2011

For a band like Phish, who rely so much on onstage chemistry, the first show of a tour is rarely if ever the best show of the run. Now, that is not to say there are not gems to be had. If you poke around there is a takeaway moment from practically every Phish show ever played. With that in mind, we put together this list of 10 memorable musical moments from past tour openers, not just any tour openers, but all shows where the band had not performed publicly in at least 90 days to give a taste of what’s possible at tomorrow’s tour opener in Bethel, NY.

Keep in mind, you won’t find the crowd eruptions such as the hiatus-ending Piper at Madison Square Garden 2002 or the breakup-ending Fluffhead at Hampton in 2009, because well – that would be too easy, and that is not what we do. Here’s what we came up with in reverse chronological order…

06/11/2010: Toyota Park, Bridgeview, IL
Ghost:
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/toyota.mp3]
Taped By: TaylorC

Phish came out of the gates with an improv-heavy first show of the summer last year at Toyota Park in Chicago, IL. The first set featured jam songs Down With Disease, Wolfman’s, Reba and Bowie, while the second stanza was top heavy with a potent Light that went into a Maze that had two ferocious solos. For our money, the highlight of the night was a Ghost that was dotted with tasteful Orca usage by Trey, bass bombs a plenty by Mike and some adventurous clav work by Page before the band worked their way towards Limb By Limb. Let’s hope tomorrow night is on par with the 2010 opener.

• Previously on HT: The B List – 10 Best Phish Tour Openers and Predictions – Phish Summer Tour Leg One

READ ON for nine more strong tour-opening moments…

This week brought about a few interesting news items in the realm of digital music. First, came the news via Forbes that Facebook – in conjunction with Spotify, a European-based

Tomorrow is finally the day that Phish returns to the road after a near six-month layoff for the first of three shows at Bethel Woods in Bethel, NY. All in all, the first leg of the group’s tour contains 18 shows, most of which will take place at familiar venues for the band and their fans.

We wanted to give our staff and our readers a chance to get their predictions for what the tour will bring down “on paper” and then once the tour wraps up on June 19 we’ll see how everybody did. So take a look at our calls and be sure to leave your own predictions in the comments section.

Our first question was, “which band member do you expect to be this tour’s MVP?” Next, we asked everybody to pick a “classic” song that will get “the treatment” from Phish this summer. Then, we asked everyone to pick what they thought the best show of the first leg would be. Finally, we asked each contributor to predict how many new songs Phish would debut and to pick the biggest bustout of the tour.

Andy Kahn:

1. MVP Band Member? Fish, because he’s due. Recent tours have seen Page take a more prominent roll leading jams, Mike showing off what he’s picked up from his solo band and Trey, well Trey is Trey. It’s time for Papa Fish to show the kids what he’s made of.

2. MVP “Classic” Song? Free needs to grow the pair it’s seemingly lost in its 3.0 incarnation. Hoping this one gets back to ripping bass runs and surging jams and loses the going-through-the-motions feel it’s taken on at times.

3. Best show? June 1, second night of Holmdel. This will be their second night at Holmdel and coming off the extended stay at Bethel Woods looks ripe for a mid-week-snooze-you-lose kind of show.

4. Number of new songs? Six: four new Trey/Tom songs, one from Page and one from Mike.

5. Biggest Bustout? Lushington – it’s been years and years since the band took us down the brutal miles and miles of Lushington. Throw in The Chase segment from Fluff’s Travels and this becomes a bustout of legendary proportions.

READ ON to see what the other contributors guessed and to make your own predictions in our comments section…

It’s one thing for a band to break up on the downside of their career, but after releasing what was by far their best album, National Bohemian, earlier this year, we’re sad to see that the pride of Baltimore, The Bridge, are calling it quits after a Thanksgiving Eve performance in their hometown. The economy is terrible, the music industry is in shambles and we can only imagine how difficult it must be for smaller acts to make ends meet.

The members of The Bridge announced their forthcoming breakup via a letter to their fans on the band’s website…

Dear Family and Friends,

This next Thanksgiving will mark the 10-year anniversary of The Bridge. It has been an amazing ride that we have shared with you all. It is therefore with a heavy heart that we announce that this year will mark the end of The Bridge. After ten years and thousands of miles, the harsh realities of life on the road have led us to a point where we can no longer sustain ourselves as a band. We fought on to continue for as long as we could, because we truly believed in our music and cherished the deeply special connection that we have built with our audiences throughout the years. But at the end of the day, the economy won, and we are forced to close up shop.

What started as a show for our friends on one Thanksgiving Eve has led us on a wild, beautiful journey beyond our expectations. The long van rides, smoky bars, sleepless nights, wicked hangovers, cheap motels, and flat tires were all worth it for the chance to play music for you all and create those special moments that we live for. It has been the most rewarding experience of our lives. In true Bridge fashion, we will be giving you everything we have left for the rest of our shows. We will be playing our final residency at 8×10, the house that built The Bridge, in the coming weeks, as well as our beloved All Good Festival, our favorite day of the year for the last 7 years. And as if it was meant to be, we will be closing out our run as a band on our 10-year anniversary, Thanksgiving Eve, at Rams Head Live. We plan on cherishing every last moment we have with you as The Bridge.

As chapters end and new ones begin, we will continue to pursue other musical endeavors, and hope to keep the spirit of this community alive. We are forever grateful to you all, the people who we have gotten to know so well through the years, as well as those who have worked so hard and given so much of themselves for the band. And lastly we want to thank each other, the members of the band both past and present, for sweating out the tough times and celebrating the high times together to try and live the dream. We are truly brothers for life. As sad as we feel that this experience is ending, we have no regrets. We feel we have achieved what we set out to do, which is to make people happy through our music. We humbly thank you, from the absolute bottom of our hearts, for your love, support, and inspiration that has given us this opportunity. It has been an honor and a privilege.

Sincerely,
Cris, Kenny, Dave, Mike, Patrick, and Mark
The Bridge

We’ll miss The Bridge and hope they each go on to bigger and better things in the future. READ ON for a list of The Bridge’s current tour dates…

Noise-jammers Garage A Trois featuring Marco Benevento, Skerik, Stanton Moore & Mike Dillon finished a run of shows in support of Always Be Happy, But Stay Evil on Saturday at

Christopher Chu (formerly @ohchu now @chrischu), lead singer and multi-instrumentalist of The Morning Benders, was one of the artists included in our B List of 20 Twitter Feeds to Follow. Not long after, the band launched its own official Twitter feed, @morningbenders to coincide with Chu’s personal tweets.

We highly recommend giving the band a follow as they’ve already been letting fans into their recording process by live tweeting from the studio as they record the follow-up to last year’s stellar album, Big Echo.

READ ON to see what the first day looked like:

iClips.net’s Streaming Is Believing series of free webcasts continues this weekend with three days worth of action from Summer Camp. All in all, iClips will treat us to three sets