Suggested soundtrack: “What’s The Use?,” 10-23-20, the Beacon Theatre, New York
It lasted all of, what, 7 minutes? 10 minutes?
For that short span of time, the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrated their first World Series championship in 32 years and fans (Tampa crew excepted) could breathe a sigh of relief: this bizarre, surreal, weird, shortened, fanless, COVID-plagued season had actually managed to play out to its conclusion. And with a wild, entertaining postseason at that!
There would be no winner-take-all Game 7 in this World Series, but we had two Game 7s in the League Championship Series plus some terrific baseball during the Series itself, including a stunning conclusion to Game 4 which, in hindsight, was probably the Series’ peak, even if it was the Rays on the winning end of that one.
And the use of Phish and the Grateful Dead as bumper music between innings garnered enough attention and tweets to get a tip of the cap from the network.
But no more than 10 minutes after the Dodgers made the final out that spurred on the traditional celebratory dogpile in the middle of the field, as Fox Sports brought us back from commercial for the trophy presentation, they cut in from the studio to let us all know that while the Dodgers were celebrating, the reason that star third basemen Justin Turner was pulled very late in the game was because he had tested positive for COVID-19.
It was a stunning, “Wait, what, holy shit” moment if ever there was one (aside from the above Game 4 ending, of course). Suddenly, the Dodgers’ ending of a three-decade title drought seemed the secondary story (unless you were a Dodgers fan) and the dark cloud that had trailed the sport (and, uh, our entire lives) around all season — and been hidden behind Globe Life Park’s occasionally closed retractable roof all Series long — returned.
And, as if things couldn’t get more surreal, commissioner Rob Manfred was loudly booed by the thousands of fans that were actually in attendance and, a few minutes later, diagnosis be damned, Turner was back out on the field celebrating with his team, including his manager, Dave Roberts, who is a cancer survivor.
It was a bewildering scene to take in and one that, as many others have pointed out, is pretty symbolic of the way the United States has handled the pandemic itself:
Testing that came far too late
Action that, when it was taken, proved moot
A complete disregard for personal safety and the safety of others
I’m not interested in placing blame because it belongs with everybody: MLB for a terrible, lagging testing protocol and for not really playing in a “bubble” (letting fans in pierced that) and, of course, Turner for disregarding the safety and well-being of his teammates. There’s enough fuel for the hot take machine to pump on for a while.
For me, though, the impact is on how that news, that single positive case, brought everything tumbling out, the single pebble that started the avalanche. We weren’t even able to enjoy the conclusion of a good postseason in which the best two teams played for the title and one of the league’s most iconic franchises ended a title drought for more than a few minutes before the specter of what we’re up against — not just in the sport but across the entire world — crashed the party.
I had a damn hard time falling asleep Tuesday night. Partly from being amped about the game (there was legit, exciting drama, particularly with the Rays pulling Blake Snell!) and the title and… yeah, the COVID. It’s already a very anxious time with a tire fire presidential election barreling towards the side of a mountain and COVID cases reaching record highs across the globe. And, now, once more, the reminder of what we’re up against, what we’re facing, barged back in like Nicholson axing through that door to Shelly Duval’s screams and reminding us that it’s still here.
There’s no escaping it. Not even in America’s Pastime.
And, once more, the walls feel like they’re closing in.
I remember the Fall of 2016 for a few vivid reasons. First, my wife and I moved across the country, back to the Midwest after a 3-year stop in California. We were living in Cleveland (she’s from the area), sharing a house with her younger brother while we looked for our own apartment.
That was also the fall that the Cubs won the 2016 World Series, an event that I’m not entirely sure didn’t rip the time-space continuum. And I was lucky enough to attend three games in person, including the historic Game 7.
And, yes, it was the Fall of Trump. Or, rather, the fall of Clinton. I remember being up late on that cold, rainy November night into the wee hours of the morning, feeling the anxiety creep up with every red-ward tick of that godforsaken New York Times needle as the impossible became the inevitable.
To call that time chaotic isn’t even close to doing it justice. Trying to get settled and find our feet in a new city, including a new place to live, was stress-inducing enough. But to do it against the backdrop of full-time work, baseball-induced nerves (I know, real First World Problem), and the stress of a contentious election was draining.
Like a lot of folks in this country, I deal with diagnosed depression and anxiety (less the former, more the latter, but always intertwined) and that time was one of particularly apprehensive feelings.
The upside: Baseball, for all its stress, also brought catharsis. How else could you describe the first Cubs World Series in 108 years? Like other Cubs fans, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop… except it didn’t.
I also found distraction in music. It was around then that I finally started giving Dead & Company a try, accepting the slowed-down version of Dead tunes for what they were: a faithful recreation of the originals that, when inspired, could rise to new heights on their own that proved it was more than a nostalgia trip.
