'It's a lifestyle': Phish Heads jam city for joyous show

'It's a lifestyle': Phish Heads jam city for joyous show
December 29, 2003 - Miami Herald
By Howard Cohen

Downtown Miami's AmericanAirlines Arena is the setting for the largest Phish fry this New Year's week will see anywhere in North America.
That would be fried fans after all the partying. Not to mention a fried band after performing a series of marathon concerts.
There will be four Phish shows in Miami, with more than 18,000 fans at each, culminating in a sold-out New Year's Eve blowout Wednesday night. The concerts, including opening night Sunday, are scheduled to run for more than four hours apiece.
Downtown Miami is getting into the heady spirit. There's a tent city set up outside the arena on Biscayne Boulevard with goings-on unseen since the last time the Grateful Dead pulled into town at nearby Miami Arena a decade ago.
Phish has picked up the mantle from The Dead, drawing a similar sort of fan, the kind that leaves everything behind save a change of clothes, cherished concert tickets and, ahem, party favors to travel cross-country to catch every show by a band that has had, count 'em, zero hit songs.
''Some people jump out of airplanes, some people bungee jump, we go to these shows to get that feeling,'' explained Mark Osleber, 30, of Chicago as he stood amid a crush of people diving through a hole gouged in a fence off Biscayne.
EVERYTHING FOR THE SENSES
There was a familiar smell drifting in the air at tent city and inside the arena (if you have to ask what it was, you aren't a Phish Head); outside, balloons filled with nitrous oxide went for $15 a pop (go up, up and away . . .); fans traded tapes of previous Phish concerts; and opportunistic vendors hawked pungent, grilled items.
''Thrill seeking,'' Osleber said, eyeing other Phish fanatics, adding that he will be enjoying the thrill for all four nights.
He's far from the only one. They came from Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Washington, D.C., Chicago and South Carolina, too.
''Phish is my life,'' gushed Orlando's Erin Grass, 25, who attended opening night with pal Ramsey Kent, 21.
The cult rock group last played South Florida at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in 1999 for a storied New Year's Eve gig, drawing more than 75,000 people. Nearly that many tickets have been sold for Phish's current Miami dates.
The appeal is simple, Phish fans say.
''It's a lifestyle,'' said Brian Benson, 30, of Miami. ``It's a jam band and they feed off the vibe of the crowd. The band and crowd become one.''
Plus, ''Where else can you camp out in Miami and party with hippies for four days?'' Benson said, laughing.
Lest you think the '60s have revisited the streets of Miami, Brendan Sweeney of Charleston, S.C., pointed out from behind the fence, ``It's not just dirty hippies, we're swank.''
Sweeney, 28, and a group of friends, you see, are staying at the posh Hotel Inter-Continental up the street.
STALWART MUSICIANS
As for the music, you have to give it to these guys. Phish delivered. Though stone pillars have been known to display more movement, these four musicians, led by guitarist Trey Anastasio, played long and hard Sunday in the first half of the show, before press deadline.
Opening with the spacey David Bowie, a song named after the British rocker, the nonconverted could be excused for wondering what the fuss is all about. David Bowie consists of the shouted lyric, ''David Bowie,'' and a lengthy, trippy jam that was funky in that feckless Play That Funky Music, White Boy way. But the band soon found a convincing, even exciting, groove, mostly thanks to Anastasio's solid fret work on rocking and lyrically simplistic songs like Tweezer, Bouncing Around the Room and AC/DC Bag.
There's a joyous vibe to this group's music, which culls heavily from improvisational jazz, and though Phish will likely never work up a bone-jiggling groove worthy of Stevie Wonder at his best -- the band is known for playing Wonder's Boogie on Reggae Woman at its shows -- bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman arguably provide a fatter, tighter rhythm section than The Dead did at its best.

Article Copyright � 2003 Miami Herald