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Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s episode is about a Phish show, to be sure, but in the larger picture, it’s about an entire tour. Today’s guest, Jordan Kahn, chose to tell his story from June sixteenth, 2000, when Phish played Zepp Suminoe-ku, in Osaka, Japan. Four years into this podcast, it’s not often that a guest chooses a show from a tour that has not yet been covered, but Jordan saw nearly every show from the Japan, 2000 tour and man, I was excited to hear all about it.

In retrospect, we all know that, just a few months after Phish played Japan in 2000, they would go on a year-and-a-half long hiatus. When listening to this show, and others from the tour, they don’t sound tired, or as if they need to stop the Phish touring machine. Maybe it was being in small clubs with quiet, respectful audiences that provided the band with the relaxing feel to experiment toward the beatless, futuristic, ambient sound that would dominate 2000. But that’s all speculation. Let’s stick to what we know. 

Jordan provides us with a personal, yet universal, experience of what it was like to travel from the United States to the Land of the Rising Sun, and parts of this conversation veers away from the Phish experience and becomes something of a travelogue with a jamband flavor.

So let’s join Jordan to talk about bullet trains, superior sushi, and why a day off during a tour is okay as we discuss June 16, 2000 from at Zepp, Osaka.