Festival 8 was awesome, and I wasn’t even there.

November 1st, 2009 Posted in phish

Phish announced that they were planning a 3-day outdoor festival on Halloween weekend, I figured, chances of attending was a bit of a long-shot. But a father of two little ones can always dream.

But, I have to say the “virtual experience” has been nothing but stellar from the beginning. I’ll spare you my opinion on the band and love of the entire experience of what it means to be a fan. But thought I’d share how they are simply doing things different. They are one of the few organizations/companies that have truly embraced the web and social media exactly right. It started off with this “commercial” that was released via twitter and facebook.

PHISH – FALL TOUR 2009 from Phish on Vimeo.

They then began the countdown of locations by releasing this “save the date” map. Making it fun to speculate where the festival would be held. The map was kept up to date by eliminating the locations until it was announced that it was in Indio, CA. Of course, continuously updating via Facebook and Twitter.

Halloween is usually a big event for Phish as they historically, perform in musical costume, by covering an entire album of another band. They have played the likes of the Beatles, the Who, Velvet Underground and others. So over the course of the last few weeks, they provided a really clever 100 possible countdown. The winner was the Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St. I listened to it today and it is solid.

For those middle aged family guys, like myself, we were fortunate enough to be kept up to date via Twitter. The main Phish tweets were provided, thanks to…

@PHISH
@YEMblog
@CoventryMusic
@phishtube

There was word that a radio station, the bunny, out in CA would be streaming the show. Not sure exactly what happened, but Live Phish ended up squaring us pretty well with the stream of the show live as well as the option to pay to download.

As far as visuals- I relied on Flickr. Both Phishfromtheroad and a fan, Das38 have posted some pretty amazing shots. Surely not as cool as U2 streaming from LA, but there were a few videos posted to You Tube.

Why bother reading this? This is a clear solid example of how utilizing the web, social media and the tools that exist today can change the way that people think of entertainment.

Why should we care? It strengthens the tribe. I was one of a few thousand people that did not attend, but did everything I could to virtually be there including paying for the set in its entirety. A great example how a website, twitter, flickr, you tube all were used in conjunction perfectly.

I am anxious to see how others will embrace technology to satisfy a massive market of fans that are remote. I’ll see you boys in 3 weeks in Philly for both shows.

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