Fans attending the shows in Atlantic City this week should be advised of the following Public Safety Notice from Boardwalk Hall:

For fans attending any of the 2013 Phish concerts at Boardwalk Hall, please make a note of the following information:

* There will be a strict no bag policy for these shows. No bags of any kind will be permitted into the arena.
* Public parking at Boardwalk Hall will not available from 10/30 through 11/3.
* One 20 oz. factory sealed or empty plastic water bottle per person will be permitted.

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by guest writer Jake Cohen (@smoothatonalsnd)

As I was taking the train up from Grand Central through Connecticut Sunday afternoon, the sunny autumn day was punctuated by the news that Lou Reed, Velvet Underground founder, noise rock pioneer, occasional hit songwriter, and denizen of the downtown avant-garde, had died at age 71. There are many artists of that era whose deaths would be a devastating blow to me personally; while Lou Reed wasn’t really in that pantheon, I felt strangely sad and affected nonetheless, as though an epoch of rock and roll was somehow ended. I wondered what Velvet Underground tunes Phish would play that night, and secretly hoped we’d hear my favorite VU tune, “Venus in Furs.”

Phish owes a lot to Lou Reed. Obviously there’s the matter of the band’s 1998 Halloween album, the Velvet Underground’s 1970 masterpiece Loaded. Yet it’s hard to imagine the “Storage Jam” from SuperBall without Metal Machine Music coming first. So when Phish returned to the Hartford Civic Center after 14 years, continuing their fall theme of re-christening the old haunts of their late 90s indoor tours, everyone was expecting some kind of tribute to the late master – maybe a reprise of the Dick’s appearance of “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’,” maybe a “Sweet Jane” or “Who Loves the Sun” bustout. I was still caught off guard by the rollicking “Rock and Roll” to open the show, the first time it had done so since 12/29/98.

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