As a student of the University of Vermont during the late 90's / early 2000's, there were a few guarantees. You were guaranteed to see naked people running through shows at Slade Hall. You were guaranteed to score a nice bag of weed in front of City Hall in the park. It was also guaranteed that Ween would play their halloween show in Burlington.

For those paying attention, you know what's up right now with Phish. For those not, they are in the mist of one of the best stretches of shows that they have put together since returning in 2009 from their break up in 2004. 

While Phish is absolutely destroying the American Southeast right now with two back to back awesome shows that saw 2nd sets perfectly bookened by the best jams and energy of this tour, there's also this great video footage that was recently posted from their high energetic performance in LA at the Forum. 

Patience has been a defining way to describe how Phish, and especially Trey, have played in recent years. A far cry from the early to mid-90's when it was often the Trey show with firey licks galore. While the latter can still take place, especially at those specific peak moments, the majortiy of the time jams have a lot more open space in front of them, leaving room for lots of interpretation. With Trey listening to and crafting a style similar to that of Jerry Garcia in preparation for the Fare Thee Well shows this past July, the patience has gotten even more prominent and more importantly, helped lead to this fantastic section of music from the third night of the Summer tour. Watch the official video below of the Twist > Light jam and it's advised to listen with headphones with your eyes closed. 

Waking up the blog a bit with a quick but sweet post of the Cities slow groove with worm riding and all. Sorry all you non-Spotify users for the stream embed.

I've had a running playlist on Youtube of all the amazing footage of live Phish and it was getting to the point where it needed to be reorganized. I thought about bucketing by seasonal tour (winter, spring, summer, fall) but I eventually went with the eras (1.0, 2.0, 3.0). I"d love to further nest these playlists by seasonal tour but beggars can't be choosers. 

[Photo Credit: Joshua Timmermans]

Not too much of a shocker as the Vermont foursome have spent the past four years in the cold, dark depths of the northeast winter for their NYE bash so a trip south is a much deserved option. This will be their third time playing the America Airlines Arena for their NYE run with the first taking place during a dark period in the bands history in 2003 and the most recent taking place during a very happy time period in 2009, their comeback year.

Phish has decided to make their final show of the summer tour before the annual throwdown in Commerce City, Colorado (AKA Dick's) a free live webcast. It's fun to write about the show in the moment, especially from ones couch. Much like being at the show, you may hear things differently tnen when you play it back and have more time to critique the nuiances of the jams. So to celebrate this fantastic tour and the free webcast, it's a play by play session tonight here at phishfork.

Besides the obvious songs getting a lot of attention this tour - Harry Hood, Chalk Dust, DWD - Phish has also given a few other classics a well deserved pat on the back for being who they are all these years. While many fans who follow there every move are fully aware of these stand outs, thought it made sense to dedicate a post to these worthy adversaries of the classic jam revival. 

As noted when they posted the Summer Tour dates, there are no east coast dates for this fall tour. So if you are a west coaster you are pumped. If you are an east coaster, well, you aren't happy. 

[Photo credit: Neal Casal]

This is a cool sneak peek video into the recording studio of Richard Swift as Marco records his new album, out September 6th on Royal Potato Family. Looks like they had a ton of fun recording this album. definitely cool to see Marco singing. There's a point in this recording where he looks like he forgets where he was suppose to come in with the vocals in this rhythmically vibrant track. It's a funny moment it seems as a cut to Swift shows him cracking up at what is presumably the same moment. 

By now you've seen the schematic jam maps created by Mike Hamad. It all started during the Tahoe Tweezer last summer. Mike felt compelled to get out his pen and paper and visulize what he was listening to. For Mike, being a student of music, visualizing meant writing out time signature and key changes along with fun arrows and other funky images along the way to recreate the feeling he had while listening in the moment. 

This list is in order by show and not by best jam. Here are the highlights from each show so far. List subject to change as we dig deeper into the recordings.

These shows reminded me of the importance atmosophere plays and how you walk away feeling about a show and also how personal a show can be. We all have our opinions and that's one of the reasons this fanbase has stayed so strong over the bands 30 year history. 

