OK found the site livephish.com

for phish experts out there, any here that are standouts for me to start with? eg, any from the Live Phish I-XX series worthwhile? I may start with the one where they cover Quadrophenia. There's just too much here to wade through. Also I much prefer the live albums, but any must-own studio albums?

Any shows from 94 and 95, august virginia beach and merriweather post from 98. Every Hampton show. Europe 97

thnx G - a way forward, yeah, that'll keep me busy and listening for awhile;D

every Hampton except the trey still on heroin post-hiatus run. awful shows.

I have no knowledge of the existence of post hiatus phish.

the 6 CD Hampton Comes Alive set might be my favorite official live release, I forgot it existed until I was browsing Dry Goods just now. of the Live Phish 1-20, 6 is my favorite (11-27-1998). 12 is also good. MSG 1995. The four island tour shows 4/2-5/1998.

Phish isn't that great in the studio. Ghost is the only essential studio album, IMO. Billy Breathes, Hoist, and Rift are also good.

Rift and Picture of Nectar are the only two studio albums from phish I like. I'd say more about some of the others, but I'm not going to do it where google can find it.

I've got one word for you: Halloween. That's when they covered entire albums. Quadrophenia was just one of them. DSotM, Remain in Light, others.

DSOTM was 11/3/97, not 10/31 , and honestly, I only ever liked the covers when phish wasn't practicing enough to do their own stuff justice.

Pedant.

And yeah, I don't necessarily like their entire album covers, but those concerts were still pretty epic special occasion type dealios -- even if you pruned one down to 60 minutes, there's still some really good stuff in there.

Grain of Salt edit: I am, by no means, a Phish expert.

For me, the concept of the halloween costume was cool, and I always looked forward to finding out what they would do, but things benefitted more when individual covers would show up in regular shows. The album sets were generally mediocre performances. The new years runs (up through 95), the tours leading up to halloween (through 98, excluding 96), and the random small venue shows between 96 and the hiatus were the peaks of my experience. My favorite show ever I never found a good recording of, from Boone, NC in fall of 94.

I was WAY too into phish for a long time. I mostly look back and remember what I liked, but don't really listen to it, because that only hurts the memories