Another pretty good audience recording for this show. There are points where the bass is a bit over saturated. Big thanks to Todd and Arty for getting this one circulated! Also, a big thanks to Dave Schanker for taping! The show starts off with an average/good Jim. A well played Reba is up next and features some soulful playing from Trey in the jam. Llama rips per usual. Another well played Fluffhead. The YEM set closer is the clear highlight. Taking risks all the way through. Because of this there are a couple miscues. The VJ segues into the formal debut of Setting Sail to wrap up set 1. They briefly quoted Setting Sail in a YEM VJ once before at The Campus Club on 12/29/90. Funny banter ensues at the start of set 2 regarding the Fishman Family Minivan giveaway in Ithaca at the start of the tour. Sloth gets things started off right. Decent Melt. Funny to hear some of the banter among fans at the start of Cavern and during TMWSIY. Interesting Tweezer. The spliced in SBD source for the encore is pretty rough, but at least it’s available to make for a complete show.

Just excellent! Love the song selection for these first two Trey Anastasio Band shows of the year. Got a repeat Sand and Wolfmans Brother, and Blaze On I believe. First set closer About To Run hit the lick’s per usual and one of my favorites. This whole show gets me in the element. Just, how talented each member is and everyone performing together in time. I love it! Second set is my jam. Quantegy is one of my favorites and just great song selection for this second set. Love ‘Life Beyond a Dream.’ Nice work you guys!! I’m so happy

On June 20th, 2004 I attended the second of a two-night Phish run at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, or as music fans throughout the northeast and beyond refer to it: SPAC. (Bless the board of directors for not bowing to the wheelbarrows of money that have doubtlessly been offered to rename the beautiful, wooded venue after some cold, ugly corporate entity.) This would prove to be my last Phish show before what we all were told would be the final Phish shows ever, at the ill-fated and long-hated train wreck of a weekend musical outing: Coventry (but enough about that fiasco for now). As the band headed into what was to be their final end (spoiler alert: it wasn’t) it was clear that they were not going out on a high. Strike that: they were going because the bandleader and figurehead of Phish was on a high. Too high to play, that is. Trey Anastasio was in a bad way and it was effecting everything in his realm, not the least of which was his band. Not to be unkind, but the anchor started to sink the ship and the other three guys in the band could no longer bail him out. It had come to the point where there was no longer any option but for everyone to jump overboard. Wondering if it was really that bad I decided to re-listen to the show this morning and yeah, the band was clearly going nowhere but away. Case in point: the very first lead guitar melody bit of the very first song of the night – [i]Rift[/i] – was pooched from the opening line and remained rough and amateur-sounding for the remainder of the ninety-second interlude. Frankly, even when Page jumps in to take over on piano it sounds very sub-par. I guess the band as a whole just wasn’t getting together to practise like they used to, but really, it just sounds like the air was coming out of their tires and the whole band was sounding somewhat deflated. And no wonder, it must have been a serious drag to stand next to Trey on a nightly basis and just watch his musical mastery slip away so noticeably. Like, a serious drag. Just take a listen to Trey’s guitar solo in that opening song and compare it to any solo he played in the entirety of the 1990’s. The writing was on the wall; it was over (temporarily, thankfully). Anyway, I won’t pick the whole show apart (which would be easy, and lengthy), suffice to say that the end was obviously nigh, and the pending disaster of Coventry was very, very predictable. But really, it was still way better than going to see a Journey concert or Foreigner or something, and all my friends were there too, so you know, I had a pretty great time anyway. And Trey’s playing wasn’t all bad, it just wasn’t like it was (or would be), and we all missed him, even when he was right there in front of us. In short I’m glad I went to this show, but if things hadn’t improved drastically (and by “things” I mean “Trey”) I sure wouldn’t still be going (another spoiler alert: I am). http://www.toddmanout.com

This show was pretty f’ing sweet. Totally cool, some great jams, yeah a lot of Phish tunes but done with a groovy funky twist. Peep the Ocelot & Wolfman’s. New songs in set 2 were even pretty rad. Everyone around me was getting down. Poppyhead and Demons def have some Phish potential. The crowd was feeling it, Trey was loving the Salt Shed. It was a great show and we were all having a blast. All in all I would recommend giving this show a spin.

Jammin couple of sets. The first set was so good and solid. I love TAB almost as much as I love Phish. I really enjoy these 4 men working together. ‘Ocelot’ was very good and 46 Days was one of the best I’ve heard. WGTYM is an excellent track, with awesome space to explore in the future. Second set was fun and upbeat. The encore was I think some of the best two song tracks I’ve heard TAB or even Phish deliver, but I’m a big ‘Cayman Review’ fan. Don’t even get me started on that ‘Ghost.’ Absolutely brilliant

Pretty good audience recording for being a few generations from the master. It sounds like this tape was dubbed over something else as you can here that recording bleeding through during quiet sections. DaaM>Bouncin’ start off the show again like a few nights ago in Chicago. A solid Sky follows. Tape flip after Stash. The beginning of I Didn’t Know is cut. The only man on the planet capable of kicking George Forman’s butt delivers a nice vacuum solo for Buffalo. George Forman (faht) Evander Holyfield on this night in ‘91. Standard Mike’s Groove. Tonight’s first set ends with the previous shows opener, Sweet Adeline. At the start of the set Trey regrets to inform the audience that George Forman failed to win the belt that night. Hood is always a welcome set opener. Solid jam on this one. Curtain>Golgi makes for a nice pairing. Tape flip after MSO. The beginning of Coil is cut. The Antelope set closer has a rippin’ little jam. Another fun BBFCFM. Trey says during one of the pauses “there’s a gentleman down there that said “play a Phish song!”” lol Fish tells another quick joke before shouting out 1,2,3,4!

At the show I remember thinking..."This KDF takes me back to Lakehood 2015 KDF from N1 Set2 opener", or "MSG NYE15 KDF". I still love both of those and this one got added to that list. TYPE2 all the way. Then we got Tweezer and Oblivion....If you enjoy type2 Phish like I do then go listen to KDF, Tweezer, Oblivion. Great show and great jams!

The levels run really hot on this audience recording. If it wasn’t for that this wouldn’t sound half bad. The first Sweet Adeline of the year kicks off the show. Chalk Dust plows out of Esther and features another rippin’ lil’ jam. The DaaM>Foam transition is nice. Solid YEM to close out set 1 with another fun VJ. Set 2 gets underway with a decent Llama. A nice Reba follows. Oh Kee Pah>Sloth pair well together. Strong standalone Suzy! Really nice version. Nice Melt as well. Good Possum closer but straightforward overall. They treat the folks at Oberlin College to the first Harpua in almost a year. Standard version.

Another SBD source available for this portion of the tour. This one sounds decent but is a little flat and lacks low end. The recording levels are tinkered with during Tela and improve slightly. A pretty straightforward Golgi, YEM get things underway. Great run of songs from Mango to the set closing Bowie. Perhaps it was due to the two month hiatus, but Mango is really off. The Bowie set closer is pretty standard. Set 2 starts off with the debut of the first band/crew football theme song over Barracuda and the opening to MSO. A pretty straightforward Reba follows. Chalk Dust is starting to grow some legs. Paul Guiness, trombone player for the opening band, Ryth McFeud, joins the band for Magilla. He can play but it’s pretty clear that he’s not as technically proficient as Phish. Tweezer has some fun teases but fails to reach liftoff in the jam. They wrap up set 2 with Tweezer Reprise. Fun encore but nothing too noteworthy.

If this wasn’t a Cass/7 or so, it’d probably be a halfway decent audience source. Lots-o’-warts! DaaM>Bouncin’ seems to be making a comeback in ‘91! lol Bouncing cuts and the beginning of Landlady is cut. Llama has a red hot solo from Trey. Pretty standard YEM for this tour. Reba’s nice but has an annoying cut just before the climax. Raging Possum to close out the first half. The beginning of Guelah is cut halfway into set 2. Nice Sweet Emotion jam/tease in Tweezer. Weird tape warble towards the end of Tweezer and continues through to Jim. Before the encore, Trey urges everyone to go check out Dee-Lite the following night and says that they’ll be there. The encore is standard fair.

