I was hot and confused.

Yes guys, it's time to remember the Eagles' Ballroom in Milwaukee. What a weird night. It started out with a fight between this girl who had a huge crush on Mike and a girl who had one on Page fighting over who would get one backstage pass. Then we had the venue itself. It was in the second story of a brick building in a room with neither windows that could be opened (well other than the ones like 12 feet up in the ceiling) nor functional AC on a 95 degree day.

I have never been this hot at a show. Not at Oswego. Not at Bonnaroo. Never. I literally spent the entire first set walking into the bathroom, pouring water over my head in the sink, walking out, listening to 5 minutes, and repeating. I tried going up front to take advantage of the fans that the band had but they were canceled out by the lights. It was just miserable.

The second set changed things though. From the beginning the band started yelling out something about OJ. Sure now I know that they watched the slow motion chase backstage during the setbreak, but at the time I was completely confused. Due to being on tour and only being able to get the news when I was changing tapes, I spent days thinking that it was OJ that was murdered.

This show was definitely defined by the second set. Between the OJ stuff, and the second version of "Simple" - the one that started its journey to being in rotation as it was played a few times during the night - to the Harpua where Trey tried to convince us that being hot and sweaty was just an illusion, this show did indeed bring the heat.

Frustrating? Yes. Annoying? Sure. Worth every minute! Of course.

Current Music: Phish - Foam

Two eavesdropping stories from my trip home:

(1) We're sitting in CLT hanging out and some people were pointing at the gate across the aisle. "That's Mike Huckabee." "Where?" We all turned around. I never actually saw him, but some other people did. Weird.

(2) While changing planes in Houston, some people were calling people and trying to schedule things and talking about all night drives. It turns out that they missed their flight somehow and we're trying to find a new way of getting to Portland... or at this point, SF or Seattle, or anywhere near home. They reached the point where they were talking about trying to find flights out of Phoenix or Vegas and fly the last little bit. At that point, why not just drive the last stretch and save the money? I hope it works for them, but it sounds like it would be the ultimate example of bad time, good story.

Current Music: Phish - Kill Devil Falls

Even from the crowd, we form a relationship with the band members. We listen to the shows and try to discern what they're doing and how they're interacting. Usually that's not very successful because we bring our own biases into it (e.g. assuming everyone is using the same drugs that you are), but last night (and really the last few nights judging from the tapes) are different in one important way. The Trey from the early 90s is back.

I'm not talking guitar skills now, mind you, but the goof. The guy who was a bit of a geek but who had a blast anyway and who would make bad jokes between songs. It's been so long since he's been around that I had kind of forgotten he was ever there. The dynamics from the stage changed and we all just wrote it up as them maturing or wanting to try different things or just everyone getting old. Instead, it's starting to look like that was the on stage manifestation of how bad things had become with him. The music got dark - but it was still GOOD so no one cared - and the band got (well I hesitate to say more serious) less silly and we all rolled with that because, well the music.

The last few nights have been different. Trey's obviously been having fun on stage, more fun than I've seen him having at Phish in years. He's telling stories and having amusing banter and just being relaxed, and in doing so his old personality is starting to shine through again. Without even noticing it, I had really missed that. Yes, it's dangerous to project too much from the crowd and to try to figure out a lot about a personality that you've talked to twice since 1994, but it just feels like the darkness has lifted and in doing so, we can see just how bad things were for him and how much better they are now. Trey the rock star is gone, replaced by Trey the goofy guy who - oh by the way - is going to blow your mind with his guitar skills. Even more than the amazing shows being played right now, this is so great to see. I hope this can last.

And the light is growing brighter now...

Current Music: Light - Phish

The day was December 29, 1990. I was at the Campus Club in Providence, RI to see Phish. I only saw two shows on this New Years Run, missing 12/28, but this clearly was the better of the two. I walked out of the show thinking two things. "Jesus Just Left Chicago" is a very cool cover and I really wanted to see "Destiny Unbound" again.

