Phish delivers a tasty stew of musical tidbits December 11, 1995 - The Times Union (Albany, NY) By Michelle Solomon Displaced Deadheads have found their new demigod, and his name is Phish. Just one day after the Grateful Dead formally announced the band would not return to the stage after the death of Jerry Garcia, the Knickerbocker Arena hosted Phish, the Burlington, Vt.-based band that is poised to fill the void left by the Dead's demise. A survey of the crowd Saturday night, though, made it clear that most of the followers were the new breed of Deadheads, not the original pack. This batch of Jerry's kids were mostly neo-hippies in their 20s smoking clove cigarettes and wearing granny-style dresses. (Yes, both men and women. Phish's drummer Jon Fishman wore a spotted frock.) But don't jump to conclusions. Not all Phish followers are simply Dead dropouts. There are exclusive Phish devotees. Sure, the Dead comparison gets some people in the door, but once they are in, Phish hooks 'em. The eccentric quartet (Trey Anastasio on guitar and lead vocals; Page McConnell on keyboards; Mike Gordon, bass; and Fishman, drums) combines a host of styles, including jazz, rock, rockabilly, barbershop quartet and Dixieland. Critics say Phish's sound is a craftily formulated recipe of other people's music. And granted, part of the fun of listening to Phish is picking out the band's influences. At Saturday night's show you could hear bits of the Dead in the first set in ''Bouncing Around the Room,'' some Little Feat in ''Chalk Dust Torture,'' and Yes on ''The Sloth.'' Second set? The Who in ''Wilson'' (apparently part of a rock opera that Anastasio completed for his master's degree in music); Jefferson Airplane in ''Slave to the Traffic Light,'' with Anastasio sounding amazingly like Airplane's Marty Balin; and the Dead-inspired ''Gumbo.'' However, the beauty is in how Phish uses its influences to yield its own identity. Skeptics undoubtedly had to be won over in the middle of the second set, when the band proved its prowess on ''You Enjoy Myself,'' a 20-minute workout that began innocently enough with Anastasio playing a jazz-fused guitar riff and Fishman lightly offering the undercurrent. Midway through the song, the kings of improvisation worked themselves into such a tizzy that they had nowhere else to go. The band created a silent jam that lasted for almost five minutes, simulating playing some of the most intense licks you could ever imagine: Fishman motioned heavily on the drums; Anastasio did a Pete Townshend, winding his arm around his guitar in a circular motion and looking as if he would break a few strings had he really been playing; and McConnell and Gordon kept their cool, doing the same. When they came out of it, they didn't miss a beat. The music picked up where it was when the sound left the room. For the remainder of the hourlong second set, Phish kept the audience under its spell, even during the quirky four-part, a cappella rendition of the barbershop tune ''Sweet Adeline,'' the final song before the band's encore, ''Loving Cup.'' Phish is a band whose time has come, despite its bits-and-pieces configuration of other people's music. The players manage to wrap it up neatly in a nice package and create a sound that's nothing short of ingenious.