[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 149 (Thursday, December 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: December 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
PHISH
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Vermont may be one of the last
States in the Union to host the Grateful Dead, but we may have spawned
their eventual successor--Phish.
The band Phish began 10 years ago with a live debut at Nectar's, a
modest tavern in downtown Burlington, VT. Trey Anastasio, the lead
guitarist and songwriter, remembers playing to a crowd of two on their
second week.
In 1991, 7 years later, Phish produced its first album with a major
record label and paid tribute to their Vermont roots. The album, ``A
Picture of Nectar'', has sold a quarter of a million copies.
When Phish came through this area most recently they broke the
Patriot Center's all-time attendance record, selling 10,356 seats. They
have toured through Europe and filled venues coast to coast for several
years. This fall they sold out Madison Square Garden in 4 hours. Their
star is on the rise.
Phish's music spans many genres--from classically inspired pieces--to
hillbilly country--to slick jazz--to hard rock. Add two trampolines, a
vacuum cleaner, a first rate light show and you have a live performance
that is hard to forget.
A lot of good things come out of Vermont--Phish is one that seems
poised to play a prominent role in the American musical scene. Do not
expect hit singles from these talented Vermonters, but expect the
grassroots of the Phish movement to grow thick.
Mr. President, I want to congratulate Trey Anastasio, Mike Gordon,
Jon Fishman and Page O'Connell on their success. I look forward to
their continued success. I ask that an article from the Washington Post
be printed in the Record at this point.
The article follows:
The Hottest Band the World Has Never Heard
(By Richard Leiby)
It all sort of came together in the little town of
Bethlehem, Pa. There I found a gentle, longhaired wanderer
named Nazzarine (``Nazz'' for short), who is among the many
followers of a group whose symbol is a fish. Generally I
don't consult Scripture, but that night after the concert I
did. The Gideon Bible on the hotel room dresser was already
open and turned to Psalm 31, which was written ``to the chief
musician.''
This I took to be a sign.
``Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for
me: for thou art my strength,'' the psalmist wrote. ``Thou
has set my feet in a large room.''
Yes, rock-and-roll works in mysterious ways. Hear now the
tale of a band called Phish.
They've been together for 11 years, and touring the country
for seven, but most of America has never heard of Phish. The
Vermont-based quartet has never had a hit single or a gold
album. Radio deejays ignore them because their sound fits no
format; it's capable of roaming from dissonant classical to
mellow bluegrass, from screeching rock to syncopated funk,
sometimes in the same song. MTV shunned their one and only
video, from the latest album, ``Hoist.''
And yet: On Saturday, Oct. 8, the night after the Bethlehem
gig, Phish broke Patriot Center's all-time attendance record,
selling 10,356 tickets. That's more tickets than Jimmy
Buffett, who established the record in 1987; more than such
million-album-selling acts as the Spin Doctors, Kenny G,
Pearl Jam and Mary Chapin Carpenter, all of whom have played
Patriot Center in recent months.
Why? All Phish fans--be they suburban teeny-boppers or
erudite college students, grimy homeless hippies or married-
with-kids professionals--talk about the uplifting ``vibe'' of
the band's live performances, the inexplicable ``connection''
they feel with the musicians, though they rarely address the
crowd. Some fans cite the spiritual charge they get from a
Phish concert, although the band itself espouses no religious
mission or message.
At best, the members of Phish offer awkward explanations
for their cultlike following. ``It's an intangible energy,''
attempts Trey Anastasio, the shaggy red-haired guitarist.
``This spiritual aspect,'' theorizes bassist Mike Gordon,
``is that there's something universal that exists and can
come through the musicians and the music, if we're not
blocking. To put it all in words sounds kind of pretentious.
It sounds like a bunch of words, until it's actually an
experience.''
Phish frequently has been compared to the Grateful Dead,
another touring band blessed with a trailing caravan of
seekers. Jerry Garcia and Co., having been at it for more
than a quarter-century, draw far larger audiences--selling
some 1.5 million tickets compared with Phish's 650,000 this
year. But, says Dead researcher Rebecca Adams, ``Phish is the
heir apparent to the Dead. It's quite clear they are winning
the lottery.''
An academic cottage industry and an Internet debating
society have formed around both bands, allowing sages and
neophytes to proselytize, soothsay and trade revelations.
