fuck yeah on them playing the Pa, Mike knows whats up
i love big B’s reviews, so on point
where the fuck is Ian/Thom?
Thom, steal somebodys internet already and get back on the Pa
Ian, are you out there? I guess he’s busy with his band, hope he stops in to comment, he has to have listened to these shows, right?
Just a week ago today that I was packing to head out on the road to Hampton. After a sad goodbye to Marie that morning, the anticipation became intense. But I was like a razor cutting paper in my organizational skills, and managed to throw everything I could possibly need into the car for the trip. Even managed to get the car serviced and new rubber put on before the trip.
Left NJ about 1130, a little later than I wanted, but I wanted to caravan with Heather and Mike, the people I sold my Sundays to, and longtime wonderful Phish fans and friends. It kept the ride interesting, keeping pace with them, and made the rest stops a little less lonely.
Heather decided to take the more direct route down 95 instead of the scenic yet a little longer way down the Delmarva and across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Turned out that traffic on 95 south of DC slowed us down to a point where the scenic route would have been quicker.
But I was coordinating my progress with ghost_2000, and texting phg and tube#47 on the trip as well, so I was deeply in a Phishy head all day long. My music of choice for the ride was Hendrix Electric Ladyland to start, followed by the Moody Blues Question of Balance, and then the five disks from 12/30/99.
Speaking of texting, until last week at this time, I had never text’d using my cellphone. By the time the weekend was over, I had either sent or received 85 messages and about 5 or 6 pictures. My bill is going to be way up there since I don’t have the unlimited texting option because I never had a need for it. Think I do now. Wish I could sign up retroactively.
Besides offering Neil the extra ticket I had, I offered him a place to crash at the Savannah Suites in Hampton, which is where I met him around 730 last Thursday night. He was hanging in the parking lot waiting for me because there was no lobby at this transient hotel.
I was so glad Marie decided not to come, because if she walked into that hotel, and saw the room, she would have turned right around and walked out. She made us leave a Rennaissance hotel in Baltimore harbor once at 2am in the morning because a mouse ran across the floor, and that place was pretty posh.
But Neil and I decided to put up with the “spartan” conditions of the room, and we unloaded our food and drink into the kitchenette, to settle in for our stay. I had made plans to go to Kelly’s Tavern on the strip with Heather and Mike that night, but Neil declined to come along.
They were staying at the Marriott on the strip, and had managed to reserve two rooms when the shows were announced. They also managed to purchase their Friday tickets from a guy who wanted to be on the strip so badly that he bought their second room reservation for Friday’s tickets at face, that he paid 6 bills for. So basically, this guy paid almost five hundred dollars extra for a hotel reservation. I’m happy it worked out for my friends, but there’s just something wrong with that.
Good food and a couple of Blue Moons at Kelly’s, as we noticed how quiet the strip was. Not a lot of people coming in Thursday night. Actually, traffic coming into town on both Friday and Saturday wasn’t as bad as I anticipated. Hampton manages very efficiently with moving people in and around the coliseum lots.
Back at the hotel, Neil was wired with excitement and wished he had come to dinner with us. He managed to have some absolut and was online monitoring activity here and elsewhere. We chatted for a good long time and drank and smoked a little while debating how Friday night was going to play out. Always so much fun to banter about Phish, and as it turned out, Neil called how Friday night’s show would everntually play out.
With visions of Phishyiness dancing in our heads, we fell asleep exhausted and sort of drunk around 130 or so, and even though the bed skeeved me out, managed to get a pretty decent sleep until about 8am.
^ nice bill… very good account of the trip leading up to the show…i like it. (and yes, call your cell phone company and play dumb about not knowing you didn’t have txt msg set up, ask if you can retroactively get it on your plan and they should do it. i’ve done that before with upping me minutes because i went over by a couple hundred one time - they should always do it for you if it means you’re changing your plan for the better)
i think we messaged about it on that thursday, bill, but what a day for a drive it was… we were going thru the west virginia mountains that afternoon and it was absolutely perfect out! all weekend the weather was unbelievable actually! (the antithesis of coventry, the rebirth!)
as for the Friday show, i won’t give a full review, but i will say that for how much anticipation had built up for these shows and the pressure the band probably felt to deliver…this night, and the rest of the weekend, couldn’t have gone any better. my expectations were blown out of the water and these shows did exactly what they were supposed to do…completely renew my undying love for Phish and create a strong sense of faith in that they are doing it right this time and something special is on the horizon! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!
