Big. Yellow. Ball.

In Saratoga forthree hours, the distinct smell of pot smoke never blows away.

It hovers in the air at a Phish show, like part of the stage display, a smoky haze that complements the spinning purple and green lights.

For recovering addicts, attending a Phish show can be essentially a stroll through a hell that is also piping in their favorite songs. While most of the itinerant herd travels with Phish for the music, every show is essentially an open-air drug market.

That's why some fans can't wait to see the bouncing yellow balloon at intermission between the first and second sets. It signals the start of another meeting of the Phellowship, whose participants give each other strength and encouragement to make it through another set with pledges that they'll get high off the music, not drugs. During the 20-minute intermission at Friday's show at the Saratoga performing arts center, 48 people circled under a tree and tossed the balloon to everyone who wanted to talk. Just beyond the circle, smaller groups of fans sat in the shadows of the lawn and passed joints.

Phish vs DMB

Even if there’s no confusing Phish with the Dave Matthews Band, the two musical groups will forever be connected for a few similarities.

Both are guitar-based rock bands that came to prominence in the ’90s with incredible fan bases, with Phish falling into the hippie culture and DMB building a following through college frat parties and mainstream radio play.

Both are jam bands with a penchant for playing long, improvisational songs in concert. With no current smash on the radio, each act routinely packs arenas and stadiums with a cultlike following. Meanwhile, the concert itself is hardly ever about the bands dazzling the crowd with theatrics and pyrotechnics. You’re mostly there to commune with fellow “Phish heads” and Dave devotees as the music charges the atmosphere.

The groups have ties to Virginia: The Dave Matthews Band formed in Charlottesville, so the connection is more direct. Although they jelled in Vermont, members of Phish reportedly adore Hampton Coliseum for its “mothership” design. This despite the 2009 arrests of nearly 200 of their fans in the parking lot, most on narcotics charges.

And both bands will stop in Hampton Roads this week: Dave Matthews Band at Farm Bureau Live at Virginia Beach on Sunday; and Phish at nTelos Wireless Pavilion in Portsmouth on Tuesday and Wednesday.

CONS

One of America’s most divisive musical acts is once again raising alarm bells from coast to coast. This time, however, the controversy is not the usual fare of drug arrests and kidnappings, but rather politics. Vermont-based rock group The Phish, sometimes referred to as simply “Phish” by diehard fans, is unscrupulously throwing its support behind the Occupy Wall Street riots with a series of concerts planned for New York City’s Times Square this holiday season. These performances are meant to commemorate the hatred of traditional values engendered in the violent protests that erupted in depressed urban areas earlier in the year.

In point of fact, these Phish shows promise to be a dangerous mix of sexual indulgence, marijuana crime and anti-American lyrical messages pumped out to audiences at ear-splitting levels. It is the decidedly treasonous nature of this heavy metal band’s show that surely deserves the attention of concerned parents and authorities alike.

Unlike other music stars who would be satisfied with a single event, the Phish has somehow forced its way into a four-night run at Manhattan’s biggest sports venue. Worse still, this erratically rancid rockfest will take place during the busiest time of the year, from Christmas to New Year’s Eve. Even more shocking, these concerts are aimed at children who should otherwise be spending time with their families. The end result is that the Phish are openly encouraging youths today to turn their backs on their mothers and fathers, on the birthday of the Baby Jesus, to congregate in a crime-ridden inner city for a 100-hour tour of the depths of depravi profound carnal deviancy and secret plots to terrorize patriotism.

Boingggg!

In Morrison COlorado the music world was shaken by tragedy Sunday night when members of the popular rock band Phish collapsed on stage after being overcome by the stench of concert-goers during a show at the Red Rocks Amphitheater 20 miles outside Denver.

Phish bassist Mike Gordon, moments before he and his bandmates succumbed to fans' fumes.

The collapse occurred approximately 40 minutes into the song "You Enjoy Myself," when the four band members—Mike Gordon, Trey Anastasio, Johnathan Fishman and Page McConnell— became overwhelmed by a combination of body odor, marijuana and the patchouli oil many Phish fans use in lieu of bathing. The foursome was rushed to the emergency room of Denver Lutheran Hospital, where they were partially revived by emergency oxygen treatment. As of press time, the musicians are still listed in critical condition.

Takin' Ovaaaa

The Grateful Dead Archive, scheduled to open soon at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will be a mecca for academics of all stripes: from ethno­musicologists to philosophers, sociologists to historians. But the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created “customer value,” promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning. 

 

Yeeeeeah

The Grateful Dead’s tour of Europe in 1972 has long been held in high regard by the members of the band as well as its staff and fans. The outfit used a 16-track tape recorder to capture every show it performed during its extended, two-month sojourn on the other side of the Atlantic. These audio documents have surfaced regularly over the years, serving not only as the basis for the Grateful Dead’s seminal concert set Europe '72, but also as the impetus for many of its archival releases, including Hundred Year Hall, etc. As good as these efforts were, however, they barely made a dent in the material that the collective accumulated. With this in mind, the long rumored boxed set that the Grateful Dead is planning to issue this fall certainly will put everything into perspective. The massive, limited-edition collection, which is expected to include more than 60 discs, will feature the bulk of the music that the band delivered during its 22-show trek across Europe in April and May of 1972. The $400 price tag might be tough for some of the group’s followers to stomach, but in the Grateful Dead’s rich history, there never was another string of concerts quite like this.

