Phish to Release Historic New Year’s Eve 1993 at Worcester Centrum Live Album

With fans still reeling from Phish’s 18th annual New Year’s Eve series at Madison Square Garden, the legendary jamband has offered another encore with a live album looking back on the origins of their year-end festivities. On February 20, New Year’s Eve 1993, Live at Worcester Centrum will emerge from the archives for a proper digital and physical media release, preserving a pivotal moment in the Vermont quartet’s ascent.

Phish’s performance on December 31, 1993 marked the group’s fifth New Year’s Eve celebration and far and away their largest show to date, with Worcester, Mass.’s 14,800-capacity hockey arena completely sold out and dwarfing their former record. The first of their 16 engagements at the venue through 2013 was an action-packed three-set event featuring, among highlights like a “Peaches in Regalia” delivered in memory of Frank Zappa, the first-ever live incarnation of “Down With Disease,” which flowed out from “Auld Lang Syne” in a shapeshifting jam that would provide the footage for their only official music video.

New Year’s Eve 1993, Live at Worcester Centrum was recorded by Paul Languedoc to 2-inch 24-track reels, and three decades after its live broadcast on WBCN, mixed by Jon Altschiller and mastered by Fred Kevorkian for CD and digital and by Chris Bellman for vinyl. Vinyl copies are pressed to 180-gram “seaweed and water” color LPs, with a cut-out aquarium scene recalling the iconic unser-the-sea set by Chris McGregor and J.W. Nickel of Rocket Science.

Box sets and other merchandise are available to pre-order now. Find more information at drygoods.phish.com.