Go Phish February 28, 2003 - Greensboro News & Record by Jamie Kritzer click on thumbnail for larger image Legendary Jam Band Will End Its Tour In Front of a Record Crowd (CityLife Magazine) The four guys in the jam band Phish have never had a No. 1 album. Their best-selling tunes are rarely, if ever, heard on popular radio, and their smiling faces aren't seen on MTV. Yet on Saturday, Phish is expected to play to the largest crowd in the 43-year history of the Greensboro Coliseum. The 23,642 tickets sold for the band's final concert of its winter tour is a testament to its unwavering popularity. The Greensboro Coliseum's highest attendance to date is 22,450 for the Backstreet Boys concert on Feb. 2, 2000. This is the band's first collaboration since it took a two-year hiatus. "They are the polar opposites of Britney Spears and N' Sync," says Lee Crumpton, who writes The Kinder Music Catalog, a Mebane- based publication on jam bands. "These guys are not trying to play pop music. They are trying to play music they enjoy, and they are willing to take music to its edges to do so." Started in 1983, Phish is perhaps the most well-known jam band since The Grateful Dead, the group with whom the band is most often compared. The group plays 15-minute jams in concert and mixes all forms of Americana, including rock, funk, bluegrass and jazz. Like the Dead, their music is experimental - a defining characteristic of the dozen or so jam bands, such as String Cheese Incident, that have blossomed in the past decade. "I play the guitar, and I can say it's definitely hard to come up with new stuff all the time," says Raleigh's Brad Williamson, who stood in line for tickets to the Greensboro show. Phish doesn't use a set list during concerts. The band members use the vibe from the audience to determine what it will play and when the concert will end. It once played played a tune called "Runaway Jim" for 56 minutes. When fans begin to sit down, the band knows it's time to move on. "The coolest thing about the band, for me, is you go in there, and you really have no idea what's going to happen," says Damien Raba of Greensboro. "The band might miss a note or something because their songs are so complex. And the audience appreciates that fact. It makes the performance realistic." Radio experts say Phish's improvisational style and lengthy songs are not radio-friendly because they do not fit the format of the short, catchy pop tunes that listeners and advertisers have come to expect. Instead, the band's popularity is derived from its fans. Known as "Phish heads," many have created their own tribe, traveling around each time the band goes on tour, similar to the way "Dead heads" moved like nomads to see their band. Hours before each show, thousands of neo-hippy fans gather in the parking lot outside the venue. Some sell Phish T-shirts. Others sell bumper stickers that pay a spiritual homage to lead guitarist Trey Anastasio: "Trey is God," one reads. At a New Year's show in Hampton, Va., some fans sold brownies baked with hallucinogenic mushrooms. However, many Phish heads are quick to point out that the hippie fans are not representative of all Phish heads. Many are young professionals who hold down well-paying jobs but are no less enthusiastic about the music. Doug Campbell, 30, used to follow Phish when the band toured in the early '90s. On Dec. 11, he made a special trip from work to the Greensboro Coliseum so he could buy tickets for the show. Campbell, a clean- shaven guy, wore a suit. People around him wore dreadlocks and tie- dyed T-shirts. "I used to have a beard and long hair, and I still do have the ratty clothes I had when I used to follow them around," said Campbell, now a sales representative for a Greensboro pharmaceutical company. "I just don't wear them anymore. But I still like the music. "I guess there's some sentimentality in it for me. Plus, they are really good live." The band - Anastasio, lead bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman, the group's namesake - formed in Vermont in 1983. From the start, the members adopted a nontraditional philosophy toward superstardom. Phish has sold concert tickets at low costs; for years, tickets were $20. Tickets for Saturday's show cost $37.50. The band operates under a major record label, Elektra, but depends on live performances - not radio hits and music videos - for its profit. "Down With Disease" was the only song it ever turned into a music video. During the late '80s and early '90s, when the music world was introduced to a new, angry form of alternative metal music called grunge, Phish was headed in the opposite direction. The group's lyrics were about love. Some were downright nonsensical. Consider the lyrics in the '90s tune "Simple," in which members sing in unison: "We've got it simple 'cause we've got a band and we've got cymbals in the band." In October 2000, fans got a jolt when band members decided to take a hiatus because they said the music and the months of touring away from their families (all four band members were in their late 30s) had gotten stale. There were no assurances that Phish would ever get back together. But several months ago, they reunited and decided to record a concert album at Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve. Then they released a studio album, "Round Room," and decided to launch a winter tour, selecting Greensboro as their last date. Fans say they are elated. They have missed having a band around that seemed to really care about their personal freedoms. Before concerts, for instance, the band often demands that promoters take a relaxed approach toward security. Fans say they also can appreciate the band's nontraditional attitude toward capitalism. Phish encourages fans to tape their concerts and then trade the tapes on the Internet. Some fans boast hundreds of free CDs from live Phish shows. Damien Raba of Greensboro is one of the people the group allows to record concerts. "A lot of artists are opposed to the free trading of their concert because they feel it negatively impacts their commercial sales," says Raba, 31. "I think that it's a much more effective way of getting their music out there. "There are thousands of people who wanted to be there that wouldn't have had that experience if we didn't tape the shows." It's easy to understand why many fans won't be able to see Phish perform. The eight-city tour sold out in a matter of minutes. In Greensboro, almost half of the available tickets were sold in advance via the band's Web site, www.phish.net. The rest disappeared in 35 minutes. Ben Collins, who recently moved from Greensboro to Hickory, has collected 300 Phish CDs since he began following the band in November 1995. But Collins says nothing can replace the experiences he's had seeing 35 live Phish concerts. Like the times Gordon and Anastasio jumped on one-person trampolines while they sang "You Enjoy Myself." Or the time when Fishman hauled an old vacuum cleaner on stage, where he proceeded to use the vacuum's sucking mechanism, his mouth and a microphone to belt out Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing." "No matter how much you think you know about them, you can never predict what's next," Collins says. "I guess that's what I enjoy the most." Copyright © 2003 Greensboro News & Record