Above: The first Phish gig. Photo by Rob Florence. From www.phish.com

Phish will celebrate the 26th anniversary of its first show at New York’s Madison Square Garden this evening. While it remains to be seen if the band will do anything to mark the occasion, a group of fans on PhantasyTour and Phish.net are organizing a sing-along version of Happy Birthday to the band. The fans will sing the famed birthday song as soon as the lights go down before the band’s first set.

The members of Phish played their first show together as Blackwood Convention in the Harris-Millis Cafeteria of the University of Vermont. For many years the group believed its first show took place on October 30, 1983, though research around the first edition of The Phish Companion revealed otherwise.