A Phish concert is a very unique experience. Never seen so many happy people in all my life.
Just be careful of the brownie salespeople in the parking lot.
Phish Announce Breakup
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diamonddan
- If we weren't all crazy ...
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Keyboardist Speaks Out On Phish Split
From Billboard.com:
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/artic ... 1000523607
A week after Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio announced the band's impending split, keyboardist Page McConnell has reached out to fans with his own reflections on the news. "I still love the music we make but the situation feels different to me now," he wrote on Phish's official Web site. "I guess in my heart I've known for a while that something had to change, but it wasn't until this last weekend that my feelings really began to coalesce."
McConnell admitted the workload required by a band of Phish's stature "can take its toll personally as well as creatively. As someone who has recently been through a divorce, I know how traumatic change can be."
"If I sound unusually candid in this statement, I am able to do so because in my mind I've already moved on to the next phase of my life," he continued. "This is a feeling I believe I share with Trey. I have a four-year-old daughter and there is nothing more important to me than being with her. Come August, I'm not going to have to tell her how many days 'til daddy comes back from tour. Combine that with my perception that the band's vitality is not what it once was, and it's easy to see how my mind quickly begins to move in one direction instead of a hundred directions all at the same time."
Phish will release a new album, "Undermind," June 15 via Elektra. The band's last tour begins two days later in Brooklyn, N.Y., with its final shows to be held Aug. 14-15 in Coventry, Vt. McConnell's side band, Vida Blue, begins a short tour tonight (June 3) in San Diego; both Vida Blue and Anastasio's solo band are confirmed to appear at the June 11-13 Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn.
In other Phish news, the group has made a May 8, 1993, show from Durham, N.H., available for purchase as part of its Live Phish Downloads series. The performance closed the tour in support of Phish's 1993 Elektra album "Rift." Fans can also pre-order shows from Phish's summer tour as well as the Bonnaroo performances via Phish.com.
-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/artic ... 1000523607
A week after Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio announced the band's impending split, keyboardist Page McConnell has reached out to fans with his own reflections on the news. "I still love the music we make but the situation feels different to me now," he wrote on Phish's official Web site. "I guess in my heart I've known for a while that something had to change, but it wasn't until this last weekend that my feelings really began to coalesce."
McConnell admitted the workload required by a band of Phish's stature "can take its toll personally as well as creatively. As someone who has recently been through a divorce, I know how traumatic change can be."
"If I sound unusually candid in this statement, I am able to do so because in my mind I've already moved on to the next phase of my life," he continued. "This is a feeling I believe I share with Trey. I have a four-year-old daughter and there is nothing more important to me than being with her. Come August, I'm not going to have to tell her how many days 'til daddy comes back from tour. Combine that with my perception that the band's vitality is not what it once was, and it's easy to see how my mind quickly begins to move in one direction instead of a hundred directions all at the same time."
Phish will release a new album, "Undermind," June 15 via Elektra. The band's last tour begins two days later in Brooklyn, N.Y., with its final shows to be held Aug. 14-15 in Coventry, Vt. McConnell's side band, Vida Blue, begins a short tour tonight (June 3) in San Diego; both Vida Blue and Anastasio's solo band are confirmed to appear at the June 11-13 Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn.
In other Phish news, the group has made a May 8, 1993, show from Durham, N.H., available for purchase as part of its Live Phish Downloads series. The performance closed the tour in support of Phish's 1993 Elektra album "Rift." Fans can also pre-order shows from Phish's summer tour as well as the Bonnaroo performances via Phish.com.
-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
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12vmanRick
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Trey, Mike Talk Phish Split
From RollingStone.com:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story? ... mainRegion
Frontman, bassist explain why America's favorite jam band is quitting while it's ahead
Less than twenty-four hours after Phish called it quits, Trey Anastasio visited Rolling Stone's New York offices to talk about his decision. "Not everybody's fully in agreement," the frontman says of the band, which formed twenty-one years ago while the members were in college in Burlington, Vermont. "But for three of us, it seemed like the natural thing to do. Bands break up, you know?"
The split comes at a time when Phish appeared to be firing on all cylinders. The band's tenth studio album, the excellent Undermind, will be released on June 15th; a friendly, rocking first single, "The Connection," released on May 24th, is shaping up to be the group's biggest radio hit. Band members have been saying that some recent shows, such as the four-night New Year's run in Miami, have been among the best in Phish's history.