``It's a spiritual phenomenon, not just entertainment,''
argues professor Adams, a sociologist at the University of
North Carolina who's writing a book about Deadheads and
discerns connections to Phish's fans. ``But it's not a belief
in musicians as deities. It's a belief in the power of music
to create community.''
``It is an experience unlike any other,'' insists Shira
Koch, Phish Head, Wesleyan Class of '98, by e-mail message.
``For a few short hours or days, we can almost lose ourselves
in music, fun, youth.'' (Though she feels compelled to add:
``Maybe I am just a spoiled college student who tries to give
meaning to an activity which is senseless.'')
True belief requires going ``on tour,'' committing oneself
to an ascetic lifestyle of following the band's every stop.
But unlike hard-core Deadheads, some of whom survive on food
stamps, Phish fans tend to arrange tours around their lives--
knocking off in the fall when school starts, working toward
real-world careers. The tour community, even if only
temporarily joined, offers more than mere fellowship; it is
an example of how children of unstable modern households have
reinvented the very concept of family.
``Definitely the scene is a surrogate family,'' says Nav
Jiwan Khalsa, 21, whose American parents (now divorced)
adopted the Sikh religion in the '60s. ``Anywhere you go that
the Dead and Phish are playing, you find people of like
minds.''
Big Piney Pilgrim
My journey to Bethlehem really began in July in the remote
mountains near Big Piney, Wyo., where I camped along with
13,000 other people in search of something transcendent, or
at least something you'll never see on C-SPAN. It was the
Rainbow Gathering, an annual celebration of woolly-headed
idealism and primitive collectivism that attempts to
transplant the Good Samaritan spirit--usually at loose in
America only on Christmas Day--to a national forest for an
entire week.
Incredibly, it works. Everyone belongs, everyone pitches
in, everyone gets fed--for free.
``Where you headed?`` I asked a skinny, dirt-caked youth of
18 who was hiking down the two-mile trail from the Rainbow
encampment. He was struggling with his box of meager
possessions, so I offered a hand.
``Vermont,'' he said. ``Going to follow Phish.''
Who?
``Brother, you should check them out. When Jerry Garcia
dies, they are gonna be it.''
A chain of equally crusty teens, friends of his, soon filed
alongside us, offering water and fruit.
``Mmmm nomm me nommm,'' they loudly hummed. ``Do do do do
do.''
The tune sounded familiar. It made everyone smile against
the drudgery of the hike.
``Is that Phish?'' I asked.
No, they giggled. ``It's from `Sesame Street.' The Muppet
theme.''
Phish and the Dead
Last week, many of those who journeyed to Fairfax for
Phish's show moved on to the Dead's three-night stand at
USAir Arena. The parking-lot villages for both bands often
feature the same characters and rituals: tribal drum circles
convened by dead-headed white kids: the wandering, LSD-dosed
bliss ninnies in search of ``miracle'' free tickets; the
unmistakable musk of patchouli oil and BO; and the insistent
hiss of nitrous oxide tanks, as kids suck $5 balloons full of
laughing gas--called ``hippie crack'' because the rush lasts
about 20 seconds.
Though the bands' following intersect, it's not because the
music is the same. Many years ago Phish covered Dead songs,
but any comparison today is wrongheaded; the only similarity
is that both are jam bands, offering hours-long sets and
extended improvisations capable of sending listeners into a
twirling dance of ecstasy. (``If you need to find me later,
I'll be spinning at Portal 4,'' Buckley Kuhn, 20, a former
debutante from McLean, told me at the Patriot Center show.)''
What Phish shares principally with the Dead is a marketing
strategy that breaks down the barrier between artist and
audience. Both bands invite fans to record their live shows,
and tapes are traded extensively (never sold). Both use hot
lines and mailing lists to enhance the word-of-mouth network.
All of this builds a more intimately connected, and loyal,
fan base. Today both the Dead and Phish generate their main
income from touring rather than album sales, subverting the
music industry wisdom that touring is something a band does
to sell records.
Several other young groups--Blues Traveler, Widespread
Panic, God Street Wine, Aquarium Rescue Unit, Leftover Salmon
and the Dave Matthews Band--are applying the Dead-Phish
formula with varying degrees of success. Matthews, a regional
favorite based in Charlottesville, has caught on with Phish
fans and last month sold out the 3,400-seat Roseland Ballroom
in New York.
