Good Vibrations Magazine

I had one of the most un-sexual experiences of my life the other night. I went to the Phish show.

I do not mean this in a negative way, though if you are reading this magazine I understand why you might take it that way. Most popular music has a sexual component. There is a continuum. It looks like this.

Penis ——————-||——————-Vagina

Prince is on the left, right below penis. (The P in Prince actually stands for penis.) I saw him at Madison Square Garden once. He spent two hours teasing the audience with the opening piano bars of Darling Nikki before actually playing it: one man, 20,000 people, two hours of foreplay and the world’s largest simultaneous orgasm.

On the right, just below vagina, is Cat Power. The kitty grown into a pussy, her voice slinky and dark, a life lived in alleys and sex with strays.

What’s that space in the center you may ask? That’s the space carved out by U2.

U2 strives for a kind of holy eros. It’s a, I-look-good-and-god-is-in-the-house-and-ain’t-that-grand kind of thing. But you don’t really want to get it on to U2. Ever try to have sex to “Pride”? Or “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”? It feels blasphemous.

Phish resides on another plane all together. I would liken it to this model.

~~Phish~~

Prince’s Penis————| U2 |————-Cat Power’s Vagina

Phish, those shaggy boys from Vermont, are not testosterone in song. They are not the tear-stained tunes of a woman opening her heart. Nor are they attempting to be rock and roll evangelicals.

The members of Phish do not try on new personas with every tour. 20 years later Trey Anastasio is still sporting a denim button down shirt and a bowl cut and John Fishman is still wearing a dress.

Phish, as “Almost Famous” as this may sound, love music. And it is that word love that has them floating above the pop-sex continuum.

Between any act and their audience there is a relationship. And when it comes to musical acts we almost always just dating.

Most acts create a kind of aural lust. You first hear their song and lust for it. You want to hear the music over and over again. It’s like the sex is great. But then you grow sated. You want something more. The second album comes out and it’s just more of the same. There’s nothing more there. Kind of like when you realize that girl you met last month unloaded every interesting thought she had on that very first night.

With the death of the aural lust we break up with the band. You occasionally listen to their album out of nostalgia, but you move on.

This is not the pattern with Phish. Phish fans are committed to a long-term relationship with their band. For years the band and the fans traveled together, getting to know one another intimately. Phish never seemed to run out of things to say and the audience never tired of listening. Even when the band played an old song they played it in a new way reigniting the love.

This relationship isn’t about the short-term fling of sex but rather about the long-term gain of a loving relationship. The audience communes through the band, they love the band for being the band.

Phish did not utter a single word to the audience the other night. There was no crowd banter, no foreplay mediated by a microphone. Many of their songs lack words except for a phrase or two. In one song they simply repeat the name David Bowie. In another, Divided Sky the wind blows high.

My sister-in-law Katja believes these songs are as zen koans. The band is not trying to say anything but rather put you in a state to simply hear the music and stop all that thinking. And at the end of each set as they bowed deeply and smiled wide, it was easy to see Katja’s point. They were being themselves, no persona, no gamesmanship, no working it.

Phish loves the music they create. Their audience loves the music. And they love Phish for the music. The fans smile at one another and hug and do that kind of silly bouncy sort-of-dance-thing, which is all you can really do once a band has reached the thirty-fifth minute of a jam. (Of course you can always tell the people on drugs because they’re the only ones still dancing at that point.)

Katja has had a profound and loving relationship with Phish for years. She loves the way the communal love of the band brings the whole crowd into harmony. As a wise man once said, a mark of our social evolution is how many people can we bring together and still feel safe? At a Phish show that’s a lot of people.

Yes, there are lots of hippies and white people with dreadlocks and skirts with bells on them and the post-show parking lot scene of veggie burritos and crystals for sale is enough to turn anyone into a Republican.

But the experience of transcending the simple sexual relationship to come to a place where you can catch a glimpse of the world in harmony because of the music of Phish is quite something.

It’s inspired Katja to make a pair of pants for Trey. So Trey, if you see this, please send your measurements to me. Katja has a great vision. It came to her while dancing at Shoreline while not trying to figure out the meaning behind David Bowie.