Phish Appearance February 12, 1993 - The Washington Post By Nicole Arthur Consider the strange saga of Phish: The band has cultivated an immensely loyal following by word of mouth alone, achieving huge success with self-promoted tours before it landed a record contract, and draws sell-out crowds with little publicity. The Burlington, Vt., quartet has, it seems, accidentally tapped into the enormous market potential of the '90s boho crowd. Hence the capacity audience at Sunday's Lisner Auditorium concert. But it's hard to overcome the impression that Phish's success is a cultural rather than musical phenomenon. Spotted in the almost exclusively white, college-age audience were bare feet, blankets spread across laps and the inevitable Grateful Dead T-shirts. And is Phish anything more than an answer to the question posed by Jerry & Co.'s mortality? Principal songwriter Trey Anastasio incorporates elements of fusion, honky-tonk and most anything else (a segue into "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" comes to mind) into his richly eclectic compositions. At Sunday's show, material from the band's latest and most self-assured effort, "Rift," predominated: its restive title tune; "Sparkle," with three-part harmonies worthy of the Kingston Trio; and the foreboding "It's Ice." More importantly, the songs were springboards for lengthy, improvisational jams that showcased the bandmates' undeniably first-rate musicianship. Nonetheless, only a Phishhead could have enjoyed banality like Anastasio's 10-minute narrative, which began with an injunction to imagine that "slowly we're all becoming plants."