Phish is Jumping June 20, 1994 - The Associated Press by Mary Campbell Phish is a rock quartet whose members may not have majored in spelling but who chose a name that's bait for headline writers. Phish is jumping. Going with the flow. Making a splash. Gliding into the mainstream. Swimming into a bigger pond. Its fans, of course, are Phish-Heads. Its computer network, where Phish-Heads hook in to tell and catch some big Phish sto 0 ermont a decade ago. The band toured this spring so it could take the summer off. Keyboardist Page McConnell explained, "Everybody tours in summer. It makes it easier for managers and booking agents if you don't have to compete." Lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Trey Anastasio added, "The summer is beautiful in Vermont, where we all live. We get to swim and frolic." But success made the swim-and-frolic plan water under the bridge. Phish sold out all three April nights at the Beacon Theater here - more than 8,500 tickets - in 35 minutes. So the tour continues through the summer, until August when Anastasio becomes the first of the quartet to marry. They'll start touring again in September, post-honeymoon. McConnell, 30, Anastasio, 29, and drummer Jon Fishman, 28, are graduates of Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., which didn't offer a major in music. Anastasio studied with a composer; Fishman perused how-to-drum books; McConnell played jazz. Bassist Mike Gordon, 28, studied film at the University of Vermont. He directed Phish's first video, "Down with Disease," this year. The song is on the band's fifth album, "Hoist," all available on Elektra. But Phish, like the Grateful Dead, sells more concert tickets than recordings and it doesn't wish to become a video-driven band. Some consider Phish the natural successor to the grizzled veterans of the Grateful Dead if that band ever stops performing live. Many Phish-Heads wear hippie garb and, like the Dead-Heads they resemble, loyally troll along on tours from town to town. Influences of the Dead, Frank Zappa, bluegrass, fusion and classical music can be heard in Phish's music. The New York Times added "bad jazz" to the list after the gig here. Under the headline "Phun, not Phunky," Newsday called the show "Less funky but a lot more fun than Blues Traveler or the Spin Doctors - Phish's confreres in free-form, neo-hippie improvisatory rock." The New Yorker described "a strange collection of the solemn and the silly, of earnest musicianship and a sort of hippie abandon." Anastasio describes the music's mix as "East Coast rockasuey." He recalls the beginnings, "We got together and started having a little fun playing together. The next thing you know we were offered $ 200 to play a ROTC dance. We had to come up with a song list in about a week that was big enough to do a Christmas formal dance." McConnell says they learned songs from thinking-men's rock groups instead of 1983's biggest hit. "'Thriller' (by Michael Jackson) had come out. That's what they wanted. We're playing Billy Joel. They didn't like us one bit. They turned the stereo up louder than the band. We got to leave early. But we got paid." Anastasio says, "A year ago a friend of mine sent me a picture of it. I framed it. There we are in the corner, hockey sticks holding the microphones up. Us in our flannel shirts. We angered the ROTC, people in tuxes and gowns. "At that moment we realized, 'This is the life; there's a future in this,"' McConnell says, deadpan. "Yes, that was when we knew," Anastasio agrees. "It was back to the garage at that point." In high school, Anastasio had written music to fellow student Tom Marshall's lyrics. They'd lost touch but found each other again and resumed collaboration, for Phish songs. "He sends me batches of poetry in the mail," Anastasio says. "I'll weave through till I find something that catches my eye. We call each other on the phone and bat it around." Marshall never joined the school of Phish. He swam another way. Anastasio says, "He's a computer programmer now. He's married, lives in New Jersey and has a new baby." Describing live shows, which may include Fishman coming forward to sing into a vacuum cleaner, McConnell says, "It's music which has the personalities of actual people; it's more of a music thing than a noise-distortion kind of thing. Not that we don't enjoy playing distorted, loud music at times during a live show." McConnell tours in this synthesizer era with what he calls "an actual piano." He also plays a Hammond B3 organ. "We sang 'Amazing Grace' a cappella in four-part harmony with no mikes four nights before New Year's Eve in Washington, D.C., for 10,000 people. Everybody was totally silent. In a rock atmosphere, to get a crowd of 10,000 quiet enough for us to step out in front of the microphones is a comment on our fans," McConnell says. Other bands are envious of those fans who stick close as scales to Phish. The New York Times review began, "A show by Phish is unmistakably a pop-music party." Anastasio thinks the party atmosphere - one could call it a Phish Phry - is what the fans like. "A great spontaneous event is happening. The feeling is, we're all in this together. It's different from being entertained by us." One night, Anastasio can't remember where but knows it was Earth Day, people in the audience started tossing around big earth balls. "Page and I started improvising to the bouncing of the balls. The drums were keeping a groove. I would play a sustained note as long as a kid was holding on to a ball." McConnell says that since then they've sometimes bought earth balls and thrown them out. Anastasio says, "The audience is in control of the music. They can bounce the ball hard or hold on. Sometimes people deflate them. We make a sound for that if the balls disappear and a different sound if they reappear. People figured out if they don't throw them back, we won't stop playing. So Mike and I and Brad, one of our road crew, form a basketball hoop with our arms. And they throw them back."