You listen to music that is "meandering" and "aimless."
You, personally, are a hippie. You smell like patchouli, hippie.
You don't have a job.
You're a terrible dancer.
You have a drug problem.
You don't even care what Phish's music sounds like, because you're too super stoned to notice.
You don't care what Phish's music sounds like (reminder: it's terrible) as long as you're super stoned, dancing ineptly, with your unemployment check raised above your head in triumph.
Basically being a Phish fan means people assuming you're an idiot. So what's the upside?
Are the hot, tasty grooves adequate compensation for the emotional suffering and condescension heaped upon you by a Phish-phobic society?
What about the hair-raising shred riffage? Does the hair-raising shred riffage heal your wounds?
The light show created on the fly in sync with the music?
The goofy IN THE FLOW, MAN faces?
The heartening realization that musicians themselves are often indifferent to the hierarchies and boundaries of taste that critics and fans try to enforce?
The years of musical history and group lore that make every show into its own episode of a three-decade story?
A concert environment in which people act like human beings and help each other have a good time instead of competing for every inch of space as if standing a foot closer to the stage than the bros next to you makes you king of the monkey pack?
The thing when — after minutes of winding chromatic anticipation — the lights go up, the crowd combusts, the music crashes like an asteroid and the world is replaced by a ocean of sound and white fire? You know, THAT thing?
Of COURSE it's worth it, pal.
DUH.
Thirty years and counting. Let's keep the vibes going.
