From: kell0040@student.tc.umn.edu ()
Subject: Phish news
Organization: University of Minnesota
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 04:00:42 GMT

Headline: Guitar group Phish nets scads of new fan
Publish Date: 11/19/1992

By Jon Hunt



The music of Phish can be difficult to understand.

The Burlington, Vermont-based group spins complex and convoluted webs 
of music in wild, tangled patterns. It's hard to play, and hard to 
get into. And -- like a spider's web -- it's incomprehensibly 
beautiful.

``On the new record, there's a really complex fugue (a musical form 
based on repetition of a single theme) based on the All Things 
Considered theme,'' explains guitarist Trey Anastasio from a hotel in 
Nashville, where the band has just completed their newest LP, Rift. 
``If I was successful -- and I think I was -- listeners should be 
able to follow the theme in infinite variety and infinite sameness. 
It should be very glorious.''

Rift follows Phish's extremely successful and diverse major-label 
debut, A Picture of Nectar. Anastasio promises even greater heights 
and innovation on their latest LP.

``The new one is better than Nectar, by a long shot,'' Anastasio 
says. ``In terms of how high you can go, if you thought Nectar pushed 
the boundaries, this new one will go even higher. Because now,'' he 
pauses for dramatic effect, ``we have a concept.''

The central idea of Rift, said Anastasio, is more firmly grounded in 
real life than the cornucopia of surrealism in Nectar.

``It takes place in one night's worth of dreaming of one guy,'' he 
explains. ``It's just a chart of this guy's dreams. Each song is one 
dream. It's quite unlike anything we've ever done before. It's a real 
departure.''

Phish will have a hard time topping the success of Nectar. Following 
the release of that album, the band (which also counts as members 
bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell, and drummer Jon 
Fishman) suddenly found itself a huge touring organization, spawning 
a following as intense -- and almost as large -- as the Grateful 
Dead's.

``We'd just been touring around,'' Anastasio says. ``We'd built up 
quite a fan base close to home. It just grew from there.''

Not bad for a group who, ten years ago, were music-school students 
``sleeping on floors'' and trying to pay the bills in a ``cover 
band'' that played everybody else's hits.

``Oh, we were way more college rock back in the old days,'' Anastasio 
laughs. ``We used to play mostly covers. We did everything from (The 
Hollies') 'Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress' to (AC-DC's)'Highway to 
Hell.'''

But Anastasio, a Goddard graduate in composition, was writing his 
complex compositions from the very beginning.

``From the start, we were doing original stuff,'' he says. ``It just 
takes a long time to build up enough stuff to where you're playing 
all originals. We started out with, I think, about two original 
pieces. Now, Mike (Gordon) just made a list of all the pieces we 
play, and there's more than a hundred. Most of them are original.''

The cover tunes still get played at the group's incendiary live gigs, 
however -- and some even stranger ones have been added, including a 
version of Nirvana's Top-40 hit ``Smells Like Teen Spirit.''

``Well, it's a good song, isn't it? Isn't it?'' Anastasio jokes.

Besides the cover versions, their bizarre live sets also include 
performing flat on their backs (with legs kicking in the air), brief 
choreography, a solo played on an Electrolux vacuum, and a song 
played with the entire band bouncing up and down on trampolines.

``That jokey stuff just worms its way into the set,'' Anastasio 
explains. ``I spend every waking hour of every day of the year with 
the band. When you spend that much time with people, you start doing 
stuff to crack each other up. That stuff suddenly appears on stage 
for that very reason -- to make the other band members laugh.''

Anastasio says the band takes a total of two days off per year -- 
every other day is spent in the studio, on tour, or in intense 
rehearsal. But he says he wouldn't want it any other way.

``On the two days I do take off, all I can think about is the band,'' 
he said. ``I can't get away. I don't want to get away. I just love it 
-- playing live, working on music, the whole creative process. I love 
writing music.''

``If you love music as I do, it's all-consuming. There's nothing else 
to do. And, frankly, nothing else you want to do.''



 

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