• Most “Run Lola Run” moment: While stuck in a 2 mile long line of cars trying to get to the venue, I had to pee. I was “driving” (ie sitting in the driver’s seat not going anywhere) and decided I would hop out, Dre would slide into my seat, and then I run across the street, pee at a 7-11, and run back. Naturally, 7-11 turned me away, so I had to run across the street to a burger joint, and traffic picked that exact moment to loosen up. To get back to the car, I had to half cross the street, then run up the divider, which at times was a nicely tree-d little thing, but then at intersections was a turn lane. Picture me running down the middle of the street in Inglewood as cars stream past. Scary? Funny? I don’t know. Regardless, I did catch up to Andreas.
  • Phish shows are just like really large raves (ie “massives”) in this way: while the years may pass and the faces may change, the age of the attendees seems static. While yes, there were plenty of older phans in the crowd (as there always have been), the bulk of the audience seemed to be white and between the ages of 18 - 22. Just like they were when I went to my first Phish show in ‘94. When I was 19.
  • Concert itself? Venue was a bit weird, and even weirder was having assigned seats. No room to dance, really, and the angle we were at wasn’t set up to be super-immersive with the lights or sound. They played a lot of good older stuff, but none of my favorites (two of my faves — Reba and Run Like An Antelope — got played the next night in Vegas. Drat!). Style, on the whole, was on the harder side…less of the uplifting “I can smell heaven!” style that I adore so.
  • Funniest concert-goer? The dude who looked like he’d walked straight off of a lacrosse field, with the backwards baseball hat and clean-cut hair. He would have been just as in-place at an Eminem concert, and in fact he had this faux-rap style of singing along with every song while acting out the words with his outstretched arms. When every song ended, he would do this bellow that sounded like he was at a hockey match, and clap and say something like, “Good job guys. Fuck yeah,” as if someone had just made a really good goal. He knew every single word to every song.
  • I really wish Amy had been there with me.
  • I remember now why some friends, in 1998, proclaimed that they were through with Phish shows. Phish had gotten too big for them, and I don’t mean that in the hipster “I knew them before they were cool” way…just that the logistics of getting in and out of shows was simply too much. This was the case last night. Andreas and I spent more time getting in and out of the venue than we did actually watching the show. For those keeping track, the show was three hours long.
  • Only in LA would there be a helicopter circling the parking lot with a search light, barking “Please get in your cars and leave now. The concert is over.” The sad irony of this was that the parking lot was such a mess thanks to no cops on the ground directing traffic, that even those of us who wanted to leave couldn’t.
  • Favorite awful parking lot noise: the chorus of “POP! tinkletinkle” that went up everytime a car tried to move. There were piles of bottles everywhere, and a moving tire inevitably encountered a bottle, which would then explode and shatter. Hell on tires, but intriguing on the ear.