On August 15th, 2024 I woke up on a pullout couch in a basement in New Jersey. It was early, like 5am, and already there was plenty of bustle coming from the other side of the fuzzy ceiling, where a half-dozen longtime tour veterans were putting the finishing touches on yesterday’s packing job. I brushed my teeth, filled a proffered travel mug with coffee, and helped with the last of the beer coolers. By 6am we had cleared out the ice fridge at the local 7-11 (eleven bags at $3.49 per) and were aimed at the highway.

M’lady and I rode with Christina at the wheel, and together we led our three-car caravan on a steady and nonstop 80mph straight shot to a Wawa petrol mart just short of the venue, where we arrived precisely on time for our 8:30am meetup with Tina and Jeff. From there we were four cars continuing on for another half-hour to the Dover Motor Speedway in Delaware.

We were all headed to the VIP camping section so Tina took the lead, claiming that she knew of a secret backdoor entrance that would get us there without the lines. She led us several exits beyond the large and obvious turnoff for the VIP section, taking us on a wholly unnecessary diversion that proved to be nothing but folly. We finally turned around and backtracked to the regular entrance, after which we all made it in in no time.

Tina had a friend who was part of a crew of fifteen or so, and they had been saving us a spot. We found it, made introductions all around and got to work setting up our home base for a weekend of Phish.

Actually, while everyone else was starting to unpack, the first thing I did was walk back to pick up a coffee cup that I had tried (and failed) to basket into a garbage can from the car just before we’d parked. By the time I got there I was happy to see that the cup had already been picked up – you gotta love these Phishy hippie folks – so I turned on my sandalled heels to rush back to camp. As I was rushing along I damn near stepped on a large black snake that was coiled up in front of a neighbouring campsite. “Jesus!” I yelped, jumping sideways. A bunch of guys sitting in a line of camp chairs started laughing and guffawing; it was a rubber snake. “Geez guys, you’re gonna give someone a heart attack,” I said as I stumbled along my way. My comment only solicited more laughter.

I passed by the site a while later and they were still at it. By this time they had tied a string around the snake so they could make the it move and really scare people. There were six of them sitting in chairs set up in a row, an actual peanut gallery created specifically to frighten people and laugh at them. I got pretty miffed, and every minute I stood and watched only made me miffier. I went back to have a beer with my friends.

A while later m’lady returned to camp from a run to the showers. “Those guys with the snake made it jump at me and they were laughing their heads off.”

“That’s it,” I said, leaping to my feet. “I’m going to talk to those guys.” I was seething.

“You’re not really?” someone in our crew asked. I turned with a start.

“Those dudes are sitting there purposely trying to scare people just so they can laugh in their faces. It’s nothing but a bad vibe, and somebody’s got to talk to them.” I stormed away from camp before anyone could try to stop me.

I was stomping my feet as I walked over there. I’m sure Fred Flintstone’s angry trombone was following me every step of the way. When I got to their campsite one of the dudes was talking to a passerby. I interrupted.

“I’m asking you to put away the snake,” I said, though I don’t suspect that I sounded like I was asking.

“What?” the guy said, cocking his head at me.

“I said I’m asking you to put away the snake,” I repeated firmly.

“Where do you want me to put it?” the guy replied with a goading smile creeping onto his face.

“Put it somewhere where people can’t see it,” I replied, resisting the bait. “Somewhere where it won’t keep scaring people.”

“Oh, f*** off!” dude said, dismissing me and turning away. Over the next few days I imagined going at the guy while he was stuck squatting in that chair a thousand times or more. I wanted to so badly. Instead, I tried one more stab at reason.

“Listen guys,” I pleaded to the lot of of them, “People around here are about to start doing some crazy weird drugs and this could really freak some people out…”

Dude’s buddy started to interrupt me but I interrupted him back.

“Come on now, you’re sitting there purposely scaring people and then openly laughing at them. If you look in the dictionary under “a**hole” that’s exactly what it describes.” First dude stood up and started towards me. “Get the f*** off my campsite you **********!”

I did. I really should have punched him hard in the throat. It obviously wouldn’t have gone well for me against the six of them; probably would’ve stopped my weekend dead in its tracks and m’lady’s too, so I’m glad I didn’t. But I wish I did. Dreamed I did, a hundred times over. But I just walked back to my campsite and tried hard and unsuccessfully to shrug it off.

I will say that I never saw the snake again and I’ll add that I was rather ashamed at how much I let the whole scenario bother me over the next few days. It was close to the front of my mind for pretty much the entirety of the evening’s show and it lingered for much of the weekend, to diminishing degrees.