It actually was my second version of "Destiny" that I had seen but the first made no impression. Literally. I found my setlist a few year later and there was nothing written down at all during that song. Still though, the impression from Providence was so strong that I was incredibly excited over the song.

I didn't see it in 1991. I didn't see it in 1992. The song dropped out of rotation. Time passed.

The day was February 28, 2003. I was getting ready to do an incredibly stupid thing to see Phish, flying to and from Raleigh in a 24 hour period to see just one Phish show. While it turned out to be an incredibly important concert for me to attend for personal reasons, at first it was overshadowed by one thing. As I was driving to the airport, I stopped to check the setlist from Nassau. "Destiny Unbound" was randomly played. Come on Phish! I'm doing a stupid thing to see you and you bust that out the show before?

And now let's talk about one more day. That day would be last night, a time when I did an even stupider thing, flying in and out of Boston in 24 hours. I figured just seeing Fenway would be enough, but then it happened. Nearly 19 years after wanting to see it again, it finally happened. There I was in shallow right center, seeing "Destiny Unbound." 6000 miles worth of travel faded away in a minute. No question I would do it again in a second.

So thanks Phish. An already legendary day in my world became even more so. And hey, you know, I wouldn't mind seeing the song again one day. Should I pencil in 2028 now?

( Some FenShots (crappy cell phone shots) )

Current Music: Limb By Limb - Phish

So I was trying to figure out how to get from Fenway to the Logan Airport post show and halfway through the thread on Phantasy Phish about the MBTA, I suddenly felt compelled to type, "Will I ever return, no I'll never return, and my fate is stillunlearned. I'll be riding forever 'neath the streets of Boston..."

My father was big time into folk music when I was growing up and as a result I listened to this Kingston Trio tape or 8 track or whatever it was way too much in the 70s. I haven't thought of the song in decades, but it's still there, waiting to come out at a moment's notice.



It turns out the song that I used to sing as , "Raspberries, strawberries, fruit rolls yum yum yum," - yes, I was making up stupid lyrics to songs even when I was 7 or 8 - also is a Kingston Trio song, as is "Tom Dooley." It's kind of scary how well I remember the music on a tape that I only really heard on the way to Memorial Stadium to see the Orioles...

I just got my jersey! I'm so stoked.

( Images of my ubercool jersey for the Fenway show )
It had to be a visiting jersey since Fenway is a road show.

I'm definitely getting stoked.

Current Music: Time Turns Elastic - Phish

Time Turns Elastic, a 13+ minute "single."

Will I hold out and stick to my no Phish 2 weeks before a show rule or will I break down?

Current Music: Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inven - Baby Let Me

CELEBRATE!!!!

I graduated from Bard nearly 18 years ago. After that I had the hell of defaulting on my loans due to them changing their paperwork and having my tax refunds garnished and then the slow move back to respectability. Now I see this!

Your Direct Loans

It took until about 11:59 PM last night to post, but my student loan is gone baby gone!

Current Music: The Word - Without God

...was my very first day in the northwest. Another escape from Las Cruces summer led me to follow Phish up and down the West Coast in May. While I have always had a weird affinity for Seattle - even when I was at Bard, I wore a M's cap for no apparent reason and UW was my first call for grad school - it took me until 1994 to see the coast north of SF. I was young...ish, I had a Geo Metro, and Phish were playing a Eugene/Olympia/Seattle/Vancouver/Portland run. It was time to explore. Here's what I remember from the run:

(1) Stopping at a rest stop in southern OR just north of the CA state line. I parked, ate a can of cold ravioli, and watched the cottonwood endlessly shed. While I didn't know how old it would get to have skies like this for months on end, I really enjoyed the fresh, chill air and romanticized the grey.

