I almost didn't go to the show because I was too lazy to figure out how to buy tickets from a Japanese ticket vendor.  But I finally decided to give it a shot.  The ticket cost me 6,000 yen (roughly $58), and it took me part of an afternoon to find the ticket place.  The show was worth it.

    One of the reasons I opted to even see Phish in the first place was because I knew their popularity here was not on the same level as in the States, where shows sell out months in advance and hordes of thousands descend upon the arenas they played, making a good view of the show pretty much impossible.  The venue I saw them in, a place called Zepp Tokyo, was a 3,000-seat hall in a new area of Tokyo reclaimed from the Pacific.  Certainly this was a far better, and more intimate, place to watch this band.

    And I was right.  Thank God.

    Of course, the legions of fans that follow the quartet from show to show, affectionately known as "Phish Heads", were whittled down to a few hundred that could afford to take a flight to Japan and follow them throughout the seven shows they were scheduled to play.  I have to admit that I am impressed that so many were that devoted.  And that number of fans is about the right number to turn a show into a swinging party without the fear of a mass riot.  It should be stated, however, that Phish Heads rarely cause trouble, and that it's usually a symptom of the police who overreact when faced with so many fans pissing on the highway and setting up camps in nearby parking lots.

    No such scenes materialized at Zepp, and the police must not have been given any advance tips on what to expect because I saw none at the show.  So like I said, a quaint, agreeable crowd met the band.

    One thing that makes a Phish show special is that varying set list night after night, where you never know what they'll play, and they'll often throw in unique cover songs.  This show blasted off with a roaring version of "Down With Disease" from the 1994 album Hoist.  For the next two-and-a-half hours, the band went through tons of tracks that had the crowd hopping with their funk/jazz improvisation: "Bathtub Gin", "Sample In the Jar", and "Wading in the Velvet Sea" among others.

    The LOMO came in very handy on this particular night and I was pleasantly surprised at how well many of the shots came out.  There were many times during the show where the house lights came on during a song as part of the light show, and I used those moments to help give myself decent exposures.  I hope you enjoy these interesting photographs at least half as much as I enjoyed going to the show.

    For more information about the band, go to their official website, www.phish.com.

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