"Welcome To Our Theme Park!"

"Welcome to our theme park," says Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio with a giant grin as he jumps behind the wheel of a golf cart. He guns the engine and bolts from behind the stage, past a huge Ferris wheel and onto the concert field where, the following day, he and his band mates --drummer Jon Fishman, bassist Mike Gordon and keyboardist Page McConnell --will play the first of seven sets at their annual two-day event, this year dubbed Lemonwheel.

 

In an era when superstar acts like U2 can barely fill stadiums inurban markets, this past August, over 60,000 Phish fans willingly traveled long distances to a decommissioned Air Force base in bum-fuck Limestone, Maine, to pay seventy-five dollars to see the show and camp out for theweekend. But this is no anomaly.

For the last two years, Phish have been one of the biggest draws onthe concert circuit; 1997's summer extravaganza, the Great Went -- whichwas held at the same site -- also drew more than 60,000 people, more thanany other single-band concert that year.

Thurday Night Concert AWWHHOO

Thursday night’s concert was Phish in crowd-pleasing mode: uptempo, playing familiar songs and ready to keep fans dancing — never getting too abstract or experimental. Its two sets were both CD-length, just under 80 minutes each, with the Rolling Stones’ “Loving Cup” as a splashy, gospelly encore.

This was the Phish that’s so light-fingered that its remarkable musicianship is often taken for granted; after all, things just keep bubbling along. The camaraderie of musicians who have been playing together since 1983 (with two major breaks) was acted out in the way each player’s improvisations peeked out and then tucked themselves back into the band.

 

Mike Gordon’s bass double timed its way into counterpoint and then eased back toward riff. Page McConnell’s keyboards, particularly Hammond organ, pushed forward with insistent, meaty chords, and then dissolved into support. Jon Fishman’s drumming rode the rhythms as much as it defined them. And Trey Anastasio’s lead guitar, the band’s dominant instrument, regularly stepped out, more pointed and purposeful than in some of Phish’s past phases: with wailing long blues lines or twangy little jabs, with ambling chromatic lines or quick filigrees. Yet instead of tracing the full storytelling arc of a guitar hero’s solo, they tapered away, handing off the spotlight to another member of the group.

Happy Birthday Old Man

Jerry Garcia would’ve turned 70 on August 1st, and his fellow guitarist in the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir, is throwing a musical bash of sorts. Called "Move Me Brightly," the event brings together an all-star group of musicians from varied backgrounds who, under Weir's stewardship, will perform a couple hours' worth of Garcia material tonight for a free webcast.

The songs will range from Grateful Dead classics to cuts Garcia performed with his solo band. While nobody in the large ensemble of musicians – a rotating cast (including members of Phish, the Hold Steady, Vampire Weekend and more) that will number near 20 by the night's end – will attempt to replicate Garcia's solos or fill his space, Weir says that Garcia's voice will be represented by the music itself.

"You find Jerry in the songs," Weir told Rolling Stone during a break in rehearsals on Thursday. "And he's amply there." Since Garcia was known never to play a song the exact same way twice, Weir says that any new interpretation is just as valid as the original: "The beauty of it is how Jerry manifests himself, how he reveals himself, to the individuals."

 

For "Move Me Brightly," in addition to Grateful Dead members Weir and Donna Jean Godchaux, those individuals will include Phish's Mike Gordon, Furthur's Joe Russo and Jeff Chimenti, the Hold Steady's Craig Finn and Tad Kubler, Vampire Weekend's Chris Tomson, the Yellowbirds' Sam Cohen and Josh Kaufman, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals' Neal Casal and Jon Graboff and the Black Crowes' Adam MacDougall, as well as singer-songwriters Jim Lauderdale, Jonathan Wilson, Cass McCombs and Harper Simon.

During rehearsals, actor Luke Wilson was on hand interviewing members of Garcia's family for a documentary directed by Justin Kreutzmann, son of Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann. The footage will air during a break in the live performance tonight.

BonnnaWWWWHOO

Returned to Bonnaroo Music Festival this summer, held about 70 miles away from Nashville, Tennesse wa Phish, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Radiohead. The festival’s most newsworthy event was the return of D’Angelo, who made a great neo-soul album in 2000 and dropped out of sight a year later. His voice and charisma intact, he was singing funk and rock songs with a band led by Ahmir Questlove Thompson of the Roots. And the must-see set on Thursday night was by Alabama Shakes, whose songs reclaim all the spirit of 1960s soul music. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, on Saturday night, were pure musical sinew, an unstoppable, muscle-powered rhythm section knocking out rock and funk ideas from the 1960s through the 2000s, topping them with wild guitar and jumping all over the stage. Phish, Bonnaroo’s Sunday night finale, was in its most euphoric mode, leaning on the part of its repertory with roots in blues, funk and country; the pop-country hit maker Kenny Rogers, who had performed earlier on his own and with Lionel Richie, joined Phish on the huge stage to sing “The Gambler.”  This sounds like a music festival that i should've attended.