Phools for Phish October 21, 1996 - Newsday (New York) By Letta Tayler The battered Volkswagen buses circled Lake Placid's Olympic Center like covered wagons. Shivering in front of the vehicle's open doors, young men and women in crocheted tams, baggy jeans and dresses made from scraps of chintz and corduroy hawked crystal necklaces and grilled cheese sandwiches. On the lawn in front of the box office, a half-dozen dreadlocked men sat cross-legged in a circle, pounding on drums. Three women with rings in their noses and glitter on their foreheads cooked tempeh burgers on a hibachi. Groups of teenagers drifted through the crowd with dogs tied to tattered velvet leashes. "Ganja brownies!" "Ganja brownies!" called a scraggly youth with a wispy beard as he held aloft a cardboard box filled with brown squares of marijuana-laced fudge. Inside the smoke-filled arena, thousands more young people bobbed and twirled, their eyes closed and their mouths fixed in ecstatic grins, as a band called Phish delved into an extended, psychedelic jam. One of the fans, Eric Bosch of Rockville Centre, has seen Phish a hundred times in the past two years. He's followed the band from concert to concert and coast to coast in a beat-up Chevy van, sleeping in rest areas and cooking his meals on a propane burner. "Phish chills! They're phat! Phat! Phat!" the 21-year-old Bosch enthused, his log red dreads unfurling like octopus tentacles as he spun in the aisles. The scene this past Wednesday night at Lake Placid will be re-enacted in Manhattan tonight and tomorrow, when Phish plays two shows at Madison Square Garden. Bosch will be there, with his van and his black Labrador, Samson. So will the men in the drum circle and the women selling tempeh burgers. So will thousands of other young people from around the country who consider Phish not just their favorite band, but their life's passion. "Phish gives you a purpose," said Bosch, who between Phish tours has delivered pizza, washed police cars and worked on a lipstick-factory assembly line to finance his road trips. "It's like a challenge, man, to get to that next show. When you get there, you just rage. You just go out and be totally whatever you want to be." The object of all this adulation is a decidedly unglamorous quartet from Vermont, a state known primarily for cheddar cheese and maple syrup. Not one of Phish's seven major-label albums has gone gold. The band's lone video has received almost no air time, except when it was parodied on "Beavis and Butthead." Its music - a euphoric, jam-heavy mix of jazz, bluegrass, calypso and rock that features neo-classical twists and solos on a vacuum cleaner - rarely makes the radio. But in the last dozen years, the shaggy foursome has quietly ignited the most significant grass-roots musical movement in the country since the Grateful Dead drifted East from Haight-Ashbury. Phish was the nation's 15th-highest concert grosser last year, selling $16 million in tickets, compared to a measly $200,000 just four years earlier. Its New Year's Eve concert last year at Madison Square Garden sold out in less than a quarter-hour. "Clifford Ball," the band's two-day gig in upstate Plattsburgh that closed its August tour, turned into an outdoor festival drawing 75,000 Phishheads. Fans say Phish's biggest hook is its extensive, mind-bending improvisations - highly technical yet free-flowing jams that at times explore exotic sonic galaxies for a half-hour before returning listeners to Planet Earth. But followers also come for the band's complex and often deliberately campy concert rituals, which have included anything from chess games with the audience to stints such as flying over the crowd on a giant hotdog balloon. And they come for the scene: a '60s throwback in which hugs replace handshakes, joints outnumber cigarettes and the vehicle of choice is an old bus. "The band puts out this really happy vibe," said Jonah Lipsky, 19, of Great Neck. A gangly youth wearing a shapeless quilted cap, Lipsky plans to catch every one of Phish's 35 gigs this fall, selling hemp jewelry and sleeping in "Longshot," the 1978 Buick Ltd. he bought a couple of weeks ago for a guitar, an amp and $100. "The kids who tour are like one big family," said Lipsky, gesturing to the raggle-taggle crowd in one parking lot behind the Olympic Center. "We help each other. If you have trouble with your car, someone will help you fix it. If you're hungry, people will feed you. People at Phish shows have a smile within a smile." Most of the time, anyway. In some cases, the sheer volume of Phish followers has overwhelmed a few smaller communities hosting concerts - the band was banned from performing at Red Rocks amphitheater in Colorado in August after officials in a nearby town complained of a Phishhead "siege." But for the most part, concerts are peaceful. "It's about being yourself. You can wear the same clothes every day and not shower for three weeks and everyone else is doing the same thing," said Russel Kreitman, 19, of Rockville Centre, who owns about 250 concert tapes and has seen the band 40 times. Lounging in an easy chair in his wood-paneled hotel room overlooking Lake Placid, Phish's lead guitarist, Trey Anastasio, said he was baffled by the band's popularity. "I still wonder why all these people keep coming," the bespectacled, red-bearded Anastasio said between sips of tea with honey. ". . . A lot of times I've felt like we're floating along the outside of whatever is the music scene of the moment. We were playing when there were hair bands, then Guns N' Roses, then Jane's Addiction, then Nirvana. And none of it was part of us." Instead of exuding grunge and gloom, Phish's focus onstage is to "have a good time," said drummer and Electrolux soloist Jon Fishman. "I have a really great life and I would feel at odds with myself going out on stage to express angst and anger," Fishman said. Apart from being celebratory, the