Phish Reel in “Victor Disc”
Phish have already recorded an album’s worth of material that may
follow their 2002 comeback Round Room. While in New York
last December for an appearance on Late Show With David
Letterman, the band taped ninety minutes of improvised music
and is calling the result the Victor Disc, after the
session’s engineer.
Phish frontman Trey Anastasio and keyboardist Page McConnell
dropped by the downtown studio where the set was recorded after
midnight the night before their Letterman taping. When
they decided to play, they had to call the hotel to get drummer Jon
Fishman and bassist Mike Gordon to join them.
“I called Mike — he was in bed,” Anastasio says. “But he came
down and we recorded another album. He’s always up for anything
that is bizarre or weird or left of center. We were still playing
at six in the morning, and I’m thinking, ‘Boy, I should go to
sleep. I gotta do Letterman tomorrow.’ But we were
cranking it out.”
No release has been set for the recordings. Anastasio says the
band might edit the jams into song-type structures as it did with
the 1997 sessions that became the 2000 release, The Siket
Disc. “It’s not an album at this point,” he says. “My guess is
that it could be one of a couple of different things. There are
germs of ideas that could turn into songs. But we’re going to get
together and listen to it again and see what it can be.”