On July 10th, 2016 I drove to Syracuse to see Phish play in a (relatively) brand-spanking new amphitheatre built right on the water (which body of water might be in Syracuse is beyond both my knowledge and my interest in bothering to google about). Four of us had driven down together and as we got to the venue we were directed to a new, gravel parking strip. We parallel parked and joined a small throng of people waiting for one of the many shuttle busses to take us to the actual venue.

Goodness knows why a concert venue built out in the middle of nowhere couldn’t have included an adjacent parking lot like every other shed in the nation is also well beyond my knowledge, and it is so on the cusp of my interest I’m this close to googling it.

While waiting for the shuttle we ran into a few of our American friends and soon enough the six or eight of us just made it into the next shuttle, squeezing in last, putting us near the front of the bus.

The last to get on the shuttle was a woman, maybe in her mid-thirties, and a little boy around eight years old wearing ear-protecting headphones. She was talking to a parking guy and getting exasperated.

“I was told we would have a special bus to ride on,” she explained, obviously for the umpteenth time. “He doesn’t do well in crowds.”

“I’m sorry,” the guy said, and it looked like he meant it. “All I can say is we’ll have it in place for the next concert.”

Reluctantly she got on the bus, surveyed the crowd and sat the kid up on a wheel-well right next to us at the front.

I was chatting with my friend Todd when the bus started to move. Behind me I heard the most horrible screech you could imagine. It sounded like the shriek of a wounded pterodactyl, or more accurately, an angry one.

Turning around, I could see the kid lunging at his mother and trying his best to head-butt her in the face. She was clearly well-trained in defence, bobbing and weaving like Rocky Balboa to this eight year-old Apollo Creed. He was autistic – full-spectrum – and this was his time to completely lose it.

The kid screamed, rocked, and struck out violently at random, surprising intervals while his mother alternated between hugging him, restraining him, consoling him, and lurching backwards out of the reach of his vicious assaults. All the while I stood three feet away trying desperately to have a normal conversation with a friend I hadn’t seen in six months, trying to avoid adding unwanted attention to the mother’s obvious stressful situation.

The bus ride seemed to take forever, and in reality I’m sure it did take much longer than one would ever expect it to take to get from a parking lot to a venue. As we neared our destination the mother broke down to tears, pleading with her child, “Please stop…this morning you were so excited to come here today…Phish is you favourite band in the world…please, please stop.”

It was really super-heavy. I got off the bus astounded that I had seen only ten minutes of that lady’s lifelong struggle, and the boy’s too of course. I stood on the sidelines of the lineup going in to the show, bought a dollar-beer or two and took a moment to settle my aura. Meanwhile a half-dozen or so friends found us and we eventually entered the venue en masse.

M’lady and I had pavilion tickets but just as we were making our way to the seated section we came upon a gaggle of Ottawa friends standing on the lawn so we joined them for the first set. I met a guy in the gaggle who was following the band on a motorcycle – doing the whole tour – but he hadn’t been inside a show until this one…am I remembering that right?

Anyway, the band started the show with a rarity from their past, The Landlady, and it set the tone for the rest of the set, which included Mango Song, My Friend, My Friend, and Bold As Love. There was even some first-set keytar playing by Page.

For the second set we found our seats (or thereabouts) in the pavilion and had a great time for the rest of the show. The shuttle back to the car confirmed that it was indeed a ridiculously long journey to the lot, even without the existential tragedy of life playing out before your very eyes the whole time. But really, the shuttle inconvenience proved to be the only downside to the new venue.

Could be worse I guess, they could have made us all walk the whole way. Although I suppose that might have worked out better for at least a couple of people.

toddmanout.com