The dates have finally been posted. After many different sources have leaked dates, Phish.com has just posted the first leg of summer tour with the help of another cool announcement video featuring the mysterious Santa Monica skywriting and a “Punch You In the Eye” soundtrack.  The dates are as follows:

6.04.09 Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, NY
6.05.09 Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, NY
6.06.09 Comcast Center, Mansfield, MA
6.07.09 Susquehanna Bank Center, Camden, NJ
6.09.09 Asheville Civic Center, Asheville, NC
6.16.09 Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO
6.18.09 Post Gazette Pavilion, Burgettstown, PA
6.19.09 Verizon Wireless Music Center, Noblesville, IN
6.20.09 Alpine Valley Music Theater, East Troy, WI
6.21.09 Alpine Valley Music Theater, East Troy, WI

Tickets are now available for request NOW right here!  Interestingly enough, when these go on sale to the public, they will be sold by Live Nation and not Ticketmaster. I’m not sure if that changes much, but we shall see.

At first glance, what jumps out are the two Tuesday night performances at the Ashville Civic Center (7,654 capacity) and the Fox Theatre in St. Louis (5,060 capacity)!  Those are some TINY shows for this era!  Surprising is only one night in the cornfields of Noblesville. Phish has played only multi-nights stands there since 1997. Two nights at Alpine in the perfect closer for the initial summer leg.  Don’t be surprised when Bonnaroo is inserted between Ashville and St. Louis.  This looks like a great and manageable first leg. See you on the road!  More to come…

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CELEBRTATORY DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY:

6.28.95 Jones Beach, NY < LINK

Now we are celebrating Phish’s return to Long Island today with one of their last appearances in the summer of 1995.  This show is packed full of your favorite songs, all played ferociously in vinatge ’95 style.  Enjoy this one, and hopefully you can listen to it in celebration of today’s tour announcement.

I: Axilla [Part II] > Foam, Fast Enough for You, Reba, Punch You in the Eye, Stash, Fluffhead, Chalk Dust Torture

II: Sample in a Jar, Poor Heart, Tweezer*> Gumbo, Sparkle, Suzy Greenberg, Harry Hood, Tweezer Reprise

E: Sweet Adeline, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

*With “Cannonball” (The Breeders) jam.

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PHISH PRACTICING IN NYC AGAIN: On the day of the big announcement, the band has been found in NYC in a studio space on West 25th.  Apparently, standing outside, one can hear very the music clearly.  Songs that have been played today are “Reba,” “Seven Below,” “Wolfman’s Brother,” “The Curtain,” “NICU,” “Cavern,” “Farmhouse,” and “Army of One.” PT’er whosgotmybud posted this small update:

Trey sounds siiiick. definitely using a compressor. Mike is dropping BOMBS. you can hear them thru this garage door right on 25th and every time mike drops a bomb the whole garage door shakes.

Exciting stuff in this part of the world!

Blueballed! At least for now. After much hype and anticipatory rumors about a tour announcement today, it has come and gone and we have nothing except two leaked dates.  Live Nation screwed up and posted the information about the upcoming Star Lake show on June 18 early before pulling it down.  Ticketmaster’s scalping subsidiary, TicketsNow, has had $200 seats on sale for Great Woods June 9th and the Star Lake show throughout the day.  Imagine that!  Ticketmaster scalping their own tickets to a show that hasn’t yet been announced.  Isn’t that what brokers do?

These Great Woods and Star Lake dates are the only ones we know for sure, and for that marathon schedule posted earlier…pssshaw.  I wish.  Unfortunately, neither of the leaked dates are included in that run, and therefore the schedule is proven incorrect.  41 shows over the summer would be quite fun, but quite the hearty undertaking for a comeback tour.  The dates were not given to me randomly however, so don’t dismiss them all together. Though, if we get half of that schedule, we should be psyched.  What also makes me question the validity of the dates is the lack of Jones Beach, which has come in from multiple sources as legit. Yet, Phish hasn’t gone on a tour like that since Summer of ’97 beginning June 13th and ending on August 17th, and that was only 38 shows spanning two continents.

