Hi everybody and welcome to this week’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Today’s guest is Michela Ratto of New York, by way of San Francisco. For today’s episode, Michela chose to discuss Phish’s performance of “The Moma Dance” with a segue into “We Are the Champions” by Queen from the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on October 29, 2014.
Baseball has come up a number of times on this podcast, most notably with Hal Hansen, who chose to discuss Phish’s show from June 28, 2000 at the Garden State Arts Center. The baseball aspect of that conversation was more about the comparison of obsessed Phish fans with statistic minded baseball savants. Today’s talk with Michela goes a lot deeper and more specific than that, as she brings up the specific feeling of what it was like to be in San Francisco, rooting for her hometown team in the World Series at a Phish show, and what it’s like when they clinch the championship right at the start of the second set.
But that’s just one part of it. Today’s conversation covers a lot of ground as we discuss the fall 2014 tour, sisterhood, working at Chili’s, and so much more. On top of that, there are those times at shows when something even bigger than Phish is going on in the city they’re playing and yet they manage to fuse it into their playing, harnessing the excitement in the air both outside and inside the venue. For Michela and San Francisco Giants fans at the Bill Graham, this was one of those nights.
You’ll also hear Michela mention a few times that she and I go to a lot of shows together–there’s a good reason for that. We’re engaged! By the time this episode airs, she and I should be on our way to getting married, so this was a personal interview in a lot of ways.
But that’s a bigger story even than Phish. So in the meantime, let’s join Michela to chat about the best sandwiches in Saratoga Springs, the king of ground scores, and JT Snow saving the life of a young child as we go over “The Moma Dance from October 29, 2014 at The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco.