Does Phish Screw the West Coast on Purpose?

Trey doesn’t book the f*ing shows. That’s why you get a manager – so you can play the goddammed guitar and not worry about that stuff. Someone noticed they were playing tiny venues this Fall. Know why? Because they piss away money (and fans who tear up extras) every time they book a venue and don’t fill it. So their management took a look at their booking strategy and decided small venues = $$$. They’re MANAGERS. The band HIRES them to do that. Could P sell out a venue in Portland? Probably. I bet their expenses are way higher travelling though. Oh, and guess what? Remember when Trey went to REHAB? That probably had something to do with personal problems. Maybe he said “Gee, being on the road all the time stresses family stuff and it makes it hard for me to live a healthy life – I bet I could play another 20 years if I was more careful about how I tell my management to book tours…”

Sorry for the counter-rant.

Justin,

I wanted to thank you for linking to my open letter to Phish. I hear you on the negativity of the PT boards, which is why I don’t hang out there very often. However, more upsetting then PT, or my sarcastic rant is what you have posted here.

There is a funny thing about the Phish community. I have posted a ton of reviews from the six shows I was blessed to see so far via Phish 3.0 (I have also posted a 3D film review and begged many to post reviews from other shows only to be turned down). Off all those reviews, the only one with any sort of feed back is ripping me for comparing Trey to a cult leader (which was not a bad thing, but some took it as such). I gave it my all on reviews of all three Phish Greek shows, and the reaction was ho-hum at best. I am fine with that, it’s just how the cookie crumbles when it comes to online reviews. I don’t write for fame and glory, I write for the love of the music (be it Phish or Cannibal Corpse or Joseph Arthur).

Yet, I post one piss and vinegar rant about the band giving the shaft to my end of the country, and it becomes the biggest post in the 16 month history of Concert Confessions in a matter of three days. Don’t get me wrong, I am stoked off the web traffic and the fact that thousands of strangers have read my words. However, by you posting this, all you have done is continute to spread the hate through the community.

You have taken my post here, wrote one paragraph about yourself and said move east. As someone with a house payment, a wife, a family and a solid job in a time when jobs are no where to be had, I can’t just pack up and move east so I can watch Phish from the lawn of Corporate America Amphitheatre in XXXX EST city.

So yes, I shared my rant as a phan. Perhaps it was a bit ugly, perhaps I should have sat on it for a day when I was not so angry inside the cubical of that steady job that pays the bills. But you see, in my anger is true beauty. The beauty of a fan who wants to witness that special bust out show. The love of a fan who is crushed that his all time favorite band (and look at my cataloge of reviews, I like a TON of music) can’t turn a profit on his coast so they more or less choose to avoid it.

As a fan of your site/twitter follower etc, I know you do great things here. Perhaps instead of making this a negative, next time you can look for the beauty. After all, if you look at the comments at the bottom, while most East Coast folks get upset by my poking fun at them (pussies, you know if it was making fun of w00ks you would be laughing) every single comment from the West Coast agrees.

So hey, thanks again for posting my open letter. I am sorry that you saw it as a negative and then chose to spread the negative vibes further. I wish you luck getting tix for all those small second market east coast gigs.

Reverend Justito
concertconfessions.com

this was quite interesting to me. Justin & i have discussed this several times in fact. the PT negativity is pretty out of control & not just about Phish, but enough about them. i live in the south. so while i am closer to the east coast, typically most phish shows are never in my backyard so to speak. with the exception of Atlanta, the closest Phish shows are always at least a 4 hour drive, typically 8 or more. i managed to do all the southern leg this year, & Knoxville last year. so i feel fortunate that 3.0 has been close by on several occasions. i am ecstatic to see the Charleston shows on the fall tour. i would love to see more southern shows. what i do know is that i love seeing the band, good shows & bad. for 3.0 i have managed to trek to Red Rocks, Indio Charlottesville & Berkeley. i have met some incredible friends along the way, and i look forward to seeing some more shows in the future in different places around the country. while i can’t do them all, or as many as i would like, to me that makes the ones i do get to see that much more special. i will agree with you on one point, i think everyone could use some more Phish, but until then, i am happy with what we’ve got. it sure beats no Phish at all… see you out there.

Patrick,

First off, not a diss/attack but just being real here. I have no clue how you got your Greek tix, but you mention seeing roughly 13 Phish shows before the Greek. My crew had 9 individuals put in for Greek and only 1 of us got tix. We all tried through ticketbastard and got the shaft. Hey, that’s life so be it.

So I got to the Greek via miracle, and a majority of folks I met were from DC, NYC, Philly etc all coming out west to see Phish/enjoy summer vacation. I met on Thursay and Friday in line sets of kids whose parents paid for them to go on Phish tour. Stub hub/plane tix you name it. It was not easy to find folks from Cali at the show (I did meet a few). This is part of my rage over the lack of west coast dates which in looking back I wish I had explained better in the open letter that inspired this blog. The PST has three shows at 8,500 tix this year (because let’s be honest, they are not playing out here again this year). A majority of those were in the hands of East Coasters. So while Phish (so I am told) lost their ass in Hartford and Columbia etc, the three small shows my coast gets are filled with East Coasters and it’s bullshit, it’s elitist and it’s fucking selfish.

Now yes, I could take vacation time and travel to Rhode Island and see Phish at some place called the Dunkin Donuts Center (something else we don’t have out west). I get that part of the magic of Phish is traveling to see the band. I have done so myself. So when we do get some magic, it really sucks that the spoiled East coast feels they have to flock to the west because we happen to have (in some cases) better venues then the east. Did anyone even think – hey, the Greek would be great, but Phish does have an ok amount of West Coast fans, let them have their moment this year? Don’t get me wrong, I was blessed that I got tix to the Greek (and the only reason I got them is because my one pal who got tix didn’t want to travel alone to the Bay Area/he knew I grew up there) but now here I sit knowing that work won’t let me make it out to fall tour and I’m praying that maybe a year from now I can see the band I love so much.