And there was Phish (of course). There was other music, too, including Sigur Ros, Natalie Prass, and a handful of other records that were on regular rotation. But I really fell into the rhythm of playing certain songs, certain Phish playlists on a loop, and one tune I kept coming back to was the famous “Went Gin.”
Late at night after a long October slog of a Cubs game left me with adrenaline still pumping or, by mid-November, the dreary Ohio fall weather setting the soundtrack to what was fast approaching at the White House, there’s something in the looping cycle of themes and lines in this performance’s jam that provided a soothing shot of joy.
When Trey takes over in the final third, building on everything that Page, Mike and Fish have built under him for the first 10 minutes, it’s an incredible build-and-release, a rip-roaring guitar line that is so perfectly and intricately woven in with the rest of the band that it’s… perfect. Dopamine floods my brain, I can close my eyes, let the music swirl in my head like sunshine and, for a few minutes, the anxiety subsides.
I can’t really manage to describe it beyond those hippy, dippy bromides. It’s something we’ve all experienced, being moved by music (or art or something else) so you probably (I hope) get what I’m saying. That said, the brilliant Amar Sastry breaks it down in all kinds of technical ways below and it’s well worth 20 minutes of your time.
This was a place I sought a lot of solace that fall, the music able to put my brain in a place where it could quiet down and move away from fear and anxiety.
In much the way I would replay the final innings of Game 7 of the 2016 World Series — including forcing myself to sit through the Rajai Davis homerun because I knew what was coming and I wanted to feel that subseuqent relief, that joy over and over — I replayed the “Went Gin” dozens of times. I’m still not sick of it; I’m not sure I could ever be. It still brings comfort and warmth to this day.
Yet, whether because of current events, what’s going on in my personal life or simply because that’s how our bodies’ chemicals rebel sometimes, the dread never feels that far away. It reminds me of a few lines from one of my favorite songs from Scottish band Frightened Rabbit, “Not Miserabl.”
Specifically:
Though the corners are lit
The dark can return with the flick of a switch
It hasn't turned on me yet
Yet
It’s that second “Yet” that always gets me. It now carries extra weight because the man who wrote it, Frightened Rabbit’s lead singer Scott Hutchison, died by suicide in 2018.
I haven’t faced anything as dark as he did (Don’t worry! I’m good!) but that doesn’t mean those lines don’t resonate, especially in a time of elevated anxiety and apprehension. You can only hold whatever it is — that darkness, that fear, that anxiety — at bay for only so long.
We’ve all felt this at times throughout our lives and it’s a recurring theme. You can only distract yourself with the same classic baseball games, loop through the same songs so many times before it slowly edges back and the shield you’ve built starts to grind down allowing the unease, the angst to creep back in.
Baseball and Phish have, in 2020, brought calm to my anxieties in a time when it feels like the world is on fire. Which, to be fair, it literally is.
For a month, it felt good to have that rhythm of baseball every night, of at least one, often multiple, games to scan through, whether I was watching intently or simply had on in the background. Baseball, even in the high-stakes time of October, still has that soothing quality for me. Whether that’s from nostalgia, the familiar patterns of the game, or just because it always interests me and brings me joy (well, mostly), I don’t know.
Joining the games have been Trey’s Beacon Jams streams which I wrote about last week, two-plus hours of fantastic music, improv and sharing Trey’s infectious joy. They’ve been a great Friday night complement to the steady diet of baseball this October; I’ve watched Trey on my television while streaming whatever baseball game was underway via my laptop.
As I wrote last week, one of my favorite parts of these performances has been the songs Trey’s done with a string quartet. It’s a fresh take on old songs and it’s actually gotten me to think differently about a handful of songs, none more than the droning “What’s the Use.”
I’m not a huge fan of the song. If I’m listening to an old Phish show and it comes on, I’ll skip it unless I **really** want to listen to the whole show to get the ambience (which is extremely weird and nerdy I know, but see: the Rajai Davis homer thing).
But the Beacon Jams, quartet-aided version of “What’s the Use” (way up there at the top of this) has, finally, made the song land for me. It’s the softness and beauty of the strings, an embellishment that may turn others off but hits me “square in the feels” as the kids say. Trey’s droning melody line stands out even more to me here, elevated by Don Hart’s lush string arrangement.
Look, I’m a sucker for these orchestrally embellished versions and I don’t apologize for it; it’s why I keep so many of those “Relaxing Classical" Spotify playlists on hand. And the arrangement works perfectly here as the song transforms, for me, from psychadelic drone to hushed lullaby; it’s the most Phish or Trey have ever sounded like Sigur Ros and, even though those are two completely different bands with different styles and different aims, I love it.
