Watch Phish Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2022 With Spectacular Retrospective Revue

Phish unveiled pro-shot video of their New Year’s Eve gag filmed at Madison Square Garden in New York City on December 31, 2022. The 28-minute clip features the beginning of the third set in which the quartet honored their 40th anniversary and rang in 2023 with a stunning production.

The focus for Phish has been evolving and moving forward but on New Year’s Eve the band took the opportunity to look back using the context of replicating and reimaging notable moments from past NYE gags and Halloween performances. JamBase contributor Aaron Stein detailed what went down in his Phish New Year's Eve 2022 recap, writing:

The final set of 2022 started with a singing telegram delivered to the band as they entered their 40th year, the reminiscence of holidays past leading Trey to say “I wish I had a time machine!” From there, the band launched into a nearly-indescribable production that managed to combine nearly every single “gag” from New Year’s and Halloween from the last 30 years. Yes, there was a “mockingbird” hoisted above the crowd (was Brad Sands in the suit?), but also dancing hot dogs (from the 1994 New Year’s flying hot dog) and umbrellas (Petrichor) and aerialists (Steam) and stand-ins for the band representing their Halloween performances of Kasvot Vaxt and Sci-Fi Soldiers and more, so much more.

While these ghosts of Phish holidays past chaotically filled the stage, the band appropriately played “Ghost.” There’s no way to fully do the spectacle justice in words as Phish in-jokes intermingled in ways only true fans could probably fully appreciate, and even then, it was impossible to process every detail in real time. The “Ghost” theme of the set opened up to other musical throwbacks, a full gospel choir joining on stage to recreate the 1996 NYE performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Page and choir belting out the sing-along classic and transporting everyone back to Boston. Later “Ghost” transformed into “Jungle Boogie” with a brass band marching down the side of the floor and climbing on stage, the time machine now set for 2003. Are you following so far? The numbers went to 2002, 20 years in the past when the band returned from their hiatus and spoofed Tom Hanks in “Castaway,” “Wilson” making way to those aforementioned volleyballs being tossed into the crowd.

As the clock struck midnight, there was no balloon drop, instead confetti cannons filled Madison Square Garden with colored paper as Phish played “Auld Lang Syne,” just like back in 1992. That’s one powerful time machine! And then, because this is Phish we’re talking about, the bizarre, insider-baseball anarchy of the “gag” kicked up a notch, the band starting up “Carini” as the stage was filled with “naked dudes,” –- dancers in nude suits, swarming like pests, dancing along in pure dadaism, eventually forming a Rockette-style kickline as Page returned to New Year’s Eve 1997, singing “New York, New York,” just like he did on New Year’s Eve in the same room 25 years prior. Holy moly!

Phish.net’s Scott Marks pointed out some of the moments celebrated in the gag. Watch the memorable gag from this past Saturday night below:

Phish returns to the stage on February 23 to kick off this year’s Riviera Maya destination event in Cancun, Mexico.