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Phish

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This article is about a rock band; for deceptive e-mail practices, see Phishing.
Phish

Phish is an influential American rock band noted for their extended jam sessions and musical improvisation. The band was formed in 1983 in Vermont. The band's four members performed together for the better part of 21 years until their breakup in August 2004. Their music has elements of a wide variety of genres. Each Phish concert was original in terms of the songs included, the order in which they appeared, and the way in which they were performed: most of their songs were never played the same way twice. Although the group received little radio play or MTV exposure, Phish developed a large following by word of mouth and the exchange of live recordings.

History

The beginning (1983-1992)

Phish was formed at University of Vermont in 1983 by guitarists Trey Anastasio and Jeff Holdsworth, bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman. For their first gig, a Halloween dance in the basement of the ROTC dormitory, the band was billed as Blackwood Convention, a contract bridge reference. Their second gig — and their first billed as Phish — was November 3 in the basement of Slade Hall at UVM, though a listing at Live Phish says it was actually on December 2.[1] The band was joined by percussionist Marc Daubert in the fall of 1984[2]; he left the band early in 1985[3], and Page McConnell joined on keyboards in September. Holdsworth left the group after graduation in 1986, solidifying the band's lineup of "Trey, Page, Mike, and Fish" — the lineup that would remain for the rest of the band's lifespan.[3]

Following a prank at UVM with his friend and former bandmate Steve Pollak — also known as "The Dude of Life" — Anastasio decided to leave the college. With the encouragement of McConnell (who received $50 for each transferee), Anastasio and Fishman relocated in mid-1986 to Goddard College, a small school in the hills of Plainfield, Vermont.[3] Phish distributed at least six different experimental self-titled cassettes during this era, including The White Tape.[4] This first studio recording was circulated in two variations: the first, mixed in a dorm room as late as 1985, received a higher distribution than the second studio remix of the original four tracks, circa 1987. The older version was officially released as The White Tape in 1998.[5]

By 1985, the group had encountered Burlington, Vermont, luthier Paul Languedoc, who would eventually design two guitars for Anastasio and two basses for Gordon. In October 1986, he began working as their sound engineer. Since then, Languedoc built exclusively for the two, and his designs and traditional wood choices have given Phish a unique instrumental identity. [6] Recently, however Languedoc has begun crafting guitars on custom order and, very limitedly, to the more general public through local music shops.

File:Old phish.jpg
Phish in the fall of 1986.

As his senior project, Anastasio penned The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, a nine-song concept album that would become their second studio experiment. Recorded between 1987 and 1988, it was submitted in July of that year, accompanied by a written thesis. Elements of the story — known as Gamehendge — grew to include an additional eight songs. The band performed the suite in concert on five occasions: in 1988, 1991, 1993, and twice in 1994 without replicating the song list.[7]

Beginning in the spring of 1988, the band began practicing in earnest, sometimes locking themselves in a room and jamming for hours on end. Dubbed "Okipa Ceremonies" (also spelled Oh Kee Pa), one such jam took place at Anastasio's apartment, and a second was at Paul Languedoc's house in August of 1989.[8] The band attributes the sessions to Anastasio, who discovered the concept in the films A Man Called Horse and Modern Primitives.[9] As a result of this dedication, the band issued their first mass-released recording, a double album called Junta, later that year.

On January 26, 1989, Phish played the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, Massachusetts. The owners of the club had never heard of Phish and refused to book them, so the band rented the club for the night. The show sold out due to the caravan of fans that had traveled to see the band.[10]

By late 1990, Phish's concerts were becoming more and more intricate, often making a consistent effort to involve the audience in the performance. In a special "secret language,"[11] the audience would react in a certain manner based on a particular musical cue from the band. For instance, if Anastasio "teased" a motif from The Simpsons theme song, the audience would yell, "D'oh!" in imitation of Homer Simpson.ⓘ In 1992, Phish introduced collaboration between audience and band called the "Big Ball Jam" in which each band member would throw a large beach ball into the audience and play a note each time his ball was hit. In so doing, the audience was helping to create an original composition.

In an experiment known as "The Rotation Jam", each member would switch instruments with the musician on his left, while Fishman played an Electrolux vacuum cleaner as a woodwind instrument. On occasion, a performance of "You Enjoy Myself" involved Gordon and Anastasio performing synchronized maneuvers on mini-trampolines while playing their instruments.

