SAY THE MAGIC WORDS: “ You Can Feel Good, Good About Hood” in Phish’s “Harry Hood”

Being a Phish fan (or, excuse me, a phan) doesn’t carry much social value. They have the strange ability to make everyone who hates them into an evangelist. I’ve had strangers stop me on the street to inform me that my hat or shirt sucks and “Phish are terrible.” I’ve had a particularly angry Best Buy cashier attempt to dissuade me from buying the box set I had preordered because “I could spend my money on something better.” And, lord, if you ever even THINK of purchasing a hackey sack, you better believe that you’re not going to live it down. But there’s a kind of camaraderie borne out of being a fan of something so vehemently hated. I get excited when I hear even a begrudging admiration of the band on sites outside Jambase or official fan sites (bless you, Nathan Rabin and Harris Wittles) to break up the steady stream of new Vice articles or other posts about how “Phish are the worst band of all time” when someone needs an easy pop culture targets to take down. I do not deny that a part of the scene and band fits the “smelly hippy bullshit” stereotype, but I counter there’s real joy, an unfiltered, inexpressible, and mysterious joy, in a Phish show not found in any other type of music.

There are very few things comparable to a Phish show. They’re three hours of monster segues and a few standalone “pop” songs (yes, that feeling of “all songs sounding the same” is intentional) which attract the densest concentration of happy, terrible dancers this side of Jimmy Buffett. The band jumps on trampolines, plays intricately composed prog-cum-classical instrumentals that melt into and are often indistinguishable from improvisation, and sometimes busts out a vacuum cleaner to “play.” The band and their fans have their own secret language, besides the official “secret language” consisting of musical queues, and it must look bewildering as thousands of people throw glowsticks during specific times, clap spontaneously, and line dance to a song called “Meatstick.” It’s that same baffling, silly spirit that sets them apart, gives me a feeling of being in a tribe of fans, a tiny island floating just outside the rest of music.

For me, the greatest Phish songs are the ones that take me to a place where it feels like it is just me and the band sitting in a room, no other people, no other eyes, just my utter attention and the music. It feels pure, like being suspended by the music so that I’m nowhere and feeling nothing but music and love and joy. It’s a feeling of complete obliteration, hypnotized and detached. When the music hits just right, when Phish gets it, it’s as if they’re pulling things out of me, sparkling and delicate feelings that seem alien but are really familiar – like objects pulled out of the deep sea. It’s a feeling that I’ve never felt in any other band, a happy obliteration of everything, ego, worries, and consciousness, to be replaced by a pure, white blankness, perfectly happy, perfectly content.

There’s many Phish songs that have brought me to that place but the one that never fails to hit those impossible peaks is “Harry Hood,” which I was happy to see live for the first time at Merriweather last year. It’s a silly song about a milk company mascot, but when the band gets into the knotty, sublime jamming attached, the song’s subject matter becomes immaterial. On most nights, hearing the magic words of “you can feel good, good about Hood!” is like seeing the crest of a wave as it breaks over you, the moment where you can realize the entirety of the moment instead of just the part that’s hitting you. In that second, you can see it all come together, the beautiful physics of each note and water droplet and the tiny ripples that build into something instant and momentous. It’s a moment of absolute clarity of something much bigger than the instant I’m inside. In it, I can get a sense (but never grasp) of what is going on all around and inside me. When I hear Phish play at their peak, I experience a kind of painting, feeling broad swaths of emotions mix together, swirl and flow, distinct at times and indistinguishable at others. It’s an experience where I know each color of the music, every point, like looking at an impressionist work and be conscious of both every color choice and the unbroken whole.

In a good “Hood,” when I hear those blissful, final lyrics, it dwarfs me and raises me up on what has happened to that point and what is coming in the final jam. And it’s not always purely positive major key stuff - I get real sad and angry and melancholy and bored at points - but I know that those emotions will flow into others. I know that the boredom will surge into tears - streaming excitement - and the darkness and anger in the music will splinter and crack to form shafts of joy or twinges of melancholy. It’s comforting to know that all of those emotions can be experienced near simultaneously; that they can all sit together and are expected to. It’s reassuring to know that those emotions fit so well together; that experience is what we can expect out of life. To hear those words is to know something more immediate and real than platitudes or words - it’s to feel dismay or boredom or anxiety segue to unbridled joy and know that those sensations can and will go hand in hand, that they endure, that there is nothing unnatural about the swing ebb of emotion. A truly good “Hood” and Phish show makes me feel something unknown, to encounter it briefly and go away wanting more.

Pretty heady stuff for a band of philthy hippies, right?



-Ben Summers

Feel good with Phish at Merriweather on August 15 and 16!