January 3rd, 2015 marked the final hurrah of a hootenanny-filled New Years extendo-weekend in beautiful, sunny Miami. This had been the first time in a long time that I had spent part of the holiday season in a seasonable clime, and I can report that the sun and the beautiful weather added a wonderful…season…to the holiday. The entire Miami experience had been great, most especially the weather. Now, I’m not one of those Canadians who has convinced himself that cold weather is a blasphemy against my very existence – the way some people carry on you’d think we all lived in igloos with the windows open – quite the opposite actually. And while I’ve taught myself to enjoy and even look forward to a nice chilly winter (by teaching myself how to snowboard and how to skate) I somehow found a way to appreciate the novelty of a hot and sunny New Years week. Shorts and sandals, frosty beers and patios, and four consecutive easy outdoor strolls from hotel to Phish concert…it’s something worth getting used to. For this final night of the run I started my evening the same way I started all of them, trying to find cheap tickets out front of the American Airlines Arena. And while this night was the hardest of them all (I actually ended up being a bit rushed getting in the door in time for the show), just like the previous night I scored one ticket for zero dollars and the other for $20, bringing the price paid for eight tickets over the course of four evenings to a total of $100 even*. The face value would have been around $600, so what we saved on tickets probably paid for most of our expenses aside from hotel and flights. I suppose it’s inverse scalping, but I still manage to sleep at night. But never mind the weather and never mind the ticket price, there was a whole concert to report on, and what a concert it was! With all the gold that Phish dished out on this final night of a no-repeat weekend I am at a loss to recall what songs they might have had available to play on the other three nights! I mean they started –started! – with one of my all-time favourites, [i]Maze[/i]** followed by [i]AC/DC Bag[/i] into one of their bestest dreamiest random-sounding globules of precomposed sonic bliss, [i]Divided Sky [/i](a song I’m convinced started out as a van-tour vocal jam based on a “divided highway” sign). The set ended with another pair of favourites, [i]Split Open and Melt [/i](the final bar of which always and aptly [in this setting, anyway] reminds me very strongly of [i]Conga[/i] by Miami Sound Machine – once you hear it you will always hear it***) and a raging [i]Character Zero[/i] that almost tricked me into thinking that the show was over. The second set and encore grounded the whole weekend by reminding us all that at the heart of it Phish is simply a fantastic rock & roll band. [i]Suzy Greenberg[/i], [i]Down With Disease[/i], [i]Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley[/i], and a Led Zeppelin encore ([i]Good Times Bad Times[/i]) kept the room dancing despite the collective exhaustion that bound us all together. It was all so very raging that I won’t even bother mentioning the late-set [i]Harry Hood[/i] reggae-fest that saw my arms raised to the girders (though I suppose I just did). In summary, while NYC is a fun place to spend NYE with Phish & Co. I would be very pleased if they booked the weekend in Miami just a little bit more often. As it stands this run was their third and thus far final time ushering in the new year down there, and given the vast differential of ticket prices and availability between the two cities I can’t really blame them for skewing northward. *I only know one person that paid more than $20 for a ticket over the whole run, and almost all of my tickets were in the 100 level. On the last night there were people asking for face value, but I didn’t see anyone pay that amount. **Aside from the great lyrics and just the overall grand composition of [i]Maze[/i] the thing I really, really dig about the song and what elevates it to one of my hands-down Phish favourites is how the band staggers their parts against one another at the end, a rhythmically unstable cycle that comes so close to throwing off the entire tune that it actually holds the whole thing together. Every time I hear the band play it live I try to find the breakaway point and figure out how they do it, but in the moment I can never catch it. I would have to sit down and figure out everyone’s parts and while that would be really fun and probably pretty educational I’m worried that doing so would erase the mystery from the song and downgrade my interest in it. There’s a fair chance that learning the secret would do the opposite and somehow elevate my penchant for the tune, but I’m not sure it’s worth the risk. ***Just like how the verses of [i]Halley’s Comet [/i]reminds me of [i]50 Ways to Leave Your Lover[/i]. http://www.toddmanout.com

March 7th, 2009 was the middle night of Phish’s triumphant comeback run at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, a super-fun sold out string of shows that marked the end of the band’s second hiatus. In addition to spending the weekend attending a trio of great concerts I spent a whole lot of time socializing and meeting m’lady’s US concert buddies for the first time. And there were a lot of them. Among the swirl of introductions, handshakes, hugs, and hotel room have-a-beer’s were a number of hey-let’s-get-a-bite-to-eat’s. On one such diversion six or so of us found ourselves at a Hooters restaurant. I have no idea why we went to Hooters; it must have been the closest place. Either that or we were already sick of Applebee’s or were unwilling to shell out the big bucks for a place like The Keg, which should give you an idea of the urban sprawl sort of food options we were faced with in the immediate vicinity of our room at the Hampton Inn. So anyway, we walk into Hooters and are wearily welcomed by the hostess, a short, stocky seventeen year-old greeter that had unmercifully (for everyone) squeezed herself into her obligatory too-tight orange t-shirt. “Can I help you?” “Yeah,” I replied. “Table for six please.” “Sorry,” she said, clearly not sorry. “It’s going to take about an hour for a table, are you gonna wait?” I pointed to an empty table right behind her that was set up for six and looked ready to go. “Could we use that table?” I asked, hopefully. She turned to me with popping gum and a teenaged swagger that was painful to watch and said (if you can believe this): “How much will you pay me if I let you sit at that table?” Oh, to have a time machine so I could go back and and ask to speak to her manager! It kills me that I merely gaped in shocked horror and gave her a poisoned, “Are you kidding?!?!” before turning to the group and insisting that we “go somewhere else, now!” I won’t say I walked out of there livid, but I would have if I hadn’t been in such a great mood when I walked in. As it was we merely laughed about it, agreed that she was being ridiculous and walked to one of the many other nearby food chains. Of course later on we went to the show and had a fantastic time. The band encored with [i]A Day In The Life[/i], which always pleases me. But the one thing that is really permanently burned into my memory from the day is that chubby Virginia hick asking me, “How much will you pay me…” It makes me shudder with ickiness. http://www.toddmanout.com

On June 4th, 2011 I pulled into Ohio’s Blossom Music Center for the second of a little two-night Phish run. This was my first time at the venue and I was pleased to find that the parking area was nothing but lawn and trees with not an inch of asphalt in sight. I followed the waving arms of the traffic control dudes and parked in the park next to a trio of young partiers who had already set up their huge sound system. I got out of the car, poured myself a drink and introduced myself to the neighbours who were absolutely raging out to classic rock. They had a cooler, no shirts, a pair of PA speakers wired to a generator in the back of their pickup truck and a whole lot of ironic energy. As my crew and I settled into lawn chairs it occurred to us that the guys parked next to us weren’t just listening to cheesy ’80’s music, they had the same two songs on a loop: [i]Rosanna[/i] and [i]Africa[/i] by Toto. It was pretty fun for everyone walking by, the three young long-hairs were getting plenty of high-fives and occasionally someone would join in the dance before continuing on their round of the lot, but for those of us stuck within continuous earshot the joke got real old real quick. It didn’t take the four of us long to pack up our lawnchairs and go on a lot stroll of our own. I can’t imagine how the three guys could stand it. I amused myself by imagining that one of them wasn’t that into it, but endured the two-song torture just to fit in with his bros. M’lady and I were lucky enough to have pulled pit tickets for this show through Phish mail-order so we were as close as you could get to the band without actually fighting for a spot on the rail. We danced and stared and just had a great time at the show, which seemed extra-awesome due to our proximity to the stage. One thing that stands out in my mind was the debut of their new song [i]Steam[/i]. I liked the song immediately, and I kept trying to figure out how they were getting the steam sound. I was convinced it was Fishman splashing away on his Chinese cymbals but m’lady insisted it was a keyboard patch played by Page. Even from our spot so close to the stage it was hard to tell – especially with all the accompanying dry ice – but after seeing the band play the song many times since I’ve become convinced that m’lady was right in the first place. When it comes to Phish she usually is. Oddly enough one of the three Toto ragers was in the pit too, a fair coincidence given that about two hundred people out of a crowd of perhaps twenty-five thousand manage to secure pit tickets. He was still raging it hard, and he was holding up a sign that said “[i]Africa Reprise[/i]” for the whole show, which was actually a pretty funny little post script to his gag of the day. I don’t recall where we stayed after the show but it was probably in the direction of Canada. Though we had tickets to the upcoming Phish show at Darien Lake we had for some reason decided to skip the Cincinnati and Great Woods concerts, and with three days off between shows we probably went home to Ottawa. http://www.toddmanout.com

June 5th, 2009 was my first and only time at Jones Beach Amphitheatre. I spent the afternoon meeting a million new people at a pre-party near the venue and arrived at the show with enough time for a drink or two in the lot. Ours was one of a million little circles of friends hanging out before the show with eyes turned upwards toward the darkening skies. This was the last show of a three night run at Jones Beach, a venue infamous among Phish fans, and not just because the band makes a habit of playing here when they tour the east coast. The amphitheatre is right on the water, which I’m sure is much more picturesque from a boat than it is from the stands, but tonight the venue would feel like it was actually in the water. When it rains it pours; it rained and it poured. I remember standing in the concrete upper tier with water literally swirling above my ankles. It was a warm night and the rain felt good. I was wearing a poncho that was soaked through enough that I didn’t care anymore so I just enjoyed the show. They played of few of my favourites, like [i]Theme From The Bottom[/i] and [i]My Friend, My Friend[/i] and they debuted [i]Twenty Years Later[/i], a new song I liked instantly; from the very first line (“I can hold my breath for a minute or so…”). And anytime Phish encores with [i]A Day in the Life[/i] I generally walk out in a good mood, even if I’m in soggy shoes. I have no idea how I managed to get a poster home safe and dry, but I did. It still lives in the tube and has not seen the light of day since the show. Come to think of it, the poster might be damaged after all.

