@mhester said:

sorry it came across like that. i didn't mean "stop going to shows," i meant "maybe taking a step back would brighten your perspective." skipping a show or shows may mean when you come back, it will sound a bit fresher, less rote.

of course people can make their own choices. no one has suggested such fans be barred from attending. but if "frustration" and "disappointment" are the most common reactions one has to attending concerts of a band they love, something is amiss. and from the looks of the literally thousands of fans around me who appeared to be having a BLAST at Wednesday's show, it may not be the band that needs to change. and even if you still want to defend that "yes, actually, it IS the band that needs to change, they need to do _______ for the show to meet my standards of what is a 'good Phish show'," then your disappointment is going to continue.

I get your point. But Phish isn't just a band to fans. It's an experience. At its best it is the best experience some of us can imagine. It is, like everything else, fleeting. Nothing that good can last, or is meant to. Life.

I think a lot of Phish fans are middle aged now, like me. Time and mortality are accelerating and the degree to which we can manage and cope with that gracefully is varied. Think of how intertwined your life is with Phish's music; at least for me it has been the soundtrack of my late 20s, all of my 30s, and at least a bit of my early 40s. So as Phish changes it is natural to want to comment on and otherwise process it.

I think this explains a lot of the drama around 3.0 Phish. Phish has defied linear time, gravity, and other forces of nature; I'm sure part of me wants to see them defy age and mortality too.