What dreams are made of

by Yome NetSan 11. August 2013

After the worst nightmare, I had the craziest dream come true.

Yesterday, after being laught at at work because of my lack of luck, I e-mailed TicketMaster to see if we can work something out for my Reading order. I asked for either a (partial) refund, a transfert to someone else's account, the ability to ship the ticket to someone in the US or for someone else to come retrieve it at the venue. The answer came later that day : the only option would be a refund of the face price and the "will call" option but only if the venue accept it. They made the request and I'll have to wait for the answer.

Meanwhile, I tried to find tickets for the Atlantic City run. I made a thread on phish.net. Another thread amoung all the other "ISO AC" threads from fans left over by the TicketMaster website. I add myself in a spreadsheet gathering all the fans who need tickets. I had a private message from a nice fan who has contact me before the public sale and who might has an extra for Halloween night. My new friend from Geneva also failed on TM for Halloween but bought his 3-day pass on Stubhub. I finaly wrote an e-mail which was like a big gamble, with very low hope it might give any positive result.

About 25 minutes later I got this answer :

I'll get you access to purchase a 3 day pass for AC. No worries. I'll set that up later today.

Thanks for staying with Phish over the years.

Wait a minute... WHAT ?!

I guess I'm the luckiest man in the world right now. Later that evening, I received another e-mail this a link to my dream.

In a time span of 24 hours, I went through all the emotional phases : stress, happyness, more stress, sadness, frustration, more happyness !

I don't know yet if my first show will be Reading or Halloween but I'll see my first Phish show in october 2013 !!

Worst than my worst nightmare

by Yome NetSan 8. August 2013

I knew it wouldn't be easy. After losing the lottery, I was getting ready for the public sale this thursday. I read a lot of pieces of advice from several forums and a good link given by Holger.

My TicketMaster account was ready with all the informations saved. I stayed at work later to be before a computer by 18 PM.

To "train" myself with the process, I logged at 17PM and tried to score a ticket for Reading, the show right before Halloween, on the 29th.
Last week, I toyed with the idea of going to this show too on my way to Atlantic City but the timing wasn't right with my Morocco trip and the flights to the USA.
After 10 minutes of "High demand! No match!" I'm finally offered 100 section seats, most of them behind the stage ! I'm still hiting the "search" button until I found General Admission floor tickets 15 minutes later. That's a good thing I tried before the Atlantic Run. I realized that I can have others tickets than the first offered.
I follow the process to see what's next, if I can get to the end and so on. And so I clicked one more time... and found myself too far than I thought.

I just bought my first Phish ticket.

But I'll have to go myself to the venue on the day of the show with my ID and the credit card to get it ! As an international buyer, I can't have the ticket printed or shipped to France ! And then I realize that I have a non-refundable ticket to a show I can't attend and I can't sell it because I can't go to the venue to retrieve it !

And then 18 PM arrive.

I click on the link for the 3-days pass, enter the quantity (just 1, I'm not greedy), select GA Floor and hit "Find Tickets".

And I waited...
And I waited...

20 minutes later, the "countdown" has already showed me "Please wait 15 minutes", "14 minutes", back to "15 minutes", "7", "4", "15", "3"... That's rather random if you ask me !

40 minutes later, after trying on the computer and on my phone at the same time (with the mobile site, not the application because it can't be installed on a french phone !)

A few minutes later, the Twitter account announced that the run was SOLD OUT.

 

 

 

How bittersweet. I paid a ticket that I won't ever see and didn't get the ones I wanted.

My options now are trying to get the AC tickets from extras. But let's see on Stubhub, the prices are insane.
I might find a fellow fan on phish.net but I'm not the only one who wants tickets.
I can do like this japanese fan who'll fly to the show and plan on finding tickets at the venue. I can't take that risk.
I can go to the Reading show only but that would be far too expensive for only one show.

I guess I fail at Phish.

No luck...

by Yome NetSan 7. August 2013

After spending all of yesterday checking my bank account every 10 minutes, I finally got the bad news with an email this morning : I didn't won the lottery. So I don't have tickets yet. My next move will be the public sale on thursday 12AM EST at TicketMaster. That's 18PM in France, a time when i'm usualy at the station, waiting for my train after my day job... I'll have to stay late at work or come back home very early.

Meanwhile, I got e-mails from two french speaking fans in less than 24 hours thanks to my website ! The first one is a french guy living in Toronto and the second is living in Geneva, Switzerland. Maybe will work things out to have their Phish-related stories on the blog and get tickets for Atlantic City...