Phish, along with Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and The Beatles, was one of the first bands to have a Usenet newsgroup (rec.music.phish), which launched in 1991. Aware of the band's growing popularity, Elektra Records signed them that year. The following year A Picture of Nectar was complete: their first major studio release, enjoying far more extensive production than either 1988's Junta or 1990's Lawn Boy. These albums were eventually re-released on Elektra, as well.

File:1992Ph.jpg
Phish in 1992

The first annual H.O.R.D.E. festival in 1992 provided Phish with their first national tour of major amphitheaters. The lineup, among others, included Phish, Blues Traveler, The Spin Doctors, and Widespread Panic. That summer, the band toured Europe with the Violent Femmes and later toured Europe and the U.S. with Carlos Santana.

Climb to the top (1993-1998)

Phish began headlining major amphitheaters in the summer of 1993. That year, the group released Rift packaged as a concept album and with heavy promotion from Elektra.

In 1994, the band released Hoist. To promote the album, the band made their only video for MTV, Down With Disease, airing in June of that year.[22] On December 30, 1994, Phish made their national television debut on The Late Show with David Letterman and played to a sold-out Madison Square Garden in New York City that evening. At their New Year's Eve show, the band played and tossed candy from atop a giant mechanical hot dog over the crowd at Boston Garden.

On Halloween of that year, the group promised to don a "musical costume" by playing an entire album from another band. After an extensive poll on their website, Phish performed the 30-song, self-titled Beatles classic — better known as The White Album — as the second of their three sets. The Halloween musical costume would be repeated in 1995 (The Who, Quadrophenia), 1996 (Talking Heads, Remain in Light), and 1998 (Velvet Underground, Loaded).

The band experienced a surge in the growth of their fan base in 1995, partially due to a decrease in Grateful Dead concerts following the death of Jerry Garcia and an increase in awareness of the band in popular culture, exemplified by the appearance of "Down With Disease" on Beavis and Butthead.

File:Halloween 1995.jpg
Poster for Phish's 1995 Halloween extravaganza

That fall, Phish challenged its audience to two games of chess. Each show on the tour featured a pair of moves. The band took its turn either at the beginning of or during the first set. The audience was invited to gather at the Greenpeace table during the setbreak to determine its move. Two games were played on the tour. The audience conceded the first game on November 15, 1995 in Florida, and the band conceded the second game at its New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden. These were the only two games that were played, which left the final score tied at 1-1. [12] In their tradition of playing a well-known album by another band for Halloween, Phish contracted a full horn section for their performance of The Who's Quadrophenia in 1995. Their first live album — A Live One — featured songs from several 1994 concerts, and was Phish's first RIAA certified gold album.

After the following tour, Phish retreated to their Vermont recording studio and recorded hours and hours of improvisations, sometimes overlaying them on one another, and used those tracks as a basis to write most of the songs on the second half of Billy Breathes, which they released in the fall of 1996. Alongside traditional rock-based crescendos, the album has more acoustic guitar than their previous records, and was regarded by the band and some fans [13] as their crowning studio achievement.

That summer, they mounted their first two-day festival — The Clifford Ball — at a decommissioned Air Force base in Plattsburgh, New York. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people were in attendance; MTV was on-hand to document the experience. In Phish's own makeshift city, Great Northeast Productions created an amusement park, restaurants, a post office, playgrounds, arcades, and movie theaters, and for two days Plattsburg AFB was the ninth largest city in New York. Aside from six "traditional" sets, the band rode a flatbed truck through the campground, serenading the audience at 3 a.m.[14] The concert's production company went on to host six more Phish festivals.

Jams were becoming so long that several 1997 sets contained only four songs; their improvisational ventures were developing into a new funk-inspired jamming style. Vermont-based ice cream conglomerate Ben and Jerry's launched Phish Food that year and proceeds from the flavor are donated to the Lake Champlain Initiative. Part of Phish's new non-profit foundation, The WaterWheel Foundation was also comprised of two other now-defunct branches: The Touring Branch and the Vermont Giving Program.[15]

The Great Went, Phish's second large-scale festival, was held that summer at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine, just miles from the Canadian border. The band drew 65,000 people, qualifying the festival to be the largest city in Maine.[16] Band and audience collaborated yet again in a colossal work of art: individual pieces of art by fans were connected to a large piece of art by the band. A giant matchstick was lit, burning the resultant tower to the ground.[17]

The Story of the Ghost

Phish headlined Farm Aid in the summer of 1998, sharing the stage with Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and Paul Shaffer. Again, altering their approach to studio releases, the band recorded hours of improvisational jams over a period of several days and took the highlights of those jams and wrote songs around them. The result was The Story of the Ghost and the instrumental The Siket Disc in 1999. Phish returned to Limestone for the Lemonwheel festival, and 70,000 fans again made the event the largest city in Maine. On Halloween in Las Vegas, Nevada, the group performed Loaded by The Velvet Underground; two nights later they played Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety to an audience of 4,000 in Utah.

