Thousands Catch Phish September 30, 1995 - San Diego Union Tribune by James Herbert Once one has witnessed Phish, it's clear why no number of cheese sandwiches will ever stand between this band and its fans. If the price of admission is equal to a couple dozen of the humble snacks, that's what the fans will sell to earn their way in. They grill them up for a dollar a pop on camp stoves, out where the battered buses park and the sandal merchants barter and the young women in sun dresses beg for change, a mobile Calcutta marketplace whose sole design is to sustain the fellowship of Phish followers. They do this because inside is a band playing a tune whose feel could be fairly characterized as "E.T. goes to the hoedown." Wait a minute . . . now it's singing a folk hymn in the style of a barbershop quartet. Scratch that; now it's laying into a funk jam, rattling the teeth and jump-starting the feet of a duo floating in a rubber boat far off the stage's starboard side. They do it most of all because there's a man in there singing the words, It's hidden far away/But someday I may tell/The tale of mental tangle/When into your world I fell, and they know that the world in question is really his, and that it's they who have fallen. Phish played Thursday evening at Embarcadero Marina Park South by the bay, towing its whole vagabond carnival into town with it. Phish, though, hardly needs a sideshow. The Vermont-bred band is a carnival unto itself, a musical adventure that whips listeners around like giddy kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl. When guitarist Trey Anastasio sings Have a cup of coffee and catch your breath, behind the calypso rhythms at the outset of "Fee," it would be counsel well heeded. Despite the 20-minute break between Phish's two sets, this nearly three-hour show doesn't leave a lot of time for quiet contemplation. What it does offer is plenty of opportunity to appreciate Anastasio's guitar work, the element that drives Phish's sound. Whether he's throttling the strings like a bongo on "Scent of a Mule" or striking chimelike harmonics high on the neck during "Slave to the Traffic Light," Anastasio has the chops -- and the volume -- to make this otherwise genre-defying quartet a rock band with a capital R. If Anastasio's guitar is Phish's steel chassis, Page McConnell's keyboard playing is the polished chrome, a gorgeous ornament whose flash sometimes grabs the glory. On "Scent of a Mule" -- an agreeably loopy tune that is about (and this is strictly a guess) a burro-rider's battle with a UFO -- McConnell fused a fierce classical technique to spacey synth effects. The result: Something like Beethoven banging out the theme to Super Mario Bros. Later, his piano added dissonant drama to a long, propulsive R&B rave-up. That segment also showcased the solid backbeat of bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman, a rhythm section with the versatility to do cool jazz one minute and cowpoke hokum the next. With Phish, such concepts as "rhythm section" are mere terms of convenience, since at any time the members might dump their instruments and either play someone else's or simply sing. The first set featured a luminous bluegrass instrumental, with all four Phish-ermen sitting on stools at stage center and strumming acoustic guitars. The arresting effect, both visually and aurally, cast a near-reverent quiet over the crowd of some 5,100. The second set saw the height of ir-reverence: a barbershop rendition of "Amazing Grace," glaringly off-key but rendered with plenty of fervor. Weirder still was a sort of funeral procession, during the song "Tweezer," over to McConnell's station, where each musician played a separate keyboard. With their concerted key-plinking, they might have been the typing pool at the Peace and Freedom party offices. "Tweezer," like the show itself, was surprisingly short by Phish's standards -- only 17 minutes. The track runs to more than 30 minutes on the band's new live album. Lengths of the live shows are generally gauged using a calendar. So the sandwiches had been sold, and the tickets had been procured, and reunited friends were clapping along to the jazz-juiced rhythms of "Stash." Did they understand Anastasio when he sang the lyrics, Control for smilers can't be bought/The solar garlic starts to rot? As the song also says, Maybe so, maybe not. But with Phish, the mystery is its own reward.