(Published on the legacy Phish.net site many years ago...)

It's 2 am...I just got home from seeing Phish at the Humboldt Brewery in Arcata. Whoah, _what_ an experience; it's still hard to grasp it all.

It started when I got there in the afternoon, hoping to do the interview. It didn't take long to track down Page and get a good half-hour interview on tape (I'll be transcribing that shortly). Incidentally, I did this with no introductory help from the promoter -- just walked in and asked if I could do an interview for "a computer network" ;-). I was referred to Andrew, the road manager, who was most accomodating. In fact, the main thing I noticed was how *nice* all of the people in the band and those who work for them are!! Really sincere people. So, I did the interview with Page, and at the end asked if I could stay for the soundcheck, which he had no problem with. I didn't recognize what they played, but it sounded great. Oh, they did a wild acapella gospel version of My Sweet One! If only I had that on tape... After the soundcheck, they had their dinner (the promoter asked if they were hungry, they all yelled "yeah!" and dropped their instruments) so I went to mine.

I came back for the show...it was awesome. I was too transported to write a setlist, but I remember Chalkdust, Foam, The Squirming Coil, Split Open and Melt, The Asse Festival -> You Enjoy Myself, Oh Kee Pah Ceremony -> Suzie Greenberg, Runaway Jim, Hold Your Head-> vaccuum->Hold Your Head, Llama, Mammaries and Harry Hood encore...

I had chatted a while with Jon (Fish) before the show, and he was considering talking on tape, so I wandered backstage after the show. (Oh, in the meantime, Andrew gave me a t-shirt and a Junta tape; and the promoter gave me 2 comp tickets! I can't understand what I did to earn all this!) I was talking about the Dead with Trey and John Paluska (JP went to one of the Boston Garden shows, but Trey said he hadn't seen the Dead in over four years; we were trying to figure out what, if anything, Phish have in common with the Dead musically. We decided that it was the "element of transport" -- somehow people are able to achieve an altered consciousness through the music. I know I do. Do the rest of you?) I started talking about the Phish-net with Trey, and he just loved the idea! He started running up to Mike and Jon, saying "Wait! You've got to hear about this!" He said he wants to get a modem for the laptop they tour with, so he can log in and read, and post! All he needs is an account somewhere - I suggested he try John Greene for this; any other ideas? He said that the lyrics to Cavern were written by email: Tom had a correspondence with a friend, each one writing alternate lines.

Later he talked about the show they had just done in Olympia Washington: they played all of Gamehendge. It was totally unplanned, it was just the right thing to do at the time. In fact, he was so excited about it that he came this -> <- close to coming back to my house with the tape so I could dub it and start a tree. However, he was talked out of it due to his illness and the fact that he needed rest. I couldn't argue with that....

Gosh, all of them were so nice! I was really overwhelmed. They were totally approachable and eager to talk about things. I'm totally looking forward to the show in Santa Cruz, of course; I hope I at least get to say hello to them there. Oh, I mentioned the Mobo Sushi gathering to them, and at least Page seemed interested in maybe stopping by... we'll see.

Considering it was only a month later that Destiny Unbound would be played for the last time for almost 12 years, it's a vaguely interesting theory to speculate that maybe this original reviewer's conversation with Trey about the possible similarities between the Dead's and Phish's music may have included an offhand remark that he thought "that Destiny Unbound tune sounded kinda Dead-ish." If so, then perhaps that bug got put in Trey's ear that night... or it was one piece of backing support he could cite later on, however flimsy (assuming of course he's the member of the band who felt DU needed to go away because of that phantom similarity).