When the Live Phish Series was announced, I was in university and didn't have a lot of money to buy things that's not food. So I told myself I'll never get that collection.
So I watched every batch appearing on Dry Goods, dreaming of the "innovative LP packaging includes sleeves". I browsed furiously the Live Phish web site to find all the funny hidden animations in the covers. I pictured myself holding the showcase organizer and using it like a "bag" to hold my stuff in the university.
Many years have passed and some volumes started to become unavailable in the official Phish web store. It was 2006 and I decided to buy them before it got worst.
So on the 25th may 2006 I placed maybe my biggest order on a website. I got all the volumes still available with sleeves (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18 and 20) and a showcase organizer. The grand total was $347.30 (including $47.60 for shipping and a 10% reduction thank to a coupon I got with the 2003 livephish cds). I received the BIG parcel some weeks later in my office (actualy, I had to go to the post office to get my package because it was a little damage). Hopefully, none of the items was damage (it won't be always the case, we'll see that later) but I face another strange problem. Some of the sleeves in the "innovative LP packaging" had some strange "glue" in them. It was like the plastic cover had melted a little. I had to clean the CDs before listen to them and one booklet had a little crush because of that. But I was so glad I didn't care. I took the train later that day with my Phish organizer with 15 volumes of Live Phish.
My goal from that day is to find the missing volumes. I actually bought #19 on a website and received it before the big batch. Unformtunatly, it wasn't the "innovative LP packaging" but the standard 2CD jewel case (the lump). I bought Volumes 1, 10, 13 on eBay. I found myself with 2 #1 because the first I ordered didn't come with the booklet. I might do a little contest on this site someday to have it won by someone.
I still have to find #17 (the hole) and #19 with sleeves to have a complete collection. So if you can hook me up...
The latter Live Phish CDs don't have a big story like the original 20 volumes. I bought them as they were released. I'm not really fond of the cardboard ecolo packaging without any picture but the music is good so...
Oh yes there is a story ! I was about to forget the Island Tour crush !
When it was announced it was difficult not to buy them right away. Indeed, one of the CDs contains what maybe is my prefered improv in Phishtory : the Roses are Free jam. Anyway I finally pre-order the full batch and waited it patiently to come. When I finally received the CDs, they were sent from abroad in a regular bubble enveloppe. Needless to say, I got them crushed. 3 of the 4 boxes where heavily damaged, causing some cover sleeves to be torn. None of the CD had a crunch though but I was really disappointed.
So I took some pictures of the crushed cases and wrote a big eMail to Dry Goods customer service. I received an answer less that an hour later asking me which of the 4 cases were damaged so that they could them new ones at once. I answered back, asking if I had to send back the crushed ones and they told me not to.
Less than a week later, I received the 3 shows heavily protected in a bigger box. It was the good old time when Dry Goods wasn't managed by Music Today... But more about that later...