I do like a rollercoaster ride, so I was really excited that the Darien Lake Amusement Park was to be open exclusively to ticketholders for the Phish concert on June 8th, 2011. I got to town nice and early and checked into the hotel onsite. It was still too chilly for any swimming in their big pool but that’s okay – I had bigger fish to fry. I didn’t have a ticket yet, and on the walk from the hotel to the park I ran into a friend who handed me one for free. Well, that was a pretty good start to the day. The entire middle of the day was filled with riding half-empty amusement park rides with a maelstrom of friends both new and old. There were coasters of course, and swingy rides and even a trip down the flume. And anytime I wanted to skip back to the hotel room for a break it was right there. The evening was of course filled with Phish. Not my favourite setlist but who cares? In this 3.0 era or whatever the kids are calling it the shows are consistently great – to my ears there are no other bands achieving what these guys are achieving and I had a great time. They closed off the second set with a song I always want to hear, [i]Harry Hood[/i]. And then a little rock and roll for the encore: [i]Good Times Bad Times[/i]. I’m sure after the show was nothing but good times but I can’t recall anything specifically. An educated guess would have the hotel rockin’ ’til dawn with an open door policy as strangers made friends and sleep fell by the wayside. But that’s only a guess. http://www.toddmanout.com

June 17th, 2010 was the first night of a two-night Phish run in Hartford, Connecticut. M’lady and I were staying with the Frayler’s, a pair of brothers that came out of nowhere in my memory; I don’t know how or where I might have become acquainted with them but know them I did, enough to be invited to stay at their place and enjoy the spoils of their generous hosting for the two-night run along with several other people, most of which also pop out of nowhere in my memory. Actually, it wasn’t even their place. Though the brothers had both moved out we were all staying at their parent’s place, which clearly provided more room and/or greater proximity to the venue. I only met the parents once; the had booked into a hotel for the two nights. Just goes to show you that the Frayler’s come from cool stock. And speaking of cool, this was the day that the two brothers showed me just the coolest trick for smuggling liquor into a venue. As we drove to the show* they described their method: The two brothers enter the lineup about five people apart. As soon as the first brother clears security and has his ticket scanned the second brother lobs a two-liter** plastic bottle filled with rum from his spot still three or four people away from getting searched. First brother reaches over his shoulder and receives the pass, tucking the contraband under his arm. Security doesn’t see a thing, busy as they are looking down into purses and and scanning tickets. It sounded foolproof (in that fools would never catch on) and in practise it worked like a charm. I was standing with brother number two when he tossed the bottle with an underarm flourish. The bottle of rum arced high and perfectly and landed right in his brother’s waiting arms. The hundred or so people waiting to get in all saw it and cheered their approval. By the time the security guards looked up to see what was going on the deed was done and brother number one was well on his way. It was nothing short of beautiful. And economical, though I’ve never spent more money on soda at a concert in my life. The show was awesome, the band played lots of my favourites and a few fun covers too, including [i]Shine A Light [/i]for the encore. I just love it when they encore with that tune; it makes the show I’ve just seen seem that much more…epic…communal…religious even? It’s nothing less than a rock and roll hymn and it makes me feel really good. The sermon is over, now let’s sing together. I can’t remember much about going back to the Frayler’s after the show, but to be fair it’s not like we were sneaking any of that rum back out of the venue with us after the concert. Either way I’m sure the rest of the evening involved plenty of high fives, craft beers, tasty snacks, and lots of comfy couch space. *Interesting to note that in Hartford passengers in a motor vehicle are allowed to possess (and drink) open liquor, though of course the driver must abstain. We took full advantage of this law (or lack thereof) as did many others I could see. It seemed to have no adverse effects – neither personally nor on society as a whole – and I recommend these same laws be implemented (or struck down?) across North America (nay, the world) immediately. **I use the American spelling of “litre” here as the Frayler’s would have obviously been using an American bottle for their liquor-sneaking trick. I’ve always found it funny that there is an American spelling for a measurement they don’t even use, but it turns out they do! Despite the fact that they could easily call the large American soda bottle a half-gallon (with only the slightest alteration) for some inexplicable reason they use the metric measurement. I’ll never figure out America. http://www.toddmanout.com

I’ll tell you what I remember about June 19th, 2004: I remember checking into a room somewhere at SPAC (that’s Saratoga Performing Arts Center for you newbs) with a crew of chums from Ottawa (don’t ask me how I got to SPAC – that would be me telling you what I don’t remember about June 19th, 2004). It was a cheap strip motel with a small second floor – we were on the second floor – with a couple of side buildings that could have been separate strip motels on their own had they not shared a parking lot (and ownership) with our place. I remember seeing the double bed all made up nice with it’s early-70’s bedcover (that matched the curtains) and taking a running dive at it, causing the flimsy frame to immediately collapse under my much sturdier frame. We called the desk and complained, I think they fixed it. Regardless, the lines were clearly drawn; it was us against the hotel staff, and we weren’t going to lose. The room was a suite, with a half-wall that offered my friend Andre and I a charming Linus & Charlie Brown wall-skit recreation. You definitely had to be there but it was still good enough to merit recognition in this missive. Somewhere in there we went to see Phish. This was in the dark days just before their Ugly Duckling Song*, Coventry, and the show probably wasn’t anything to write home about. Unless you’re the kind of person who writes home about flubs and train wrecks at the hands of a guitar player who used to be a serious contender, which I choose not to be at this time. After the show I soon tired of my Ottawa compadres so I grabbed my guitar and a bottle of hard liquor and set out from our room to find an adventure. This had long stood as a guaranteed recipe for success but on this night Casey struck out, hard. I cruised up and down the many rooms of our strip-motel resort serenading one heady music fan after another, each parked in their plastic throne with fresh drinks at the ready. And somehow, someway, I couldn’t cajole a single one of them to invite a traveling troubadour to their fire, as it were. I had somehow tipped the scales to become party-irrelevant. I had, however, gained the ire of the evening’s sole hotel proprietor, who gave me the stink-eye in between fielding a thousand calls and hassles that he was obviously very unprepared for. Benevolent as I am, I eventually decided to spare him at least one problem so I slunk back to the room, where I did the only thing a chronic benevolent snorer could do in a proper wookstack: I cast my guitar aside and banished myself to the closet – where I slept like a dead man – using tomorrow’s t-shirt as a blanket and my small knapsack as a pillow. And that’s what I remember about June 19th, 2004. Glory days. *A play on “Swan Song”. http://www.toddmanout.com