After all this hubbub I took a shower. I found the bathrooms pretty nice for festy bathrooms, but overall Glen Close (as Phish has long called their festival VIP section) didn’t feel very VIP-y. The “concierge” was just a local teenaged volunteer sitting next to a self-serve basket full of mini soaps and other toiletries. There was no welcome gift, all the sites were packed in super-tight, and I was quite shocked that there was no wifi anywhere in the VIP campground. Especially given that the sitemap was an app.

Eventually showtime loomed and our little crew from New Jersey walked to the gate, got our bracelets scanned and went in.

The site was pretty great. It was certainly nice and big and it was completely level, with nothing but clear sightlines from every imaginable vantage point. The most prominent feature on the concert pitch was a massive, multi-storeyed cardboard “City Hall” that was being hand-constructed by the onsite artists utilizing the muscle-power of we Phish fans. As we were admiring the structure the crew put out a call for help to add another level to the structure, so about a hundred of us straddled the corrugated paper building and after a guy with a megaphone called out “1…2…3…LIFT!” we all lifted. I was surprised how heavy it was, but after all it was a three-storey building! We collectively lifted it about three feet and held City Hall aloft while a level of cardboard pillars were quickly taped into place underneath.

That was pretty cool. I was hoping it would get lifted again later on so I could see it happen from afar, but no…this proved to be the final tier. The heavy rains that would fall on Saturday morning destroyed the whole thing.

Our crew shifted, split, rejoined, grew, dwindled, and reformed until a bunch of us finally parked ourselves a ways back on Page side, halfway between the 2nd and 3rd speaker poles. I was a pretty good spot, close enough to the stage without being close enough to be crowded. In short order the band came out and started with Moma Dance, one of their obvious mondegreeners.

“Wait…what? Mondegreeners?!?” you ask.

Yes, mondegreeners.

Y’see, the festival itself (Phish’s eleventh*) was entitled “Mondegreen”, which (apparently) is a term for misheard lyrics. Like m’lady thinking for years that the line was “Gimme the Beach Boys to free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock and roll, and drift away…”

So yeah, mondegreen. Like hearing The Moma Dance as “the moment ends” or hearing Halley’s Comet as “Hell is coming”. Or hearing “wash an Uffizi and drive me to Firenze” as, well, almost anything but that. Phish writes mondegreens into their lyrics all the time.

(Astoundingly, that Moma Dance opener would prove to be the only tip of the hat to the world of misheard lyrics over the span of the entire festival. After a soundcheck riddled with snippets of cover songs like Day Tripper, Midnight Rider, and even Stairway to Heaven I was thinking the band was bound to give us a medley of covers with comical near-lyrics or some such musical treat but alas, ’twas not to be.)

We were positioned so evenly between the two speaker towers that by the third song I found the slapback effect between our speaker and the delayed speaker column behind me impossible to ignore. The sonic disappointment was exacerbated by my snake-distracted mind and a quickly increasing weariness that made this not the greatest Phish set ever for me. Good songs were played well by a good band, but from where I was standing there was nothing earth-shaking and little to write home about (despite what you may have read). When I replied thusly to my campmate Bones the next morning upon his inquiry on my opinion of the show he responded by pointing out that I’m generally rather critical in the first place. I had no idea he knew me so well.

By the time the show ended I couldn’t get back to my tent and into my sleeping bag quick enough, but I sure did try. The combination of time change/jet lag exhaustion plus a new blackout tent and high-class super-comfy air mattress pads helped me sleep pretty great, though when consciousness finally started seeping back to my psyche it was immediately tainted with thoughts of those freakin’ dudes and that damn snake of theirs.

Clearly I was going to have to get over it if I was going to enjoy the rest of the festival. Spoiler alert: I mostly did.

*Turns out this is a bit of a controversy. Was Amy’s Farm – where Phish played for a camping crowd of a few hundred folks back in the band’s early, early days – a Phish festival? Probably not. Was Oswego – which wasn’t billed as a festival and came uncharacteristically in the middle of summer tour – a festival? Probably (it had a name after all, even if the name was just “Camp Oswego”). Was Coventry a festival? No name, not much to celebrate…but yes, Coventry was definitely a festival, though one that many would prefer to forget. How about Curveball? Definitely a festival, but it was cancelled before a note had been played. Here’s a list; you decide:

Amy’s Farm (1991),

The Clifford Ball (1996),

The Great Went (1997),

Lemonwheel (1998),

Camp Oswego (1999),

Big Cypress (1999/2000),

It (2003),

Coventry (2004),

Festival 8 (2009),

Superball (2011),

Magnaball (2015),

Curveball (2018; cancelled),

Mondegreen (2024)

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