By Larry Nager
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Guitarist Trey Anastasio and Phish will perform two shows in U.S. Bank Arena today and Saturday. (Associated Press photo) | ZOOM |

The drummer performs in housedresses and doubles on vacuum cleaner. Rehearsals have been known to involve elaborate rituals in which band members play in blindfolds or trade instruments in a quest for the perfect jam. Concerts mix spacey, dance-fueled improvisations with state-of-the-art light shows and high-tech - yet goofy - props like a giant, flying hotdog.

It's a bizarre recipe for success. But while much of the music industry sings the blues, Phish is flying high. Today and Saturday, the rock band lands in Cincinnati for two sold-out shows at U.S. Bank Arena.

In 1999 and 2000, Phish was a top rock touring act, grossing more than $60 million in ticket sales. Then, in October 2000, burned out from the road, members called it quits in an open-ended hiatus.

Now Phish is back, bigger than before. The double Cincinnati sellout took 19 minutes, a local arena record. Most of the 32,000-plus seats went to out-of-town fans, the so-called Phish Heads who follow their heroes across the country. Scalpers have been getting as much as $300 for floor tickets that originally sold for $37.50. An eBay search Thursday found 415 auctions of tickets for these concerts.

"They went out at the top of their game," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert industry journal Pollstar. "The whole jam band phenomena is really kind of amazing, and Phish is the biggest act."

Fans fill hotels

As Cincinnati becomes the Phish Bowl, it's almost impossible to find a vacant hotel room on either side of the river. Everything is filled, from no-frills youth hostel dorms to suites at the Cincinnatian Hotel. Tristate clubs have booked late-night jam band shows, billing them "after-Phish" parties.

In a hype-driven business full of here-today-gone-tonight "artists," Phish has legs.

"This isn't manufactured by some PR agent in New York," said Bongiovanni, who compares Phish to the Dave Matthews Band in terms of long-term appeal. "So many acts get red hot and then flame out and they're gone within three years. Phish is a career band if they just choose to stay together."

It's the band's unique relationship with its Phans that keeps that career going. At a Phish show, the entire crowd dances, the band's rhythms responding to audience movement as much as that movement reflects the band.

"On a good night at a concert they can just take the collective energy of everybody," says Trisha Schroeder, 27, of Fort Thomas, a veteran of about 30 Phish shows.

From college to the road

The band got its start in 1983 as an undergraduate lark at the University of Vermont and was playing campus-area bars within the year. By 1986, personnel was set - guitarist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman, whose legendary quirkiness inspired the name.

From the start, Phish took its cues from the Grateful Dead, a band that ignored music industry rules, making millions on the road while selling very few records.

By the '90s, Phish's nonstop touring was paying off, and the group was second to the Dead in ticket sales. When the Dead broke up following guitarist Jerry Garcia's 1995 death (they have recently reunited), Phish was heir apparent. Phan Nation expanded as Dead Heads joined the throng.

But, like the Dead, nothing has been able to jumpstart Phish's moribund record sales. With few commercial radio stations willing to play Phish's eccentric mix of loose-limbed prog/rock/jazz/folk, the band has sold just 6 million albums worldwide. The new Phish CD, Round Room, is not on Billboard's Top 200.

See them on the Web

Always innovative, Phish may have found a way around the whole radio/record business. The band sells downloads of every concert on the Internet. The February tour is available at the Web site, each concert priced at $9.95 in MP3; $12.95 in the better-sounding, larger-file Shorten format. Downloads come with graphics files for printing CD labels, front and back covers, and liner notes.

Phish Heads decry the commercial attitude. In the old days, they say, the band would allow amateur tapers to plug into their soundboard. Those days are over.

"The buzz around is that the shows are changing. It's becoming more commercial," says local Phish Head Geoff Oberhaus, 33. An intellectual property attorney, he also runs a server on a Web site that allows jam-band fans to download concerts, including Phish, all with band permission.

Part of the change may be due to the reason the band went on hiatus: road weariness. As Phish members want more time at home with their families, they're playing fewer shows. This tour is two months long, so they want to make each concert count.

Even so, says Oberhaus, the band is to be commended for keeping prices down. "Phish could've charged 70 bucks a ticket, and it still would have sold out. A lot of these Phish Heads would have given up food."

Shows on this post-hiatus tour have been predictably laid back. Melissa Ruggieri, pop music writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, covered the Jan. 2-4 concerts at Virginia's Hampton Coliseum. It was Ruggieri's first Phish experience.

"I was surprised that for a GA (general admission) show of mostly younger people, there were no visible behavior problems," she said.

Local Phish Heads Wendy and Scott Andersen were at one of those Hampton concerts. Demand for tickets was unusually high, Wendy Andersen said. "On our way into the show somebody offered us a thousand bucks apiece for our tickets, and they were going for even more than that," she said.

Both in their early 30s, the Andersens have followed Phish for almost 10 years, each attending more than 40 concerts.

"They're a great band," Scott Andersen said. "They're great musicians, and that's the main reason that I go. They've been playing together for so long that they really know each other and know where they're going musically."

But both agree that a Phish concert isn't just about listening. To be a true Phish Head, get moving.

"You don't necessarily have to dance, but I think you'll have a lot more fun if you do," said Wendy Andersen.

E-mail lnager@enquirer.com