Phish – Blossom Music Center – Cuyahoga Falls, OH – 6/4/11

SLAVE TO THE TRAGIC SALT
By Thrusty Rhodes

I promise I am not a suicidal teenager; I just want to party hard every chance I get. As life goes on, the less connections I have in my social circles and the more weary I become of lot transactions. This inevitably leads to rock concerts wherein all a guy gotz is weed and booze. So on Saturday night at the Blossom Music Center, I decided to attend the Phish show with a lawn ticket and a legal alternative (Plan B.S.) called “Energizing Aromatherapy Powder” a.k.a. “bath salts”. I had never tried “Lucifer’s Afrin” before, but word on the dirt was that only “a little dab’ll do ya”. I heard that the HIGH is pretty extreme and the LOW sucks duck nuts unless you eat Valium or a shotgun when coming down.

So without trying too hard to find real drugs in the lot, I resigned to Plan B.S. Upon entering the expansive, rollicking back lawn of the burgeoning venue and walking by big-ass pisser lines, I hip-scotched all the way around to the empty, other side and secured a solo port-o-party. I licked my right index finger like a Fun Dip stick and commenced to smear 300 of 500 milligrams of legal speed onto my shuddering tongue. “We’ll see where this goes,” I whispered to God right before the everlasting Lord’s starting line-up marched up on stage to begin ripping the first set.

1st SET – Phish at Blossom – 6/4/11
Kill Devil Falls, Guyute, Fuck Your Face, Foam, Ocelot, Rocket in My Pocket, Back on the Train, Guelah Papyrus, Tube, Run Like an Antelope

In retrospect, “Kill Devil Falls” was the perfect opener for me for this show. Supposedly, you’re supposed to hallucinate kinky demons and horny hobgoblins who make you perform life-altering actions while blitzed on “bath salts” like stabbing ghosts who were really paramedics and/or getting tattoos of bonfire emblazoned on your pubic area. This version of KDF was tight and tasty but what came next really started to get the organs grinding.

“Guyute” is a #1 stunner, even in the fading dayglow of receding sunshine. This festive rendition had some sweet peaks and engaging valleys just like a good woman should. This song reminds me of The Weather Channel because some loc’d out audio director played instrumental parts of “Guyute” in the weather forecast music mix, back in the day. Little did we know that it would metaphorically rain sticky trickery in our misty eyeballs during the next few minutes when these four pouring tornadoes would torrentially penetrate our head-holes and flash-flood our pulsating panties with invigorating, gelatinous waves of mesmerizing jizzle-jazzing.

By playing the song “Fuck Your Face” as the third track in the first set on a Saturday show, Phish is telling you to NOT bring your gibbering children to the psyche-circus unless they are the designated drivers or you sneak dope heroine into the venue inside their grimy diapers. Seriously, you are already paying for tickets, booze, room, board, molly, paraphernalia, ganja chili, parking, porking, hemp souvenirs, etc. SPEND A LITTLE MORE SCRILLA ON A GODDAMN BABYSITTER. All I’m saying is when I inadvertently smash your bouncing, bundle of joy because it knocked me over while chasing bubbles or snatching up glowing debris as I’m defribrillating on killer drugs, then it’s your legal responsibility. You know, you know better. BTW, the bad boys pummel-crushed the gushing guts out of FYF before face-crashing into a neck-snapping, skull-crunching “Foam”.

“Ocelot” seemed neat because, before the show started, a guy near me said his 5 year old daughter wanted to hear “Ocelot” really bad. When the father notified his child that the band was playing her favorite song, she began screaming and doing rickety cartwheels. It was somewhat endearing and made me start re-thinking the “no bringing children” rule that was established earlier in the previous paragraph. Just then, the flimsy spinning trig aimlessly spilled into an innocent dude who dropped his $10 beer to avoid murdering the tumbling youngster with his buckling, grown-up body. Parents, please do not make it anyone else’s fault at shows for squashing your oscillating offspring because you chose life. DON’T TAKE THE MISTAKE.

“Rocket in My Pocket” seemed coincidentally gross and inappropriate after what I just witnessed during O but totally beat off in the same buoyant stride as the previous selection. Keep on rocketing me, baby, you burning bushwhackers! It was right around this time when I decided that “bath salts” were an over-hyped farce and that I, Thrusty Rhodes, can dominate every and any substance that would make a lesser man defecate into his shivering hands and call it dinner a la mode. So I foolishly fingered the rest of the pseudo-toot that was burrowed in the sneaky back pocket of my customized fanny sack, chased it down with a mellifluous chug of Bud Heavy, and “headed straight for the rhythm and blues”.

