Happy Aloha Friday. 🌺
First, the shoutout: this one’s for the 320 — St. Cloud, Minnesota. And today is Leif Erikson Day, which is on the calendar because a congressman from Minnesota, John Blatnik, got the resolution passed in 1964. Edition 320. Minnesota’s area code, on Minnesota’s holiday. We couldn’t have written it better.
That kind of thing has been happening to me all week, and there are a lot of words for it. Carl Jung called it synchronicity: two things connected by meaning, not by cause. Horace Walpole coined serendipity in a 1754 letter, for finding what you weren’t looking for. Kismet, my old standby, comes from the Arabic for your portion, your lot. And in Chinese there’s yuánfèn: the fated affinity that brings two particular people together. Pick your word. Here’s the biggest one.
For years I took notes at Phish shows. Setlists, song notes, jam notes, in little Moleskines that ended up in a junk drawer with my ticket stubs. I always wanted a better way to keep what happened at a show and come back to it. This year I finally built it.
It’s called Phreezer. The name is a nod to “Tweezer” and its one standing order: won’t you step into the freezer. It lets you rate a Phish show song by song, live while the band plays or after the fact, and turns your ratings into a signal: the arc of the show, and where it peaked. I launched it right as summer tour started and posted about it on Phish.net.
About a week later, another post went up on Phish.net. Another phan. Another app. Another Matt. Same data, same deadline, same tour. Neither of us knew the other existed.
My first reaction was panic. Then I opened The Helping Friendly App and it was super cool, and it did something different. His tracks your shows and helps you find your crew when you lose them in the crowd. Mine rates the music. So I messaged him through Phish.net: really cool app, funny that we both think alike.
Great Matts think alike.
Then it got weird. His first email back called it kismet. I wrote back about synchronicity. We both saw our first Phish show in 1994. We both count “Carini” as a favorite — mine is on my license plate. And in 2014 I left Connecticut for Kauai; around the same time, Matt left for Spain. Two guys who packed up and left home, then came back to the same band.
That was early July. We’ve traded feedback ever since — what broke, what people actually used, what to build next. He even tested One Percent and sent me the most useful feedback anyone has given me on it. This morning Phish.net published a Q&A with both of us, side by side: Great Matts Think Alike.
One of the questions was the best bust-out of the summer. Mine was “Back in the U.S.S.R.” at Madison Square Garden on July 25, the first time Phish had played it in 485 shows. I was there. It’s a Beatles song, Lennon and McCartney, and today is John Lennon’s birthday. He’d have been 86.
John met Paul in 1957 because a mutual friend introduced them at a church fair in Liverpool. I met Matt because Phish.net ran our posts a week apart. Two kids at a church fair. Two Matts on a message board. People who might never have crossed paths otherwise.
Phish is the first community where I felt seen. I’m an introvert. I love the idea of crowds and I push through them most of the time, but at a show all of that goes away. Phreezer was my way of giving something back. Finding out someone else built something for the same reason, at the same time, didn’t make mine smaller. It told me I wasn’t crazy.
None of this was planned. The area code, the holiday, the other Matt, the song, the birthday. I didn’t go looking for any of it. It showed up on its own. Noticing was my part. So was sending that first message. If I’d closed the tab out of panic, there’s no Q&A and no friendship. Just two apps that never met.
The coincidence is free. The message is on you.
Fall tour wraps this weekend: Jacksonville tonight, then two nights in Huntsville. If you’re going, or watching the webcast from the couch, step into the freezer. Rate the show with me, song by song, while it happens.
This week’s sign-off is a double. Back in the U.S.S.R. — Phish, MSG, 7/25/2026, for John. And Tweezer — Nassau Coliseum, 2/28/2003, my desert-island jam.
Watch for the coincidences this weekend. The song that comes on right when you were thinking about it. The person who turns out to be building the same thing you are. When you cross paths with one, don’t just notice it. Send the message.
Mahalo Nui. 🌺
— Matthew
