Bonnaroo x 2 !
As I logged on to Bonnaroo.com at 9pm to confirm what we all expected, the splash page video presented a funky logo with the “Tweezer” melody as the first notes I heard! Yes, folks, after much speculation and arguments both for and against, Phish will, in fact, be playing Bonnaroo. The band will headline the US’s largest summer festival in Manchester, TN, playing three sets over two nights. Sharing a stage with such acts as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, The Beastie Boys, Snoop Dogg, David Byrne, and Nine Inch Nails, Phish will bring their own unique flavor to the colossal festival of over 100,000 people. Weird? Most definitely. Exciting? Hell, yes!
Phish is the only band playing two shows over the four nights, clearly taking the largest spotlight at the festival, even if The Boss is listed before them on the artists page. The festival gave them this nod by opening their 2009 announcement with the freakin’ “Tweezer” melody. The way I see it, with the magnitude of this festival, these shows are going to blow up huge! Phish are the masters of playing to their surroundings. Whether it was The Gorge, a small European club, MSG, or Big Cypress, the band always knew how to match their music to the mood. Now, for a moment, imagine the mood at the massive site of Bonnaroo, overflowing with people of all ages and the biggest names in the music business. With a stage the size of a small island under the dark night sky, Phish will step to the mic and rip the place apart. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, I have a gut feeling that these will be super-sized Phish affairs with massive open-air jams and setlists that you fantasize about. But hey, that’s just one guy’s opinion.
There are divergent schools of thought on these shows. Some propose that Phish will attempt to be more accessible to the mainstream audience by focusing on succinct jamming and playing more “songs” that are palatable to the masses. Phish won’t go too deep in front of an audience that may never have heard them before, this theory goes. Dig into a twenty-minute psychedelic “Stash,” and many teenagers could be heading for the refreshment stand. Play a variety of different songs, mix in a few huge dance jams and everyone will rage. While this is a valid point of view, over the course of a two-set performance and a late night set on different nights, Phish will have plenty of time to cater to everyone. There will be more than a few Phish psychonauts there after all, and the band knows that.
Regardless of what happens on stage, the experience of moving from the intimacy of the mountains in Asheville to the largest clusterfuck east of the Mississippi, then directly into the ornate theatre of The Fabulous Fox will be a surreal week. The overwhelming, yet obvious, thing about Bonnaroo is that it will not be a Phish fest. When the Phish show ends, there will be other bands and DJs playing throughout the night and day. With an incredibly diverse crowd, not limited to the generally like-minded folk that congregate at Phish shows, this will be one of the most bizarre trips yet. Some may be turned off by the less-than-pure Phish environment, however, going into the festival knowing this, I think it will be a fascinating social study in the state of the scene today.
Regardless of whether you think this is the worst decision that Phish has ever made, or the best one, it’s happening. With Knoxville on the 10th and The Fox on the 16th, there are five “off” days for those not wanting to attend Bonnaro0- enough time to check out the Smoky Mountains if you’re on tour; enough time to fly home and back to Deer Creek or Star Lake if you’re not. My point? Don’t complain about Bonnaroo; either go or don’t go, it’s that simple. Suffice it to say, they will be two of the more interesting Phish sets of the summer for so many reasons. And somehow I don’t think the music will disappoint.
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PHISH THOUGHTS TICKET EXCHANGE: Big news in the world of Phish Thoughts! With the help of a couple Phish Thoughts community members, “AlexanderK” and “Mitch,” we are about to launch an official web-based ticket trading board! Let me explain.
First, you will be brought to a “Dashboard” where you will click on any show’s tab along the bottom of the page, for example “6/16 Fox.” It will then bring you to a show-specific page that looks like a spread sheet split into two sides: “I Need Tickets” and “I Have Tickets.” You will indicate your “Name,” “Phish Thoughts Screen Name,” “Tickets I Have to Trade/Sell” and preference; “Lawn,” “Pavilion,” or “Any.” This way you can locate the people who have the tickets you need easily without reading down hundreds of posts! You will even have a place to indicate if you need a ride to any show. Today we are in Beta testing, and can accomodate about 50 users. If you want to be one of these first 50 people to have easy access to the tickets you may need, send please email ticketexchange@phishthoughts.com with “Beta Request” in the subject line and your Phish Thoughts Screen Name as the text.
There are a few rules that will be re-posted when this goes live. What you do on the site is tracked, and any violation of the following will have you removed and banned- no questions asked:
1) No altering the “Dashboard” except for “Suggestions.”
2) No altering entries from other users. (That includes changing cells and moving entries up and down in the list.)
3) No harassing other users of the site via email.
This should be great community resource, and a much more effcient way of scoring tickets from each other now and into the future. Note: Please only post tickets you are 100% sure that you have, and that you are 100% willing to part with! Also, make sure you enter your information on the correct side of the board corresponding to “Need” or “Have.”