“Back on the Train” Ut-oh. I am probably wrong with the timing of this incident but I think it was right before BOTT when a sucker-punk chump threw a hefty handful of glow wands onto the stage directly at the lead singer who then picked up as many as he could with one big swoop and hucked them back at the jerkass as if to say, “Not in my backyard, unitard!”. Did anyone else see this? BTW, BOTT nailed it in the BUTT, sharp and hard!

“Guelah Papyrus” was a tricky treat because the lead singer and big-nosed dude in the middle of the stage tried to do a little dance during the open breakdowns after the “This is the work of” choruses. Shit looked like “The Urkel” and shit. Honkies don’t know, honkies ain’t changed!

The lyrics for “Tube” sounded like they were reciting random lines from John Tesh’s inspirational radio show, translated by a Dyslexic, Schizophrenic, Eunuch on night-before pills, Crunk bombs, and Smarties. T is a powerful ballad unto itself but tonight, it served as a perfect launching pad for an unbridled, scintillating space shuttle with titillating antlers…

“Run Like an Antelope” seems to get hyberbolically more intense every time I witness it live and direct. This mega-version served as another stellar example of why Trey should re-lapse only when writing music. ;>

2nd SET – Phish at Blossom – 6/4/11
Birds of a Feather, Possum, Steam, Piper, Lizards, Sneaking Sally Through the Alley, Blossom Jam, Harry Hood/ Have Mercy/Harry Hood, Character Zero

ENCORE: Slave to the Traffic Light

“Birds of a Feather” split opened the second set like a hopelessly lost fatso in the woods to the innards of a melting, moose turd. Pastor Page’s celestial key lines transcendentally accented the mothershipping lighting display as these nasty asstronauts were about to take us deep into the sparkling, dark matter and light up our cosmic orifices like Big Dippers in Supermassive black holes. 8> 8>

“Possum” = They flipped the scripture with this sacred variation and made it into what will ultimately become known as THE BLOSSOM POSSUM. During the jammy part of this composition, they began playing around with some pitch-bending-descending notes that lent the teetering attendee to hypnotically connect with the wobbly, slobbering vibe to the precarious point of losing one’s body balance…and then SLAM-BAM-PHUCK-ME-MA’AM, they’d break it off into icky-shit-kicking, raging-rapid-riffing thusly bringing us back to life, back to reality, just long enough until they would re-untie our stringy souls like a blind-wino unties his shoes before he goes into a drunken slumber and then, SLAM-BAM-PHUCK-ME-MA’AM, BOOM, straight to the moon, man! By now, “bath salts” have proven to be 2 legit 2 stop. It’s like meth, ecstasy, and Robitussin DM, mysteriously stuffed into one uncanny-ass pinch of deceptive dust. I recommend it to NOBODY but the astonishing, vanishing banshees who gang-flocked out of my anal cortex every time I secretly flatuated into the sweltering breeze…

“Steam” is an original number that was performed for the first time at this concert and it is so totally my new most-fave song eva to the ultimate max, for hecka realsies, ya’ll! I friggin’ love mid-tempo, trance-out psycho tracks i.e. “Frankie Says”, “Spock’s Brain”, “Carini”, etc. This mischievous ditty seemed somewhat similar to the savage style and lyrical content of these aforementioned smash hits. Weird, spooky, death-might-try-to-rape-you-type-of-thang-going-on-up-in-here. I remember there were some elegiac, lyrical lines in this song about “wolves clawing at your door” or “wolves licking Cheeto grease off your Silly Putty” or something cool like that involving wolves. This Cleveland “Steam”er did not smell or get your tits dirty! Totally goodass!

“Piper” always gets the blood splooging throughout the veins and this selection was no exception. They jack-hammered the ascending crescendo like an imprisoned, professional arm-wrestler to his private Shake Weight, furiously working-out in solitary confinement while snorting dry, uncut Kool Aid packets. He said, “I come from the land of darkness”, and said “my boogers are blue today”…

