Phish Read Online Free Page B

bordered by farmers’ fields outside of Coventry. This was supposed to be a grand finale. Instead, it turned out to be a waterlogged disaster, dampening already disillusioned spirits within Phish Nation. There was no joy in Mudville.
    The only thing worse than being there was not being there. Traffic had backed up for thirty-five miles along Interstate 91. And yet the festival site could not accommodate another car, because the fields were too saturated for parking. Many among the army of pilgrims who’d come from every corner of the country—and from other countries, too—couldn’t get to the festival because of the interstate gridlock and untenable parking situation at the festival site. The police, promoters, and Phish saw a calamity in the making and called on fans to go home, promising reparations at a later date. Gordon broke the bad news on the radio.
    And then something remarkable happened: In a mass act of civil disobedience, they didn’t go home. They parked their vehicles on the interstate’s breakdown lane and walked, like a ragtag army of refugees, toward the festival site. Some walked twenty miles or more. They were not going to be denied a final chance to see their band, rain and mud
and discomfort and inconvenience be damned. If ever there were a demonstration of loyalty to a rock band that went above and beyond the call of duty, the determined mass march to the Newport State Airport at Coventry to see Phish was it.
    Musically, Phish made a disappointing exit. Their relatively dis - pirited and untogether playing—so atypical of a band that had always operated on principles of musical tightness, infectious joie de vivre, mind-boggling concentration, and continuous improvement—appeared to jibe with rumors of drugs and disarray within the Phish camp.
    The stage was rumored to be sinking in the mud. Truckloads of wood chips, gravel, hay, and plywood rolled in to stabilize the grounds. This was the inspiration for some lines from “Invisible,” a song from Anastasio’s first post-breakup solo album, Shine : “Fall down good, sink in the water / But you’re walking on wood.” It was a reference both to the state of the band during Coventry and the state of the land as the musicians trod the boards to navigate the sodden site.
    Fortunately, the rain stopped falling on Saturday, when the music was set to begin. But the damage was done. The sea of mud had taken days to form, had been worked over and stirred up by all the vehicles and human feet, and would not vanish as quickly as had the clouds.
    “I want to welcome all of you to this incredibly special night and weekend,” Anastasio told the crowd as Phish took the stage on Saturday night.
    “In twenty-one years, I’ve never ever been nervous going onstage before a Phish concert—ever, ever, ever,” he said a few songs later. “Tonight, I’m a little nervous.”
    It sometimes showed in his playing. Coventry was not his, or Phish’s, finest hour. Clearly, he was a man in pain. Combining the long-simmering issues that led him to break up the band, guilt and uncertainty over that decision, and the use of drugs to numb those emotions with the meteorological mayhem that wreaked havoc and dampened spirits, Coventry in a sense became Phish’s Perfect Storm.
    Even loyal friends had a hard time coming to the group’s defense at Coventry, though they stopped short of outright criticism. What, for instance, did Ian McLean—a veteran fan of “Ian’s Farm” fame who saw at least one show on virtually every tour—have to say about Phish’s performance that weekend?
    “No comment.”
    Phish subsequently refunded unused tickets to those 10,000 ticket-holders who hadn’t gotten in to Coventry. In addition, each was sent a limited-edition photo book hand-signed by every member of Phish.
    “I hope people appreciate the gesture, because it was heartfelt,” manager John Paluska told Billboard magazine. “The band put a lot into it, and I think it was