[Editor's note: Sigh, no cartoon this month. No Cooking column either for that matter and I've been pledging that one for a while. What we do have is an essay which incorporates humor, which raises a point about humor, and which quite likely some of you will find humorous. Enjoy!]

I, Meatstick or How to Correctly Feed a Meatstick to a Bunch of Vegetarians

By Clay (unoclay@hotmail.com)

Taste, as a responsible audience of jam music must constantly recall, is ultimately subjective--or so we are told. But at what point does the relative aesthetic positioning of a truly Great Show advance beyond the realm of a mere opinion, thereafter becoming a matter of unassailable fact?

When deciding what bands, tours, sets, songs, and ultimately jams we label as the best, most representative examples of ""good music""--we are all inevitably bound by personal criteria and contexts. The conclusions which one draws from one's own subjective perspective are therefore a consequence of context. Understanding this, when a young 'head pretentiously announces, "Merriweather '99 was one of the Greatest Shows Ever!!!!," the older, more experienced fans will (hopefully) smile indulgently at the youngster, reminding themselves that this overzealous newbie is speaking from the only (albeit limited) context they know--and such rashness, in itself, is fine--but not necessarily to be taken "seriously."

Context, when making _any_ sort of statement, will always reign as the most influential factor in our evaluations & formations of truths. Example: If one asserts one's love for hot dogs, this individual is obviously coming from a different context than myself. However, any evaluation of the 'truth value' of this claim (the correctness of liking hot dogs, the correctness of the value systems which permit one to love hot dogs, or even the evaluation/truthfulness of the claimant's purported love), will unavoidably be an examination of the Context of the claim--Can we trust the speaker? Is the speaker considering the contexts of their own claim?--and so forth.

Therefore, in attempting to evaluate the validity of any opinion-based claim, we, as the arbitrators of JamMusic Facts, must base our evaluations on thorough assessments of the context in which the 'taste-claim' is made. And if any Absolutes, independent of subjective opinion, might ever be discovered, they will only occur where the most hallowed conventions and sacred decorum of the entire genre are met. These moments of objective perfection will obviously be rare-at-best, but when they occur, will be marked by an outpouring of exuberance and approval by a notable majority of fans.

Innumerable considerations and expectations were brought to the table on 12-31-99, and thanks to the unerring intuition of Phish, most--if not all--of these factors were met. On these grounds, I argue that a _particular aspect_ of The Meatstick Millennium Show was so well conceived, implemented, and delivered, that the show's relative Greatness rocketed beyond the province of opinion, and forged itself an eternal spot in sacred halls of Objective Fact. Follow me through it.

So, I went to NYE2K to see my favorite band. They are my favorite band because I have seen them perform music 5.75 as many times as i have washed my hair in the last 3 years. (This fact means i am hardcore ;']--free show to the first person who correctly guesses both numbers.) I arrive in this nice field full of wonderful people who all remember my name, smiling hugging people who's names i seem to have misplaced. I have an enormous amount of fun for many hours, participating in conversations and activities designed to Build Build BUILD the excitement...until the night of Y2Trey finally arrives. Finally, virtually Gagging with suspense, we all head in to see this show--perhaps the most anticipated Phish show of all time.

It is obvious that by this point, after months and years of waiting, expectations of personal Taste are running almost unreasonably high. All the fans are making predictions such as "Oh boy, tonight we finally get Destiny Unbound," or perhaps, "Its Harpua at midnight for sure," or the odd fellow yelling "SPOCK'S BRAIN! WHOOOOOO HA!". All these people are obviously sharing a context--one in which Phish will play some rare treats for NYE to reward the faithful. Dammit, we say to ourselves, they'd better play something rare-as-hell, after all the time and money i spent getting here. ;']

But would a simple rendition of an underplayed song, such as Destiny or Spock's, have been the answer? Could our lifelong countdown to The Millennium be consummated by a fumbling, yet entertaining Forbin's narrative? Or, on the other hand, should we celebrate with a song that everyone knows, many enjoy, and even possess more-than-a-tinge of ironic hilarity thrown in to <> the pop-culture hoopla that Y2K has become???

Is this Phish? Could they do anything less?

The moment (#1) you've been waiting for: 11:59 P.M., Dec. 31, 1999. Your whole life, overshadowed by the millennium, awaiting....what? Meatstick? Is that Meatstick playing over the PA? And not even live Meatstick, but a garbled, prerecorded madness? Is this some sort of excuse to allow the band to fly around in our old friend, the Boston Frankfurter, while ignoring their instruments in favor of video cameras and souvenir trinkets?