band - which includes keyboardist Page McConnell and bassist Mike Gordon - doesn't preach a particular philosophy. Many of its lyrics are nonsensical ruminations, such as a line in "Stash" that goes: "Control for smilers can't be bought / the solar garlic starts to rot." The closest it comes to taking a stance on any issue is sponsoring a "Green Team" of fans who recycle garbage after concerts in exchange for tickets. Following an old Dead policy, Phish also allows audience taping of its shows. Intentionally or not, however, the four Phish members set an example through their lifestyle. The band got its start at Goddard College, an alternative school in Plainfield, Vt. Between tours, each member of Phish returns to his separate abode in offbeat Burlington, Vt., the only city in the nation to have elected a Socialist mayor, to hot-tub, snow-shoe and read books such as "A Pattern Language," an exploration of architecture's effect on the psyche. The band loves Vermont because, "It's cold. It's really cold. And it's slower," said Anastasio, smiling. All four members of Phish grew up in much more suburban surroundings - northeastern towns that are a lot like Long Island, one of the band's biggest strongholds. Phish's nerve center on the Island is Prime Cuts, a record store in Rockville Centre that boasts a 1,000-strong collection of Phish concert tapes, reputedly the largest collection of any retailer in the country. On a recent afternoon, dozens of young people in baggy garb emblazoned with piscine symbols drifted in to check out its tapes, "Phishisgruven" bumper stickers and hemp jewelry. THE PHISH SCENE is exploding, especially since Jerry Garcia died," said Prime Cuts owner Don Cantor, a laid-back former Deadhead. Like many fans, Kantor worried that Phish may be ruined by its own success. "For a long time, Phish was the best kept secret in the music business. But as they get more successful, the scene ends up getting diluted," said Cantor, noting that the band's new album, "Billy Breathes," is considered its most radio-friendly venture yet. "That's what happened with the Grateful Dead." Between Phish's extensive road tours and its psychedelic jams, comparisons with the Dead are inevitable. But Phish and its fans note there are several differences. "Phish's music is a lot livelier than the Grateful Dead's, which was more mellow and also more spiritual," said Scott Knyper, 24, a self-described "Phish addict" from Oceanside who scheduled his vacation in Europe to coincide with the band's tour last summer. Unlike Deadheads, who spanned three generations, the average Phish fan is 21.2 years old and attended his or her first concert 2 1/2 years ago, according to "The Pharmer's Almanac," a Brooklyn-based guide to the band written by and for fans. Most Phish fans are computer literate. Many log daily onto the Phish news group rec.music.phish to swap concert tapes, seek tickets and debate the meaning of Gamehenge, a Tolkien-esque tale that unfolds in a series of Phish songs. Many of them don't do drugs. Some opt for short hair, starched shirts and 9-to-5 jobs. "A lot of geeks follow Phish," said Jonathan Goldberg of Huntington, who is known as Taper John because he's taped so many Phish concerts. Goldberg, who is starting a data networking service in Melville, spent three summers following Phish, at one point quitting a coveted job as a computer network engineer at the Royal Bank of Canada to drive from concert to concert in an old Volvo with a friend. "I lived and breathed Phish. It's kind of hard to explain," said Goldberg, 26, who has flown to Las Vegas for the weekend to catch a Phish concert. "But it was all about Phish, it was all about the legends." Goldberg was among the lucky few to attend a concert in which Phish added a new plot twist to "Harpua," a song about an old man and his dog. In most versions of the song, the dog, Harpua, kills a cat called Poster Nut Bag. But in one concert, Phish had the cat kill Harpua. "You could meet a Phish Head in a parking lot and be like, My God! Did you hear that? It was amazing!' " Goldberg said. "It's a common bond among people, I guess." Phish's constant surprises, in fact, are one of its biggest draws. The set list varies dramatically from show to show. Jams shift focus. Covers range from "Johnny B Goode" to "The Flintstones" theme song. Guest artists have included Blues Traveler's John Popper as well as opera singer Andrea Baker, who sang a Puccini aria while clutching a box of macaroni and cheese. At the Lake Placid concert, Fishman played drums in a muumuu, which he lifted at the height of one jam to show off his new boxer shorts: bright yellow satin jobs decorated with a smiley face on one leg and the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character on another. "You never know what they'll do. It's always exciting and different," said Jason Busell, a fan from East Meadow. "They're bringing music back to life, back from the MTV Eighties." At fans' request, Phish played the Beatles' "White Album" in its entirety two years ago at its annual Halloween concert-cum-party. At any given moment, the band may drop one of five musical signals into a song to prompt an audience response. One signal is a segment of the theme song from "The Simpsons," to which the band shouts, "Doh!" like Homer. The band's next big stint, Anastasio said, will be to stage "The Long Gig," a marathon in which Phish will see how long it can play a single jam without stopping. Food, drink and toilet facilities will be provided, but anyone who leaves can't reenter. "What kind of music would we be playing after thirty hours?" Anastasio wondered. ". . . And how long could we play? Would we outlast the fans?" At Lake Placid, most fans said no. "Phish is the greatest band in the world," said Brett McGrup, a 17-year-old from Plainview sporting John Lennon glasses. "I'll be into them forever." article © 1996 Newsday, Inc.