Fucking Phish, Man
Considering how much of the past decade of my career has been dedicated to advocacy on behalf of Insane Clown Posse and Phish and their poignantly misunderstood fans it’s crazy to me that the book that would eventually become You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me was sold in proposal form as Confessions of a Pop Culture Masochist.
Before I began exploring the worlds of Insane Clown Posse and Phish on a fundamental level I did not know either cult act yet that did not keep me from disliking them all the same. I went into my epic Phish/Insane Clown Posse journey seeing the road ahead as a masochistic ordeal, albeit one that would pay rich dividends in the form of a snarky page-turner making delicious sport of Juggalos and jam band fans.
That is not how things played out. Instead of making fun of phans and Juggalos I became a hardcore fan of Phish and Insane Clown Posse. I found my tribe and they were a gaggle of blissed-out jam band aficionados and clown-painted horrorcore devotees.
At this point I have been to something like 46 Phish shows. In about a week and a half I will go to my EIGHTH Gathering of the Juggalos. The end of You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me ended up being the beginning of my life as a Juggalo and Phan.
I don’t just enjoy taking drugs and listening to the band Phish perform live: I need it on a spiritual and emotional level. As much as I love this website and all of you wonderful readers, Phish shows are my Happy Place. They’re my religion, my church, my synagogue, my spiritual center.
It’s only a bit of an exaggeration to say that one of the things that got me through the pandemic was the promise of being able to see Phish again.
We’ve reached a place with this awful pandemic where you can go to an outdoor concert without feeling like a sociopath willing to risk their own life and the lives of loved ones for the opportunity to see Vanilla Ice perform his hits. We have not, however, reached a place where you can go to a concert without feeling more than a little irresponsible, even if you have been vaccinated the way my wife and I have both been.
So it was with a mixture of all-consuming excitement and trepidation that the wife and I ventured back into the big, exciting, scary world of live music by seeing Phish perform in our new neighborhood of Alpharetta Saturday, August 31st.
It was my first show since Juggalo Days in Los Angeles in early 2020, AKA the Before Times. For one magical Saturday night the wife and I were able to forget about all of our dreary adult responsibilities and be fans again.
It was wonderful having an opportunity to get lost in the crowd again, to give myself over to the groove. Everywhere I looked people weren’t just happy: they were goddamn ecstatic, overcome with joy. There was literally nowhere in the entire world I would rather be than at that show.
The wait and uncertainty that comes with live music in the age of COVID just made everything sweeter. In my darkest moods I wondered if concerts would even be possible going forward and now here I was at one of the best and most joyful shows I had ever been to.
The thing about the incredible high that comes with seeing your first Phish show in twenty four endless, dispiritingly eventful and completely calamitous months is that it comes with one motherfucker of a hangover.
That hangover is literal of course. It’s a matter of coming down from all of the wonderful substances that were in my body during that unforgettable show, some legal, some less so.
But it’s emotional and spiritual as well. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Phish since the show. I have had “AC/DC Bag” and “Weekapaug Groove” going through my head hardcore for the last seven days.
I can’t wait to see Phish again. I can’t wait to experience the transcendent feeling that comes with losing yourself in the crowd. That’s a big part of the reason I am excited about returning to the Gathering on August 19th for three strange, magical days and nights of musical insanity.
Bad things happen when you chase the high of a Phish show too hard or for too long. Part of what makes it special is its rarity. There’s a time and a place for that level of spiritual and literal intoxication. For me, that time and place are my hometown Phish shows and the Gathering of the Juggalos every year, as well as “Weird Al” Yankovic concerts but that’s another matter altogether.
I’ll have to wait at least another year to experience that but I have ZERO doubt that it will be worth it. It always is.
Be a part of the recently launched Indiegogo campaign for 7 Days in Ohio II: Return of the Juggalos over at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/make-7-days-in-ohio-2-return-of-the-juggalo-happen--2/x/14797497#/ and help send Nathan back to the Gathering for the EIGHTH time for more literary magic, madness and miracles!
Pre-order The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s upcoming book about the very best of the very worst and get instant access to all of the original pieces I’m writing for them AS I write them (there are EIGHT so far, including Shasta McNasty and the first and second seasons of Baywatch Nights) AND, as a bonus, monthly write-ups of the first season Baywatch Nights you can’t get anywhere else (other than my Patreon feed) at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
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