PHISH at Molson Amphitheatre (909 Lake Shore West), Tuesday (July 9), 7 pm. $50-$75. LN, TM. See listing.
If you’re most people, the only thing you know about Phish is that they’re some goofy jam guys. That they were on the weed episode of The Simpsons. That you don’t like them.
And you don’t like the people who like them: men wearing drawstring toques in summer, women with custom hula-hoops.
“I think there’s a knee-jerk hostility toward hippies,” says Nathan Rabin, whose interrogation into fan culture in his new book You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me, makes him, pretty much, a Phish expert.
“The idea is that they’re stoners, they’re overgrown children. And while the rest of us are going out and being grown-ups, they’re just nogoodniks.”
Granted, Phish are goofy. One of their songs rhymes “sociologist” with “neurologist.” Another just repeats the words “David Bowie” and “UB40” over and over. But for fans (or “phans”), this sense of humour has long been one of the band’s virtues.
Watching singer/guitarist Trey Anastasio amble through a 14-minute solo, carroty hair matted over his face, is like watching a human Muppet wail.
And saying that weed makes them better isn’t really a knock against them. (The whole point of weed is that it makes everything – apart from scary movies and maintaining an erection – better.)
The problem is that Phish are hard to get into. Their studio albums don’t approach the richer experience of their live shows (and recordings), and it’s hard to get into those without tracking down some hard-proselytizing phan who will spend the next week barking old tour dates at you. Here’s a new one: this week’s Molson Amphitheatre gig is their first Toronto show in 13 years.
Their music also requires a bit of attention. Unlike jam band progenitors like the Grateful Dead – who can be more passively enjoyed – phandom is one of those all-or-nothing deals.
“At first, it’s a little noodly, a little self-indulgent and directionless,” says Rabin, who approached the band with hesitancy. But after spending years exploring their music, he has a whole new set of adjectives for it: “pretty, delicate, interesting, complicated.”
There’s a great moment at the end of the TV series Freaks And Geeks when Linda Cardellini’s Lindsay Weir bails on a two-week academic summit to follow the Grateful Dead on tour.
It was the grace note of a show about young people forming their identities and the pushing and pulling that tugs high schoolers in all kinds of competing directions.
Yes, the Dead may be associated with cheesy tie-dyed stoners in beat-up VW vans. But the decision was Lindsay’s own – bold and brave.
The tenacity of Phish’s legions of followers feels similarly audacious in its own “dare to be stupid” kind of way.
Like Deadheads or Insane Clown Posse’s loyal, face-painted Juggalos – also investigated in Rabin’s new book – there’s something weirdly noble about phans.
While pop music appreciation depends on fickle tastemaking, on staying desperately ahead of the curve, on cycles of trend-spotting and trend-bucking, Phish aficionados have cast their lot. They listen to Phish.
Like their nomadic fans, Phish exist in their own loopy orbit well outside of mainstream culture. No hit records. No big singles. There’s all of music then, outside of that, there’s Phish.
And even if it feels like holding someone in high regard for being really good at devil sticks or clearing the chamber of a 6-foot bong in one go, it’s hard not to admire them.
johns@nowtoronto.com | @johnsemley3000