(2) Eugene completely failed to make an impression on me. I remembered the wicker basket ceiling of the Hult and rewriting "Sample" to be a commercial for Snapple., but the city itself, I couldn't tell you anything about how I felt about it.

(3) Crossing over the WA state line and seeing the first Washington State highway route, I laughed quite a bit at seeing what we used for our logos. It's definitely one of the most unique road sign designs in the country. Someone was feeling pretty silly.

(4) I stopped at the K-Mart near Chehalis to get some batteries for my crappy deck. While there, I saw this MTV kiosk that showed videos. "Down With Disease" was one of the options. This was the first time I saw the video. Every time I drive down to southern WA, I point that out.

(5) I really really liked Evergreen from what I could see walking around the campus before the show. It did feel a lot like Bard and was much more like me than, say, NMSU. The crowd didn't seem to like the show much though. People were just kind of milling about. Phish tried playing an "Ob La Di Ob La Da" jam in YEM to see if people would react to that, but nothing. Oh well, they'd make up for that 6 months later at a show I would not attend.

(6) Seattle was on the kind of day that inspires people to move here. It was sunny and 70. I was staying with someone I knew from rec.music.phish in the U District and it was the weekend of the street fair. It seemed like every corner had a band forming. I had missed that kind of energy in Cruces and it's not surprising the 94-95 school year would just be spent planning my move.

I can't believe I saw Phish at the Moore Theatre. It was another pretty forgettable show except for the end of the second set. The band announced that they always play for us, so it was our turn to play. So we clapped to make a drum beat and made random noises on top of that to be the rest of the music. After it ended Jon got all excited and said, "You guys never play that one any more!" A little tired of people requesting bustouts there?

(7) Apparently, even if they don't like the fact that I had NM plates but was crossing into Canada with little luggage, Canadian officials will let you in pretty easily if you explain that you're a grad student who teaches mathematics. It fits their image of the kind of person who should be allowed into the country. Coming back across, I got searched and had a weird exchange with the official inside the customs building. She looked at my driver's license and said, "David Steinberg? Are you Jewish?"

I wasn't sure why customs was asking me questions like that but I let it slide.

(8) Even before I knew that I didn't like Portland, Seattle and Portland treated me the way that they always do. Seattle gave me sun and a cool street fair. Portland gave me very grey skies and nothing at all to do around the venue; I didn't know about Powell's yet. Again, I should prefer Portland over Seattle in so many ways, but it just keeps rejecting me.

(9) Coming back down through California, the long view of Shasta you get on I-5 just stunned me. Rainier, St. Helens, and Hood were all hiding on my trip up north so this was my first time seeing one of the mega mountains climbing out of a valley. While I still love the local peaks, Shasta was my first one and always will have a very special spot in my heart as a result.

Current Music: The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

You gotta love a system that lets people vote to have low taxes, tons of service, and no debt, without explaining how it works. As if that kind of crap isn't enough, I was looking at what might be on the ballot in WA in 2010 and I found this

The summary?

"Initiative Measure No. 1047 concerns a supreme ruler of the universe. This measure would prohibit state use of public money or lands for anything that denies or attempts to refute the existence of a supreme ruler of the universe, including textbooks, instruction or research."

Textbooks. How much do you want to bet that this is an attempt to prevent evolution being taught in schools? Fortunately, it'll probably bomb, but sheesh.

Other fun measures in 2010:

Two different Eyman measures to lower the car tabs to $30... again (1042 and 1049... I don't get why there are two). I "love" how Eastern WA can decide that King/Pierce/Snohomish county can't have light rail even though we voted for it locally and it won't affect their taxes. There's also I-1041 that says you would have to learn CPR to get a driver's permit, 1044 which would destroy the business tax structure of the state, and 1043 that would require us to follow any rule the feds come up with for illegals. I suppose I don't have a real problem with the repeal of the seat belt law, but I still would vote against it. While it does some good on occasion, direct democracy has some issues.

Current Music: Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station