[We would like to thank John Montague (.net @mazegue) for providing this recap. -Ed.]

How did I get here? I like my Phish a little grimy. I like it indoors, because I like the energy bouncing off the walls. If I could, I’d get teleported to The Colonial Theater in the early '90s, or perhaps pick up some broke and dirty hitchhikers en route to Dane County Coliseum. I want the full Phish experience. I want the parking lot. I want Shakedown Street. I want my dose of American culture at its very best. That said, I am here in Mexico for whatever Gamehendge has in store. Two of my best friends are turning 50 this week, and this is how they want to celebrate. I can’t think of a better reason to be here.

I just saw a good dark and stormy, grimy Phish show in Mexico, in the least grimy of venues. It was a deep show, layered with complexity, light dancing with dark on Black and White night.

[We would like to thank Kelly Wilson (.net @kellynicu) for providing this recap. -Ed.]

Night one of Phish at Riveria Maya began with a mild yet refreshing mist of rain before the band took the stage at 9:15 to a sea of eager fans. They kicked off with an upbeat “Back On The Train” to get the party started while Kuroda’s purple and blue lights made even the palm trees dance and glow. After an extended jam, Trey, as always, graciously welcomed us before breaking into “Moma Dance,” which included three random samples of the words “three orange whips.”

[We would like to thank user Jasn1001 (Jason Carlson) for his work and this post! -Ed.]

One of the best things about Phish.net and Phish.in is the free API access to the relational database. It allows any member to request a key and query the database of songs, shows, setlists, and more.

As a long time Phish fan and having recently gained some data manipulation skills, I started a personal project to make a visualization dashboard. Plots that I always wanted to see. To help summarize all of the data the volunteers at The Mockingbird Foundation, Phish.net, and Phish.in have collected over the years.

I had already been working on the dashboard before seeing the recent post about show ratings being disabled because of a surge in activity skewing ratings of historical shows. This motivated me to finally finish the dashboard and share it. The idea of increasing access to the data and helping individuals find a reason to rate shows on Phish.net is what the project is about. Whether it is a highly rated show, average, or low. If a listener had been there the night of, streamed it from home, or listened to it on phish.in a few years later. I think the dashboard can help to navigate the data around the year, tour, or show and help to justify a rating of what your ears just heard. A law of large numbers type of idea that the larger the sample size of ratings becomes the closer we get to the true rating of the show. Here is the link https://www.philletofphish.com/. It is best viewed on an iPad or larger.

Here is a quick rundown on the site.

First, select the show date from the searchable dropdown box, which by default is set at the most recent show.

What is Wordsmith?

By popular demand, Wordsmith is back! Once again, Tom wrote a verse of what might be a song someday, and he’s stuck with a bad case of writer’s block. Please help Tom by contributing the next verse.

[We would like to thank Brian Weinstein, user @AttendanceBias, for the Attendance Bias podcast and for this post. -Ed.]

Hold on a minute. Before you read any further, let’s time-travel 15 years into the past. Need a little help? Here’s a quick summary of where we were, as a nation, in the late-winter of 2009:

President Barack Obama has just been inaugurated for his first term as president. Seinfeld is airing a quasi-reunion episode via the genius of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. The Yankees won the World Series a few months earlier, and the Pittsburgh Steelers just won the Super Bowl. Taylor Swift is a successful but niche country artist, while The Black-Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga are at the top of the pop charts. And in the world of film, Heath Ledger just won a posthumous Oscar for his iconic performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight.

Are you there yet?