Phine
Art
Throughout
the bulk of their storied career, there was little that the
rock band Phish did, in either a musical or cultural sense,
that could directly graft them to the punk genealogy, but
in the sprawling web of their (ph)an community, there existed
an implicit DIY ethos that was held at least as sacred as
the music the band created. From songs that depended on audience
interaction, to a copyright-spurning policy that encouraged
live taping, the Phish experience neither began nor ended
in the arena, at the concert. Phish heads were, and are (as
the band will be reuniting next month for the first time in
five years), interactive animals who fought passivity to the
point of compulsive nomadic touring. While it was ultimately
an in-the-moment musical experience that band and audience
sought, the parking lot outside the venue was at least as
important as the stage inside.
After four years of uncompensated collection and compilation,
local teacher and long-time “phan” Pete Mason has put together
a one-of-a-kind compendium of phan-created ephemera. Totalling
more than 420 pages, Phanart: The Art of the Fans of Phish
features 1,600 pieces of art ranging from T-shirt designs
to paintings, posters, stickers and license plates, as well
as 40 artist essays and interviews.
A far cry from the sort of nostalgic monuments the publishing
world has erected for other pop-cultural phenomena, the book
stands as an extension of what music journalist Benjy Eisen
calls “the open source Phish code,” whereby there is no official
story or objective history that will grow more singular with
age. Instead, it is the amorphous mass of subjective phan
experiences that constitute the Phish legacy, and that this
book aims to capture. “Following Phish,” Eisen says, “wasn’t
about feeding off of [the band’s] energy—it was about using
a collective energy to fuel your own.”
This energy is channeled into abstract paintings, cartoon
caricatures, fabric art, song illustrations, and all variety
of homage. As Phish biographer Richard Gehr writes in the
book’s introduction, “What fans often lacked in the hygiene
department they more than compensated for in their alternative
shirt, sticker, poster and ride/ticket/dose-grovel designs.”
One of the most compelling and ubiquitous items documented
in the book is the mock-corporate logo, whereby, for instance,
the Apple logo is transformed into a rebus for the song “Mango,”
or the Jiffy Lube logo is co-opted for the song “First Tube.”
It’s not exactly the anti-establishment demolition campaign
that DIY punk tried to wage, but embodies the cleverly subversive
geekdom that allowed Phish to circumvent so much of the ’90s
musical superstructure (i.e., radio play, MTV exposure) by
pioneering community and Internet-based avenues.
In keeping with this collectivist ethos, Mason has decided
to donate all net proceeds from the sale of the book to the
Mockingbird Foundation, a nonprofit group started by Phish
fans in 1996 that funds music-education programs for kids.
Saturday (Feb. 7) at 7 PM, Mason will unveil Phanart with
a party at Revolution Hall in Troy. (Admission is $12.) Slated
to perform are Phish tribute band the Flow, and the McLovins,
a teenage trio who recently rose to YouTube stardom through
deft, basement renditions of Phish’s complex early material—evidence,
no doubt, that the Phish legacy has become a multigenerational
affair.
—Josh
Potter
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