The planning

JAMIE ANDERSON ’91 (Delta Chi): My generation was, in many ways, reared on videogames, MTV, and ’60s and ’70s throwbacks. My particular interest was The Doors and Led Zeppelin. But a lot of us, by ’84 or ’85, got turned on to the Grateful Dead. 1987, ’88, and ’89 were really hot years for the Dead. And we were all in our late teens with driver’s licenses. A lot of us went on tour. … So you had this backdrop of third-generation Deadheads, and we loved jam music.

JAMES DIXON ’91 (Phi Gamma Delta/Fiji): The year before Phish came, Blues Traveler played Fiji. And then, four months later, one of their hits broke. I think Fiji house had Dave Matthews, too. And then, all of a sudden, the Dave Matthews Band was huge. And I always wondered how it was that we were getting bands like this. I know there was one guy, Mike Putnam, who had a connection.

BEN MILLER ’90 (Social chair, Beta): I think Putnam was like a real music guy. He was really dialed in. I think his brother-in-law was in Blues Traveler or something.

KYLE BAIRNSFATHER ’90 (Phi Gamma Delta, Co-director of fraternity security): I think Mike’s sister dated and then married the bass player.

MIKE PUTNAM ’90 (Beta): My brother went to college with [Blues Traveler bassist] Bobby Sheehan at Harvard. And my brother was engaged to his sister. I went to high school in Maine with Ben Hunter. Ben was Phish’s first manager. He was booking their first tour out to Ohio, so he was looking for dates to play and a couple filler shows. And I was social chairman at the time at Beta. … I knew that Ben was looking to fill some tour dates, and I helped put it together.

Ben Hunter, Phish’s first manager: Mike Putnam and I graduated from high school in ’86. We hadn’t been in touch for years, but we were still mates. I love the guy.

BAIRNSFATHER:There was a meeting that I was at, and Mike was pushing for this really cool band, but they were too expensive for one fraternity to sponsor. So the proposal was made: Is it better to have 10 parties with 10 okay bands, or to have one totally cool party with one killer band and then have no money for anything else? … I sided with the one killer band. Mike had some promo material but that was not very impressive, but he put in a tape and the music was really expansive and cool. I was sold.

DIXON: It was a joint Fiji/Beta party. We had to pool funds in order to afford the band. That makes me think that some of the guys knew that Phish was going to be good if they were charging more than the other bands.

PUTNAM: I would guess it cost a

couple grand, maybe a bit more.

MILLER: We probably paid them four or five grand.

DIXON: Phish wasn’t Phish then. They were just this weird band from Vermont.

Hunter: Phish had just played a New Year’s Eve show at the World Trade Center in Boston. There was a lot of buzz. They were regularly playing for 1,000 to 2,000 people. But in Colorado, in the spring of 1990, they were already big. It wasn’t like there was saturation everywhere. They couldn’t go to, say, Las Vegas. It was pockets of support. And that’s how it started. Places like Skidmore or Cornell or Hamilton—the college kids started talking to each other. And trading tapes. The thirst for material was gigantic.

PUTNAM: We were pretty close with Fiji, and it was decided that we would split the cost. And then we invited three sororities, and had a rager on a Wednesday night.