Island Tour Inspiration


I can trace the inspiration for Phantasy Tour to a couple key events and interactions leading up to its launch in September 1999. One such event was a rec.music.phish / Phunky Bitches meet-up that took place 20 years ago today on April 5, 1998 at the Trinity Brewhouse in Providence, RI. This was the day of the final show of Phish’s 4-show Island Tour, named as such for the fact that the shows took place on Long Island and in Rhode Island. My wife and I were living in Harrisburg, PA at the time and had made the trip up to Rhode Island on Saturday for the first of two shows at the Providence Civic Center. On Sunday we arrived at the Trinity Brewhouse a couple hours before the show and weren’t really sure we’d know anyone there. We were pleased to spot a familiar face in the crowd; our Harrisburg friend and Benjy’s Digest curator, Benjy Eisen. Twenty years later, there isn’t much about that pre-show gathering that I can recall, but I will always remember that Benjy handed me a pen and pad and invited me to make my song picks for the show that night. Being in the infancy of my concert going career, this was, to the best of my knowledge, the first time I’d seen fans picking songs before a show in any fashion that was more formal than a casual discussion about what you hoped to hear that night. This wasn’t about what I wanted to hear; it was about testing my knowledge of the band’s repertoire, habits and recent setlists. I did think to myself that I might never find out how I'd fared against the other players (and I didn't). In the months that followed, I thought it would be nice to be able to collect picks and see standings online. I thought about the potential of assigning songs to setlist positions or song categories and making the game last all tour. I thought about the potential to have fans compete online regardless of whether or not they were attending the show. It would take another year and 5 months, some encouragement from friends, and lots of late nights to unveil Phantasy Phish for Fall Tour 1999.




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