Phish Madison Square Garden April 2022: Fan Survey Results

With Phish, the question is never whether a show will be unique, but how. Every show features a setlist the band has never played before, jams they’ve never played before, and, inevitably, new forms of online chatter and/or grumbling about what unfolded.

But even by Phish’s constantly-groundbreaking standards, their recent four-show run at Madison Square Garden was unlike any other. For starters, it was a New Year’s Eve run in April. It also included a bunch of marine mammals flying around through Madison Square Garden – which resulted in the rare instance, via a brief video from @lawngurl, of Phish capturing the attention of normies, with five million views on Twitter alone as of this writing. And this MSG run busted the Phish bubble a second time, garnering discussion on Howard Stern and in Variety about the quantity of Covid that was spread at the shows.

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Visit JamBase’s Phish: The Skinny Hub for links to show recaps, setlist analysis and more

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All of those points, though, leave some questions unanswered. First, outside of the hubbub, how were the actual shows? How did a fake New Year’s run in spring stack up to the real thing? And on the Covid front, just how many people did get sick — and were there strategies that prevented people from catching it?

To answer these questions and more, I ran a survey of 1,537 Phish fans (1,260 of whom saw at least one show at MSG) between April 26 and May 4. This survey followed similar surveys that I ran after the first leg of summer tour and fall tour. The same caveats apply to this one as applied to those: though I attempted to get responses from a broad cross-section of fans by posting in multiple venues (Twitter, Phish.net, Phantasy Tour, r/Phish on Reddit), encouraging people to share with friends who aren’t in these places, and leaving the survey open for a long period, this is not a scientific, representative sample of Phish fans. That said, a ton of fans, including casual and die-hard fans alike, participated — so there’s lots of fascinating data here. So let’s make like an inflatable whale and dive in.

April 21 edged out April 22 as fans’ favorite show of the run

Overall, 42% of respondents said April 21 was their favorite show, just a bit higher than the 33% who chose the three-setter, April 22. Another 18% selected April 23, and just 1% chose April 20.

In previous surveys, we’ve seen clear attendance bias — that is, people are much likelier to say a show they attended was their favorite. That was less of a possibility here, as 46% of those who attended any shows attended all of them. And while we do see slight attendance bias here, April 21 is regarded as the best show even among those who attended April 22.

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64% said this run was better than the previous few MSG New Year’s runs

On the one hand, nearly two-thirds of respondents said this run was better than the previous few runs at MSG. But fans were much likelier to say it was “somewhat better” than “much better.”

What’s more, after fall 2021, a whopping 71% of fans said that that tour was “much better” than the average tour from the previous few years. So while fans did think this was a better-than-average MSG run, it was not viewed as quite as much of a standout as fall tour was. (Of course, part of this may not be about these shows, but about the high bar that was set by previous MSG runs.)

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The gag, on the other hand, was seen as exceptional

By contrast, the overwhelming majority of fans saw the Earth Day gag as a big step up from past New Year’s gags. 58% said it was “much better” than other gags, and another 29% said it was somewhat better.

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co-MVPs: Trey Anastasio & Jon Fishman

Fans were about equally likely to say that Trey Anastasio (28%) and Jon Fishman (25%) were the MVP of the run. Fishman had been the consensus MVP of fall tour (46% said he was the MVP of that tour) while Trey’s percentage was a hair up from the 24% who said he was the fall tour MVP. Fans thought Mike Gordon stepped up at MSG — 15% called him the MVP, up from just 2% in fall. Page McConnell fell slightly, from 14% in fall to 9% at MSG.

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Simple narrowly wins Jam of the Run honors

Fans identified four jams as the standouts from MSG: 20% said “Simple” from the final show was the best jam of the run. 15% thought the April 21 “Ghost” was the champion, while 14% said the April 21 “Tweezer” was. 10% chose the April 23 “No Men in No Man’s Land.” No other jam was selected by more than 4% of respondents.

The most popular jams from April 20 were “Carini,” “Down With Disease” and “Stash,” all of which were selected by 3%. From the April 22 show, both “Set Your Soul Free” and “Split Open And Melt” were chosen by 4%. Of course, it’s notable that the April 22 show was considerably more popular as a package than April 23, despite the latter’s jams being better regarded — suggesting that the April 22 gag and three-set holiday show energy had something to do with the show’s popularity.

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The number of people who caught Covid was … high.

