In general, it’s continually amazing how obsessed early adopters of technology are with their own low-level activities. When Dennis Crowley was launching his phone application Foursquare in 2009, he argued, “What we wanted to do is to turn life into a video game. You should be rewarded for going out more times than your friends, and hanging out with new people and going to new restaurants and to new bars—just experiencing things that you wouldn’t normally do.” Rewarded. Crowley feels like technology should reward him … for eating at different restaurants!

Phish appeals to the kid in us all. Especially when those kids are actual kids. On the floor in front of where I was sitting, one man had a child, who looked to be about 5-years-old, on his shoulders. There are several ways to look at this. On the one hand, an environment with as much rampant drug use as a Phish concert may not be the best place for a 5-year-old to be hanging out; the contact high alone could have him buzzing for days. But I’m not a professor of being a father, I’m just a guy who writes about music. So then I started looking at it from the kid’s perspective, and he looked to be having the time of his live. And why wouldn’t he? For one, he was up way past his bedtime (I presume, at least). For another, he got to wear an awesome hat made of glowsticks. Thirdly, there were balloons bouncing and glowy stuff everywhere, not to mention that bananas light show coming from the stage. And loud music to boot! So I could easily see what this kid was enjoying, and perhaps what everyone else around him was, too: Going to a Phish concert is a very visceral experience where you get to act like a kid again. That nakedly expressive dancing that’s so prevalent at Phish shows is reminiscent of the kind of free-form dances little kids do, though slightly more controlled. But the idea is the same: You’re just moving to the music and doing what it tells you to do and not caring about anything else. On that topic: Phish could probably make a killer children’s album one day.