I like movies and tv. Im really into playing online poker for real money and am pretty good at it. Im a huge fan of the jam band PHISH and have travelled all over the country to see them. I have been to about 30 of their shows and would have been to more but I have to find someone to travel with and Im from a kinda small town that doesn't have many PHISH fans so im forced into paying for everything(concert tickets, gas, hotel rooms, party favors(if you know what I mean), food etc. and it adds up. I once wanted to see them in Las Vegas on Halloween night(every Halloween they cover an entire album by another band, they actually play the whole album!)and it was sold out and I had to pay $500 a ticket from a ticket agency. So there went a thousand right but it was worth it. You meet the most interesting people at their concerts. Which by the way are life changing. They do covers of other bands stuff from led zeppelin and lynrnd sknyrd to will smith's "getting jiggy with it" and unlike most touring acts which play the same concert night after night on their tour with the same songs in the same order PHISH has had a different concert EVERY time in their 30 year career span. and unlike any other band that has been around 30 years they are at the top of their game their last album they released was super good and their live shows are packed with energy and so much fun. Everyone dances and parties and has a super good time. Its all about love and community(they have thousands of fans that follow them from show to show and they support themselves by selling stuff out in the parking lot ranging from grilled cheese sandwiches and Samuel adams to LSD and magic mushrooms that make the light show and concert a spiritual experience. It has been said even by the haters of PHISH that everyone should see them atleast once live to appreciate the level of musicianship these guys have they are all musical prodigy's who can play a 3 minute song from one of their albums and jam it out for 30 minutes! The lead guitarist(trey) was the one recently picked to fill in for the late jerry Garcia for the Grateful Dead's 50th year reunion concerts in California and Chicago partly because phish get put into the same category as the grateful dead because some of their musical sounds and ideas are the same and because when jerry died back in 1995 it left a lot of deadheads clueless as to what band to start listening to and what were they gonna do because they were used to devoting significant portions of their lives following them from show to show so a lot of them started to follow phish. The best experience I ever had in my life came from a THREE day concert of them leading up to new year's eve on the 1999-2000 NYE they played the biggest concert in the united states that new years eve their were EIGHTY THOUSAND of us down in florida on an indian reservation. The very few law enforcement officers that were there were very cool and their biggest complaint was having to get off their horses to give the fans hugs. It was one hell of a party for those three days with tons of nitrous oxide and LSD(five bucks got you a dose dropped into your beer or on your tongue) it was really really good acid. So anyways throughout the three days of intense tripping and meeting all sorts of people from hippies that have been seeing the grateful dead/phish for 30 plus years to lawyers and doctors who were fans of the band. It all lead up to the most kick ass idea for a new years eve show that I would have never thought of. on NYE they had a kick ass fireworks show followed by Peter Jennings flying above us in a helicopter reporting live on the show to the ultimate treat, once the clock struck 12:00 A.M. they played until the sun came up!!!!! It was 6 or 7 hours of the best music I have ever heard in my life for what seemed like blissful eternity or it could have been the fact that I was on the best XTC I have ever had in my life(it changed my soul) it was a blast and they spent a few million dollars for the extras at the concert for instance they had an ice cream named after them by ben&jerrys ice cream which they gave away free nye and had free rides on the ferris wheel facing the stage to the huge blocks of ice we would find scattered throughout the forrest on the reservation. The best part about it was no matter how hard you were tripping all you had to do was turn your head in any direction and you would see someone tripping twice as hard as you so there were no worries and it was all about the love and music. I remember we had to wait I think it was 19 hours out on the highway just to get in the concert because so many people were going to the concert the highways were jam packed since they weren't built for that much traffic. But once we got in and realized the cops there didn't give a fuck what we were doing as long as you didn't cause any trouble(and you will never find trouble at a PHISH show, the fans are some of the most caring and loving people you will ever meet, a lot of them are vegans and have dreadlocks. I have never seen so many white boys with dreadlocks in my life!) a lot of the fans lead a real natural lifestyle, once I travelled to Norman,OK with my cousin and stayed at some phisheads house for 3 days of wine drinking no tv or meat eating and just listening to great music smoking killer pot and playing guitar and they don't wear deodorant or cologne they don't watch tv and avoid man made chemicals and don't eat meat and a lot of the girls don't shave their legs and pits(I know I think its a major turn off too)but sorry to ramble on but if I can sum this whole article I have wrote up in a few words its that every person should see the band PHISH perform live atleast one time in their life to appreciate what thousands of devoted fans call real music. Music that will change the way you look at life and how you treat other people and how you choose to live. Phish avoids being played on "mainstream" radio and MTV is a no no. Most fans are introduced to them by another devoted fan. For me it was my cousin who had followed them for two years and was a taper. That