In the days following the shows, it felt like almost everyone who attended the shows was popping positive Covid tests. It was hard to avoid jokes about which was spreading more quickly, Covid or @lawngurl’s video of Bananas the Whale. So just how bad was it?

Overall, 42% of respondents who attended at least one show indicated either that they had a confirmed case of Covid, or that they were sick and suspected it was Covid but had not confirmed it.

This is obviously a jaw-dropping number. It’s also much higher than the 15% of attendees of the Halloween run in Las Vegas who indicated they were infected (which itself was far, far higher than the percentage who reported being infected after attending any of Phish’s shows from earlier in 2021).

Sorting the numbers by people’s behaviors, we can learn some lessons about what made a difference in people’s likelihood of getting infected. But first, some things that didn’t.

• Overall, those who had received at least one booster shot were no less likely to be infected than unboosted fans. (Boosted folks may well have gotten less severe infections, but the survey did not attempt to ascertain severity.) It’s worth noting that vaccines were required for entry, so we can’t know whether completely unvaccinated folks would’ve been even more likely to get infected.
• There were no discernible differences among mask wearers and non-mask wearers. The survey did not ask about the type of mask people wore, nor did it ask about mask-wearing outside of the shows — there have been anecdotes about religious N95 wearers being protected, and about infections from brief mask breaks at post-show parties. The survey results cannot confirm nor deny any of this.

So what did have an impact on likelihood of infection? A couple things.

Recent infections. The more recently someone had previously been infected, the less likely they were to be infected again. Just 8% of those infected in February or March were re-infected at MSG, along with an unlucky 15% of those infected in January. Infections from before the winter omicron surge appeared to provide protection for some, but many fewer than had protection from prior omicron infections. By contrast, around half of those who either hadn’t been infected since 2020, or who had never been infected, did contract Covid following the MSG run.

Seeing more than one show. 24% of those who saw only one show indicated that they’d gotten Covid. This was much lower than the 44%, 46% and 46% of those who saw two, three or four shows, respectively. We can’t know for sure what protected those who saw one show. One data point suggests an answer, though: 77% of those who saw only one show live in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island or Massachusetts — far more than the percentage of those who saw multiple shows. It’s possible that most attendees of one show came for the show and immediately went home, whereas those who made a weekend of it attended events throughout the days and nights that multiplied their exposure.

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Most fans continue to feel safe at shows

Overall, 71% of fans would feel safe attending a Phish show right now. That’s lower than the 78% who felt safe after fall tour — but the 32% who now feel very safe is up from 29% after fall tour.

But there’s a significant difference between those who did and did not attend shows. 73% of those who were at MSG would feel safe seeing shows now, but only 60% of those who were not at the shows would feel safe. The difference suggests that some fans may be choosing not to attend shows — or at least, certain shows — because they don’t feel safe.

To that end: in response to an open-ended question about Covid, many fans said that they knew the risks going in, and felt that the shows were worth it. But many others indicated that they wished there were more Covid safety measures – either that more people masked up, that they themselves had chosen to mask more, or that Phish would lean more toward outdoor shows.

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Phishing up Earth Day was a hit. Let’s try more holidays.

Phish had whales and dolphins fly around an arena for Earth Day. It was frigging awesome. It begs the question: what other holiday hijinx could they pull? I outsourced this question to respondents, and their answers did not disappoint. Just a few of the many highlights follow. Phish, I hope you’re reading.

• “Thanksgiving. Have floats carried across the floor like Macy’s parade and then give out pumpkin pie to all fans.”
• “Dec 21 in Europe so they could play 21.12 by Rush”
• “Marathon Monday in Boston and ever[y] song has to be exactly 26:02. No matter what is going on in the jam, it stops dead at 26:02.”
• “Presidents Day- the band dresses up in suits and american flag pins with security detail on stage, which is made to look like a campaign rally (bunting, signs, teleprompters, etc) and they cover the Presidents of the United States of America’s debut album”
• “Jan 25th is Opposite Day. They play the set backwards, come out say “thanks we love playing here, see you next year” play the encore, leave the stage. Then set 2 in reverse order, >Set B[r]eak>set 1 in reverse order.”
• Several fans had a similar, brilliant idea for Groundhog Day. Twitter user @garntd suggested, “set 1 and set 2 have same songs (jams could be different),” to which @bobbker added, “I Got You Babe opener for each set.”
• “I would love to see them playing a Mike’s Song that lasts an entire set in honor of Michael McDonald’s birthday.”

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View the topline results of all questions here.

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