Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. If you pay attention to the Phish podcast world, or the Goose podcast world, then you’re certainly familiar with today’s guest: Ryan Storm. Ryan is the host of the Almost Always There podcast as well as We Move Through Stormy Weather on Osiris Media, and you’ll find his reviews, commentary and general thoughts about the jamband scene at all of his outlets, which you can find in today’s...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Send us a text As we prepare for Ryan Storm's episode about 10/22/21 at The Desert Sky Pavilion in Phoenix, we also are preparing for our next episode with Adam Jerugim: 5/27/94 at The Warfield in San Francisco. Have memories from spring 1994? Call 516-366-5732 and leave a message of your thoughts, opinions, and memories from spring 1994!
Oct 15, 2024•6 min
Send us a text Hi everyone! Do you have memories, thoughts, ideas, or criticisms about 10/22/21 at Desert Sky Pavilion? Want to share them? Call 516-366-5732 and leave a message as we get ready for the next Attendance Bias episode with Ryan Storm of Osiris Media! I can't wait to hear from you!
Oct 05, 2024•2 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. There are a lot of Phish shows that are seen as turning points in both the band’s career and the evolution of their sound over 40 years. The Paradise in 1988, Gamehendge in Great Woods, New Year’s ‘95, Halloween 1996, and dozens more. Those are the high profile ones. Because there are also shows that can fit the description of “turning points” but don’t get the same sort of attention a...
Oct 02, 2024•1 hr 37 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. It was an absolute thrill to talk to today’s guest, Michael Benjamin about July 6, 2012 at SPAC. It was a thrill for two main reasons: First, I knew I was talking with a real fan about a genuinely exciting show, because he drove over 6 hours to get to the venue, and crossed the border, since Michael lived in Canada at the time. But also, today’s conversation selfishly granted me a ...
Sep 18, 2024•1 hr 30 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. With all of the lore and inside jokes of the Phish universe, conspiracy theories are part and parcel of being a superfan. When we learn the lyrics to new songs, see the artwork announcing a new tour, or even an offhand comment from a band member on a PhishRadio interview, Phish fans are always looking for signs and asking: “What does it meeeeean?” Today’s guest, James Del, is the perfe...
Sep 04, 2024•1 hr 31 min
Send us a text It's been about 2 weeks since Phish's 11th festival, and we are just starting to come back to Earth. Luckily, I am joined by the best to recap those 4 amazing days in Delaware. Skinny and JW of the "Stub Me Down" podcast, along with Scott King, have a free-form conversation to reflect, rank, and simply shoot the breeze about Phish's long-awaited festival. Other than the introduction and outro, this episode was not edited....
Aug 28, 2024•1 hr 56 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. You know, everybody has their own standards for what constitutes a “special” Phish show: a killer setlist, monster jams, rarities, meeting up with old friends, making new friends, going to your hometown venue, and more. I mean, that’s the entire premise of this podcast! But every now and again, Phish plays a show that is an undisputed SPECIAL SHOW. A show that encapsulates all of t...
Aug 21, 2024•1 hr 28 min
Send us a text Hey all, I'm testing out an idea for a late-summer episode about Coventry. For several reasons, I always figured that it would be impossible to do an Attendance Bias episode about Coventry because...well...who would be biased in thinking that Coventry was a great show because they were there?! BUT a listener emailed me with what I think is a pretty clever idea: What if listeners called in with one positive memory about Coventry? It could be something as big and concrete as having ...
Aug 13, 2024•44 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s special guest is a returning champion: Thom Epps, who was a guest on attendance bias way back in the summer of 2020, when the podcast was just getting off the ground. Somehow, with the excitement on my part of hosting a podcast, and Thom’s excitement of being a guest on a podcast, his that early episode completely missed the point: Thom picked a show that he did not attend,...
Aug 07, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s special guest is Jamie Boldt, and boy, did he pick a winner to review today: 10/31/95 at the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago, Illinois. Regular listeners of Attendance Bias will note that The Who was THE band for me as I made the transition from classic rock and alternative radio in my early teens to exploring the world beyond the corporate record stores and Top 40 radio. To say it...
Jul 24, 2024•1 hr 33 min
Send us a text Episode Playlist The Improbable, Unstoppable Rise of Goose, by Charlie Werzel for The Atlantic Welcome back, everyone! Today, Megan Glionna and Brian Brinkman of The Helping Friendly Podcast join Attendance Bias as we morph back into "Flocking Outside: A Miniseries About Goose From 3 Phish Lifers." About a year ago, the three of us released a 3-episode miniseries to get a handle on the sharp rise of Goose, and the tension that was building between the fanbases of Goose and Phish. ...
Jul 17, 2024•1 hr 31 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s guest, Brian Blatt, takes us back 30 years to April 6, 1994 at the Concert Hall in Toronto, Ontario. Phish had just started their spring tour promoting Hoist, but also showcasing their increasing ability to play anything and everything–from straight rock and roll, to bluegrass, to latin jazz, to a capella tunes, and more. Plus, a recurring theme of today’s show was the band...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today's episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. When I began this podcast, I didn’t know too much about the key shows of the end of 1.0. The years 1999 and 2000 weren’t exactly lost to me, but it was harder then than it is now to get the most recent recordings. And even if you were lucky enough to get a recording of a recent show at the end of the century–or the beginning of the new one–chances are that the recording didn’t quite ca...
Jul 03, 2024•1 hr 27 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s guest, Matt Hoffman, takes us back to an instant classic: December 2, 1997 at The Philadelphia Spectrum, the first night of a 2-night run that has since been released officially by Live Phish. The fall 1997 tour has been reviewed on this show before on Attendance Bias…and basically any other conversation about Phish, but today’s discussion focuses more on the micro–this specifi...
