Phish

The band that redefined the concept of "progressive-rock" for the 1990s was Phish, heirs at once to Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead. From the former, they inherited a composition style that mixes rock, jazz, and classical in an almost orchestral manner, as well as a sense of humor. From the latter, they inherited a predilection for improvisation and live concerts.

Trey Anastasio on guitar, Jonathan Fishman on drums, Mike Gordon on bass, and Tom Marshall on lyrics began playing on the campus of the University of Vermont (in Burlington, to be exact). Soon Page McConnell (keyboards) joined, coming from an avant-garde music school with his leanings toward jazz music. The group's first semi-professional commitment was a musical, entirely composed by Anastasio. Soon the group could boast a repertoire of dozens of songs, which for several years would constitute the blueprint for their (legendary) live performances.

In short, the fame of the group—and of those shows that were not at all formulaic and were incredibly virtuosic—surpassed the narrow borders of New England and spread everywhere. A "fan club" was established, a "newsletter" was born, and the national computer network began to broadcast their exploits like a drumbeat. A phenomenon more unique than rare in the history of rock, without having yet recorded a single single, Phish allowed themselves the luxury of completing two national tours, managing to fill theaters with thousands of seats. At the concerts, a self-produced cassette was distributed that would only see the light of day years later: Junta (1988 - Elektra, 1992). The long jams of David Bowie, Fluff's Travels, and You Enjoy Myself, Esther, and The Divided Sky could not be more anachronistic, but they found an audience of fervent admirers. With those concerts, Phish re-evaluated guitar solos, jazz-rock keyboard accompaniments, time changes, group improvisations, and the entire language of progressive rock.

The first album, Lawn Boy (Absolute A Gogo, Sep 1990), fueled a cult phenomenon that was already spreading. The work is not only one of the most varied and imaginative ever; it is also an essay in scientific editing, a painstaking assembly of heterogeneous themes and scores, and musical chameleonism. Rock suddenly returns to the kaleidoscopic suites of the early 1970s.
All the tracks are predominantly instrumental, and all expand the rock song-form to the extreme. All are characterized by continuous mutations (of melody, rhythm, instrumentation, key), so that the true protagonists of this music end up being the sutures; and composition becomes the art of knowing how to sew together the most disparate ideas. Thus, it happens that within the same piece, one hears calypso cadences, jazz-rock phrasing, "barbershop" vocals, "found" noises, slow-dance tunes, and rhythm-and-blues fanfares perfectly integrated with each other, to the point of not understanding where one ends and the other begins. The stitching is even better camouflaged than in Zappa's early suites, but the roller coaster of arrangements is no less adventurous. Phish possess the same encyclopedic culture as the Bonzo Band, but with a savoir-faire and an air of a devoted collector rather than a prankish high schooler—with the spirit, in short, of a Penguin Cafe Orchestra of jazz-rock. Finally, they are distinguished by an instrumental and compositional skill that has very few equals, as much in rock as in jazz, especially for the ability to blend the ensemble. Anastasio is the primary composer and arranger, and to him we also owe that muffled sound, packaged with artisanal care.
For example, The Squirming Coil dilutes a delicate chamber jazz into an overwhelming crescendo, using the piano to beat the rhythm with elegant boogie figures, landing unexpectedly in a Dire Straits-style ballad, and culminating shortly after in a solemn chorus (with falsetto doubling). The parade of disguises continues at this pace until Bouncing Around The Room, a more classical-sounding track set up as a game of sophisticated vocal counterpoints and minimalist crescendos, but with an evanescent Grateful Dead-style finale. Split Open And Melt begins as a jazz-funk fanfare but ends with a Renaissance-style a cappella lament. The quantity and quality of textures is impressive.
That this is not just a show for musical acrobats—that the program is contaminated by strong doses of comedy—is demonstrated by Zappa-esque gag-songs like Bathtub Gin. Further de-dramatizing the atmosphere, bringing it almost to the level of a traveling circus, are the brief interludes scattered here and there: My Sweet One, which unfolds a country & western tune with naturalness, or the avant-garde bluegrass of The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony.
The goal declared by Anastasio is to resurrect the code of the old "big bands," which is to take a motif and "let it be heard" in different variations: the dance version, the intellectual version, the relaxation version, and so on. The goal is, in other words, to rediscover the flexibility inherent in musical language, which the aggressive commercialization of the capitalist era ended up castrating in favor of a more rigid (and therefore more easily sellable) form of expression.
But Phish's linguistic code has a further level of interpretation, as it is not tied to a specific genre. The pretext of a track can come from a pop chorus as much as from a bluegrass nursery rhyme; but along the way, that theme will change into another—blues or funk or reggae or who knows what—and its final destination is entirely random. The dynamics are equally unpredictable, with a succession of highs and lows, of pressing rhythms and slow rhythms, of deafening passages and imperceptible passages. Highly skilled at progressively creating states of suspense, at orchestrating alternations of tension and relaxation, at making the rhythm disappear into a continuous flow of syncopation, and at suddenly coagulating all energies for wild explosions—masters of the classical technique of the fugue—Phish manage to blend the rational (Western) and irrational (African) spirits of modern music.
In this sense, the masterpiece within the masterpiece is Reba, which begins as a vaudeville sung in a whisper to the rhythm of light tap-dancing and subtle piano playing, only to dive into a cartoonish context of ragtime orchestras and end in a funny and "total" Zappa-esque band-style, with sequences of superbly arranged guitar jazz-rock.
But from a strictly technical point of view, the instrumental Run Like An Antelope succeeds even better in combining elements; it starts with a crackling country-rock, shifts gears with a pressing "jazz-blues fusion" propelled by saloon piano in a rapid crescendo—becoming more swinging, more electric, touching upon magical Peter Green atmospheres—to culminate in a wild guitar-led jam and end in a sparkling blues-rock reminiscent of Little Feat and the Band.
Although the album immediately became unavailable due to the bankruptcy of the record company that was supposed to press it, the fame of the group grew further, placing them at the top of the charts of music critics across half of America.