Cultural icons (1999-2000)

To prepare for the New Year's Eve millennium celebration, the band decided to forego the annual summer festival in 1999. At the eleventh hour, Camp Oswego was held in Volney, New York, with 65,000 in attendance.

For the Millennium Celebration, Phish traveled to the Big Cypress Indian Reservation in the Florida Everglades. Of the major New Years Eve concerts around the globe — Sting, Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel — at 85,000, Phish had the largest attendance of any paid concert event that night.[18] During ABC's millennium coverage, Peter Jennings and World News Tonight reported on the massive audience and featured the band's performance of "Heavy Things". Called "Big Cypress", the enormous festival culminated with an extended seven-and-a-half hour set that began at midnight and ended at sunrise.

2000 saw no Halloween show, no summer festival and no new songs: May's Farmhouse contained material dating from 1997. That summer, the band announced that they would take their first "extended time-out" following their upcoming fall tour.[19] During the tour's last concert on October 7, 2000 at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, they played a regular show and left without saying a word as The Beatles' Let It Be played over the sound system.

The hiatus allowed the members of Phish to explore more deeply their musical side projects. Anastasio continued the solo career he'd begun two years earlier, formed the group Oysterhead, and began conducting and orchestral composition with the Vermont Youth Orchestra. Gordon made an album with acoustic guitar legend Leo Kottke and two films before launching his own solo career. Fishman alternated between Jazz Mandolin Project and his band Pork Tornado, while McConnell formed the trio Vida Blue.

One more time (2002-2004)

Over two years after the hiatus began, Phish announced that they were getting back on the road with a New Year's Eve 2002 concert at Madison Square Garden. They also recorded Round Room in only three days. In their return concert, McConnell's brother was introduced as actor Tom Hanks. The doppelgänger sang a line of the song "Wilson", prompting several media outlets to report that the actor had "jammed with Phish."

Chris Kuroda lights up Phish at Alpine Valley, Wisconsin, in July 2003

At the end of the 2003 summer tour, Phish held their first summer festival in four years, returning to Limestone for It. The festival drew crowds of over 60,000 fans, once again making Limestone the most populous city in Maine.[25] In December, the band celebrated its 20th anniversary with a 4 show mini-tour culminating at Boston's Fleet Center. During the Albany date on this tour, Phish invited founding member Jeff Holdsworth onstage in the frontman spot to jam for the first time since 1986.

In order to avoid the exhaustion and pitfalls of previous years' high-paced touring, Phish played sporadically after the reunion, with tours lasting about two weeks. After an April 2004 run of shows in Las Vegas, Anastasio announced on Phish.com that after a small summer tour the band was breaking up. Their final album, Undermind, was released in late spring.

The band jammed with rapper Jay-Z at their second Brooklyn show in the summer of 2004, and performed a seven-song set atop the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater during The Late Show with David Letterman to fans who had gathered on the street. Their final show was also the last Phish summer festival — Coventry — named for the town in Vermont that hosted the event. 100,000 people were expected to attend, and it was simulcast to thousands more in movie theaters across America.

File:Pharewell.jpg
Phish's final bow, August 15th, 2004

After a week of rain that prompted rumors of a sinking stage, Gordon announced on the local radio station that attendees should turn around, no more cars were being allowed in. As only about 20,000 people had been admitted, many concert-goers abandoned their vehicles on highway roadsides, shoulders and medians and hiked to the site, some as far as thirty miles. The band broke down crying onstage several times during the final concert, most notably when McConnell choked up during the ballad "Wading in the Velvet Sea" and elicited Anastasio to say a few words of farewell.

Coventry was an emotional goodbye for Phish and for its audience; an end to Phish's chapter in rock music. Without any help from radio, music television channels or album sales, Phish became one of the biggest live acts of all time. As Rolling Stone magazine put it[20]:

Given their sense of community, their ambition and their challenging, generous performances, Phish have become the most important band of the Nineties.

