This and That

Technology is an always growing monster, but the good kind like in Monster’s Inc. There are very few industries that have been effected by technology more than the music industry. In my lifetime alone there was the invention of the record button to make mix tapes with my ridiculously sized boom box off the radio, the Compact Disc, mp3s and my personal favorite the external USB friendly hard drive which is a great tool for storing obscene amounts of music digitally.

Napster

Looking back on the history of the music technology tango, we have Napster who came onto the scene in the mid-late 90s and is still seen as one of the pioneers of the getting new music into people’s hand movement and they did it by way of peer to peer file sharing. Similar technologies are used today in the way of BitTorrent and online file sharing (senspace, mediafire, rapidshare, etc.) and it continues to evolve due to the growing popularity of the personal mp3 player(iPod, Zune, etc.) As a music fan there is always music a few clicks away, which translates to Life is Good!

The band Dispatch greatly benefited from Napster’s infiltration of the college market and were able to grow to become one of the nation’s most popular unsigned (by choice) bands. The Grateful Dead, Phish & the jamband music scene as a whole grew exponentially off the back of its fans sharing their music. Originally it was the classic B+P where you’d send someone blank tapes and enough money for postage and they’d make a copy of the show and send it back to you. These were very popular especially with list service groups. I know I made a lot of trades back in the day via rec.music.phish and The Phish Bowl on AOL. Now through BitTorrent and sites like etree.org and the Live Music Archive it is even easier to get shows right after they happen, the previous way could take weeks to get you your favorite show from someone’s list. Now we have instant gratification. (more…)

March 6-7-8 2009

So as you may or may not know I was lucky enough to score two 3-day packages for Phish’s return three-night run at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, VA on March 6,7 & 8 2009. We’re very excited to be able to be there for this special occasion as I brought Sue with me to the previous hiatus return at MSG. Unfortunately due to the whole being a teacher thing, Sue can’t take off more than one day during that period of time in March due to it being during the testing period at school. The obvious choice was to take the time off to be there for the Friday night show.

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Christmas comes early. It seems that each month the Phish gods shine upon us with goodies from the archive and this month was no different. Fresh off the announcement of Summer Tour dates and rumored Bonnaroo announcement coming next week, the Clifford Ball DVD has everyone excited. Last night and into today the band updated their YouTube channel with 5 new video clips from their forthcoming DVD package. These include Bathtub Gin, Fluffhead, Sample in a Jar, Punch You in the Eye and the legendary ‘Flatbed Jam’. Check them all out below:

Phish - Bathtub Gin - Clifford Ball DVD
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Phish Summer 2009

Phish has just announced another date as part of their summer tour, June 10th at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville, TN. This is just another sign that the band will be headlining Bonnaroo as the rumors have been reporting all over the interweb. One can only assume there will be more dates to follow…

For more information: http://phish.com/news/index.php?year=2009#story417

Phish: The Biography - now available for pre-order on Amazon.com with very limited esp. about a release date http://tinyurl.com/9h5oju

Phish Summer Tour 2009 - check out the video - it’s been posted on phish.com moments ago http://phish.com/summer2009/

look for a video with PYITE as the background music to be posted on phish.com today with dates - Round I. it was there early AM & now gone

phish.com hasn’t posted dates yet, but did just announce the Clifford Ball 7 DVD BOX SET being released in March http://tinyurl.com/8vemod

love that the PA Phish show is no longer on livenation.com but was seen by so many fans. another sign they’ll announce more shows today

Phish dates are starting to fall out - Burgettstown, PA 6.18 is the first to be posted on live nation’s site today http://tinyurl.com/884da5