These two bands have caused numerous headaches in my mind and soiled the radio landscape (Creed) and concert landscape (Phish) for years, and now it’s time to say goodbye and it comes with a giant ass smile on my face. I mean, we have had to watch as Stone Temple Pilots and Rage Against the Machine have called it quits within the last few years, so why not have some bands that people are actually excited to have break up.

No band (maybe except for Limp Bizkit) is hated more in the rock community than Creed. None. For you old people, think Journey, twenty-five years later, mix some pseudo-spiritual lyrics and you have this stomach-churning band from Tallahassee. Creed has sold 25 million records in the U.S. alone, three albums of rock radio filler. I will give Creed this, they had (God, its so great to talk about Creed in the past tense) a solid guitar player in Mark Tremonti, but lead singer Scott Stapp truly annoyed the hell out of people.

Stapp was a man who has trying to make a better life for himself and that’s fine. But he seemed to develop an ego that only Fred Durst could top. But then, Stapp got on stage drunk, rolling around for awile on said stage in a Chicago venue and botched a bunch of Creed ‘classics.’ But if I had to sing “My Sacrifice” over and over again, I would have drank my way to liver failure by this point. Then, his own ex-wife beats the crap out of him. I think it is a good thing that Stapp and the rest of the band break up so that he can get his life back together, again. It’s good for me as well, so that I don’t have to hear about another Creed album anytime soon.

Next, Phish is breaking up. I think I was more excited about this breakup than Creed’s. Creed fans were not groups of people that followed the band around, making jelly sandwiches and tie-dye shirts in order to survive. However, Phish fans were and that is what makes their breakup so funny. I think my hatred with Phish isn’t with the band, but with their smelly, wannabe, suburbanite hippie crowd. For the most part, these people that listened to Phish were probably some of the most affluent people you would ever meet, but they looked and smelled like a septic tank.

I went to a high school in this area (which started with a T and ended with a Y), where Phish and Rusted Root and all this other faux-hippie movement stuff thrived. The music has no emotion and goes on endlessely with drawn out, boring jam sessions. Now that the Dead are scraping every last buck they can out of Jerry Garcia’s white beard and Phish is calling it quits and heading back to Vermont (By the way, who is the hell is from Vermont?),what are the hippies going to do now?

Let’s see if they can still follow bands around. I can’t wait to see them converge on the String Cheese Incident concert. Who are they? Exactly. Hanging out in a VW bus all day and making hemp necklaces is not considered a career, unless of course you are the child of Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. Too bad you all wasted your over-privileged existence on Phish because now, you have to find something new to waste your next 60 on and sorry folks, Jerry isn’t coming back anytime soon.

Now here’s the plan. I need more bands to breakup. Not that I want it, but I would bet the house on seeing Limp Bizkit break up before 2004 is up. That means we get solo Fred Durst albums, which could be a nightmare.

But I need more than the Chocolate Starfish… How about 3 Doors Down, the ultimate Creed clone? Send them back to Mississippi. Matchbox Twenty? Sonic Youth? Now, the indie kids may kill me over that one, but they are over, so over. I want more happiness and bands like these breaking up are the only solution. But anyways, back to our fallen heroes in Creed and Phish. To end this column, here is my epitaph for both bands: Good riddance, never come back, and wannabe hippies suck.

Art Michalski might 47 years old by the time a new episode of “The Sopranos” comes out; thinks Shaq needs to quit basketball, and make “Kaazam 2”, and wants you to send him a list of what bands you think should break up. Send him the list at arthatesyou@detroitbuzz.com.