Einstein -- he's one of my heroes. ... He brought all sorts of creative ideas to this planet, and he had a lot of mediocre minds working against him --- but if you're going to accomplish that much, you've got to be challenged. I'm sure he was challenged in a lot of ways, but he managed to steer clear of it. No one ever hated him. You'd think in a position like that you could become bitter, you could become a jerk, and you'd have every right to be that way. But even still to be able to stay a nice guy, and end up having a reverberation like that ... that's incredible.

Slowly, over time, we started picking up on the jazz thing. It's really an important thing to learn, on a lot of different levels. First of all, it's the American art form. Second, harmonically and musically you learn so much from jazz, even if you're not going to be a straight-ahead jazz player. Any kind of musician can learn from jazz

We are very much in favor of it. I think a lot of the reason... a lot of our success has been directly related to having our show tapes accessible to people all around the country. People have heard our tapes, and then we finally get out to the west coast and people are able to see us for the first time, and we've stipulated that if we do sign that it is going to be in the contract that people will be allowed to keep taping.

By popular request, here is the interview with Page McConnell of Phish, which [Shelly Culbertson] did before their show in Arcata, Ca. on 10/15/91.

Shelly Culbertson: As an introduction, could you tell me what the line-up is in the band, and what everyone plays?

Page McConnell: My name is Page McConnell; I play piano and organ. Trey Anastasio - guitar; Mike Gordon plays bass and Jon Fishman plays drums.

SC: How long has the group been together in that form?

PM: We've been like this for six and a half years, and the band has been around for about eight and a half years...no, actually just six years; I've been in the band for six years, and the band before that had a guitar player --there were four of them, and when I joined the band the guitar player stayed around for a little while and then he moved on, so it's been this line-up for six years.

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