A Picture Of Nectar (Elektra, Feb 1992) achieved the ideal format, reducing the acrobatics to the bare minimum so that the melodic theme acts as a center of gravity and counterbalances the centrifugal forces with a heavier core. At the same time, the record exalts the group's eclecticism, jumping with ease from comical bluegrass and ragtime sketches (Poor Heart) to serious digressions on the pianistic art of Thelonious Monk (Magilla), from Santana (Landlady) to Yes (The Mango Song), from the calypso of Stash to the reggae of Guelan Papyrus, scattering here and there atonal fugues and Christmas carillons, romantic serenades and vaudeville nursery rhymes, with McConnell in greater prominence and an almost "orchestral" mastery in the bass and guitar counterpoints.
Not to mention the pressing ZZ Top-style boogie of Chalk Dust Torture, the torrid jazz-rock of Llama, and the Zappa-esque jazz-funk ditty of Cavern (featuring one of their most memorable melodies). Being better focused, each track has the opportunity to develop its theme to the end, instead of constantly interrupting and overturning it.
Once again, however, the most suggestive moments are those in which Phish tackle their kitschiest sound sources (world music, jazz, and pop) with the style of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, particularly Glide, built on a splendid duet of double bass and acoustic guitar, as well as a doo-wop chorus. In the field of improvised jams, Phish score a hit with Tweezer, in which they pay homage to the "roots-rock" of the Allman Brothers and the Band. What keeps Phish away from 1960s acid rock is the "classical" touch, the sonic cleanliness, and the formally impeccable musical patterns. The spirit is not that of hippies but that of polished chamber musicians.

During the March 1992 tour, the group performed seventy-seven different songs, compared to only twenty-five recorded on disc. The witty bluegrass of Rift, the jazzy jam of Maze (a cross between Frank Zappa and In A Gadda Da Vida), the classical-style fugue of All Things Reconsidered (a cross between Zappa and Bach), the touching flamenco of My Friend, and the comic vaudeville of Sparkle were collected only years later on Rift (Elektra, 1993), consistent with their strictly anti-commercial ethics.

The Dude Of Life is a legendary New York character who occasionally appears at Phish shows dressed as a king or an elf and sings one of his songs. The repertoire of this bizarre bard is reputed to be composed of sarcastic meditations on the essence of life, such as the famous one from TV Show, which is one of the most common pieces of graffiti in college bathrooms across America: "Life is a TV show/ that should've been cancelled long ago." His friendship with Trey Anastasio dates back to high school, when both were members of Space Antelope. Dude wrote some of Phish's songs, specifically the instrumental Run Like An Antelope and a couple of tracks from the legendary self-produced cassette Junta, plus a couple of tracks that remain unreleased (there are at least fifty Phish songs that have never appeared on a record). The music of Crimes Of The Mind (Elektra, 1994), recorded in 1991 and left in the vault for years, is exactly what one might expect from Phish, with just a touch of quirky humor more than usual. In short, the classic blend of Little Feat, the Band, and the Grateful Dead, with heavy doses of gospel, blues, and jazz in a structure that lends itself to jamming. Dude proves to be worth much more than the vaudeville snippets Phish grant him live. As a songwriter, he sits halfway between Warren Zevon and Neil Young. The epic and fatalistic pace of the former drives several of the more linear songs (Dahlia above all) and sharp satires like Self. The solemn neurosis of the latter leaks through the title track. The sketches for which he became famous, however, leave something to be desired, both the Zappa-esque gag of Family Picture and the obvious parody of Lucy In The Subway With Daffodils. The character is better represented by moved celebrations of his own ignorance, such as King Of Nothing.

