The return of the Phish phenomenon

The legendary jam band reunites, igniting fans who see themselves as much more - a community

By Adam Conner-Simons, Globe Correspondent  |  May 24, 2009

At 10 a.m. on Jan. 30, Live Nation opened its online box office for the highly anticipated summer tour of Phish, the four-piece Vermont-based rock outfit that reunited in March after a five-year hiatus. Within minutes, millions of requests flooded the site and every single seat for all 15 concerts had sold out. Less than 24 hours later, tickets to the band's May 31 kickoff show at Fenway Park were trading hands for as much as $1,600 a pop on Craigslist and StubHub. Just like that, the tribe of Phish heads had spoken.

Plenty of music lovers are fans. The Phish contingent, meanwhile, would be more aptly described as fanatics. They follow their band across the country and around the globe, seeing upward of 20 or 30 gigs in a row and meticulously dissecting set lists with friends and on online discussion boards. They collect dozens if not hundreds of bootlegged tapes of live concerts and can recite, from memory, the exact dates of their favorite performances.

And if you think that the fervor of Phish fandom has long since passed its peak, then you must have missed the group's trio of comeback concerts at Virginia's Hampton Coliseum in March. "When they took the stage that first night, the sheer jubilation and energy in the room took my breath away," says Jeremy Goodwin, a Swampscott native who has seen nearly 100 shows. "Anyone who was there would be hard pressed to name another time when they felt something - anything - remotely like that."

Such a level of obsession is remarkable given that Phish, which is headlining both Fenway Park next Sunday and the Comcast Center on June 6, doesn't have any major radio hits. Its members, who met at the University of Vermont in 1983, are goofy, geeky, overgrown college kids. Yet thanks to the group's moderately sized but immensely devoted fanbase, not to mention its vibrant live shows, Phish has sculpted a highly successful career that spans three decades and had Rolling Stone calling them "the most important band of the '90s."

The group's unique rise to fame has been shaped largely by positive word-of-mouth that extends back to its early days in Vermont. "It was a very grassroots effort," says East Boston resident Peter O'Keefe, who started listening in the late '80s. "Everybody knew someone who had a brother that would drive up to Burlington, tape a show, and bring it down."

The band's relaxed attitude toward taping has been integral to its success. Since long before Radiohead was experimenting with "pay what you want" pricing plans, or Lil Wayne was pushing out an endless stream of unofficial mixtapes, Phish has encouraged free and legal trading of its live shows - and the fan response has ranged from passionate to obsessive.

"You build your Phish collection through what can only be described as field recording," says Goodwin, who was a major contributor to "The Phish Companion," a comprehensive reference book with more than a thousand set lists, reviews, and other tidbits of Phish lore. "You're trading tapes through the mail with people from all over the country who you may not have even met before."

In the early '90s, the tape-trading phenomenon was further intensified by the Usenet news group rec.music.phish, a pre-Internet discussion board in which fans could trade information and recordings. "The Phish community has always been very plugged in," says Jonathan Schwartz, who serves as DJ of an all-Phish program on Sirius satellite radio. "These college kids had access to resources and were able to use the [Usenet] group as a tool to share music." In the early stages of Usenet, only three other artists were represented: the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan.

Nowhere was the group's word-of-mouth ethos more clearly displayed than at Boston's own Paradise Rock Club. In 1989, Phish hadn't yet broken into markets outside of Burlington and was having particular difficulty catching the eye of Paradise management. On Jan. 26 of that year, the band rented out both the club and a bevy of school buses that it used to bring fans and friends down from Burlington. Within a matter of hours, there was a long line of Phish fans that stretched along Commonwealth Avenue. Needless to say, the group hasn't had a problem booking gigs in Beantown since.

To its credit, Phish makes concerted efforts to connect with its audience and break down the wall between band and fan. From golf-carting around the parking lot before shows to, more recently, sending out live Twitter updates of set lists, the band realizes its fans' central role in the trajectory of its career and has even hired fans for key positions behind the scenes in the group's management and marketing.

"They aren't just some disassociated rock stars," says Chelmsford native Jim Raras. "They are humble enough to realize that [the fandom] surrounding them is no small thing, and so they're definitely very cognizant of their fans' perspectives."

Of course, there'd be no Phish mania in the first place if people didn't like the tunes or the band's unwavering dedication to improvisation, spontaneity, and musical variety. Drawing from a well of more than 600 original compositions, Phish can go entire tours without repeating songs, and its dynamic potpourri of influences - ranging from funk and folk to bluegrass and jazz - creates an infinite number of musical possibilities during each performance. Unpredictability is the rule rather than the exception at shows, whether that means playing The Beatles's "White Album" from start to finish, switching instruments mid-song, or simply jamming all night long. (Literally: Phish's New Year's performance in the Everglades in 2000 started just before midnight and continued until dawn broke nearly eight hours later.)

Such epic and diverse concert experiences are what make Phish heads return to show after show and have helped establish a close-knit community. After the five-year hiatus, a show like Fenway is no longer just a way to pass the evening - it's a full-blown family reunion where you might reconnect with dozens of Phish pals. At the first Hampton show, Raras found himself surrounded by fellow fans he hadn't seen since the 2004 farewell show in Coventry, Vt. "The music is the No. 1 thing," he says, "but a close second is the opportunity to catch up with old friends."

Part of the Phish bonding stems from the pre-show "lot scene," borrowed from the Grateful Dead's "Shakedown Street," in which concert parking lots become massive, festive flea markets overflowing with fans selling food, beer, art, jewelry, clothing, and more out of cars and picnic baskets. Maynard resident Chris Prinos, who has seen more than 125 shows, describes it as "Mardi Gras meets a flea market, on acid."

While we're on the topic of drugs, Phish heads want to clear something up: very few of them actually conform to the stereotype of the shaggy-haired stoner. Fan organizations run the gamut, including the substance-free "Phellowship," whose members travel the country together seeing shows sober, and the nonprofit Mockingbird Foundation, which has raised more than $750,000 for music education. With a core demographic more than a decade removed from college, today's fans are professionals of all stripes - lawyers and doctors, teachers and executives - who view their Phish fandom as just another aspect of their persona. "Some people go on fly-fishing trips," says Raras, who is chief operating officer of a solar-power company in Colorado. "We go on Phish trips."

For many Boston-area Phish fans, the Fenway show is a rather appropriate collision of two equally devoted demographics. "Both [Sox fans and Phish fans] are obsessive, type-A personalities that know everything about the history and players involved," says Prinos. "They don't do anything at half-speed - they start at a six, and then turn it up to 11."