Yes, we love Trey Anstasio’s sublime guitar ministrations. We love Mike Gordon’s rapturously fluid bass lines. We love Jon Fishman’s percussive range, from subtle Jazz inflection to hammer-and-tong Rock thunder. We love Page McConnell’s magnificent organ (and his playing’s pretty solid, too — insert rim shot).
We love your absurdist Zappa/Beefheart/Hitchcock lyrical quality. We love your musical diversity, from Prog complexity and Jazz elegance to Rock bombast, Jam improvisation and Pop simplicity. We love your audience taping policy. We love that you went from club-small to arena-big and never lost your passion for the music or your sense of humility and responsibility regarding your fans. We love The Barn. We love the side projects (but we love the band just a little bit more). We love the ethereal cloud that hangs over every audience you entertain. We love collecting versions of “Split Open and Melt.”
For those of us who lost our Phish cherries to A Picture of Nectar, we really love A Picture of Nectar, to an extent that might be considered unhealthy by the uninitiated.
Go love Phish at U.S. Bank Arena Friday and Saturday night. Get show details and more Sound Advice here.