While previous albums simply recycled their live repertoire, Hoist (Elektra, 1994) was composed and refined as a unified whole. The result was, not surprisingly, more organic and polished. Its tracks are not jams to be performed indefinitely, but concise and melodic songs. Whatever the intent, the result is clearly commercial. The "stones of scandal" are Down With Disease—a trotting, melodic funky-soul numbers just a hair away from the farcical mood of the Spin Doctors, which is currently raging on the radio—and the carefree soul-rock of Sample In A Jar, syncopated and catchy enough to impose it upon the Southern nation. Even the epic chant of If I Could, wrapped in electronic spirals, and the delicate country parable of Lifeboy, embellished with violins and banjo, are packaged for mass listening.
But when Julius strikes up that ZZ Top-style boogie, amid the funky sorties of the Tower Of Power horn section and the swinging doubling of a gospel choir, or when Axilla unsheathes its overwhelming phrasing, the group's rebellious nature comes out. Their legendary jamming remains relegated to the end of the record, in the long Demand, signaling that that era is now over. Masters of kitsch as only Zappa knew how to be, Phish also allow themselves the luxury of a Roaring Twenties evocation like Wolfman's Brother and a breakneck bluegrass track like Scent Of A Mule. In the usual melee of Grateful Dead, the Band, Doobie Brothers, Little Feat, and Allman Brothers, Phish carve out another masterful work.

To make amends to their die-hard fans, Phish then published A Live One (Elektra, 1995), a worthy descendant of the great double-live albums of the 1970s. Phish celebrate the legend, exiting with great class through the same door they entered: that of live performance. Live, the kinship with the Grateful Dead comes to the surface without tricks, at least in peppery little songs like Bouncing Around The Room (from Lawn Boy) and Chalk Dust Torture (from Nectar), with the epic vehemence of Wilson as a solid addition to the repertoire. Those who gain most from the live format are the longer tracks, which have the opportunity to shine in all their compositional and executive genius, without the veneer of charlatan humor we had been accustomed to. In fact, there is more Zappa than Dead in the jazzy scores of The Squirming Coil (from Lawn Boy) and Stash (from Nectar), due to the digressions thrown in with nonchalance (the calypso of the latter is famous) and an orchestral fluency that has few equals in rock history. The most courageous improvisations are perhaps found in the three previously unreleased jams: You Enjoy Myself (twenty minutes, it appeared on the first cassette), Slave To The Traffic Light (eleven minutes), and Harry Hood (fifteen minutes). Here, the showmanship is often reduced to a minimum. The funky tune of the first emerges only after seven minutes and disappears almost immediately, submerged by the logorrheic solos of the keyboards, guitar, drums, and even jug-style vocals. One must wait until the end before the second lifts off into a glorious hard-rock theme. Harry Hood is largely dominated by a subdued tinkering of the keyboards. Let the cannons thunder: a colossal version of Tweezer—their improvised jam par excellence—breaks the thirty-minute limit (with moments of absolute chaos). The live setting is the most ideal for Phish.

That great clown of composition, Trey Anastasio, assembled a jazz orchestra in 1996 by gathering old and young luminaries (Marshall Allen and Michael Ray from the Sun Ra Arkestra, John Medeski of the Medeski Martin & Wood trio, as well as Marc Ribot, formerly of the Lounge Lizards) and recorded Surrender To The Air (Elektra, 1996). Amusing himself by speculating on Miles Davis's intuitions in funky fusion, John Coltrane's in the field of transcendent free jazz, and Sun Ra's in the field of cosmic spirituality, Anastasio leaves ample space for his collaborators (especially in the four parts of And Furthermore). The sly and (deliberately) inconclusive manner of Phish constitutes the cartilage upon which these learned improvisations by virtuosos rest. A record of splendid serenades for hippie intellectuals.

