Phish Closes Five-Night MSG Run With Early-Nineties Throwback — SkimNews
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- Phish wrapped their 92nd through 96th shows at Madison Square Garden in a five-night stand built entirely around their early-Nineties run, with each night pulling only from that era's songbook.
- Trey Anastasio dressed in period-specific looks featuring T-shirt designs he hadn't worn in years, and Phish closed the run with "Esther" off their 1989 debut LP Junta.
- Jonathan Schwartz, host of a daily show on SiriusXM's Phish Radio, first discovered Phish as a University of Missouri journalism student when he heard "Esther" blasting from a fraternity house hallway.
- Schwartz attended his first Phish concert in April 1993 at the now-defunct 1,200-person American Theater in St. Louis, where Trey Anastasio's friend Roger proposed to his girlfriend onstage during a massive version of "AC/DC Bag."
- At a 1998 Tower Records album signing in Manhattan for The Story of the Ghost — where the line circled the block and ran thousands deep — Schwartz asked Anastasio to keep pushing the envelope, and Anastasio replied, "I'll do my best man. I promise I'll do my best."
Why it matters: For longtime Phish fans, a five-night MSG stand committed entirely to one decade's catalog is a deliberate artistic gesture rather than a typical greatest-hits revue, and Schwartz's first-person account demonstrates how the band's taping culture, in-person encounters, and era-specific nostalgia have sustained a multi-generational community from the early-Nineties onward.
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