A New Form of Interactive Entertainment July 1, 1994 - Centerstage Art&Performance Magazine by Isaac Josephson Spring break 1992 was a landmark time of my life. My cousin got married. I experienced coed showers at Haverford College. I lost one of my closest friends, and I saw Phish for the first time. My cousin married an arrogant lawyer from Queens who is now 50 pounds overweight. As for the showers, I highly recommend such entities at Northwestern. My friend, a lovely Russian girl I met in high school youth group, lost her identity to a sorority. Phish played for roughly 500 people at the Chestnut Cabaret. I was supposed to go with the Russian girl. However, she had her heart set on flittering back and forth between the fraternity parties that evening. So, she gave me a key to her dorm and we parted ways. It was a bit odd, going to a show alone in an unfamiliar city. I got to the venue about 30 minutes before the scheduled start, sat down on the dance floor and pretended to be very interested in my $7.00 ticket. I'd been there 5 minutes when I felt a tap on the shoulder. A girl with what seemed like her entire head encased in hair wraps introduced herself as "Sky," and asked if I would like to join her group of friends. They were a blissful, grimy and incestuous crew, intrepid travelers from a commune in Oregon slowly making their way out to visit Sky's sister at Choate Academy in the hopes that they could persuade her to follow them on the cannabis and hallucinogen-laced path of the renegade prep school hippie. I was happily accepted into this mellow contingent, and we sat down, cross legged together to wait for the show to begin. The lights went out and four men wandered on stage. The drummer was clothed in a weathered black and orange sun dress with an unobtrusive strip of duck tape attached to the side. The guitarist sported a shaggy hair-do, spectacles with $2.00 frames and a wacky grin. The bass player would have been right at home in a Lewis Carroll novel and the keyboardist looked like John McEnroe on Nitrous. Then they began to play. And I found myself immersed in an ocean of best music I'd ever experienced. I closed my eyes, singling out each of the instruments in my mind and following their grooves. I don't remember much after the first three songs. Somewhere in the confused haze was a great rendition of "Take the `A' Train," six cokes and an electrolux vacuum cleaner. My next vivid memory was finding myself drooling over a batch of cheese fries at a Philly steak sandwich shop around the corner from my friend's dorm. They took what seemed like hours to eat. Phish is a very personal experience. Now, almost two years later, Phish plays in stadiums, arenas and pavilions for well over 10,000 fans at a time. Phishnet, an internet newsgroup dedicated to discussion of the band, has grown to over 40,000 participants. Fans have begun to fall victim to the inevitable contest of one-upping each other. "I have more tapes..." "I've been to more shows." Sometime around last October, when a member of the Phishnet announced he was painting his face green and dedicating his life to the study of Phishlosophy, I took a step back. I tried to examine what exactly it was I liked about Phish and how I could continue to experience it. How could I rediscover that unique feeling under these conditions? Was it possible for Phish to retain its personal nature on such a large magnitude? These were questions I have been asking myself since Phish made the jump from Chicago gigs at the Metro (a venue of under 1,000) to the Aragon Ballroom, an acoustic nightmare that holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 undernourished fans. Of course, those who recall Nectar's bar back in 1984 probably said the same thing when Phish moved on to bigger and less personal venues. At any rate, seven months later I still had not come up with an answer. I tried to rediscover that feeling through other bands, other genres of music, but none came close. Then, just before Phish's show at the UIC pavilion, a 14,000 seat venue, I had a chance to speak with Trey Anastasio, lead singer and guitarist of Phish, about things from his perspective. We spoke of music and Spectacle, of Marvin Gaye and Peter Gabriel. He told me what he thought of the new stuff and the old. I found some answers to my questions. But sharing them with you would deprive you of your creativity. Read what Trey had to say and come to your own conclusions about the unique musical phenomenon known as Phish. Could you talk about Phish in terms of a concert, where people go to hear the performance, and in terms of a Spectacle, where people go to see the performance? Man! That's a good question because it makes me think. I don't have some sort of stock answer. It's not like "Where do you hail from." I guess I don't really distinguish between the two. I think of the whole thing as an event What do people get out of the event? Energy. The whole thing is kind of a transfer of energy. Music, to me is all about energy itself. I think that when I go on stage, I feel a combination of different feelings - anticipation, excitement. I feel things start to happen - music, spontaneity and maybe a little bit of fear because I don't really know what is going to happen next. This line of questioning didn't seem to lead anywhere, so I decided to try something else. Back in the spring tour of 1991, you guys showed an animated video for "Esther" (a song off of their album, Junta). I was wondering if you'd ever consider integrating more multimedia like that into your performance? That video was shown between sets and it was the only time we'd ever done something like that. I don't really like the concept of video screens and things unless they're used in some kind of creative aspect where the audience as well as the band are using their creative minds. So you do not believe in Spectacle as a part of the music performance? I'm not against it. If there's Spectacle, hopefully it enhances the music. I want to incite the listener to be creative as opposed to spoon feeding them. That's very important to us. So, for instance, our backdrop is abstract on purpose. People come up to us and they say, "Oh...that sign that says `Phish' behind you," or "Oh... that