Future plans

In a recent Sirius Satellite Radio interview, Anastasio mentioned a Phish reunion is "definitely not 100 percent out of the question." Gordon concurred, stating that "everybody's getting along really well. There's no reason it couldn't happen ... it would probably be a long time away ... I can never be sure, because I've never been able to predict the future."[21]

As for now, the members are busy with their own personal projects. Anastasio continued his solo career with his own band and performed with Oysterhead in June 2006. Gordon has played with Leo Kottke and the Benevento-Russo Duo. At Bonnaroo in 2006, he played with his newest project, Ramble Dove, which is the name of the country outfit he fronted in his directorial feature Outside Out, and has also joined Grateful Dead drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann along with Steve Kimock as the "Rhythm Devils." Anastasio and Gordon toured as a four-piece with the Benevento-Russo Duo in the summer of 2006. According to Gordon, McConnell "hasn't been as much in the public eye, but he's been working on an album for awhile now"[21]. McConnell debuted his new solo project at a festival in September held by jam band moe.. Fishman has performed occasional shows with the Everyone Orchestra and The Village, but has, for the most part, retired from the music business for now.

Music

Phish's musical ethos is a playful mix of improvisation, rock, jazz, bluegrass, heavy metal, folk, blues, country, progressive rock, acoustic, and classical. Some of their original compositions (such as "Theme from the Bottom") tend towards a psychedelic rock and bluegrass fusion, with more rock, jazz and funk elements than The Grateful Dead and other earlier so-called jam bands. Their more ambitious, epic compositions (such as "Reba" and "Guyute") are often said to resemble classical music in a rock setting. All told, the band performed 620 individual compositions, of which 226 were originals (of the 244 they penned) and 394 covers.

Further information: Phish and their music

Discography

In addition to their thirteen studio-recorded albums, Phish has released a multitude of live shows: four traditional live albums, and a series of 27 complete concerts called Live Phish. Phish has also released 6 videos, containing live concert footage and documentary material.
Further information: Phish discography

Live recording circulation

Because Phish's reputation was so grounded in their live performances, concert recordings are commonly-traded commodities. Official soundboard recordings can be purchased through the Live Phish website, while legal bootlegs produced by tapers with boom microphones from the audience are frequently traded on any number of music messageboards. (In fan discourse, the word 'bootleg' is usually used to refer to fan-recorded shows offered for sale — a violation of the band's policy.)

Phish fans have been noted for their extensive collections of fan-taped concert recordings: it's not uncommon for fans to have heard 500-1,000 hours of live Phish, and owning recordings of entire tours and years is widespread.

Concerts

The driving force behind Phish was the popularity of their concerts. Each one a production unto itself, the band would constantly change set lists, details, and add their own antics. With many fans flocking to the venues hours before they opened, the concert was the centerpiece of an event that included a temporary community in the parking lot, complete with "Shakedown Street": at times a garment district, art district, food court, or pharmacy. For many, one concert was simply a prelude to the next as the community followed the band around the country.

Tickets By Mail

Fans were able to purchase tickets before the general public by using Phish Tickets By Mail, a mail-order service available through Phish.com or their newsletter, Doniac Schvice. Orders were filled on a first-come-first-served basis, making every attempt to return all orders before tickets went on sale through traditional outlets. In 2002, Phish abandoned the mail-in method of Tickets-By-Mail in favor of an Internet-based ticketing system, allowing ticket-seekers to submit all necessary information online. Abandoning the first-come-first-served philosophy, orders were instead filled by lottery.

Fifth member

A dedicated group of fans unsuccesfully attempted to have Chris Kuroda officially recognized as a member of Phish. The band's lighting designer since 1989, Kuroda was completely responsible for the visual aspect of a Phish concert, establishing it as important as the aural. Each concert was an original experience, and Kuroda's ability to equate light and sound during an improvisational jam was unparalleled.

File:BBKingTrey.jpg
Trey Anastasio and B.B. King

Glowstick Wars

A common occurance during extended jams at night or in a dim arena, fans would toss glowsticks into the air. At times the band would get involved by throwing glowsticks that landed on the stage back into the audience, thus creating a "glowstick war". During these glowstick wars the stage lights are often turned off and the thousands of glowsticks flying through the air become the light show while the band continues to play. Glowstick wars were common during songs with extended sections like You Enjoy Myself, 2001, The Divided Sky and Harry Hood.

Notable guests

Phish transcended genres, as evidenced by the sheer number and varying backgrounds of guests who took the stage with them over the years. In addition to Nelson, Young, Santana and Jay-Z, Phish shared the stage with, among many others, Jimmy Buffett, George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic, Bela Fleck, Wynonna Judd, Kid Rock, Frank "Son" Seals, B.B. King, Phil Lesh, Dave Matthews Band, Tim Reynolds, Sarah McLachlan, Buddy Miles, Ricky Skaggs, and Bob Weir.

