July 3rd, 2011 was the ultimate day of Phish’s first visit to Watkins Glen, New York, home to the massive turn-both-ways NASCAR track known to race fans as The Glen. Not only was this Phish’s first time playing the track, it was in fact only the second time a concert had ever been mounted at The Glen (excluding Phish’s performances on the previous two nights, of course). And that first concert had been a biggie: Summer Jam at Watkins Glen featuring the Grateful Dead, The Band, and The Allman Brothers Band on July 28th, 1973. With an estimated crowd of 600,000 people that show set the Guinness World Record for highest attendance at pop concert, easily outpacing Woodstock.

I daresay that I woke up in a much, much more comfortable state than many of my time-distant concert brethren had some thirty-eight years previously. Like, did porta-potties even exist back in 1973? Remember what lawn chairs looked like back then? Were there zip-lock baggies? I promise you they didn’t have booths of coffee or Philly cheesesteaks or Ben & Jerry’s or or or like we did.

Of course we didn’t have the Dead or The Band or the Allman’s either, so I guess there’s that.

But we did have Phish, and a whole lot of Phish too. Over two days and nights the band had given us six fantastic sets and on this final night they would deliver two more super-fun piles of music. The band ushered in the evening with a rare and groovy Bob Marley cover, Soul Shakedown Party, which was a pretty nice start. After that the first set ran all over the place, teetering between straight-up standards like AC/DC Bag and Mound and a bunch of Gamehenge stuff (with narration) to a rather aggressive Big Black Furry Creature From Mars and a late-set cover of Little Feat’s Time Loves a Hero. Ignorant as I somehow manage to remain to the vast majority of Little Feat’s oeuvre, this was the first time I had ever heard the song. Coincidentally it stands as the last time to date (of eight plays total*) that Phish has played it.

And get this: Phish started off the last set of the weekend with AC/DC’s Big Balls, a debut that still stands as a one-timer. I recognized it immediately (it was the second-ever AC/DC song I had ever heard in my life. I remember my friend Dave Norgrove fast-forwarding from Dirty Deeds straight to Big Balls and eyeing me enthusiastically while he snickered at every double-entendre) and they totally nailed it.

Their were no gaps in the second set, which segued through a killer No Quarter and tons more until they finally jammed their way into The Star Spangled Banner, indicating that it was probably past midnight (and hence: Independence Day) by the time the set ended.

The encore was First Tube – a song I always love to hear – and the instrumental was stretched out and punctuated by a thrilling fireworks display that lasted well beyond the final ringing chord. What a great way to close out a weekend of great music!

And then it was on to the afterparty, a spacious, comfortable, roomy, raging, all-encompassing farewell fling that was 30,000-strong and went until the very, very wee hours. The next day m’lady and I and our four fellow-revellers somehow packed all of our nomadic possessions along with our weary selves into my Mitsubishi Outlander (utilizing the popup third seat in the back) and made the drive home to Ottawa, stopping at virtually every fast food restaurant we saw along the way.

(Incidentally, the last time there was a concert at The Glen was the same year that the Quarter Pounder was introduced to the national market. It astounds me when I think of the deprivity that my concert ancestors had to endure.)

*If you haven’t already noticed, Phish is a very statistic-oriented band. And there’s no better resource for Phish overall stats** than phish.net, a url that I’ve always found quite clever.

**For Phish stats relating to shows one has personally attended google “Zzyzx Phish stats”.

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