On June 22nd, 1995 I rounded out a three-show run of Grateful Dead concerts south of the border with my second-ever Phish concert, which took place at a lovely little amphitheatre in the Finger Lakes region of New York state with the very obvious and quite pleasant name: Finger Lakes Performing Arts Centre. It’s now called Constellation Brands – Marvin Sands Performing Arts Centre which is clearly a much catchier name. It’s staggering to think of how much thought went into the new name. Did I say “thought”? I meant “money”. Anyway, as I said I had just finished a very eventful and dare I say life-changing little run following the Grateful Dead from Vermont to New Jersey with my good friend Jason, and we pulled into the Finger Lakes lot to find our good friend Corey lackadaisically selling Molson XXX beers (the high-octane beer from the pre-IPA lot era) aside his flashy red sportscar sporting Ontario plates. We gave him hugs and handshakes and he gave us frosty beers in return and we three whiled away the preshow drinking away all of his profits. We had lawn tickets for the show which was a-okay with me. With very few exceptions I tend to prefer standing on the grass at outdoor venues to standing on the concrete-floored seating area in front of a folding chair – I don’t sit down very much at concerts* (especially back then), and this outdoor venue in particular was rather small anyway. It’s a good thing that we were on the lawn too, because I fell myself down a couple of times…on purpose. Y’see, back then there was a secret language that Phish was trying to create with their audience and having seen the band a year before and done some listening since I was “in” enough to know about the inside joke but still very “newb” enough to totally screw it up. Basically, Trey would make a slippery-slidey sound on his guitar alerting everyone to get ready for the coming message and then he would play one of several set riffs that called for a collective audience response. Like, he could play a snippet from the theme to The Simpsons and we were all to scream “D’oh!” at the same time. Or he would play a riff from The Byrds song [i]Turn Turn Turn [/i]and everyone was supposed to turn around en masse and face the back of the venue. The idea was that only the serious core Phish-heads would know to do these things and these seemingly random collective actions would both intrigue and freak out the newcomers. I mention this because I twice heard Trey give the signal and follow up with descending slurs that told me (and many others, or so I thought) to fall down onto the ground and play dead. Only he hadn’t made the signals – I had obviously been a little too excited about being in on the game and was listening a little too hard for the signals – so I was the only person in the crowd who just randomly fell down out of the blue. And I can tell you, it’s a lot less cool when you perform a mass simultaneous action along with exactly nobody else. Musically, I can (and should) report most particularly on the second set of this concert, notable that it is. The first set was fine, fun, and quite standard (though what did I know about “standard” Phish sets back then?) but the second set contained a mere three songs – two and-a-half, really – including a deep delve into exploratory space-jamming over under and through their one-riff masterpiece[i] Tweezer[/i], a single song that stretched to a full forty minutes and only wrapped up by morphing into a reprise of the same song, obviously titled [i]Tweezer Reprise[/i]. (For those keeping score, the other song was [i]Theme From the Bottom[/i], which opened the set.) Wow, a forty-minute song. Funny that I walked out of there thinking this was pretty normal for the band (again, I had only seen them once before, whereas I have seen them well over a hundred times by now). Also funny that I would eventually find myself in attendance for one of the band’s most famous and notorious jams, the very famous Lake Tahoe [i]Tweezer[/i], which clocked in at a relatively brief thirty-seven minutes. After the show Jason hopped a ride with Corey leaving me to drive back to Ottawa solo. It was (and remains) very, very out of character for me to drive with even a hint of alcohol in my system, but despite pounding back a bunch of powerful beers before the show I still got behind the wheel and drove after the concert. Now, I knew that I would be meeting a border guard along the way so I wasn’t drunk or anything, but let’s just say I became quite concerned when a patrolman lighted me up about an hour after I started the ride home. He was pulling me over for my broken tail-light, I knew that from recent experience, having gone through an altercation with the New Jersey police over the same issue the night before. I also knew that I needed a distraction, quick. So, to direct the officer away from any thought of checking my sobriety I quickly led the conversation straight to my broken tail-light (and headlight, I’m now remembering) and showed him the summons I had already received for the infraction in Jersey, further assuring him that I would soon be in my own land where I would then be the concern of the Canadian law enforcers, and where I would be getting the lights fixed in short order anyway. He acknowledged my Jedi mind trick with a smile and an obedient wave and sent me on my way. No droids for him on this night! *Yeah (turning around with an annoyed look), I’m that guy, and no, I don’t care if you “paid for these seats”; if you aren’t a patch-wearing outlaw I’ll continue to stand throughout the concert thank-you very much. If you’d like to complain there is an usher right over there. If he tells me to sit down I will consider it, but until then all I can say is enjoy the show, buddy (turns back to the music and raises fists in the air). http://www.toddmanout.com

On July 3rd, 2019 I woke up in Saratoga Springs much earlier than I wanted to and headed downstairs for the free hotel breakfast, which wasn’t too bad at all. It was much better than I was, that’s for sure, but that isn’t saying much. After taking a feeble stab at nourishing myself I went back upstairs where m’lady and I checked each other for bruises and memories, of which we had plenty and few, then I spent the next four hours sitting alone on the front deck writing a song called I Wish I Was a Cell Phone. Again, the song was better than I was. Next up was an unhelpful dinner where I didn’t even finish my warm, thick, freshly cooked Saratoga potato chips – if you can believe that – and then it was off to night II of Phish at SPAC. We were lucky to hop into a friend’s Uber which saved us a fair walk and got us to the venue in time for a pleasant bout of relaxing on the lawn before the concert. When showtime loomed m’lady and I left our friends and found our adjoining seats in a thankfully rather sedate section of the balcony, where we sat in sleepy anticipation waiting for the concert to begin. In no time the lights faded and the four lads ambled onstage and started the show, or at least they tried to. As Trey played the opening chords to [i]Fluffhead[/i] the crowd latched on and screamed their anticipation. Fishman started rattling on his ride cymbals and Page plunked down a few notes while Mike…well, Mike was having problems with his bass. As the other three guys shrugged and vamped, Mike’s tech poked and prodded and eventually went backstage to retrieve a replacement bass (aka: a “rebassment”). Mike put it on and immediately the strap gave away, almost causing him to drop his spare bass. Egad…this wasn’t boding well. All the while the other three musicians continued to tickle out the opening to [i]Fluffhead[/i] with a half an eye on their troubled bandmate, who still couldn’t seem to find any sound. After another twenty seconds or so the tech re-emerged holding bass number one, stepping towards Mike’s riser with a strident, confident gait that told the crowd, “Don’t worry friends, I got this,” and he was right – he had fixed the bass. And then, after the other Phishies had already been flapping in and around that [i]Fluffhead[/i] intro Mike came in with his first note of the evening and clearly the show had finally begun, proving something I’ve always known: a song doesn’t actually start until the bass comes in (with apologies to The Doors and The White Stripes). Following on the back of Mike’s instrumental troubles, the sound of the first few songs was really muddy and Trey’s vocals were very, very low in the mix. I had frankly never, ever heard anything other than the tiniest little sound quirk at a Phish concert, but here the sound was, well, bad. Roadies were seen running about, Mike kept signalling to the stage mix guy for more monitors, and Trey even had a midsong huddle with one of the techs. Meanwhile the band had upped the ante with a second-song[i] Guyute[/i] followed by one of the Thrilling Chilling tracks, [i]Martian Monster[/i]. Next up was Llama and then [i]Steam[/i] and [i]Poor Heart [/i]and, well, it’s quite startling how much clarity I have when recalling this concert, especially when compared to the previous one the night before*. Thank goodness for two-night runs, but c’mon now. Anyway, it was another great show (my 113th, I believe) and afterwards we re-found our preshow friends and half-walked half-Ubered our way back to the Inn, where we found a little jam on the porch but overall kept the night under control. The next day we had the pleasure of enjoying the day off in Saratoga Springs, one that saw us cycle through the vast and beautiful state park, sample from a couple of the smelly carbonated healing spring water spouts that are the town’s namesake, visit a huge old cemetery (where we happened upon a couple of curious deer) and the old racetrack (Saratoga Springs boasts the oldest horse racing in America, doncha know), coast past a mile of big old beautiful houses, and have a dinner that couldn’t be beat before laying on the grass in Congress Park and staring up at the darkened sky watching a very loud and frantic 4th of July fireworks display alongside thousands and thousands of other people, all of us ooh-ing and aah-ing to (almost) beat the band. Having a non-concert day in Saratoga Sprigs was something I’ve long wanted to do and man, it did not disappoint. Now I’m hooked on the idea of coming back for the horse races. *Or is it? http://www.toddmanout.com

When Phish announced that they would be playing a couple of back-to-back dates at Mohegan Sun on their 2019 summer tour I’ll admit I had to sit down for a little info session with Mister Google. Turned out that Mohegan Sun was the name of a casino somewhere called Uncasville, Connecticut (a town name which required more chatting with Mr. G.) and these would mark Phish’s first (and second) show(s) there. Of course by the time I finished my research the price of the rooms at the actual casino on the dates in question had shot up a million per cent to the point of unaffordability, which was disappointing as there were no other hotels anywhere even close to Mohegan Sun. In the end m’lady and I shared a room at a Holiday Inn-ish sort of place about twenty miles away with our bestest Boston buddies Joe and Dee, which turned out being just fine. We saved even more money by shunning taxis and/or ubers; if I’m not mistaken I drove on night one and Dee drove on night two. You’d think such a division would make it easy for me to distinguish the memories of one night from the other but nope…both nights are a swath of memories that blur into one another like cream and sugar in black coffee. I must say they did a pretty darn good job with the casino. It was clean and classy but shunned glitz and glimmer in favour of emblems of the native land that sat beneath the spiralling carpets and tiled swimming pools. There were feathers and dreamcatchers and stuffed wolves and bisons and teepees and rock formations all over the place. And of course gambling tables and slot machines and esoteric restaurants and upscale bars and shopping concourses. Curiously, I noticed lots and lots of children, many of them proudly strutting through the casino hallways carrying trophies. I discovered later that in addition to hosting Phish and their following the Mohegan Sun was simultaneously hosting a youth gymnastics competition and man, did the parents have at the Phish fans online, chastising them (us) for engaging in every manner of party-like transgressions in front of their innocent children, to which I replied (in my head): it’s a casino! Why would anyone hold a children’s event at a casino? Casinos are by definition dens of sin and excess so don’t bring your six year-old to one. Anyway. July 10th, 2019 was the final of the two nights and the show was super-great. The band was clearly having a great time and playing well, they played a bunch of my favourites and the second set ended with what m’lady and I had jokingly (but seriously) decided was now “our” song, a new one called [i]Drift While You’re Sleeping[/i], the lyrics of which would kick off our wedding ceremony three months down the road. And just to prove that everyone was having a swell time the encore stretched into a long continuous musical stream that proceeded thusly: [i]Bouncing[/i]>[i]Saw It Again[/i]>[i]Kung[/i]>[i]Saw It Agai[/i]n>[i]Slave to the Traffic Light[/i]. Sometime late in the second set I finally remembered to take off my glasses, an optical trick I had stumbled upon a year or two previously but one that had not ingrained itself enough to yet become habit. The globular fuzziness produced by my significant visual impairment does amazing things to Chris Kuroda’s already exceptional light show and I was giddy to experience his astounding visuals through my own unique filters. Gosh, I’m so glad I haven’t had corrective surgery. Much like the extended encore our aftershow experience stretched on into a stream of events that saw us visit several burgeoning hotel rooms, a handful of pools, and at least one highly unattractive dance bar until the evening finally ended with my first-ever visit to a Krispy Kreme outlet (one of four locations of the iconic shop in the one, single casino), a culinary experience that was not nearly as satisfying as I expected it to be. Even at 5am. http://www.toddmanout.com