So to answer the question of this blog, Phish and their right coast fans screw the West Coast. That said, I hope you enjoyed California and got a slice of Blondies Pizza while out here.

I’ve been bit by “the bug” since my first show in 96′. I’ve been blessed with good timing and success in my career, and I travel far and wide to see Phish whenever possible, I’m not sure why someone else would hate on that! With Phish booking mostly smaller venues in secondary markets, they are making a statement, “Shorter, Less Crowded tours are what they and their family are looking for these days”. If it were up to me Phish would bookend each leg of their summer tour with a 2-3 day run in Football sized fields or stadiums around each corner of the country. It doesn’t have to be full blown festivals, but just a large enough area for large groups of friends to camp and enjoy the shows. I was at the Greek shows and we happily waited 4-5 hours each day before the gates opened, but I completely agree that 3 shows with 8000 capacity for the entire west coast summer tour kind of sucks. But Colorado got 4 Red Rock shows, a special Telluride 2 day experience and open the fall tour with 3 more shows in the Denver area, so the western part of the US has had some life. I live in Miami and was fortunate to live 5 minutes from where Phish played 4 shows to end 2009, and on NYE there were 100-200 tickets for $5 or Free!!! I was blown away. 7 years earlier at MSG for Phish’s return from hiatus someone offered me $1500 cash for my ticket as I walked in now u could get you and your entire family miracled for 3 set New Years show. I’m certain this years New Years shows in NYC will be top dollar again. In summary, there will never be enough Phish to satisfy the large and ever growing fan base. Peace, and make sure to enjoy life each day and especially each show you are fortunate enough to attend!!!!!

Maybe it’s because nobody showed up for Festival 8. Looked like there was less than 30,000 people on hand and a lot were from other parts of the country. Quit crying and whining until you can get people to show up.

in response to a few things:

i got my tickets through the lotto. 2 tickets each day. i also managed to help a couple friends & snagged 2 Fridays through the general on-sale. last year i got my red rocks in the lotto. having put in for lotto many times, these are the only times i have ever scored tickets, for what that’s worth. i am glad you were able to score a couple for the Greeks. actually everyone i went to the shows with lived in Cali, either the Bay Area or otherwise. i paid for them from my own pocket, i am fortunate enough to have a job right now as well.

in response to this “the three small shows my coast gets are filled with East Coasters and it’s bullshit, it’s elitist and it’s fucking selfish.”, that statement sounds pretty elitist & selfish. no one is entitled to tickets, be they jaded vets, custies or wooks. unfortunately life isn’t fair, so we have to work with what we get.

that being said, here is what i would like to see happen, for good or bad, & a precedent has been set in Telluride. set aside a certain amount of tickets for “locals only”. that’s probably the best we can hope for.

in response to this “Did anyone even think – hey, the Greek would be great, but Phish does have an ok amount of West Coast fans, let them have their moment this year?” no, i never once for a second considered that. if that makes you think i’m selfish, sorry, but the first thing i thought was, this is a great excuse to head west & visit with friends. that’s exactly what i did & it was worth every penny.

Yes, negativity is rough. Especially for such a positive band. But the “move to the east coast” response is worse, and possibly equally negative.

Can’t deny that its tough to see Phish as a West Coast fan in the 3.0 era. Before the first hiatus, West Coast shows were plentiful. It’s their prerogative to play where they’d like, and they owe us nothing. But if the lopsidedness isn’t a clear message to the west coast, it’s certainly a tough pill to swallow.

Phish spent their best years in the East, went to school in the East, and became popular in the East. Period. They went from playing bars and clubs all over New England and now have people stampeding at Great Woods. They played in frats in CT, and now… they don’t “Lose their ass” in Hartford, they double Tweezer Reprise and then blow the roof off SPAC the next day.

If you were them, there is nothing better than ripping through Run Like an Antelope for hundreds of New Englanders, some of who have PARENTS who followed Phish. The fans out here are loyal, and they always give the band what they want and vise versa.

In response to “Maybe it’s because nobody showed up for Festival 8. Looked like there was less than 30,000 people on hand and a lot were from other parts of the country. Quit crying and whining until you can get people to show up.”

You are way off base. I used to live on the east coast and go to the festivals there. I knew about 50-60 people that would go (close friends, friends of friends, etc). I’ve since moved to California and attended Festival 8. None of the 50-60 made the trip west for the festival. They went to plenty of summer shows then plenty of fall shows, but the general consensus was something like this, “I’m not flying to California to wait in a traffic jam for 20 hours and have to use porta potties that don’t get emptied or cleaned enough.” In talking with a lot of people at Festival 8, they had friends who felt the same as mine. At IT in 2003, I meant plenty of people from the west coast, including seeing a good number of California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Colorado license plates.

I think the low attendance at F8 is more attributed to a segment of the EC fanbase that feels entitled to the festivals, since, outside of Big Cypruss, all festivals before F8 were in the northeast.

Given how undeniably smoother things ran at F8 than at any of the other Festivals I went to (Went, IT, Coventry) and the near unanimous agreement that it was the best run festival to date, I think word of mouth among fans, along with this being the last weekend Halloween for a while, would have resulted in at least 10,000 more attendees had they done it in Indio again this year, which is the rumored number of fans that they fell short of to turn a profit.