[quote author=yem47 board=live thread=9148 post=245349 time=123686 we were going thru the west virginia mountains that afternoon and it was absolutely perfect out!
[/quote]
I loved that drive as well.
I was hoping to catch you guys somehow on I-64. I knew what you were driving, and I envisioned seeing you up ahead and pulling up right beside you guys and giving you the bird with a huge smile on my face.
It was a fairly good game of cat & mouse for a while, but I was so excited to get to Hampton I made incredible time.
^ i remember hank saying you must have been pretty close to us for a while…but us having four people for possible piss breaks and whatnot, that was probably the delay i assume
So with the Bug, they left out the “It doesn’t matter” throughout the whole song and didn’t sing it until the end. Do you think this was symbolic in anyway? They sang the “Overrated” and “Don’t need it” part.
Was there a Bug on 3/6? But that’s an interesting observation. It was definitely purposeful and very possibly symbolic of their music mattering very much to them again.
Friday morning at Hampton was incredibly symbolic for me because it started with an increase in salary. I’ve been working a deal to extricate myself from my part time job, and part of that deal involved asking my full time employer for a ten percent raise so I could quit my other job.
Well, about nine on Friday morning, my supervisor called my cell phone, something he never does, but he thought I might like to hear that the company agreed to my raise, and he was oh so right about that. I was dumbfounded, and knew at that point that the rest of that day, hell, the rest of the weekend was going to be pure heaven. And it was.
I was as light as a feather, because I kind of knew that I was quitting the other job, but was a little concerned about the lesser revenue that the pension would give me, but now, all that was wisked right away. I knew that my evenings would be mine from now on, and that just turned Hampton into a major major reason to celebrate.
After calling Marie to tell her the good news, Neil and I left for the Cracker Barrel for breakfast. I was so freaking high, and I didn’t have a drink or a smoke as yet. Had a great breakfast that I was planning to buy, but Neil just took the check before I could treat him, and he paid for breakfast. What a cool guy he is.
After we left the CB, Neil drove down coliseum drive and we went to scope out the place. Things were still pretty quiet by 10, so we dropped the car off at the hotel, and decided to take a walk back over to the venue to see what was building.
When we got in front of the coliseum, I took a picture of the big tetris man in the fountain, and laughed at the guy in the golf cart trying to keep the fans away from lining up at 11 in the morning for an 8 oclock show. Guess he didn’t understand how crazy Phish fans really are.
From there we hunted down Brett at the Days Inn, and after finally meeting the big guy, we had a beer together and talked about the excitement that was building. Some guy came by as we were standing outside his hotel room, selling Hampton posters and magnets. Brett turned around and bought a magnet for both Neil and I, and it now sits proudly on my frig, to be a reminder of both a helluva weekend and a helluva guy.
The day was absolutely beautiful. Neil was in shorts and t-shirts were the choice of wear. The sun was warm, but there was a great cool breeze out of the south that made it just freaking perfect.
Hung with Brett until nearly one as he was waiting for his room across the street at the Ramada to be available. We walked back to our hotel, and I decided to take my car to the lots at 2, just so that I can have my cooler and night time shirt available nearby. So I loaded up the cooler with the appropriate drinks for the day/night… grey goose and lime juice in poland spring bottles was my general plan, with sambuca shooters stuffed into pockets to get by the pat down.
I love Phish show lots. They are typically such a chill scene, with some of the best people on the planet. But I have to break this off for the moment, cause it’s time to return to work.
yea, sorry the Bug was on Sunday, wrong thread.
I knew you were a Man of Class! 
I got one, and my pockets were full and Brett instructed me to “stuff it in my shoe.”
That guy…always thinking.
Wouldt be a Phish show witout em!
Stopped for ice and headed over to the lots. We were a bit early, excitation be blamed, so we parked at the Ramada on the strip and waited for the traffic to start moving in. Hung out with a lot full of excited people waiting to go in, and listened to Bill Frisell Unspeakable. Just like the warmup music inside, nice stuff, perfect day not being challenged a bit.
When the cars began to move and we found ourselves being routed by the coliseum staff and policia to some of the furthest lots. So Neil jumps out on the way and heads over to find Hank and Brad, and or BigB, Brett, etc and see if they were on line yet. He was kind of an advanced guard of the SOA, making sure the coast was clear for continued friviolities.