When I woke up on August 2nd, 2013 I wiped the magical pixie dust of live musical bliss from my eyes and found myself in a dingy motel room on the outskirts of the outskirts of San Francisco. M’lady and I had joined a pile of friends for a Phil Lesh concert at Phil’s very own clubhouse/venue Terrapin Crossroads the night before, a lifetime highlight kind of show that came with a buffet dinner, a lengthy sit-in by Phish bassist Mike Gordon, and a dreamy campfire singalong that brought tears to the eyes of many. It had been so amazing that we couldn’t stop ourselves from driving straight back to Terrapin Crossroads the moment we checked out of that dingy motel. We were hoping they might be open for brunch where we could linger and reminisce about the previous evening but alas, they only opened for brunch on the weekends, which this wasn’t. So we drove into San Fran brunchless. It was my first time visiting the city and I found the steep winding streets quite unnerving. It’s odd to be surprised when confronted with a well-known cliché, but I always am. I was shocked to discover that there were really canals throughout Venice, astounded at the proliferation of slot machines the first time I visited Vegas, and amazed that the impossibly steep streets that Steve McQueen raced through in Bullitt were actually impossibly steep. But they were. M’lady was shocked too, but for a different reason. “What is wrong with you?” she asked with a smidgen of actual concern. “I’ve never seen you drive so slow.” I suspect this was the only time she ever saw me white-knuckle driving. We had arranged an unbelievable deal at the very fancy-shmancy Fisherman’s Wharf Hyatt, one that included full breakfast every day and very expensive valet parking. We checked into our luxe accoms and had a drink or two to celebrate before setting out to explore the wharf. When we did we found an olde-schoole penny arcade museum filled with an astonishing array of coin-operated delights, all in working order. There were fortune telling machines and juke boxes, pinball machines and video games, horse racing machines and strongman challenges, but most fascinating were the coin-op marionette scenarios. We dropped a coin into one and the curtains opened to reveal a mob cheering on a hangman. The trapdoor dropped, a little puppet dangled from its little puppet neck, and the curtains closed. Amazing what people did with their spare time before the internet. After an early dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant (I had the burger) we hopped the bus to Bill Graham Civic Center for the first of a three-night stand of – you guessed it – Phish, Phish, and Phish. We met a stranger in a park for a pre-arranged ticket trade and hung out with all the loco locals in a tiny Shakedown Street that had sprung up across the street. Inside the venue we found some friends we had met at the Tahoe shows. They had some extra seats saved so we joined them just as the lights were set to dim. Of course this was my first time inside the Bill Graham Civic Center and I thought it was a heck of a venue. Smallish, it holds maybe 8,000 fans, about half of which crowded onto the expansive square floor while the rest (like us) sat in balcony bleachers that surrounded three sides of the boxy room. I loved it up there; we were treated to a great view of a great show for the whole night. Drink trips were frequent and simple, as were the corresponding bathroom jaunts. But most importantly, the concert was awesome. The Tahoe show from two nights earlier had quickly become legend, mostly due to a 30+ minute jam ([i]Tahoe [/i][i]Tweezer[/i]) that birthed an audience/band/back-and-forth/participation “Woo!” that was the talk of the tour. At this show both the band and the crowd picked up where they had left off and got their woo’s in wherever and whenever they could. Anytime the band even hinted at a millisecond stop in a jam the crowd would woo it up, which encouraged the band to put the little breaks wherever they could which in turn made the crowd woo more which inspired the band to… Being so early in the history of woo we were still having a good time with it but let’s just say the woo thing got pretty old pretty fast. “Woo” is almost considered a dirty word on tour nowadays. After the show we missed the bus by mere seconds and waited a half-hour for the next one to take us back to the hotel where we nightcapped in king-size luxury. Funny to think back to the days when I would sleep in my car on some dark hidden road after a concert. Crazy. http://www.toddmanout.com

