[Editor's note. last month's essay, Time For a Phish elicited some strong responses, both positive and negative. We have decided to offer you two criticisms of the piece. One of them follows below. The second appears in the Feedback section.]

This little bit of mindless dribble was inspired by Josh Rosen's article "Time for a Phish Lock-Out" that ran in last month's issue. You should read it, but the gist of it is that Phish needs to take a break, and that it is not as simple as "don't go to the show," because that is much harder to do than to say. I was immediately struck by the fact that this sort of "Phish isn't as cool as they used to be," stood in contrast to the generally positive vibe of jambands.com, not mention the fact that it wasn't all that much different from the sentiments expressed by some of the more boisterous voices on the rmp. Of course each person has a right to her/his opinion, but that is just why we don't need to hear more about why people don't like Phish anymore. We've heard it all before. Over the summer the bad vibes reached a point of saturation. Every review was horrible although the folks I met at shows weren't coming from a perspective anywhere near that of the nay sayers. It is so much more taxing to defend something than to criticize, though. When you read so many bad reviews and "I remember in 1993 when..." comments, you think what's the point of carrying on this argument? and you move on. (And of course, now when you look at people's Best Jam of 99 lists, summer dates are everywhere.) I myself saw some great stuff on that tour, and was blown away by what I saw of the December tour.

I was just reading our intrepid editor Dean's interview with Jamie Masefield in which he said, "You can't believe how much the band feeds off the audience. If you're playing a ballad, a really slow tune, sometimes you can sense that a particular audience might not want to hear it and it brings you down a little bit. On the other hand, sometimes you can play a ballad and they are right there soaking up every note you play and they are just feeling the emotion and it's an amazing feeling to get that surge from the audience whether it's in a quiet way or a in a loud way."

Now if you've ever been to see the JMP when Fish is sitting, you know what he's saying. A good number of people are there to see some variation of a Phish. The kids are hyper and rowdy to the point of being rude. It always embarrasses me, both for myself and for Fishman, because it shows that many folks aren't there to listen, really listen, but are there to party, or dance to the point of exhaustion. While there is nothing wrong with either of those things (who doesn't want to dance to the point of exhaustion?), it is too bad when partying transcends the music. After all, that's what you're there for, right? And just as much as being loud and rowdy can get in the way of truly experiencing the music, so can a poor mindset. If you go into a show skeptical, don't expect to come out transformed. Sure it may happen, but when there is so much negativity, how can you possibly expect to be blown away by something great? You cannot expect to be happy if you keep thinking dark thoughts. Send bad vibes, get bad vibes. It's comin' around y'all. In a circle. This leads to the real problem. The addiction isn't going to shows, it's going to shows actively searching for every flaw and flub until you reach a point where no single song can make a night, but you only need one to trash the whole evening. Happily, most of us haven't reached that point yet.

In all fairness to those vocal people who cannot be pleased, bitching is a sort of right of passage. I would expound on this on my own but I think the following excerpt from Dean and Steve Silberman's discussion Phish and the Dead from November 1998 says it all.

SS: In a sense, bitching is a binding force in the culture. If you can bitch - "Oh my God, another Easy Answers!" - you must really be inside the culture. One thing that was great about going to shows with people who were not every-show Deadheads was, I'd be sitting there thinking, "Oh no, Miracle out of Space?" And they'd be like, "It was great!" Because for them, it would be a rare chance to immerse themselves in the process of discovery, whereas for someone who'd been there three nights that week already, what they were hearing on Thursday wasn't as good as on Tuesday.

DB: Sure, that's like, there are certain Phish songs that are quick and sweet, something like Sparkle or Poor Heart that have caused my friends to sit down. Sparkle, for the most part, doesn't change, and if you're really at the show to have some transforming experience, that probably isn't going to be the song for you, although frankly it's often a nice change of pace. And frankly, when they play that tune, what I'll often do is look around and find the one person who is insanely into it because it's such a gleeful, happy song and this is someone who really came to the show in many ways hoping to hear, among other things, Sparkle, because they happen to love that song and they want to dance really fast to it. And I sort of vicariously enjoy the tune through them, or at least I remember what it was like when I felt the same way about it. Of course, my other approach is just to listen to a band member who I usually don't focus on during that particular tune. During Sparkle for instance, I might focus more on Fishman. But I have to admit that one of my pet peeves is people who arbitrarily bitch.

