Gone Phishing
“Build a city, build myself a city to live in,” guitarist
TreyAnastasio chimed on the first day of Phish‘s weekend
extravaganza, pausingthat Talking Heads cover mid-song to call out
to fans on a nearby Ferriswheel. It was a fitting line, given the
setting: a veritable nomad city of60,000 built upon the turf of the
former Loring Air Force Base inLimestone, Maine. Lemonwheel, this
summer’s grand Phish tour finale, waswell underway. And in the
tradition of 1997’s Great Went (also held atLoring) and 1996’s
Clifford Ball in Plattsburgh, N.Y., the tribes hadturned out in
force.
The return to Loring allowed for creative planning that resulted in
a morehighly evolved theme-park vibe. Inside the concert grounds
sprouted aGarden of Infinite Pleasantries, an Asian-styled
playground with tiki huts,huge papier-mache cranes, a
stacked-Portalet pagoda, walk-in saplingsculptures and a rock
garden where fans piled stones. Then, of course,there was the music
— more than four hours of Phish per day, as well as anafter-hours
jam where the quartet probed Brian Eno-inspired soundscapes onthe
main stage, surrounded by several hundred candles painted by fans
inthe crafts area. (The Eno influence would surface again in
lulling,whimsical tunes like “Brian and Robert” (as in Eno and
Robert Fripp) and”Wading in the Velvet Sea” slated for The
Story of the Ghost, anOctober studio album partly generated
from improvised sessions like theLemonwheel space jam.)
But Lemonwheel’s peaks came in robust jam vehicles like “David
Bowie,” anafternoon “Possum” (a bluegrassy bop with Miles Davis
guitar quotes added)and “Down With Disease,” which segued into the
accelerating trance of”Piper.” Those songs found Anastasio, bassist
Mike Gordon, drummer JonFishman and keyboardist Page McConnell
locked in shifting, telepathicgrooves that retained a muscular as
well as a cerebral focus, driven homeby a monster sound system and
light show to rival the Maine sky. Alsowelcome were the playful
intricacies of art-rocking rarities “The DividedSky” (played the
first day after the sun came out) and “Fluffhead,” as wellas the
goofy “Sanity,” where the band sang “Lost my mind just a couple
oftimes ….”
Then, of course, there were the covers. Fishman took center stage
in histattered housedress to croon Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,”
and add a”sounds of love” solo on his vacuum cleaner, which he
played like aninverse kazoo. And Phish opened its final set by
nailing the Beastie Boys'”Sabotage” with edgy garage-punk glee, and
later followed with “While MyGuitar Gently Weeps,” revived from
Phish’s performance of the Beatles’entire White Album as a
Halloween stunt in 1994 and rarely played inrecent years.
However, the strangest cover — and moment — of Lemonwheel came at
theend, when band members lit an onstage fuse that worked its way
to a giantelephant sculpture off to the edge of the crowd.
Fireworks exploded in thesky as the elephant raised its trunk and
blew mist (while Fishman provideda soundtrack on trombone), then
rolled toward the campgrounds while Phishloped through Henry
Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk.”
Lemonwheel was quite a trek even for Phish’s road-tripping fans,
and drewabout 10,000 fewer people than the Great Went or Clifford
Ball. Of course,it was still a big crowd (the band should have kept
the video screens ofthe past two years), especially compared to the
few thousand folks thatshowed up for Phish’s free ’91 show on a
farm in Auburn, Maine. Yet, in itsartistic scope and carnival-like
unpredictability (the campground was atrip unto itself), Lemonwheel
offered an unparalleled escape from theoutside world, and a detour
from today’s cookie-cutter concert venues.