On August 5th, 2013 m’lady and I woke up early, wiping sleep from our eyes following three consecutive nights of San Francisco Phish. We arose in the luxury of the Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf and wandered zombie-like to the restaurant for excellent made-to-order fluffy omelettes. After a relaxed breakfast we packed up and called the valet. Our car certainly stood out amongst the parade of shining Beemers and Caddys that were arriving at the ornate front entrance to the hotel. It was packed to the roof with camping equipment and dirty laundry and in very, very dire need of a good washing, but it sure looked like it was having more fun than the other cars! We loaded in our suitcase, guitar, mandolin, cooler, and beach bag and hit the highway with the windows down. We had one final show in this half-summer Phish tour to go and it promised to be a doozy. The drive to Los Angeles was fast and pleasant along wide highways that arced through endless tracts of semi-desert that reminded me of the opening segment of M*A*S*H (which was shot in the area). When we got to LA I somehow pulled off the highway and landed us directly in front of our destination, the Hollywood Bowl. In no time at all we found our weird and wonderful accommodations for the night, the Magic Castle Hotel. The Magic Castle Hotel is a medium-low grade hotel built atop a mountain directly across from the iconic Hollywood sign. It sports a nice pool and an oddly huge, centuries-old pagoda that had been brought from Asia a century earlier, and you reached the hotel by driving up a road that began behind the Magic Castle. The Magic Castle is not a chintzy restaurant nor a children’s playhouse, it is in fact an actual castle and it serves as the meeting place and headquarters for international card-carrying magicians. The place has hosted the world’s greatest illusionists for decades and continues to do so, which is pretty darn nifty. Also nifty was the free shuttle offered by the hotel, a surprising feature given how inexpensive the room was (also surprising was how big the room was, with a full kitchen and a twenty-foot balcony replete with a million dollar view). Our driver even let me bring a beer for the drive, and he dropped us off at the front door of the Hollywood Bowl with a promise to pick us up whenever we were done. When we had left Canada three weeks earlier my PTBM tickets for this show had not yet arrived so I had to have them switched so I could pick them up at Will Call. The lady in the booth gave me a miniature heart attack when she told us that there was only one ticket on our order but we got it worked out soon enough. Unfortunately our replacement “ticket” was basically a diner receipt but no matter, we were still in the proper seats: 5th row dead centre. This was my first visit to the Hollywood Bowl and I had been wanting to see a show there since I first saw that famous Bugs Bunny cartoon that has the wascally wabbit conducting an opera singer in the iconic venue. Before the show I wandered and marvelled. The concession stands are top-rate and there’s even a wine shop. M’lady and I bought some drinks and semi-upscale grub and sat along the perimeter of the walkway to eat. In the venue itself much of the seating was in boxes of course, each with four moveable director’s chair-style seats and two fold up tables and waiters who busily rushed food and drinks to happy customers. How civilized. The cheap seats to the side and behind the boxes were hard wooden pews. How quaint. Down in the very front where we were seated there were no boxes – just regular folding chairs – but there was still wait service. The gentleman in front of me ordered a bottle of wine to his seat while the guy beside me ordered one of the largest hamburgers I’ve ever seen. White-cloth-on-arm, yes sir no sir service, and all the while in front of you sat that shell, that bandstand to define bandstands, the world famous Hollywood Bowl. Of course seating doesn’t always matter so much; when the show started the 20,000+ in attendance were on their feet and we all stayed there throughout. The first set was rolling along well when I noticed roadies setting up two extra amps beside Trey – there was going to be a sit-in! Here in LA it could be anybody! I was pretty excited at the possibilities. In the end there was no guest-star. Rather, Trey’s amp had crapped out on him and the two amps were set up on the fly to get him through the night. While the roadies were busy plugging things in and setting dials the band gathered around Fishman’s drum riser and together the four of them performed an impromptu and very rare drum jam. Aficionados might notice that for the rest of the show Trey’s tone suffered slightly and his sustain was nonexistent. That’s okay because the real star of the second set was Chris Kuroda, Phish’s masterful light man. He lit up that bowl with a constantly morphing colourful swirl of unbelievable creativity. The eye candy was just so over-the-top that the lights were bound to steal the show no matter what the band did. Rainbows, pulsating tunnels, Olympic rings, at times I felt like I was standing on the lip of a cosmic psychedelic wormhole to the future. The guy’s work is absolutely unparalleled in the lighting business and the stuff he does when faced with a unique space to work with is always incredible. (For further examples see the the suspended balloons at the ’09 comeback shows in Hampton or what he did with the treeline at Festival 8 in Palm Springs.) For the encore we left our seats and found a spot near the back so we could appreciate the venue from a wider perspective, an exercise that proved that the visuals looked fantastic from everywhere. After the concert we were walking to a nearby hotel and found our way blocked by a caravan of Mexican women selling bacon-wrapped hot dogs smothered in fried onions and green peppers from hand-pushed carts. They were all yelling “hotdoghotdoghotdoghotdog…” and seriously had my attention when m’lady grabbed my hand and gave me a pull. “Come on,” she implored, trying to weave us through the carts. “I’m starved and we’ve got to find something to eat!” I pointed out that we were standing in the middle of a flock of people selling delicious-looking bacon-wrapped hot dogs smothered in fried onions and green peppers. She said she didn’t want a bacon-wrapped hot dog smothered in fried onions and green peppers and so I told her I was happy to join her wherever she wanted to go, but only if she would wait a moment while I got myself a bacon-wrapped hot dog smothered in fried onions and green peppers. It was the single greatest hot dog I had ever eaten*, but it was relegated to the number two spot as soon as I bit into my second bacon-wrapped hot dog smothered in fried onions and green peppers. M’lady ended up ordering one and it was undercooked. Hers was terrible. A few minutes later we arrived at our friend’s hotel which was Phishhead ground zero, snake charmers in every other room and no one daring to be quiet. We visited for a while but soon found it difficult to follow the conversation. As we left our friend’s room a lady across the hall appeared. She was clearly an accidental booking; one of those unfortunate souls who innocently books into a hotel that is playing host to something she doesn’t understand. For just the briefest moment she looked at me with eyes searching for a kindred spirit, like “Dear lord, can you believe what’s going on here? Let’s put up a united front with the hotel manager!” But in an instant she realized that I too, even with white beard of long and greying hair of short, yes I too was one of “them”. Aside from the subtly different styles of raging parties that could be heard as we passed each floor on the way down to the lobby it was a very quiet elevator ride. We called our hotel and in no time our personal shuttle arrived. Back at our place I found a wookstack dog party in the room next door so I forced myself onto them for an hour or two before bidding everyone good night. Then I enjoyed a final nightcap with m’lady on our spacious balcony overlooking the diamonds of Hollywood glinting below us. The next day started with a swim in the glorious pool and a call to the manager to arrange for a second night’s stay. We had planned to start heading north but instead we stuck around LA and touristed through the world-famous Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, my first In & Out burger (delicious!) and dinner reservations at the very fancy Chinese restaurant that sat just above our hotel, the Yamashiro. It was a good Phish tour. *I had not yet experienced the glory of the Icelandic hot dog. http://www.toddmanout.com

On August 12th, 1998 I found myself in the latter half of a little entertainment run south of the (Canada/US) border courtesy of Phish and The Tragically Hip (though mostly Phish I suppose), a stretch that had proved to be high on the fun-scale and somewhat rife with technical difficulties, not the least of which was a nagging car problem that no amount of wishing and hoping could seem to remedy. Regardless, my friend Jason and I got everywhere we needed to go, including Vernon Downs, a harness racing track in New York that was hosting Phish on that fine summer evening. Vernon is just outside of Syracuse, which happens to be hometown to the band’s drummer Jon Fishman and I remember a lot of attention being thrown onto the quirky percussionist throughout this show. There was a shoutout to Fishman’s high school cover band Frodo before they covered Zeppelin’s [i]Ramble On[/i] and I seem to recall Trey trying to goad Fishman into singing some cheesy cover song (perhaps [i]Sexual Healing[/i]*?) that he really didn’t want to sing to the point that it became an onstage argument, though it is possible that I’m mistaking that with another show or perhaps even dreamed it up entirely. How could one know? On the other hand, the internet does confirm that this concert was indeed littered with some killer cover songs that weren’t [i]Sexual Healing[/i], from the show-opening [i]La Grange[/i] and the aforementioned [i]Ramble On[/i] through a sweet second set [i]Loving Cup[/i] and into the now-legendary encore of [i]Burning Down the House[/i], sung (of course) as “Vernon Down the House”. Not bad, huh? Covering ZZ Top, Zeppelin, The Stones, and the Talking Heads all in one show, and a bunch of tasty Phish too, like [i]Makisupa[/i], [i]Slave[/i], and a [i]Mike’s[/i]>[i]Weekapaug[/i] sandwich that had [i]Simple[/i], [i]Rift[/i], and [i]Sleeping Monkey[/i] along with that [i]Loving Cup[/i] all squished inside. For me it was all about the [i]You Enjoy Myself [/i]that closed the concert. Back then [i]YEM[/i] was hands-down my favourite Phish song and one I was always always always hoping to see, most especially as a show-ender. I just loved it when the last thing I heard was an extended whacked-out vocal jam. Though really, when I think back at this show all I can think about are those cover songs (and the banter). Maybe Grumpy Billy Joel had a point when he jealously dismissed Phish as a “second-rate cover band” after their historic no-repeat thirteen-show run at Joel’s favoured venue Madison Square Garden. Except for the “second-rate” part, of course.** *Not that Marvin Gaye is cheesy, but Phish covering Marvin Gaye is certainly cheesy. **Though thinking about the times that I actually did hear them cover [i]Sexual Healing[/i]…maybe in select instances Joel has it righter than wronger? http://www.toddmanout.com

August 13th, 2009 was the start of little three-show Phish run fairly close to home. M’lady had been attending some of the band’s more westerly dates so I met her at the bus station in Buffalo (I must have been in Toronto for something or other) and together we made our way to Darien Lake. We booked into the nearest-by EconoLodge which had been completely overtaken by fellow concert-goers, just the way I like it.. We enjoyed a couple of drinks making new friends and soon started making our way to the venue. Of course Darien Lake is most noted for it’s theme park, which houses the concert amphitheatre. Unfortunately we didn’t take advantage of the park – that would come a few years later when our Phish tickets included exclusive park access – so there were no rollie-coasters for me, though admittedly the Phish show provided sufficient entertainment for the day. We were on the lawn for the show and I remember looking wistfully at the large Ferris wheel lit up in the near distance. Don’t get me wrong, you’d never get me on one of the things but they sure do look cool at night. Especially when one of your favourite bands is rocking out proper in the foreground. [i]Sample[/i], [i]Bowie[/i], [i]Golgi,[/i] [i]Sparkle[/i], [i]Fluffhead[/i]…it was all so wonderful. There was a spot of bad news when late in the first set Trey informed the crowd that the great Les Paul had died. Inventor of flange, multi-track recording and yes, the electric guitar (arguably), Les Paul is the only person to be inducted into both the rock hall of fame and the inventor’s hall of fame. I met the legend and heard him play a set of music on Valentine’s Day back in 2005 and was sad to hear of his passing. And while I was more than happy to hear Phish pay tribute to Les Paul by playing one of his signature hits [i]How High The Moon[/i] I was astounded that they just played the head and stopped dead. Could it really be that Phish doesn’t know how to jam over jazz changes? Unthinkable, but it made me wonder*. Back at the hotel after the show I recall running into a bunch of Ottawa friends in the stairwell just outside of our room at the EconoLodge. I remember being surprised that there was such a large Ottawa contingent at the show and indeed at the same hotel but I shouldn’t have. With Darien Lake only about four hours away it’s basically a hometown show, and everybody likes to stay as close to the venue as possible, especially if it’s cheap (or if you prefer: econo). In the first few years after Phish reemerged and started touring again I would forever be surprised to run into friends from home in the most unlikely of places. Nowadays I consider it a given. *What was I saying?!? Since I first typed that sentence I have noticed many, many Phish jams where they were unquestionably improvising and comping jazz changes. http://www.toddmanout.com

