ST. LOUIS FAVORITE PHISH MAKES A MIGHTY SPLASH August 19, 1993 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Michael Kuelker Phish is a road-refined jam band that will always have a second home in front of St. Louis audiences. On Monday evening, the group made its fourth appearance in town in the last 13 months, performing to another packed house at the American Theatre. But very little was similar to the band's show there last April, except for the quartet's genuinely remarkable technical prowess: The set list was altogether different, the mood-enhancing light show seemed a mite more bizarrely extravagant, and the audience reaction was, if anything, even more ardent. The heat generated onstage was immediately caught by the 2,000 or so in attendance, which upped the temperature on an already sweltering summer night, but the sauna-like condition of the venue didn't dull the action. Many in the crowd "shook their bones," as that special form of self-expressive freestyle dancing is sometimes known, for the entire three-hour show. Phish often constructs a boundary for a song with the inevitable purpose of testing it, sometimes by shifting textures of the material entirely, from rock to jazz to country, and soloing until the boundary is made moot. With the carefree heart of a beatnik poet, guitarist/vocalist Trey Anastasio typically spills his lyrics over the bars of music, in songs that seem to be farce-themed mini rock operas. Anastasio's bandmates - Page McConnell, piano and organ; Mike Gordon, bass; and Jon Fishman, drums - have ample opportunity on virtually every song to offer a proficient solo or simply an amazing fill or accent. Just as impressive as their savant-like stature as soloists is their ability to keep focus musically. The first set, which incorporated sparkling versions of "Horn," "Reba" and "Split Open and Melt," concluded with kMcConnell's beautiful extended piano solo on "Squirming Coil." Having established that musical limits are for wimps, Phish's second set and encore mingled a number of genres an dgamestering, from a strobe-lighted opener of rock thunder to jazz/funk and hyper-country, punctuated by some silly stage antics. The concert's final three selections - I'm perfectly serious here - were a psychedelic rendering of Led Zep's "Good Times, Bad Times," then encores of "Amazing Grace" (a capella) and "Rocky Top" (as in Tennessee). At the current rate, the iconoclasts in Phish ought to be back in St. Louis right around Christmas. It's the sort of band that could rewrite "A Christmas Carol" musically, with a conclusion in which, instead of wishing "God bless us one and all," Tiny Tim announces "It hurts when I cough." The Phish stories keep getting stranger.