There has to be some strategy in naming your venue something innocuous, like Hi-Fi Buys Amphitheater. That way, when Dylan and Summer and their golden retriever pack up the Jeep Cherokee for summer tour, ready to make their first trip to the Dirty Dirty, they picture friendly surroundings and a sterile venue equipped with things of a Hi-Fi nature.

Only in the last two miles of the trek do they start saying things like, “I didn’t know we were going to have to drive through the fucking ghetto of Atlanta, dude. But I’m, like, a liberal, you know, so it’s cool. Hey, Summer, lock the doors.”

Musically, this was an upgrade from the previous night’s show in Charlotte; it was less experimental and more zesty – I left content to jump off the tour here while the heads rode on.

One of my companions took great offense to the band’s choice of encore, “Wading in the Velvet Sea,” and spent the final 15 minutes of the show whining like a goddamn kindergartner. The rest of the time he spent high-fiving this 30-year-old geek in front of us during various “killer” parts of the first and second sets. I didn’t meet any new friends, but I did have one encounter worth mentioning.

During setbreak, I needed to urinate and quickly realized that making it to an actual stadium urinal was going to be impossible, given the line. So I snuck to the back of a nacho stand, and to my wonderment, maybe 10 others had beaten me to the spot and were already, you know, whizzing away. Perhaps I paused for a little too long, ‘cause this guy said to his buddy, “Hey, is that dude waiting in line to pee on the ground?” In my defense, there wasn’t a ton of room, but it was an argument not worth arguing. Too faded even for a one-liner, I recoiled and pissed on the back of the nacho stand, right by the employee door, and then quickly fled the area.

Oh yeah, and Phish rocks.

– Dale Sveum