It's the information age, these days. And the Phish.net has really changed the face of the band, because anytime anything happens that's out of the ordinary -- which is practically every Phish concert -- everybody on the network knows about it the next night. We recently premiered six songs -- songs that didn't make our new album -- in the first gig of this tour. A bunch of people taped the show. That night, people put the descriptions of those new songs on the Phish.net -- and [information on] how you could get a copy of the tape. So within days, you've got tapes of these new songs all over the country, which is exactly what we'd want. That way, when we go out on this national tour, people are going to have heard of the new songs, and even heard tapes of the new songs, before we get to the different towns.

Amid a scandal that has shaken the Mockingbird Foundation to its very core, the charitable foundation announced today that that it has severed all ties with its now former Executive Director, Ellis Godard. The controversy began in the late evening hours of October 24, 2010. The second set of Phish’s show at the Mullins Center in Amhearst, MA was winding down and literally tens of users were glued to the setlist on phish.net. Godard was on setlist duty when the Phish world appeared to come to a standstill. Either that or the band launched into a 30 minute “Free.” And just when it appeared Godard had simply abandoned his responsibilities to the Phish community things got worse. With one simple keystroke, Godard claimed that Phish had played “You Enjoy Myself.” The error was mockingly tweeted across the internets and even memorialized on awesomescreenshot.com. With that unparalleled combination of negligence and malfeasance, Godard tore Mockingbird’s credibility to smithereens.

The truth is that Godard’s dismissal is yet another in a series of drastic changes to the Mockingbird’s Phish.Net platform. Scarcely a year ago, setlists were being transmitted to Phish.net through a loose affiliation of unemployed fanboys jotting down notes at the shows and the occasional carrier pigeon. Setlists would appear on the site anywhere from twelve hours to twelve days after the show. Enter technology guru Adam Scheinberg. “I was working on a script to send hourly emails to Trey requesting he play ‘Camel Walk’ at every show on the ’09 Summer Tour, when I realized my skills could be put to better use,” recalled Scheinberg. Scheinberg continued, “Ellis was running a pretty ragtag operation, but it did manage to pull together over $500,000 in directed grants to music education for children. So it was clear he wasn’t a complete shit-for-brains.”

Scheinberg transformed Phish.Net into a ruthlessly efficient operation. He would create a database documenting every time each song in the Phish catalog was played. Song histories were added to the site for every song Phish has played. And setlists were posted to the site in real-time. Sometimes before the band even knew what they were playing. In discussing the changes, Scheinberg explained that he made the setlist entry system “so simple, even a trained monkey could use it.”

But none of that helped Godard last night. Reporters from Hidden Track and Jambands.com were waiting for Godard outside his home this morning shoving assorted Schoeps and Sennheiser microphones in his face and demanding an answer. But answers didn’t come. Longtime fan David “Zzyzx” Steinberg reports that Godard simply hemmed and hawed about it being some sort of sociological experiment before muttering “Wanton in a key I live and me for horse rent.” At that point, Godard fled the scene. According to Steinberg, “the whole thing went on for precisely sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds, which is longer than roughly 97.6% of Phish 3.0 jams.”

Count Charlie Dirksen among Godard’s disappointed colleagues. “I’ve known Ellis for over fifteen years,” Dirksen said, “and I really thought he knew something about the Phish from Vermont. But I was wrong. Even more wrong than I was about that ‘Fire on the Mountain’ tease on 12/31/95. But at least I’m admitting it this time.”

This gaffe was simply the last straw in the odd descent of this once respected uber-phan. In recent days, Godard was reported to have claimed that he wouldn’t recognize the song “Alaska,” even “if Trey sang it to me on my lap.” However, those reports could not be substantiated. The Mockingbird Foundation will appoint a new executive director in the coming days. Scheinberg is said to be writing a script that will not only choose the new leader, but actually cause a white plume of smoke to be emitted from Nectar’s.

Three hours-plus (including intermission) is kind of a lot for any band — man were there a lot of guitar solos. But it was also a show with plenty of twists, which explains [Phish's] enduring appeal. "

Hadley police report that fans headed to the Phish concert at the University of Massachusetts Mullins Center caused heavy eastbound traffic along Routes 9 and 116 Saturday night. The Hadley dispatcher reported there was "tons of traffic" along the main road through town, which has caused things to be a little chaotic. There were no problems other than the bumper-to-bumper line of cars, she said. Amherst police reported no problems.

