One of the best things generally about Phish's covers of other bands' music, and the Halloween "musical costume" tradition in particular, is how much great music of other bands you can discover in the process of being a "Phish phan".

Other than 1994's Beatles' "white album" choice, which most in the audience knew by heart owing to the Beatles' near universal popularity, most of Phish's later Halloween albums choices tended to reflect Phish's influences in somewhat more obscure choices that many in the audience were mostly unfamiliar with, something of a risk for Phish that its audience would share the band's enthusiasm for their own influences.

This year's choice, Little Feat's 1978 double album "Waiting for Columbus" is within that mold and perhaps is the closest to Phish in all of the choices of recent Halloweens.

As Bob Lefsetz pointed out, Little Feat was a band that toured endlessly in the early and mid 1970s but could gain no radio traction or hit songs, save for its near hit, "Dixie Chicken". But their music was really innovative for the time, they had a committed fan base (at a time when the Grateful Dead were basically on hiatus from touring), and they had a kickass, tight live show.

So, in 1978, that band released a double LP vinyl album of two live shows in London and Washington, edited together into as much would fit on 4 LP sides which each side couldn't go much beyond 20 minutes, and when recording a live show was a big deal, requiring trucks parked outside with bulky studio tape deck consoles, and snaking cables into a theatre.

Which brings me to this year's reissue of a remastered edition of Waiting for Columbus by the famed audiophile company, Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. MFSL reissues select CDs from iconic artists like Frank Sinatra and the Beatles where the master tapes are available, and uses proprietary mastering techniques and 24 karat gold CDs which are individually pressed from the master in a limited, numbered "collectors edition".

On the 10/31 setlist review page, Phish.netter @BarkleyMoo mentioned that MFSL had released a remastered WfC in a limited gold CD edition and recommended it to fans, and I went bought one immediately from the MFSL/Music Direct website here. It was $39.99, and about $6 ground shipping.

I received it two days ago, copy 000429 out of 500, and it hasn't been off my Apple TV, iPod boom box or car stereo much since. It is a terrific recording of a great couple of shows.

Without taking away anything from Phish's masterful imitation of Little Feat two weeks ago, the original performances at the height of the Lowell George period in 1978 are jawdroppingly tight, like Phish playing their own music when "the hose" of a "legendary" performance is happening. Like Phish, Little Feat sought to make these recorded gigs special, by adding the horns section from the Tower of Power, a blues band of the day.

If you enjoyed the Halloween performance and want to hear a formidably impressive recording of a formidably impressive, although overlooked band of the 70s era, you will run, not walk to snag one of the presumably less than 70 available copies left of this CD from the Music Direct link above.

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A mermaid themed chandelier in the Boardwalk Lobby of the AC Convention Hall, taken on my iPhone during setbreak last Saturday.

Atlantic City casino revenues are down again this month ...

Gaming revenues at Atlantic City casinos dropped again ...

Atlantic City casinos took another hit ...

For years, headlines like these - driven by monthly casino-revenue figures - have been unrelenting: The amount of gambling money Atlantic City casinos take in has continued to slide.

But the problem is, too few people have been looking at all the numbers. The focus on the monthly casino take has overshadowed a bright spot that Atlantic City needs to focus on.

Yes, fewer people are coming to Atlantic City, but they are spending more money on nongaming activities such as hotel rooms, meals and entertainment, according to a study by Spectrum Gaming of Linwood. The amount of money lost gambling in Atlantic City fell 23 percent since 2007, but spending on hotel rooms is up 21 percent and food and drink is up 6 percent, Spectrum found.

Many casinos have been decreasing comps. Yet people are still spending - and spending more, even in these tough times - to stay, dine and be entertained in Atlantic City.