picture of something or other you have hanging behind you..." That means they're being creative. The stories I tell up on stage are fun for me because I'm using my imagination. People don't do that too much because television doesn't really make you. Its passive entertainment. So you want Phish to be active entertainment? Yes, I want to be active entertainment - where the listener is active. I feel the same way in the jams as I do with the Spectacle. To me, they can be listened to on all these different levels. And from a listening standpoint, you have to actively listen in the way that you choose. You're not going to be hearing the jam in the same way I'm hearing it. Like in "Guelah Papyrus" (off of Picture of Nectar), someone might be hearing a cool rock song, while someone else hears an insane atonal jam? Yeah, and someone else might be hearing a wash of different lines crossing over one another. That's just scratching the surface. Someone who's being really creative might hear a giant stomping through the forest. What does, for example, the lighting at a Phish concert do to enhance the music? Let me put it this way. No matter if you're going to see a symphony or anything, if you're in a room with a bunch of people there's visual stimulus. So, that naturally becomes part of the show - everything from how the stage looks to how the lighting is in the room. I've found that certain things for me enhance my fun in terms of music. Like what? Well, last night, we were in the back lounge after the show listening to this bluegrass cd and playing tetris. We turned off all of the lights, turned the contrast on the screen way down so all the blue looked purple. Then we listened to this great old bluegrass cd while playing darkened, darkened tetris. How does your stage performance complement your music. With the strobe and the fog on "Mike's Song," you look like one of those 70s super groups. But then again, you're jumping on trampolines. Are we supposed to take you seriously? I think that's up to you. The strobe and the fog during "Mike's Song" look so incredibly cool...It puts my mind into this weird state that I like to be in. That reminds me of something Mike [the Lewis Carroll character/bass player of Phish] told us he did in high school. He built this platform that was suspended by chains in the middle of his bedroom, and it had black felt covering all the way around it so he was in pitch blackness. What he did was he put four speakers inside this thing and he listened to albums in this suspended platform in the dark. He had a joystick that he used to spin the sound around the speakers, and the whole floor was moving and swinging and everything. It took up his whole bedroom - he could barely fit the bed in there. So, you like to alter your mind when listening to music? Its so much fun to lose your mind. Music itself alters your mind. The thing about music is that its the only place where you can totally lose your mind. That's why people take drugs, because its fun to alter your consciousness. Its more than fun. Its a learning experience, a great part of life. Altering your consciousness might be bungee jumping. For some people it might be working out. Some people take drugs. But I think, for everybody, music alters your consciousness. For me, with these gigs, I can go up there and totally access parts of my brain, deep into the shadowy regions and consciousness and spirit and all that kind of stuff. And when its over, there's no hangover. you didn't get AIDS, you know... What do you think of Peter Gabriel's elaborate theatrics or U2's Zoo TV? How would you compare your lights, fog and trampolines to what they do? The one thing that none of those guys really do much of is improvise. And improvising, to me, the spontaneity of the whole event is one of the parts that I love. Do you ever feel pressure to be spontaneous? No, we actually practice being spontaneous. Isn't that sort of an oxy-moron? It is and it isn't. What? (Laughing) No, seriously. You can practice improvising. We stand around in a circle and do these listening exercises. We've learned that listening comes before playing. We go around in a circle and each person in the band focuses on listening to what the other three people are doing with the ultimate goal being if the whole thing was going and we were all playing and suddenly someone screams "STOP! Trey, sing to me what Page is playing." And I can do it. That's the goal. How would you compare your show seven years ago to today? I mean, you don't regularly invite random people up on stage to talk anymore, do you? I definitely think things change, but its hard for me to tell because I'm in the middle of it. So I really think of it as just life. Inviting people up on stage....At the Warfield Theater, we had this opera singer. She sang with the San Francisco Opera. Unbelievable voice! So we were doing this "Mike's Song," and the strobes were going and stuff, and we brought it way down, got quieter and quieter. It was a really good jam. Everybody was totally keyed in. The place was completely silent. Finally, she just came walking out on stage and started singing this opera - but with no mics or anything because she's real. And it was amazing! And then she started tossing macaroni and cheese into the crowd. How do the specific stage antics you do relate to specific things in your music? Well, we're always making every kind of attempt to communicate as many ways as we can with the audience. Now, 90% of that effort is energy/spiritually. So, we try and communicate through the balls (At some shows, stagehands throw out four oversized beach balls for the audience to play with. Each member of the band plays his instrument according to the movement of the corresponding ball) and the language (Phish has certain musical signals that cue specific audience responses) and things like that, but also through the music. So its a communication thing. We've tried all these extraneous things (balls, language etc..). Its also a feeling like surfing and riding motorcycles and stuff. The surfing thing, I've really been getting off on. The feeling of the wave and being a part of it, but at the same time having it be much more powerful than you is similar to the feeling I have with the