Comparisons to the Grateful Dead

Phish is often compared to the Grateful Dead[22], but the similarity is more cultural than musical. Fans of both bands would often tour for weeks at a time, travel from show to show, and support themselves by selling food and homespun goods to the pre-show parking lot community. There was a great deal of crossover between the two fandoms; after the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, there was a noticeable migration of Deadheads into the Phish fan base.[citation needed] It is worth noting that just as Jerry Garcia had frequently collaborated musically with non-band member Robert Hunter, Trey Anastacio frequently shares writing credit with non-Phish member Tom Marshall.

Both communities owe philosophical and spiritual debts to the hippie movement and 60's counterculture, but while the Grateful Dead offered a living connection to the late-60's rock scene, the culture of the Phish community had always been once removed.[citation needed] Complicated by later subcultures, the Phish fan base gradually became more diverse, assimilating such cultures as the late-90s raver ideology.[citation needed]

The comparison extends to the corporate practices of both bands: the primacy of live shows over studio albums and commercial appearances, the fan-friendly taping policies[23][24] and generous archival release programs[25][26], and the familial quality of the organizations themselves further align the legacies of the two bands.

Musically, the bands' similarity was more ethic than aesthetic. Their embrace of group improvisation in a rock context is their unifying factor; however, Phish was able to draw heavily on musical traditions such as progressive rock[27] which is very distinct from the Grateful Dead's roots in folk and Americana[28]. In addition, the rigorous structure and formality of some of Phish's playing — qualities noticeably absent from the folksy style of the Grateful Dead — also serve to differentiate the two groups.[citation needed]

Fan activities

Fans of the band — known as phans, "phollowers", or Phishheads — have created a dozen or so fan organizations. Maintained by phans for phans, these run the gamut of profit status, and indirectly work to the benefit of the band. Among the more noticeable groups is "The Phellowship", a group celebrating seeing shows sober together, and the "Green Crew" who work after concerts removing trash and refuse. People for a Louder Mike (PLM) is an informal effort to campaign for the increase of Gordon's bass in the mix, and The Mockingbird Foundation is a fan-run charitable organization dedicated to music education for children. There are organizations for gays and lesbians as well as female fans, and communities of fans on Usenet newsgroups such as rec.music.phish and on Phish.net.

References

  1. ^ "Live Phish Download, 12/02/2003 Fleet Center, Boston, MA". Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  2. ^ Pharmer's Almanac: Vol 1, pg. 32 (1995)
  3. ^ a b c "The college years".
  4. ^ "Early demos".
  5. ^ "White Album".
  6. ^ "Paul Languedoc profile".
  7. ^ "The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday".
  8. ^ "Oh Kee Pa Ceremonies".
  9. ^ Gehr, Richard, and Phish. The Phish Book . 1st ed. Burlington, VT: Villard, 1998.
  10. ^ "The Boston Globe, 11/30/03 archived on Nugs.net" (PDF).
  11. ^ www.phish.net - language
  12. ^ ""What Does Chess Have to Do with Phish? at Phish.net".
  13. ^ ""[Billy Breathes] is, even in the band's view, light years better than any of their previous studio efforts" - in Guitar World interview".
  14. ^ "Phish.net account of "The Clifford Ball"".
  15. ^ "Phish Food".
  16. ^ ""They Came, They Partied, They Went" by Chris Pollock, Washington Post, August18, 1997".
  17. ^ "Phish.com account of The Great Went".
  18. ^ "Official band history of 1999".
  19. ^ "Hiatus".
  20. ^ Rolling Stone review of Lemonwheel by Matt Hendrickson, pp.20-22, 10/1/98, Issue #792
  21. ^ a b "Phish Members for summer tour at Rollingstone.com by Benjy Eisen, May 3, 2006".
  22. ^ "For Phish fans who dig the road, the music never really stopped".
  23. ^ "Phish and Band Member Taping Policy".
  24. ^ "Grateful Dead vs. Archive.org and The Fans".
  25. ^ "Live Dead, Archive Releases of the Grateful Dead".
  26. ^ "Live Phish, Archive Releases of Phish".
  27. ^ "Interview: Trey Anastasio, the brains behind Phish, plays from the heart on Billy Breathes - December 1996".
  28. ^ "Grateful Dead: Debut Article".
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