The Virtual Engineer » phish

Week of snow ended with a Trey show at Electric Factory

derrek.cooper — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:02:01 +0000

Spent the last week or so somewhat couped up in the house with the family thanks to the 45″+ of snow we received over a few days here in Philadelphia. I’m all for a little snow or even alot of snow. But, I’m done shoveling digging cars out, pushing snow off the roof etc..

I had tickets for two TAB shows. One at the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville and one for the Electric Factory in Philadelphia. Needless to say, my cville trip was cancelled dude to lack of train service, so I ate that ticket. But, thankfully not trying to venture south, allowed me to hang with my brother and catch the show at the Electric Factory.

Trey at the Electric Factory in Philly

We both had to fight our way downtown and hooked up some pre-gaming at the North 3rd Bar in Northern Liberties. Classic bar with fantastic food and beers. Can’t say enough great things about this place.

Cruised up to the Electric Factory and got ready for a 3.5 hr jamming show. Highlights for me were Sand, Let Me Lie and an uber energetic First Tube as the final song in the encore.

Sound quality is rough, but I think you get the sense that the energy is high. The band was having a great time. Really solid way to end a blizzard of a week.

PHISH – Philly Show – Night #1

derrek.cooper — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:34:11 +0000

I waited along time for these guys to come back to Philly and wasn’t disappointed. McPhish and I enjoyed it old school in the lot. Introduced him to shakedown, which seemed bigger back in the day. I’ll spare you with the it was the best show ever drool”. It was solid. Highlights for me were Possum, Wedge and Harry Hood.

Check out this cool video above. Highlighting Down with Disease, which isn’t a particularly favorite of mine, but sounded great. I love rolling old school with a 1am stop at good ole Geno’s Steaks in South Philly. All due respect to the south philly kings, which at the time tasted awesome. But in reality, they are just ok. Probably had nothing to do with the bowl of cherry peppers I ate like they were pickles.

The fact that PHISH is so accessible on this tour via streaming on PhishTwit and downloads on livephish.com, makes it much easier for us old heads to enjoy it remotely.

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

derrek.cooper — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:50:00 +0000

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.

PHISH is back!!!

derrek.cooper — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 01:32:00 +0000

Completely non-CFD, non-CAE, non-CAD related post. In fact, no technical content whatsoever.

But sometimes, it is just nice to take a step back and post something on the personal side. One of my favorite bands of all time have been on hiatus (break-up) for the last 4 years. They are scheduled to play three shows in Hampton, VA in March.

I have seen them in the past and hope to see them again when additional shows are announced.I have a few GB of live digital phish shows, that is what is loaded on my ipod and what I am playing in the office.