PHISH FAIL TO CATCH April 8, 1994 - The Toronto Sun by Ira Band We were savaged by an April snowstorm outside The Concert Hall Wednesday night, while inside we were being snowed into believing it was 1969. Ever since a few music wags began comparing Phish to The Grateful Dead, the band's somewhat black-clad fans have gone tie-dyed. And love-beaded. And dizzy. So has Phish. The result was foul. Despite Phish's flashes of inspiration on disc and a dexterity that saw them bouncing through a grab bag of pop, rock, jazz, reggae and bluegrass stylings, the live result was a flaccid sound. The choke-'til-you-croak air quality and poor sight lines had some of the wilting tie-dyes rushing into the tiny foyer to catch their breath. There, as cold blasts of air billowed in from outside, they danced, spinning around in circles like blank automatons while a couple of interminglers handed out invitations to a local Grateful Dead dance and a late-May Dead-heads weekend in the country. Groovy. The bopping was as frenzied - and mindless - inside, although the perimeters of the room were becoming littered with fast-fading teens too pooped to party. Meanwhile, Phish took their song snippets and stretched them into retrograde jams. Most had the consistency - not to mention nutritional value - of a batch of jelly donuts. Worst of the bunch was the aptly-titled Scent Of A Mule, a country & western bluegrass hybrid that didn't even have the decency to feature a banjo. The great organ swirls on Sample In A Jar sounded better, as did the reggae inflections on If I Could, but they weren't enough to sustain a steady pulsebeat. The fact that the four members of Phish are actually talented musicians only added to Wednesday's disappointment. For all the hippy-dippy time-warping and ambitions of melodious expansiveness, the concert was little more than a musical journey that went nowhere, man. SUN RATING: 1 OUT OF 5