I know, I know, let the Grateful Dead analogies go man. But it's hard to deny the similarities in the two bands when it comes to their history with album releases versus their live performances. There's just no comparison and most fans of the two bands see (or rather saw in case of the Dead) the albums as just a launching pad for new ideas to be introduced during the multitude of live performances. Remember, you are talking about fans who go to an average of 5 shows per tour, often back to back. So repetition is not necessarily our thing. 

By now I'm sure you've seen the 2014 summer tour We're excited to see the return of The Mann Music Center to the list. It'll be nearly 19 years since the last time they played at this fun little tucked away venue just outside of Philadelphia. My first show was in 1996 so I just missed this venue by a year but growing up just outside of Philadelphia I saw many summer shows and was always bummed Phish had graduated to the bigger Camden amphitheatre just over the Ben Franklin bridge. For one it's a more intimate venue then Camden but more importantly it's only about a 15 minute drive from my home town. dates. If not, go check them out. 

There was a time when Phish wouldn't think twice about booking shows around the holidays, leaving only a few waking hours to spend with friends and family. While it wasn't that they didn't care about family in the early days, their priorities were clearly geared towards their music and the growing scene that surrounded them at that time. A scene that ultimately drove the band to break up in 2004. 

There have been some great New Years Eve runs in Phish's history. Most would argue the best and most memorable run was Big Cypress. There are many aspects to this run that make it special, such as the all night set that saw some of the most creative playing from the fouresome up till that point in their career. But one such attribute that came to mind while watching the live Youtube footage of the first set from day one was just how awesome they sounded out of the gate. 

Often the first night of a new years run is not given much credit among fans as producing great shows. Some might suggest that the typical break between their fall tour and the NYE run is a contibutor to this lack of momentum that seems to be prevelant in NYE opening shows. A warm up of sorts. A theory that got even stronger during the 2011 run where they took the entire fall off. Some even calling it one of the worst NYE runs ever. But that being said, there are plenty of highlights to pull from opening nights in years past, however, none come out firing quite like Big Cyrpess.

When I started phishfork I started it mainly because I was receiving complaints from the few followers I have over at hip2besquare.net. I started hip2besquare in 2005 and it was during my post-Phish musical phase. The reality is my post-Phish musical phase started some where around 2000 / 2001 when the band went on their first hiatus. Like many fans and even some of the band members, Big Cypress was a bit of a pinnacle and since it seemed like Phish had hit their peak, I started to explore outside of the jam scene. It started with Wilco, Flaming Lips and Yo La Tengo and quickly spread to Malkmus (and Pavement) then to bands like Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. The next thing you knew I was surrounded by Brooklyn hipsters at just about every show I attended.

As I dig back into the Fall 2013 tour catalog, an interesting thing came to light. Out of all of the great Tweezer and Carini jams that have been thrown out there, the song that has me coming back for more and more is Twist. The two specific versions that stand out are Glen Falls and Atlantic City. 

As with some of the summer streams, I do my best to capture some of the nights moments while sitting on my couch - #couchtour for those of you on Twitter. I missed last night but if you haven't checked it out, it is highly recommended to listen to the Carini. Lots going on in that puppy. 

It's no secret, Phish is perhaps the most successful cover band on the road today. Whether it be playing full albums back to back like they do at their Halloween shows (White Album, Remain in the Light, Loaded, etc.) or adopting a cover as one of their own (Also Sprach Zarathustra, Rock n Roll, Crosseyed n Painless), laying covers is part of their DNA. They take pride in being able to show respect to the bands that have inspired and continue do so throughout their career.

Lets see if I can keep this thing up. If you missed the first Phish TweetMix, check it out here. 

Set 1: Ghost, NICU, Icculus, Heavy Things, Theme From the Bottom > Esther, The Moma Dance > Ocelot, Stash, Lawn Boy, Limb By Limb, Easy To Slip (Little Feat)

When one heard Phish would be returning after canceling due to epic rainfall in Toronto, the die hard fan in all of us was saying, "how much are flights to Toronto in a couple of weeks"? The band has a tendency to throw down when they know a show may be under attended. Since the original date was canceled and the proximity of the following show (Washington state) is quite a ways away, one had to believe that this would not be highly attended by most touring fans. 