“Lizards” was a definite highlight of the set and pivotal point in my personal existence. The otherworldly lighting schematics for this song allowed a temporary portal to a bizarre dimension to open up for the few of us out there on “Energizing Aromatherapy Powder”, Oxycontin, and Budweiser. Oh yeah, I ate two Oxy 15s when I thought the legal speed wasn’t working as good as it should during set-break. I do things smart people don’t do. My spiritual-eyes stepped into the different world while “Lizards” was unfolding and miraculously managed to escape the brain-staining, distorted delusion just before the song ended. Let’s just say that every living thing inside this fiendish dimension had the Almighty Oprah’s head and droopy boobies on it! Girl, boy, man, woman, dog, frog, cow, owl, ocelot, antelope, possum; you name it, Oprah’s skull and shredders were on it. It got me to thinking that maybe that ego-tripping, narcissistical billionaire bizzy bootch bought herself a whole dimension and scientifically-fused her DNA into every breathing entity so as to give her specific, physical features to each filthy creature. The Winfrey Dimension is prob where she goes to get away from all the saddening madness associated with being a fatuous, corporate slave driver of head-dead, whitebread mothers and super-clueless hoochies. The Winfrey Dimension is where she takes clandestine vacations that are really just well-disguised, disgusting fuck-hunts. She indiscriminately porks and pillages whatever she wants without police intervention because she calls it masturbation since every living thing resembles her flaccid facade. She gets away with morbid mongoose molestation just because that innocent little mongoose has her flabby face and place holders on it’s quivering pre-corpse. “The trick was to surrender to the flow…”

“Sneaking Sally Through the Alley” always reminds me of outer space porno music. It’s what aroused Martians throw in the tape-deck when attempting to coagulate with a significant other. This vulgar version provided plenty of sultry grooves and sickening consummations that allowed the nasty boys to tenderly pound our juicy, stewing, communal flesh into what is being called “the Blossom jam”.

The “Blossom Jam” is where Trey broke a string…….my sex string Fender Splatocaster! This transcendental titbit allowed flowering mental excursions to spring into the thinker like: How does feces make life grow?; Where’s Jesus when I miss game-winning 3 pointers?; and What’s Fishman wearing under his dress? After simmering down into a peaceful heat-lightning rumble-thunder ambiance, these glory-storming Nor’Easters shoved a succulent Hood sandwich down our soggy, foggy throats.

“Harry Hood/Have Mercy/Harry Hood” The randy aquatic bass notes, tender skin-hitting, surgically-precise gash-stitching guitar gesticulations, and reggae-tronic piano pimp-tinkles tickled the torn whore-sores copiously opened by the magical slashers that preceded us and gave a euphoric reprieve into a cathartic delirium thus allowing the audience’s articulating thoughts to delve into existential reverberational splendor and intrinsical metaphysical reflections. “Have mercy” ‘til the day that you die, you perverted nun-humpers!

Nothing beats trying to out-sing the band during a second set ending, “Character Zero”, while tweaky-peaking on “bath salts”, et al. Try it out and refute me, Satan. Why don’t you just leave me the Hell alone and dirty dance on somebody else’s shoulders for a while? Please stop messing with my kill-switch, oh dark Lord and decadent decapitator of plebeian leeches! Although, now that I think about it, YOU never ever let ME down, oh unholy giver of unending regurgitating supremacy! You make me wetter than water, oh flaming Black Master of Disaster! Let me help you permanently perpetuate Armageddon, Satan, Son of Death! I so totally succumb to your hedonistic bidding, festering petulance, and throbbing hammerhead peckerwood Magnum P.I. lunchbox! Beat me with your penis, beat me with your penis, beat me; beat me; beat me with your penis! I, I ought to see the man Mulcahy, I ought to see the man Mulcahy, I, I ought to see the man Mulcahy, I, ought to see the man Mulcahy, I, I…I… I, I…I…I, I…aaaahhhhhhhh, crazy-air-guitar-solo-psycho-punch-myself-in-the-balls-BREAKDOWN until death do us party, all-powerful Apollyon! Pisstol-rip my whimpering crapper with your dripping zipper zapper, oh Prince of Purgatory Bliss! Beat me with your penis, beat me with your penis, beat me; beat me; beat me with your penis! Beat me with your penis, beat me with your penis, beat me; beat me; beat me with your penis! Beat me with your penis, beat me with your penis, beat me; beat me; beat me with your cloven-footed penis!

Whoazers, Nellie ‘caine, it’s encore peepee time…see you in Heaven, Satan!!!

Whooof, ohh, uhh, yeah, whuh, ohhhh, ok, whoooofff; my soul began to feel super-vulnerable and desperately needed to find positive, divine guidance in the worst way. As I was finishing a Wiz Khalifa, the tantalizing mood-soothing notes of “Slave to the Traffic Light” trickle-flowed from the hazy stage like the percolating broth sloshing from my skinny Slim Jim into the manure-brewing sewer of dying life and living death, decaying beneath humanity’s time-riddled footprints.

“Snap into me, Macho Man,” I whispered to God.

“What the FUCK did you just say to me, bro?” said the cross-eyed Browns fan next to me at the urinal.

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