Phish-Heads Lap Up In Band's New Material November 17, 1997 - Rocky Mountain News By Michael Mehle A Phish concert is a lot like the adage about Colorado weather: If you don't like what you hear, stick around for five minutes because it's bound to change. Witness the many faces of Phish on display Sunday at McNichols for the first of two shows: After opening with a tight version of ICU, the band kicked into the new number, My Soul, a terrific bar band blues jam that burned with guitarist Trey Anastasio's fiery fretwork. Less than 15 minutes later, the Vermont band brought banjo player extraordinaire Pete Wernick on stage for the breakneck bluegrass of Scent of a Mule and Poor Heart. The tempo raced as Anastasio, Wernick and even keyboardist Page McConnell exchanged licks at a furious pace. Once Wernick left the stage (to a thunderous ovation from more than 15,000 Phish faithful) the group launched into Taste, a jazz / pop hybrid that bled into an extended - and sometimes messy - jam anchored by Anastasio and drummer Jon Fishman's intricate rhythms. If that wasn't enough different ideas for one evening, the band then gathered at the front of the stage for the a cappella barbershop quartet standard, Hello My Baby. And all that eclecticism unfolded in the first of two sets. While there's enough musical ideas to appeal to anyone's interest for at least a song or two, Phish fans lap it all up. The faithful follow the group across the country to witness what will come up next in the foursome's varied repertoire. Audiences for other artists are likely to give the cold shoulder to new material premiered in concert, but Phish fans consider it a treat, as they did when the band broke out a few new tunes Sunday. Accomplished and adventurous, Phish's four members are willing to take the risks that come with improvisation and ever-changing set lists. Sunday, most of those risks paid off, although the band didn't find much magic in a 15-minute jazz excursion that kicked off the second set. It did hit all the right grooves while jumping from style to style earlier; Anastasio in particular is a bona fide virtuoso who can make standard blues licks burn one minute, then chicken pick with Wernick the next. It's not so much that the band can play all the different styles that's impressive but rather that they're able to play them all so well. Although the group and its fans would prefer Red Rocks - where the band has been banned after an overflow of followers shut down Morrison in August 1996 - Phish managed to make McNichols feel more intimate than one would expect from a generic concrete structure. Large arcs of purple, green and red light swung across the band and out into the packed audience of dancing Phish-heads, who were drawn to the bare stage and its four members. Security, it seems, would prefer McNichols, where crowd control seemed to eliminate most of the problems we witnessed at Red Rocks two summers ago. Article © 1997 Rocky Mountain News