The Moment Ends? A Tribute to Phish

>THE MOMENT ENDS?
>By Jonathan Kiefer
>
>
> Years ago, that was us, the nascent Phish Nation, honking audience
>participation into "Stash" on the horns of our Saabs, snowboards
>roofracked; haunting head shops, you know...as if; hauling out the dusty
>four-track
>recorders, making trouble for the other members of our INXS cover-bands;
>loping, lacrosse sticks in our hands, through the halls of prep school
>dorms, having sought music that could be ours but couldn't be ruined,
music
>impervious to overplay on the radio or at the prom, having scoured the
>college radio stations for some kind of awakening. We had found it.
>
>We'd been told we had to hear this. Vermont-spawned quartet, unlike
>anything: frontman Trey Anastasio, lead vocals and guitar; Page McConnell,
>keyboards; John Fishman, drums; Mike Gordon, bass. At first, we might have
>hated it. Or started off skeptical. Listened impatiently, wondering, What
>the hell? Or thought it was just weird and probably took some getting used
>to. Word was, they were fluent in various styles. Okay, we said, sure, it
>sounds like bluegrass because you don't really listen to bluegrass. Yes,
>tell me about Latin funk, white boy. I mean, fluent? We'd always felt
sorry
>for the kid who played seven instruments half-competently, instead of
>playing one well. But we caught two or three live shows and came back
>thinking it could have been two or three different bands.
>
>We hadn't known how to categorize them and eventually got the idea that it
>couldn't be done. We liked the idea. It was cool and exclusive to be
>uncategorizable. We almost got polemical about it. "Hardening of the
>categories promotes art disease," we quipped, quoting whoever said that.
>Gradually, we relaxed-we didn't want to be fetishists, after all. No, they
>weren't virtuosos, but they were aficionados-real music lovers-and they
>were willing to try anything, even if they screwed it up. They were
>goofballs,
>these Phish, and good examples for us.
>
>Of course, some of us had our minds blown from day one. The incidence of
>blown minds, we should say, was not directly proportional to our ability
to
>recognize a few bars of Gershwin tucked into "Bathtub Gin," like a tongue
>in a cheek, or the melodic palindrome within "The Divided Sky" or other
>unannounced, too-clever and surprising musical structures, quotations and
>allusions. If we'd expected three chords and the truth, we got five
chords,
>sometimes with substitutions, two meters at once, and a riddle. We liked
it.
>
>So we made it familiar. Whistling, humming, mastering even those
>mathematically mind-numbing syncopations, if only to prove that we could,
>that tapping along was doable, even through the sustained anticipation. We
>finally learned all those cryptic words and wondered what they meant,
>hatched our own theories. In any event, we could sense what the band was
>getting at, and we liked it. We loved it. We had to know what they'd do
>next.
>
>More shows. Calling them "concerts" just didn't seem right. They opened it
>up. Jammed. Gliding and riding and weaving those songs out into space
>somewhere. Twisting around. We'd been treating these 20-minute improvised,
>exploratory ditties like background music before, scoring chores and
>homework and drives to the movies and sometimes getting high. The shows
>changed that. Being there made all the difference.
>
>It was comfortable inside the joke. The more we learned, the more immersed
>and conversant we became about this phenomenon-which we were helping to
>create-the cozier we felt. We saw more shows, and more. We knew, because
>outsider friends told us, that we talked about Phish too much. They also
>told us that, hell, we'd have been Bruce Springsteen fans if Phish were to
>cover one of his songs. It was a fair point: as if hundreds of originals
>weren't enough, our boys added music by more than 200 other artists to
>their live rotation, including one by the Boss himself...but only once, on
>July
>16, 1999, with longtime Phish lyricist Tom Marshall on vocals. Yeah, try
>and stump us.
>
>These tricksters were willing to cover just about anybody. The Allman
>Brothers, sure, sure, makes sense. Willie Dixon? Nice. Whoa, that's a Van
>Halen tune, remember that? And...um...ZZ Top? Ellington, Coltrane, Mingus,
>Monk, Miles-dig it. Wow, Neil Diamond, huh? Frank Zappa, yeah,
he's...yeah.
>Oh, the Beatles wrote that? Seriously, I didn't know. What? Shut up.
>
>Sometimes they played entire albums of other people's music, by request.
>They kept us guessing. And listening. We went out and bought more music.
>Theirs, yes, but also caught up on the pop and rock we hadn't gotten
around
>to, the jazz or rhythm and blues we hadn't known about, the other stuff
>we'd stayed away from. If we had instruments, we practiced playing them,
>hoping
>to improve by osmosis. With Phish for guidance, we experimented more with
>writing music of our own. We became active listeners.
