Rolling Stone: Phish Resurface

We had these jam sessions, Anastasio says one night after practice, where we drank hot chocolate with mushrooms and just played, trying to get in tune with each other, for eight hours. One of those jams, he points out, is on a record: “Union Federal,” a bonus track on the CD reissue of Phish’s 1989 independent cassette release, Junta. We used to rehearse like demons, Anastasio, 38, says excitedly, a big smile busting through his ginger forest of beard. A lot of it was mind games, challenging each other. We’d change roles: I’m always the natural leader. Page, you be that person now. We’d make Fish set up his drums left-handed instead of right: Use your mind to play, not your hands. Or we’d just play one note for an hour – weird stuff.
The weirdness bloomed in concert: in clubs such as Nectar’s on Main Street in Burlington, where Phish first played in December 1984 and honed their writing and jamming chops through 1989; then in theaters and, finally, arenas. Fishman, who turns thirty-eight on February 19th, played most gigs during Phish’s first two years flying on LSD. I still play with the feeling I got from those experiences, trying to generate wind and water, he claims quite earnestly.

Charters' anthology may be the first book about the Sixties that hasn't made me want to braid my hair, paint peace signs on my cheeks, and go stick a daisy in the barrel of a gun. It is, unlike many of its counterparts, a grown-up book. Wiser. Wryer. No longer the cherubic student activist clutching a tiny photo of Che Guevara. This book is 30 years past any sort of giddy optimism. This book is my dad. Get him talking about the Sixties and I don't care how many times you've read "Be Here Now," you will start to feel disillusioned.

After 35 years, the fabled movie cut from hours and hours of film and audio tape recorded on the Merry Pranksters' bus is being released on video in 10 or so episodes. I found out this morning and ordered a copy of the first episode right away. I’ve been wanting to see this ever since I read Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the $29 tape includes footage of Neal Cassady’s famous rants – the same Neal Cassady who became Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s On The Road – which makes it priceless, if you ask me.