This much more I am assuming to be true.  Alpine Valley on July 26th and 27th. People are freaking on these dates, and the entire hotel is booked with Phishies.  It will happen.  When Alpine exists, you gotta think Deer Creek will come directly before or after.  Red Rocks 7.29-8.2.  I am sticking with the original dates that have been tossed around for months.  The only thing about the faux dates that are cool is that they are the same dates they played Red Rocks in 1996, perhaps another indication of fabrication.  The Gorge and Shoreline will also be on.

Here is what I will throw out there as guesses.  Phish will play MSG, whether it is part of summer tour or beforehand.  No doubt. Phish will visit Camden for two nights.  Trey loves Camden and the E Center is a Phish staple.  Great Woods will turn into two shows.  I bet they go back to Lakewood for a couple, and the Los Angeles area will get a stop.  I would imagine they will start June in the northeast, working their way down to Bonnaroo and then out to the Midwest, hitting Rothbury on the way and ending at Alpine or Deer Creek.  Then they’ll start back up at Red Rocks, head out west, and go either up or down the coast.  Perhaps they’ll throw a random show or two before Red Rocks to warm up- potentially Sandstone or Phoenix.  I would estimate we will see a summer slate of between 20 and 30 shows.  Anyhow, this is 100% pure conjecture.

Don’t believe anything until you see it up on Phish.com/tourdates!  Hopefully today will be the day.  It’s coming soon….

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ROSS GROWS ON A ROLLING STONE: The story of Trey’s new Ross Compressor made Rolling Stone.com!  Also, the mainstream mag is now reporting Phish rumors!?  Crazy, what’s next?  Phish reviews in Rolling Stone? I should get in touch.

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DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY:

6.28.95 Jones Beach, NY < LINK

I thought we’d be celebrating Phish’s return to Long Island today, so i uploaded one of their last appearances in the summer of 1995.  This show is packed full of your favorite songs, all played ferociously in vinatge ’95 style.  Enjoy this one, and hopefully you can listen to it in celebration of today’s tour announcement.

I: Axilla [Part II] > Foam, Fast Enough for You, Reba, Punch You in the Eye, Stash, Fluffhead, Chalk Dust Torture

II: Sample in a Jar, Poor Heart, Tweezer*> Gumbo, Sparkle, Suzy Greenberg, Harry Hood, Tweezer Reprise

E: Sweet Adeline, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

*With “Cannonball” (The Breeders) jam.

Just now you logged onto your computer, clicked your trusty Phish Thoughts bookmark and bang– now you are reading.  Maybe you’ll grab the show for download today, or perhaps you’ll delve into the archives and download many gems of years past.  There is always the “Google spreadsheet,” BitTorrent, or phishows.com to select virtually any show your heart desires.  Feeling ornery?  Hop over to Phantasy Tour to vent!  If you need a portal to all things Phishy, look no further than Gadiel’s legendary page or Scotty B.’s You Enjoy My Blog; for archives and setlists, click over to Phish.net.  Yup, the Internet has it all when it comes to Phish and our community was one of the first to utilize this great democratic tool to spread the word (and music) of our band.  These days, just log on and the entire Phish universe is at your fingertips.  But what was Phish life like before this crazy World Wide Web existed?  How the hell did we know what was going on?  Let’s reminisce.

Before Phish.com gave us the official low down of what was up, the band used their hilarious and now defunct newsletter, Doniac Schvice. Initially titled “The Phish Update,” the newsletter was divided into the informational and the absurd.  The Schvice’s sections included the official scoop for tour dates, mail order tickets and festival info, but also included the tongue-in-cheek mail in questions and answers, “Fish’s Forum,” and the abstractly humorous “Mike’s Corner.”  Always fun to read for anticipatory excitement or straight entertainment, the Schvice was the band’s way of disseminating information– “from the tongue to the Schvice.”  There was nothing like looking at the upcoming tour mapped on the centerfold of the newsletter as you plotted and schemed your personal course of action.  Turn the page, and you’d enter the land of the absurd via comical musings of the band members themselves, as their personalities saturated the paper– something noticeably buried in their cookie-cutter website of today.  The Schvice made the entire Phish experience more personal; you were a part of this special community who got these crazy newsletters delivered right to your door.  And each time you got one, you were psyched!

