So I gave a pair to my best friend, Ryan, for his birthday. We were going camping - and this band was playing, a road trip like we'd taken a billion times before, just for kicks.

Then I moved back home to Rochester, NY... were Ryan was. We got into a little trouble one night in a stupor that ended with broken glass, alarms and police. So we couldn't go. But I have his two tickets, plus the eight The Edge wasn't interested in - in Albany, the only station playing Phish is WEQX, a Vermont station that's signal reached northern Albany. I bet they didn't get ten tickets.

So we sent the tickets to Darien Lake with friends to get traded, sold or whatever. They were free, shouldn't go to waste, right? Well, we got treats, some cash, and some lucky Darien Lakers got to go to the Went for real bargains, and a few miracles. I hope someone there who got one reads this or hears of it, but probably not.

Being an avid DMB fan at the time, I was trading tapes and whatnot. I figured at the time I had the tickets I might as well get some phish since all the tape lists I was choosing trades from had this other band on the list too. I got like 5 shows... and didn't really care for them. Since then I have listened to them, and think I was on crack or something - Amy's Farm early 80s, some 92 show in a college cafeteria, another in what sounds like a closet... killer Mikes grooves, insane antics... I paid no attention.

When the boys rolled into town here in Rochester in December 1999, I got a ticket. Why not? Big fuckin party, right? And they got me and didn't let go for three hours that night. I was out of my skull in euphoric bliss unmatched at any Dave Matthews show I had been to dozens of. These guys were making shit up, sometimes for ten minutes and just playing, one song into another... I'd never heard it, and I had come so close so many times. They had to be in the same room with me for me to understand at all. 

I have no idea why, but Ryan was with me during the whole journey, he was at The Blue Cross Arena in Rochester, right next to me, when it was all happening. He went with me to Big Cypress, Radio City Music Hall, Deer Creek, Merriweather, Alpine Valley, Hershey, Darien Lake and out to Vegas and Shoreline. We met the people who will be in our lives forever and had experiences of a lifetime, just in time.

Turns out Phish was playing all over our parts while we were discovering other bands. They were right under our noses since almost day one, and we never even knew it.

 - Pete