Humor

With Phish back on the road for a reunion tour, here are ten things you might find at the year’s most anticipated musical traveling nostalgia circus.

1. Aging Phishheads will trade in their battered 401(k)’s for battered VW buses with 401K miles.

You know there are a handful of thirtysomethings considering this right now – ditching the cubicle, the wife, the kids, the razor – and hitting the road to follow their favorite 90’s band one more time. The temptation must be destroying them slowly from within, as the angel on one shoulder tells them that they can just catch the local show, while the devil on the other tells them to trade in what’s left of that battered 401(k) for a rusted, broken down bus. “C’mon just do it!” the devil tells them, “Don’t worry, it won’t catch on fire on the freeway like the last two did.”

2. A fan in the parking lot will be charged with “Assault With A Veggie Burrito.”

After arguing with a fellow fan who claimed that Hoist was a better album than A Picture Of Nectar, an irate Phishhead will take a wrapped veggie burrito out of his cooler and proceed to beat his nemesis with it as viciously as one can beat another individual with a veggie burrito. Two key factors will protect the victim from receiving serious head injuries in this incident: One, his thick crop of filthy dreadlocks will act as an impromptu helmet and, two, the fact that the weapon in use was a veggie burrito.

3. The band will endorse their own brand of nitrous oxide.

Tired of not getting a piece of the action from all the drug sales in their concert parking lots, the band will strike up this ingenious idea. Since nitrous is technically a legal drug (if you’re in a dentist’s office) the band will simply brand their own gas. When those tanks just happen to pop up at the parking lots at their shows, they will take a one dollar cut per balloon sold. Any parking lot nitrous peddler not giving up his cut will be forced to deal with keyboardist Page McConnell and his dreaded aluminum baseball bat, lovingly christened “Wilson.”

4. Budget restraints will force the band to cut back on it’s legendary light show.

The lighting for the summer 2009 tour will consist of an illegal immigrant (Hector) paid $23 per show (plus last dibs on crew catering and, of course, a “nug”) turning a table lamp on and off in rapid succession at strategic points during the concert. No one will realize that buying a strobe light at Spencer’s Gifts is actually a cheaper option.

5. Fans attending more than two shows in a row will be forced to buy a t-shirt at every show there after.

Anyone who has ever spent an hour or so immersed in a sea of fans outside a Phish concert knows that credo number one for this clientele is not “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” In fact, cleanliness is apparently next to the last aspect of life these people have any concern for. So, in order to promote a more pleasant, sanitary, “fresh scented” concert experience for 2009, the band will force traveling fans to buy and immediately don a fresh new shirt after their third show. This may sound harsh, but it’s much more pleasant than option two, hosing down hardcore fans with a mix of Tide, Irish Spring and concentrated car wash soap.

6. Trey Anastasio will realize that he has chosen a bad environment for practicing sobriety.

For a guy who faced some serious drug possession charges a couple of years ago, you’d figure that throwing yourself dead-center into one of the largest traveling parties the United States has ever produced could be a risky endeavor. Talk about temptation! It’s like an alcoholic trying to sober up while working at a brewery. We shall see…

7. Drummer Jon Fishman will under-estimate the power of his new purchase during his vacuum solo and will have his larynx sucked out.

Lucky for him though, the vacuum bag will be ripped open to reveal his larynx was riddled with larynx AIDS. The vacuum will be nick-named “The Life-Saver” and Fishman will rave about it, in a tender handwritten note, since his talking days will be kaput.

8. The band will introduce their all melodica hour and a half long second set.

Just when you thought a band couldn’t jam out on melodicas, Phish proves everyone wrong with their monster second sets of melodica madness! Minds will be blown when Trey reveals his custom double-neck tricked out gold-keyed melodica on the last night of the tour. Even better, it will be an hour and a half of JUST ONE SONG! Just one long-ass melodica jaaaaaaam maaaaaaan…yes!

9. A handful of fans will proudly show off their live bootleg tape collections as if they were a prize collection of jewels.

Look for these fans in the parking lots as well. The ones with their big, wooden, formerly wall-mounted cassette cases filled to the brim with 90’s goodness. The cream of the crop will actually be playing the bootlegs with DAT players. Now that is dedication. Walk on by and bask in their conversation, as they explain to wide-eyed listeners how that New Years Eve ’95 show was actually a FIRST GENERATION DUPLICATE! If only the MP3 and CD-R had never been invented, all that magnetic tape would still actually be worth something.

10. The Phish vs. Dead debate will officially end.

For years Phish and Grateful Dead fans have (much to the chagrin of their co-workers, families, friends, psychologists, priests) debated endlessly about who the greatest jam band of all time really is. Well, on the final night of Phish’s four night stand at Red Rocks a victor will be declared when the ghost of Jerry Garcia appears on stage and announces to the arena that the greatest jam band of all time is in fact, THE DAVE MATHEWS BAND! This will be followed by a collective “Whaaaaaaaaaaa?” from the crowd. The ghost of Jerry will then ask Trey if he knows anyone “who’s holding.”

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