OK, so I'm reading Peter Carey's "His Illegal Self" and its about 60's radicals, among other things, and Carey is throwing in real names with fictional names. Well, when I read I like to google things in the book and find out if they're real, etc. One name mentioned was Bill Hicks, so I googled it. Turns out he's a famous (and dead) comic. Should have none that. And of course, it lead me to You Tube. And then good ole Sam Kinison popped into my head. For those of you that are still cutting your teeth, you probably won't remember this genius. Of course, you've seen him in "Back To School." But aside from that, this guy was the shit back in the 80's. And then, completely out of nowhere, he dies in a car crash. And we lost a great one.
The first time I heard about Phish was my senior year at Episcopal back in 1992. At that time in music history, grunge was just beginning to explode on the scene. Pearl Jam was about all we listened to. But I always kept time for my jam bands. I had already seen The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band, Widespread Panic and many others. CDs were still the way we listened to music, but cassette tapes were still around and were what you got all your bootlegs on. The internet didn't exist, or at least not to the public. Hearing about new bands was largely done by word of mouth. And that's how I heard about Phish. My first taste of Phish was their album "Lawnboy." I remember being impressed with the musicianship. I thought there was some Zappa-esque arrangements going on, as the music seemed to dart in crazy tangents. I also remember seeing a picture of the band and I thought they looked like a bunch of Trekky nerds. They definitely didn't look like MTV material,...
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