It’s been a little over one year since Phish have announced their return. While most conversation has been focused on the band and how well they’re playing, perhaps it’s time to discuss the behind the scenes work. Phish management, here’s your report card.
Venue Selection: A
Phish have finally broken out of playing the same old places at the same old times. Sure some venues are crowd favorites – MSG, Hampton Coliseum, the Gorge – and should stay in the mix as much as possible, but Phish have done a great job mixing things up, throwing in places such as the Asheville Civic Center, the Fox Theatre, Fenway Park, and – of course – a festival at Indio, CA. Even before any New Years show, I will have seen 12 shows in 2009, with the least interesting venue attended being the Thompson/Boiling Arena in Knoxville. Sure there were the usual Camdens and Cincinnattis on the tour schedule, but if you wanted to see Phish in new and interesting places only, you could do so and still see quite a few shows.
This would have been an A+ except that the southeast, while not as underserved as it claims to be, really could have used a few more shows, as could the Texas area. And yes, just once I’d like to see a show or two in Seattle, but I know that as long as the Gorge exists, that’s not very likely and for good reason.
Ticket Prices: A+
When Phish came back in Hampton, the demand was incredible. Phish could have charged $100 or maybe even $150 a ticket and still have easily sold out the building. They didn’t.
Apparently Phish Inc. is the only company left in the country that understands that businesses have to plan for the long term. Phish didn’t get the maximum profit for those three shows, but the good will engendered by keeping the prices so low is one of the reasons why Phish are continuing to sell out most venues.
Merchandise: B-
I’m the guy who likes to buy official merchandise. When Phish came back in 2003, the excitement from that combined with some rather good designs led to me purchasing five shirts from the winter tour alone. My house is covered with posters from that tour.
This year? Not quite so much. The t-shirt and poster designs have left a lot to be offered. Ok, there was the amazing Hampton glow in the dark spaceship shirt that just about everyone bought but after that, the designs have been kind of dull. I went into Asheville planning to buy a poster but was stunned that it was just some murky, dark design that had nothing to do with the town. Admittedly the last thing I need right now is to spend money on new Phish shirts or posters, but my wallet was willing to be opened if the right merchandise would be provided.
LivePhish.com still provides a valuable service, getting the shows out there with incredibly fast turnaround, but people have not been particularly happy with the mixes. However, those have improved dramatically over the course of the year and with a few more tweaks, this should be one of the best things that Phish produce.
This year also saw the release of the Clifford Ball DVD set. Releasing a 7 disc set was a bit of a risk, but the release is incredible. The obvious follow-up would be a 10th anniversary Big Cypress release, but the clock seems to be ticking down on that idea. This grade would be an A if that were produced.
This is a bit of a mixed bag, but the Joy Box fiasco needs to be addressed too. First, very few people wanted the box. What we wanted was the DVD – and I wonder how many people would have ordered it if the track listing had been announced earlier; it wasn’t obvious at first that the disc would only contain videos of Joy songs – and the bonus disc. There just was no way of purchasing those without getting the box. This is the reverse lesson from above, maximizing a short-term gain in exchange for pissing off the most loyal fans.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the set is shipping incredibly late. Dry Goods finally addressed the situation in a recent email, offering 10% off of a future purchase. While they didn’t have to offer anything, the coupon didn’t play well. Unless Phish release something amazing in the next few months – again, 10th anniversary of Big Cypress DVDs please – most of us won’t have anything we’ll want to buy in the store before the coupon expires in March. This is definitely an area for some improvement.
Mail order: B-
If I were giving out grades after the first leg of summer tour, this would be an F. Phish Ticketing can’t be blamed for the fact that more people want to go to shows than there are tickets, but between the all or nothing mail order results and not being willing to look at any of the scalper fighting techniques that other bands have invented while Phish was broken up, the system feels a little dated. Phish were cutting edge for a while there but now they’ve been passed by many bands.
