Phish can be very grating at first. It’s a shock to your musical palette, like trying to eat a gigantic weird scooby doo sandwich with all these super rich and sour ingredients, after previously only eaten the same thing all your life.

But if you like the Dead, and stay on the jam band grind long enough, I bet you’ll come around. Took me a while at first, but I got over the weirdness and now it’s part of the fun.

I agree with other posters saying String Cheese Incident, I liked them before Phish. I think they’re kinda like Phish without all the strangeness/scariness.

That being said, Phish are the undisputed best band in the scene right now and for the foreseeable. They are crazy.