What does that mean? First, it means the resort is clearly on the right track with the kinds of events it hosted last weekend. The wildly popular Phish concerts completely sold out 14,100 seats for three nights at Boardwalk Hall. That's 42,300 tickets. Many of those fans stayed in the casino hotels, ate at restaurants, shopped at stores and visited nightclubs. The same weekend, Harrah's Entertainment's "Out in A.C." event reached out to the lucrative gay tourism market, while Bally's Atlantic City hosted more traditional Atlantic City entertainment Saturday night - a boxing match.

These are the kinds of weekends that need to happen more often. Sure, some of the people who packed the city gambled. But that's not what brought them to Atlantic City. That's not what will keep them coming.

And Atlantic City's future growth area probably won't be gambling.

"We're still the second-biggest gaming market in the country, but when you lose a billion dollars of revenue that's not coming back, you have to change your business model," said Don Marrandino, Harrah's Eastern Division president.

I'm not a phish fan, in fact I'd never listened to their music before this weekend. Let me say that I have never met a more friendly, excited and happy group of people in Atlantic City than the phish fans. I thought their positivity was infectious. They were a joy to be around while I was there and I would welcome them back in a heartbeat. If what this article says is true, I never saw the tiniest hint.

In an Artsblog post, Annie Burkhart writes, "Phish has a fanatic following, so much so that it’s normal for tickets to sell out three minutes after they go on sale. The possibilities to mobilize the massive community are awesome, and that is just what the founders ofThe Mockingbird Foundation have done. A foundation organized by Phish fans, The Mockingbird Foundation, funds music education programs for children, especially in communities touched by Phish tours. This past weekend, the foundation donated $1000 for instruments to the Atlantic City High School. It’s their mission to grant access to music, but they strongly support programs that integrate student interaction with music. Music is a Phish fan’s fuel; it would be silly to keep it confined to music halls and venues.

Even though we get really pumped over songs with lyrics about running antelopes and possums, we do what we can to spread the groove into communities, and I couldn’t be happier to be a morsel of that culture."

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You see every Halloween Phish plays an entire classic album. And rumor was it was gonna be Zeppelin, so the Phearless Phoursome dropped some classic Zep into their set the night before, the 30th. But on the holiday, the album they covered was WAITING FOR COLUMBUS!

HUH?

I bet most of you have never heard of this double live album, when two vinyl discs didn’t even add up to the length of one CD.

What do you do when you don’t break through? RECORD YOUR GREATEST HITS!

Well, Little Feat only had one. But they had all that great music in their catalog that so many people had never heard. And they were big in England. And if you think "Waiting For Columbus" took hold in America, you’re rewriting history. Sure, dedicated music fans now knew who the band was, but still most people knew no tracks. Although as years passed, "Dixie Chicken" became a standard. That’s what perseverance will do for you. Concentrate on cutting something great, not what people want, and you might end up with a cut that lasts, one that truly strikes a chord.

Still, it’s not like Little Feat is the Doors, there’s been no mass renaissance. So it’s utterly AMAZING that Phish played this live album in its entirety Sunday night.

But it’s even better than that. They even employed a horn section, just like the original band, featuring Michael Leonhart of Steely Dan’s band. This was no casual effort, this was a tribute to their forgotten heroes, this was musicians who had to get it RIGHT!"

Phamily Classic, benefitting the Mockingbird Foundation

ZZYZX ponders his next move as the Phamily Classic Poker Tournament gets underway in Atlantic City at the Tropicana Casino today

The current Weekend Poker Update for Atlantic City's Real Deal includes the Mockingbird Foundation's own Phamily Classic among the events to witness, and notes both that it's sold out and that it's for charity.

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If you don't have a ticket, don't come. This is real. This is first a music concert, not a free-for-all party. ... Many of the people without tickets have no responsibility or obligation to our scene. They don't give a shit. They act like idiots. They think it's just a party to get as trashed as possible at. We're supposed to be about higher consciousness, not drunken stupidity. ... They can only get away with this crap if you let them. The old slogan is true: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. ... Listen to the rules, and pressure others to do so.

