Tackle Box: Phish, 'At the Roxy'

AFTER PURSUING SOLO interests for the past four years, the members of Phish will reunite in Hampton, Va., in March of next year. On your local Craigslist, tickets are selling for hundreds of bucks. Excited as the fans may be, this reunion's only going to work if Phish can overcome whatever it was that sagged down those musically lifeless years just before their breakup. In short: Post-millennial Phish pretty much sucked.

Ridiculous scalper fees might be worth paying if the band uses their latest archival release as a blueprint for their comeback. "At the Roxy" (JEMP Records), which documents three consecutive concerts the band played in Atlanta in 1993, reminds us why Phish ruled the 1990s jam band scene. It's all energy. From the opener, the Rolling Stone's "Loving Cup," to the closing bluegrass traditional "Pig in a Pen," the band sounds just as hungry as the crowd. Playing with a palpable giddiness and ferocious chops, Phish freewheels through all of "Roxy's" eight discs, delivering hall-of-fame versions of nearly all their songs that are worth hearing.

But be warned: "At the Roxy" is really only for the severely infected fan. It is not for the Dave Matthews-obsessed babe who'll tolerate a little Phish on a mix CD. It's not mellow Phish that your boss might like because he "smoked a little weed one time." This Phish has not been scaled, deboned or even had the hook removed from its mouth. This is prescription-strength Phish, all-the-way live and full of extended improvisational jams, shaky vocal performances and goofy stage antics. (Only a Phish-head would want to hear drummer Jon Fishman solo on a vacuum cleaner more than once. Yes, you read that correctly. And on "Roxy," Fishman blows that vac three times.)

So, if you dare: In 1993 the band was two years away from hitting absolute improvisational ecstasy (hear "New Year's Eve 1995"), and the seeds for those glorified heights were sowed right around the time of "Roxy," which explodes multiple times with kaleidoscopic jams led by Trey Anastasio's liquid-lightning guitar work.

Early Phish tunes like "Run Like an Antelope," "Split Open and Melt," "Reba," "The Divided Sky" and "Foam" make for "Roxy's" most musically satisfying moments — the jams sound so effortless and perfect that you'd swear they weren't made up on the spot. The extended takes on the classics are balanced nicely by a number of songs from the band's then-new album "Rift," which serve up more succinct summations of Phish's unique blend of prog-rock, jazz, pop, country and classical composition.

Phish's bag may sound more mixed up than a senile old man, but they stitch together their influences well, creating something that's altogether unique. It's a rare group in rock music that could pull off what happens on disc five of "Roxy," a seamless, nonstop run through 11 songs that includes the jerky funk of "Tweezer", the country twang of "My Minds Got a Mind of It's Own," the bouncy pop of "Glide" and the drippy guitar wankery in "I Am Hydrogen." That multi-genre marathon also includes an abbreviated take on Kiss's "Rock and Roll All Nite" that features a phony Gene Simmons (actually an audience member named Jay Von Lehe), and listening to it, you just know you're missing out on some sight gag. It would have been nice to have been there to see whether it was funny or not.

Ultimately, however, it's the enthusiastic and often downright unbelievable music-making on "At the Roxy" that makes you wish you could have been there in 1993. And it's memories like this, of Phish at their most brilliant, that will lure people back to the band next year.

Written by Express contributor Russell Carlson