Wow, this is something that people talked about but now the band is actually doing. I hope there's enough interest in this that we can have webcasts for summer tour. Perhaps time to invest in a better TV so I can hook my computer up to it.

Phish, in its second year of touring after a five-year hiatus, remains a powerful box-office draw, with $33.2 million in gross and 658,000 in attendance to 43 shows.

"They will always do business," says Paradigm's [Chip] Hooper, who is Phish's agent. Of the 2010 tour, he says, "They were having fun, the fans were having fun, they were great shows, they were very thoughtfully booked, and it did really well."

From Billboard.biz article "Year-End: Bon Jovi Leads As Top Touring Act of 2010", by Ray Waddell (12/10/10) - http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i3a15dfaab86484fbde46ce43eb863d8c

Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 12/2/09

from Phish's Alpine Valley 2010 DVD

Phish.net now has a its own dedicated servers in a data center, hosted by End Point Corporation.

After the Hampton reunion last year, the Mockingbird Foundation, with IT director Adam Scheinberg (@sethadam1) at the helm, decided to build a new database-driven website to update the static "billboard" of text setlists of the Phish.net archival site, which had operated pretty much unchanged from 1994.

The site architecture of Phish "setlists" hosted at Phish.net is now a huge relational (MySQL) database that connects the showdates, songs, venues and individual site users to provide not only instant information on all 1,504 Phish shows by date and the 814 songs Phish has played at those shows, but users' own personal "stats" and "gaps charts". Phish.net was also built with an open API architecture so it could "feed" information from its setlist databases to many other phan sites, and its "smartphone" mobile site, m.phish.net.

After months in beta, and through 2010, Phish.net has grown to over 10,000 registered users, many of whom participate in a lively relaunched community discussion forum and have added "their" shows to their profiles and stats "seedfiles".

During the recent late Fall tour and Halloween run, Phish.net on its former "virtual" (shared) server began to fail under the load of more than 20,000 fans trying to get setlist information at the same time, and the server was repeatedly "crashing" under the loads. With our new dedicated servers, this will not happen, and Phish.net can now accommodate almost unlimited traffic and growth for years to come.

If you haven't checked out the new Phish.net site, especially the information you can get about any song by clicking on the link (history, lyrics stats) or the smartphone optimized site at m.phish.net or the discussion forum or blog, check them out and you will be pleasantly surprised by all the new, cool stuff there.

I once knew a woman with a weird problem. Apparently her brain chemistry was such that her normal condition was that of someone on LSD. Jokes aside, this was not a fun thing for her at all. Normally she was blissfully unaware of her issues and would just tell her surreal stories and try to do her work as best as possible but every now and then she'd have a moment of clarity. She had goals that would never be realized because she was stuck in this weird internal world and there was nothing that she could do about it. The release of "Idea (Another Idea)" as a Mossbonus track caused me to think about her.

"Idea" by itself just seems to be one of Mike's weird songs. There's surreal imagery and the like but nothing too out of the ordinary, well if you ignore the line, "And I see you yelling and I don't know why." It's easy to miss that with all of the wacky imagery. I wrote the song history and never really noticed it despite pouring over the lyrics to figure out what it's about.

"Idea (Another Idea)" is the flip of "Idea" that takes that line as the core. It's the moment of clarity, admitting that, "Don't care what I leave behind/When I get caught up this way." The first two verses all seem to be about the struggle to cope. "Idea"'s "I've been lost," gets morphed into "I've been wrong," (and the concern is to stop messing it up instead of the weirder stacking it up) as he talks about his desperate attempts to stay off of the slippery slope into his delusions. It's a repeated motif - "I've rejoined the human race," the moment is one last strand of grace - but one that is doomed for failure. By the end of the song, we're back to surrealism.

While I doubt Mike had the thought of someone fighting with their sanity in mind when he wrote these two tracks (without my personal history, I never would have thought of it myself), it works as an interpretation. What was a goofy little song now comes across as rather bleak, but also rather powerful. It's too bad that the track is only an iTunes and Amazon bonus track, as it changes the one song that Phish have played off of the disc. Thankfully, it's available for only the 99 cent charge (as opposed to requiring a purchase of the entire album) and it's streaming on Relix: http://www.relix.com/audio/relix-radio/2010/11/16/mike-gordon-idea-another-idea-version

Moss is definitely a project where the bonus tracks have been interesting.

WISEGUY HACKERS PLEAD GUILTY IN FEDERAL COURT

After professing their innocence for months, the three Wiseguy defendants pleaded guilty yesterday to hacking the Ticketmaster system for several years, scooping up all tickets at onsale, including the Phish Hampton reunion shows among many other concerts and sports events.

According to an article and the above photo from yesterday's Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, "Today, three men who set up the sophisticated network of computers that locked out legitimate fans and netted more than $25 million in profits pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.

Kenneth Lowson, 41, and Kristofer Kirsch [shown in above photo to the left of his lawyer], 37, both of Los Angeles, admitted to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and exceed authorized access to computers engaged in interstate commerce. They face no more than two years in jail, fines of $250,000 and forfeiture of more than $1.2 million when they are sentenced in March.

Joel Stevenson, 37, of Alameda, Calif., pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of exceeding authorized access to computers engaged in interstate commerce. He could get up to a year in jail and a $100,000 fine.

Lowson and Kirsch owned Wiseguys and directed all of the company’s operations. Stevenson was the company’s chief U.S.-based programmer."

Give someone a token of your affection for the Holiday run with this pure silver wearable token commemorating the 2010-11 NYE shows by Vermont artist and jewelry maker Jennifer Kahn.

The token is available in an archival coin display holder for $25, a pendant on black waxed cotton cord (16" or 18") with sterling ends and a sterling lobster clasp for $35, or on a sterling chain for $45.

In addition to the commemorative fish and apple, and "NYE, NYC, MSG", all three show dates are inscribed among the lines on the edge. A limited edition of only 100 tokens will be made to order.

Ordering details from the cashortrade.org website here. Jennifer is generously donating 10% of her sales of this commemorative token to the Mockingbird Foundation.

"Guyute", by sneakypower. Also check out Esther.

MMMMMMMMmmmmmmm….soup!

In this case, Potato Cheddar Chowder soup from the upcoming PhanFood cookbook, by the “Healthy Hippie” newsletter’s Taraleigh Weathers, ”PhanArt Pete” Mason and dozens of contributors.

Here’s the recipe.

PhanFood is available for pre-order for $19.95 from the its publisher, the State University of New York (SUNY) Press (yes, SUNY Press, way to go Taraleigh and Pete!).

Click on the photo or this link to pre-order or for further information about the book.

There will be also be a book release party with free admission from 7pm to 9pm followed by music from Dopapod until 2am on Saturday, December 11th at Nectar’s Restaurant, 188 Main St, Burlington, VT. For further details contact Pete at PhanArt.

Credits: Recipe by Lindsay Jones. Photo and recipe reprinted by permission, from PhanFood: From the Kitchen Pot to the Tour Lot edited by Taraleigh Weathers and Pete Mason, the State University of New York Press ©2010, State University of New York. All rights reserved.