Here comes that troublesome bastard, subjective taste. Some people immediately think, "Weird, not what _I_ expected." Others think, "YES!!!!! What an absolutely perfect night this is going to be!!". Yet others think, "I'm not doing that damn dance, even if it is the millennium." And as I took great pains to outline above, all these sorts of thoughts are, on average, acceptable reactions. People are entitled to context, even at the holiest of holies--a millennium Phish show.

(On a personal level, my context was doing overjoyed backflips.

I became slightly obsessed with that song ever since the leaked tapes of Bearsville '98 gave me goosebumps and an overwhelming Hose, thus finally clarifying what those '97-era chants of "Time, time, time for the mmmpph-mmmmph" meant.)

Obviously, my subjective-context is irrevocably biased. So for me, the lead-in to NYE2K--a flying Meatstick exploding out of the symbolic Everglades hydrofoil, surfing across the crowd to a tune of the same name--is all i could have ever asked. Torrents of tears ran down my head (for those keeping score, this does not count as washing my hair)...the Meatstick2K was everything, if not more, than i could have asked for. The night was under way--utter (or should i say udder) perfection.

Following this point, there are several nice jams to pass the time. Sand, YEM, Reba, Roses, on and on and on it goes. There are more segueways than the most intrepid fan can immediately digest, everyone gets to hear at least a couple immaculate renditions of favorite songs, and thanks to the triumphant returns of Crosseyed and Painless (a lapse of 158 shows) and Love You (178), even statisticians are somewhat appeased. Returning home, more fans will write essays praising Big Cypress than any other show in several years. Everyone got theirs in Florida. But yet, what is the deciding "oomph" that pushes this one over the top?

7.25 hours after the whole shebang embarks into Meatstick 2000, here comes the Big Moment #2 that everyone is anticipating--the sunrise jam. A couple of hours into the midnight set, anyone who was 'in for the long haul' _must_ have begun to consider what song(s) might _conclude_ this unprecedented MONSTER of a set. We all had our theories--Divided Sky, Harpua, Destiny Unbound. 2001 essentially satisfies the requirement for the symbolic "dawning of a new year" song--not rare at all, but the 'concept' and vibe of the song fit the moment perfectly. But as the whole dreamstate-turned-concert comes to a close, what could they possibly end with?????????

I argue that at this juncture, subjective taste is no longer a meaningful concept. You may have seen every show on Summer '99 and had Meatsticks, tasty and otherwise, coming out of your ears (i did). You might never have liked the song, or always thought it sounded too suspiciously like Fire on the Mountain (it doesn't). But in any case, __after having set off the whole night___ with a Bite o' Millennium Meatstick, the only possible ending to this--the longest, largest, and most-heralded Jam Music Extravaganza--could be anything BUT a grand, majestic, hilarious-yet-transcendent Meatstick Sandwich.

Phish by no means invented the concept of the (---->)segueway. However, their application and sense of this jam-music staple is by far one of the most important and enjoyable aspects of their music, if not the Main Reason they are the Entity they have become. Good bands write earth-shaking songs all the time..but we would never attend their concerts umpteen times if they didn't have some means of reinventing themselves..and for Phish, the rebirthing process seems to be done primarily through segueways, open-ended palates which allow the band to explore new styles which expand their Songwriting capacities.

The whole idea of an -----> is the reinvention/examination of an old, familiar piece which suddenly explodes into new glory....and these seem to be the most popular shows amongst the Hard Core. For proof, one need look no further than the most-circulated Roxy Theater (2-20-93), Bomb Factory Tweezer, or the infamous Nassau 4-3-98--all these sets are ultimately marked as the Golden as a result of their unparalleled "into"s.

My point??? The Y2KMeatstick Sandwich was, after being set in motion, one of the best possible representations of Phish-as-a-whole they could have made. Perhaps Meatstick isn't the 'best' song Phish ever wrote--no arguments from the subjective perspective there. But as a closer to 99, it was pretty damn representative of the past year, a _theme_, as it were. The song encompasses humor (VERY important factor when speaking about Representative Phish Songs), allows for open-ended jamming (something they will hopefully capitalize upon this summer), and on Y2K, the entire midnite-to-dawn set, when looked at as a composite entity, became a Sandwich inside Meatstick. This is the icing on the cake, the final deciding factor which places Big Cypress 12-31 on the "Unassailably Greatest" list--beyond the reach of petty subjectivity.

If this were a shorter, less-voluminous show, we'd be all over the whole 'Chalkdust-->Mirror-->Chalkdust-->Dog Log-->Chalkdust' angle, but in a set of this length (at least 34 coherent tunes), it is forgivably easy to overlook the perfect planning/aesthetic value of the Greatest Jam Band pulling off the greatest Jam Band Antic at the Biggest Show of their/our Lives---------->
a Sandwich,
a Jam Band Sandwich,
the Sandwich that ended a millennium and began another,
The Meatstick Sandwich.