Neither a 650-word review for a general interest publication, nor a discursive blog post making stale jokes about hippies can adequately describe my Festival 8 weekend. Suffice to say, my neurons currently share the consistency of fried squid and I am subject to embarrassing revelations about my newfound ardor for Phish. It’s the sort of thing that needs a minimum 10-page essay, a video accompaniment, and a haiku about Hacksaw Jim Duggan (see above), who never broke character while wearing his costume all weekend long. At 4 a.m. on Saturday night, he could still be found wandering around the parking lot screaming “Hooooo.”
Posting may be a bit light over the next few days as I struggle to re-acclimate to Los Angeles, daylight savings, a slew of looming deadlines, and the ramifications of last weekend. As a man named Ox once said, “everything’s the same, but different.”My review for the Times is up now. At some point, I imagine I will write about it in more depth–but in brief, Phish pulled it off, which is just about the highest praise I can give to a band with the hubris to book the Empire Polo Club for a weekend without any openers or ancillary live entertainment. Below, Phish’s two best songs for people who don’t like Phish. Don’t question my sanity, regardless of how much fun I had this weekend, I still think “Gotta Jibboo” remains the most insipid song ever recorded.
Download:
MP3: Phish-“Bouncing Round the Room (6/7/09)
MP3: Phish-“Fee” (Live Phish 19)
