I'D RATHER BE PHISHING February 17, 1993 - Livingston Medium (Rutgers) y D.J. Sussman Hippies, trampolines, beach basketball, a mind-melting light setup, sweet-smelling-marijuana-smoke-filled air... When you buy a ticket to a Phish show, you're guaranteed to encounter these experiences. And the music -- oh that swinging psychedelic sound; tunes that wrap your body in tendrils of multi-clored mist -- is all you need to get you dancing in the aisles, swinging your limbs like a mad yet gleeful whirling drvish. Is it any wonder that those who have embraced the Phish experience, the ones who look upon the stage as if it were some holy alter, keep coming back for more? Hardcore Phish-heads make their love of the music something of a religion, and will travel hundreds of miles to see their gurus perform, desperately hoping to hear a song they've never experienced live before. Collecting bootlegs of Phish's live shows becomes something of a hobby and a status symbol; possessing rare songs or getting one of their many "guest stars" on tape is a treasured find. So it was that I traveled to Newark, Delaware to see the band. Knowing I was going to interview them, I ran through my mind on the trip down the dozens of questions I could ask them -- Phish is a band of many mysteries, and figuring them out is just part of the game. After getting lost at the Univ. Of Delaware and enduring a tense wait forced upon me by confused ticket sellers, I was taken to see Page McConnell, Phish's keyboardist. After getting comfortable in the well-catered back room Page led me to, we got to talking about their just-relesed album Rift, their fourth recording to date. Phish has never before made much lyrical sense, and Rift breaks that tradition. Whereas on their last album, A picture of Nectar, they sang about gun-toting llamas and belted out lines like "llok who's in the freezer / Uncle Ebenezer!" this latest release is much darker and more serious, with a strong theme of melancholia that weaves through the songs. Of course, Phish haven't given up their jam-fest super-speed musical style, and this up-beat, happy-sounding music often betrays the deeper lyrics running through it, making for puzzling mind candy -- the kind where you can't quite figure out the flavor. Page explained that for Rift, the band wanted to create something more accessible, something people can relate to. "It's hard for people to relate to a song like 'Guelah Papyrus'," he said. True enough; the great majority of their songs don't make much sense, not even to PAge, who quipped, "A lot of the songs I sing, I don't even know what I'm saying." .....