Phish phanning phlames of rock
November 16, 1997 - The Denver Post
Jason Blevins and Jim Hughes
For three days last August it was the biggest city in Maine. An estimated 120,000 concertgoers colonized the barren, remote northeastern corner of the country, jamming small country roads for miles. The site of the three-day musical bacchanal was the decommissioned Loring Air Force Base 10 miles from the Canadian border.
What rock 'n' roll dynasty could have attracted such numbers to such an unlikely venue? The Rolling Stones? The reunited Beatles?
Nope.
The "Great Went," an impromptu city consisting of a "theme town" of private vendors and services, thousands of portable toilets and a rolling sea of brightly colored tents, was built around two days of performances by Phish, the Vermont-based quartet. Over the course of the three-day event, the band played more than 40 songs, including an all-keyboard set that started around 2 a.m. Saturday. The Bangor Symphony Orchestra played a soothing dinner-hour set Sunday evening. A radio station simulcast the show in Boston, entertaining those who were unlucky enough to miss the event and providing information on performance schedules and traffic conditions for the thousands in attendance.
Despite a dearth of mainstream media attention, regular MTV rotation or Top 40 hits, Phish has inspired a devout following. The thousands of "Phish Heads" who fervently follow the four classically trained musicians to Maine and points beyond comprise a cultural phenomenon not unlike the caravans of zealous Grateful Dead fans that criss-crossed the country for more than two decades.
"The way the music is constantly changing makes it like a continuing story that never ends," said Sarah Ann Opple-Flynn, 26, who has seen more than 82 shows and plans to hit 100 by year's end.
A University of Colorado graduate and former marketing executive in San Francisco, Opple-Flynn and her husband have spent the past two years living in their Subaru as they follow the band, selling T-shirts to finance their travels.
"It always draws me back," she said. "I really need to hear each and every chapter."
In many ways, the culture surrounding Phish is reminiscent of the Dead scene. But the Phish phenomenon has grown more quickly, possibly because a Phish concert is a more strangely theatrical event than the performances of the stage-staid Dead. The band's freewheeling, improvisational musicianship, and its strange, often absurd stage antics keep phans like Opple-Flynn hungry for more.
In the early years, front-man guitarist Trey Anastasio and bassist Mike Gordon played while bouncing on miniature trampolines. Drummer Jon Fishman, a.k.a. "Greezy Fizeek," often "plays" an Electrolux vacuum cleaner with his mouth. And at this August's Great Went, the band collected thousands of pieces of wood painted by audience members and assembled them into a three-story, multihued sculpture. After a lengthy ode to the piece, the band stopped playing and let the audience gaze upon the communal artwork.
Then they burned it.
Under a full moon, flames rose 100 feet in the night sky as the band burst into a flurry of jams and 100,000 phans writhed and hollered in blissful appreciation.
Phish has toured incessantly since its conception in 1983, logging three to four tours a year, sometimes hosting as many as 70 sold-out concerts a tour. And Phish Heads are there for as many as they can see.
The shows at McNichols Arena Sunday and Monday are unusual in that, as of press time, tickets were still available.
For some, the band's allure can be found outside the amphitheaters, arenas and concert halls that host the actual performances. Food, jewelry, artwork, clothing and a cornucopia of various illicit drugs can all be bartered for in the parking lots. "Shakedown Street," a tradition borrowed from the Grateful Dead parking lot scene, is a veritable tailgate strip-mall, and the party in the parking lot is often a raucous warm-up to the actual event.
Many fans, though, insist that it is an abiding love for well-wrought, improvisational music that fuels Phish Heads' devotion, not merely parking-lot partying. By allowing live taping of each show, a rare practice in today's proprietary music industry, Phish's live performances have been replicated by the thousands. Frenzied tape trading is common in Phish parking lots across the country and on the Internet by those eager to access the more than 900 live shows captured on tape.
"There is a whole culture that has sort of evolved around the band outside of the music," said Dean Budnick, whose "Phishing Manual: A Compendium to the Music of Phish" published by Hyperion is so far one of two books that chronicle the Phish experience.
"Phish has drawn me to regions of the country that I hadn't been before until I went out to see Phish. To some degree, that holds an appeal for people who just want to get on the road and see America. But far more important, it's the music," he said. "On any given night, something very, very interesting is going to happen, something that just might leave people either spiritually altered or just exceptionally entertained."
And for those who dismiss Phish fans as unkempt, drug-addled adolescent dropouts, take note of author Budnick, whose own phanaticism led him to write the "Phishing Manual" last year - he's currently writing his dissertation for a Ph.D. in American Studies at Harvard.
Budnick admits that other factors have contributed to the group's breakneck rise to international prominence. The dissolution of the Grateful Dead following the death of bandleader Jerry Garcia, for instance, brought thousands of tour-ready fans to the Phish scene.
But the band's success has been propelled by more than an influx of Deadheads, he said.
"Phish truly began to do some exciting things in 1993," Budnick said.
That year, the band left the small venues where it had developed its following and started selling out 10,000-seat arenas.
For Halloween, the band usually "dresses up" as bands chosen by their fans through reader-response surveys. In 1994, the band played the entire Beatles "White Album" note for note. In 1995, Phish paid homage to The Who, playing the entire Quadrophenia album.
And then, in the summer of 1996, the band members invited their fans to a closed Air Force base in upstate New York for a weekend Phish festival called the Clifford Ball. Seventy-five thousand phans showed up for the event the band promoted itself. It was the largest-grossing concert in the United States that summer.
And then this year saw the even more populous Great Went, one of the largest and strangest single band, live-music spectacles in recent history.
"If you think about it, it's truly a very sort of risky, challenging, interesting sort of venture, and I think that word about that spreads," Budnick said. "And you can't ignore the fact that, over time, Phish has gotten better and better." CONCERT WHO: Phish WHEN: 7:30 tonight and Monday night WHERE: McNichols Arena TICKETS: $ 25; call 830-8497 PHISH COVERS
Phish has a repertoire of more than 250 songs, 90 of which are covers. From goofs on mellow gold hits to homages to its idols, the band regularly weaves other people's songs into its live shows. Phish colors the familiar tunes with its own sound, a weird fusion of jazz, rock, funk and country.
Article © 1997 The Denver Post
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