Fluffhead

Originally published March 6, 2010 on Selectism.

One year ago today I was in Hampton, Virginia. I was there to see Phish, and it was a big deal.

Five years after announcing their breakup, the band was back for a run of three shows at the Hampton Coliseum, itself a special place in the hearts and minds of fans. This was a group event. The band has gotten back together, but our band had gotten back together too. Some of my very closest friends were gathering to take it all in together.

It was hard to have musical expectations in that situation. Five years after a break up—fueled by apathy and (sadly) drugs—I just hoped to have a good time, and hear some of the music I loved.

As the first show approached, people got to chatting: “What do you think they’ll open with?” “Do you think they’ll play…?”, etc. Unless you’re very familiar with Phish’s music, it’s hard to appreciate the weight behind any of these songs; why fans may groan when the band starts up “Bug,” but jump up and cheer when they break into “Tweezer.” The names don’t mean anything. It’s what’s beneath the names.

For a band that’s so associated with improvisation, a core group of their earliest and most highly regarded material is based on long, composed sections of music. Sweeping. Soaring. Technical. Epic. The type of material that doesn’t lend itself to a lack of practice and a haze of pills. The band respected their work too much to destroy it. Some of these songs were pushed out of the rotation as a result, and the fans knew it.

One of these songs is Fluffhead. The ultimate combination of old fan favorite and Sweeping/Soaring/Technical/Epic. On the way down to Virginia, my friend Byte said to us “I wonder if they’ll bust out Fluffhead?” We chuckled. “They haven’t played it in years right?” “Nope.”

When the time finally came for the first show to begin, the energy inside the coliseum was at an all time high. This was it. It may be hard to understand how much this band and this music means to people. Years and years of travelling, stories, frustration, memories, and special moments were shared with the four guys that were about to walk on the stage. And while time had passed, and everyone’s lives were different now, this was a moment that really, truly meant something.

So what were they going to play, or more specifically, what were they going to open with? Anyone, myself included, would have told you it didn’t matter. Just taking the stage was enough. But everyone would have been lying. It did matter. It set a tone no matter how you looked at it.

We broke up. We went to rehab. We swore we’d never play again. Now here we are.

When the lights went down as the band walked on the stage, the roar of the fans was about as loud as I’ve ever heard. They all walked out and picked up their instruments, like they had done so many times before, and like everyone thought they may never do again.

As the crowd continued their wild cheers driven purely by seeing them on stage again together, the first few notes of the opener started to drift out of the PA…

Fluffhead.

It was already so loud that it took a few seconds for the crowd to realize what they were hearing—for the shock to set in. All at once, this crowd that you would have sworn couldn’t get any louder turned the dial that stopped at ten up to twelve.

I honestly can’t think of a stronger musical statement.

We’re back and we’re not fucking around.

This one moment, this one choice, didn’t just set the tone for that show, or that tour, but for the rest of the band’s career. And to be honest, it set the tone for how I would feel about them. This was the real deal. As real as it gets. So this is how it’s gonna be huh?

Of all the shows, in all the years, this one song—these few seconds as the waves of excitement expanded through the room—stand above anything else I’ve ever experienced. If you could bottle the feeling in that room at that moment you could solve a lot of problems. Pure, pure bundles of joy.

Jack Kerouac — On The Road

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

Hunter S. Thompson — Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda… . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning… .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave… .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

When I was in college, I wrote a long paper comparing On The Road and Fear and Loathing. Those passages were the essence of it, and have always been very moving. The profound sadness, the passing of time, and the sense of missed opportunity. I haven’t thought about it in a long time, but I thought about it a lot today.