Whale of a Phish November 24, 1995 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Brian McCollum Vermont band is hooking fans by word of mouth Think Phish is primed to inherit the musical throne due to be yielded by the Grateful Dead? The evidence, at first glance, looks strong: Both bands attract counterculture caravans of devoted young fans who follow the band from city to city, creating a self-supporting community and calling themselves family. Both are time-tested road warriors, upholding the value of live performance -- and extended instrumental jamming -- over all else. And both have secured their spot on the musical map without the normal tools -- videos, smash singles, media saturation. Phish's recent ''A Live One'' double album sold hundreds of thousands of copies with nary a nudge from MTV or Rolling Stone's cover. So even with new rumblings of an upcoming Dead tour -- the band hasn't performed since Jerry Garcia's death in August -- nobody could blame you for figuring that Phish is poised to take over the helm. Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio doesn't want to hear about it. ''People probably think, 'Well, Jerry Garcia died, now all these Deadheads are gonna start following Phish around.' It's not gonna happen,'' he said. ''That's a trivialization of what the Deadheads were thinking. If somebody has a true, deep love for a band, it's like loving another human being: You can't just replace that with somebody else, or you're gonna be disappointed.'' He's probably right. Tough as it may be for casual observers to separate the two phenomena -- seen one retro-hippie parking lot scene, seen 'em all -- there are night-and-day differences among Phish, the Dead, and the slew of jam bands that have popped up in recent years. There's that matter of musical competence, for starters. In the world of improvised noodling, a fine line splits the doldrums from Avalon. The crackerjack players in Phish manage to keep their jams, which often clock in at more than 30 minutes a pop, hopping and happening. Just thank the four band members' daily, soldierlike regimen of rehearsal drills, aimed to loosen their ears and imbue their instincts with the nuances of improvisation. Anastasio, who studied classical composition at a private college in home state Vermont, is the kind of guy who practices jazz when he's alone and drops phrases like ''atonal fugues'' into casual conversation. Technically minded as the band may be, the end result is about experiencing a sort of spiritual transcendence onstage -- ''envisioning another dimension,'' said Anastasio, who reads voraciously about the psychology of live performance. He's found similar descriptions offered by everyone from Brahms to jazz trumpeter Art Farmer. ''What I'm finding is that there's music in the universe, in heaven, whatever you wanna call it,'' he said. ''You're not really making the music yourself 100 percent -- what you're doing is hearing it and opening up your mind and letting it rush through you.'' Something otherworldly must be going on. Phish's fans are a religiously faithful lot, and it's been like that since the band's genesis 12 years ago as a Thursday night fraternity-bar act in Burlington, Vt. ''We had one fan the first night -- Amy Skelton, who's now our merchandising person,'' he said. ''The next week there were two people, the next week four. We always knew everybody in the audience. And it's just been that way everywhere we've played.'' It's a bond most rock acts can only dream about. ''I still look down on the front row now and can probably name or recognize a third of the people there,'' Anastasio said. ''It's weird. I feel like I'm playing in a room full of buddies.'' So while devotees do their part to exalt the band -- next time you see one of those ''Thanks, Trey'' bumper stickers, you'll know it refers to Anastasio -- the band reciprocates the love by spurning mainstream success. When big labels in the late '80s first batted their eyes at Phish, now signed to Elektra, talk among band members focused mostly on why they shouldn't make the plunge. ''Everybody who's at the shows right now is there because of word-of-mouth. Their friend told 'em, or a friend of a friend,'' Anastasio said. ''Say we have a huge hit. All of a sudden the show is saturated with people who are there only to hear that song. It would weaken the strain.'' Strong as Phish's anti-commercial stance may be, there's not a thing the group can do about its snowballing popularity, which saw it shoot from Northeast college-circuit band to one of last year's 30 top-grossing acts. To help skirt the problems that had started to plague the carnival atmosphere outside Grateful Dead shows, Phish's management now gives detailed security guides to concert venues. The manuals explain how to deal with everything from T-shirt bootleggers to portable toilets to the ''human ladders'' that over-eager fans sometimes build to bust into arenas. Preserving a semblance of intimacy is important to Phish, and the band has vowed to never perform in stadiums. Simply making a living as a musician is grand enough, said Anastasio, who once worked at both a T-shirt printing shop and dog-food factory. And he'll be content if it stays that way -- with a little transcendence tossed in for good measure. ''We don't need to get any bigger,'' he said. ''We're not trying to. All we're ever doing is thinking of putting on a good show