So I drove into some lot really far away, but also close to the exit, and pretty much filled to the brim with happy Phish fans, so I didn’t mind a bit. I get some pretty ‘cautious’ looks at times, but since 12/3/97, I kind of revel in them. Learned on a Philly subway with a bunch of other fans that the cautious looks were almost always followed by some kind of recognition and a smile.
I love the Phish lots generally, but this one at Hampton, was definitely my favorite. I’m sure there are scaly stories as well, and I have one of those too, but there wasn’t much happening that wasn’t always at one and perfect. There was nothing out of place, whether it was rude or not. And when I opened the grey goose, it only got better.
Red team go, red team go!
nice, love reading the breakdown of the lead up to the show, great stuff!
…I get so overwhelmed by…
I can’t remember exactly, but I think when Neil jumped out of the car behind the convention center to head over to the line, he already had some goose masked in a water bottle. Believe we set them up at the hotel, and I had mine ready in the cooler. So after I pulled into a spot on the perimeter of the lot, near the port-o-lets, port-o-potties, johnny-on-the-spots, but facing out to the street, the remaining lots and the coliseum beyond, I turned off the engine, but kept the 2/28/03 Tweezer blasting on the system, and reached in the back for the goose, and in my pocket for my bullet.
No, I don’t mean THAT. I’ve been convined by most of you here not to use the metal bullet pipe because of the loose aluminum ions that are released upon heating, so I don’t usually. But for these kinds of situations, it’s very very handy because it’s discreet to use, people can barely understand what I’m doing with that lighter.
So I hung out and relaxed for about twenty minutes, enjoying the music, the drink and the smoke, and most of all the thoughts that were flooding in now about the first Phish show in four and half years. I had been unable to conceptualize about what to expect for that first show, that’s why I couldn’t enjoin in the Hampton Pick 25 game that the BigB set up. It was too much for me to deal with because my mind would have just snapped with all of the projected guesses and songs I really wanted to hear.
But I was feeling really good about everything so far. All events leading up to that moment were pretty damn near wonderful. So I decided to walk the lots a bit and see what folks were up to. But first I wanted to text Neil to see where he was and if he had met up with the rest of the Pa.
Texting. I’ve only had my cell phone for about two years. Marie has had one much longer, but I never wanted to be bothered between land line phones. Having a phone in the car, always seemed more of a bother than a good tool. And before last Thursday when I got into the car for the drive to Hampton, I think I had used my cell once to return a text message someone had sent me. So obviously I didn’t have a text plan on my service.
Found out just last night, when Marie and I went to Verizon to add texting to our plan, that I had sent/received 120 messages between Thursday and Sunday while on the Hampton trip. I’m hooked, and if I could turn my phone on right now at work (not allowed in the building because it has a camera), I’d be texting anyone and everyone who gave me a telno.
So I was walking, or even possibly stumbling, around the lot and stopped to buy a Magic Hat Number 9 from a couple of guys from the Albany area. Post hiatus fans who managed to get their tix through the initial lottery, and who were, unsurprisingly, straining at the bit until the show started.
We talked a bit about that feeling and all agreed that there was no way to understand that kind of level of excitement. It was beyond any rational sense, but they knew what I was talking about, and told them about when I first experienced that emotional hook during the first set closing Antelope at Darien Lakes in the summer of 97. Told them at times it makes me feel like Richard Dryfus making a model of Devils Tower out of his mashed potatoes. They knew exactly what I was talking about.
To quote Neil quoting Third Encounters…
This means something!
come on Bill, let’s get to it. i wanna hear how you cried like a girl during Fluffhead when Trey tore out the most heroic and triumphant solo ever and in that moment it fully hit you that they were actually, truly back to stay, like i did. i mean, like the guy standing next to me did.
OK, I cried like a girl when Fluff started. Story over.
Actually, I was still numb and processing what was happening during most of Fluff until almost the end. The tears didn’t come until DS because it hit me where I was and that Marie wasn’t with me because that’s ‘her’ song.
But you’re making me jump ahead, and I’m not saying anymore.
damn Bill, you use a bullet?? :o
I didn’t know you partied THAT hard! 
^very nice 
that pic is awesome. Look how happy they are. Rockin The 3-6 bowie