The aquatic suite of Billy Breathes (Elektra, 1996) represents, instead, the first disappointment of Anastasio's career. Phish reduce themselves to a studio group, whereas in the past their records had been first and foremost live recordings (it mattered little whether in front of oceanic crowds or inside deserted auditoriums), and the music suffers for it. The songs are all calculated to hit the radio-listening masses, simplified to the point of appearing like skeletons of Phish songs: of Free and Theme From The Bottom, only the melodies and lively cadences remain; of Character Zero, only the rock grit.

Anastasio and company recover from the thud of Billy Breathes (Elektra, 1996), the first mediocre album of their career, with Slip Stitch And Pass (Elektra, 1997). The brazenly commercial approach of that previous work did not pay off, so the troop tries to make amends, at least with the fans, with a live recording. Wolfman's Brother (14 minutes) should be numbered among the classics, strong with a textbook gospel-soul melody and a syncopated country-rock cadence, but above all for the mature and elegant way in which the quartet reels off its repertoire of jazz, blues, and rock phrasing and rhythms, as well as for Anastasio's superb and chameleon-like solos. Mike's Song, frenetic, funky, and hard, denotes the growing resourcefulness of bassist Mike Gordon. Taste returns to their rural roots and serves up the most jazzy atmosphere, with Anastasio succumbing to the tropical accents of Carlos Santana and the piano literally "pounded" by Page McConnell. But towering over everything is the crackling and driving Weekapaug Groove, halfway between a Peter Green piece, the mystical vertigos of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and a saloon boogie. These four long jams are enough to reconcile young and old with Phish.

The polished and relaxed sound of The Story of the Ghost (Elektra, 1998) confirms, however, that Anastasio and McConnell (primarily responsible for the music) have forever lost their former brilliance, and the only consolation is the grace with which they compose formally impeccable songs. Record executives gloat over the soul-jazz of Ghost and the funky-soul of Birds Of A Feather (with scents of Californian acid-rock) and perhaps also for the Brazilian light music of Frankie Says. But Limb By Limb marries the vocal harmonies and sumptuous progressions of Yes to the blues-rock of the Allman Brothers, and Wading In The Velvet Sea is a solemn ballad that launches one of the most memorable melodies of their career. Phish also allow themselves to desecrate bluegrass with the crackling Water In The Sky and to mock dance music with The Moma Dance. And they do not skimp on experimentation, particularly with the surreal sketches Fikus and Shafty, which renounce the traditional song format in favor of ethnic cadences and harmonic oddities, and stand out, despite their brevity, among the most intriguing episodes. The suites that made them famous are missing, but the most ambitious track, Guyute (coincidentally, a piece dating back to 1994), contains eight minutes of elegant variations on a faint folk theme, notably first whistled Jethro Tull-style and then played on the guitar in the manner of a Baroque fugue. The liner notes say that the group composed around forty songs in the last year and only thirteen ended up on this album.

Having come to the forefront almost in secret, surprising the official press, strengthened by oceanic gatherings that made the pilgrims of grunge pale, and entering the charts without exploiting any of the traditional rules of marketing, Phish have become an institution and have refounded the very idea of what rock music is.

With a singular collage of jazz, rock, classical, country, blues, and world music, and bolstered by enormous talent—but even more so by the right spirit—Phish have placed themselves at the vanguard of a movement re-evaluating the anti-commercial and communal values of the 1960s. Their psychedelic jazz makes them the direct and legitimate heirs of the Grateful Dead.

The Phish are unrecognizable on Farmhouse (Elektra, 2000), a tepid collection of pop songs that don't even work as parodies of commercial music. The simple, melodic compositions of Trey Anastasio pivot on catchy tunes and allow for very limited jamming. Anastasio is an aging songwriter, who now puts his heart into carefully crafted, slow-tempo ballads such as Bug (organ drone, majestic guitar riff, epic refrain) and Dirt (string orchestra, solemn piano figures). The band lifts his mood in Farmhouse, but, as good as the result is, the song is merely a heap of quotations (martial tempo of the Band, soul vocal harmonies, gospel organ lines, romantic guitar solo). Elsewhere the standard is even less imaginative, approaching Santana's latin-soul-rock (Twist), uptempo country & western (Back On The Train) and lame rhythm and blues (Gotta Jibboo) The instrumentals are probably the worst of their career. The album's most embarassing moments come with some uninspired gags (Heavy Things) that were clearly meant as the album's forte. This is certainly the least daring of their albums so far. Page McConnell's organ and piano are pretty much the only reason to listen to Phish these days. Anastasio's next album will be instrumental new age music.

