“When Phish broke up, I made some comment about how I’m not gonna go around playing ‘You Enjoy Myself’ for the rest of my life,” Anastasio said with a laugh. “And it’s so funny because Fish and Mike and Page have been talking to each other a lot lately and now — it’s not that I can’t believe that I said that, but its symbolic of how much I lost my mind or how much I lost my bearings or something. Because at this point in time I would give my left nut to play that song five times in a row every day until I die. I certainly thought about that while I was in jail.”

via Live Music Blog

Throughout the years, my music preferences are always fluctuating. As far away as the majority of my musical tastes have shifted away from Phish, they have always held a place in my heart. With that said, I vividly remember my first show.

I was a junior at Eastern illinois University and along with some friends, we hit the road and headed an hour north towards the University of Illinois. It was a brisk fall day (have I told you that I love fall before? :)) and I remember the sights, smells and energy within the parking lot of Assembly Hall like it was yesterday. We finally got in, the lights dimmed and a truly memorable concert experience was now forever etched into my brain.

To commemorate this anniversary, let me share with you the version of “Possum” that they performed at my first show on October 22nd, 1995. This has to be one of my favorite versions ever. There is some CRAZY tension/release in this version.

Even if you’re not a Phish fan, this is a really good example of Phish doing what they do did best…

Download it here -> Possum – 1995.10.22 – Assembly Hall – Champaign, IL

- Posting is gonna be light for the next week or so. We’re going to the land of cheese, brats and beer (three of my favorites). Coincidentally, Rick Klau came up with a cool experiment for a trip the his family is going on next week. He basically created a podcast, but not in the traditional “person talking into a microphone” sense. He asked that anyone that uses del.icio.us “tag” mp3s that he should listen to on the trip with the tag, ricksipod. He then ran the feed that del.icio.us generates through Feedburner to create a “podcast”. You subscribe to the feed and anything tagged with ricksipod is automagically pulled down to your computer/iPod. Very clever and I’ve taken advantage of it. This will be the soundtrack to our trip as well. Thanks, Rick. :) (and by the way, “Soba”, which I mentioned above was one of the songs that is currently in the feed ~ although it wasn’t me who tagged it…)

- I got accepted as a member of AttentionTrust

- I got a lot of new music this week that I’ve been listening to…
= Golden Smog – “Another Fine Day”
= Thom Yorke – “The Eraser”
= Sufjan Stevens – “The Avalanche”
= Band of Horses – “Everything All The Time” (probably my favorite of the bunch, although I’ve had this before ~ just making it “legit”.  You’re welcome, RIAA.)

- Big Brain Academy for the DS has been getting most of my attention lately. With all of these brain games I’ve been playing lately, you’d think I would be uber-smart? :) Now that we have two DS’s in the house, I’m finding that it’s really fun to play head-to-head against Liz. What’s great about the DS is that with the majority of games that I have, you can play against someone but only need one copy of the game. I’m sure we’ll be making a drinking game out of head-to-head Big Brain Academy while up in Wisconsin (although, that kind of seems counter-intuitive?). :)

AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM TREY 05.25.04

Last Friday night, I got together with Mike, Page and Fish to talk openly about the strong feelings I’ve been having that Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it’s still on a high note. Once we started talking, it quickly became apparent that the other guys’ feelings, while not all the same as mine, were similar in many ways — most importantly, that we all love and respect Phish and the Phish audience far too much to stand by and allow it to drag on beyond the point of vibrancy and health. We don’t want to become caricatures of ourselves, or worse yet, a nostalgia act. By the end of the meeting, we realized that after almost twenty-one years together we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude.

So Coventry will be the final Phish show. We are proud and thrilled that it will be in our home state of Vermont. We’re also excited for the June and August shows, our last tour together. For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We’re done. It’s been an amazing and incredible journey. We thank you all for the love and support that you’ve shown us.

– Trey Anastasio

Brad and the band are huge Mac and iPod fans and Jason got to hear some of the interesting ways that the band uses technology (specifically their iPods to hold a catalog of the band’s music that all the members have).

It’s amazing how inventions such as the iPod have changed not only the way that people relax, but also the way some people work.

Apple has posted an article about their presence at Phish’s “It Festival” that occured last weekend up in northern Maine. Apple sponsored a tent full of iMacs at this event where people could go and burn themselves a disc full of tracks from Phish’s “Live Phish” series of cds for free. Besides the cd burning tent, Phish had a radio station setup that was broadcasting the whole weekend and was using iTunes as the source for the music.

Pretty cool to make a cd while you’re at the festival so you have something new to listen to when you’re stuck in traffic for 10 hours like some of the attendees were while trying to get out of the parking lot/camping area… Overall, the concensus is that the “It Festival” was fantastic and worth the hassle of crowds, etc. I will be able to experience the event when the rumored DVD of the shows from this past weekend is released…

Now they gotta step up and get a feed for setlists… That would be sweet! :)

They are discussing the move over at LivePhish.com to FLAC files (away from .SHNs) to make even smaller “lossless” audio files for download…

and after reading all the postings over at Slashdot, I’ve concluded that the regular posters over there are even bigger losers than I already thought/knew! :)