One journalist’s wild summer on the road with the world’s most popular cult rock band, Phish.
Despite their enormous success and their status as America’s biggest cult rock and roll band, Phish remains an enigma. Each of their albums has sold more than 500,000 copies, and their concerts sell out instantly, but the band makes a virtue of ignoring the mainstream, and the fans rather prefer it that way. In Run Like an Antelope: On the Road with Phish, Sean Gibbon deftly and hilariously chronicles this unique musical subculture.
Inspired by the offbeat road stories of Hunter S. Thompson and Bill Bryson, among others, Gibbon resolved to follow Phish and their kite’s tail of hundreds of thousands of followers on their 1999 summer tour. What he discovered is a new kind of American tribe: a mixture of aging, resigned Deadheads, wealthy college kids, and dedicated Phishheads, all bound together by their belief in the band, passion for the music, and energetic spirit, which transform Phish into an experience. His ensuing adventures among the Phish fans constitute a memorable, insightful, uproarious odyssey into this new frontier of American pop tribalism. Whether he’s being kidnapped by a group of ebullient Georgia Tech coeds, or being serenaded by devoted fans on the institution of Phish, Gibbon navigates the wild, fascinating Phish experience with verve and a keen eye, brilliantly communicating both the enormous energy of the band’s music and the distinct character of their fans.
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll are all here in this look at the “counterculture” world of Phish fans. The rock band from Vermont has never had a hit record, yet fanatical groupies follow its members from concert to concert with a devotion reminiscent of Grateful Dead fans. Although Gibbon gives readers some background material on the musicians and their music, this book is really about the experience of being on the road. Phish fans on tour sleep in tents or cheap motels, ride endless miles in old cars and vans, and wear grungy clothing. They let the modern world of 24-hour news cycles and the hottest technology slip away, replacing it with a parking-lot economy based on selling T-shirts, grilled-cheese sandwiches, and drugs to get enough money to buy gasoline and concert tickets. The romance of the road soon gives way to an almost mindless existence of navigating interstates and munching greasy fast food, punctuated by the high-energy celebration of a concert. For Gibbon, this is what “makes it all worth it.” His candid portrayal includes a very bad trip on “very dank” brownies that landed his friend in an emergency room. A handful of uncaptioned, poor-quality, black-and-white photographs accompany the text. This insightful and absorbing look at Phish fandom may make rock enthusiasts think twice about going along for the ride.
Jane S. Drabkin, Chinn Park Regional Library, Prince William, VA
Sean Gibbon has written a number of newspaper features on Phish and the Grateful Dead. He is a recipient of the New England Press Association award for best feature of the year and is a huge Phish fan. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.
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