I just found some guy on Itunes sharing his music folder, and was pleasantly suprised to find “Farmhouse” in his collection. In college, I listened to a lot of Phish. I wasn’t one of those trivia freaks who could recite their setlist from 4-18-97 or anything (shit, usually I couldn’t remember the setlist from a show I’d just seen) but I loved going to the concerts and, over the course of four years, made it to a fair number of them. My first time was in Providence, RI, in 1998, when my then-boyfriend and I spent hours in the cold with our fingers in the air trying to find someone with two extra tickets. Although we didn’t get in that night, we did find someone with extras for the next night’s show, and, sure enough, eight PM the following evening found myself stoned in the Civic Center, wondering what the hell was going on and hoping they’d play something fom Slip Stitch and Pass. It was the only album I knew, at the time. I hate feeling out of the loop.

After that first show, I was hooked, and before they broke up I saw Phish in Albany (three times? One loses track), Darien NY (passed out facefirst in the mud during set break), Camden NJ (4th of July weekend, two shows), Mansfield MA (twice, one of which was my 20th birthday), Rochester NY (a bad batch of E left myself and five friends incapacitated for days afterwards) and Worcester MA (Katsumi’s first show). I rang in the new millennium with a marathon set in the Florida Everglades and danced from midnight until dawn, although I’ll freely admit that I don’t remember anything between the hours of 3 and 5AM. The camping show was so much fun that in the summer of 2003, I went back for more. My college friends and I rented a van, packed it with booze, and headed up to Limestone Maine for IT. For what would turn out to be my last time around the bend, I finagled backstage passes to their sold-out 20th-anniversary show in Boston and nearly shit myself with joy when Mike Gordon appeared a foot from my left hand with a plate of cookies.

There was a culture associated with Phish, obviously, and being part of that culture was important to me for awhile, when I was 20ish. It was even important as I eased out of college life, since really, how mature can you be if you’re still hauling off to tour every summer?

So here I am, listening to Farmhouse, when “Gotta Jibboo” comes on. For those of you who don’t know the song, I’d highly recommend that you listen to it. I remember being at that Rochester show, totally out of my mind, swinging my arms around to that song like it was the best shit ever. Today? I heard it and thought “holy crap, I hope nobody hears me listening to this”.

How embarrassing. Gotta Jibboo? What horseshit.