Oh memories, memories
Here is what I actually remembered from the show before listening to it again recently: I was happy to hear the new "Anything But Me" (love those "Round Room" ballads!), "Saw It Again" rocked out hard, "What's the Use" was gorgeous, and I had fun walking through the coliseum's corridors during set break. Twenty years later, that is the entirety of my memory of a show that was the longest commute for the shortest return on music.
Unfortunately, my more vivid and lasting memories had a lot less to to with the actual show. But I will get to that.
A ticket stub in your hand
When Phish announced their return from a two-year hiatus with the New Year's 2002-03 run, I submitted my early ticket requests for all four shows and received one for Jan. 4. When the tickets went on sale on Ticketmaster, I got nothing.
It made absolutely no sense to drive to Hampton, VA, from Parsippany, NJ, for one show, but I did it anyway.
I arrived at Hampton Coliseum and was wowed - it really did look as cool on the outside as the pictures on Phish's "Hampton Comes Alive" album portrayed. Unfortunately, I got stopped at the gate and was told that the parking lot was full and I should park at one of the nearby shopping centers.
Rock and roll
Hearing the show now, I am once again put off a bit by Trey's crunchier guitar tone that feels not quite right for some tunes, but the first set is a good, if not quite essential, listen (save for the aforementioned "Anything" and "Again"). "Split Open and Melt" is interesting because you can hear the seeds of the hot messes of 3.0 era "Melt", though it does stay more rooted in the actual song for much longer.
So do "Rock and Roll" and "Mike's Song" at the beginning of the second set, but they do rock pretty damn hard, with Trey's new, fat guitar tone working to his benefit. The latter, however, eschews it traditional ending - and though it gets pushed into the key of F, where "Simple" would have been the expected segue - the song breaks down to quietude and segues instead into "Mountains in the Mist". Four shows in, the 2.0 era is showing that unusual song selection and a penchant for not properly ending songs are among its oddities. A heavy duty "Down With Disease" jam ends in a similar manner later on.
"Weekapaug Groove", which fades upward from Trey playing the main riff and eliminates Mike's bass intro starts at a medium pace, but Fish picks it up, and by the middle of the jam, there is some great interplay between Trey and Page that is worth checking out. And just when you think it is going to come back around to the chorus for the end, Trey finally gets his chance to play "What's the Use".
After a silly ending to the set at the conclusion of "2001" after some heartfelt words from Trey, the encore drops one more new song, "Friday", a 'Round Room' ballad that vaguely recalls "New Age" by Velvet Underground.
On the whole, it was decent, but it was after the show when the real debacle began for me.
Bummed is what you are *
In the parking lot, I met a guy that was looking for a ride to New York. I told him I would get him to a train station in New Jersey. So, we walked to the shopping center where my car was parked and....no car. Sure enough, there was a sign that I did not notice on my way in to this lot in which *I was told to park* indicating that cars would be towed. There was a phone number to call for the towing company, but these were the days before it was standard to include the area code. I had a cell phone, but a seven-digit number in an unfamiliar area code did me no good since these were also the days before smartphones and I could not simply look it up.
We found a store that was open and found out the area code, called the towing company and sure enough, they had towed the car and told us where it was impounded.
I honestly have no recollection of how we got to the place or how far away it was. But I do remember that when we got there, there was a long line of Phish fans in the same predicament, each having to pay a hundred bucks to get his car back.
My long journey home
We finally got on the road sometime around maybe 1 or 2 a.m. and now I had to drive through the night after being up since the early morning. My passenger fell asleep in no time, and eventually, so did I.
Being jarred awake after drifting off the road and into the dirt is a scary experience. I was lucky there was no guardrail or other obstacle into which I could have collided. My passenger woke up, too, and I assured him everything was OK, trying to make it seem like I had been fumbling around with the CD player and not falling asleep.
After that harrowing experience, I somehow mustered the energy to keep it together through the long winter night, finally dropping my guest off at the Harrison PATH station sometime after sunrise. I got home to Parsippany, around 9 a.m.-ish, if memory serves.
I had been up for more than 24 hours, minus however many seconds I had slept at the wheel. I had commuted 14 hours, plus a couple of hours dealing with the towed car. All for one decent but unremarkable Phish show. Was it worth it?
*thanks, aLi!
