Phish Summer Tour 2011 Recap: A New Graph and Some Stupid Facts

Woe is me.  I can't stop thinking of new ways to visualize the information we have about Phish tour.  Luckily, the lengthy tour that they completed last week has provided plenty of data from which I could cultivate stupid facts and shape into interesting charts and graphs.

First, let me explain the Rotation Graph.  In this visualization, the Y axis represents the 214 different songs performed on the tour and the X axis represents the 34 shows in order, from Bethel to Essex.  I have plotted a red box to represent the song being performed in the first set, a red box to show the second set and beyond.

Looking at the graph as a whole gives an idea for the frequency of the most commonly performed songs.  Work your way down and you can get a feel which songs were concentrated in leg one or leg two and which were more evenly dispersed.  Go all the way down to the bottom of the model and you can see a map of all the one-timers performed over the course of the tour and where they appeared in the setlists... pretty cool.

There were 787 total songs performed at just over 6197 minutes of music.

Other useless tidbits:

  • Percent of songs with a segue indicator (">") on my setlists: 38% (302/796)
  • 14 Songs returned to the rotation after a gap of 100 shows or more: Daniel Saw The Stone (137), Lonesome Cowboy Bill (141), Bike (100), Been Caught Stealing (298), Life On Mars? (175), Jam (139), The Curtain (202), Dogs Stole Things (167), Sleep (105), Sparks (463), Sweet Adeline (285), Sabotage (318), Come Together (537), Guy Forget (199)
  • 12 Debuts (No Quarter, Steam, Rhymes, Thunder Road, Suskind Hotel, Monkey Man, USA Storage Jam, Big Balls, Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover, Rocket Man, Babylon Baby, The Way It Goes)
  • 9 Songs performed twice at a single show: Bathtub Gin (5/28, surrounding Manteca), Harry Hood (6/4, surrounding Have Mercy), Mound (6/15, continued after rain delay), HYHU (6/17, surrounding Bike), Tweezer (huge 2nd set sandwich, reappears out of Sand), Weekapaug (8/8, encompassing the debut of 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover), Alumni Blues (8/15, with the classic LTJP pairing), Down With Disease (huge 2nd set sandwich), Ghost (the unforgettable Guy Forget sandwich on 9/4)
  • Cumulatively, the total performance time for all the first 1st sets were 410 minutes longer than all the combined 2nd (and 3rd) sets and encores
  • The average song length was 7:48; average show gap was 13.14

Additionally, I have updated the visual song charts which debuted after leg one of the tour.  As a reminder, you can sort this alphabetically, by frequency or average length.

> The Phish Summer Tour Recap Graph <

> Visual Song Charts (Updated Through 9/14/11) <

Got any other strange tour facts that you'd like to see?  Let me know.

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