Hot Tours: Phish, Elton John, Bob Seger [Billboard.com]
Legendary jam band Phish tops Hot Tours with ticket sales totals reported from its traditional year ending run of concerts at the partially refurbished Madison Square Garden in New York City. The band played the arena to close out 2011 with sellout shows on each night from Dec. 28 through New Year’s Eve. The four performances grossed more than $4.3 million with a total of 75,707 tickets sold – an average of 18,927 per show. At the end of 2010, the band played three shows at the arena (Dec. 30, 2010-Jan. 1, 2011) with 55,710 tickets sold for the whole run, an average of 18,570 per show.
Everyone’s had a full week to digest the Phish New Year’s Eve run, arguably a “standard” Phish affair with no major surprises but an undeniably fun four-nights in NYC for a ton of lucky music fans. That’s a great way to kick off a new year no matter what, and we’re psyched to be kicking off our new year here at LMB with a proper Phish Friday post. Let’s round up some videos and hang out this afternoon…
I chose the first 10 that come to my mind from the run after digesting the entire run; some of this I watched real-time but I generally wasn’t fully engaged on the entire Couch Tour, so take my opinion and notes as a quick mental dump / recap about the four nights. Many others have tackled this run in hella detail. And I should note that we’re avoiding the “full” review of these shows given the fact that my crew didn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. It was hard to digest in a few ways, but all of them agreed it was fun and well worth a review to focus on the higlights only. Let’s dig in… READ MORE
Photo via Nick Irving
So, despite every awesome thing happening in San Francisco and Phish Couch Tour calling my name, I ended up disconnected a bit on New Year’s Eve night and ended up spending my time with friends in the redwoods in Northern California. Life is good.
In case you haven’t found your way over to Phish.net yet, here’s how the New Year’s Eve show went down for my friends in attendance for Phish NYE: READ MORE
Phish doesn’t often let “news” slip without its best attempt to keep it under wraps, but plenty of folks have caught on to the LivePhish.com pre-order page for the New Year’s Eve shows at Madison Square Garden and the fact that fans can pre-oder a HD video stream version of the shows. Couch Tour…kangfirmed!
I’m sure the official announcement will hit the newsletter later today, but for now start planning your Couch Tour parties if you can’t make it to MSG for the festivities!
Furthur announced their New Year’s Eve plans the other day and will be spending three nights at Bill Graham Civic Center Auditorium in San Francisco when the clock turns over to 2012. I’d put a guess that they’ll have a few special guests over the course of the run and you’ll see a lot of music in those three days if you stay in the Bay Area. Pre-sale tickets go on sale on Monday… READ MORE
The New Mastersounds announced a set of fall/winter tour dates earlier this week, which is yet another run following up the release of their new album, Breaks from the Border. They also tacked on their New Year’s Eve plans without much of a mention, but it looks like the band is joining the Tedeschi Trucks Band here in San Francisco for a grand ‘ol party at the Warfield. Mark it, folks…it’s officially time to start planning your NYE.
Read on for the band’s dates including stops in Hawaii, Austin, New Orleans and beyond… READ MORE
Get planning on your NYE folks!
The rumors already started hitting my texts last night with thoughts that Phish may be at MSG for a two-night NYE run with potentially a few other dates ahead of that, but not everyone’s going to be in NYC or wanting to travel around those dates. Or maybe they’ll have some pre-NYE competition (duh) with the likes of some other pioneers of a side of this scene known as Disco Biscuits, who were smart and got their NYE show announced early. >>>
