In a 20-year retrospective on Phish’s first festival, Clifford Ball, the Press Republican revealed that the town of Plattsburgh initially sought to cancel the event, even just a day before the festival kicked off. (via Jambase)

“I was trying to figure out how to break the contract,” Mark Barie, CEO of Plattsburgh Airbase Redevelopment Corp admitted. “I didn’t want them here, and I was looking for details and loopholes in the contract, but I couldn’t find any. They did the contract very well.”

Barie added that he was concerned that having a massive concert like Clifford Ball, which drew upwards of 90,000 people, would hurt the site’s ability to market the flight line and surrounding property. “We were either going to be a concert venue or an international airport, and I didn’t think we should be a concert venue.”