Shows & Show Schedule

Perhaps more than any other show, Phish's New Year's Eve 1995 (to 1996) extravaganza at Madison Square Garden set the commercial and artistic bar for the jam legions that followed. Bordering on musical theater starring four longhaired nerds, their three sets packed in one stunt after another. But as always, the band's most impressive tricks were in their improvisation, including a delicate second set-ending delay loop motif that later turned up on Trey Anastasio's homemade side project One Man's Trash as "That Dream Machine." "It felt like an era was coming to an end," Anastasio told Parke Puterbaugh of the band's massive extended fall 1995 trek, featuring some of the Vermont quartet's all-time noisiest excursions. New Year's '95 would prove to be a renewable resource, yielding an instant classic tape, months of fan debate ("Did Trey tease 'Fire on the Mountain' in 'Drowned'?"), a three-CD set and, most recently, a six-LP Record Store Day edition. Jesse Jarnow