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DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY:
7.31.97 Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA < LINK
With West Coast dates coming at some point not too far off, let’s look at some Bay Area Phish history from the Summer of ’97. Phish played a blistering show at The Grateful Dead’s old home, featuring adventurous jams out of “Runaway Jim” and “Mike’s.” Other highlights include a show-opening “Ghost,” the “YEM” and a “Weekapaug” laced with “Happy Birthday” for Jerry Garcia, himself. Get ready Shoreline, we’re coming back!
I: Ghost > Ya Mar, Dogs Stole Things, Limb By Limb, Dirt, Maze, Glide, I Saw It Again, You Enjoy Myself
II: Runaway Jim > When the Circus Comes, Vultures, McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters > Mike’s Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove^
E: Cinnamon Girl
^Trey thanks Bill Graham Productions and the Phish crew, talks about keeping the spirit of Jerry Garcia alive through music, and wishes a Happy Birthday to Jerry Garcia. Jerry’s birthday was the next day.
Tags: Summer '09
Well I’m signing off for tonight. Great talks everyone and R1, no hard feelings. Talk to you all tomorrow.
7/31/97!! One of my all time favorites. Ghost, Yamar, Limb, Maze, Saw it Again YEM all in top ’97 form! The Mosterous Jim and the vultures….so sick
@cowfunk: got my tickets in the mail yesterday from tickets unlimited. I ordered them overnight. They came damn fast.
i’d like to help that one guy above stub down, buy my knoxville tix are level 300! just as long as i’m in the building i’ll be just phine!
i also goy my boston ticket in the mail today! they came faster than i expected.
I might not be able to make it up to boston, so if someone has an asheville they’d like to trade for a boston pavillion…please drop me a line on here!
For those of you interested in going to Bonnaroo visit http://www.inforoo.org. Those boards will have the answers to just about any Bonnaroo question you may have. BTW I discovered Phish Thoughts because someone posted a link to here a while back. Thanks Mr. Miner.
I just emailed Bill Pascrell thanking him for his attention to the tn debacle. YAY! way to go contact for showing me this.
Anybody know the rap tune coming out of Tweezer?
speakimg of all the greatness and kind, hip people who come out of NJ the real question is will Bruce and the E street band have some sort of jam session with phish … btw the two you got trey, page, bruce, steven, etc all Jersey boys it’ll be a celebration of the New Jersey in the TN countryside … i hope the Congressman is there, if so I want to thank him for finally standing up to the TM machine … now, what does everyone really think about the garden state
Trey is orginally from texas man
and how much of Texas has he ever revealed about himself or wrote about in his songs, it’s many a Jersey inspired youth experience… Tom Marshall is from Flemington NJ, where Trey went to grade school, and latter Princeton Country Day, his dad worked for the SAT service HQ’d in Princeton and his mom at Sesame Street… Is the Children’s Television Workshop out of the Dallas area??? Get back to me on that one … You could say Fishman is from Philly cause he was born their, but no one says that do they, he’s from Syracuse right …. rock on caman,
haah man.. all i was saying is that he was orginally from texas..no was arguing his NJ cred
^@ bryant…. i’d be more excited if King Sunny Ade either came out and played with phish or if trey came out with king sunny’s band. His afro-trance was a major influence on Trey.
The boss is great and is band is spectacular, but its always the same show everytime.
the boss does not play the same show every time…recognize
has anyone bought tickets yet today?
^ got mine 🙂
you better be chillin’ with me at the roo’ then man!
how fast will bonnaroo sell out?
^^ looks like pretty soon. All of the lower priced tickets are gone– only the $250 variety….
SHIT……
i cant but tickets… i can.. but.. i can’t.. long story..
two best bar bands of their time, there leaders separated by maybe 40 miles in Central New Jersey and maybe 15 years in age … Both are infamous for 4 hour shows …. My perspective – both groups hold to each other in rock history … In the 80’s when bruce and his band were the only rock band with a large prescence to current day Phish who overtime grew to a point where 100,000 people would go to the Everglades to see a garage band who told crazy stories, and jammed for 20 mins a song … both have been panned by the music industry for years, while the fact remains that one group is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and another will be there soon … so it will be quite special to maybe see them meet on stage at Boneroo
Mr Miner!
I couldn’t have described my thoughts on phish playin roo any better than u did. A bunch of my buddies are booing down the idea, but i got my tic. I need someone 2 rock those shows with. Maybe I could meet up with ya there. Biggest Phish phan you’ll ever meet. Send me an email and let me know if I can meet up with the notorious Mr Miner.
Evan
The tweezer on the site takes me back to atlanta 2000 with the deep nasty tweezer that they played there, or the in and out tweezer in atlanta ’93. Phish likes to bring the heat to the south so these shows should be bad ass.