Phishin'

I've always truly regretted that I never saw the Grateful Dead before Jerry Garcia died. I never quite embraced the whole Grateful Dead scene (as so many of my friends growing up did), but I've always been a huge fan. The Dead have endured my many musical phases: the classic rock years of middle school, the jamband years of high school and college, post college indie rock, and presently what I like to call the "potpourri years". Europe '72 will always be my soundtrack for the first warm days in Spring, and Reckoning remains one of my favorite albums in my collection. But I never made the trek out to Giants stadium or whatever seemingly far away place where the Dead would be playing, and I feel like I really missed out on something by never seeing them. Seeing any of the present iterations of the remaining members holds no interest for me. 

Unfortunately I didn't really learn a lesson from this, because I always had it in mind to make it to a Phish show, and never quite got around to that either. I came around to Phish relatively late- my friends were all listening to them in high school, but being a contrarian, I was focusing on other parts of that whole genre. I would travel hours to see God Street Wine, but didn't make the 20 minute drive to see Phish in a club in New Haven. Live and learn I guess. But by the time I really got into them they were playing huge venues, and I had started losing patience with the whole scene surrounding them. As time went on their shows apparently started to spiral in quality also (which I believe ran directly parallel with the increase in Trey's drug habit), and when they broke up "for good", I figured another opportunity was lost. 

But, not entirely surprisingly, Phish is back! And why not- they still have legions of fans. The leftover deadheads, the thirtysomethings ready to pull out the hackey sack for one last hurrah, and undoubtedly the younger kids who never got a chance to see Phish but have been smoking dope to them all the same. And, hopefully, me. They are playing the Comcast Center (previously Tweeter Center, and Great Woods before that) in June and tickets will be close to impossible to get. But I signed up for their pre-sale drawing today, so if I'm lucky enough to get randomly selected I can go to the venue I vowed never to return to for a last chance to see this band.