Saturday, October 16, 2021

Marathon XXVI

Despite the Pequannock 5K giving me an icky feeling about being in crowded places, it seemed like things were getting better.  I was vaccinated, I started spending time with friends and family who were also vaccinated and it felt like some sort of semblance of the old normal was going to return.  

That was July.  So I signed up for the Hartford Marathon.  I needed to run that race again - this time at the official in-person event - and try to right the wrongs of last year. 

And then the delta variant of COVID suddenly became a threat.  People were dying again, vaccinated friends were getting breakthrough cases and I stopped feeling safe around others.  So I retreated back to my own personal lockdown.

But I kept training for the race, partially because I kept looking for a glimmer of hope and partially because I was already way too committed.  I was going to run this thing no matter what.  Connecticut was one of two states on the Eastern seaboard (the other being Georgia) in which I still had not run a sub-four-hour marathon.  

On Oct. 9, having completed the 18-week Hal Higdon Advanced Training program, I woke up at 4 a.m. and, feeling no excitement at all, got in the car and started driving to Hartford...

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Phish at Atlantic City beach - Aug. 15, 2021

While walking along the uncomfortably crowded boardwalk, we heard the opening strains of "The Landlady".  Nice.  As we made our way to the entrance to the beach venue, Phish started playing the intro to "Scents and Subtle Sounds", which they had skipped the previous night when launching into the meat of the song.  Wow, that was weird and interesting.  Never miss a Sunday show, they say.

And though the rest of the show did not follow through on that promise for the crazy and unexpected, it was a solid show that continued the trajectory of the tour, with the band getting tighter at every stop.  The first couple of shows had be cringing.  What a difference a few weeks makes. 

The first set's selections touched on four decades of Phish - with a classic Mike's Groove ("Mike's Song" > "I Am Hydrogen" > "Weekapaug Groove"), "The Sloth" and a set-closing "You Enjoy Myself" covering the 1980s; that "Landlady" plus "Roggae" and "Back on the Train" (both of which are better than ever) and a "The Moma Dance" that was so good that Phish deemed it the only track from the entire A.C. weekend worth posting on its You Tube page, covering the '90s; the "Scents" intro touching on the brief '00s period (ah, 2.0, weird times); and the face-plant-into-rock of the Kasvot Vaxt tune, "The Final Hurrah" repping the '10s.  When I see Phish, I want variety and boy, did I get it!

You know what else I want?  Flow.  And the second set had it.  A "Carini" set opener always sets the stage for some hot jamming, and this one was no different.  Speaking of hot jamming, the set also contained a mid-set "Piper" and a "First Tube" closer.  That is what you call placement.  Somehow, "Waves" and "Simple" - two songs that have been known to launch giant improvisational explorations - managed to be the shortest songs of the set, which may have been disappointing in some ways, but this set was about the flow.  And while complaints could be made about Phish's versions of "Set Your Soul Free" and "Beneath the Sea of Stars Part 1" compared to the versions by the Trey Anastasio Band and Ghosts of the Forest (respectively), the performances on this night were just right for the mood.  The former was big and uplifting, while the latter was soothingly perfect for a beautiful night on the beach.

Another GOTF tune, "About to Run," has become common in Phish's sets, as well as TAB's, so I guess Trey really likes it, but I am not totally sold.  Even from the original GOTF shows, I thought it was one of the weaker songs.  At this show, it was the only thing that broke the awesome flow.  

Trey, if you are going to play some more GOTF, give me some more of that "Ruby Waves" action.  How about "The Green Truth"?  Better yet, really surprise me with the rock-out of "Beneath the Sea of Stars Part 3 (Blue)".

Speaking of surprises, I certainly did not expect "Fluffhead" in the encore.  Heck, with "Tweezer Reprise" played the previous night and "YEM" out of the way in the first set, I wondered what would happen at all.  And if the triumphant ending of "Fluffhead" wrapped things up nicely for the weekend, "Backwards Down the Number Line" was the bow on top.  

I do not think I will be attending any more Phish shows in person - not with COVID still being a problem (and everyone there acting like it is not a problem).  I have attended 156 shows in 14 states over 28 years.  It was an amazing experience.  Fifteen years after the Coventry debacle that we all thought ended our Phish travels on a sour note, I am happy to now end my journey on a high note.  This is a band that is still worth listening to, and I intend to keep doing so as "couch tour" phan.  

In case you are wondering, I did my stats on Zzyzx's website (ihoz.com) and my most seen song is "Chalk Dust Torture".

Monday, October 11, 2021

Phish at Atlantic City beach, Aug. 14, 2021

First order of business - get up before the crack of dawn and start running. 

I planned out a 19-mile run from Galloway, east through Absecon, then south through Pleasantville and Northfield, then back again. I love these long runs on Phish tour because I get to really see the neighborhoods, not just the areas surrounding the venues and hotels.

It was early, I was tired and groggy, but it was imperative I got out there before the heat really kicked in.  It was already in the 70s and the sun was coming up.  The goal was to keep it slow and steady and get it done so I could join my wife and friend for some lunch and head over to the second night of Phish on the beach in Atlantic City.  As the run went on I slowed from low 8s to low 9s, and then took a wrong turn to end up doing more than 20 miles.  My overall pace was 8:46, and that was fine, especially after a night of dancing and five hours of sleep on a crappy bed.

