Phish (12 page)

“McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters” began as a poem Marshall sent to Anastasio in 1985. He posted it in his UVM dorm room for a year, and it turned into something else when Anastasio began work on
Gamehendge
at Goddard. McGrupp was Colonel Forbin’s dog—the one he was out walking when he fell through the time portal into Gamehendge—and the song recounts the colonel’s adventures from the perspective of an observant shepherd. Though it didn’t appear in the submitted version of
The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday
, “McGrupp” showed up all five times the
Gamehendge
suite was performed, displacing “Possum” as the closing number.

The breakout of
Gamehendge
at Nectar’s was the first Phish gig attended by their manager-to-be, John Paluska. He has these recollections of the performance: “I remember thinking it was a pretty bold thing to do in a little nightclub. There was a fair amount of narration, so it was asking a lot of an audience to follow, a lot to assimilate in a bar setting. It was all very new and it was impressive and almost hard to take it all in.”

Curiously,
Gamehendge
wouldn’t be performed again for three and a half years. They came close a few times, such as their first New York City gig (at Kenny’s Castaways in Greenwich Village), a few weeks after the Nectar’s
Gamehendge
. They played everything except “Tela,” albeit out of order (insomuch as there is an official order).
Gamehendge
also seemed to be on their minds during a weekend stand at The Front, another Burlington venue, in October 1989. Over the course of two nights they performed every song from the saga, breaking out “Tela” for the first time in over a year and suggesting that Anastasio was still tinkering with the songs and their running sequence.

The next full performance of
Gamehendge
was at the North Shore Surf Club in Olympia, Washington, on October 13, 1991. Although Anastasio had a cold that night, it was still a strong performance. Yet
the omission of “The Lizards,” the interpolation of “The Landlady” and “Reba” between “Wilson” and “Colonel Forbin’s Ascent,” and the jumbled song order indicate that perhaps Phish backed into
Gamehendge
sideways that night. Still, there was plenty of narration.

The West Coast got its second
Gamehendge
on March 22, 1993, when it popped out early in the second set at the Crest Theater in Sacramento. This mammoth set included both a complete
Gamehendge
and a “Mike’s Song” trilogy. The next one emerged during a fabled 1994 show in Charleston, West Virginia. Referred to as “GameHoist” in fan shorthand, it found them playing a full
Gamehendge
for the first set and their latest album,
Hoist
, complete and in order, during the second set. They played to a fairly empty room that night. A special show like that was Phish’s way of “punishing” fans for skipping shows in out-of-the-way places—or, looked at another way, rewarding those die-hards who did expend the extra effort to make the gig. This “you snooze, you lose” strategy, as they called it, helped inculcate the notion among the growing horde following their tours that no show was worth writing off the itinerary, lest they miss a once-in-a-lifetime event like GameHoist.

Incidentally, this Charleston show also served to ignite further such adventures by Phish, according to longtime band associate Eric Larson. Their first complete performance of one of their own albums gave them an idea that blossomed into their Halloween covers concerts.

Larson recalled: “They got talking after the show and said, ‘What if we did somebody else’s album? What if we did it on Halloween? That could be a surprise.’ That’s what started it all, that show in Charleston, and it was spontaneous. They didn’t plan to do that; they just did it.”

The final performance of
Gamehendge
was only two weeks after its West Virginia breakout, making for the closest consecutive per - formances of the epic. They reprised
Gamehendge
at Great Woods, outside Boston, during the first set of a two-night weekend stand. Apparently this one was planned in advance. Kevin Shapiro recalled
telling Jon Fishman that he intended to skip Great Woods to see the Aquarium Rescue Unit. Without giving anything away, Fishman strongly suggested that Shapiro attend, intimating that they had something special planned. It turned out to be Phish’s last complete performance of
Gamehendge
.

Gamehendge
doubtlessly got a double airing in close proximity because Phish had begun discussing the possibility of releasing
Gamehendge
as an interactive CD-ROM. They announced plans to do so in their fan newsletter and mentioned it in interviews. Then, just as quickly, the idea was dropped.

“It was one of the few things they ever announced they would do that they didn’t do,” noted Shapiro.

Anastasio shelved it, having made the decision that he didn’t ever want to profit from
Gamehendge
. Moreover, there was a lack of enthusiasm for the
Gamehendge
project among the other band members. No doubt the project would have taken a lot of time, effort, and expense. Given that Phish was in the process of breaking nationally, producing a
Gamehendge
CD-ROM might well have been an untenable commitment at that time.

In January 1996, Anastasio said, “
Gamehendge
is on hold. All I can think about right now is the new album” (which would turn out to be
Billy Breathes
). And it was never put back in play.

In April 2001, I spoke with him about the possibility of including one of the
Gamehendge
shows in the
Live Phish
series, which had just been announced. The band members were in the process of selecting the first six shows to release. The conversation is typical of the way forward-thinking artists tend not to obsess over or even clearly recall events in the past:

But, alas, none of the twenty numbered volumes of LivePhish or subsequent concert discs or downloads have yet turned out to be
Gamehendge
shows.

 

In my opinion,
Gamehendge
remains a major piece of unfinished business. Let me draw a parallel. In 2004, Brian Wilson resurrected, recorded, and released
Smile
. This abandoned 1967 album had been intended as the Beach Boys’ follow-up to
Pet Sounds
, a majestic pop opus. But the pressure got to Wilson, the Beach Boys’ leader, and he let go of it as various psychological issues made it increasingly difficult for him to function. More than a quarter-century later, Wilson triumphantly re-recorded
Smile—
which turned out to be every inch the classic that pop mythology had purported—putting that ghost to rest.