I also think that people who are into the Phish scene - because the band doesn't have as much history as the Dead- they really want to accelerate to the point where they can start bitching about stuff. I know someone who did most of the fall tour last year, and all he did was complain about the set lists and the number of repeats. To me, if you're going to complain about setlists, and stand there inside the show and make a spectacle of yourself when they do a repeat, if that's all the Phish experience has become for you - the chance to be there to see a really rare song - then maybe you should re-evaluate why you're there in the first place. Because there's certainly a remedy for that: take a step back and start seeing fewer shows.

Also, Phish has called much of this criticism on themselves. A few months ago I was talking with James, a tape trading buddy, and he pointed out that Phish are sensationalists and market themselves as such. Everything is about pushing the limits, making it bigger, better, longer, brighter, higher each time. To a large degree this is where many of the post-Big Cyprus, "Is this the end?" comments came from. How can they possibly out do this?!? But the thing is, they don't have to out do it. They can just keep playing two set shows for the rest of forever and that would be fine. Who are we to say that they have out do themselves, or blow our collective consciousness every time? It's O.K. to hear a good version of a song; it doesn't have to be the "best." I rarely refer to any performance as the "best." Sure, like everyone I have my favorites, but that is a different thing all together. And my favorites change. That's because I am a living, growing organism. It is necessary for me to change. Right now I really dig Tube, but in the past I've been hooked on Divided Sky, Timber Ho, and Wolfman's, just to name a few. For now, I'm sort of into individual songs, but there have been, and will be again, times when I really groove to free form jamming. The point is change happens, and it happens because it's necessary.

And here's where we get to the ironic root of the situation. When I was speaking with Al Evans from Soulive, he said that when he and Peter Prince started MBL, something like Soulive wouldn't have caught on.

"It's evolving, it's changing. I remember back in the Moon Boot days, you would always hear people saying 'We're into music,' or 'We're into different kinds of music,' but sometimes that really wasn't the case. I'd see a lot of cats, they were kind of outsiders to tell you the truth, If Soulive came around back in the day when I was doing Moon Boot, back in the early nineties, I don't know if we'd have the same kind of following as we do now." In the early nineties people were much more restricted in what they would accept as jam music or the jam scene. The improv rock scene was dominated by the Dead, and groups that produced different vibes remained small. 'Course bands with a Dead sound were immediately labeled cover bands, and stayed small too, but anyway- now we live in a time when our musical world is flourishing and includes vibrant strands of techno, hip-hop, jazz, bluegrass, groove, funk, soul, rock and good old psychedelia. But as the landscape broadens before our eyes, the band which has been the vanguard of musical exploration and improvisational development for years, has a fan base that is totally unaccepting of change. You hear very few complaints that Phish is playing just the way they did 4 years ago; they're mostly complaints that the music has changed. It's true enough that we no longer see song after song of machine gun Trey. It's true enough that we no longer see Forbins or Harpuas. Yes the groove is deep and thick, so very unlike the fast song oriented jams of, say, 1992. Are these things bad? Are they good? No, they are neither. They are change. And ultimately change is what this music, both in terms of Phish and the broader jam world, is all about. It's about exploration and new ideas, new emotions. It can be sugary sweet or incredibly challenging, but ultimately it is cathartic. If people are unwilling to go along for the ride, get off the bus. If you are unwilling (or unable) to get off, I have no sympathy and I certainly don't want to hear your multitude of complaints. It is so much easier to criticize, to complain, to find fault and then wallow in memories shows "before they sold out, man," than it is to grow and develop, to learn new things, to change. No, I have no sympathy for those who cling to the old ways. It's been said before and it'll be said again, and again, if you don't like it, don't go. If you can't stop, you've got bigger issues than repetitive bass lines in Sand. Not going to Phish doesn't mean not going to music. There is a plethora of vital and intriguing music being created out there, and it's coming from all fronts. Go, explore, find, get a new band, rediscover an old one, be happy. Just don't drag the rest of us into some hyper-critical predisposed negative zone. That's just not going to help anyone.