The first set of the second show had some neat surprises, like my first "Slow Llama" and "Soul Shakedown Party" in years, and the always welcome back-from-the-dust-bin "Destiny Unbound" (a song I have been hearing a lot as I have been listening to all of the 1991 shows).  But for the most part the first set was very first-set-y.  "Tube" had us dancing, "46 Days" had us rocking, "Reba" was pretty standard and, well, "Melt" is going to "Melt" these days (the light show is fun to watch on the latter, but that is all I can really say).  For a brief moment, I think I had an idea of what those Mexico Phish shows must be like, as Phish played the breezy island sounds of "Ya Mar" while I splashed around in the ocean.  But before I knew it, the set was closing with "The Squirming Coil".

Trey Anastasio's solo album from last year yielded a few songs that have worked their way into Phish's set lists, so it was not much of a surprise to hear "I Never Needed You Like This Before" to open the set, but the doors blew wide open for a big "Drowned" jam, which eventually gave way to "Ghost" - always reliable for a groovy jam - and then, to my delight, the criminally underplayed "Scents and Subtle Sounds".  Unfortunately, they skipped the intro to the latter, as they tended to do back in 2004, and then cut the jam jarringly short.  Of course, it is hard to complain when the ripcord is pulled only to fire up "Chalk Dust Torture".  

When "Chalk Dust" fizzled out and led into "No Quarter", I could not help but think they were playing the wrong Led Zeppelin song.  I mean, they played "The Ocean" in Mexico, why not do one for the folks on the beach in the U.S.?  

A beautiful "Slave to the Traffic Light" and a rollicking "Suzy Greenberg" ended the set and my poor legs were tired from all the dancing after all that running, so when the ballad "A Life Beyond the Dream" was played for the encore, I was happy to hear it, even if it ended up not being a great performance of it. 

I figured they would save "Tweezer Reprise" for the end of Sunday's show, but...nope....here it was, and I had no choice but to dance and leap as I have been doing since my 20s when that song is played, sore legs be damned.  Another satisfying end to another good show, though I think I enjoyed Friday's show better (or at least Friday's second set).

Gloria, Ali and I wanted to find somewhere to hang out post-show within A.C. but the boardwalk, the casinos and the restaurants were overflowing with people.  The crowds were too big, and it was all too much for me to handle.  There was nowhere I felt comfortable at all, let alone somewhere I would have felt comfortable enough to remove my mask.  So after a lot of walking around (and with a grand total of 56,405 steps for the day), we retired back to the hotel room.

Sunday, October 10, 2021

Phish at Atlantic City beach, Aug. 13, 2021

When tickets went on sale for Phish's autumn and New Year's Eve shows in 2019, I made a decision - skip the tours, save some money, then really do it up for summer tour 2020. 

Of course, had I known the world would go kablooey, I would have gone to as many shows as possible in the second half of 2019.  

Before the pandemic hit, the idea of doing it up A.C.-style was exciting.  By the time the shows, came around in 2021, I had no desire to go anywhere in public, let alone a crowded Phish show.  But I was vaccinated, it was outside on the beach, and the possibility of being away from the crowd made the prospect a little better.  Even still, I kept my mask on any time I got remotely close to another person.  

The venue was a blocks-long stretch of beach, and we stayed in the back, away from the crowd, even hanging out in the water for a while because it was such a pleasant night.  The sound was good enough that we could hear everything pretty clearly, if not loudly or crisply. 

It was nice to hear "Cars Trucks Buses", especially as an opener, and "AC/DC Bag" and "Funky Bitch" were standard first-set fare, but "Blaze On" and "Wolfman's Brother" kicked things up with jams that stretched out a bit and had us, as Trey Anastasio sang in altered lyrics to the former, "dancing on the beach."

I have been listening to a lot of 1991 shows lately and there is no doubt that, in comparison, vacuum solos by Jon Fishman are a lot harder to come by these days, so to get one in the first set of my first show in two years (in "I Didn't Know") was a treat.  Having also listened to the whole 2021 tour up to that point, I shuddered a bit when "Rift" started up because, well, Trey had not yet had a precise performance of it.  He almost got through it with no flubs, but at least it was better than the previous two, and the "Sand" set-closer, with its trademark perfect mix of rock and funk, made up for anything that was previously lacking.

The second set came out swinging hard with back-to-back fun-time jams in "Tweezer" and "Bathtub Gin" and the party kept rolling with "Everything's Right".  I hate to say it, but I do not have much interest in "Possum" anymore.  However, I actually get a kick out of watching how everyone else still loves it - especially because several people in the audience were not even alive when Phish first played that song with its songwriter and founding band member Jeff Holdsworth. 

Things got interesting for me again in the back half of the second set with classics like "2001" and "Harry Hood" and two of my newer favorites, "Rise/Come Together" and "More".  Even with "Possum" in the mix, that second set was as solid and fun as a Phish show can get.  Add a "Loving Cup" encore to that, and it is hard not to be happy coming away from that.

Egress from the venue was pretty easy, and we managed to get back to the Red Roof Inn in Galloway at a reasonable hour.  Unfortunately, the hotel was terrible and the beds were ridiculously uncomfortable, which was bad news because I was planning on a 19-mile run the next day.