Phish Spolights Liver Performances December 5, 1999 - Greensboro News & Record By Staff Album Review - Hampton Comes Alive The myth goes something like this: Rock music, in its purest form, is ideally executed onstage. It's an appealing notion. There's something romantic in the idea that rock is a folk art best interpreted in the volatile setting of a live venue - a rarefied rite of communal ecstasy tweaked with a touch of danger. It's also wrong - most of the time. Rock 'n' roll is most decidedly a studio craft, born of the merger between technology, capitalism and American culture. Even many of the music's rawest, most organic moments draw their magic from the timeless immediacy of the recorded medium itself. The real rock 'n' roll catharsis is a solitary experience, shared by a listener and his album or radio. That doesn't mean there aren't transcendent moments onstage. Indeed, for the bands that can handle it - the players with real chops - live performance is a place for channeling high spirits. Take Metallica, Dave Matthews and Phish, who have released a dozen live albums between them while spawning innumerable bootleg concert tapes. Metallica's slyly titled "S&M" - that's "Symphony & Metallica" - is a two-disc retrospective of the group's program last spring with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. If it's the first Metallica album that earns the adjective "gorgeous," so be it: Gorgeous it is, as the group weaves its snarling canon into a rich fabric of new sounds. Swells of strings cascade for genuine drama (just check the coda on "For Whom the Bell Tolls"); elsewhere the orchestra provides subtle counterpoint to Metallica's familiar dark roar. It's easy for rock-orchestra collaborations to choke on their own pretention, from the Moody Blues on down. Here it's tastefully executed, as the symphony doesn't so much co-opt the sound as enhance it. Dave Matthews Band's "Listener Supported" comes with strings and woodwinds, too, albeit in the minimalist form of LeRoi Moore's fiddle and Boyd Tinsley's sax. Since the mid-'90s, DMB has grown from a collegiate fave to an arena powerhouse, and the group's polished delivery helps tunes like the lurching "Rapunzel" and rural classic "Long Black Veil" go down like warm brandy. As ever, drummer Carter Beauford is the one to keep your ears on, lighting up the bottom end with astoundingly kinetic grooves. Vermont jam quintet Phish inspires a nearly obsessive devotion among its fans, who get quite a handful with the six-disc opus "Hampton Comes Alive," recorded last fall. The group's penchant for sonic exploration is manifest here, with giddy improv oozing out of songs like "Possum" and "Farmhouse," along with a playful cover of Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping." Perhaps too unwieldy for the casual listener, the set will certainly satiate a hard-core Phish fetish. Review © 1999 Greensboro News & Record