It rarely happens that a true supergroup is formed. Usually, one or two virtuosos team together and recruit one or two players from minor bands. Oysterhead is the exception to the rule: guitarist Trey Anastasio (Phish), bassist Les Claypool (Primus) and drummer Stewart Copeland (Police) rank among the greatest ever at their instruments, and two of them are the indisputed leaders of their bands. Unfortunately, The Grand Pecking Order (Elektra, 2001) succumbs to the syndrome of supergroups: an impressive arsenal of ideas, but an unfocused average material. Little Faces opens with African beat, funky guitar and jazzy keyboards and one expects a fabulous jam by three creative players: instead, we are served a psychedelic ditty with prog-rock overtones. Oz Is Ever Floating has a reggae beat and a melody reminiscent of Cream, but not much happens with it. By the third track, Mr. Oysterhead, we are sailing in the mare magnum of lounge/soul music. Anastasio's Radon Balloon makes a stab at the popular genre of the moment, bossanova (with an involuntary imitation of Donovan).
Sure, the cartoonish quality of pieces like Claypool's Shadow Of A Man would fit well within a Residents operetta. Most songs feel like musichall gags (Rubberneck Lions, The Grand Pecking Order) and the second half is pure filler (embarrassing filler like the hard-rock of Pseudo Suicide and the Kinks-ian parody of Owner Of The World).
In concluding, an album of weak (and childish) material.

Trey Anastasio's second solo album, Trey Anastasio (Elektra, 2002), sounds like the most relaxed project of his life, each song bathing in roots music and releasing party vibrations. A four-piece horn section (reminiscent of 1970s' pop-jazz), a female choir (reminiscent of 1970s' soul-rock) and a funky organ are met halfway by loud guitars and powerful drumming, thereby creating a somewhat conservative southern stew of funk and boogie. Alive Again opens the proceedings with strong rhumba and jazz accents, propelled by a horns and percussions feast. The similarities with Colosseum are particularly strong in Night Speaks to A Woman, possibly the album's best melody. The slightly noisier, faster and heavily syncopated Money Love And Change could have been on Chicago's first album. On the other hand, the mixture of hard-rock and funk in Cayman Review recalls latter-day Little Feat. Even the longer jams, such as the 11-minute Last Tube and Push On 'Til The Day exude a joyful, carnivalesque spirit.
Anastasio takes a break only in the pretty piano ballad Drifting and in the instrumental tracks, which to call "odd" is to understate (At The Gazebo is a sort of funereal version of the Beatles' Yesterday, Ray Down Balloon is a delicate orchestral overture in a neo-classical vein).
This is the shadow of Phish. Little is left of their exuberant creativity (only the exuberance, basically).

Vida Blue (Elektra, 2002) is the new project of Phish keyboardist Page McConnell, that now dabbles in a virtuoso kind of pop-funk-jazz (Most Events Aren't Planned, Electra Glide). The 12-minute CJ3 proves that he could be a significant jazz musician.

Phish reunited to record the terrible Round Room (2002).

Anastasio's Plasma (2002) collects live performances.

Mike Gordon's solo album Inside In (Ryko, 2003) is actually the soundtrack of his own first film.

Phish's album Undermind (Elektra, 2004) has one interesting psychedelic song (A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing) but mostly sinks in the quicksands of lazy easy-listening for hippies (Army of One and Tomorrow's Song).

In the meantime, Anastasio embarrassed himself again with a solo album, Shine (2005), that contained his most radio-friendly songs ever.

Promos and early material was included on The White Tape (Dry Goods, 1998), particularly the tapes of 1985.

Anastasio's next solo album, The Horseshoe Curve (2007), instead, collected instrumentals composed over several years, borrowing from funk, soul and Latin music. His eccentric big-band arrangements are not quite Frank Zappa's, and ambitious pieces such as Olivia meander through different styles without Zappa's knack for making sense of the nonsensical.

Phish's Joy (2009) displays a strong jazz influence, both in the ballads Joy and Backwards Down the Number Line and in the 13-minute jam Time Turns Elastic, while absorbing elements of reggae (Sugar Shack) and boogie (Kill Devil Falls).

Later albums include: Party Time (2009), Fuego (2014), Big Boat (2016), Sigma Oasis (2020), Evolve (2024).

Phish were also responsible for the live album I Rokk (2018), credited to Kasvot Vaxt, and Get More Down (2022), credited to Sci-Fi Soldier.