Consumer Guide Album

Phish: A Live One [Elektra, 1995]
With their damn newsletter at 80,000 and counting, the growth of their economic base is impervious not just to criticism but to any eventuality that doesn't involve the breakdown of the American transportation system. So give 'em 10 years, and don't worry you'll miss something in the meantime. Phish isn't a classic two-guitar jamming band like the Allmans or those guys from Marin. It's a keyb-guitar-bass-drums quartet, its music dominated conceptually by the high-cholesterol chords and florid arpeggios of Page McConnell's piano. Occasionally there's a good song--naif that I am, I like the one called "Simple." But they've never put more than a couple on one studio album, and this two-hour live double is where they show off their base-building specialties, e.g. "a mind-blowing 35-minute version of `Tweezer'"--which is actually only 31, praise God, and guess what else they got wrong? C+