Attendance Bias Mini Episode #11: Glide, 12/31/13 @ Madison Square Garden, NY, NY
When it comes to naming your favorite Phish song, I have my stock answer, and then maybe question it with a few backup answers. But it’s been a constant in the 24 years that I’ve been listening to Phish—my first favorite song is still my favorite today, and that song is Glide. I’ve mentioned it several times on this podcast, but Glide was the big bang for me. Every show I’ve seen, album I’ve bought, show I’ve downloaded or streamed, and opinion I’ve had can be traced back to track number ten on A Picture of Nectar.
The quick version of my Phish origin story is that I was 13 years old at summer camp in Massachusetts. I was with a group of older kids in a van, on a field trip to New Hampshire to hike up Mount Washington. It’s about a 4-hour drive from the camp to the mountain, so I packed a lot of music for the ride. I remember listening to Live at Leeds, by The Who, which I still consider the best live album ever officially released. Eventually I took a break from my headphones to hang with the group. The driver put A Picture of Nectar on the car stereo, and I was transfixed. From the opening track of Llama, I was totally engrossed and locked in. I wanted to hear more. And more. And more. Eventually, the album got to Glide, and I was transfixed.
I don’t know what it is about the song that grabbed me. I think it’s the cowbell opening before the power chords that I connected to the opening of The Who’s Pinball Wizard; one instrument playing a complex part before the rest of the band barges in. The vocal harmonies and key changes definitely had something to do with it too. I loved garden variety classic rock at the time but maybe I was subconsciously looking for something more musically complex and challenging. Phish certainly provided that.
I was singing the song to myself all weekend. Up Mount Washington, back down, and on the four-hour ride back to camp. The day I got home from camp that summer, I went straight to Sam Goody at the Roosevelt Field mall and bought A Picture of Nectar and wore it out, probably by the end of that year. I hadn’t seen Phish live yet, but I hoped at every show I saw that Glide would make an appearance.
The one time I heard Glide live at a show wasn’t exactly a celebratory moment: they started it up at Coventry and it became a Monkey’s Paw moment: it was the song I was most desperate to hear, and ended up being the single song performance we would most want to strike from the record. It wasn’t until 2009 that I would hear a cohesive, genuine Glide live, and then I would hear it several times more. But no time was more meaningful as when they opened the JEMP Truck set with it on New Year’s Eve, 2013