Phish fans push band toward big time December 27, 1994 - The Providence Journal-Bulletin by Andy Smith Slowly, without much help from radio and MTV, Phish is becoming a big-time band. It sells out arenas in the Northeast - they packed Great Woods on two consecutive nights over the summer. On the West Coast, where they're not as well known, the band is still playing in theaters. "It's always been a word-of-mouth thing," yawned drummer Jon Fishman, who interrupted a nap in his San Diego hotel room for a telephone interview. Of course, in the computer age, word-of-mouth also means word-of-modem, and Phish fans link up on the information highway via the "Phishnet." The eclectic, jam-happy quartet from Burlington, Vt., is frequently compared to the Grateful Dead. Actually, the band's music, a free-wheeling mix of jazz, blues, show-tunes, classical, bluegrass, World Music and rock, doesn't sound much like the Dead's, even though both bands revel in improvisation. On the other hand, the look and feel of a Phish concert is uncannily similar to that of the Dead's, down to the marijuana fumes wafting through the air and the tapers recording the show in their special section near the sound board. (Phish comes to the Providence Civic Center Thursday night). And while not every Phish fan is also a Dead Head, an awful lot of them are. "Of all the crowds to attract, that's a good one, a good listening crowd," Fishman said. "At one point last night, there was a quiet section and you could hear a pin drop. It was so cool." And although Phish's fan base is smaller than the Dead's, Phish inspires the same level of devotion in many of its followers. The band has an appealingly sunny, zany quality - Fishman regularly wears a dress and occasionally plays a solo on a vacuum cleaner, while guitarist Trey Anastasio and bassist Mike Gordon have been known to play while bouncing up and down on trampolines. It's a far cry from the studied anguish of, say, Nine Inch Nails. Phish's latest album, Hoist, is a more melodic, focused album than predecessors Rift and Pictures of Nectar, altough it does include a long freeform jam called Demand. The band actually made a video this time around, and managed to get some radio play for Down with Disease and Sample in a Jar. Fishman said the album represented a conscious effort to be more radio-friendly. "I wouldn't go so far as to say 'sell-out,' but if I were 16 years old I might say that," he said. "Down by Disease was so geared to radio it wasn't even funny . . . "But I don't want to bash Hoist, even though there were compromises involved, because there were things on that album we'll never get to do again. We played with the Tower of Power Horns, Bela Fleck, Alison Krauss - musical heroes of ours." Next up for Phish, Fishman said, is a live album, which the band will assemble from peformances on their current tour. The band mixes up a lot of influences. Fishman, for example, was into '70s art-rock like King Crimson and early Genesis, while keyboard player Page McConnell listened to jazz and rockers like Lou Reed. Once the current tour is over, Fishman said, he's going to go to Africa for a month, then come back home to Vermont and work on his drumming. "I'm kind of sick of the level I'm at," he said. "When you tour all the time, you don't have time to really do any serious practice, and you reach a certain plateau, and I don't want to stay there." At presstime, a few tickets at $ 19.50 were available for the Phish concert at the Providence Civic Center on Thursday. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Call 331-2211 or (617) 931-2000.