Tough phishing for Phish tickets

When Phish announced in late September that it would reunite for three shows at the Hampton Coliseum, a fan frenzy erupted around the globe.

In just under 15 minutes on a recent Saturday, the estimated 14,000 tickets available for each of the March concerts sold out. The band is, after all, this generation's answer to the Grateful Dead.

This was great news for Hampton, where businesses will reap the benefits of people practically dumping cash in their town. But it's bad news for many locals who'll be unable to see one of the great bands of our time right in their own backyard.

"It's hard to get a grasp on the demand for this show," said Ken MacDonald, a promoter for the show and for the coliseum, which is one of Phish's favorite venues. "The only word I can use is gigantic."

Because Phish, which split up four years ago, has yet to announce any other dates, "There are hundreds of thousands of people from across the world trying to get tickets," MacDonald said.

Joe Tsao, who's seen the group play Hampton several times, said he's heard of people coming from as far away as Japan.

As a matter of perspective, this is like Bruce Springsteen at the Meadowlands, or Madonna at the Staples Center, he said. "The demand puts all the pressure on these shows."

All tickets for the shows were $49.50; there are listings in the $600 or $700 range on Craigslist or ticket resellers. One auction on eBay had a three-night package for more than $2,000.

"It's disappointing," said Sara Schroeder, a 35-year-old Norfolk resident who's been going to Phish concerts since high school. She's seen them in Richmond, a few times in New England and once at New York's Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve (third row). She camped out for three days to see them in upstate New York, and she was among an estimated 60,000 people at their historic, two-day "Lemonwheel" show in Maine. So yeah, she's a fan. Now a mother of three with another one on the way, she can't justify spending upwards of $1,000 on a show. "A lot of people are really mad."

Schroeder was tremendously frustrated after trying to get her tickets online. She's not exactly a novice with the Internet either: She's a systems analyst and her husband's a programmer.

She said she logged on exactly when sales started - 10 a.m. Oct. 18 - only to be rerouted to another site that had marked up the tickets to $360. She blamed Ticketmaster. "If it can't handle users coming on (en masse) they shouldn't sell tickets."

Perhaps in keeping with the fan base of this trippy, sometimes surrealist group, some disgruntled fans have begun circulating conspiracy theories about what really happened.

"I heard they were already sold out before they went on sale," said Shane Fowler, a 23-year-old from Virginia Beach who wanted to see Phish for the first time. "Only people who were official members of the fan club were put into the raffle, and there was no way to get tickets unless you were a member of the fan club." He said he knew fan club members who still didn't get tickets.

"As soon as they went on sale," he said, "I was on Ticketmaster, ready to click. Then it flashed for half a second and it came back with nothing."

MacDonald explained that nothing fishy went down. "People gravitate towards theories, or think they know more than they know. There was nothing really unusual other than super-high demand."

Part of fans' disappointment stems, ironically, from the band's unusually fan-friendly approach. In the mid-'90s, Phish employed a mail-order ticketing system that let fans follow specific instructions to get tickets before they went on sale. That's how Schroeder used to get her passes.

"I have never not gotten tickets through mail order," she said.

By the early 2000s, that system morphed into an Internet-based lottery system, which is in use today and was used for the Hampton show.

In that arrangement, a "portion," MacDonald said, of tickets went to the fan Web site and the remainder to Ticketmaster.

A two-ticket limit per person was the best they could do to fight price gouging, MacDonald said. "The first-come, first-serve and a computer or over the phone is pretty random. No one is saying tickets are going to this person or location first. The computers don't have any filters - they treat everyone the same. I think it's as fair as we can do. There's going to be disappointed people."

Phish shows are regarded as among the best in the business for a number of reasons. The group is said to have never played the same songs in the same succession, or for that matter, even played a song the same way. Improvisation and winding, surprising detours are their hallmarks, and they even encourage fans to videotape their shows and trade them as long as they don't do so for profit.

"You never know what they're going to play," Schroeder said. "One year at Hampton they played (Will Smith's rap song) 'Getting Jiggy With It.' I've heard them cover 'Purple Rain.' They don't just stick to The Beatles and Dylan. People get down at those shows."

Last time, Schroeder and her husband were shut out until miraculously, the night before the show, someone who couldn't attend sold them tickets for $125.

So maybe there's hope. Good luck.

Malcolm Venable, (757) 446-2662, malcolm.venable@pilotonline.com