Amazingly enough, when m’lady and I awoke on the morning of August 17th, 2018 we still didn’t have a plan. Bringing you up to speed, two days earlier we had gone from heavenly bliss to hell in a bucket when the purchase of our dream home in Newfoundland had fallen through on the very closing day. We bit our trembling bottom lips and drove to Watkins Glen, New York where we checked into the VIP camping section for a weekend of Phish. The next day a million friends from far and wide began arriving and just when things were looking upupup our hopes and dreams were dashed once again when the entire Curveball festival was cancelled in the middle of the afternoon due to a boil-water order (which was indeed quite a curveball). We opted to stay onsite for the evening and commiserated with a hundred friends over a thousand beers. When m’lady and I finally turned in for the night we still had no idea what we were going to do with the weekend (not to mention all the beer we had bought). But just like the bar staff says at a quarter after closing: We didn’t have to go home but we couldn’t stay here. It’s not like ideas hadn’t been bouncing around our crew. A handful of hastily thrown-together relatively-nearby mini-fests had cropped up out of thin air in an attempt to draw the massive dispersing crowd of music fans, plus there was talk of trying to book multiple sites in a nearby state park. The bottom line was we had a lot of friends gathered together with tents, food, snacks, and a festival-sized pile of alcoholic beverages so the opportunity was nigh. We just needed a plan. And then in an instant one was miraculously hatched, confirmed, and settled upon sometime around 10am. Seemed our good friend Brian had a godfather who was a judge, and this judge had a cottage on the banks of Keuka Lake just twenty-five miles away in the Finger Lakes, and not only that, he was willing to give it up to his godson and a significant pile of his friendly neo-hippie friends, of which we were two. So we packed ‘er all up and caravanned to the cottage. When we arrived we were greeted with a lovely two-storey cabin directly on the glassy lake with plenty of bedrooms. There was even an old, working funicular to transport all our stuff down the steep embankment from the roadside. Good thing too, as m’lady and I had well over a hundred beers with us and everyone else was similarly stocked. Hmmm…now did m’lady and I pitch a tent? I think we did. I recall there were a couple of tents set up in the small backyard, but most people had found sleeping space indoors. There was what, maybe fourteen of us there? And my gosh we had so, so much fun! I don’t remember much grumbling about the cancelled festival. If there was any at all it would have been quickly quashed by the bevy of good friends forcing beers into and belly laughs out of one another all weekend. We were swimming, singing, jamming, sunning, relaxing and eating great food and it was just freakin’ stellar. I’m still laughing about my friend Dave remembering with a start that he had had his phone in his pocket when he went for an impromptu midnight swim the night before. A group of us were rolling on the ground with tears in our eyes as Dave waded cursing into the lake in search of his umpteenth lost phone of the season. Oh, it was all such a great time. Thanks BDunn. I honestly can’t imagine that we would have had nearly as much fun at the festival, however I’m totally open to experiencing a time/space vortex that will allow me to test the theory. Astoundingly, when m’lady and I left on Sunday afternoon (with our friend Stapes in tow) we didn’t even need to use the funicular as we had somehow gone through our entire mountain of beer. Perhaps we accidentally went swimming with our beers in our pockets? http://www.toddmanout.com

In the late summer of ’11 Vermont was among the states hit with major flooding, the worst the region had seen in almost a century. Good on the de facto hometown boys Phish to quickly organize a one-off flood benefit show just off the highway one exit north of Burlington on September 14th, 2011. The showground was a field and not much else, perhaps there were some aluminum bleachers facing the stage but other than that nothing. I grabbed a handful of beers and found lots of standing room, off to stage right (Page side). While I remain a bit of a poster geek this was early in my geekery stage and lingering in the lot before the show had caused me to miss out on the poster. They had also given copies of the poster to people with VIP tickets, so I took on a strategy of finding a VIP who wasn’t interested in their free poster and would they please sell it to me for $50? As the beers flowed and the tunes rocked I asked more and more people to sell me their posters. Or so I thought. It turns out I was just basically asking the same dude to sell me his poster over and over again, thinking he was different people. He eventually made himself memorable to me at which point I gave up my poster hunt and turned my attention to the show. By then it might have been too late for me, except Phish just tore from one rocker to another in a fist-pumping free-for-all with [i]Carini[/i], [i]DWD[/i], [i]Rock and Roll[/i], [i]Slave[/i], [i]Twist[/i], [i]Suzie Greenberg[/i], and more, and with a hands-in-the-air [i]Loving Cup[/i] encore, well I was just a little bundle of poster-free rage cage. There was no reggae, no barbershop, no freaky vocal jams, no country twang, just a bunch of three-chord blazers in a straight-up rock and roll show, start to finish. The highlight of the somewhat highlightless show was [i]Character Zero[/i]. The band really drove it for the distance and Trey raged. The wook-stack at the hotel after the show had curious bedfellows. There was a bass tourney going on nearby and the place was packed with fishermen. So some were there for the fish while the rest of us were there for the Phish, though I suppose we were all into the bass. The continental breakfast started at 4am when nobody in the building was asleep (yet or still). You’re welcome Vermont, for all the help. http://www.toddmanout.com

On October 16th, 2018 three of us drove (well, I drove) to the United States of America for a pair of Phish concerts in Albany. Approaching the US border I noticed a large, conspicuous digital sign on the side of the road warning: “No cannabis at the border”. With Canada just a day away from legalizing marijuana nation-wide the Americans were obviously making a point of making their point. “It ain’t legal here buddy, and we’ve got our eyes on you.” So it was with a little extra trepidation that I pulled up to the border crossing, half-expecting some extra questioning. What I got was this: “Where do you live?” Ottawa. “Where are you going?” Albany. “What are you going to Albany for?” To see some concerts. So far, so standard. “You going to see Phish?” Um…yes. “Why?” Um….because it’s fun… “They’re terrible!” Um… “Why would anyone want to see Phish, they are horrible!” Er… “Aw, I’m just kidding,” the border dude said, smiling and handing back our passports. “Have a great time.” And we did. Checked in to our Holiday Inn Express right around the corner from the venue and went to a nearby New Orleans-style bar for dinner, just beating the massive pre-show crowd and scoring the best table in the house. An hour and a half later we walked up the street and joined the booming crowd in front of the Knickerbocker Arena. Dave found his Boston crew and zigged to his seat beside the stage while m’lady and I zagged to our reserved perch in the back corner of the upper level, which ended up being an excellent spot for the show. The band kicked off with [i]Moma Dance[/i], which was a bit of an odd beginning – but good – followed by a nicely jammed out[i] Tube[/i]. It proved to be a good start to the show, and things just kept getting better: [i]Theme From The Bottom[/i] (always a favourite of mine) and [i]Free[/i]. Later in the set [i]Cities[/i] surprised everyone in the room (band included) by miraculously appearing out of the end of [i]Everything’s Right[/i]. before rounding out set one with [i]Walls of the Cave[/i]. But it was during the second set that I realized just how odd of a show we were witnessing. Halfway through the setlist it occurred to me that Trey was ducking away from every possible solo opportunity. Whenever a soft spot would come up, a pocket just waiting for one of Anastasio’s signature screaming bend solo intros, Trey would instead milk a low chord, soloing in pure timbre rather than notes. It was really curious, really different, and really fun. Worthy of very, very special mention was CK5’s continuing mastery of his dangling light rig. During [i]Twenty Years Later[/i] he took things to new heights, arranging his remote-controlled light trusses in a downward sloping angle that careened and pulsated in ways I’ve never seen before. The crowd screamed madly. I was literally weeping. Gosh, it was so great. When [i]Character Zero[/i] started up to close the set I convinced m’lady that her best chance at truly enjoying one of her least favourite Phish songs was to air-guitar along with it. She did and she did, and so did I (of course. I always do). Then, during the [i]Harry Hood [/i]encore I took a chance during the late jam and raced all the way down to the basement bathroom and back again, arriving just in time to join in breathlessly for the “You can feel good, good about Hood!” singalong that capped the concert. Out on the street the lot was getting closed up just as it was starting so m’lady and I finished off the evening enjoying fridge-beers in front of our hotel and making new friends. All in all it was a fantastic time. “Why would anyone want to see Phish?” Honestly! http://www.toddmanout.com