>
>We were hooked.
>
>***
>
>It isn't so hard to have groupies these days. Politicians, business
>leaders, fraudulent religious figures and legitimate ones, athletes,
>painters,
>writers, actors and musicians all have them. Teachers, public radio
>personalities have them, and death row defendants. Institutions have
>groupies, thanks mostly to advertisers, and advertisers do, too. Nor is it
>hard to be a groupie. Who doesn't want to get behind something, get
inside?
>Who isn't a collector of something, and who isn't entitled? America's
great
>plurality is a plurality of scenes. And Phish has one of the big ones.
>
>Of the available musical subcultures, the school of Phish is rather
benign,
>even earnest. It tends to avoid, or at least not dwell on, the angrier,
>more punishing and reactionary aspects of rock. To enjoy and participate
in
>their scene, Phish fans do many things, but rarely do they seethe. When
the
>band
>"really rocks" or "has a serious edge," as they sometimes do, some fans
>still express surprise.
>
>Then again, expressing surprise, and inducing it, is the band's modus
>operandi. This has earned them a devoted and constant audience. Groupies.
>Devotion here isn't defined by knowing all the minutiae, seeing all the
>shows or collecting all the recordings. It's more about how Phish can do
no
>wrong. They've cultivated an atmosphere of curiosity and experimentation
>and gambled that fans would find it breathable. They chose hard work and
>word
>of mouth over posturing and hype and extensive public relations, and they
>succeeded famously. Here is the band that played the world's largest New
>Year's Eve concert in 1999 (estimates of attendance range from 75,000 to
>100,000). Here is the band that had to be forgiven for making a music
video
>(only one). And they were.
>
>Attention came, eventually, from the elite press because how could it not?
>This was a fairy tale band, having come up on its own, beholden to no one.
>Not even the fans. Predictably, the attention didn't spoil them. For the
>most part, they ignored it.
>
>The Phish subculture is democratic, at least in spirit, alleging a sense
of
>community and, in one way or another, palpably creating one. A community
>doesn't mean a utopia, of course, and a mobile, makeshift commune doesn't
>mean a community. But the Phish subculture is more than its scene. For one

>thing, Phish usually codify their music-and make it familiar to fans-in
>concert, long before recording it in a studio and releasing it on an album
>(they sold out two national tours before ever signing a record contract).
>This offers a rare perspective in pop or rock, more common to the
>quiet-seeming, steadily creeping influence of genuine folk or the loud,
>public ceremony of gospel. Some hard-line Phish Heads, having grown
>accustomed to live dynamics, find the crisp, contained studio versions
>chafing and difficult. But they can forgive that, too.
>
>Really, the worst thing Phish could do to the fans would be to stop making
>music together. And last October, at the peak of their popularity, that's
>what they did. Wrapping up a typical fall tour, they thanked the fans,
>explained it was time for an "extended hiatus" and dutifully pressed on to
>the two final shows at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View,
California.
>Then they went home to their families. They told the press "no comment"
and
>never really said goodbye.
>
>***
>
>We are the Phish Nation. How do you like the sound of that? The Phish
>Nation, we are. We are your phriends and phamily. The true, blue phans of
>Vermont's phinest. What's it all phor? Some hippie band? Some smart
>person's band? Some good-humored, avant-garde rock band? Some
experimental,
>nouveau-folk, electric jam band? The most important band in America?
>
>It's this: Phish is where we go for solace and release. Phish is where we
>go to not be alone. To rest our minds and expand them. It's as spiritual
as
>we
>want it to be, and the rules are pretty easy to swallow, the grooves are
>easy to follow. For some of us, this is the holiest thing we have.
>
>Look, we're not going to hang around the airport, trying to convert
>you...though now that we think about it, that's not such a bad idea. Come
>with us. Pheel the phlow. You know you want to.
>
>Okay, okay.