Will 2013 be finally THE year ?

by Yome NetSan 29. July 2013

When the fall tour 2013 has been announced last week, I read the news like any Phish tour announcement for sixteen years. Where will they play ? How many shows ? Basic stuffs. But when I saw that they'll play 3 days at Atlantic City from October 31th to November 2nd, I got pretty hyped : Halloween + 30th anniversary show during the same run ?! I HAVE TO GO !

Ok, I realized a few minutes later that their birthday was on December 2nd, not November 2nd...

Nevertheless, my brain was already on fire. The run will be at the very end of the Toussaint holidays in France. I already planned a family trip to Morocco but it won't last the 2 weeks. With one flight to the U.S.A., I could attend 3 shows, including a pretty rare Halloween 3-setter ! I talked about it to my wife and her answer was both encouraging and full of common sense : "How much would it cost ?"

Yes, the main concern will be the money, as it has always been.

The following day, I checked several websites for flights booking to have an idea of the grand total.
First surprise : Atlantic City International airport can't be reached from Europe. So I search for Philadelphia from Lyon, Paris or even Geneva. I found several possibilities with or without stopover for a price from 600€ to 700€. I can find cheaper with 2 stopovers but I don't want to spend 24 hours in planes and airports...
A 3 day ticket would be 180$ but I have to add the fee and shipping for a total of 217.10$.
I have also to count 4 hotel nights, a way to go from Philly to Atlantic City (it seems I won't be alone), food and pocket money.

OK so I have to find a 1200€ bill.

I could fight against my habits to buy countless video games or vinyls to finally save this amount until October. The problem is I have to spend most of it (tickets, plane and hotel) at least in august and I don't have it now. So, like many times before, I dug the idea...

 

On Saturday, I received a letter from my company about my annual bonus. Usually it's stuck on a special bank account for 5 years unless I get married, have a baby or buy a house, which is not planned. But for the first time, this year, I have the option to request the full amount to be paid immediately.

 

Wait a minute...

 

This morning, I did something I've been dreaming of for sixteen year : I request tickets for a Phish show on tickets.phish.com

Oh my. I'll go to a Phish show !

I finally found the Virtual Band

by Yome NetSan 10. August 2012

Remember when I wrote about a comment on the Headphones Jam that mentions Phish as a "Virtual Band" ? I couldn't recall where was the original post on the Internet but I just had a flash !

Actually, it was just before my eyes because it's the first review on livephish.com ! I don't know how I didn't think about it before...

TheSpaceman  (1/16/2007 9:31:15 AM)

I would be happy if Phish got together every now and then and recorded new jams like this for livephish.com

If touring is going to be an unworkable situation for the band...they should do this stuff on their own. Be a digital band. Screw the tours, screw the major label hassle...if the only way Phish can come back is by being radically different, while still moving forward, i think this is a great answer. No 3,000 person guest list, no lot scene...just new, great music with no pressure.

I would dig it and I bet they would end up making some great music.

p.s. - this jam is very cool.

 

Japanese dreams

by Yome NetSan 17. June 2010

I've been in Japan last year for a trip around traditions and video games, organized by a french retro games book and magazine editor : Pix'n Love. I've been to Kyōto, Osaka and Tōkyō. It was a defining trip for me. I loved everything there : the weather, the mood, the people, the streets, the temples...
My only regret is that I haven't met too much locals and I definitely want to go back there one day.

10 years ago, Phish was coming back from a 7 shows tour in Japan. It was the last time they played outside of the American continent. Several trip reports and journals give us a glimpse of what is to see Phish in Japan, and after reading them I guess I'd prefer Phish to announce a tour over there than in Europe. Those articles remind me of the feelings I got in april 2009 when I was wandering the streets of Ikebukuro and Shinjuku by myself.
If a new tour in Japan would happen, nothing in the world could prevent me to make the trip. Yes, I know it's almost what I said for the US summer tour this year...

 

Hidden Track :

 

Dr. Pauly on Coventry Music Blog :

 

Mr. Miner's Phish Thoughts :

 

Other random pages and downloads :

 

The fifth show of this tour, played on the 14th june 2000 in Fukuoka, is available on CD and download as Live Phish Volume 04.


The Virtual Band

by Yome NetSan 23. March 2010

I heard this expression when livephish.com released the Headphone Jam during de 2004/2009 break. The idea was that Phish would become a virtual band, not performing live but gathering on some occasion to record hour long free form jam. They would still be "broken up" but still playing in a way. I thought it was a good alternative at a time when reunion wasn't even hoped.

But from my point of view, Phish has always been a virtual band. I discovered them in 1997 with a studio album dating back from 1988. As i've never heard about them, I thought they were disbanded for long. Then I became aware that they were still playing lot of shows and starts following them on the Internet.