One of the primary shots of adrenaline that came from the Schvice was the Tickets-By-Mail order form.  Having to follow exact specifications to ensure your request was both received and filled, the ordering process became a quarterly ritual for fans.  A separate postal money order for each show and one for the seven dollar Fed Ex fee, a self-addressed stamped envelope, the correct postmark, a properly labeled envelope with the dates of the requested shows in the lower left hand corner; these were the facets of the game.  Then there were those who decorated their envelopes meticulously, hoping to dazzle the eyes of the ticket fillers.  The beauty of this paper-heavy system was that everyone nearly always got their tickets!  Aside from Halloween and New Year’s Eve, the largest suspense was where your tickets would be located.  Ahh, the days…

If the Schvice was the tool that got us where we needed to go, The Pharmer’s Almanac “Tour Extra”s handed out on every lot was the tool that kept us abreast along the way.  Providing setlists and updates from the current tour, these “Extras” allowed anyone who just hopped on, to understand the context of the show they were about to see.  With the knowledge of what had been played over the tour, fans could better predict and guess what songs might be unveiled on the current night. Meanwhile, the Tour Extras helped fans keep track of what shows they’d seen and what shows they wanted to get on tape.  With advertisements for like-minded businesses and short articles of interest, the Tour Extras became a trusted source of information in the scene.  Thanks to Almanac co-founders Andy Bernstein and Larry Chasnoff, we were handed a new update every time we stepped out of our car on lot. Much like their book, the Tour Extra looked at Phish through the lens of a fan, keeping us updated on all the nerdy things we love.

Once shows were over, we all wanted the tapes!  Yet, without BitTorrent, LivePhish downloads or FTP technology, it was every man for themselves.  There was no listening to the show 24 hours later unless you taped it yourself.  Before we could shoot our tape lists across the nation via dial-up modems, first we were relegated to snail mail.  One of the main pre-Internet sources of tape trading was the back of Relix magazine where fans posted “classifieds” offering printed out tape lists and B & P (blanks and postage) for freshly spun analogs.  Tapers, the cornerstone of the trading community, were the ones to get the tapes out there and then we all spun generation after generation of copies.  One friend would simply approach tapers after shows, asking for their name and address to facilitate a B & P situation.  “Hey man, d’you get a tape of that?”  When successful, this was by far the most efficient way of procuring those sought after grey Maxells.

With every rumor, piece of information, and performance available at the click of a mouse today, it’s hard to remember the quaint paper-based era of the early to mid-’90’s.  With nothing but our own resourcefulness, we navigated the Phish scene, scored tickets, and hit the road– destiny unbound.  Believe it or not, all of this coordination happened not only without the computer, but even without cell phones!  How we ever found each other, I’ll never know.  But it did happen, and it was good.

What are your memories of “back then?”  Respond in Comments below!

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DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY:

6.30.99 Sandstone Pavilion, Bonner Springs, KS RMSTR < LINK

One of the best tour openers of the modern era, Phish annihilated Bonner Springs’ open-air amphitheatre to kick off the countdown to 2000.  With two sets of phenomenal improv, this night set the tone for what would be a legendary summer.  Thanks to Paul Gwynne Smith, we now have a spectacular sounding copy of this superb evening.  Wasting no time whatsoever, the band opened the tour with a 20+ minute standout excursion of “Bathtub Gin.”  Following up the statement-making opener, Phish threw down hot first set versions of “Tube,” “Maze,” and “Limb By Limb.”

One of history’s most colossal “Free”s came out of the second set opening, “Squirming Coil.”  With the stage flooded in red smoke, Phish created a militant incarnation of the jam that has stood the test of time.  A great summer combo of “Swept Away > Steep > Piper” continued the momentum, while the set came to a dark close with the debut of “My Left Toe” oozing out of “Bug” and leading into “Stash.”  Again, these are single song downloads, so create a folder and have at it!

I: Bathtub Gin, Farmhouse, Tube, Horn, Get Back On The Train, Maze, Limb by Limb, Golgi Apparatus

II: The Squirming Coil > Free, Birds of a Feather, Simple > Swept Away > Steep > Piper, Bug > My Left Toe, Stash

E: Bouncing Around the Room, Sample in a Jar