I got my merit badge.<\/p>\n
For every gig of the summer tour, all eighteen of them, Phish sells a merit badge.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, just like the Boy Scouts…if you get ’em all, you can buy a sash, sew ’em on and show off.<\/p>\n
That’s what we used to do in the Boy Scouts.<\/p>\n
Yes, I’m an Eagle Scout.<\/p>\n
Who knew it was a paramilitary organization?\u00c2\u00a0 But hell, it was where I had my first homosexual experience.\u00c2\u00a0 I was too dumb and naive to realize that when Harold wanted to get into the sack and warm his hands between my legs…<\/p>\n
Shit, that’s when I freaked out.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I decided to become an Eagle Scout to go to the World Jamboree, in Idaho, it was a requirement…\u00c2\u00a0 But I never made it, there were too many people with seniority.\u00c2\u00a0 But Eagle did look good on my college application. Remember when we used to acquire those totems to create an identity to impress people we didn’t really respect anyway?<\/p>\n
That’s how I always felt about teachers.\u00c2\u00a0 Or was it the administration?\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I had some great teachers, inspirational, but I can count the good ones on one hand…\u00c2\u00a0 And mostly they were in high school, especially Pamela Hurley and Mr. Harrity.\u00c2\u00a0 Thinking back, it was Mr. Harrity who influenced my writing style…he’d taken a sabbatical and came back telling us we had to write for five minutes every morning, and if we ran out of things to say, we had to repeat the last three words ad infinitum.\u00c2\u00a0 I think this is what makes me able to write off the top of my head so fast…I’m not sure.<\/p>\n
ANYWAY, they ran out of merit badges.<\/p>\n
But then Jason found one on the ground, it had literally fallen between the cracks.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s in my wallet.\u00c2\u00a0 An embroidered mountain with two clouds and the words "Phish 2010".\u00c2\u00a0 Means more to me than all those academic achievements.<\/p>\n
Anyway, again, the venue was SPECTACULAR!\u00c2\u00a0 The sun set and you could see the tips of the peaks swathed in gold…someone leaned into me and pointed and said "There’s your purple mountain majesty…"<\/p>\n
The band hit its groove halfway through the first set, the audience was boogieing, it was a private party all about music, and vibes.\u00c2\u00a0 To paraphrase Robert Plant, you remember music, don’t you?<\/p>\n
And yes, we had plenty of laughs.<\/p>\n
It was thrilling to stand on the side of the stage.\u00c2\u00a0 To look out through the lights and the fog at the assembled multitude.<\/p>\n
And I loved hearing "A Day In The Life".\u00c2\u00a0 And "Mighty Quinn".<\/p>\n
But I wasn’t expecting Traffic’s "Light Up Or Leave Me Alone", that got us started.<\/p>\n
And equally thrilling was the exit.\u00c2\u00a0 The last note was played, each band member got into his bus and we ambled behind in a van, with concertgoers bowing at the vehicles carrying the players.<\/p>\n
And also cool was going into the room behind the stage where they record the shows and mix them on the fly.\u00c2\u00a0 The other night, the MP3 and FLAC files were available for purchase thirty eight minutes after the gig ended.<\/p>\n
And I loved connecting with the head of security.\u00c2\u00a0 He remembered me from Jackson Browne.\u00c2\u00a0 He said he started off doing security for Steve Jobs, it was after John Lennon had been shot, when celebrities got freaked out.<\/p>\n
This was the circus.\u00c2\u00a0 Dead center.\u00c2\u00a0 Bull’s-eye.\u00c2\u00a0 This was the heart of the action.\u00c2\u00a0 With Strasburg delineating the costs and logistics, the fee for going past curfew.\u00c2\u00a0 And multitudinous unheralded players coming together to present a show.\u00c2\u00a0 And then on to the next town.<\/p>\n
It was like Jackson Browne’s "The Load Out".\u00c2\u00a0 Or "Almost Famous".\u00c2\u00a0 But for real.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got my merit badge. For every gig of the summer tour, all eighteen of them, Phish sells a merit badge.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, just like the Boy Scouts…if you get ’em all, you can buy a sash, sew ’em on and show off. That’s what we used to do in the Boy Scouts. Yes, I’m an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Q8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3233,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions\/3233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}