After a great Fare The Well and a spectacular Summer tour, the end of the year sounded a little too quite. But that was before I received lots of good LPs to spin...

New Year's Eve 1995:
Live At Madison Square Garden

Originaly released on 3 CD in 2005, Phish's New Year's Eve 1995 show made its way again to independent record stores on 6 LPs during the Record Store Day on 18th april 2015. This huge boxset is limited to 4500 copies and costs an arm. Of course, no store in France had it and it popped pretty quickly on eBay. Due to its already hish-sky price, scalpers can't charge much more but I've been reluctant to buy one of them over here. I waited several month to see if it would appear on Dry Goods but in september, I've been told by my contact at Phish Inc. that it won't be sold there. Thanksfully, this person managed to got me one of the remaning copies and sold it to me ! I finally received it on the 20th november, around the same time as the other vinyls bellow. But surprisingly, it ended on the Phish merchandise site on 3th december ! Grab it while you can !

The boxset is rather simple but quite nice. With six 12" discs, it's huge and, of course, heavy. It's also my first and only 6 LPs boxset. My second biggest one is David Gilmour's Live in Gdansk with 5 LPs.
All pictures and texts are taken from the original CD boxset but re-arranged on six sleeves and a leaflet. A download card is also included and, if you're lucky (if you're the first one actually), you can use mine : just find it on the pictures. One strange thing : the image used by Phish in february to hint at this release (a green square with the words "Side K : you Enjoy Myself"), isn't part of the boxset at all. Actually, the only green things on it are the tittle's letters and side numbers on the outside of the box.

I haven't got the chance to isolate myself for more than three and a half hours yet to proper listen to the music. I haven't listened to the show for many year actually as I haven't been impressed the first time I heard it. Maybe my expectations were too high knowing that Rolling Stone Magazine named it one of the "Greatest Concerts of the '90s", or maybe I wasn't in a good mood...

 Continue reading...

More good news !

I received a shipping email saying that my order has been re-shipped by DHL. Un fortunatly, I can't find the tracking number...
I also got a refund for the shipping fees I paid 5 months ago. So things are taking a better shape thanks to the help of the merch account manager.
It should be arriving quicly with DHL so I'll update when I have news.

Mainwhile, I ordered through livephish.com the full Miami NYE Run as miniSD USB slots like the Festival 8 ones. We'll see which order comes first ;)

Nevertheless, he didn't answer me about the exensive shipping rates so I wrote this last message.

Hi,

First of all, I'd like to apologize for writing you again and thank you very mush for your help in my issue.

I received the refund for the shipping fee and the following email stating that my order has been shipping with DHL.

Unfortunatly, I can't find the tracking number for DHL...
I tried to use the number MIS20106167 in the DHL website but it don't work (as I expected, it's the Dry Goods, order number but who knows...) and this shippment doesn't appear in my Dry Goods account.

Just a quick answer about the shipping rates. I understand that the Joy box is heavy so the shipping rates are expensive, but here are other examples :
Joy Box ($99.00), standard shipping to France : $48.19
Joy CD ($9.99), standard shipping to France : $15.21 (!!!)
Stealing Time T-shirt XL ($19.00), standard shipping to France : $16.21
Festival 8 playing cards ($9.99), standard shipping to France : $28.84 (!!!)
Festival 8 miniSD ($62.00) standard shipping to France : $14.71
Live in Vegas DVD ($17.00), standard shipping to France : $15.21

I made some comparaison with Amazon.com (shipping from the USA)
Joy Box ($91.99), standard shipping to France : $12.48
Joy CD ($11.99), standard shipping to France : $6.48
Live in Vegas DVD ($22.49), standard shipping to France : $6.48

I also order last week a set of Rock Band instruments for the PS3 game from Amazon.de (Germany). It contains a guitar a drum kit and a microphone. Even if it's shipped from inside of Europe, the box is much bigger and heavier than the Jox Box. Shipping was only 8,42 euros ($12.11) !

I also found 2 old invoices from Dry Goods and you can see the difference here : http://www.bouncingaroundeuroom.eu/post/2009/12/23/It-was-the-good-time.aspx


With those easy examples, could you please explain me how those rates are calculated ? Don't you think that they are ridiculusly expensive ? Come on, $15.11 for shipping a plain $9.99 CD in an enveloppe...

Thank you again for your patience.

Wednesday Dec 10th I finally got a letter that I can come to the German customs office in Berlin Schoeneberg to pay tax and release my delivery. So I drove to the department first thing in the morning on Thursday Dec 11th. From my previous experience I expected nothing less than 2 hours of driving and waiting. I was so damn right.

When you get there your have to show them the letter and you have to draw a waiting number - mine was #35. Next step after waiting is to go in, open the package by yourself, take out all contents and show them to the officer. Then he calculates the tax on basis of the value of the goods + delivery. It's 19% in Germany so on top of my 130,- USD value of goods + 50,- USD shipping I had to pay 23,- EUR tax. But you have to wait again before you are allowed to pay. With the receipt of your payment you can go back and finally release your order. What a hassle! But hey, fuck it - it's Phish :-) I would drive to Alaska.

The good thing about showing all contents of the box to the officer was to see them by myself for the first time in real. I got a huge smile on my face and the officer seemed to be kind of impressed as well. After driving to work I proudly showed the box to my colleagues. At home after work I made a couple of pictures.

The box itself is massive. Made out of heavy cardbox. Originally I thought its made out of plastic or wood. The cardbox seems not so stabile on the edges and corners. My box had a little scratch. Inside you find a hardcover book with lyrics, pictures and 2 CDs and 1 DVD. You also find 10 signed posters by different artists.

It's definately worth 75,- USD and you get a special price (11 USD each) for 2 Joy T-shirts.