My computer has always been, and still is, my only link with the band. Browsing several websites and blogs about the band and fans, downloading audience or soundboard recordings of almost every show, watching, at first very poor and then very good quality, videos is a everyday occupation.
I remember watching songs' name appearing in setlists. At one time, some where only names as I haven't listened to them yet. I discovered Mike's Song, for example, with Slip Stitch and Pass.

Internet is also the almost exclusive way to buy Phish related material, although I managed in 1999 and 2000 to buy somes albums at my local store in France. This was possible, I think, because the band toured sporadicly in Europe and Japan from 97 to 2000, so their releases were better distributed outside the US. So I bought a lot of Phish albums, live releases, boxsets, dvds, books, goodies, promo cds. All of that gave me a rather complete view of the band, their music and their career, but in a virtual way. There hasn't been any physical connexion because everything went thought the computer.

Oh wait, There's one ! I managed to buy the Green Sparow, Mike Gordon's last studio album, with a signed booklet. The signed booklet was added to the package along with a regular sealed CD. I understand that it's a lot easier for every one (including Mike) to have a pill of single booklets signed without having to open a cd, pull out the booklet, sign it, pull back it inside and then send it.

Phish is the only active band that have a big impact on me that I've never seen live in concert. In fact, Phish is the artist entity that had the most impact on me for my whole life. Bigger than Michael Jackson back in the 90's, who is the artist that woke up my musical tastes (and I got to see him live in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1997).
The only other band for which I would travel the globe to see live is Pink Floyd. Another dream that I will never live for obvious reasons.

I felt very broken in 2004 when I knew about the break up, again by checking my emails. I cried when I read the news and I cried again on august 16th morning when I woke up and read the setlist and reports on the Internet.
I feel almost as broken up since I took the decision last week not to go to the USA this summer. I always fear that a break up (or worst) can happen any time and that I will never see them, althought the musical and health situation for the band is very different now than in 2004. I'd never listened to the Las Vegas 2004 run since this week, and I'm glade to enjoy the music I heared in 2009.
By the way, 2009 is the only year during which I listened to every single show played by Phish, at worst 2 days after it was played. In 2004, I listened to all of the summer tour but out of order and in the following month, without regularity. I started in January to listen to every 2002/2003 shows and even if it's not 1994 or 1998, I'm enjoying it very much.

By the way, what if all that music was fake ?

I thought about it from the very beginning when I didn't really know the songs and where to find shows. I happened to download concerts from other band (Cousin Fungus, String Cheese IncidentDave Matthews Band, Greateful Dead, or other jam bands) without noticing at first it wasn't Phish. I even end up burning CDs and labelling CDs as Phish by mistake. At the end of the day, I was still enjoying all this new music, whatever the band was playing.
The idea came then that, even if Phish wasn't really playing this music, I wouldn't care as long as I'm enjoying what I listen to. I mean Phish's music could be computer generated, the band could fake playing on stage (like lips-synch with instruments), all of their improvised moment could be writen in advance. Sure I'd be pissed to have been fooled but, man the music is fucking good ! That's why I enjoy live DJ sets like Daft Punk's Alive 2007. Everything is written and planed but the music is fun.

That's what's important after all : music.
Phish can still be a virtual band playing (or faking) in a far away country, I don't care as long as I can listen every day of my life to new music from them.

Europe tour confirmed...

by Yome NetSan 8. September 2009

...in my dreams !

I had this great (and sad at the same time) dream last night. I was in a kind of college in France and there was some sort of press conference with the Phish management (the band wasn't there) to announced the US/Europe tour for 2010.

Trey would play 4 shows in march in Paris with a "Trey & friends" kind of band. It had a special name but I can't remember.
There was also a european tour in may starting with 2 shows in 2 unknown german town, then 2 shows in Switzerland. 2 shows in Paris followed at Elysée Montmartre and Crétin Hall (!). The tour ended in Amsterdam with 2 shows again.
All those dates where surround with US shows all over the place.

The marketing departement had made things big by printing posters, flyers, post card and even credit-card-size adds. I clearly remember the look of the credit-card stuff. They were printed verticaly with, on the back, a great picture of a Phish stage, taken from a good distance, with an eruption of lights (must have been influenced by this shot). On the front, there were all the confirmed dates of the tour, with a little colored square before each date.

Yes, because there were also a lot of soon-to-be-announced dates, in US and Europe !

I woke up sad knowing it was just a dream but impatient to go to phish.com to see if there was an announcement...

 




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