Mr. Miner's Phish Thoughts

What a weekend! Capped with an incredibly exciting Super Bowl, these last few days have been a roller coaster ride of Phish ticket mania.  With all tickets now sold, we may be seeing West Coast dates before too long.  Imagine what will happen to Live Nation’s site when Red Rocks goes on sale?  I don’t even want to.  Many of the frustrations we faced with their ticketing system are documented for their CEO here.  Nonetheless, as we all try to position ourselves for these summer shows, it is all finally sinking in- Phish is happening…

…For those paying attention (I wasn’t), there was a Hampton re-release right after the Super Bowl ended.  A ticketless friend of mine pulled two for each night in six separate transactions, completely reversing his plans for the first week of March!  Maybe some of you scored too, but by the time I heard, there was nothing left.  This may continue to happen.  Be alert…

…Phish seems to be way under-priced, causing scalpers to drool at the profit margin they can make on our band and flock like vultures to the tickets.  While other bands of their stature use tiered ticket structures, charging well over $100 for the best seats, Phish should be respected for giving the people who actually get to buy tickets a real bargain.  But the increasing number of fans who have been forced to scalp from brokers have had to cough up an amount of money that much closer represents Phish’s “market value.”  It is becoming increasingly apparent that Phish’s “market value” today is between $100 and $400 dollars depending on the size of the venue and the quality of seat.  As someone on this comment board brought up over the weekend, would it help if Phish tickets cost $100, therefore decreasing the profit margin to be made by scalpers?  Maybe this is one step, albeit counter-intuitive, to reducing broker interference with the Phish scene.  If there isn’t enough money to be made, maybe they will go elsewhere?  Maybe not…

…People in Ashvelle got screwed on Friday. After being told that 400 tickets would be sold at the Civic Center, over 150 people waited for over a day to score these tickets.  The fans even organized their own list of names so people didn’t need to remain lined up, creating a mini-Phish lot party.  Yet when 10 am Friday came, an “error” in the Ticketmaster computer system released the 400 tickets that were to be held for Asheville’s box office, resulting in only twenty locals scoring stubs for the summer’s second smallest show.  Sorry Asheville people, that sucks…

…Let’s hear it for www.knoxvilletickets.com!  Out of the four ticket systems used for tickets this weekend, Knoxville’s seemed  by far the most efficient.  Granted they probably weren’t hit with nearly the traffic of Live Nation or St. Louis’ Metrotix, but the system worked smoothly.  I looked for Knoxville on Live Nation before realizing they were being sold elsewhere.  Quickly logging onto knoxvilletickets.com, I was automatically queued and the screen refreshed every 60 seconds, like Metrotix did for The Fox.  However, unlike Metrotix where I never saw another screen, I was quickly brought into the site, pulled up a 100 level after searching for a floor ticket twice, and checked out without hassle.  Compared to all my other attempts this weekend, this was a breeze…

…Hampton is now officially one month away! What once seemed like an eternity has been condensed to only four weeks of waiting.  What seemed like fantasy is now an impending reality!  Using the future tense to predict what might happen will soon be out the window, as we will be talking about what Phish is doing on a nightly basis.  There couldn’t be a more fitting venue than Hampton to launch round three; with a purely GA free for all, things will be insane and explosive to say the least.  People have referenced the last comeback, saying these Hampton shows will merely be sloppy warm-ups.  And while I agree that Summer will be a different story when all is said and done, I have a feeling these first three shows are gonna’ be a hell of a lot different from the last return.  I’m not going on anything but intuition, but it just feels different- way different…

…I guess Phish 3.0 is all about trading tickets online.  In a flurry like nothing I’ve ever seen, fans have been wheeling and dealing all over the web, trading, selling, and scoring any and all tickets they need.  I like it; it’s very democratic.  While I do believe you can get tickets at shows, it is always nicer to have yours beforehand, and it seems like more fans are trying to do that.  This can only be a good thing.  I am trying to devise a tool to facilitate this exchange. Stay tuned…

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DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY:

7.24.98 Woodlands Pavilion, Houston, TX SBD < LINK

Today we have a leaked SBD of a dark-horse Summer ’98 show.  The second set starts off with the funkalicious combo of “Wolfman’s > 2001,”  before taking an abrupt left turn into the rare “Scent of a Mule.”  A set-ending “Slave,” “Chalk Dust” one-two punch, punctuated a fine night in Texas.  The first set contained the summer’s omnipresent “Moma Dance” and psychedelic segments of improv in “Stash” and “Taste.” Enjoy the SBD!

I: The Moma Dance, Runaway Jim, Bouncing Around The Room, Stash, My Soul, Taste, Golgi Apparatus, Loving Cup

II: Wolfman’s Brother > Also Sprach Zarathustra > Scent of a Mule > Ha Ha Ha > Scent of a Mule, Slave to the Traffic Light, Chalkdust Torture.

E: Character Zero

Tags: Culture, Summer '09

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 3:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.