[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.

                          ____________________