The idea for the shirt came from a dream I had before Hampton. It's actually the reason why this whole phishtube thing happened. See Story Below.
FRONT: Phishtube Logo
BACK: "All My Friends Come Backwards Down the Number Line."
My heart leapt when I heard the news. Phish announces return. Hampton. So many emotions were running through me, I couldn't pin them down. My friends and I were immediately freaking out and excited about reuniting and sharing that common ecstatic experience once again. The implications were tremendous. What was it going to be like? We had time to reflect on our experiences from all the years of shows that we now had a different outlook... Would it be the same? Were we too old? Had we outgrown this "Phish Thing"? We would only find out once we got to the shows, but they were still months away.
Just like I had done during college, I began to spend countless hours online researching Phish and watching YouTube videos. I had no particular objective. I was just interested and curious. I wanted to put into context what this "reunion" was all about, what it meant to other fans, and what it meant to me. It was amazing to hear what other people's take was on the reunion and it stirred countless discussions between me and my closest friends. The lottery happened. I was denied tickets. The onsales happened. I was shut out. It was never so hard to get tickets in all my life. I watched, disgusted, as the ticket prices went through the roof. It was unbelievable to me. I never thought Phish could be so commoditized. But it is what it is, I thought to myself. I'll be in those shows one way or another. As the months went by I slowly lost hope as the hype grew and the ticket prices continued to climb. There was no way I could afford those tickets, and besides, it went against everything I believed in to pay a scalper for tickets. Back in the day, we wouldn't go into the show until all the "kids" had tickets. There was no way I was going to pay above face for tickets. That was not what the Phish I knew was about.
During this time I came across a video on YouTube that sent chills down my spine. The title was, "New Phish Song?"... It was of a performance at Rothbury Music Festival in the summer of 2008, featuring Mike Gordon and Trey playing a version of the song "Backwards Down the Number Line". I immediately connected with the song and it affirmed my feeling that the reunion tour was going to be epic. I awoke from a dream where I saw long lines of numbers just flying past me during a show. It made me think of a sketch I had recently done in one of my notebooks that resembled the symbol "pi". I took the sketch and made it into an illustration. I had a feeling that resonated through the core of my being and I instinctively knew this song would embody the feeling of connectedness I had experienced so many times throughout the years of going to shows.
Ever since the first time I went on tour, I would come up with ideas for shirts and talk about them with my friends, but never acted on my ideas or created one. How cool would it be to make a shirt for song and have it on the lot before they even ever played it? Wouldn't that be tripped out? That was my main motivation as I quickly went to work on the shirt design and had a run of shirts printed on the finest organic cotton I could find. My friends thought I was nuts... my soul told me otherwise.
I made the shirts, tried to sell them at some of the shows but got too distracted by the streaming lifestyle and my friends' lack of committment to the "Oce-LOT". I definitely don't want these limited edition shirts to go to waste, however, hence this opportunity to buy the shirt online. I don't know if I'll do more Number Line shirts, but if I do I probably will change the design and they won't be printed on 100% Organic Cotton. I guess what I'm trying to say is, get em' while they're still cool. Buy the Number Line Shirt.
