The Grand Phinale August 8, 2004 - Boston Globe By Steve Morse After two decades & countess sold-out shows, jam-band icons Phish swim into the sunset Four Vermont hippies known as Phish were at the Boston Music Awards at the Wang Center in 1993. Few people paid them much heed because the center of attention that night was Aerosmith, which drew reporters like a magnet. Phish was hustled off to a side room -- a telling gesture, as Phish always seemed like a tangent to the mainstream. The band never scored much radio or MTV exposure or sold many records. Its members weren't darlings of the press. But through grass-roots, word-of-mouth popularity, Phish became a ticket-selling juggernaut that ultimately drew the most loyal fans this side of the Grateful Dead or Bruce Springsteen. That all crashes to a halt this week as Phish disbands after playing sold-out shows at the Tweeter Center on Tuesday and Wednesday and a farewell camp-out festival named Coventry after the Vermont town where it will run two nights next weekend. Just a few months shy of its 21st anniversary, Phish is breaking up so members can spend more time with their families, pursue solo careers, and get out from under the self-driven Phish machine that has taken the do-it-yourself ethic to a new level. Phish has been a phenomenon -- a parallel universe that never paid attention to shifting musical trends as it became heir apparent to the Dead's jam-band/outsider legacy. "They were the next evolutionary step from the Dead," says Larry Moulter, former president of the Boston Garden, where Phish played some memorable New Year's Eve shows -- one featuring a giant flying hot dog that is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Phish explored New Age values and new fusions of music -- blending a love of classic rock with folk, bluegrass, jazz, and electronica elements. It even had an ice cream named after it: Ben & Jerry's "Phish Food"; royalties from its sale have gone to nonprofit organizations helped by the band's WaterWheel Foundation. The music industry is full of bad guys, but Phish never succumbed to them. The group kept its artistic vision throughout, kept its ticket prices down, allowed fans to tape its shows a la the Grateful Dead, and was in the forefront of the trend to provide concert downloads through its website www.livephish.com. "We are a band that has always put our live shows first," says Phish keyboardist Page McConnell. No one is sure who, if anyone, can replace Phish in the jam-band scene. The Colorado group String Cheese Incident is one possibility; it just booked New Year's Eve at Radio City Music Hall. "When Jerry Garcia died, people thought there would be a rush to other bands," says Bert Holman, manager of the Allman Brothers Band. "But people who went to 20 Dead shows weren't necessarily going to go to 20 other shows. And look at it another way: When the National Hockey League goes on strike this year, does that mean college hockey will get all the extra tickets? I don't think so." Certainly, it will be hard to duplicate Phish's zany, large-scale festivals such as the Clifford Ball, Lemonwheel, the Great Went (named for a line in a David Lynch film), Big Cypress (held in a Seminole Indian reservation in Florida), and last year's IT festival, which have been like tribal hippie gatherings celebrating back-to-nature, alternative lifestyles and featuring specially built villages and an on-site radio station. They were Phish's Woodstocks, but with just Phish playing, not dozens of bands sharing the stage. "There's been a sense of ownership at these festivals between the band and audience that has created a really peaceful atmosphere. We've rarely had any violence. The most I've seen is a fist fight," says John Paluska, who has managed Phish for the last 15 years after growing up in Lexington. The festivals have also helped Phish become an extraordinary money-making machine. Last year's IT festival in Limestone, Maine, was attended by 65,000 fans and grossed $8.5 million -- the most for any concert event last year. But another part of Phish's legacy is that while it has made enough money to keep its accountants happy, it has never done anything crassly commercial. It was approached to do a pay-per-view broadcast of the upcoming Coventry, but turned it down because, as Phish singer Trey Anastasio says, "I've always thought pay-per-views are kind of cheesy." Likewise, this is a band that never sold out to the advertising industry, as so many rock stars have done. It's hard to turn on the television today and not hear artists from Sting to Bob Dylan to Led Zeppelin selling their songs for jingles. "I once got offered a boatload of money to give [our song] `Down With Disease' to Nissan, but I turned them down," says Anastasio. We were thus spared from hearing the lyrics "waiting for the time when I can finally say that this has all been wonderful but now I'm on my way" to sell cars. Anastasio, who once lived in a cabin with no electricity in a town adjacent to Coventry, has held on to his countercultural values, as have the other band members. The group originally formed as students from the University of Vermont and Goddard College, and they have maintained a hippie innocence. But these were never indolent hippies. Few bands have ever put in the blood and sweat that Phish did -- rehearsing five hours a day and hammering away in clubs until it finally broke into larger venues. Playing in Boston was the turning point -- the group eventually became the biggest New England band since Aerosmith -- but to make it happen between the formative years of 1988 and 1992 required six shows at the Paradise, seven at the Somerville Theatre, and dates at Johnny D's, Nightstage, and Dorchester's Strand Theatre before the group was able to play Great Woods (now the Tweeter Center) as an opening act for Santana. "Historically, they were always great at taking over a night. You knew you'd get a strong first set, then a stronger second set. And back in the early '90s, they played with an eye-of-the-tiger passion," says Andy Gadiel, founder of JamBase.com. "And it was always a special event. They changed up the set lists and that way rewarded fans who went to multiple shows in a row." And though Phish was compared to the Grateful Dead by playing two sets a night, mixing up set lists, and favoring long improvisations, Phish broke new ground by sometimes playing entire albums by other artists on some nights, such as the Beatles' "White Album," The Who's "Quadrophenia," the Talking Heads' "Remain in Light," and Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." The Floyd album was played at a faraway show in Utah, serving as a wake-up call to fans. "We did it in Utah partly because it was one of the only shows on the tour where there was only a small percentage of the house that was sold," Phish bassist Mike Gordon told the Globe at the time. "So we decided to teach a lesson to fans who were on tour with us but skipped Utah. We wanted to show them that the really unexpected stuff is going to happen in the middle of nowhere." Coventry is also in the middle of nowhere by urban standards, so it's appropriate that Phish is ending there. But this house will be full. A sold-out figure of 70,000 tickets has already been reached. And to ease the pressure of having ticketless fans show up, Phish is having the shows broadcast on XM satellite radio and close-circuited on high-definition video to 50 moviehouses that are part of the Regal Cinemas chain (the closest to Boston is the Solomon Pond Mall in Marlborough). And, of course, more surprises are in store, which is the band's trademark. Will it be the strolling minstrels and giant fire truck brought into the Great Went? The plane that did skywriting and balletic loops overhead at the Clifford Ball? Or the hired folks who rappelled down a tower at IT? Given Phish's track record of surprises, it could be just about anything. But then it will be over -- and one of New England's finest bands will be gone. Article Copyright © 2004 Boston Globe