On December 31st, 2010 I attended my first-ever Phish-hosted New Year’s Eve concert, which took place at Madison Square Garden in New York City. M’lady and I had driven straight from my family’s Christmas celebrations in Moncton, New Brunswick to Worcester, Massachusetts (a town name/condiment that I just can not pronounce properly. It’s frustrating but at least people tend to get a kick out of hearing me try) for a night of Phish, then it was on to the Big Apple for a birthday show (of mine) featuring Prince, followed by another night of Phish, this concert, and still another Phish concert on the first of January.

Oh, and then we went to a Broadway musical on January 2nd, after which we did our best to get out of town and almost succeeded.

But getting back to this night in particular, m’lady and I emerged from the subway into a normally bustling city that was bursting with energy in all directions. A few blocks away the scattered remains of Dick Clark was soon to be hosting one of the most famous New Years celebrations in the world, coaxing the ball in Times Square down with a zillion eyes watching. Man, the shows you could go to on this night alone! Chuck Berry was playing over at BB King’s, Gov’t Mule was at the famous Beacon Theatre, the Drive-By Truckers were in town…not to mention Phish of course; there was simply tons going on everywhere you cared to look. NYC kicks it pretty hard as a regular feature but for NYE things tend to get cranked up a few notches.

We had inadvertently been shut out of tickets for the all-important December 31st Phish show, TicketMaster having erroneously issuing me wheelchair access tickets and then taking them away when I told them I was in fact able-bodied. I assured them that I would likely find myself libated enough to require much assistance, but they wouldn’t budge no matter how many times I badgered their unbadgerable customer service, which left us scrambling for a pair of very hard-to-get tickets.

And then lo, the evening before kindness had reared its karmic head. Friends we had stayed with at previous shows voluntarily traded their pair of 100 level tickets (and $160 cash) for two pairs of 400 level tickets in order to help us out. There were many hugs.

It’s notable to note that Phish invariably pulls out all the stops on New Year’s Eve, always playing three sets instead of their standard two-set show and, most notoriously, they always always always come up with some sort of midnight gag to present to the crowd. These gags are usually elaborate (but not always), usually musical (but not always), and always (yes, always) a surprise.

(Phish are remarkably good secret-keepers. Between their NYE stunts and their Hallowe’en ‘musical costumes’ these things never, ever leak to the phans, no matter how ‘inside’ your information; and our information can get pretty inside.)

On this night Phish timed the new years countdown to fall within their novelty song Meatstick. I call Meatstick a novelty song not merely because the lyrics are silly (lots of Phish songs have silly lyrics), but because it is intrinsically linked to a silly dance called The Meatstick, which was created in an effort to achieve the world record for most people doing a dance way back at one of their festivals. The attempt failed as the Guinness officials deemed that The Meatstick didn’t actually qualify as a dance.

But not only that, during an Asian tour the Phish fellas had learned how to sing the chorus of the song in Japanese, and they had been doing so for one of the choruses ever since.

So I say “novelty”.

Anyway, that latter point played directly into the gag at this show, which opened the third set. As the Phish boys finished up their Japanese version of the song’s chorus they were joined onstage by a quartet of tribal African dancers, who sang the chorus in their native tongue. Then out came a Mariachi band, singing and playing the chorus in Spanish. Then a group of Hasidic Jews, then a quartet of Swedish girls dressed in ski gear.

I’m sure you get the idea.

Canadian Mounties, Hawaiians in grass skirts, Swiss yodellers, Germans in lederhosen, belly dancers, whirling Dervishes…ultimately there were about fifty people on the stage, all leading the giddy crowd of 20,000 through Phish’s silly Meatstick non-dance. Elaborate? Not really. Musical? Sure. Fun? Absolutely!

And then they followed up with the countdown to midnight accompanied by Auld Lang Syne (of course) right into After Midnight by J. J. Cale (how cool is that?).

And so it was that I discovered that Phish New Year’s Eve concerts are pretty darn fun. No wonder I went again a few years later (and again the year after that).

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