October 18th, 2016 was the first of two nights of Phish in Nashville, Tennessee. These would be the only two shows of the fall tour that I would catch, once again proving that I sure know how to pick ‘em. I flew in and cabbed to my standard dive hotel, a neo-hippie takeover Comfort Inn reasonably close to downtown. When I arrived I noticed a small group of people protesting in front of the hotel, waving around signs featuring home-drawn pictures of bedbugs and other unsavoury critters. Like I say, the place is a bit of a dive. I checked in and strolled down the street to buy some mix for my duty free. By the time I returned the hotel had obviously taken care of the pest problem; there wasn’t a protester in sight. I grabbed a glass from my room, settled into the busy pool area and started in. I think I might have walked downtown for the show, I don’t remember for sure – perhaps I hopped on the free tourist bus – but I do recall being on foot as I approached the venue. With every step the faint rumblings of amplification grew until the soundcheck crystallized in my ears. “That’s funny,” I said to m’lady, “it sounds like they are playing [i]Walkin’ Blues[/i], and it sure sounds like Bob Weir singing. “Do you think that’s the soundcheck we are hearing,” I pondered as we walked, our pace increasing, “or are they playing music through the PA?” We kept walking, they kept soundchecking, and soon the two of us were convinced; that was definitely Bobby singing with Phish. Well now! We cruised the lot before the show and bought some food and sundries (I got the coolest Steal Your Boognish t-shirt for a mere $20) and hung out before heading in. Inside the nearly-new amphitheatre we parked ourselves on the lawn and made friends with our grassy neighbours. The band came out and got the place up and moving with blazing [i]Chalkdust[/i] followed by a torturous [i]Blaze[/i]. Then [i]Ghost[/i] appeared, and man, all of us on the grass were ready for the [i]Lawn Boy [/i]that came next. It almost sounded like hell was coming when they went into [i]Halley’s[/i], then they come at us with [i]Sand[/i]! I could keep this going, but how about I give both of us a break. Let’s just say the first set odyssey ended with a funky twilight run though of [i]Also Sprach Zarathustra[/i]. Of course the second set was the money when it comes to this show. After [i]My Friend, My Friend[/i] (one of my Phish faves) the band introduced their friend Bob Weir. Actually, scratch that – as I recall nobody said a word of introduction. Come to think of it, I don’t believe that Bob’s name was mentioned at any time, even after the show. However, it was literally a case of a man needing no introduction. Bobby came out, they launched into [i]Samson and Delilah [/i]and the crowd went completely nutballs. It was pretty exciting when he stayed onstage for Phish’s [i]Twist [/i]and even took the lead vocals on [i]Miss You[/i]. And they kept going! [i]West LA Fadeaway [/i]and then [i]Playin’ In The Band[/i] (which was at one time my absolute favourite Grateful Dead song), with Trey on vocals! (Let Trey Sing) Again without a word to the audience, Weir joined Phish for the encore too, treating us to a blissful version of Dylan’s [i]Quinn The Eskimo[/i]. Bobby had sat in for basically half the concert and it had sounded great – by the time we filed out of the place and walked the two blocks to the Nashville strip the show had already become the stuff of legend on the interwebs. M’lady and I poked our heads in on a Jeff Coffin gig but it was too notey and non-Nashville for us so we opted for a bit of honky-tonkin, stopping in for a beer and a song or two at a half-dozen bars along the noisy street. We found out the next day that we had left our seats by the door in one place just a few minutes before Trey and Mike had walked in. Too bad we missed them but it’s not like they got up and played or anything. It is interesting to note that Bobby wasn’t with them. I bet he was out partying with Fishman. http://www.toddmanout.com

On November 1st, 2014 I awoke with a bit of a fuzzy head. Sure I had gotten a little tipsy at Phish’s Hallowe’en show the night before, but really, isn’t every morning a little fuzzy when you wake up in Las Vegas? (If you answered “no” to the previous question – which was meant to be rhetorical – then one of us ain’t doin’ Vegas right.) Perhaps especially when you’re staying at The Flamingo (or as I typoed it once and have since and will forever call it: The Flaming O). Why? Because the Flaming O is kitschy, it’s classic, and it’s cheap, and as a result it attracts a fuzzier clientele than does, say, the Bellagio or The Venetian. Take, for example, yours truly from just a few nights previous. We had just checked in after a long day of airplaning and enjoyed a relaxing nightcap in our room – which was situated about thirty-seven acres from the nearest bank of elevators, which were themselves at least twenty-nine leagues from the front desk, to which I had to return twice upon arrival because the key kept not unlocking the freakin’ door – when I decided to spend an hour raking it in at the tables downstairs. And I did quite well. So well in fact that I found I couldn’t leave the roulette table. Not when my chips stacked so high I could barely reach over them, not when the free-drinks ladies started calling me by name, not when my pile started diminishing at a steady and rapid rate, not when my dashes to the bathroom started coming with every spin, not even when in a fit of frustration I placed just one, single bet on the table, $10 on number 9, and lo, the little pea popped right into the #9 slot. No friends, I was fuzzy enough to sit at that table until I lost everything I had won and even the $100 I had started with (and maybe a wee bit more – I remain fuzzy on the actual figure). Had I left the table at exactly the right time I could have come back to the room and crawled into that king-sized coconut-scented bed with enough money sitting on the nightstand to pay for our entire trip, but of course I didn’t. Instead I arrived back at the room shocked to discover that not only was it daylight, but m’lady was awake, showered, and ready to meet some friends for brunch. I did my morning calisthenics and we got out of there. And so, it is with admitted – nay, professed – fuzziness that I report that Phish delivered a solid middle-night show at the MGM Grand arena that evening (not the evening of my gradual roulette fiasco, but the evening that I am ostensibly writing about: November 1st). The first set was a rock and roll sandwich bunned by[i] Fuego[/i] at the front and [i]Wingsuit [/i]at the back, a clear nod to the previous year’s Hallowe’en show, a concert that premiered Phish’s new album Wingsuit, which was renamed Fuego when it was officially released. The second set was even better. At one point the keyboardist played a few samples from the Chilling, Thrilling Disney album they had jammed along to during their musical costume the night before, snippets that were met with roars from the crowd. The writing was already on the wall, and Phish knows which side of the bread they are buttered on. The band would go on to play the heck out of Chilling, Thrilling tracks at their future shows, consistently to the ecstatic joy of approximately 95% of their fans (myself included) and the head-shaking chagrin of the other 10%. And while my figures may be a little fuzzy and a lot made up, they are utterly consistent with the rest of this ticket story and, frankly, these write ups on-the-whole. http://www.toddmanout.com

On December 1st, 2003 I drove with a couple of friends from Toronto to Albany to see Phish at Knickerbocker Arena. nero must have just finished up a run or at least had a few days off in their relentless touring schedule that freed me up for a show, a relatively rare opportunity during that era of my life. Either way, I had a chance to catch some Phish and I took it. The drive to Albany should have been a cakewalk, especially compared to the constant epic driving of the nero bus I was very accustomed to at the time. But it was storming the whole way, and it was storming bad. A good eight to ten inches of snow had accumulated and it was still coming down fiercely. The traffic on the interstate was down to one lane in each direction and moving slow, the lengthy parade of cars stuck behind the salt-spewing snow plows that crawled along at no more than thirty miles per hour. We had a show to get to but even more pressing was the fact that my friend had an extra ticket to sell, and he was very worried that we would be late and he would have to eat the ticket. Back then I was driving a pretty solid Honda Accord. It wasn’t a four-wheel-drive but it had winter tires and seemed up to the challenge. I pulled out and reclaimed the I-90 passing lane, flying blind past the snowplows with a steady hand and an iron nerve and wouldn’t you know it, we made it to Shakedown Street just in time to sell the ticket and get in to the show (albeit a bit late; we walked in during their second song, [i]Stash[/i]). The concert that followed has become infamous due to an extended sit-in by long-lost original member Jeff Holdsworth who, as I had heard it, walked off into the mountains one day during an early Phish tour and never came back, never called or wrote…nothing. I heard he just disappeared, found religion or something like that and nobody had heard from him since that day, and here he was stepping on stage at Knickerbocker midway through the second set and strapping on a guitar. Just because nobody does, I’ll reference the first set, which was great. As I mentioned we walked in during [i]Stash[/i] (having missed the opening [i]Chalkdust Torture[/i]), then it went: [i]Guyute[/i], [i]Thunderhead[/i]>[i]Sparkle[/i], [i]Wolfman’s Brother[/i]>[i]Good Times Bad Times[/i]. And so you didn’t need a crazy sit-in to make this a memorable show, but I suppose it helped. Not that Holdsworth’s participation was musically transcendent or anything. Though notable for being historic, the second set won’t win any awards in the “killer jams” category. It was a fun event to be at though, no denying that, but when they started into [i]Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress[/i] Dave and I rolled our eyes pretty hard, silently (I hope) urging the band to abandon their nostalgic romp and get back to rocking our faces off. They didn’t though. They even encored with [i]Fire[/i]. I’m guessing we drove back to either Toronto or perhaps on to Ottawa after the show, maybe even dropping off or picking up a passenger or two along the way, I don’t remember. The storm must have abated though as I don’t recall the post-show drive at all. http://www.toddmanout.com