Phish

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PHISH

Formed: 1983, Burlington, Vermont

Members: Trey Anastasio, guitar, vocals (born Forth Worth, Texas, 30 September 1964); Jon Fishman, drums, vocals (born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19 February 1965); Mike Gordon, bass, vocals (born Boston, Massachusetts, 3 June 1965); Page McConnell, keyboards (born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 17 May 1963). Former member: Jeff Holdsworth, guitar (born 14 November 1963).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: A Live One (1995)

Phish is a phenomenon more than a band. It became a major stadium touring act by the late 1990s without having to make its way through conventional commercial channels like radio airplay, music videos, or corporate sponsorship. Instead, Phish blossomed in popularity due to grassroots organizing, a thriving Internet culture, and intensive touring. The band specializes in improvisational music and its lure is through its live shows more than its albums. Phish is the most successful band continuing the legacy of the Grateful Dead, the longtime San Francisco collective that groomed its own subculture from the late 1960s through the early 1990s. Phish helped contribute to its own mythology through a number of hallmarks such as marathon live shows, unusual cover choices, Halloween shows featuring setlists covering entire albums by other artists, and a dress-wearing drummer known to "solo" by running a vacuum cleaner onstage. Phish announced a hiatus in 2000, but after a series of solo projects from its respective members, the band was back on the touring circuit in late 2002.

Guitarist Trey Anastasio, drummer Jon "Fish" Fish-man, and bassist Mike Gordon met as freshmen at the University of Vermont. With sophomore and guitarist Jeff Holdsworth (who left soon after), the group played its first show at a basement party in 1983. Keyboardist Page McConnell, a student at nearby Goddard College and already a fan of the band, joined two years later. After a few years honing their sound at college parties, the group recorded its debut Junta (1988) to sell as a cassette at live shows. They then started touring outside Vermont, playing up and down the East Coast and later in Colorado and Utah. After an album on an independent label, the group was signed to Elektra, a major label, in 1992.

Grassroots Success

The Internet factors heavily in Phish's success. The rate of Internet development parallels the band's growth. When phish.net was introduced the band's popularity boomed. The website allowed the band to connect directly with fans. The Internet fostered tape trading and allowed for band minutiae to be archived and discussed. A subculture surrounding the band was nurtured without the conventional aid of radio airplay or cable television. Phish's popularity grew under the radar of the mainstream media. By 1996 Phish was already playing arenas. That year the band grossed $17 million and played forty-nine U.S. shows, including its biggest show yet, to 75,000 people in Plattsburgh, New York, on the heels of their most popular album, Billy Breathes (1996).

Phish is intrinsically linked to the Grateful Dead, the pioneering psychedelic group known for improvisational music, a subculture of devoted fans, and a touring life that stretched for thirty years. When leader Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the Dead had been headlining arenas, their popularity mainly due to live shows since they never sold many records and had only one Top 10 hit. Although dozens of bands thrived in the wake of the Dead, none did so with as much success as Phish.

Like the Dead, Phish expertly juggles rock, jazz, country, funk, bluegrass, pop, and spacey instrumental ambience. The group brings these styles together with simple lyrics and uses their songs as frameworks for improvisation.

Aside from their originals, they actively school themselves in rock history, peppering setlists with covers. (In 1994 they began an annual Halloween tradition of covering entire albums.) Phish live shows are dance parties with long stretches of improvisation that often feature giant inflatable objects. The group fostered their popularity by sanctioning arena sections to be reserved for tape recording. During this time the band played large outdoor festivals and multiple nights at stadiums. For New Year's Eve 1999, they played a record six hours, from midnight to dawn at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian reservation in Florida.

Much of Phish's jamming spirit is fused into their studio albums, although The Story of the Ghost (1998) and Farmhouse (2000) are considered their most song-oriented work yet. Phish made only one video ("Down with Disease") in the 1990s and never had a major hit song.

Ruling the Touring Industry

By the end of the decade, Phish had become one of the biggest names in rock. It grossed more than $61 million in ticket sales in 1999 and 2000. In 2000 the group announced a temporary hiatus due to exhaustion. Apparently there was one lesson from the Grateful Dead they did not want to learn: "A part of what killed Jerry Garcia was the bigness of what the Dead became. He couldn't stop touring. It's the antithesis of what I want to happen," McConnell told a reporter in 2003.

After releasing side projects over the course of a year, the group reunited in late 2002 and picked up where it left off, but at a decidedly slower pace and with ample room set aside for rest and solo interests.

Phish proved a rock band could reach monumental success by reaching out to fans directly, rather than through the established media. Its populist attitude spawned a subculture of devoted fans and made it phenomenally successful on tour. The band's prolific output of live albums, studio work, official bootlegs, and side projects helped whet fans' appetites, and the live shows redefined the psychedelic dance experience originally established by the Grateful Dead.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Junta (Phish, 1988); A Picture of Nectar (Elektra, 1992); A Live One (Elektra, 1995); Billy Breathes (Elektra, 1996); The Story of the Ghost (Elektra, 1998); Farmhouse (Elektra, 2000); Round Room (Elektra, 2002).