Gamehendge
begs for the same rite of revisitation, completion, and closure, whether Anastasio does it with Phish or as a solo project, as Wilson did with
Smile
. It deserves to take its rightful place alongside such conceptual classics as the Who’s
Tommy
and
Quadrophenia
, the Pretty Things’
S.F. Sorrow
, Frank Zappa’s
Joe’s Garage
, the Kinks’
Preservation, Acts I and II
, and Pink Floyd’s
Dark Side of the Moon
and
The Wall
.

L
ate one summer evening in July 1988, Phish had a decision to make. They’d just finished the second night of a stand at Nectar’s and were caucusing outside the club at 2 in the morning. Monday had turned to Tuesday, and Phish had been booked—or so they believed—to play a bunch of shows in Colorado, commencing two days hence. At the time, Mike Gordon handled bookings, and his girlfriend (and future first wife) Cilla Foster had put him in touch with Warren Stickney, the owner of a club-restaurant in Telluride called the Roma Bar, where she worked. Some vague promise of a monthlong tour had been made, which got amended into the less glamorous offer of gigging at Roma for a week for a thousand bucks. But as the date loomed, Stickney wasn’t returning Gordon’s calls to confirm arrangements, and Phish grew uneasy about traveling across the country on blind faith.

Still, Phish was up for an adventure, and the idea of playing outside of New England was appealing. By this point the group had been around for nearly five years and hadn’t yet extended their reach much
beyond the local circuit. Their biggest step forward thus far in 1988 had been a booking at The Front—a popular new Burlington club that was the next step up from Nectar’s, in terms of size. This gave them a larger hometown venue to play at for the next three years. This was progress, but Phish hungered for more and were ready to take their show on the road.

Still, the westward jaunt “was really up in the air,” recalled Paul Languedoc. “If we got out there, would the band actually be playing, or would it just be a big waste of time? Mike finally got hold of Stickney at the last possible moment, and there was a big discussion among the band members about whether we should do it. We did, just for the fun of it, I guess.”

They had a vote and decided to leave then and there for Colorado. The traveling party consisted of the four members of Phish and their skeletal road crew of Languedoc and lightman Tim Rogers (who preceded Chris Kuroda). They called their pals Ninja Custodian to sub for them at Nectar’s, crammed gear and bodies into their claustrophobic, plywood-walled GMC cube van (aka “The Love Den”), and, as Gordon put it, “just drove forty hours straight to Colorado.” That is, until the van gave out at 10,000 feet, necessitating emergency repair by soundman Languedoc, who also served as Phish’s equipment manager, all-purpose fix-it guy, and miracle worker. He built Anastasio’s guitars, Gordon’s basses, and the band’s road cases. In fact, his invaluable expertise led to an in-joke that Languedoc had actually constructed the band members.

 

Phish and crew rolled into Telluride, but Telluride didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet. Unbeknownst to the band, many locals were boycotting Roma for owner Stickney’s alleged nonpayment of staff and musicians. As a result, perhaps six to twelve people a night would turn out to see Phish—not that there was a glut of potential customers in this ski resort during the summer season. Those who did cross the picket line, so to speak, honored the boycott by not buying food or drinks at Roma.

On a promo picture advertising the gig, the band acknowledged the possible payment predicament with these handwritten addendums: “We drove 2000 miles expecting Warren to pay us $1000,” “Vermont’s Most Naïve Rock Band at Roma Fri and Sat,” and—with an arrow pointing to their likenesses—“Suckers.”

“Despite everything, it was a blast, a great experience,” contended Languedoc. Moreover, Stickney ultimately made good on the grand he owed them. Phish played seven gigs in Colorado, including five at Roma on successive weekends; one at its competitor, the Fly Me to the Moon Saloon; and one at the Aspen Mining Company. Fly Me to the Moon was directly across the street from Roma, and because this venue was kosher with Telluride’s night owls, it was packed for Phish’s lone gig. Two years later, they returned for an encore performance.

In 2006, Phish issued a three-disc set titled
Colorado ’88
documenting their stay in the Rocky Mountain State. The cover photo is a black-and-white shot of Anastasio and Page McConnell carrying McConnell’s electric keyboard across the street from one club to another. While Phish mostly played to minuscule crowds in Telluride, they made some loyal fans and, for the first time, presented their adventurous music outside of their New England comfort zone. As it turned out, Colorado would rank high on the list of states they played most often, trailing only Vermont, New York, California, and Massachusetts.

Most important, the ’88 Colorado road trip galvanized Phish for the “get in the van” lifestyle of an itinerant rock band on their way up. Like all the great alternative rock bands of that time, from R.E.M. to the Minutemen, Phish paid their dues, putting in the long miles, late nights, and backbreaking work of a group hungry to be heard. City by city, they slowly built up a following. It started with Boston and Colorado and spread to Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. College towns such as Athens, Georgia; Charlottesville, Virginia; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, got on board early, too. Later on in the nineties, when Phish started to gain recognition, many presumed they were a suddenly successful new band, causing Jon Fishman to joke, “I guess nine years of overnights makes us an overnight success.” So
it was in 1988 that all four became full-time musicians, with no outside jobs or commitments. On March 12, John Paluska, who would become their manager, saw Phish for the first time. Then a junior majoring in English and math at Amherst College in Massachusetts, Paluska was hanging out with his friends in the Burlington band Ninja Custodian, who took him to see Phish at Nectar’s.

“I very specifically remember the guys in Ninja Custodian saying, ‘They’re a lot like Frank Zappa.’ So I went with curious expectations, and it was a striking situation. There was something very incongruous about it to me right from the start because they were playing at this neighborhood bar for no cover on a very cramped, almost nonexistent stage. Yet they were so polished and so good, and they had such a depth of material.