Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 25, 1991 TAG: 9102230310
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TRACIE FELLERS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
No, fans of obscure music, it isn't a joke or a string of typos. It's Phish, a Burlington, Vt., band that will play the Barrel House in Salem on Tuesday night. A $5 cover will be charged for the 9 p.m. show.
The four-man band, described as unusual, unique and a bunch of "unrepentant hippies," is: drummer, vocalist and sometime vacuum cleaner player John Fishman, the source of the band's name; bassist and vocalist Mike Gordon; pianist, organist and vocalist Page McConnell; and guitarist and vocalist Trey Anastasio. Anastasio is responsible for most of the songs on "Lawn Boy, the group's first album for Absolute a Go Go records.
The album is as ecletic as the band members, who list musical influences from Doc Watson and Hank Williams Sr. to Wynton Marsalis and Duke Ellington. Phish's stew of funk, bluegrass, jazz, country, rock, calypso, blues and more has led to comparisons to groups including the early Genesis, FrankZappa and most often, the Grateful Dead.
In the Northeast, where the band has a large following, its fans have even been dubbed Phish heads.
But Phish is no clone of the Dead - or any other band.
"They're all definitely influences, but the thing about the influence question is understanding how many there are," Anastasio told the Boston Herald last fall. "All I do is listen to music. We have thousands of albums."
In the seven years or so since Fishman, Anastasio and Gordon started playing at the University of Vermont and nearby Goddard College, the group's original sound has developed not only from listening, but from learning.
Before a tour last fall of New Orleans, Texas and Colorado, the quartet spent six weeks writing and practicing individually, they told the Boston Globe. They then spent the following six weeks playing together for five hours each day, taking only Sundays off.
"Lawn Boy" includes enough to hold the interest of any music fan. O'Connell's finest work on the piano has the complexity of jazz and classical pieces, and Anastasio's guitar is worth hearing whether he strums prettily or makes the instrument squeal.
"Reba," one of the songs from the album, is a weird tale of a woman who makes a most unusual meat product. As many of Phish's tunes do, it goes off into an extended instrumental section that fuses jazz and rock for an eminently listenable sound. "Split Open and Melt" is a funkier offering that goes off on a tangent and just jams. The title track is an acoustic ode to a green lawn and "My Sweet One" has a decided bluegrass and country flavor.
Phish is certain to put on a show worth catching. Who knows . . . these guys might even sign up a Southwest Virginia branch for their fan club.
by CNB