>
>Time has passed. Years. Let's have a look at the Phish Nation now. Mostly
>white, mostly male, mostly upper-middle class. Must we apologize? We are
>the crunchies, the wookies, the tapers, the taper-wookies, the tourists,
the
>yuppies, the yuppies who don't think they're yuppies, the stoners, the
>stoners who don't think they're stoners, the yuppie-stoners and you get
the
>idea, the clean-and-sobers, the Deadheads, the anti-Deadheads, the posers,
>the neo-slackers, the college-towners, the UVM'ers, the all-American Yalie
>quarterbacks, the California Berkeleys, the Boston Berklees, the community
>college tryers, the mousepad Mafia, the assistant service consultant-PR
>manager-programmer-implementation coordinator-client services
executive-web
>designer-dot commers, the lot commers, the kid brothers and sometimes
>sisters, the music snobs, the music snob snobs, the bike messengers, the
>outdoorsies, the need-to-get-out-moresies, the nomads, the miracle
seekers,
>the miracle workers, the proto-hippies, neo-hippies, prep school hippies,
>nobody's hippies, nobody's fools, the occasional ravers, the accidental
hip
>hoppers, the one-in-a-million ganstas, the others.
>
>We are the Phish Nation.
>
>By now, it's evolved into-we don't know if it's fortunate or not-an
>obsession. An addiction? Gosh, we say, we've spent more than a decade on
>this band, and who knows how many dollars? Saved our wages and salaries,
>planned our vacations around them. We've done hundreds of shows, seen the
>country. Descended in hordes on supermarkets and rest stops in the
>heartland, hearing: So where are you guys from? And answering: Everywhere.
>Those Mom and Pops must have loved the looks of us. If we could camp, and
>were into that, we would. We'd earn what we could in the parking lots,
>selling arts, crafts, T-shirts, food, dope. It really became a lifestyle.
>We tried not to romanticize it, but that was silly. It is romantic.
>
>Or it was. Evolution means change, and we've seen it, all right. The shows
>are one thing, but nowadays that scene in the parking lots is something
>else. We've got that younger generation now, and with it a generation gap.
>The youngsters are suspicious. So are the oldsters. We have factions. Our
>opinions differ. Why do the yuppies have to ruin everything? Why do the
>hippies have to ruin everything? Hugs? Drugs? We're losing our phamily
>values. We were brothers and sisters once. Now we're far removed. Are
these
>trying times for the Phish Nation? Yeah, no question, the scene is pretty
>wack.
>
>***
>
>Breakups and breakdowns are common enough in popular American music. Plain
>old breaks, "extended hiatuses," though not unheard of, are less common
and
>less successful. The touring life, however attractive, however rewarding
>and necessary, is a strained one. Sometimes a loss of momentum becomes, a
>point
>after which things won't be the same, becomes necessary. Staying the same,
>of course, is anathema to Phish. Improvisation includes the risks of lost
>momentum. And exhaustion is counterproductive.
>
>For seventeen years, Phish spent most of their shared life on the road.
>They shared themselves, stayed together, stayed out of trouble and tried
to
>stay
>open, innocent. Meanwhile, they practiced as determinedly as conservatory
>students and wrote music prolifically. Together or not, they're probably
>doing something musical right now. As Phish, though, they may have arrived
>at a point where the dismissal of preconceived notions itself became a
>preconceived notion. They may have reached a critical mass. Few people
>think they don't deserve a break.
>
>If Phish wanted a West Coast "home town," they could have San Francisco.
>The Bay Area, with a rich but not yet daunting history, still enjoys some
>version of youth, some vivacity. It's as good a place as any for the Phish
>scene. A place for possibilities and paths not taken, a haven for the
>otherwise marginal, where the spirit of bohemianism, of creative
>self-invention, will be nurtured-and tested-daily. This is a natural
>destination for personal pilgrimages. Or musical ones. True, according to
>volume 5 of "The Pharmer's Almanac," Shoreline Amphitheatre isn't among
the
>fans' top ten favorite venues for witnessing live Phish. But, then,
>"Anywhere" is
>number three.
>
>The blessing or curse of Phish's current success, the relative wack-ness
of
>the scene, neatly reflects that of the Bay Area, whose cultural identity,
>after a few seismic shocks, might seem on shaky ground. In both cases, a
>debt is owed to the legacy of the Grateful Dead-the band that took free
>flowing, electrified communal music on shared, ritualized road trips from
>under to aboveground decades ago and recast San Francisco's cultural
>reputation. Jerry Garcia's death in 1995 blanketed the area, like a
>persistent fog, with the devastated sense that a real movement had ended,
a
>scene was lost. From another perspective, it was wide open.
>
>Phish is not "the next" Grateful Dead, but the Phish scene is to the
>Grateful Dead's something of what Volkswagen's new Beetle is to the old:
>obedient but hardly servile; bigger; bolder; with more horsepower; slicker
>seeming, yet goofier when you think about it; a good idea to some, a bad
>one to others; an idea whose time has gone, or come.
