While most of the articles written about the first leg of Phish’s summer tour tended to focus on the music, articles about the tour’s second leg seemed to focus on the fans and their drug usage. Each day, I review mainstream articles about the band for YEMblog and multiple articles about the number of drug arrests have been written about nearly every show of the run.
When you put 10-20,000 people together – along with a slew of police officers – arrests are bound to happen. It doesn’t matter if the band on stage is Nickelback or Phish. Eight people got arrested outside of the Hartford show on Friday. Seems like a small number to me but there were four articles written about it. Of course, the fact that 18 nitrous oxide tanks were seized didn’t help and a number of reputable music blogs including Brooklyn Vegan and Prefix picked up on the story taking aim at “the hippies.”
One story that got a lot of play this past weekend was about a “Phish fan” who dosed a Saratoga PD investigator. The incident happened the day before the show and the so-called fan who was responsible hailed from the next town over, Ballston Spa. I lived in Saratoga for four years during which time I saw plenty of LSD in town. As much as the SSPD and The Saratogian want to blame Phish for a local resident dosing an officer, it has nothing to do with the band.
As I said earlier, the local press reported on drug arrests at nearly every stop on the band’s tour as you can see over at YEMblog. Local police departments see us coming from a mile away so wise up and keep that shit on the down low. Sadly, our reputation precedes us. Let’s help the media get back to focusing on the powerful music Phish is making at each tour stop and not on the dalliances of a few members of the fanbase.
13 Responses
Who exactly is blaming the band? Are you actually complaining about the fact that hippies do more drugs than most music fans?
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t understand why The Saratogian references Phish when a local man doses an officer in downtown Saratoga miles from the venue on the day before a show.
The number of articles on drug arrests have overtaken the number of articles on the band’s music. That sucks.
I give brooklyn vegan and prefix 4 more years become they become completely obscure and hated. i vote to remove them plus some of the other really bad hipster blogs from HT blogroll.
D its more about the fact, that the local police see Phish fans as an easy target for high profile busts and easy money and the media (some of which should know better) is eager to supply the coverage and report on it, no matter how loose the association.
Hippies do not do more drugs than other fans. First of all, none of my friends who see Phish do drugs at all. We’re in our 30’s have kids and jobs…too much to lose. Second, I go to tons of shows, all genres. The pot smoke at the Sonic Youth I show I saw two weeks ago was out of control. Plus, I know a lot of those “holier than thou” hipster types that read Brooklyn Vegan…they’re all strung out on heroin and meth.
In general the law has been accepting of the blantant abuses of local laws… otherwise we’d all have gone to jail at some point on tour. Seems to me that they’re ignoring the majority of drug use/sales and just removing the undesirables and real fuck ups. In a way, they are cleaning up the scene in a bit.
“Hippies do not do more drugs than other fans.”
OK then, they just get arrested for it more often.
“First of all, none of my friends who see Phish do drugs at all.”
Logical fallacy.
“How did Nixon get elected? I don’t know anyone who voted for him”
id have to be on drugs to see nickleback.
N2o is easily a bust , I personally don’t enjoy it but I do love a bit of psylocybin or L. Overall busts are down at shows , less “plain clothes” officers etc, because its been a few years since the last tour.Be smart, use slang and code language, if they don;t get it they don;t get it, dig.
I did plenty of drugs when I was younger, but I always found I enjoyed music much more sober. I was at the SPAC show and I was dismayed by the numbers of people I saw huddled in groups on the ground pouring out and taking various powders and pills and what not. It’s one thing to smoke pot or whatever, but is it really necessary to spend more time taking cocaine or whatever other powders than listening to the music?
I started going to Dead shows in the early 90s, and I have never seen as much drug use at a concert as I did at SPAC. I am not even counting everything in the lot before or after the show because I don’t really consider that as taking away from the music.
They aint going to get me. Been cleen since 1986. Feeling the groves since 1979.
The Saratogian must be the most ill-informed/obviously biased newspaper in this whole country. The writing is atrocious and the logic flawed. I would be shocked if this journalist made it past 6th grade. Terrible. Just terrible.