It’s cold and it’s wet.  There’s a threatening storm passing over and a brilliant crack of lightning spreads from one end of the sky to the other.  Fenway Park erupts with surprise, delight and anticipation.  The mob engulfing the fabled arena is peppered with people who have traveled for miles and for days on a pilgrimage to see the men playing 10,000 volts of rock music in center field; a band of monster creating a sonic landscape the size of Lake Champlain. The man in the front slides his hand up the neck of his bright orange electric guitar and strikes the note we all wanted to hear, precisely how we wanted to hear it.  He leans back, grimaces, injecting his entire life force into his melody and at that very moment the storm clouds part and the mob is washed in golden sunlight.  Elation.  Bearded pilgrims laugh up at the sky while women dance in circles around them.  Every climbing note seems to be pushing the clouds farther and farther apart.  I feel warm again.  I stop worrying about the OD’d guy I saw on the ground on my way in.  My legs are moving…I never told them to.  The groove gets heavier and now the monsters are playing the funkiest thing I’ve ever heard.  A rainbow emerges from the passing storm and lands stage left.  That just happened.

Phish concerts are heavy.  Very, very heavy.  Phish at Fenway Park was the fourteenth time in my life that I’ve been pulled to the center of that weight.  It’s hard to say why I’ve seen Phish more times than I’ve seen any other band or watched any movie.  The pull has always been subtle but somehow inescapable, as if I never choose to go, but rather that the currents take me there.  I was 12 when my parents brought me to my very first concert, a Phish show at the old Worcester Centrum to commemorate my D.A.R.E. graduation.  I was 17 when I camped out in a nomadic village tens of thousands strong on a farm in Coventry, Vermont, all of us gathered for days to spend time close to Phish.  I was 19 when I figured out time-travel at the Tweeter Center while Phish played ‘2001’.  Don’t ask, I forgot as soon as the song ended.  Regardless of the story, there is something that always happens to me at a Phish concert.  I suspend my cynicism and I begin to believe that my craziest thoughts are true.  I begin to think romantically again without that internal self-doubting snicker that tortures and eventually kills my most grandiose ideas.

The concert was full of highlights.  The show began with a recitation of Fenway Park’s rules of conduct that received as much fanfare from Phish fans as anyone could expect.  It was all a set up for the “Star Spangled Banner”, sung in 4 part harmony by the quartet, proudly walking out to the pitchers mound from the Red Sox home dugout.  Fans removed their caps and placed their hands over their hearts and sang along.  The set itself was loaded with old classics from their decades of touring.  Jon Fishman was tight and deep as ever on drums, laying down irresistible grooves for “Moma Dance” and “David Bowie”.  Mike Gordon, with his mane of grey hair bouncing along, produced some seriously satisfying bass tones that felt huge coming out of center field all night.  Trey Anastasio played like a god-damned wizard.  Save for a miscue in the beginning of “Tweezer (reprise)” and a relatively flat solo in "Wading in the Velvet Sea", his playing was both sincere and powerful.  He played the audience like an instrument, especially in the playful “Stash”, a song written like a rock song with a stellar, stellar be-bop jazz head.  His best moment came at the end of “David Bowie” where he and pianist Page McConnell played some of the fastest melodic runs I’ve ever seen him play.  It was good to see.  Glad to have him back on his game.  Many of the old favorites showed up, including "Bounce Around The Room"and "Bathtub Gin".  The trampolines came out for “You Enjoy Myself”, a great gag I haven’t seen since I was 13 and the pre-encore closer was friggin Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times”.  Download the concert at http://www.livephish.com/