I'm sorry, but this is my one and only chance to say this: 20 years later, I'm still upside down. Thank you.

First show, this review written 20 years to the day after the fact. The First Moment Of IT is still as seared into my brain now as it was when it happened. The summer going into college, I was getting over mono, liked the song Wilson and not much else, but good new friends of mine said you gotta check out Phish and they're quitting anyways so give it a shot. I was a Dead snob. But I'd already loved Alpine from a good handful of DMB shows, so sure. Phish felt like the more dangerous thing to do.

Fast forward through the first set, which felt cool, fun, different, appreciated Access Me (without knowing it going in) as feeling non-traditional and obvious as an opener, basically the footing underneath me was pleasantly shifty from the start. I was just happy to be there with. my buds. Boogie On is groovy, it's really dark outside now, and then:

GHOST.

IT, I learned during Ghost, is the feeling where mind, body (the face in particular) and soul are forcibly sucked from what you identify as "you" and melded solidly with the world created by the music. The world I most humbly found myself inside of during Ghost was unsettling and grooving, like we were in a factory of sorts and the four of them were experimenting with various kinds of machinery, pushing buttons that made me feel all sorts of different things, all pretenses of showmanship or performance or fronts vanished, nothing between me, them, and the strange world we were all experiencing unfolding together. It was alive and breathing and weird and awesome in a pure and profound way that I hadn't experienced before with anything in my life. Eventually Trey hit upon that "duh-duh-daa" lick that the rest of them rallied around to pull us out of the abyss, and they found their way into Free. I liked Free, but it wasn't THAT. I liked the rest of the show, but it wasn't THAT. I spent the rest of the show wondering why they didn't take us back THERE again, and stay there.

I don't wonder that anymore, because I'm wise enough now to know that to get THERE is only partly their doing, its mine too. I've gotten better at allowing myself to be taken there, and this subtle shift in mindset has allowed me to experience IT during moments I'd find unremarkable if I weren't at the concert: say, the Dicks 2019 Bug or the Alpine 2019 Caspian (in addition to plenty jams I do find remarkable). Surrender to the flow, don't roll your eyes or gloss over it, actually do it and IT will happen, easy to do but easy to forget.

IT is a wonderful thing, and it is a fact of life that if you allow yourself to, you can experience it while walking your dog or doing the dishes (also while on psychedelics; I'd had weed and alcohol at this show, btw, hadn't taken psychedelics yet). But mindfulness, you know.

There still hasn't been a time quite like during that Ghost. But there have been countless times since that I've felt many indescribably awesome things at the many Phish shows I've seen, and I'm grateful.