I actually owe so much to ALO, and to a phan named Jamie, for jumpstarting a stalled interest in Phish in 1995. Had purchased PON a few years earlier, but dismissed the band as not what I was looking for.
Heard BATR from ALO on the radio, and it encouraged me to buy the album. Didn’t “get” much of the album until I heard the Hood. I got so into the Hood, that that was all I played for a week or more. It was like I was a junkie, injecting that performance into my veins. I was definitely hooked.
If BATR beckoned me from the window to come in, and that Hood met me at the door and carried me through, the first song I connected to once inside was the YEM. From then on I was absorbing music at such an incredible speed and volume, like drinking from a veritable firehose. I was buying every available song the band had released because I was yet even remotely aware of what was introduced to me as “boots” from the shows.
That introduction came as what I would later learn were these random acts of kindness by Phish fans to connect with one another, and to promulgate the love for the music ,and the band, by making copies of the show tapes. It came as a complete surprise from Marie, who came home from work one day and handed me two cassettes marked Phish 4/21/90, Ft. Collins, CO, sets 1 and 2. She explained that she was talking with one of her co-workers at the office about my obsessive behavior over Phish music, and her friend commisserated with her because her son was a fan too. Marie said the next day the co-worker gave her the tapes for me.
All I knew was his first name was Jamie, and I scribbled a heartfelt note of thanks because I was completely impressed with his random generosity, the first of many such incredible connections that I would have with so many total strangers over Phish’s music. I was likewise taken by the emotional levels of understanding that I experience when I listen to these performances, and how they are pretty much recognized and felt by all of us. And connecting at that unimpeded emotional level is undeniably meaningful. Doesn’t matter how much of a asshole we may be in our daily lives as we struggle to deal with all there is with what we have, the recognition, that at those profound levels of understanding, we are not alone, we exist together in our kindest and happiest form of humanity, creates a community that I am still in wonder over.
A Live One is my album du jour, and hearing it again just stirred up all these memories about how it all began for me.