For fans of America's biggest cult band, the term "boys of summer" doesn't refer to guys who get paid millions to play baseball but rather four Vermont men in their forties who earn millions by playing goofy, unpredictable music while jumping on trampolines, having glowsticks thrown at and around them, and in the case of Phish drummer Jonathan Fishman, wearing a polka-dot muu-muu and playing a vacuum cleaner.
Yes, after five years of much-needed hiatus, Phish (and the adjoined
community of fanatics that follow the improvisation-heavy group) are
back. Joy, Phish's eleventh studio album, is due in September; the band's
new original songs are replete with a kind of reformed happiness and
confidence that seemed a little forced on 2004's Undermind, a
disappointing album released just as the quartet announced its
well-publicized breakup that summer. And that reformed joy makes sense -- unlike the version of Phish that imploded in 2004 on a tour that
culminated with a two-day performance in front of 70,000 people in
Vermont, Phish circa 2009 is well-rehearsed (deftly executing the
band's most Frank Zappa-esque material) and reportedly steering away
from hard drugs.
Phish's "farewell" festival in 2004 was
telecast live in theaters around the United States and caught Anastasio,
at times, in a drugged-out haze; at one point on the second evening, one
could even see singer/guitarist and ringleader Anastasio snorting
something onstage. Phish's music repeatedly bottomed out in 2003 and
2004, when the act replaced its previously revered approach of fun
and frequent practice equaling impressive execution with messy thirty-minute improvisations out of botched songs. And Anastasio himself
bottomed out after Phish called it quits in 2004; he was forced to
repent and rehabilitate after being pulled over in upstate New York in
2006 and charged with possession of hashish, hydrocodone, percocet and
Xanax.
Despite what you might think from seeing boneheaded
kids in Phish t-shirts and dreadlocks, the group's actual music (led by
the occasionally transcendent lead guitar of Anastasio) can be
exhilarating, intelligent and stunning. The product of four Goddard
College music majors, much of Phish's best material is informed by
their classical background and, in terms of influence, comes closer to
the Talking Heads and Zappa than the blissed-out mush of latter-day
Grateful Dead music. In many cases, Phish's most-loved songs are
incredibly challenging to perform sober, let alone when loaded on who
knows what.
"Fluffhead," from Phish's 1989 debut Junta, is an
irreverent "progressive rock suite" so difficult to perform well that
the band didn't play it live from September of 2000 until the opening
night of its three-night reunion in Hampton, Virgina this past February. The
roar from the obviously pleased crowd was so loud that, even on Phish's
official soundboard recordings, you can barely hear the beginning of
the song.
And they nailed it.
But why, if Phish's shows are so
hit-or-miss, do thousands of people eschew normal life to follow the
eclectic foursome from town to town? On one hand, Phish never plays a
song the same way twice, and every set-list is different. Phish sets may
include surprise guests (such as Bruce Springsteen or B.B. King),
surprise cover songs or even cover albums, such as "The White Album" and
Quadrophenia, so a Phish concert is always at least part spectacle. And
it's exciting: the chance of experiencing the beauty of a venue like
Red Rocks while skilled musicians attempt to juxtapose dense
arrangements with group improvisation -- that's sometimes akin to a
sixth-sense.
But sometimes Phish concerts are
embarrassingly awful, and even hardcore fans will attend this weekend's
four shows at Red Rocks (the band's first at the storied amphitheater since
1996) knowing that, as Entertainment Weekly once said of Phish
performances, the audience's ears might be metaphorically urinated
into. However, many "phans" will tell you that the surprise is an
element of the group's attraction, and a huge part of following Phish has
always been the embrace of a like-minded community. According to thirty-year old Andrew Merriam of Englewood, who has seen Phish over fifty
times and just this May saw the band at Fenway Park in Boston, there's
a new found buzz among fans.
"Phish's music is tight again," he
says. "There is a glimmer of that old humor floating around, and there
is new music to be discovered, new shows to experience and new friends
to make."
Some of us will be content to observe from afar, but
for those willing to live on "goo-balls" and ganja-buttered quesadillas
while chasing Phish around America, the opportunity is once again all
yours.
Phish kicks off a four-night stand at Red Rocks this evening. All shows are sold out!