Three hours-plus (including intermission) is kind of a lot for any band — man were there a lot of guitar solos. But it was also a show with plenty of twists, which explains [Phish's] enduring appeal. "

Go figure. Phish plays a solid show last night with songs many fans, in many eras, longed for - NICU, Carini, 2001, Mike's & Weekapaug, Funky Bitch, Fluffhead, Loving Cup. But many fans, particularly a number of the lot of you here within our (multiple and overlapping, but ultimately notable if not distinct) bubble of Phish veteranism, complain that it lacked anything notable, and didn't justify Miner-level praise (all due respect to his vocabulary and skillful phrasing).

Sure, I'm a fan of the weirdness, too. I'm honored to have been at the 2/20/93 Roxy, for example, among others. (Not that last night was that. The Roxy was miles, and locked smiles, beyond last night.) And I've of course made sure to hear everything from the early embarrassing-in-retrospect bar shows to the later embarrassing-in-most-ways Coventry shows. But I've aggressively cut back on what I listen, particularly, post-breakup, to perhaps only a show or two each tour that I didn't actually attend, because the jadedness was ruining it for me. And it may be ruining it for you.

By the "breakup", I'd stopped going for the music. I was going to see friends, and to experience the aura - and those, too, were of course changing. The music's now back for me, and not just because it's gotten better, but because I'm not mired in it.When I head to AC next week, it won't just be exciting because of the imminent Halloween show, or the 120-seat Phamily Poker Classic at the Tropicana. It'll be because friggin' PHISH is playing. And they play great shows. Like Providence, last night.

The reliable stuff, the solid stuff, the strings of good songs with no flubs or meanders or distractions or oddities, the straight-ahead "this is our stuff" Phish? That's the show last night, getting 2 of 5 stars because it came too soon after Uttica, and verged too little from the compositions.

Mike just loves doing weird little projects that fall below the radar. First there was the "Joey Arkenstat" album Bane (and if you don't own that, you really should. It's a weird 50 minute continuous track that ventures into interesting places), then there was the "Birth of the Universe" track, and now there's a new one on Live Phish: Moss Remixes.

A 24 minute selection of (mostly) instrumentals that build off of aspects of songs onMoss, this is pretty interesting. It's melodic, dark at times, pretty at others and is a perfect little spin for a quiet morning. Not only that, but it's absolutely free! I can't promise everyone will love it, but if you're a fan of Mike, what's the downside?

http://www.livephish.com/music/0,586/Mike-Gordon-mp3-flac-download-Moss--The-Remixes.html

For this album we wanted to something new and somebody closer to our age. There's always this feeling with each album that, what have we done before and what's a direction that we haven't gone in? The album before Hoist [Rift] was really conceptual. It was kind of a concept album, and the whole thing was strung together. We wanted to just go swing to a whole different direction, and [Hoist producer] Paul Fox is somebody who... I think the biggest thing that appealed to us was that his records sounded so good.

It was a hell of a night! I was pretty interested in Phish before seeing them live, but hooked solid well before the end of the first set.

To my somewhat eternal dismay, I skipped the following night, also at the GAMH and the show at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz later that weekend as I was preparing for my A exam in grad school on 11/1/91. I also skipped most of the 10/31/91 GD run that year.

Being that responsible was silly. I still failed the exam! I might as well have had fun :-) "

So we're two weeks out now and people are starting to look for clues. There's no album game to play this year, so here's what people are speculating about. Since I don't know anything, I can just play along.

Rumor: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway/Selling England by the Pound - Genesis

Source: The image of a Halloween ticket really looks a lot like a random poster for a Philly Genesis poster

Case For: Those are rather similar images. Remember how they had a banana image for the calendar when they did Loaded? There was a hint! Also TLLDoB has been rumored for 98 and was a finalist last year.

Case Against: The Dog Faced Boy is also very similar to a standard image of the guy. Also it's not exactly an image associated with Genesis; few people knew about that random poster before a week ago. Musically, it has the issue of being an unknown entity for the fans whereas they usually try to have one or two songs that everyone would know.

Rumor: A Night at the Opera - Queen

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