Phish returned to the concert stage at Madison Square Garden on December 31, after a twenty-six month hiatus. Confounding expectation, the band opened its show with ‘Piper,’ and performed a number of songs from early in its career, along with three from its new album. One of the tunes off Round Room served as part of the group’s New Year’s Eve festivities, as during ‘Seven Below’ snow began to fall onto the band. Precipitation then dropped onto the audience though machinery installed high above the crowd, while costumed snow angels and other mythical Arctic creatures appeared. This segment led into ‘Auld Lang’ Syne’ and then ‘Runaway Jim.’ Earlier in the evening, after the Garden Jumbotron featured snippets of Tom Hanks calling for ‘Wilson’ during the film Cast Away, ‘Hanks’ (actually keyboadist Page McConnell’s brother Steve) stepped onto the stage during Phish’s song of the same name to utter the ‘Blat Boom…’ line.
Phish plays tonight at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia