Phish Fans Follow Band, Wander Into Red Rocks August 7, 1996 - Gazette Telegraph by Jeremy Simon As is usually the case at Phish concerts, the fans were the real show at Sunday night's sold-out concert at Red Rocks. Known as Phishheads, this traveling band of pointedly disheveled kids make the Vermont hippie band the focus of their summer vacation each year. Plastered with dread locks on-the-make and tie-dyed shirts that salute the forefathers of the band-as-traveling-carnival movement, the Grateful Dead, many came ticketless but no less excited. Hundreds held outstretched fingers indicating that you could save their soul, if only you had an extra ticket to sell them. One boy strummed a guitar as his girlfriend sang, "I need a ticket, whoah, I need a ticket..." If they didn't get one, they formed drum circles, sold each other homemade Phish merchandise and pinned their hopes on the next night. Sunday's was the first of four Phish concerts at Red Rocks. Each sold out handily. Those who got inside Sunday were treated to a standard Phish concert: Two sets and nearly three hours of songs. Every seat was taken, and fans in spilled into the aisles and danced on the stairs. Red Rocks says no more tickets than seats were sold, but it seemed impossible to squeeze any more people into the seating area. Phish (guitarist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman) knows its audience, which doesn't expect to merely hear the albums reproduced. More than the songs Phish played aren't on any album. Only one song from each of the last two studio albums (they have four, plus a double live album) made the set, "Maze" and "Sample In A Jar." Even these were stretched well beyond album length. Their freeform jamming stayed exciting because they mixed and matched tempos. Though songs like "AC/DC Bag" and "Guyute" aren't available commercially, that didn't keep them from being as familiar as "Happy Birthday" to the Phishheads, who sand along merrily. The songs are widely circulated on legal bootlegs: Phish is one of the few bands that not only permits but accommodates taping of shows. About 100 microphones were set up in a cordoned-off area near the front. Phish is typically compared to the Grateful Dead, but they have two traits that set them above the Dead musically. The first is an overriding cleverness manifested in bizarre lyrics (on one song, not played Sunday, they rhyme "Papyrus" with "Osiris") and interesting additions to their live set. They sang barbershop harmonies on "Sweet Adeline," and the "Star Trek" theme made an appearance during the two-song encore. The second is a livelier pace. They're as comfortable playing in double-time as real-time, and at some point in each jam, they inevitably speed up or slow down. During a few jams, the band lost all sense of melody and structure and played randomly and atonally. Somehow, the fans still danced, oblivious to beat or tune. Or oblivious to anything, perhaps. A perpetual smell of marijuana was in the air- as much as anything, an integral part of a Phish concert. After the show, the party continued in the parking area. An endless line of hitchhikers fanned out toward the highway, in the true spirit of Phish, without a plan. © 1996 Gazette Telegraph