Phish in Hampton: The Super Bowl of Concerts

Quick: Which is better? Attending a great game or a great concert? Comparing the two is difficult, because determining the success of a sporting event is usually quite objective and binary (your team either wins or loses), while evaluating the quality of a concert is completely subjective.

However, this much we can all agree on: all events are not created equal.

Some games mean more than others: games against the big rival; homecoming games; games that clinch something; playoff games; championship games. Likewise, some concerts mean more than others: Halloween; New Year’s; the first show at home after a long tour; festivals; comebacks.

In sports, there is one game that by definition transcends all the games that came before it. It’s the championship clincher. Every game before it has led to it, and you know that nothing comes after it. This is why the Super Bowl is the greatest game on earth; it’s America’s only best-of-one, winner-takes-all pro team sports championship.

In music, it’s much tougher to generate a concert that transcends all the shows before it. Concerts just carry on from one to the next with little definable culmination and no defined lifespan. But if you could somehow incorporate the concept of timeline and climax into performance art, you could have a transcendent concert. This is exactly what Phish has managed to do.

This is why Friday, March 6th at the Hampton Coliseum is The Most Significant Phish Show Ever.

Phish will play their first three shows in nearly five years over the course of March 6th-8th. After twenty years of touring, they hung it up in August 2004, allegedly never to play again. The greatest live performance powerhouse in American history was done. (If you don’t believe that, ask yourself if Jimmy Buffet or Bruce Springsteen can draw 100,000 people to a festival in Limestone, Maine with no other bands. The answer is “not a chance.") Tens of thousands trekked to Coventry, Vermont for Phish’s farewell festival, and when weather washed out the campground, people left their cars on the side of the highway for three days, hiking the last 10-25 miles into the festival. This just doesn’t happen to any other band.

With the exception of the Grateful Dead, Phish have to be the all-time American leader in fans with 100+ shows under their belt. Those who have seen about fifty shows (forty-four for me) don’t consider it to be a particularly high number. Countless others joined late or were just too young to get out to shows when the band quit.  These people had the rug yanked out from under them just when they were coming in, and they are actually the ones who are fighting the hardest to see Phish right now. Ticket prices have never been higher and neither has demand.

Phish doesn’t have as many fans as major pop bands, however, Phish does have a lot of fans, and the passion-per-fan output dwarfs that of any other act. Nobody likes Phish; you either passionately love Phish or you couldn’t care less about them. Phish is more than just a musical interest.  If someone is into Phish, this often defines a huge chunk of their lifestyle.

That’s a huge chunk that has been missing for nearly five years to all of these fans. The importance of having Phish back cannot be overstated to the Phish fan. This comeback puts a magnificent sliver of significance back into Phish fans’ lives.

How will it all turn out? Nobody knows. Where does the band even start? With an original catalog of some four hundred songs and countless covers played, what material do you even choose to prepare? Can they play their own uber-complex songs? Are they in touch with the fan base regarding which tunes we have to have back and which ones we could just as easily live without? Can they rekindle the jamming teamwork that makes them so irresistible?

Everyone will have to judge for themselves. The important thing is that we are judging at all. This is the most important concert in America in years. It all comes down to this. There won’t be a scoreboard, but make no mistake about it: Phish’s comeback run at Hampton Coliseum is the Super Bowl of Concerts.

Stay tuned to melophobe as I will be providing post-show analysis after each of the three shows.

Following the lines going south,

Seth Wolfman

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Brother Ali + Abstract Rude - Middle East Downstairs (Cambridge, MA; Mar. 28, 2008)

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