ATTENDANCE BIAS LISTENERS REFLECT ON COVENTRY: 20 YEARS LATER
[This post is courtesy of Brian Weinstein, Host of the Attendance Bias podcast. -Ed.]
Regardless of whether time heals all wounds, it certainly adds perspective. Twenty years after an event–a movie, a championship win, an album, or a monumental concert– it’s customary to look back and think about What It All Meant, both at the time, and with the benefit of hindsight. Two decades seem to be the right amount of time to revisit even the worst experiences with a fresh set of eyes. With the approach of Mondegreen, Phish’s 11th large-scale festival since 1996, now seemed like a good time to reflect on Phish’s “final shows” that took place exactly 20 years ago: Coventry. What would it be like to look back mindfully, focusing on the positives? (After all, there’s nothing that could be 100% negative, right?)
A few weeks ago, I put out a call for listeners of the Attendance Bias podcast to share a short message detailing ONE positive memory from Coventry. There were no guidelines other than that: it could have been something as concrete as the “Split Open and Melt” jam, or something more abstract, like the sense of community that a person felt after witnessing hundreds or thousands of fans abandoning their cars and hiking into the festival.
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And, boy, did the Attendance Bias audience come through. Today’s episode features 40 minutes’ worth of positive memories from what is indisputably Phish’s worst festival. The common thread through all of the memories, though, was people helping one another get through a festival: locals providing ATV rides into or out of the fairgrounds, residents letting people park in their front lawns, strangers helping a young fan afford a bus transfer, one fan providing a warm pizza in the middle of a terrible set…it comes down to people helping people.
But let’s make one thing clear: this episode is not meant to whitewash Coventry, or to gaslight you into thinking that Coventry wasn’t so bad. It was as low as it gets in terms of the Phish fan experience. But with age comes wisdom, and the goal of this episode and this blog entry is to see Coventry through the lens of the larger Phish narrative, compared to how it was viewed at the time.
Charlie Dirksen has taken this angle before on PhishNet. Twice before, as a matter of fact. But rather than take the bird’s-eye view of the disastrous festival, I hoped that listeners would share the small things that made them smile through the traffic, through the mud, and through the band melting down in front of tens of thousands of fans. If you’re packing for Mondegreen, going to the supermarket in preparation for couch tour, or on your way to Dover, DE, click HERE and give today’s episode of Attendance Bias a listen. In the end, Coventry was as bad as you remember, but there were also flecks of positivity that weekend.
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Sunday morning came and 100% of those who committed to helping out the collective group showed up and we drew a map of our strategy in mud on the side of car. One by one over the course of an hour or two we pushed and shoved and grunted and hollered as we maneuvered each vehicle to a manageable position for exiting. It was gonna be a breeze because we were 50 feet from an exit gate, right!? Wrong but that is a story for another time.
I don’t recall anyone’s name but those individuals were the kindest people all things considered with how muddy the situation was and how poor the music quality was. Everything else sucked owing mostly to the fact that the only comfortable place to be was in the concert field area, and that was where we were experiencing a runaway train wreck of a music concert. Navigating everywhere else was to post-hole your way through knee deep mud, not knowing what was mixed in with the mud and water.
I didn’t listen to Phish for two years after that show believing that if they were gonna retire then I was gonna retire them too. It was almost a relief that it ended on such a low note, because it left such a poor taste in my mouth, I cringed thinking about revisiting their music knowing I inextricably tied it to that last experience.
Thanks for doing what you do, though. Such a solid concept and a plethora of stories from this fan base. Giving fans a sounding board to tell their story probably acts as a sort of therapy for everyone.
I don't intentionally listen to the show, but it comes up from time to time. I don't really find any of the music great, perhaps OK at best. As I've said countless times the past 20 years, that doesn't matter to me and I don't feel slighted in any way. I had seen many great shows before Coventry and if that was going to indeed be all I ever heard of Phish live to that point, and beyond I would totally be fine with that.