In the last week, I’ve listened to this track a dozen times at least, if not more. I even used the LivePhish app to break out a full playlist of all the songs Trey’s played at the Beacon shows with the string quartet, a shot of “calm-the-hell-down” amongst feverish refreshing of FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast and coronavirus numbers. These are two mind-numbing extremes but somehow there comes a point of equilibrium.
The problem with that balance, though, is that it’s alwaus teetering and it won’t take much to push me one way or the other, either into full anxiety mode or into full “SCREW IT, LET’S MOVE TO THE WOODS” mode. And it’ll soon be too cold for the woods.
Regardless of what happens Tuesday, the winter is going to feel colder and longer than usual. If Trump wins, it’s like the worst Groundhog’s Day ever, except it’s 4 more years of emotional winter, not 6 weeks. And if Biden wins, that won’t make all the terrible magically diseappear. The pandemic will continue, sea levels will still rise, systematic racism will continue to churn away, and the world will continue to burn, just that it’ll be doing so to a loop of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You.”
Which isn’t the worst way to go but still….
That’s a very dark, gloomy, pessimistic view, I know. Again, I like to think I’m more a glass-half-full guy most of the time! But it’s the anxiety talking. It’s the “We can’t have 5 minutes to celebrate the end of the World Series without COVID rearing it’s ugly head” anxiety talking. It’s the “fear of post-election violence spurred on by our hate-monger president” anxiety talking. It’s the “Ongoing existential crisis about climate change” anxiety talking. It’s the “How did science and medicine become a political debate point” anxiety talking.
You get the idea.
Things are never quite as dire as they seem in my head, but, for once, they don’t feel far off. I’ve never made any secret of my own political allegiances and a Biden win would restore a bit of hope, even if the road ahead is tough.
So in these final few days heading towards the election and whatever chaos lies beyond, including a pandemic that will stretch well into 2021, likely impacting next year’s Phish tours and Spring Training, I’m working on that balance. I’m doing what I can to find comfort to try to level things out.
I’ve started in on Rick Perlstein’s series of books that track the post-WW2 history of conservatism of the United States, just finishing Before The Storm which focuses on the rise of Barry Goldwater leading up to the 1964 election. And while it’s not a perfect mirror of what we’re going through in 2020, there are definitely plenty of elements that underscore what a flat circle time really can be. If you think the Red MAGA Hat crowd is new, the John Birch Society had the act down 60 years before.
And while that doesn’t dispel any anxiety or agita I feel about our current state, better understanding the cycles of history that have put us at this moment is its own weird comfort. Yeah, this sucks but now I can better see where it was built from and the known is always a bit less scary than the unknown (as countless horror films have proved).
And I’m continuing to focus on those stand-bys of baseball and Phish. I’ve been burning through various MLB Network documentaries that are on YouTube (I’m a big fan of the MLB Baseball Seasons series) and the old “This Week in Baseball” series. Yeah, it’s nostalgia and that can be dangerous, but there’s less harm to be done in finding comfort in a time when the Montreal Expos still existed than, say, turning the clock back to 1930s-style fascism.
Trey’s Beacon Jams are now part of the routine, too, a Friday night standby I can depend on to be a staple for my weekend, besides hikes with the dog, football, and joining my wife in judging the people on each “House Hunters” episode.
I’ve also been reading Rob Mitchum’s terrific ongoing series reviewing Phish shows as they unfolded 25 years ago. Fall 1995 is a treasure trove of great stuff and having such easy access to those recordings makes it easy to read along and dip in and out of those shows to enjoy.
And the fall is generally rich with old Phish shows to go back to, from the Halloween sets to the Reading, PA 2013 show that yielded my favorite “Down With Disease” ever (and not unlike the “Went Gin).
And, yeah, I’ve even listened to the “Went Gin” several times in the last few days. It’s all helped even as I worry about the law of diminshing returns.
Hell, we’re even going to put up our Christmas decorations this weekend as soon as Halloween is officially out of the way because, well, we can and we want to. Whatever brings us joy, right?
I know this has been several thousand words of privileged middle-aged white guy whining, but when you’re reading a newsletter about baseball and Phish, you know what you’re getting into. That’s the best defense I have.
I guess that’s all I can do: focus on those things that bring me joy and comfort even, like a World Series clincher, they come with reminders about the raging dumspter fire our world currently is.
As impossible as it seems (and may prove to be), maybe that’s what can stabilize the balance, to keep holding that anxiety and despair at bay in the corners because the only other option is to give in and let it run our lives into the misery swamp.
And what’s the use in that?
Thanks for, once more, indulging my navel gazing. More luke warm takes about Phish and the baseball offseason to come. In the meantime, if you haven’t already voted, be sure to make your plan: find your nearest ballot drop box or polling place and get your vote in on time. And hold on tight.