The Ticket Lottery
The Phish Lottery Continues
Never have I wanted my credit card to be charged as much as I do right now. The magic digits of $564 are the numbers that would bring me bliss, celebration, and relief. $564 (or $282 if you’re rolling solo) represents the cost of two tickets for The Greek and Telluride. (Or any 10 single tickets, but that’s mere trivia in this instance.) Anyone who gets the privilege to purchase these golden tickets via Phish’s lottery this week will be able to deeply exhale and put their feet up, while everyone else sweats it out. Lottery winners will be automatically freed-up to stab for east coast lower pavilions, or to help friends on the harder missions this weekend. But more than anything, one’s hassle will be over before it ever began.
6.16.09 - The Fox (C.Smith)
Phish tickets are fickle bitches these days. At times costing upwards of $300 in the secondary market for the smallest shows, at many other times, one can’t give them away if they tried. The actual market value of a single Phish ticket fluctuates so greatly in relation to locale, as one can clearly observe this summer. Other than The Greek and Telluride, all other tickets will be easy scores, and the only issue will be lawn or pavilion. If one waits out the initial feeding frenzy, many of these tickets will be for sale on lot for far under the $60 face plus fees value. The same scene took place in 2009, where the only hard tickets (besides Hampton) became the tiny Fox Theatre in St. Louis and the band’s uber-climactic return to Red Rocks, holding only 10,000 people. (Asheville gets an honorable mention, but it wasn’t the same.) For most other shows, one could score a stub for $20 -40 easily, and it was a fair deal leaving both parties happy. It used to be that one could walk to the venue with an extra ticket with no doubt of selling it to someone along the way. But at this point, when trying to sell extras, one encounters far more people trying get rid of their own superfluous stubs than anyone looking to buy one. Except for these special shows when tickets are worth more than gold; it’s quite an interesting dichotomy.
The Greek Theatre - Berkeley, CA
Last year’s Fox show, one case study, turned out to be a very funny occasion. So many people flew across the country and paid top dollar to get into The Fox, and Phish responded with one of the tamest shows of the tour, centering “Time Turns Elastic” in the second set. A decent, yet linear, “Halley’s” jam held the only redeeming value on a night that everyone had circled for months as the “can’t-miss” show of summer. But unquestionably, The Fox represented an exception rather than the norm, as Phish rarely disappoints. And something tells me the band won’t be dropping duds in Berkeley and the Rockies come August.
With only a few days separating us from summer tour’s general on-sales, everyone and their mother (pun intended) will be getting their lottery emails before too long. Over these next two days fans will obsessively check their credit cards, praying for that magic $564 or $282 hold, and before long, we will all know one or two people who scored huge. But in the meantime, all we can do is wait and cross our fingers. With the amount of requests versus the amount of available tickets, the word “lottery” has never seemed so appropriate.
Good luck to all, and may the force be with you. We are gonna’ need it.
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Jam of the Day:
“Wolfman’s Brother” 7.26.99 II
The second set opener from Summer ’99’s US finale at Deer Creek.
[audio:http://phishthoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/2-04-track-04.mp3]=====
DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY:
6.20.04 SPAC, Saratoga Springs, NY < Megaupload
SPAC 6.19.04
This show concluded Phish’s last gasp of full-blown creativity in 2004. As the band sculpted their unofficial post-hiatus finale over SPAC’s magical nights, they left us with two more shows to remember forever. The band’s first visit back since Summer ’95 proved to be high point of ’04. The second set – “Seven Below > Ghost > Twist, YEM” – contains top-notch jamming throughout.
I: Rift, Julius, Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?, Waves, Gumbo, Water in the Sky, Horn, Poor Heart, Drowned
II: Seven Below > Ghost > Twist, You Enjoy Myself
E: Good Times Bad Times
Source: Unknown
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NOTE: I am out of town for a few days at an undisclosed location with very sketchy Internet connectivity. This will effect the site in a few ways this week. First off, there will be no torrents. I will do my best to get torrents of this week’s shows up when I get home. Also, I may not be able to connect for long enough to upload new shows for Downloads of the Day, therefore, I will likely feature shows that were posted a long time ago or went directly to the archive. Things will be back to normal by the weekend. Thanks for your understanding!
Tags: Culture, Tickets
wankmaster Trey in 2.0. still many goodies in there tho. i just thought that BB king show lagged in feb 03 at “the Byrne”.
Just started No Country yesterday, coincidentally. His meter is really strange, closest to Faulkner or Hemingway I guess. But after about three or four pages of getting used to his style, I’m really impressed with his pacing.
The way he writes about such intense events, while using the passive tense, really works.
“When he stood up out of the chair he swung the keys off his belt and opened the opened the locked desk drawer to get the keys to the jail.”
He breaks so many rules in the sentence. Anyone else would have started “Rising out of the chair, he swung the keys off his belt… ” not to mention the redunancy of all the keys, and mentioning that he needed the keys because the drawer was locked. His writing seems almost juvenile at times, but I think that’s where the power is. I’ll have more thoughts as I read further I’m sure. p. 53 right now.
Anyway, off to watch LOST.
The hold is now an official CHARGE!!
Yay!
Now, I wait for the actual email telling me where my vacation’s gonna be this summer.
@Little Buddy
Thought you might have missed my response earlier…
I lived in Penfield for the first 18. Saw a lot of shows at Finger Lakes…never seen PHiSH.
@the light between:
as an English major who picked up not one iota of grammar or structure during his college years…i’m nodding my head yes…but overall i think it’s a unique rhythm, and like you said, you have to stick with it. it’s, dare i say, dreamy? the dialogue in the border trilogy is very dreamy, it think it’s his stripping out of the rules that i do like quite a bit.
check out some old Dos Passos for some of this similar deconstruction.
btw…the only way i ever would have read Celine or Dos Passos is from reading Bukowski ravenously as a young buck and seeing him name check them repeatedly.
out for the nite. this place is rich with culture. enjoy.
Official charge here too! Hpe i wake up to some info
@gavinsdad
Ahh, I like the dreamy description. His style does do quite a bit to lend a very surreal quality to all the proceedings. Like things are happening that seem normal, but they just don’t seem quite right, quite real…
Well, from the new charges on my card it looks like I’ve got at LEAST 2 of the 5 for the “way out west” shows! I live in the middle of nowhere in AZ and I’ve got nobody else to share this with thats as excited as I am! Where the (fill in expletive) is my email? Best of luck to all!
jeolous are we!
I thought Shoreline killed the gorge. RR Tweezer 09 show though smokes although was not there. I know Miner loved Gorge but I just thought it was way too packed, and compared to say 98 Gorge….no comment
whatever so many things go into a live experience. have to say front row hartford O9 and alpine 09 both were as good as i have ever seen.
Good luck to all on MO
@garret – I think I read that in an interview one time. It might be in the New Phish book. I can’t reference it though.
how does the hold on your card work? i have 231 pending to phish tickets on my card. the only show i requested was 2 2 day tickets to telluride. the only other ticket request i did was for last summer and never checked my account. FKNA!
there is a photo labeled the fox 06-16-09 but the photo is of alpine valley