>
>But not merely a replacement. Such things, to the people who hold them
>dear, the true groupies, are irreplaceable.
>
>***
>
>We've got Widespread Panic here. And String Cheese Incident and moe. And
>Galactic and Karl Denson and Sector Nine and Medeski, Martin & Wood and
>others as yet unheard of. We've got Phish solo projects, Anastasio's new
>band and tapes to trade, CDs to burn, the old stuff to hear, again and
>again. We've got websites to check, just for the hell of it. But for how
>long, how long? We'll need our phix.
>
>We've been good to them, and God, they've been good to us. Swum us through
>the highlights and traumas and transitions of our comings-up: left nests,
>invented independences, beginnings of academic and professional careers,
>the finding of peers or friends or lovers and the losing, the deep, dark,
>uncharted waters of adulthood, of life.
>
>At that very last show, we told ourselves to ignore the rumors, good and
>bad. Never call it a breakup, we said. It's a break. No reason not to
>believe that, right? Hadn't Trey said something about 17 more years? No,
>not a breakup. A setbreak, of sorts, between two great jamming epochs!
>That's
>it, that's it. We'll be back in 15 minutes, folks! Or months, whatever.
>
>They played "You Enjoy Myself" for an encore, and we sure did. We showered
>them with applause. They looked at us, we at them. They left, saying
>nothing.
>
>We passed a wave of shock between us. The house lights rose, and we didn't
>move. Okay, maybe not all of us, maybe half or fewer, but we stayed. The
>soundman played the Beatles' "Let it Be," and the crew came out to strike
>the set. We showered them with applause, too. Clapping and cheering and
>whistling and shouting. We hugged and cried our tears of joy, of
melancholy,
>and you can't take that away from us. It was beautiful, we agreed. We
>recognized the solidarity.
>
>And, as instructed, we let it be. Evolution means change, and change means
>growth, right? Let's remember what we have. We are the Phish Nation.
>
>Maybe it had been an escape. Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe so, maybe not.
Yes.
>we admit it, we concede. An escape from all the irony, the edge, the
>useless rage that permeates our really pretty good lives. We love these
>guys,
>because they aren't rock stars, and they aren't anti-rock stars, either.
>They aren't dumb, and they aren't affected. They're just not wrapped up in
>all that knowingness (How about not knowing? Expecting? Hoping?), the
>self-consciousness-which is not to say self-awareness. They're aware, and
>so are we. More than an escape: an impulse, for all its progressiveness
and
>moving forward, of nostalgia. To find a childhood, yes, that's what we
>said, a childhood. Of ideas that would take us all around the world, of
>curiosity
>and precociousness, sure, of course, but the good kind, the hungry kind,
>pre-competitive precociousness, the kind in which we played, the kind we
>displayed before the Saabs and snowboards and lacrosse sticks and seeking
>out a new sound. Before finally settling in to our low-slung,
>former-warehouse
>offices with exposed bricks and ducts, free Cokes and casual
>Monday-through-Fridays.
>Before finally settling in to the commitment of second-hand chic or
fleeces
>embroidered
>with dancing bears, emblematic Birkenstocks and poser dreadlocks, or even
>authentic ones, whatever that means. Yes, is it so far-fetched to think
that
>ours is a
>backward reach, a relaxation or an exhalation-sometimes smoky, okay-and
that
>sure
>we want tobe kids or kid-like and you know you do, too, right? It is
>possible that
>you know exactly what we're saying, and it's not so far off, come on, it's
>what
>you'd expect from the inheritors, the babies of boomer-hippie pairings,
with
>more privilege than perspective but admittedly, admittedly...and isn't
that
>a prerogative of youth that's been earned for us, however ungrateful we
are?
>Ours is a nostalgia not for the cause, the "day," the original scene, but
>for ourselves. Look, we want to believe in karma, we really are a
>can't-we-all-just-get-along crowd, and we're learning, hard, that it's not
>working, that love isn't really free, but jeez, we're trying to keep the
>cost down, and what if there is such a thing as a collective groove, and
>it's not so complicated after all? Can't we live while we're young? Can't
>we get off on that vibe, the community, the anticipation, the familiarity,
>the
>deviation, the sense-making-nonsense, the seeming spirituality, the music,
>the expanding vamps that build and build and Oh my God where are we now?
>And keep building, is it possible?! Outwards, onwards, becoming something
so
>far away from where we started that it just seems-it is possible, and
>return,
>just as we've almost forgotten how it began, to where we always were, to a
>phriendly, remembered refrain.
>
>Sure, we can. We are the Phish Nation. Sure, we can.