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New Year's Eve with Phish in Big Cypress By Kathryn Cernera With all of the buzz about Y2K and an apocalypse I decided early that I wanted to be nowhere near my native New York City (or Long Island as the case may be) on the eve of the millennium- I chose rather to spend four days with my favorite band Phish in the heart of gator country on the Seminole Indian reservation at Big Cypress in Florida. I went to the festival with high hopes and lofty ideas of what the event would be like. I have attended other Phish festivals and been blown away by the entire experience; I couldn't fathom a festival this large! Well, the festival was not all that I expected- traffic was more difficult than I could imagine, the food provided by vendors was overpriced (not quite Woodstock prices, but close), there was a water shortage, and we didn't go to Gamehenge, but in retrospect I have to agree with the young phan who hugged me at the stroke of midnight and yelled "there's no place in the universe I want to be except here!" Aside from the 20 mile traffic jam entering the park (which took us 16 hours to navigate) Phish threw the most well-planned and organized party I have ever attended. The band and their production company spent an entire month converting an everglades cow pasture into a small city. The freshly made roads and neighborhoods for the attendees to camp in covered approximately two miles of land. Upon arrival we were given maps to help us find our ways home. Once we had settled and moved into "tent-city" the incredible ride began. Phish played their first of five sets on December 30th. In the opening of the first song of the show, "Water in the Sky," the band urged us to "close the shutters/draw the shades/filter out the everglades." I knew then that despite my geographic reality, this weekend would be some sort of trans-geographic amusement park ride, or at least an alternate reality. I have always believed that a Phish concert is more than a mere concert, it is an event. This festival was no exception. Many other reporters have called it a neo-hippie throwback to the summer of love--this may be going a bit too far. I think it was more of a gathering of music lovers looking for a great time and an escape from normal America. Phish shows have their own economies, this is one of the few places where the barter system overrides the monetary system, with vendors of everything from blown glass, to clothes, to grilled cheese set up on every corner. Phish did a fine job of keeping us entertained with their Ferris wheel, hot air balloon rides, illuminated woods for post show drum circles, 50 foot paper airplanes aloft in the trees, and of course, the music. The show on the 30th was phenomenal (as all Phish shows are) but nothing extremely innovative. The set lists included standards like "Ghost," "Jiboo," "Tweezer" and "Character Zero," with a welcome "Golgi Apparatus," "Possum" or "Suzy Greenburg" wedged in. Overall the show was well-played and well-jammed, but low energy. They were saving it for New Year's Eve. The first set on the 31st started with a "Runaway Jim" at approximately 5:00 (I wasn't wearing a watch) and meandered through a "Tube" and "I Didn't Know" complete with a solo by John Fishman on the vacuum cleaner, the set culminated in a promise--the promise that "After Midnight we're gonna let it all hang out." And hang out it did. Minutes before the turn of the millennium the show turned strange. Father Time rode out onto the stage on a bicycle and proceeded to fall over, seemingly dead. Simultaneously the band rode a fan boat into the show, and abandoned that mode of transport in favor of a giant hot dog. They rode the dog through the crowd to the stage, where they fed it to the Father with the "Meatstick" playing overhead. Father Time was revived by the meatstick just as the countdown started. As the ball dropped in New York, Phish played the first notes of "Auld Lang Syne" signaling the start of a new millennium and a seven and a half hour set to come. The band kept their promises-they played straight through until the sun rose over the field. There was never a break in the music, and the jams were long and winding. This set alone was worth the $150 ticket price! As the sun rose and the band left the stage "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles accompanied a spent and overstimulated 80,000+ people back to their camp sites for some needed rest and the trip home. It's really difficult to put the events of this festival into words, and I haven't done the best job in the world, but I know that 50 years from now I'll be telling my grandchildren about how I ushered in the new millennium with Phish in the swamp in Florida, and that I still won't be able to explain the event. Kathryn Cernera is a junior english major at Ithaca College. |
