12/30/97 @ MSG w/Kate Fuego

Attendance Bias

Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s guest is fire dancer Kate Houlihan of Austin, Texas.

At the beginning of this podcast, I was surprised that so many guests picked shows from 1999. But now that we are two years into the show, a new trend has developed: the holiday run. For a multitude of reasons, many special moments in Phish history happen during the holiday run. By now, at least six guests have come on Attendance Bias to talk about a personal experience they’ve had from one of the legendary Phish shows from December 28 to 31st of any given year. For this episode, however, Kate picked the cream of the crop: Phish’s show on December 30, 1997 at Madison Square Garden.

While the 1994 and 1995 holiday runs have been covered on Attendance Bias, this is the first time that the 1997 run of shows has been chosen by a guest. It’s a thrill for me, because this was the stretch when I saw Phish live for the first time. For Kate, it wasn’t her first time, but you’ll hear how this show, on the 30th, was when she got it and decided that she was all in on this band that we love so much.

So put on your best speakers, get your lunchboxes full of olive loafs and fried eggs, and make sure that you make that last train out of Penn Station as Kate Houlihan tells her story about December 30, 1997 at Madison Square Garden.
Audio used in today's episode
Purple Bee