This remnant will be replaced soon. The FAQ is back, with a new design! What's the Coventry Festival? These are the final Phish shows, August 14-15, 2004, at an airport in Vermont. (To the right is a satellite view, which another fan found from TerraServer.) It might get a different name later (such as The Other Side of the Shark Festival, hah). But "coventry" means a state of ostracism or exile. It comes from Coventry, England, where Parliamentarian's sent and held Royalist prisoners during the English Civil War. To send to Coventry is to exclude from society; to shut out from social intercourse, as for ungentlemanly conduct. Perhaps a bad omen, the city walls of Coventry were demolished in 1662. "I've never ever been nervous going onstage at a Phish concert. Tonight I'm a little nervous." - Trey on stage, 8/15/04 Phish donated proceeds from the event to a host of local organizations, including AWARE (Aid to Women in Rape Emergencies), Bread and Puppet, Burke Recreation and Education Fund, Burlington Emergency Shelter, Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, Committee on Temporary Shelter, Coventry Parent’s Club, Coventry Village School, Dairy Farmers of Vermont, Ducks Unlimited, Frontier Animal Society of Vermont, Newport Center Volunteer Fire Department, Newport City Elementary School, Out of School/After School Program, North Country Coalition for Justice and Peace, Northeast Kingdom Community Action Inc., Northeast Kingdom Tourism and Travel Association of Vermont, Northwoods Stewardship Center, Orleans Elementary School – Project Playground, Salvation Army, Spectrum Youth Services, and Vermont Foodbank. The Bunny played a mix based on the SNL skit featuring Will Farrell talking about cowbells. That mix is avaialble from ibrecords, specifically provided there for Phish fans who heard it at Coventry. See also: The Vermont State Police's Coventry site ("Festival traffic is expected to begin arriving very early Thursday morning and will continue steadily through Saturday afternoon ... The roads should be relatively clear Saturday night and throughout Sunday.") CNN story, posted friday afternoon ("Phish concerts are known for their carnivallike atmosphere, but on Thursday -- four days before the jam band's final performance -- the event showed little of that hallmark festiveness. Driving rains the night before turned the concert site and adjoining farmland into a soggy, muddy mess and left the air thick as soup. ... Phish devotees consoled themselves by thinking of the happier times that would hopefully lie in store during the two-day festival this weekend. ") Rolling Stone review ("Though a triumph for the many who slogged through hell to get there, Phish's three-set performance on Saturday underscored why they are breaking up. ... The band's final sets on Sunday were an extraordinarily human 'goodbye' mostly unknown in rock & roll. Early on, Anastasio confessed his nervousness to the crowd. Later, both he and keyboardist Page McConnell broke out in tears, the latter during an emotional rendition of 'Wading in the Velvet Sea.'") Billboard Article, inc. comments from Great Northeast Productions principal Dave Werlin ("To us this was a frustrating decision because it was not our call," he offers. "It was not our desire to do things this way, but it became a public safety issue." As it stands, Coventry will end up grossing about $10 million, up from $8.25 million from the band's It festival last year. And Werlin has no regrets about the band's final performance. "We were blessed with clear skies on Saturday and decent weather on Sunday," he says. "The band played incredibly well, production was great, the sound was great, and there was a real emotional interaction with the fans") "For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us." -- Donald Williams "That is why all parties political, economic and confessional, are careful to have periodic reunions where their members may revivify their common faith by manifesting it in common." -- Emile Durkheim, 1912 "No one can go back and make a brand-new start. Anyone can start from now and make a brand-new ending." - Anonymous This page last updated January 26, 2007. All contents © 1992-2007 Ellis Godard. All rights reserved.