Many of these bands share something else: a rejection of
the voguish alienation and anger of so-called alternative
groups, and a return to a celebratory spirit of rock's
barefoot-and-tie-dyed past. Phish in particular is a fun
band, as playful as children (though the members' average age
is 29\1/2\) and inventively wacky; for example, when drummer
Jon Fishman, dressed in a frock, sings Prince's ``Purple
Rain'' while accompanying himself on a Electrolux vacuum
cleaner.
Add in expertly honed, unpredictable sets and on-stage
trampoline gymnastics, and the Dead start to look like what
they are; a bunch of old men.
``With the Dead, you're going to get an average to lame
show,'' says Steve Logan, 27 a computer salesman from
suburban Philadelphia who used to collect live Dead tapes but
now concentrates on Phish. He's seen them 73 times; he has
stockpiled nearly 500 hours of digital audio tape. ``With
Phish, for the most part, it's an excellent show,'' Logan
says after setting up his $600 Sony recorder. ``The majority
of the crowd is going to walk away saying, `That's one of the
best shows I've ever seen.'''
Says Jonathan Epstein, 21, a Massachusetts correspondent on
the Phishnet, a computer bulletin board: ``I lost my faith in
the Grateful Dead. I lost my faith in the Dead when I herd
Phish.''
on the road
Stun the puppy!
Burn the whale!
Bark a scruff and go to jail!
Forge the coin and lick the stamp!
Little Jimmy's off to camp.
--From Phish's ``The Squirming Coil''
Nazz and his four friends were road-tripping from
Cincinnati in a red Bronco packed with sleeping bags, flannel
shirts and sustenance that included a case of Pete's Wicked
Ale. First stop, Bethlehem, then on to Fairfax, then
Louisville before returning to reality at the University of
Cincinnati.
Many Phish fans attend college. But some, like Scott
Nazzarine, are taking a break. He is 20, an architecture
school dropout. He follows both the Dead and Phish, and
tramped to Wyoming this summer for the Rainbow Gathering. He
wrote his high school senior thesis on Jack Kerouac.
``I try to avoid working as much as possible,'' he says,
laughing. He doesn't worry about surviving, he says because
``people are so friendly'' on tour.
But like the hippies of yore, today's self-seeking
transients often have middle-class roots to return to.
``I've worked Phish into my master plan,'' says Todd
Overbeck, 21, a ponytailed sociology major at the U of C.
That blueprint includes: graduating with a good GPA,
mastering Swahili and enrolling in the Peace Corps (he hopes
to work in Africa), then getting a graduate degree. But for a
year or two in between, starting in fall '95, he will follow
Phish.
Why? It's part of his religion, he says, but not the
conservative Catholicism he was raised in. ``It's the
spirituality of carpe diem--of seizing life, being happy,''
he says. ``It's the spirituality of having a good time.''
Do Phish's lyrics contain deeper meaning? Of course,
Overbeck and his friends say. They cite the parable of
``Possum'': ``I was driving down the road one day and I hit a
possum. Possum, possum, possum.''
Nazz smiles, as if revealing a secret. ``Sometimes whatever
they're saying doesn't matter,'' he says. ``They could be
saying anything.''
sacred music
Before the Bethlehem show, the rabbi tends the cookstove,
stirring beans to make veggie nachos, a quick nosh for the
parking lot faithful.
How much?
``By donation,'' He demurs. He also offers Camel wides for
a more worldly sum of $3 a pack, and a free glimpse at his
set-list catalogue of Phish's live shows, back to '86.
``This is part of my research and part of my occupation,
because I'm clergy,'' says Yanni Cohen, 25, an assistant
rabbi in Manhattan. ``I get a spiritual boost big-time from
Phish shows. And I'm here for advice if someone needs it.''
It pleases Cohen that Phish sometimes breaks into the
ancient chant ``Aveinu Malkeinu'' (``Our father, our king'')
and other Hebrew songs in concert, (Though no longer an
observant Jew, bassist Mike Gordon attended Hebrew day
school.) ``It's a right-on message,'' the young rabbi says.
I offer Cohen my extra free ticket to attend the concert.
Sorry, he says, but the sun has set, his observation of
Sabbath has begun. He cannot attend.
