon Wenerd, Senior Editor at Bro Bible and foaming-at-the-mouth rabid Phish Phan, to tell us why we're a buncha phuckin' dicks for not liking Phish. Take it away, Brandon!]

There are two lenses in which the world views Phish:

-A drug band from Vermont who plays 25-minute songs with nonsensical lyrics to a stoned audience of Birkenstock-wearing trustafarians who played ultimate frisbee in college.

-OR: A group of four talented musicians/college best friends who have helmed the ship of a lovable and enigmatic rock band by doing things their own way.

If your opinions about Phish fall into the former category vs. the latter, nothing is going to change your mind. The only thing worse than having to explain Phish to someone who's not open to trying to understand Phish is apologizing for liking Phish. Unless you suffer from miserable social acceptance issues, being a fan is not something anyone should ever feel sorry for.

One cannot approach Phish and its community without a sense of humor. The fact that the band ever ballooned in popularity in the first place is a hilarious slap-to-the-face of "cool" music: In the late '80s and '90s, while rock culture was bar-chording out to grunge, Phish grew by performing self-composed atonal fugues and canons, with an emphasis on improvised, Zappa-esque modal riffs. Their popularity surged—especially in the Northeast—as Gen-X started to gravitate towards grassroots college bands like Dave Matthews and Widespread Panic. Musically, Phish was experimental jazz with a touch of Bach in a rock band setting, with trippy Dr. Seuss-on-acid lyrics and the occasional Velvet Underground or Talking Heads cover to show that their intentions were pure. Phish's lyrics are like a cosmic stroll through a Salvador Dali painting: Surreal and abstract, with entire worlds constructed around a cast of kitschy characters embarking on Odyssey-esque adventures. When you listen closely, there's no doubt an entire dimension of Phish is constructed from the imagination of a couple of bored, suburban kids who are just looking to have a good time.

This past weekend, Phish played a three-night run on New York City's Randall's Island. The festival site had the feel of an idyllic county fair, with tens of thousands from around the country flocking to New York for six sets of Vermont's Finest. Earlier this week, the band followed up that performance with a slot on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

These are great days to be a Phish fan: The band just released their most accessible studio album in years, Fuego, and the beloved live product (two jam-driven sets mixing classics like "Fluffhead" with new stuff off Fuego) is arguably the best it's ever been. The Randall's Island run exemplifies just how polished Phish 3.0 has become, with the group pulling no punches on new jam vehicles like "Fuego" and "Wingsuit," along with catalog classics like "Chalkdust Torture," "Run Like An Antelope," and "Reba." Demographics are starting to change in the fanbase, too, as more and more younger, college-age kids have started cropping up at shows to see what this whole Phish experience is all about.

For me, the weekend marked my 40th or 50th-something Phish shows; I lost count a while ago, mostly because I didn't want to treat something I truly love like it's just another notch in the bedpost.

My first Phish show was in September of 2000, just a couple of weeks before my 15th birthday, at Hershey Park Stadium. I was in 9th grade at the time, avidly collecting fan-made live Phish recordings from traders off eTree.org after buying A Live One a few years earlier. My dad dropped a high school friend and I off outside the venue that Friday night, where we strolled wide-eyed through the parking lot at college-age dudes in patchwork shorts drinking beers, playing hackysack, and hawking t-shirts and veggie burritos on Shakedown Street, the central gypsy market in the parking lot at every Phish show. Before the show even started, we geeked out as impressionable adolescents about scene: "This must be what college is like," we snickered.

Phish opened my first show with "First Tube." The kick was immediate, with 17,000 people jumping into a dance groove in unison upon Mike Gordon's fat bass downbeat. Coupled with the wall of sound, the dancing made for instant sensory overload, like the band was pulling marionettes through their music to make the crowd dance. I had never seen or felt anything like it. I was hooked.

It's perfectly fine to not like Phish. They're not for everyone and fans like it that way. Some old-timers hate because they feel they don't have the same soul as the Grateful Dead ("Those guys were listening to Del McCoury, I was going to the mall," Trey says in "Bittersweet Motel," Todd Phillips' 2000 documentary about the band), others because the music is too inaccessible or fans too fan-boyish. Some just because the music is too "happy" sounding. Some are just self-righteous, contrarian hipster dickbags who don't realize the tremendous influence Phish has had, either musically or attitudinally, on indie favorites such as Animal Collective and Vampire Weekend, whose drummer Chris Tomson is a self-professed fan. As Felicia D'Ambrosio said in the Village Voice before the Randall's run, "haters are tedious."

These same tedious haters are quick to write Phish off as absurd hippie nonsense, failing to see the tremendous joy many people from all walks of life get from the band. When someone shits on Phish, they're essentially shitting on the idea that humans seek feelings of joy and togetherness—the pursuit of which, the last time I checked, is a pretty basic human instinct. Just because Phish fans get their kicks listening to songs about how hands and feet being mangos or singing along with tens of thousands of people to odes to walk-in freezers doesn't mean that those feelings don't count, or are somehow less worthy than others in which people seek to bond with another person. Just because someone finds their peace in "You Enjoy Myself's" crisp guitar arpeggios and not in My Bloody Valentine's fuzzed-out wall of sound doesn't mean their experience is any less valid than yours.

I dare you to go to a Phish show and find anyone genuinely concerned with being cool, or anything other than simply having a good time.

In closing, I leave you with some immortal words from Trey Anastasio:

Wait 'till I'm old / Can't I live while young?

Brandon Wenerd is the Senior Editor of Bro Bible and runs the @BroTips twitter account. His IRL twitter is here - @brandonwenerd