25 Years Of Phish New Year’s Eve Gag Videos

Phish New Year’s Eve concerts have been part of the band’s history since December 31, 1989. The band introduced a traditional third set to their New Year’s Eve shows in 1991 and the following year incorporated on-stage antics (former road manager Brad Sands dressed in bird costume flying over the audience during “Fly Famous Mockingbird”) that also became firmly part of Phish NYE concerts in 1993 with the aquarium theme incorporated into the countdown to midnight.

The spectacle of a Phish New Year’s Eve show went to even further, literal, heights in 1994 when the band soared over the audience inside flying hot dog, a prop that would play a prominent role years later at Big Cypress in the Florida Everglades on New Year’s Eve 1999, and wind up in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

Phish capped a momentous 1995 with their first of now many New Year’s Eve shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The concert featured guitarist , bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman acting out a “Time Factory” theme as part of the countdown to midnight.

Subsequent years saw Phish continue to expand on the New Year Eve “gag” tradition, and use December 31st to host historic events like the aforementioned Big Cypress festival’s midnight to sunrise set and the return from their first hiatus on New Year’s Eve 2002 during which dancing pixies and artificial snow inside MSG helped usher in the new year. More recent December 31 Phish shows have evolved the gag concept into more serious stage productions that have had the assistance of Broadway choreographers and dancers.

Below is at least some video footage of each of Phish New Year’s Eve “gags” performed over the past 25 years. The videos are presented chronologically from December 1995 through last year’s infamous “Send In The Clones” gag that resulted in Anastasio being stuck on an elevated platform for the bulk of the third set and encore.