Phish fantasy: Ardent fans buy up tickets December 14, 2002 - News & Record (Greensboro) by Jamie Kritzer GREENSBORO -- The upcoming Phish concert at the Greensboro Coliseum sold out Friday in about the time it takes to make a tuna-fish casserole. The 35-minute sellout should make the Phish concert the most heavily attended show in the coliseum's 43-year history, says Matt Brown, coliseum manager. In all, 23,642 tickets had been sold for the March 1 concert by late Friday morning. Almost half of those were sold in advance via the band's Web site. About 150 fans, dressed in dungarees and Phish paraphernalia, stood in line for a few hours before the box office opened at 10 a.m. "Christmas came on the 13th!" Chapel Hill's Evan Wagner yelled after he bought six tickets for the show. "I've been waiting for a long time to see these guys." In terms of attendance, Phish will top the Billy Joel/Elton John concert on April 28, 2000, which drew 22,089 people. Joel and John's concert will likely remain the coliseum's top-grossing concert because most tickets for that show were at least $85 -- more than double the $37.50 cost of Phish tickets, coliseum officials said. Ray Loughran, a popular local singer known as Walrus, claimed the first spot in line after a lottery drawing." I can't believe Phish is coming to Greensboro," Loughran said. "This city is just not hip. I mean, the (Grateful) Dead played here 10 years ago. But something happened, and they said 'never again.' This is so cool."