An outstanding, insightful new interview with Trey is now available in the July/August 2011 edition of The Believer magazine. An exceprt:

"Yeah, since Phish came back, I’ll just walk around backstage and ask everybody, “What do you want to play?” and people will say, “Oh, I want to sing this or that, ” until I have thirty or forty songs on a piece of paper. It’s like the writing. The set lists are all over the place. A mess. Then we go out onstage and just forget about it. We give a set list to Chris every night and he just laughs and rips it up. We never even play the first song."

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In my life, I’ve been incredibly lucky to be an early and long-time follower of two of the world’s greatest rock bands, The Grateful Dead and Phish.

Sometimes, people ask me what the biggest difference was between “following the Dead” and “following Phish”, and I tell them it’s the deep and lasting friendships I’ve made with Phish fans from around the country.

And I also add how a bunch of those friends came together to do some wonderful things as a group: publish a couple of well-received and sold-out editions of a book about Phish that the band liked enough to sell in its store, formed a charity that has donated over $620,000 for music education programs for underserved kids, and refurbished the Phish.net website for Phish 3.0 as a monster up to the second Phish historical performance database, all still as non-commercial and “by phans, for phans”, as it was in 1994.

And the reason for any difference -- between the Dead and the Phish -- had nothing to do with their music or the fans of each band.

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Impossible as it may seem, and old as it may make you feel, Phish archivist Kevin Shapiro curated his first "From The Archives" show at The Clifford Ball. Nearly 15 years later, a Phish festival wouldn't feel like a Phish festival without "FTA", and the fanboy with the gig every other fanboy would gladly kill for can still deliver the goods.

Before I get down to the biz at hand, it bears repeating that just last week - and perhaps not coincidentally - Phish released Live Bait #5, a themed compilation of choice nuggets from Phish festivals dating all the way back to 1987 (Ian McLean’s Party at Connie Condon’s Farm). If you haven't picked up LB5 yet then get off your ass and do it now. It presents Phish as a band of seasons, a band of eras, and a band of epochs, whose evolution has been punctuated, among other things, by big balls.

And now, a super ball.

Tonight's Superball IX "From The Archives" show blasted off just like a Phish show - about 45 minutes behind schedule - and your intrepid Phish.net reporter stayed up past his bedtime to capture all the action. Here's how it went down on The Bunny...

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