OK, so maybe I got carried away with the black plague warning with infected prairie dogs for Broomfield, but good authority has it that bedbugs are a problem in AC, even at the Boardwalk hotels:

----- Forwarded Message ----

From: ******************

To: some list

Sent: Thu, October 28, 2010 9:53:07 AM

Subject: BED BUG REMINDER FOR A/C

PLEASE INSPECT YOUR ROOMS FOR BED BUGS IN A/C.

A/C has had major bed bug problems for a few years and the Tropicana (where a ton of us are staying) is loaded with them according to Bed Bug Registry. Most A/C hotels have bed bug problems -- including the Trump, Taj and even the Borgata.The little fuckers hitch rides on the casino buses that take people from urban, bed bug infested areas of Philly, NYC, etc. My guess is the Chinatown A/C bus is probably driven by a giant bed bug in disguise. Combine that with the fact that Atlantic City residents have major bed bug issues, and it's the bed bug perfect storm.

I don't give a shit about you taking home bedbugs. However, I don't want any bedbugs hitching a ride on me after hanging in your rooms once I've certified my room bedbug free.

Here are two articles:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11877871/

http://membracid.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/how-to-inspect-your-hotel-room-for-bed-bugs/

Remember -

1) Put your luggage in the bathtub while you inspect.

2) Don't leave your cloths or bags on the ground or bed. Keep shit on dressers, hung up, on luggage racks or in drawers. DO THIS FOR THE ENTIRE TRIP!

Seriously, I fear bedbugs more than I fear Republicans. Don't take this lightly.

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Last night, we rolled out a brand new, baked-from-scratch Phish.net mobile site. You can access the Phish.net mobile at m.phish.net.

Why did we upgrade our mobile site?

1. It's built for any modern mobile device, not just iPhones.
2. It supports deep linking and permalinking.
3. We hope to implement better integration with LivePhish.
4. It supports deployment of additional content and is compatible with our new API.
5. The mobile forum has been updated to use our API, so it will replace our mobile forum site effectively pretty much immediately.
6. The code is simpler and more lightweight.

Mini Technology Update

I want to take a moment to address something as well. As many of our regular visitors know, we've had some problems over the last week with server stability. Rest assured, we are working very hard on fixing those issues. The reality is, our traffic has grown significantly with this tour, so much so that it caught us by surprise. We're working with our host to allocate the appropriate resources and better optimize our equipment to scale for peak demand. We take our job as the core Phish data warehouse seriously, and we want you to know that your data is safe and we hope to continue to grow and cement ourselves as the most officialunofficial place for Phish information.

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Be careful out there pholks, especially driving home from shows. It's happened before (why the summer festivals after the Went let people stay on site an extra day before driving), and it happened again after Sunday's show:

According to an article today in the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle:

"Five Ontario County teens were injured, one seriously, in a rollover crash on the New York state Thruway yesterday morning.

New York State Police Sgt Robert Simon said the teens were on their way home from a Phish concert in Massachusetts when the driver, Nathan A. Hart, 19, of Farmington, fell asleep at the wheel about 10:35 a.m.

Hart was westbound when his vehicle drove off the north shoulder, near mile marker 314 in Tyre, Seneca County, Simon said. Hart attempted to move back onto the highway, but the van overturned several times.

Two male passengers from Farmington — a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old — were thrown from the van. The 17-year-old was taken to University Hospital in Syracuse via Mercy Flight and was listed in fair condition today, according to a hospital spokeswoman.

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It's the information age, these days. And the Phish.net has really changed the face of the band, because anytime anything happens that's out of the ordinary -- which is practically every Phish concert -- everybody on the network knows about it the next night. We recently premiered six songs -- songs that didn't make our new album -- in the first gig of this tour. A bunch of people taped the show. That night, people put the descriptions of those new songs on the Phish.net -- and [information on] how you could get a copy of the tape. So within days, you've got tapes of these new songs all over the country, which is exactly what we'd want. That way, when we go out on this national tour, people are going to have heard of the new songs, and even heard tapes of the new songs, before we get to the different towns.