Well, where do I begin? This was the show of life! This was my 7th show and I brought my younger brother Jeff and our best friend. This was their 4th show they were sophomores in high school and I was recently graduated still living at home. I had dragged them after constant urging and pleads to go to Albany ’09 and after SPAC ’10 we finally got used to the flow of things at a phish show. So we bought the tix like a month ahead of time for obscene amounts of $$$ thru ebay, (which totally sucked for the record). Being from Albany this was our first show that we would have to venture out into a city we’ve never been to …for 3 days …to us this was the biggest thing we’ve ever done. This was a big deal.
So long behold that day after Christmas we got slammed with this killer 2-3 feet of snow and really cold weather. My parents and everyone we knew were in an outrage! Totally taken away at the fact that not only have we seen the same band this many times but that we were leaving in this weather, which was still snowing out when we left. So we packed the car, stop at price chopper grab $100 worth of food to keep cost down and hop on I-90. This road was terrible! So slushy and a few near misses on the road kept us paranoid as hell the whole ride. My car was living up to its name since a week earlier the thermostat went on it so we had no heat the whole way. We were in full snowsuits because we were so damn cold the whole way to Worchester. We finally got to the days inn hotel which was FILLED with phans from all over the states, which was also one of the coolest things ever seen, even to this day. Night one was dope but night two was when shit got real. We parked in the awesomely immense parking garage next to the venue. I normally wouldn’t talk about this but its necessary for illustrative purposes. So we got all out goodies including something called “penis envy” the dealer left and we looked at each other like “What kinda bullshit name is Penis Envy??” but the guy was serious Don’t take too much… we were gunna do the whole 2 slices but thank god we only had the one. We took them a little too early in the lot and were tweaking on the way in. this was also my first time “hippy flipping”.
As you can imagine this was REALLY REALLY intense, the show started with that killer “Kill Devil Falls” into that UNREAL “My Minds Got A Mind of Its Own” something happened during this show… complete euphoria, we finally got “IT”, the whole reason everyone was in this arena, goes on tour, puts their life on hold, pulls “no shows” for tomorrows double at their cooking job (which is what I did), this show changed our 3 lives forever. Words cannot describe. Around the end of the 2nd set near the best “Hood” ever our friend who came with us all of a sudden was in the dumps as we all do sometimes, and yacked right there in the seat which was a window into a whole world of new things to trip about. WOW. Show ends we go back to the hotel.
The next day we had a rough morning packed the car and went back to Albany in the best mood ever. When we got home we found out the worst… as soon as we got home my car died and needed $2000 and our friends’ dad had passed away the night before while we were at the show after a long battle in the hospital. My heart will always go out to him, this was rough times for him. The epiphany about him being in the dumps was instant; this was one of those shows where the intensity continued to sink in days, weeks and months after.
This show changed our lives for many reasons that I can’t go on about but the biggest one is that we were so new and inexperienced at the time. This was one of the first times we walked around the “Hole”. It was all so surreal even when we came home my car died I lost my job I need to borrow money from mom and dad, and our bod with the 3 of us and our bond with phis was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced and probably ever will. Inside jokes between us about this trip even until this day, about the show, the blizzard, my car dying and being broke and jobless for the next month or so at my parents house …those were the days!