So, that was my first show. I was in graduate school at Ohio State the time, and a couple of office mates and I had just discovered Phish. One of those office mates was Randall, who was 6'10". He played college basketball as an undergrad, and while in graduate school he'd typically wear basketball jerseys over t-shirts. He was skinny, with a short neck and a long face. Almost all of his extra height was in his legs -- he had a 46" inseam. He was overly smart, and he always had a stoic bored look on his face that took a while to get used to. His nickname was Lurch, like the butler in the adams family. He did very much look like this:

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On 6/22/94, Randall, another office mate, and I were in the 7th row right in the center of Veterans Auditorium, and of course Randall stood out since he was so much taller than everyone. That night the Knicks were playing the Rockets in game 7 of the NBA finals and so Randall had a Rockets Jersey on (he wasn't a Rockets fan per se, but he I think he had at least one of every NBA jersey). With everyone standing up for the show, there was the normal sea of heads, and he looked like he was standing in chest high water. Because of his proportions, he looked like some guy standing on a box in the middle of the crowd.

During the first set, Trey couldn't help but keep looking at him. And of course, typical Randall just stood there with his normal bored looking face, and every once and while he'd write something down on a small hand size notebook he had with him. Between songs Trey would push his glasses up and look at Randall with an inquisitive look on his face.

Then when the second set started, of course Trey came out and announced the game 7, score, "First Quarter, Houston by 5". He was clearly acknowledging Randall who looked down at me with a quick stoic glance and smirk.

We all know what happened next. The Mikes Song was ridiculous. Kuroda turned on the dry ice and strobe lights for entire song up through the end of Simple into Icculus. The air pressure in the theater was such that the dry ice stayed perfectly on the stage and covered it so completely that the theater stage looked like it had a movie screen between the crowd and the band and there was nothing but that strobe going off.

By time the band got to the end of Simple the dry ice was dissipating. When Icculus started Kuroda put a yellow light on Trey and he was all you could see. The rest of the band was still hidden from view by the dry ice fog. I think he moved his mic stand out towards the front of the stage as well.

Clearly, Trey was obsessed with Randall. Early on during the transistion from Simple into Iccullus, you can hear Trey saying "Cym-bop and beeb-a-phone, skyballs and scratch paper." Referring to Randall writing stuff down during the set.

And then he looked right at Randall, and was talking to him saying, "You might be standing up on top of your skyscraper..."

"you can be Akeem, Shalim, any of those people..." He was referencing Akeem Olajuwan from the Houston Rockets, and was pointing directly at Randall.

By the time Trey said, "You might think your life is okay, but you're wrong, you're all wrong...", Trey finally had Randall laughing.

What a night!

Randall and I become huge fans and attended the first 6 Phish festivals together.