Phish Dicks

Somewhere right now, a white guy with dreadlocks is explaining why the show I loved so much actually wasn’t good.

His main points are something along the lines of “the band hasn’t been good since the 90s” or “they don’t take as many risks as insert much more niche band here,” and we have all been on both ends of this conversation. Whether it involves a 1.0er who went to 150 shows before I was even born or me calling Goose a gateway band, I’ve bore witness to a version of this dick-swinging contest countless times.

For a scene known for happy drugs, dancing, spinning and the overall hippie-dippie portrayal of the crowds, there is a huge superiority complex that casts a dark cloud over the whole thing. While I don’t particularly care much about how or why this phenomenon became a thing, I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s been around since the real deadheads were shitting all over that copycat band from Vermont and its poser fans.

Dick-swinging: A field guide

These days, I see “poser” fans get shit on in plenty of different ways, probably because I have cornered myself in a vacuum online. Some of the time, it is the age-old show count flex rearing its ugly head. When this conversation starts, it is never billed as a contest but it always is one. If someone asks you, “How many shows have you been to,” it is rarely out of curiosity, it is boiling down your experience to just a number vs another number. If your number is lower than theirs, congratulations! You are officially somewhere between “real fan” and “tourist.”

More often, I notice new additions to the scene being looked down upon for the band they started with. An excited post from a new Goose fan in r/jambands is met less with a welcoming sentiment and more with a long “Well, actually…” ending with a random setlist from 1997 that nobody asked for. In fairness, nobody participating in that exchange is lying. That show in 1997 was almost certainly better than someone’s first jam experience 30 years later. My issue is that the joy of an excited new fan was used as an excuse to perform expertise, and now they’re less likely to come back.

My personal favorite, one that I’ve encountered more than a few times in person, the fake smile paired with “you’ll get it eventually.” At its face, this isn’t even an insult. Without context, it might even seem encouraging. But this is diminishing, it tells you that your experience doesn’t count yet. That show you loved is just practice, a mere semblance of the real thing that you will feel later.

None of this comes out of malice, just someone who decides that longer = better. Longer jams, longer shows, longer time in the game. Dick-swinging, per se.

We weren’t born this way

Nobody starts out with that unappetizing superiority complex. Nobody’s first show ends with them thinking their own or anyone else’s experience didn’t count. That belief gets put there. Somebody hands that to you, and you carry it around long enough that you start to believe it was yours all along.

Think about the 1.0er. He didn’t invent this. Somebody did it to him first, probably some head who saw the band in a barn with about seven other hippies. They probably had their own “you’ll get it eventually” moment handed down from someone even before that.

That’s why this isn’t just a character flaw and instead a ruthless cycle, like alcoholism. Anyone who does this to a new fan almost certainly had it done to them, when they started out in the scene. And instead of that becoming the reason to stop it, it becomes the reason that the status feels earned. You put your time in getting outdick-swung, and now you have the right to dick-swing yourself.

We love nerding out about lineage, how different songs and eras evolve from each other. Pretty funny how the condescension gets passed down in the same way.

No wrong way to enjoy a show*

There’s no wrong way to enjoy a show. That’s basically scripture here, more of that hippie-dippie junk that we pretend to subscribe to. Dance however you want, stand still if you want to, cry during Waste, don’t know a single song and go anyway. That’s the pitch of the scene.

Except apparently there’s a footnote on that page of the (helping friendly) book. No wrong way to enjoy a show, unless you enjoyed the wrong show, or enjoyed it for the wrong number of years, or enjoyed it without your homework done.

Every few months, I see the same worried think piece in some form. The scene is aging out, nobody under 25 is going to shows anymore, who’s going to be doing this in 20 years? And every time, the comments are full of people in staunch agreement with that sentiment. Nobody actually wants this to end.

Meanwhile, those same dark corners of the internet are the ones handing out the syllabus to anyone new who wanders in excited. If people are actually worried about the scene dying, a good way to make that happen is to make the youngest, newest, and most excited people feel like they don’t belong here.

Somebody’s first show could be the best night of their life. Instead of just getting to have that, they get corrected. Some shrug it off. Some don’t, and quietly excuse themselves from diving deeper into the scene. They go find a community that is happy to have them.

I don’t have a five step program for how to end the cycle. This stuff gets passed down without anyone noticing, so noticing yourself acting this way is probably a good step in the right direction. Catching yourself before “Well actually…” might do most of the work.

A harder thing to do is resisting the urge to correct someone’s joy in real time. Somebody posts about the best night of their life and the instinct is to jump in and point them in a better direction. “You should hear the ‘93 version.” Again, it was probably better in 93! I’ve started asking people what brought them in. What part of what song made the difference. I’ve found it changes the response and invites a genuine conversation that tends to follow.

None of this requires you to actually change your taste, by the way. It’s perfectly fine to think that the scene peaked before you were born and never budge the other way. Nobody wants you to pretend that every era is equal, or the guy selling grilled cheese in the lot with 400 shows under his belt has had the same night as the 20 year old on his first tour.

All I’m saying is that your opinion is not a public service in those moments. If nobody asked for your advice, there’s a good chance nobody wants it.

Somewhere right now, that dreadlocked white guy is getting ready for Dick’s. Three nights, a stadium named for exactly the kind of contest this piece is about, and thousands of people who are going to have the best or worst or most forgettable weekend of the year, all standing in the same lot.

That guy from the top of this piece isn’t wrong, in a way. The show he’s dismissing right now may not be his favorite. He’s wrong that it needed saying, and he’s wrong that his staggering show count gave him the right to say it.

For many of us, that guy is our future. If all goes to plan, we will be telling the youngins that they don’t know anything until they listen to Billy’s summer 2026 tour.

Alternatively, we can bond with the new generation. Maybe find something we were too clouded and grumpy to see before. I say, let somebody have their own favorite show without telling them why it shouldn’t be. The scene isn’t dying because the kids don’t get it. It’s dying because we keep telling them they don’t, yet.