In the summer of '97, when I was thirteen, I somehow convinced my father to take me to see the band Phish for a whole weekend. We drove to a decommissioned air force base in Maine, where tens of thousands of smelly travelers had convened to hear jams and hang out in the lot that was here a whole airstrip. My mother didn't have any idea of the scene we'd find, else she wouldn't have allowed it. My father rightly saw that it would be an interesting novelty for us both, and bless him for the effort.
The first sign on approach was one selling water pipes by the side of the road. I didn't know what water pipes were, but I sensed I was entering another world. Shortly that telltale stoner gave way to thousands of cars, and thousands more people setting up tents and meeting friends.
There was a pervasive funk in the air that could not be avoided. I learned years later that it was not the pot smoke I was smelling everywhere; it was the pot everyone was carrying in their pockets. The word was "nuggs."
It wasn't just the drugs, though. I can't remember ever seeing so many happy people in one place, and I know at least two of them weren't on drugs. There was something more going on. I was glimpsing not just a subculture, but an actual community, with its own economy, etiquette, and attitude. It was a group of people cultivating a particular consciousness, and doing it not just with hallucinogens but with a shared sensibility. I think the rot was just beginning to set in as it always does, but by and large these were peaceful, loving, unified and respectful individuals.
At one point Dad related to me a conversation he had with a woman with plates from some distant state. She had seen her first show, and decided to hop into her car and start following the band for the rest of the tour. Many people did that, suddenly leaving their square lives to relax on the road. I sensed they were the ones who could afford to do so. People sold food and jewelry and drugs out of their vans, but to even be in the position to drop out of society in that manner, one must have a certain standing in it to begin with.
There were surely a goodly number of trustafarians, but a lot of otherwise ordinary people too. Young and old, hippie and normie, from every corner of America and beyond. I saw a sea of people washing away from the stage after every set. There were no fights, no bad vibes that I picked up. Everyone was cooperating to create a spontaneous city of people with a taste for fun, surprising, eclectic music. Phish as a band is musically omnivorous, contagiously sharing their love for different forms. That kind of idiom can only welcome all kinds. They studiously avoided politics or serious worldly concerns. Phish was a safe space without judgment.
So what a twinge I felt when I got home and read an article out of Boston reporting on The Great Went. One line stood out, a needle seeking to puncture that pleasant bubble. The author observed, and then pointedly said nothing further on the matter, that there were almost no black faces in the crowd. It just hung there, in the middle of the article, awkwardly interjecting itself as a non-sequitur. What was the reader supposed to make of it?
Some people got together, and had a good time, and no one got hurt, and great memories were made, and happy songs were sung, and it felt like a rite of passage for me, but there weren't any black people there. I should probably feel bad about that. Why don't black people like Phish? They play blues and jazz and funk music all the time. Is that cultural appropriation? Is Phish racist? Is that why blacks don't like them? Am I racist because I like Phish? I wish more black people were there, so I wouldn't have to worry about this.
I had never seen a more cohesive and cheerful community, but the implication was that it must be doing something wrong. I couldn't figure out what that was.
It should be said that Phish followed a cultural template from the Grateful Dead, who apparently trafficked LSD for the CIA. Every rebellion of the last while has had an element of social engineering somewhere within. I really don't think that Mike Gordon, the Jewish bass player, is actually the handler for three programmed stooges, deliberately removing good-hearted people from regular society where they might do some real damage, but it would be naive to pretend the mass movement of lots of people on lots of drugs listening to nonsense songs to escape from their privileged lives instead of improving their world is an unmitigated good.
Nevertheless, however embarrassing, there is a fundamental sweetness to an unpolitised hippie. Those who fall into the lifestyle of following a jam band, or who manage it on their vacations, find a fandom that could be called a family without too much hyperbole. Certainly, they are a particular tribe, with symbols and chants that may move them more than those of their nation or town. Phish doesn't have a constitution. They don't have a foreign policy or a seat at the UN. They do have singing, and dancing, and drums, and drugs, and lots of friendly, welcoming people, but apparently no black people, and that's a problem.
