It's Ice! Detroit Gets Shut Down At The Joe, Phish Rips It Up At Cobo

By Adam W Parks

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Stars 3 @ Red Wings 1

It was a rare sight in downtown Detroit Wednesday night as both Joe Louis Arena and Cobo Arena held simultaneous events. One, a common occurrence as the Wings hosted the Stars in a Western Conference rivalry. The other, a historical concert from Phish that brought an end to an era. The two venues are relics in Motown and are just one stop away from each other on the Detroit People Mover.

Cobo Arena is scheduled to be demolished to make room for a near $300 million expansion to the Cobo Convention Center. The 12,000+ arena is the former home of several local sports teams, such as the Detroit Pistons (1961-78) and the Ontario Hockey League's Detroit Ambassadors (90-92). It has been the sight of numerous and memorable musical events as several musicians and bands have recorded live albums there including Bob Seger's Live Bullet, Kiss's Alive!, Journey's Captured, Yes's Yesshows, and The Tragically Hip's Live Between Us.

Phish, an East-Coast band out of Vermont that has built an amazingly loyal fanbase from playing thousands of shows in more than 20 years of touring, has not played in the state of Michigan since a December show at The Palace in 1999. Often panned by critics and slammed by fans of radio-friendly music, Phish is a band that Rolling Stone dubbed "The Most Important Band of the '90s". The guys have carved themselves a large niche into the musical world by working outside of the normal musical business standards, and are a somewhat unlikely choice to play the final curtain at Cobo.

"While Skating, Both Legs Tracing Different Shapes, I Made My Choice"

For this writer, the only thing that gets my serotonin flowin' as much as a Red Wings Stanley Cup Championship is a Phish concert. To drive to Detroit and stand in a building adjacent to where the Wings were skating was a weird feeling, but it was a no-brain decision for me. The Wings will play over 40 games in Detroit this season. I have traveled as far as Las Vegas, Miami, New York City, and the bottleneck of America Limestone, Maine to see Phish, and this was my first opportunity to catch a show without having to cross state lines.

Friends and family sometimes have a hard time understanding why myself and thousands of others do what we do to see Phish concerts. But if you read LAMP THE LIGHT, than you are a passionate follower of the Red Wings. I find a lot of similarities in being fans of both. Phish concerts have helped me stay in contact with many close friends over the decade, people that now live across the country. When the band announces a new tour, my phone blows up with calls and text messages. My email fills up with messages. It creates a buzz in my own little community that I can only compare to a Wings playoff run. When the Wings win, or lose, a playoff game, I become instantly connected with all of my fellow Wings fans, where ever they are.

Greektown was a bustling mass of red and white, tie-dye and dreadlocks. Inside Cobo Arena I felt right at home proudly sporting my Nicklas Lidstrom jersey along with hundreds of others whose hearts were torn between events. As the lights went down and Trey, Mike, Page, and John took the stage, I could not help but wonder what was happening on the ice at the Joe.



Waiting, Calculating, Till Next They Venture On The Ice"

Sometime during the second set inside Cobo, I learned that the Wings had lost 3-1 to the Stars, ending a three-game winning streak. The news bummed me out briefly, but the show continued. It was not until the next morning that I learned the controversial circumstances swirling around the loss. If I were a Canadian, I would have said something like, "What's all this no-goal stuff aboot? The Wings got robbed, eh? Those refs are a bunch o' hosers!" If you have not had the pleasure of seeing this horrendous call, check it out below:



After re-watching the game on Thursday (thank-you DVR), the Wings did not play well enough to win the game, though the lucky pucks have rarely bounced in Detroit's favor this season. On this particular occasion, it cost the Wings an opportunity to tie the game, and it took away what might have been Brad May's only goal of the season. Here is Mike Babcock's reaction from the postgame interviews:



NHL senior vice president of hockey operations Mike Murphy tried to explain on NHL Live! what the hell the refs were thinking at the time, and attempts to justify their conclusion. I have an argument refuting every sentence he uttered:

"The way we've always handled it and the way we will continue to handle it until we have a procedure change is the referees call on the ice stands." Soooo...why do you even have a review procedure? To critique how crappy your refs are?