However, it appears that between the first and second leg of summer tour, the system has changed from being a single lottery where you got all of the shows that could be filled when your number came up, to an individual lottery for each show. This minor tweak spread the orders around nicely. It seemed like a lot more people were getting tickets in the fall tour lottery than on previous legs. This is a much desired tweak and is appreciated.
Web Page: B+
Since the band has returned, tours are now announced with a video. This seems like a minor change, but in terms of drumming up excitement for the shows, it’s been quite dramatic. Every time I had a doubt about flying cross country twice in a 24 hour period, I watched the Fenway video and got fired up again.
The “From the Road” section has also been a massive improvement. Admittedly, in the era of iPhones, it’s easy to get information out, but the updates on Phish.com have been exceedingly quick and more reliable than a Twitter feed. We’ve come a long way since 12/31/02 where I had to use my Palm Phone to try to update the setlist live, leading to a 5 minute delay to put out the midnight song because all of the phone lines were jammed.
The album game on Festival 8 – while marred by requiring so much side scrolling that most people ended up going to either the Jamtopia page or even the back end XML file on Phish.com to see what had been eliminated – has sparred endless conversation about what should or shouldn’t be played, what would be a good choice or a horrid one, what potential trick Phish could do to play a different album. This has been such a popular game that even Phantasy Phish has actually mostly been talking about Phish recently. Kudos.
Unfortunately, the other Flash game for F8 was the one misstep. The game itself was cute, had had some funny moments like the sudden appearance and destruction of Alaska, but it ran way too long. Moreover, while the destruction and eventual return of California did provide some buzz, it was almost all negative. People booked flights early based on the really reliable rumors, and had to go through a few weeks where they were scared that they were going to lose money. I see the humor there, but it kind of backfired in this case, making everyone angry instead of amused. Joking is fine, but in this economy, you don’t want your most loyal fans to feel secure in being able to buy cheap airfare. If nothing else, that gives them more money to spend on concert tickets and LivePhish. Unfortunately, this leads us to the biggest failing of Phish 3.0.
Announcement of Dates: F
It didn’t start out that way. Hampton was announced with tons of time for people to make plans and the first leg of Summer Tour seemed like it was the same. Then they suddenly announced an extra Knoxville show, but that was only a few days later and didn’t really affect anyone’s plans. Then they announced the other Jones Beach and Fenway show, with barely enough time to get decent airfare and that did cause people to have to blow up their itineraries and start over.
Then we had the whole fiasco with Festival 8, where everyone knew where it was but the official website intentionally tried to make people think it wasn’t there, making a lot of people too nervous to lock in incredibly low airfare. Fortunately, flights stayed cheap, but that could have easily led to a much lower attendance.
Finally, here we are, less than a week away from Halloween, and NYE still hasn’t been announced. The smart money has been saying there will be a return to Miami, but the band is saying nothing. Meanwhile plane tickets are getting more and more insane – a quick check this morning showed that Seattle to Miami on those dates is over $700 per person – and people are understandably getting frustrated. The staggered and late ticket announcement feels like a game, some way of getting people to buy more tickets because the shows they really care about aren’t available yet. That will only work so many times before people just get frustrated. I’ve never missed a Phish New Year’s Eve concert but I’m actually asking myself this year if I can afford to go.
This is the big issue. Yeah it would be nice if Phish could have cooler shirts and mail order became a little less scalper friendly, but timely announcements are the difference between people going to shows and people deciding that the whole thing is more pain than it’s worth. Things are moving in the right direction. Fix this for 2010 and everyone will be happy.
*****
David Steinberg got his Masters Degree in mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1994. He first discovered the power of live music at the Capital Centre in 1988 and never has been the same. His Phish stats website is at www.ihoz.com/PhishStats.html.
He is the stats section editor for The Phish Companion and is on the board of directors for the Netspace Foundation. You can read more of his thoughts at http://www.livejournal.com/users/thezzyzx.