So I offer it to his friend, Wanda D'Orta, 32, a former
dental hygienist who now sells tie-dyed clothing, who was
raised by strict Christian parents and still follows Jesus
but rejects the institutional church. D'Orta says she finds
truly Christ-like ``unconditional love'' among Phish fans.
``There are a lot of disciples here,'' she says, gesturing
to the assembled, ``even if they don't know it.''
She has never seen a Phish concert. She marvels at the free
ticket and seems on the verge of weeping with happiness.
``This is such a blessing,'' she says, ``God bless you.''
present at the creation
Amy Skelton is the legendary Phirst Phan. She alone was
there to applaud Phish during its debut live show 10 years
ago on a winter night in Burlington, Vt., at Nectar's--a
tavern that is now a sacred site, drawing pilgrims by the
carload.
``The second week there were two people, literally,''
recalls guitarist Trey Anastasio. From there the affinity
circle kept expanding, as Skelton used her pickup truck to
haul loads of 10 fans to bar gigs. ``And we met all of
them,'' says Anastasio.
He and other band members still wander into the parking lot
after shows, but nobody treats them like gurus, or even rock
stars. They dress like perpetual grad students. Their idea of
a wicked good time on the bus is a chess match (keyboardist
Page McConnell and drummer Fishman ended the spring tour tied
11-11).
``The guys have never taken themselves too seriously,''
says Skelton, 29, who now handles the band's merchandising on
tour. That's her horse, Maggie, dangling on the cover of
``Hoist,'' which has sold about 250,000 copies.
Phish's third album for Elektra, ``Hoist'' was an exercise
in, well, fishing for radio and MTV exposure, Elektra hoped
for a breakthrough after earlier releases flopped
commercially.
``So we made a conscious decision,'' Anastasio recalls.
``They want a couple of radio songs, they want a video, let's
just do it and see how it feels. And we did it, and I didn't
like it.''
Why? ``It's too commercial.''
Anastasio realizes the irony of this. Most bands, no matter
how loudly they bray about the evils of selling out, actually
are willing to enter pacts with Lucifer to get a record on
the Billboard chart. Phish is genuinely fearful of becoming
too popular, of losing the intimate relationship with its
fans (up until last year, band members even answered all mail
personally). Many Phish Heads denounced the making of a video
for the song ``Down With Disease.''
``We don't think we'll make any more,'' says Gordon, who
directed it.
So far, the band has played to no audience larger than
18,000; New York's Madison Square Garden, an upcoming stop,
holds 20,000. Anastasio says that's the limit.
``We won't be hitting RFK Stadium,'' he vows. ``It's too
big; it's just a stupid place to have a concert. The only
reason to play in a room like that is because you make a
whole lot of money.''
It is a very large room, indeed. But perhaps the Great tour
Manager in the Sky will decide the size of the room into
which this man sets his feet.
phame
Within minutes of asking Phish to pose for photos, we are
surrounded by a frenzied swarm of pre-pubescent girls
demanding autographs. The girls play for a 13-and-under
soccer team in Cold Spring Harbor, on Long Island, they're in
Fairfax for a tournament, and not only have they heard of
Phish, they have CDs right here for them to sign! Albums
their 15-year-old sisters told them to buy! They looooovvve
Phish!
The band is estatic, yet surprised that their fame has
reached this level. ``This is new for us,'' Anastasio says,
shaking his mane.
But it's no wonder: Phish's music has built-in kid appeal.
Anastasio used to write songs with his mom, once the editor
of Sesame Street magazine. One of Phish's songs, ``The
Divided Sky,'' takes its melody from a family musical, ``Gus
the Christmas Dog.''
It turns out the soccer team has no idea Phish is playing
that very night, right down the street. Instantly, Anastasio
invites all 15 girls to the concert. A few hours later, in
the middle of ``Cymbal,'' the Cold Spring Harbor Muppets file
in front of the 10,356 spinners, seekers and just plain
astonished music lovers, and chant:
``Everything we go, people wanna know! Who we are, where we
come from! So we tell them: North, south, east, west--Muppets
are the best!''
It's too perfect. The lesser deities that watch over
feature journalists are clearly working overtime. And in the
end, the story of Phish becomes a simple lesson:
To find happiness, be as if a child. Play and share. Love
one another. Dance and sing. Somewhere in there, you may even
find God.
____________________