"He sees the shot and he sees the save and doesn't see the puck in the net and kills the play or blows the whistle." The whistle did not BLOW until after the puck went DIRECTLY into the net. Shouldn't he LOOK for the puck in the net before he makes the call?

"It's not when you hear the whistle blow, it's when he intends to blow the whistle." It's not when you pull the trigger that you kill somebody, it's when you INTEND to pull the trigger that the sucker drops dead. Intentions are like assumptions.

"There is a little bit of a gray area there between when he intends and when the whistle sounds." Listen, this is a PROFESSIONAL league, not the freaking pee-wees. How can a potentially game-deciding rule be shrouded in a 'gray area'? If this were the NFL or the NBA, the national sports media would have painted this issue black or white for the league.

"In this case Dennis LaRue was clear with what he saw and clear with what he interpreted and that was, 'I had killed the play before the puck entered the net.'" LaRue was able to SEE and INTERPRET a play in less than a tenth of a second? Again, that puck slid under Alex Auld's pad and went DIRECTLY into the net.

"When we scrutinize it and go through video review I think everybody would concede that the puck was in the net, and Dennis didn't see that unfortunately." First of all, everybody DID see that the puck was in the net. Second of all, and not be redundant but, WHAT IS THE POINT IN HAVING A REVIEW POLICY IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO USE IT TO CORRECT A MISTAKE?

Mr. Murphy, this rule opens the floodgates for subjective play calling from your refs...ask the NBA about how ugly that can get. I am not a Wings fan whining here. Like Babcock said, Detroit had plenty of other opportunities to tie the game up. I am pissed that the sport that I love the most can be so inept on so many levels, from an NHL vice president to a referee. We can continue to complain about the outcome of the game, it will not make anything right. Babcock and his team have already moved on, guaranteed, but I would be willing to bet that they will be looking for redemption on November 30th when Dallas returns to Detroit.

May vs. Trey: "Every Move I Make He's Got A Hand Up Just In Time. He's Throwing Several Punches, And Blocking Most Of Mine."

That goal would have been May's first of the season. He only scored one last season so there might be reason to believe that he was robbed of his only goal of this season. But he did drop the gloves for the sixth time in twelve games this season as he squared up with Krystofer Barch because Krystofer's parents are illiterate. The fight marked the fifth time that these guys have gone after each other in the past three seasons, and it was cool to see the two combatants icing their knuckles and getting a good laugh afterwards from their respective penalty box.

While May was landing punches on Barch at the Joe, Trey was shredding solos for the audience at Cobo. Ernest Joseph Anastasio III, also known as Trey, is arguably the best cross-genre guitarist of all time, and listening to him jam can be compared to a good fist fight on the ice: balanced and focused. The patience he displays with his tension/release style of playing combined with his propensity and proficiency for improvisation allows him to stand toe-to-toe with any guitar player in the world. Like a good boxer, or hockey fighter, Trey knows how and when to go for the knockout riff. Check out this Down With Disease solo taken from the Bittersweet Motel documentary:



One is a tough-guy enforcer that gets paid to punch faces. The other is a guitar-god with a skill to melt faces. One keeps the opposition's hands off of his more skilled teammates. The other once mailed a human hand to a friend as a joke. One received a 20-game suspension for slashing a dude's nose in Phoenix, Arizona. The other nearly faced a year's worth of jail time for felony drug possession charges stemming from a DWI incident in Whitehall, New York. May had a good goal overturned. Trey flubbed a few notes in Foam. Even though the fight was exciting and the goal should have counted, I give the Wednesday night's top performance to Mr. Anastasio for his work in the second set of music, specifically the soaring solos during the down-tempo tunes Waste, Taste, Bug, and Wading in the Velvet Sea.

To all of my non-Phish fan readers out there, I promise the next review will be strictly about the Wings and their game against the Florida Panthers, but for now...

He's fallen on the ice, it cracks
Will he plunge in and join me here?
He meets my eyes, to my surprise
He laughs in full light of my frown
My double wants to pull me down



Peace.