I’m sitting on a train. There’s no one in my section. Just me, my AirPods, and a Radiohead album—The Bends—playing.

It’s been a while since I’ve given The Bends a proper listen-through, but once it started, it was like being reacquainted with an old friend, you know? That friend you can go months, even years without seeing, but the minute you meet up it’s all hugs and laughter and those beautiful inside jokes.

With a recorded album, I feel like you can develop this intimacy and anticipate the parts—chord changes, a guitar solo, or just a feeling, a memory evoked by the music. To me this is the inside joke we get with music, this secret understanding.

I think it’s why I don’t pursue musical exploration like I did in high school or college. I’m a creature of habit, stuck in my ways. I don’t have time to maybe like new music when I have so much beautiful history with what I already know and love.

That’s recorded music.

But there’s another type of inside joke in music—live music, where artists improvise and create something new in the moment. I’m looking at you, Phish, Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers. Three bands I’ve seen live more than any other act combined. They call them “Jam Bands” and some people look down on this scene, but it’s not really a cohesive genre like alt-rock or country. These are fusion bands, musicians who mix multiple genres and aren’t afraid to push the boundaries.

Let me focus on Phish—a band formed in 1983 that played this beautiful mix of prog-rock and jazz, then by the mid-90s had this heavy funk influence flowing through everything. They didn’t come onto my radar until 2004 during their break-up tour. The song titles were weird, the vocals weren’t great, but I felt something electric. I’d listen to their studio albums occasionally, familiarize myself with the songs, but it wasn’t until 2009 when they reunited and I saw them live with other fans that I finally got it.

That year I saw nine shows—no two alike—and each time a song was played it was tweaked in some beautiful way. To be a Phish fan is to be an active participant with the band, waiting and listening for those slight deviations from the norm, or a tease when a bar or riff from another song gets inserted into a spacey jam. I never got to see them in the early days when they literally had inside jokes with their audience, these wild cues for silly responses. But I have my own inside jokes now when I listen to a live Phish show—and that’s really the best way to experience Phish, live and breathing, whether you’re there or spinning the recordings at home.

I wonder, do other people feel this same connection to music? This need for these secret musical conversations?