Set 1: Dinner and a Movie, AC/DC Bag, Maze, Mound, Funky Bitch, Bathtub Gin, Wilson, Water in the Sky, Boogie on Reggae Women

While mining the Phish community online (thanks to HubSpot's new monitoring app in the Social Inbox), I pulled out some tasty selections that you all have offered up as suggested listenings and I compiled my favorites below in no particular order. Enjoy. Hope it helps you get through the work week.

A great mix of Japan 2000 tour highlights gets you pumped for the pending summer tour. Thanks to Masaya Hal for compiling the playlist. The Tweezer to open the mix is taken from the 6/9 show and is worth the price of streaming admission. The segues between songs are well played to boot. Enjoy... 

In the "Best Evah? - Series" we throw out to you suggestoins on some of the best evah versions of jams, songs, shows., etc. We all know how much we love to debate on what is the best show, song, jam in this community so hopefully this just adds more fuel to our collective fire.  

Suzy Greenberg Jam from Daien Lake, NY (9/14/2011)

The above is just the jam that leaks out of the end of Suzy proper from this 2k show. This was a classic Oh Kee Pah -> Suzy pairing and was the closer for a very good set indeed. 

For those that want to hear the Suzy that came before this jam, go here. It's certainly worth listening to, if nothing more then to get amped up for the above jam. There's some good Page and Fishman breakdowns in this version and the funky theme at times sets the tone for what is to come.

We started this b-sides series a few weeks back in preparation for the upcoming summer tour. So many gems have been produced across the northern borders and Toronto is certainly no stranger to a throwdown party.

[Stream Courtesy of PhishTracks.com - http://www.phishtracks.com/shows/1998-08-15]

Download this show (link sourced from The Spreadsheet)

Set 1: Mike's Song > Simple > Beauty of My Dreams, Roggae, Split Open and Melt,Poor Heart, The Moma Dance, Divided Sky, Water in the Sky > Funky Bitch >Cities > Weekapaug Groove

For those who came from Vernon Downs got hit with repeats - Mike's -> Simple (of course Weekapaug later) and Roggae. But when it comes to these festivals you have to go in knowing that the band hits the refresh button. Besides, it's Mike's -> Simple and in 98 this was a classic paring that always led to good times. This particular version stays within boundaries as both the Mike's and Simple jams remain true to form. 

[Stream provided by www.phishtracks.com]

Recently released on DVD, this was the second trip to this Pittsburgh area amphitheater for the band. Their first visit almost exactly one year ago and it has been a staple almost every tour since. Up till this point the last two shows clearly set the bar high for new cover songs. As mentioned earlier, this was the summer tour full of new covers played every night by the band. The question is, how can you top Beastie Boys and the Grateful Dead? You could...

Download Show (link sourced from The Spreadsheet)

Download the "Fee" from this show for free from LivePhish.com

On the heels of an exceptional Merriweather show with an encore that sent ripples throughout the Phish world, they decided to keep the crazy cover bust outs going. The death of Jerry Garcia was still a big dark cloud for many fans within the Phish community and it was no secret that it was the anniversary of his death - hint hint. 

Download Show (link sourced from The Spreadsheet)

[Stream provided by www.phishtracks.com]

[Stream provided by www.phishtracks.com]

From the psychedelia  spacey, rocker era that mostly sums up the style of show I saw first with 12-28-96, to the funkadelic world that was the fall 97 tour. Often cited as the "Phish Destroys America" tour and said to be one of the best, if not the best, tour they ever put together by the band (this past summer tour is creeping). 

Thanks to Youtuber, Tyler Penn, we have a nice video with high quality audio to share along with this recap. Great view for checking out how Kuroda ran the light shows back then to boot.

Since it's been almost 16 years since that very night, it's hard to give a review from my "in person" perspective so this review will be primarily based on a re-listen thanks to the recording made available by The Spreadsheet. In fact, unless otherwise noted, these reviews stem primarily from downloads that you can find at this impressive collection put together by Kevin Hoy (@hoydog23). For your streaming pleasure, we'll be using the YouTube uploads courtesy of The Aquarium. 

Download Show (link sourced from The Spreadsheet)