Hooked on Phish

Phish doesn’t take their music seriously, and neither do
the legions that follow them from city to city on every tour or the
ones that just stop in for a friendly hello when the band drops into
their town. Their music speaks in a language that only those who have
taken the trip to the deepest part of the inner well of soul can
understand—and it’s not absolutely necessary that you have to be high
to punch your ticket. And those who have tripped the great fantastic by
either abstinently standing or dancing beneath the diamond sky with one
hand waving free, know that what speaks on the outside isn’t
necessarily the same thing that resounds between the ears.

Take the opening song Phish played at the Onondaga County War Memorial
on Sunday, Nov. 22, simply called “David Bowie,” one of the band’s
earliest songs that first debuted Halloween day in 1986. The lyrics
consist of two repeated phrases: “David Bowie” and “UB 40.” Phish is
the only band that could engage such inanity and still stir the crowd
into revelatory bliss. The mantra-like quality of the song set the tone
for the rest of the night as it seemed to corral everyone from wherever
their daily trip led them to that point, and henceforth, it was a union
of performer and audience.

Long before everyone came together in euphonic harmony,
however, downtown Syracuse set the scene for the night ahead. The War
Memorial’s sibling facility, the Pirro Convention Center,
opened its doors free of charge at 11 a.m. for the army of Phish-heads
that make the concert experience more than just
drive-plus-concert-equals-ride home. Local band Lee Terrace jammed outside in the parking lot across the street from the venue, while Grateful Dead tribute band Dark Hollow and African percussion ensemble Adanfo
performed inside. As time went by, thousands descended upon the former
OnCenter for the pre-Phish phestivities, while hundreds more passed the
time blocks away in the taverns of Armory Square.

This reviewer typically enjoys Syracuse Suds’ chicken
wing and beer specials for NFL football every Sunday and just before
kickoff of the Jets-Patriots game at 4 p.m., the bar’s celebratory
compendium resembled something more akin to St. Patrick’s Day. The
unsuspecting football fans unaware of the Phishing expedition didn’t
know what harpooned them. The standing-room-only crowd at Suds imbibed
on the good vibes that the night was ringing, while a couple different
revelers were heard asking others if they wanted to “come back and hang
out in the car for a while before the concert.” I wonder what they do
in there. . . 

But whatever the motif of the mood was, everyone seemed
to be having a good time. And since many out-of-towners traveled long
distances just to see this concert, they’ll remember the Salt City as a
place where they’d want to make a return visit. “I’ve had more fun here
today than most of the other cities I’ve seen Phish in,” said Jarrett Chandler,
a first-time Syracuse visitor. The resident of Millis, Mass., claims to
have seen the band in just about every city they’ve played in the
Northeast. “In bigger cities, people tend to drift more apart before
the show. But this is pretty rad because it’s almost like one big
festival around here right now.”    

While old-school groups like the Grateful Dead and the
Allman Brothers Band are considered “jam bands,” they were performing
that style of music before the phrase was even coined. Phish began
playing small clubs around the University of Vermont in Burlington in
the early 1980s; as they toured and expanded their outreach through the
years, they spawned many more like-minded bands along the way on the
jam band scene, which reached its peak in the mid-to-late 1990s.

Despite the aforementioned absurdity of their lyrics—to
their credit, most of their verses are not that shallowly
abbreviated—and the fact that they don’t take their music too
seriously, it doesn’t mean that these four dudes aren’t talented
musicians. On the contrary; guitarist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, drummer (and Jamesville-DeWitt High School graduate) Jon Fishman and keyboardist Page McConnell let
their instruments speak volumes instead of waxing poetic lyrically.
While they might not be pronounced instrumental virtuosos like some of
the great jazz quartets, there’s bantam space of the nether-region of
the musical cosmos this band doesn’t have the capabilities to leave
uncharted. And that’s the turn-off for some people, grounded in the
fact that this is a band they can’t get into, or don’t want to try to.

Many of the 24 songs the band played eclipsed far beyond
the 10-minute mark, and while the many who never bothered to sit down
in their designated seats invisibly brush-stroked the air with
idiosyncratic hippie dances, there were also those who might have been
checking out the band for the first time or on a bad trip asking “Are
we there yet?” halfway through the first set. A synopsis of every song
played on the night is as follows: intro-verse-chorus-Anastasio
soloing-verse-more Anastasio soloing-chorus-more Anastasio
soloing-cadence. Yes, if you like guitar heroics, Anastasio, who in a
weird way resembles a feeble Chuck Norris, did not leave his penchant
for improvising missing in action for too long as the night went on.
The other members had a few moments to shine, but no question, the
majority of the jams were dominated by Anastasio.   

The songs the band played don’t even really matter, as
they could have pooled together another 20-odd tunes from the hundreds
in their repertoire. Most people would be disappointed if they didn’t
hear those one or two expected tracks that epitomizes a certain band,
such as “Sweet Home Alabama” or “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. In
Phish’s case, the anticipatory mystery of the songs about to be played
excites more so than what was just heard. When the song is playing,
it’s more about being in the moment than actually listening to it.  

But the night wasn’t a complete blur,
and a few numbers really stood out during the first set. For “Lawn
Boy,” from their 1989 album Junta, Anastasio pointed the
spotlight away from himself and introduced McConnell as “The Chairman
of the Boards,” as the latter temporarily abandoned his keyboard
station and walked along the front of the stage like a lounge crooner
and sang the hybrid doo-wop/Vegas ditty. “Sparkle,” from arguably
Phish’s best and tightest album, 1993’s Rift, radiated in a
kind of bluegrass-meets-Ramones sound undulation. The story of a man on
the verge of proposing marriage is told as he remains calm during the
verse, then builds to a clamoring panic attack during the “laughing,
laughing fall apart” chorus.

The Band revisited Rift in the second set, playing “Maze,” “The Horse” and “Silent in
the Morning” in sequential order. And it would seem to not be just mere
happenstance that several of Stevie Wonder’s greatest hits were playing
over the P.A. before the gig; Phish ended up covering a
pretty-fly-for-a-white-guy version of Wonder’s “Boogie on Reggae
Woman.” They also jammed on a cover of the hard-livin’ bluesman Son
Seals’ “Funky Bitch,” got amped up while rocking out The Who’s
“Drowned” before getting the Led out during their encore of Zeppelin’s
“Good Times, Bad Times.”

And surely whether the times were good
or bad, the crowd has probably had their share. But on this night,
nobody seemed to care about anything other than slipping out of reality
and letting the good times roll until they had to prepare for the dawn.
But as there was no artificial energy illuminated at the Phish show,
the morning had already become a distant memory. When the music’s over,
turn out the light...

(Check out  slideshow)