music. A lot of stuff that surrounds us is about communication. U2 would argue that what they're doing is communication. Maybe it is. You asked me about Peter Gabriel. That's a really good one to compare us to because I saw Peter the first show and the last show of his latest tour. I love Peter Gabriel. The first show, he played in a club with none of the theatrics. It was incredible! Really incredible. The last show was with the full theatrics. I thought the theatrics were incredible, but I gotta say they didn't move me the way the first show did. It moved my mind, but not my soul, you know what I mean? It moved my mind in a visual way, and it made me think really cool things. I thought it was entertainment at its highest - in terms of entertainment. But in terms of music, Carlos [Santana] can move me more with one note than that whole spectacle could move me. How did you find that summer tour with Santana? Our show was too short. We learned a lot though... One of the things we learned on that tour that we talked a lot backstage about was this feeling that you can sink into somebody's heart and soul with music. Right in. I feel like a vehicle. I'm not even creating the music. Its bigger than that. Carlos used the analogy with the hose. He watched one of our sets. When we came off stage, he said he had been envisioning the audience as a sea of flowers and the music was the water, and we were the hose. And then he said he used to talk to Marvin Gaye about this stuff. Marvin Gaye used to say that the music was up there and if you think you're making it, you're wrong. But certain people are good vehicles for the music. And the best thing you can do when writing or improvising music is to get out of the way. Music's sort of this transcendent thing. Its like the surfing thing. You're floating around out there and this wave comes along. And you can catch it and ride it. It can thrash you violently, but if you let go of your fear and everything and just go with it, its gonna give you the ride of your life. Its like in Dune, where they rode the sandworms... The philosophy of music, huh.... Yeah! We talk about this stuff all the time. We sit there on the bus philosophizing about it for hours. And we have this quote written in front of the four of us on stage and it says, "The beginning and end of all philosophy is freedom," which is something I took out of a book by Noam Chomsky. The end being freedom, letting go and letting the music flow. This article in Newsweek mentioned that it was all a big inside joke. What do you have to say about that? I can definitely see where they're coming from. There's definitely a lot of stuff that...that's kinda like the way the four of us are all the time. That goes back to when you hang out with the same people for a while, you start to kind of develop this sense of humour that no one else understands. Its not like its on purpose or anything. You're not trying to exclude other people. That's just the nature of our humour, and we really have this feeling that we don't want to be any different on stage than we are in real life. I'm not going to stop who I am when I go out on stage and become this stage guy or whatever. I could tell you, not by name, but by face, half the people standing in the front two rows at the shows. They come around enough and start to pick up on the jokes, you know? You guys do a lot of Syd Barrett covers. Barrett was known for his non-cohesive wandering style. How does that relate to your music? We realized after long, arduous research that Syd Barrett and Neil Diamond were the two greatest songwriters of all time. What about Barrett's non-cohesive style? Junta [Phish's first album] had cohesiveness. Nectar [Picture of Nectar - third album] had energy but it didn't have cohesiveness. And then Rift [number four] was so cohesive because Nectar was so uncohesive that we went into it like, "We gotta make a cohesive album." So how do we do that, well, Rift is a concept album. But it didn't have the energy, to me. Though it did have the content. Its deep. You know, you could dig it with a shovel. I think Rift is Tom's [Trey's writing partner and longtime friend] greatest triumph. What happened was he wrote it and he sent it to me. And they were about me, but he didn't mean them to be. How do you think Hoist (Phish's latest endeavour) compares to the other albums? Its a funny thing. I feel great about this album because, on a certain level, I think its our best album. But on a certain level, not, you know? The composer I study with, he's also one of my best friends, I didn't even play him this record. He doesn't care about this. We went into this album with the philosophy that we were not going to write the stuff until we got there. And so all we had were these germs of ideas for songs. The idea was that the first time the song came together in its entirety, we were going to lay it to tape, and it would sound fresh as opposed to sounding like a song that we were playing live but without the audience energy. And it worked. I don't think there's the actual musical content there was on, say Rift in terms of composition. But I do think the energy was a lot higher. So one thing that did happen because of that process was that I didn't compose the way I normally do - like when I sat at the piano for two weeks and wrote "All Things Reconsidered." I'm not planning on stopping doing that, either. That's the important thing people should know. I love actually composing things. What do you think someone who's never heard you before would think about you after hearing Hoist? Good pop band? I don't know what they'd think. If they listen to the whole thing, they know there's more than just good pop going on. I rag on all our albums. If you want to hear me rag, you can ask me about Nectar. Right now, I like Hoist. Its held up longer for me than most of our other albums. But, in general, as soon as we finish anything - a tour or an album, I'm just ready for the next one. So would you say you're never completely happy? I'm only happy with moments. I think I'm happy until a certain amount of time has gone by, and then I want to do something else. After the moment, I'm just looking for another moment. Article provided by its author, Isaac Josephson