In addition, a thirteen-date summer tour in support of Undermind begins on June 17th in New York (a show that will be simulcast in forty-seven movie theaters nationwide) and culminates in a two-day festival in Coventry, Vermont, on August 14th and 15th. That gig will now be Phish's farewell. Upwards of 65,000 fans are expected to hear the band bid goodbye to its old material. "I'd like to revisit that stuff one more time," Anastasio says of the upcoming tour. "But I just can't play that s*** anymore. If that makes somebody angry, I'm sorry. I gotta do something new. I cannot spend my entire life going around the country playing 'You Enjoy Myself.'"
According to bassist Mike Gordon, his bandmates came to his Vermont home for a meeting on Friday, May 21st, and sat around the kitchen table to discuss band business. After some joking around, "Trey simply announced, 'I can't do this anymore,' and started to cry," Gordon says. By the end of the three-hour meeting, the bass player was the only one arguing for a reconciliation. "It's pretty weird to have the plug pulled on your career just like that," he says. "But it's a totally classy thing we're doing, leaving on our own terms. The only thing I disagree with is that longevity pays."
As disappointed as Gordon may be with Anastasio's decision, he says there is no bitterness. "Trey is one of my biggest influences," he says. "I have huge admiration for the way he sets goals. They are not too big and not too small. And then he follows through. One of the reasons he's able to do that is he cuts out the extraneous stuff. He doesn't use e-mail. Last year, he threw out his CD collection and burned his television. I have to see this as one of those things."
This is not the first time the band has gone away. In the fall of 2000, Phish took a long break, re-forming two years later to record Round Room. They resumed touring with a New Year's Eve show at New York's Madison Square Garden. At the time, keyboardist Page McConnell told Rolling Stone that it would be "difficult for me to imagine us ever breaking up again." But Anastasio was never so sure post-hiatus Phish would be a permanent proposition. "I was saying, 'Let's see if this takes a new life,'" he says. "What I found over the last year was that we were having fun on the road but that we were basically playing the old songs, and it didn't feel fresh anymore."
In the end, Anastasio believes he is protecting Phish's legacy by quitting now. "How much longer was Led Zeppelin gonna last after In Through the Out Door if John Bonham hadn't died? We all heard that album. Things don't go on forever, and the quicker you accept that change is inevitable, the happier you're gonna be." Besides, he says, "I don't want my daughter to be in high school with her friends following Phish around the country -- that would just be too weird."
WILL DANA
(Posted Jun 03, 2004)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story? ... mainRegion
Frontman, bassist explain why America's favorite jam band is quitting while it's ahead
Less than twenty-four hours after Phish called it quits, Trey Anastasio visited Rolling Stone's New York offices to talk about his decision. "Not everybody's fully in agreement," the frontman says of the band, which formed twenty-one years ago while the members were in college in Burlington, Vermont. "But for three of us, it seemed like the natural thing to do. Bands break up, you know?"
The split comes at a time when Phish appeared to be firing on all cylinders. The band's tenth studio album, the excellent Undermind, will be released on June 15th; a friendly, rocking first single, "The Connection," released on May 24th, is shaping up to be the group's biggest radio hit. Band members have been saying that some recent shows, such as the four-night New Year's run in Miami, have been among the best in Phish's history.
In addition, a thirteen-date summer tour in support of Undermind begins on June 17th in New York (a show that will be simulcast in forty-seven movie theaters nationwide) and culminates in a two-day festival in Coventry, Vermont, on August 14th and 15th. That gig will now be Phish's farewell. Upwards of 65,000 fans are expected to hear the band bid goodbye to its old material. "I'd like to revisit that stuff one more time," Anastasio says of the upcoming tour. "But I just can't play that s*** anymore. If that makes somebody angry, I'm sorry. I gotta do something new. I cannot spend my entire life going around the country playing 'You Enjoy Myself.'"
According to bassist Mike Gordon, his bandmates came to his Vermont home for a meeting on Friday, May 21st, and sat around the kitchen table to discuss band business. After some joking around, "Trey simply announced, 'I can't do this anymore,' and started to cry," Gordon says. By the end of the three-hour meeting, the bass player was the only one arguing for a reconciliation. "It's pretty weird to have the plug pulled on your career just like that," he says. "But it's a totally classy thing we're doing, leaving on our own terms. The only thing I disagree with is that longevity pays."
As disappointed as Gordon may be with Anastasio's decision, he says there is no bitterness. "Trey is one of my biggest influences," he says. "I have huge admiration for the way he sets goals. They are not too big and not too small. And then he follows through. One of the reasons he's able to do that is he cuts out the extraneous stuff. He doesn't use e-mail. Last year, he threw out his CD collection and burned his television. I have to see this as one of those things."
