Phish Heads Get Treat; Businesses See a 'Godsend' by George Varga on Creators.com

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Trick or treat?

That's 60,000 fans to see one band — Phish — not the 120-plus bands and solo acts that typically perform at the same site for three days each April at the annual Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

The treat, if Phish can pull it off, will be for more than the four-man group's rabid followers (or Phish Heads). Hoteliers in the California's greater Coachella Valley area hope that Festival 8 — as Phish has dubbed its weekend of eight performances between Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 — will spur business at a time of year when tourism is usually moribund.

"Without being dramatic, it's been a godsend that we've gotten this event," said Mark Graves, director of communications of the Palm Springs Desert Resort Convention Visitors Authority.

"Let's face it, we're all experiencing a down economy. This is a shot in the arm the whole valley will benefit from."

Whether Phish Heads will fill all 18,000 hotel rooms across the valley remains to be seen. The Convention Visitors Authority is overseeing three-day festival package deals at 17 hotels, from Hilton to Travelodge, in the California desert cities of Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs, Indian Wells, Indio, La Quinta and Rancho Mirage. The hotels are offering bus transportation to and from the festival, for which three-day tickets cost $199 each (no one- or two-day tickets are being sold).

Phish, meanwhile, has teamed with Valley Music Travel to offer its own hotel package deals and shuttle service from Los Angeles International Airport, as well as paid on-site options for fans who want to camp or bring their RVs.

Valley Music Travel three-night packages for the Desert Springs Marriott Resort & Spa, which cost $649.50 each, were sold out a day after going on sale.

Phish was formed in late 1983 by a group of students at the University of Vermont. By 1985, the band's best-known lineup was in place, featuring drummer and group namesake Jon Fishman, keyboardist Paige McConnell, bassist Mike Gordon and guitarist Trey Anastasio (who performs his concerto Sept. 12 at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic).

The group, which disbanded in 2004 after 19 albums, reunited in March for three sold-out shows in Virginia. Its Indio, Calif., appearances will enable the band to revive its popular Halloween tradition of performing classic albums by other bands (from The Beatles to Talking Heads), in their entirety, on stage.

But Phish is offering more than just music to festivalgoers. The band's website — phish.com — promises that Indio "campers" will be provided with "a communal sense of rapture" and "occasional deja vu."

To find out more about George Varga and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.