s right unlike most other bands who frown upon cameras or people taping their concerts Phish, just like the Grateful Dead, encourage it. They even have an area devoted for people taping their shows and sell tickets that are just for tapers. So anyways my cousin got introduced to them by a buddy in college and left home with $100 and a full tank of gas and ended up with a van load of phisheads(devoted fans of the band) and spent the majority of two years following them around the country. You see they will for instance start one of their tours(they normally have a tour in the spring, summer, fall, and a run called "the holiday" tour)up in New York and work their way down the east coast then go across the country to the bottom of the West Coast and work their way up the west coast then the tour is finished, that's when some of the phisheads return home and get a job until the next tour or for some they simply follow a similar band like the string cheese incident or widespread panic. there are some phisheads who never go "home" they follow phish and when phish isn't touring they just follow another jam band and keep going from band to band travelling across the country and sometimes to places like Europe. They really care about their fans too. They average price for one of their great concerts is around $40. In comparison a few years back I went to see Fleetwood mac perform a concert to which I paid $150 for and thought I was gonna be right up by the stage only to realize I was towards the top of the 2nd level! We had to use binoculars just to see the band. and the only bad thing about seeing phish in concert is that it ruins basically every other concert you see. Like Fleetwood mac. Their was no dancing. No lsd out in the parking lot. their was no light show and every song they played sounded just like it did on record basically they were playing the same songs over and over the same way every time for 30 years. How much more boring can you get? With phish every time they play one of their songs its different then the last time they played it. sometimes one of their 2 minute album song might end up being 30 minutes long, with several guitar solos and just jamming out. oh and another thing, these guys are so talented that when they get an idea for a song to cover they go backstage and play the song on a cd and just sit there and listen to it then they go out onstage and play the song, note for note, guitar solo's just like the one on the song they are covering and nail it flawlessly. For instance one night it happened to be a TueTsday and they had an idea to do a cover of lnyrd sknyrd's Tuesday's Gone. So they went backstage listene to it ONCE and went out and played it note for note sounding just as good as lynrd sknyrd did. Now that is what you call talent. Especially when they do Led Zepplin covers because phish's guitarist trey plays the guitar solo's that made jimmy page famous note for note sounding as good if not better than jimmy page himself. Trey can play any song by any guitarist and nail it. He is the best guitar player in the world. He once did a concert with Santana(who a lot of people see as a great guitarist, not my cup of tea, but it is for a lot of people). Well when the guitar solo's came during the song Santana would play one then trey would play one and blow Santana out of the water. Trey put him to shame. He can play the slow blues ballads up til speed metal by metallica(trey votes every Halloween, when they play another bands complete album song for song(which they call it, donning their musical costume)he votes that they cover a metallica album, which would be so bad ass. But not to mention the bass player of PHISH Mike Gordon, who most people who play bass professionally or are in the music business regard mike Gordon as the best bass player in the world. Im dead serious. The guy is freaking amazing. He plays that bass like its his bitch. He can play slow ballads up to the funky jams that get the crowd dancing and he has this technique on how he plays his bass that just looks bad ass. The guy is the best thing to bass since sliced bread. So you put the best bass player in the world up with, many people regard as the best guitarist on the planet and you top it off with a bad ass keyboardist and one hell of a drummer who plays his massive drum set like a wild man while wearing his traditional "MOO" often accompanied by a Viking horn skull cap and sometimes just plain naked and you get the guys who are just freaking amazing musicians to where they can not only play their instruments like golden gods but they can IMPROVISE on the spot and they do it so naturally they make it look easy and have it all come out sounding freaking amazing trey said that during practice they let different members of the band lead out the jamming, deciding which direction to take the music and then they bounce their role off to another member who will start his jamming the way he sees fit. But what makes it phenomenal is that the music sounds like they have been rehearsing it for months to go out and do a concert and it is just made up on the spot. I play guitar and when I was practicing every day I bragged about my ability that if I had the music in front of me I could basically play any song there was and make it sound pretty good after a few tries. Well I got a hold of one of PHISH"S live music's books and it blew my freakin mind. I could not even come close to playing how trey played the songs it was like I was reading Chinese! that's when I gained a whole another aspect of respect for trey for his musical genius. But as I was saying phish cares about its fans. Even when their average price of a ticket Is around $40 they usually place in the top three touring acts according to billboard magazine and they rate how you place in the top touring acts by how much money the act has earned. Well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that phish must be selling a hell of a lot of tickets when they are up their with Britney spears who is charging over a hundred bucks a ticket minimum. Well I have rambled on enough about the greatest band on the planet and if you actually read all this your freakin incredible. Hopefully someone who has never heard of phish, and their are a lot of people who haven't, reads this and goes to one of phish's legendary concerts and they will be hooked, guaranteed. Its that simple especially now since phish's guitarist trey is sober and at the top of his game. Easily said phish is playing so good right now, they can't get any better. It is weird to say that but it is true. They really are the best band on the planet. The question is, do you agree or are you musically ignorant?


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I listen mostly to Phish, see about them in my about me and interests sections. I also listen to the grateful dead a lot too. I have a few other bands I listen too. But no rap. Rap simply is not real music. The fact is when no one in the band can play an instrument it is not a band. Rap is made up of computers and some ignorant ass boasting about being from the ghetto and how tough he and his boys are. That isn't real music. That is an ignorant mans so called music. anyways carrying on im also into johnny cash, david allen coe, john Anderson, a lot of outlaw country music I also like the cranberries, katy perry(don't even try to clown on my katy)rush, soundgarden, alice in chains, foo fighters, primus, metallica, some slayer, and the only rap I will listen too, biggie smalls

fight club, fast times at ridgemont high(best movie ever made)the breakfast club, young guns one and two, lord of the rings, all the harry potters, anything with john candy(funniest man there ever was) superbad, requim for a dream(Ass to Ass!!!)Rush, Rounders, the goonies, carlitos way, back to the future one and two part three was a tribute to fags, anything bill murray, the karate kid, the original not the mass produced piece of shit that was also a tribute and dedication to fags that will smiths ugly little talentless kid was in. anything will ferrel

trey from phish and will ferrel