12/16/99 @ Raleigh, NC w/ Brent Summerville

Attendance Bias

Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein.

We’ve covered plenty of shows from the summer of 1999 on Attendance Bias but, lest we forget, there was a lot more to that year than a raucous summer tour. There was also a fall tour and a lesser-explored December tour, which took place entirely within the last month of the millennium. Today’s guest, Brent Summerville, chose one of the last Phish shows of 1999–December 16 at the Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, NC–to review today. Although portions of the show are available on YouTube, there are certain nuances that we can only hear from someone who was in attendance. Luckily, we have Brent here to tell us all about it.

At the time, Brent was moving back to North Carolina from Michigan, and had been seeing Phish for five years. He brought a friend to this show, which he rarely did at the time, and was on his old college campus where he had lots of ties to this small basketball court-turned-concert venue.

Phish broke out a monster second set for this show, and it joined the fabled 5-song second set club, with a version of Sand full of soundscapes, as well as a soul-cleansing Tweezer. But there’s more to it than that. Let’s join Brent to chat about college basketball, Trey’s keyboard setup, and cold Michigan winters as we revisit December 16, 1999 at the Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, NC.