This is not the first time the band has gone away. In the fall of 2000, Phish took a long break, re-forming two years later to record Round Room. They resumed touring with a New Year's Eve show at New York's Madison Square Garden. At the time, keyboardist Page McConnell told Rolling Stone that it would be "difficult for me to imagine us ever breaking up again." But Anastasio was never so sure post-hiatus Phish would be a permanent proposition. "I was saying, 'Let's see if this takes a new life,'" he says. "What I found over the last year was that we were having fun on the road but that we were basically playing the old songs, and it didn't feel fresh anymore."
In the end, Anastasio believes he is protecting Phish's legacy by quitting now. "How much longer was Led Zeppelin gonna last after In Through the Out Door if John Bonham hadn't died? We all heard that album. Things don't go on forever, and the quicker you accept that change is inevitable, the happier you're gonna be." Besides, he says, "I don't want my daughter to be in high school with her friends following Phish around the country -- that would just be too weird."
WILL DANA
(Posted Jun 03, 2004)
Phish Get Televised
From RollingStone.com:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story? ... on=single1
2003 performance to air on PBS
Phish will have their first full-length television special, when a 2003 performance airs August 2nd on PBS.
It: A Phish Concert Special will include ninety minutes of footage from the group's two-day It Festival at the Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine, which drew more than 60,000 fans. In addition to performance footage (the group played three sets each day), the show will include interviews with the band, which plans to break up next month.
The group decided in late May to call it quits after nearly twenty years playing together. After releasing a new studio set, Undermind, on June 15th, Phish initiated what will be their final tour. The group will wrap the tour with the two-day Coventry Festival on August 14th and 15th in their home state of Vermont.
ANDREW DANSBY
(Posted Jul 14, 2004)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story? ... on=single1
2003 performance to air on PBS
Phish will have their first full-length television special, when a 2003 performance airs August 2nd on PBS.
It: A Phish Concert Special will include ninety minutes of footage from the group's two-day It Festival at the Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine, which drew more than 60,000 fans. In addition to performance footage (the group played three sets each day), the show will include interviews with the band, which plans to break up next month.
The group decided in late May to call it quits after nearly twenty years playing together. After releasing a new studio set, Undermind, on June 15th, Phish initiated what will be their final tour. The group will wrap the tour with the two-day Coventry Festival on August 14th and 15th in their home state of Vermont.
ANDREW DANSBY
(Posted Jul 14, 2004)
PBS Special Spotlights Phish's "IT"
From Billboard.com:
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/artic ... 1000577587
PBS stations across the United States will on Aug. 2 premiere a 90-minute special chronicling Phish's August 2003 IT festival at Maine's Loring Air Force Base. The film was directed by Mary Wharton, who won a Grammy for her Sam Cooke documentary "Legend," and features sound engineering by multiple Grammy winner Elliot Scheiner. Select stations will broadcast the special in high-definition.
Phish's official Web site hosts a list of stations planning to screen the film. IT drew 60,000 fans to watch the band play six sets over the course of the Aug. 2-3, 2003, event.
As previously reported, Phish is planning to split following its Aug. 14-15 Coventry festival in Coventry, Vt. Although the event is sold out, the band is auctioning a handful of tickets via Yahoo! Auctions, with proceeds above face value earmarked for its charitable Waterwheel Foundation. A contest is also underway via Phish.com to design the official Coventry t-shirt.
Meanwhile, the band has made the previously unreleased track "Tiny" available for download exclusively from Apple's iTunes Music Store. The cut was recorded during sessions for Phish's recent Elektra studio album, "Undermind."
-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/artic ... 1000577587
PBS stations across the United States will on Aug. 2 premiere a 90-minute special chronicling Phish's August 2003 IT festival at Maine's Loring Air Force Base. The film was directed by Mary Wharton, who won a Grammy for her Sam Cooke documentary "Legend," and features sound engineering by multiple Grammy winner Elliot Scheiner. Select stations will broadcast the special in high-definition.
Phish's official Web site hosts a list of stations planning to screen the film. IT drew 60,000 fans to watch the band play six sets over the course of the Aug. 2-3, 2003, event.
As previously reported, Phish is planning to split following its Aug. 14-15 Coventry festival in Coventry, Vt. Although the event is sold out, the band is auctioning a handful of tickets via Yahoo! Auctions, with proceeds above face value earmarked for its charitable Waterwheel Foundation. A contest is also underway via Phish.com to design the official Coventry t-shirt.
Meanwhile, the band has made the previously unreleased track "Tiny" available for download exclusively from Apple's iTunes Music Store. The cut was recorded during sessions for Phish's recent Elektra studio album, "Undermind."
-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.