For Phish fans, New Year's Eve is a guaranteed party December 20, 1996 - The Boston Globe By Steve Morse The hardest FleetCenter ticket to get this time of year is not to a Celtics or Bruins game, but to Phish's two shows Dec. 30 and 31. Phish fans go crazy for the band's puckish wit on New Year's Eve. Once, at the Boston Garden, the band came down from the rafters in scuba diving gear while a giant clam opened on stage at the stroke of midnight. Another year the group climbed into a model of a jumbo hot dog and took a ride over the Garden crowd, playing "Auld Lang Syne" while balloons and Ping-Pong balls dropped from the ceiling. "Yup, we think up all of this stuff," says drummer Jon Fishman from the band's Burlington, Vt., office. "It starts with some funny idea and grows into total ridiculousness. Then we look at our budget to see if we can do it. "We've got this year's gag all set," adds Fishman, without revealing the nature of it. "Nothing will ever beat the hot dog, so we don't have to worry about outdoing ourselves. But I like this year's idea. It may even be as good as the hot dog. "But it's really mostly about playing well," Fishman says of the shows. "And on New Year's Eve, we get to play an extra set. So if the gag works, great, but we still get to play more music. And I'm just glad that people want to come to our party." Phish frenzy is running extra high this year because Phish has enjoyed its first hit single, "Free," which comes after years of building a word-of-mouth, improv-rock concert image a la the Grateful Dead. "Normally we've been banned by radio, but I guess this time they like the song," says Fishman, laughing. "I haven't heard it much because I don't listen to radio much, but the song has kept us in the public eye. And it's a song I actually like. I like the playing and the riff." "Free" has an airy, trancelike feel as Fishman, Trey Anastasio, Page McConnell and Mike Gordon deliver a simple, hooky riff that's quite different from some of their complex jazz-rock. "We did 40 takes of 'Free' in the studio," says Fishman, a fact that seems shocking given the simplicity of it. "We ended up taking a combination of two takes - the front half of the first take and the back half of the fifth take." Phish's latest album, "Billy Breathes," isn't doing as well as the single, yet it's the group's best studio effort so far. It resonates with chiming electric guitar tracks and more-than-usual acoustic tunes. And Phish learned a valuable lesson making it, because the group brought in coproducer Steve Lillywhite (who has worked with U2) to edit the tapes. "We didn't have to go hacking and cutting and editing," says Fishman. "As far as I'm concerned, if I don't have to listen to playbacks of all the tapes, then I'll play 100 versions of a song. I'll play them standing on my head as long as I don't have to listen to them all later." With the aid of a coproducer, Phish was able to focus on the music more, rather than being "control freaks" in the studio. And they learned to do fewer and fewer takes, but make them count more. "We didn't know how to conduct ourselves in the studio in the past," says Fishman. "It's so different from the stage. On stage we've been musicians and nothing else. But in the studio we were trying to be the producers, engineers and everything else. We'd be too stressed out." For the next album, Phish will record in spurts between live gigs. "Otherwise you get bogged down and it's like being in Camp David negotiating with yourself," he says. Phish will tour Europe this winter and the States in the summer. However, plans for another Clifford Ball festival (named for the father of air mail) are up in the air. The festival drew 70,000 people to a Plattsburgh, N.Y., air base last summer, but despite good relations with town officials, Phish can't get the air base back because it has a new tenant. "We're now looking to Colorado for another Clifford Ball. You can only do one of those a year," says Fishman. The band will mix in some amphitheater gigs, but also hopes to play "abandoned facilities whether they're indoors or outdoors, as long as people can camp nearby. "And we also have the fantasy of playing on the edge of the Grand Canyon some day," Fishman says. article © 1996 Globe Newspaper Company