After reading this post, I gave consideration to downloading Coventry and giving it an attentive listen. . .it wasn't up on etree, but I remembered listening to some of the 'choice' moments in the fall of 2004 ("we just need to blow off some fuggin steam", et c.)

I headed to livephish to listen to some clips and see if I wanted to shell out the 30$ for it. I heard Trey's choked-up vocals to "Split Open and Melt" and was fascinated and repelled. I don't think I would have been able to appreciate the depth of the whole experience- I still was only 24 and pretty naieve about things and didn't suspect that the band at a Phish show was at least as high as the crowd- but man.

This is some dark stuff. What a scene. Hundreds of hangers-on, sex, swimming pools full of drugs, money, money, money, and the nucleus of it all hitting bottom in public with three other guys just barely less far gone keeping him from drooling all over the stage (and instead, we get tear-choked vocals delivered in a semi-catatonic state).

Eight years before that, they were the lovable goofballs from Vermont (who maybe tried coke and didn't like it?), who eschewed and mocked the excess that almost killed them.

I can't consider myself a 'serious' Phish scholar without listening and digesting these shows. I do consider myself a 'serious' GD scholar, and I don't see comprehending the entirety of 92 - 95 as an essential prereq.

So what was I saying again?