I usually try to keep my Phish posts to a minimum since I know a lot of my followers could care less about the band, but today marks the 9th anniversary of my first show (2/20/03) and I want to talk about it dang-nab-it!
At the time I was a high school junior living with my parents in the Chicago suburbs. By this point I had already gone trough many musical phases in my young life. Grunge, rap-metal, and even a yearlong punk rock stint where I used Elmer’s glue to give myself a red mohawk. I had heard the name Phish tossed around once or twice by friend’s older brothers but had never heard any of their music until one of my best friends bought me a copy of ‘Junta’ (Phish’s first studio album) for Christmas 2002. I quickly became infatuated with the album and one song in particular, entitled ‘You Enjoy Myself.’
I had never heard a song like that before.
It had everything – beautiful classical elements, crazy builds and peaks, and soaring guitar licks.
Boy. Man. God. Shit. I was hooked.
Leading up to February of 2003, ‘Junta’ hadn’t left my CD player in over two months. The funny thing is, at this point, I had no idea that Phish was known for their live performances. I hadn’t even considered seeing them in concert or heard a single live recording. That all changed on Wednesday February 19th 2003. I drove to school just like any other day, went to my locker, and walked to my first class. There I ran into my friend Ryan, who told me that Phish was playing a show at the Allstate Arena and his dad had surprised him with five tickets he had gotten from a coworker.
It was on. In retrospect, it’s really funny to think about how Phish was playing a show ten minutes from my house and I had no idea until the day before. My how the times have changed…
I had no clue what to expect. Up until this point I had only been to three concerts – Weezer (great show), Sum41 (I know, I know…), and Limp Bizkit (Ha!). I must have listened to YEM at least 20 times the night before the show (or ‘concert’ as I would’ve called it back then). After a night of anxious sleep, the day was finally here.
February 20th 2003.
Immediately following the longest day of school I’ve ever experienced, we took off to Ryan’s place to get ready for the show. I don’t remember a lot of the details of what we did but I do know it was a lot different than the way we pre-game now. I know for a fact we didn’t drink any alcohol or smoke any herb. Most likely we played Halo and ate grilled cheese (well I guess some things never change). Around five o’clock we piled into the car and headed to the arena.
One we arrived I could already tell this was going to be different than any other show I’d ever seen. The entire parking lot was full of people partying and there was a HUGE line of people waiting to get in the doors already. We drove up to a parking attendant, rolled down the driver side window, and handed him a piece of paper. It turned out Ryan’s dad was golfing buddies with the head of security at the arena. He had “forgotten” to mention the fact that we were going to be let into the arena before anyone else to secure the best seats in the building!
After we were directed into some back VIP lot we unloaded and were brought to a side door where we were told to wait. A few minutes went by and a giant man who looked like Dog the Bounty Hunter greeted us. He briefly introduced himself, and then promptly walked us directly onto the floor, dead center, leaning on the railing. Thanks Dog.
We sat there, backs to the rail for about 20 minutes until we heard the floodgates open in the front of the arena. I’ll never forget the pissed off looks on people faces when they came running in only to see us already sitting on the rail. I’m not going to lie, some of these fans were not very friendly towards a group of 17 year olds who had the rail directly in front of Trey for their first show. I remember getting grilled about what my favorite song was and which member of the band I liked the most. ‘You Enjoy Myself’ and Trey were my answers. I still stand by that response.
I’m not going to go into details about the show, but when those lights went down my life was changed forever. I hardly knew any of the songs that were played that night. It didn’t matter. I was in complete awe for three hours strait. As many phans would say, MIND = BLOWN. Looking back it was a ridiculous show, with five songs reaching the 20 minute mark (Simple, Jibboo, Tweezer, Seven Below, Pebbles and Marbles) and a three song encore:
Thursday, 02/20/2003
Allstate Arena, Rosemont, IL
Set 1: Rift > Rock and Roll, Guyute, Driver, Waves > Simple, Gotta Jibboo
Set 2: Tweezer > PYITE > Fast Enough for You > Seven Below, Pebbles and Marbles
Encore: Golgi Apparatus, Anything But Me > Tweezer Reprise
I later found the above picture from that night on the web. You can see my friend Ryan and I sprawled out on the rail in complete shock of what we were witnessing. It was the start of a beautiful addiction, still going strong 50+ shows later. See you pholks this summer….
