While I was reading Phish Thoughts the other day, I came across a post about the Victor Disk, a collection of recordings from 2002 before the band played their first reunion shows after the hiatus. After having listened to it several times now, I have to say, this is just great. This is why I love Phish. If all they did was stuff like this from now on, I’d be a happy camper. They are so good at just settling in and jamming it out with eachother, who needs things like structure and lyrics. Just give me endless Phishy improv and it’s all good.
Ok, I remember the first time Phish came back. It was hard to get tickets to MSG and Hampton, but the rest of the tour wasn’t a big deal from what I remember. There certainly wasn’t all this despair about not getting tickets and scalpers and such. I mean there are always scalpers, but I just don’t remember it being like this last time. So what’s changed?
Well, for one, last time we knew it was just a hiatus. They were expected to come back at some point, it was only a matter of when. This time, we thought they were done, finished, end of the road. Of course we all hoped and prayed, but really it was always a distant hope.
Back then we only had to wait a little over two years. This time it’s been over four years, so everybody is really jonesing for the Phish! I was honestly shocked at how quickly the summer tour sold out, especially the larger venues. I figured Alpine would stick around for awhile, but no such luck.
So what does it all mean? Is this how it’s gonna be for Phish 3.0? I sure hope not. The second time around, it was nice knowing you could slack on tickets and still see the shows you wanted to go to. I’m hoping once the first year of their return has passed, things will settle and we’ll get back to normal. Whenever the West Coast run is announced we’ll probably have to deal with the same crap, but we’ll see. Whenever you have limited supply and great demand, you get high prices. Damn economic theory is screwing us on this one!
I had resigned myself to not going to Hampton, and I was ok with it. Tickets sold out super fast, I did all I could, and I certainly wasn’t going to pay some scalping bastard. Yep, I had resigned myself to sitting this one out, but a chance conversation with a good friend rekindled the hope, and low and behold, we scored tickets for the Sunday night show.
We even found incredibly cheap plane tickets, which could have been a dealbreaker. So we’re going to the show, and we couldn’t be more excited. Each day brings the reality closer, and the energy levels continue to rise in anticipation of what we thought we’d never see again.