It’s that time of year again… In five days, Phish will return to New York’s Madison Square Garden for their annual four-night New Year’s run. Each year, we like to celebrate the season in the days leading up to Phish at MSG with the 12 Days of Phishmas, a daily series that gives you your Phish fix and helps stoke your excitement in the days leading up to the run. In 2016, we took you back to 12 historic Phish performances at The Garden. In 2017, with the Baker’s Dozen barely out of sight in the rearview, we relived the magic and mystery of the band’s historic residency.
For years, we’ve been earmarking some of our favorite Phish interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and other cool content that we haven’t found the right occasion to share with you…until now. For 2018, we’ve made you a very special Phishmas Advent calendar to help spice up your countdown to showtime. As we approach the start of the run on the 28th, we’ll open up one panel a day and reveal a fun surprise inside—a little something sweet and Phishy once a day until the Garden party begins. No peeking! By the time we’re finished with the calendar, it will finally be time for the gift we’ve all been waiting for: Four nights of Phish on their home court at the World’s Most Famous Arena.
5 Days Til Phish – Trey & Mike Talk To MTV On H.O.R.D.E. Tour In 1992
On the eighth day of Phishmas… Trey and Mike chat with MTV during the inaugural 1992 H.O.R.D.E. Tour. This is a classic Phish interview, and one that you’ve probably seen if you’ve done even a cursory search for Phish interviews online. Nonetheless, it’s one of our favorites, and gives a fascinating look at an important time of growth for the band.
H.O.R.D.E.—an acronym for “Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere”—was a big step not just for Phish, but for the larger burgeoning “jam scene” in the early 90s. The five bands on that first running of the H.O.R.D.E. tour (Phish, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Widespread Panic, and The Aquarium Rescue Unit) were all on the rise, making a living touring the country playing clubs and theaters. By coming together for one big tour, they were able to combine each others’ audiences and play to amphitheaters around the country. This led to greater exposure, which in turn helped them become the nationally touring behemoth they are today.
As was the theme of the entire tour, when Trey and Mike sat down with MTV that summer, they knew they were getting a chance to make an impression on a newer, broader group of potential new fans. They still had something to prove. Aware of the stakes of this higher-profile tour and interview, Mike and Trey played it relatively straight, making the case for their unusual brand of success and their unusual group of “obsessed” fans. However, they still took some opportunities to let their prankster personalities show through. It makes for a highly entertaining segment for Phish fans looking back—especially since many of the points they make sound not-so-oddly similar to the cases you’ve probably made for the band to your non-Phish friends at one point or another.
Of course, the most amusing aspect of the segment is the physical gag Trey and Mike repeat throughout the conversation. As if they had set out some secret code or trigger ahead of time, on a few occasions throughout the interview, the two make eye contact and proceed to take a sip from their beer and cross their legs in unison—a little layer of token Phish strangeness on top of an earnest, uninitiated conversation.
In the interview, they talk about how the band got to this point (“leaving a trail of ‘improved’ hotel rooms across the country for nine years”), what the band’s sound is (Trey: “To me, it’s a mixture of loud… and soft;” Mike: “It’s a cross between rock, jazz, funk, latin, Broadway, and bluegrass), and whether it’s been hard for them to find an audience that’s willing to listen to such variety.
“It’s never been hard for us, and that’s the interesting thing,” Trey notes. “Our whole career has been based on live playing. We started in Burlington, and by word of mouth from our live shows, we worked up to a point where we were touring the whole country, supporting ourselves and five crew members…without any record selling at all. So that answers your question. It hasn’t been hard at all, in a live sense.”
That’s the connection Trey draws between the five bands on the tour, who he agrees sound nothing alike but acknowledges are connected by that simple common thread. On Blues Traveler, he explains, “A lot of the people who were coming to see us were coming to see them, and there was something going on that was connecting the two bands.” While, by all accounts, the music itself was different among the acts, “there was definitely some kind of connection. The Spin Doctors, we had never even met before the H.O.R.D.E. But still, people were writing articles about [those] three bands: Blues Traveler, Phish, and The Spin Doctors, like it was some kind of…” “Scene,” Mike finishes for him. “Scene,” Trey repeats in agreement. Swig the beer. Cross the legs.
They go on to talk about how they reach fans without albums and videos, from word of mouth to their “pretty big” 17,000-person mailing list to this new-fangled thing called the Internet. “Some of our fans have set up this thing called the Phish Net. A computer network. International computer network,” Trey explains with excitement. “Anyone who has a computer can access it.” Remember, it is 1992…
They also discuss the taper culture that had helped the band gain a following, and how it keeps them on their toes creatively. “Bootlegging tapes has been what made us what we are.” “Who we am,” Mike chimes in. “Who we am,” Trey agrees. Swig beer. Cross legs.
Night after night, Phish creates “genuine,” never-before-heard music together onstage, and that’s what makes seeing them live so special. As Mike notes, “I talk to people and they talk about this emotion they get when they’re here…and it’s really something they can’t get anywhere else. … It’s not something that would be accessible to the mainstream first-time listener, necessarily. But for the people that come, the music, and everything else that goes on onstage and in the crowd…it’s this different sort of feeling and it’s unique to this experience, so they keep coming back.”
Toward the end of the segment, the interviewer asks if they can see themselves still touring together in 20 years. Both Trey and Mike optimistically affirm the question. “I hope so,” Trey says. “We get along very well for a band that’s been playing for nine years. For me, things don’t really feel any different now than they did 9 years ago. The experience of going onstage and having a great musical experience is the excitement of the band. And I don’t care if tonight there were 12,000 people, and 9 years ago there was two. I’m telling you, it really doesn’t feel any different to me. If we play well, it’s exciting. If we don’t play well, it’s frustrating.”
“All in all, it’s an incredible job,” Mike notes. “To be able to travel around and go to some new city that we’ve never played in and jam and play music that we’ve never heard before because it’s all spontaneous to that moment, and have some people be blown away by it, or something. So if we could be doing that in 20 years, then I’d like to be doing it.”
There have surely been some ups and downs in the 20 some odd years since they stated those intentions, but here we are in 2018, and Phish is going strong. We couldn’t be happier that their wish came true. Swig beer. Cross legs.
Watch the interview below:
Trey Anastasio & Mike Gordon H.O.R.D.E. Tour Interview (1992)
[Video: obliviousfool83]
We’ll be back tomorrow to open the ninth panel on our Phishmas 2018 Advent calendar. What other Phishmas surprises are in store? You’ll just have to wait and see…
In the meantime, you can go back through the previous Phishmas surprises:
On the first day of Phishmas… The Big Daddy Show
On the second day of Phishmas… David Byrne Interviews Phish
On the third day of Phishmas… Trey Anastasio Talks Fare The Well At The New Yorker Festival
On the fourth day of Phishmas… A Look Inside The Hoist Sessions From Cactus Films
On the fifth day of Phishmas… Mike Gordon Fascinates A Muscle Shoals Legend
On the sixth day of Phishmas… Page McConnell Chats in the Streets of London
On the seventh day of Phishmas… The Peanuts Conjure Cartoon Phish for “YEM” Dance Party
On the eighth day of Phishmas… Trey & Mike Chat with MTV on H.O.R.D.E. Tour (Swig Beer, Cross Legs)