[We would like to thank @drbeechwood and his friend, photographer Tony Stack, for this photoessay -Ed.]

If you were there, you remember…the highs, the lows, the rain, and the sun. Some of you walked for miles, others like us somehow found back roads and drove really close to the venue with no problem, while listening to the radio and hearing Mike tell people to turn around. No way! The music…speaks for itself? These were some of the lowest rated shows ever, but in the end, we got together for a celebration of the end that ended up NOT being the end.

A lot happened between the sad final notes of "The Curtain With" at Coventry on 8/15/04 and the jubilant first notes of "Fluffhead" on 3/6/09 at Hampton…and here we are, 20 Years Later, about to celebrate another East Coast festival in Delaware.

My friend, Tony Stack, from Boulder, Colorado (“Rocksteady Studios”) was a freelance photographer for Jambase and got a photo pass for the weekend. This resulted in the shots from the on-stage scaffolding and a few pictures from the pit, but he also took some photos of the crowd before and during the shows, reminding us that it wasn’t all a muddy depressing weekend. Enjoy!

All photos used with permission © 2004 Tony Stack

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[This post is courtesy of Brian Weinstein, Host of the Attendance Bias podcast. -Ed.]

Regardless of whether time heals all wounds, it certainly adds perspective. Twenty years after an event–a movie, a championship win, an album, or a monumental concert– it’s customary to look back and think about What It All Meant, both at the time, and with the benefit of hindsight. Two decades seem to be the right amount of time to revisit even the worst experiences with a fresh set of eyes. With the approach of Mondegreen, Phish’s 11th large-scale festival since 1996, now seemed like a good time to reflect on Phish’s “final shows” that took place exactly 20 years ago: Coventry. What would it be like to look back mindfully, focusing on the positives? (After all, there’s nothing that could be 100% negative, right?)

A few weeks ago, I put out a call for listeners of the Attendance Bias podcast to share a short message detailing ONE positive memory from Coventry. There were no guidelines other than that: it could have been something as concrete as the “Split Open and Melt” jam, or something more abstract, like the sense of community that a person felt after witnessing hundreds or thousands of fans abandoning their cars and hiking into the festival.

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