Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Not many guests have come on the podcast to talk about anything from the year 2000. It’s kind of a lost year when most fans consider the tail end of 1.0. 1999 gets a lot of love, Big Cypress is the unquestioned greatest of all time, but what about those 52 shows that capped the 1.0 era?
Today’s guest, Brad Rosen, joins us today all the way from Israel to help plug in that gap. Brad went to a bunch of shows on the 2000 fall tour, and if he had his way, I have a feeling that he would want to have an episode about every single one. But we were able to whittle today’s guest spot down to highlights from the Albany 2000 run: September 8 and 9 2000 at the Knickerbocker Arena, known then as the Pepsi Center.
Phish was just about a month away from their first hiatus, but this 2-night stand presents a band that has it all, with maybe the edges beginning to fray as they drift from one jam to another with few boundaries in sight. Throughout the show, you can hear the crowd responding to the band with ceaseless energy, although we’ll also hear Brad explain how, if there were few boundaries in the music, things were definitely fraying in the lot scene.
So give Farmhouse another spin, make some room for Michael Ray, and don’t forget to stop at Hershey as Brad and I discuss September 8 and 9, 2000 in Albany.