Jun 24, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s episode is about a Phish show, to be sure, but in the larger picture, it’s about an entire tour. Today’s guest, Jordan Kahn, chose to tell his story from June sixteenth, 2000, when Phish played Zepp Suminoe-ku, in Osaka, Japan. Four years into this podcast, it’s not often that a guest chooses a show from a tour that has not yet been covered, but Jordan saw nearly every show...
Jun 12, 2024•1 hr 13 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s guest is Steven Gripp, the creator of the Phish Mapping Project. Steven is here today to tell about one of his favorite segments of Live Phish he’s ever witnessed: “46 Days>The Dogs>46 Days” from the Austin 360 Amphitheater on July 28, 2015, in Austin Texas. Steven and I also talk quite a bit about his project: If you’re a nerdy fan like me who could spend hours down ...
May 29, 2024•56 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s guest is Anton Milioti, bass player from the acoustic-ish Grateful Dead cover band, Crickets and Cicadas. Today, Anton and I spend a good deal of time talking about the Grateful Dead and live performance, but the majority of our conversation centers around a show that was Anton’s first, and still holds up in Phish history–December 30, 2013 at Madison Square Garden. When a g...
May 15, 2024•1 hr 29 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. When I first began collecting tapes, I would always keep my eyes out for Phish shows at Jones Beach. Having grown up on Long Island, going to concerts at Jones Beach was a summer tradition. It didn’t even matter who was playing–the venue was a 10 minute drive for me, and on a nice night, it’s one of the best outdoor venues in New York. So you can imagine my reaction when I found out th...
May 01, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. I am ecstatic to introduce today’s episode, as it features both a knowledgeable guest who is well known within certain circles of the Phish community, and a thorough, wide-ranging discussion about three of the greatest improvisational rock concerts ever played: Phil and Friends at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco on April 15, 16, and 17, 1999. While not a Phish show, or even a Gra...
Apr 15, 2024•1 hr 45 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today, we’re taking on one of the big ones: one of the most pivotal shows in the band’s 40 year career. Guest Jeff Paradise was at the first modern Phish Halloween show, October 31, 1994 at the Glens Falls Civic Center, where the band played a 3-set show that included the band’s first musical costume; a full cover of The Beatles’ White Album in the second set. The full show lasted abou...
Apr 03, 2024•1 hr 38 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. We’ve covered plenty of shows from the summer of 1999 on Attendance Bias but, lest we forget, there was a lot more to that year than a raucous summer tour. There was also a fall tour and a lesser-explored December tour, which took place entirely within the last month of the millennium. Today’s guest, Brent Summerville, chose one of the last Phish shows of 1999–December 16 at the Reynol...
Mar 20, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias, or more really, the third and final episode of “This Time Will be Different: 15 Years Since Hampton.” I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s episode ends our look back at what led to Phish’s comeback at Hampton, 15 years ago on March 6, 2009. If you haven’t listened yet, previous episodes have covered The pressures that led to the hiatus in 2000, the multi-faceted hot mess that was 2004, and the rebirth of the Phish...
Mar 06, 2024•47 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias, or more accurately, episode two of “This Time Will be Different: 15 Years Since Hampton.” I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today, I join my two co-hosts: Scott Marks and Charlie Dirksen of Phish.net and the Mockingbird Foundation, to take a look at the 2.0 era, as well as Phish’s breakup in 2004. For those of you who listened to episode 1, it was clear but not obvious, that Phish needed a break after Big Cypress, and ...
Feb 28, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. The first week of March is always a conspicuous part of the year for me. No religious or secular holidays, no birthdays or wedding anniversaries in my social circle, but there is one series of dates that will always deserve some deep thoughts, if not any flowers, chocolate, or greeting cards: March 6-8 , 2009, when Phish returned to the live stage at the Hampton Coliseum. As of 2024, i...
Feb 20, 2024•45 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. If you’ll indulge my Grandpa-Simpson waxing poetic about the past for a second: when I was first getting into Phish, there were some shows (mostly from the early-90s) that lived in legend. There were stories about them, but it wasn’t so easy to find internet posts or first-person narratives about them. One of those shows was June 21, 1994 at the Cincinnati Music Hall. Phish began the s...
Feb 07, 2024•1 hr 41 min
Send us a text Do you remember where you were when you heard that Phish was returning to Hampton in 2009? To celebrate 15 years since Hampton, I’d love to hear about where you were and what you thought when you found out about Hampton ‘09. I think it would be fun to put together an audio collage of fans’ memories of where they were, what they thought, and how they felt. If you are down to contribute, I have a set of directions and a sample script. It’s quite easy, and I think it will be a lot of...
Jan 25, 2024•19 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Halloween is, without question, one of the highest profile nights of the Phish calendar. All Phish Halloween shows are judged, compared and, for better or worse, claim their spot in the band’s mythology. But, as part of a pattern that’s been discussed on this podcast before, it’s not always the high profile night that gets the best show. It’s usually the night before the night. Decembe...
Jan 24, 2024•59 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. I would guess that most of us have had the experience at a Phish show where the band is communicating to us, directly. Not communicating with the crowd; I mean, the members of the band are playing a show that speaks to our exact life experience. Whether or not you’ve ever made eye contact with Trey right before they leave the stage after the first set, there’s no denying that the best ...
Jan 17, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Send us a text Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. I’ve mentioned a number of times on this podcast that, when I’m not spouting gibberish with strangers about Phish, I am a middle school teacher. I try not to offer too much personal information on the podcast for obvious reasons, but I am overly thrilled to say that, today, my personal life on the podcast and my professional life at school intersect in the most glorious way. That way i...
Jan 10, 2024•1 hr 8 min
