Greatful fans catch Phish before it's gone August 11, 2004 - Boston Globe By Joan Anderman MANSFIELD -- It's the last week of the long, strange trip that will end this weekend in Coventry, Vt., where faithful will bid a final farewell to Phish. Happily for the nearly 20,000 fans at the Tweeter Center -- less happily for the thousand or so ticketless diehards who failed to score in the parking lot -- the road to Phish's final resting place in jam-band eternity passed through the Tweeter Center last night, and will again tonight. The concert was, not surprisingly, three hours of gleeful bedlam. Because this was the last Phish show for many, it was perhaps an even more delirious than usual mass of moving body parts spilling over each other, cramming the aisles from the front row to the lawn, smiling beatifically and carving shapes in a thick haze of smoke. Two minutes into "AC/DC BAG," the night's first song, a kindly man offered a pair of 3-D glasses for a brief glimpse of his rainbow-flecked hallucination. And then the band took over. Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, and Page McConnell shared the crowd's enthusiasm, and seemed bent on throwing a party to remember. To that end it was a jam-heavy night, with dense, elongated extrapolations outnumbering straight-ahead songs many times over. Spry, compact "Heavy Things" and the pretty ballad "Friday" were the exceptions on a night where the first set opened with a morphing groove that stretched beyond 15 minutes and closed with the sonic equivalent of a lava lamp. "Birds of a Feather" was a psychedelic vessel for four undulating shapes, devoid of melody, direction, or signposts. Add to the sensory mix conical beams of colored light that surely beamed a few devotees to Gamehenge before the strands began to weave and gel back into a song, and you've got a fair sense of the first set (which included "Punch You In the Eye," "Wolfman's Brother," and "Theme From the Bottom.") It may be stating the obvious to call Phish tight. But when your genre is jam, tight isn't just an attribute, it's an end in itself. The second set kicked off with "Mike's Song," "I Am Hydrogen," and "Weekapaug Groove" strung into one amped-up, funkified, 30-minute epic. Whatever you think of the music, there was no denying the innate chemistry that connects the minds, hearts, and instruments of these four musicians and which spilled over the edge of the stage to create a mirror effect in the large, stoned, dancing family of Phishheads. Anastasio fed them with some rare spoken words, explaining the origins of "Weekapaug Groove" -- something about driving back from a Rhode Island gig listening to Frankie Vallee on the radio -- and dedicating the next song, "A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing," to his friend Captain Kevin, who was in the audience. Anastasio then led the band through the tune, which amounted to one sprawling chord -- a fine surface to splatter on -- before returning to the world of chords and choruses with "Makisupa Policeman," "Dog-Faced Boy," and "Friday." An encore of the vintage Phish tune "Possum" closed the show -- a heartfelt and earthbound finish to a wonderfully wild ride. Article Copyright © 2004 Boston Globe