Phish podcast Undermine from JamBase partner Osiris Media dropped the first episode of its second season today. The season premiere looks at how the early days of the internet coincided with the growth of Phish’s fanbase and helped a community form around the band.
Lyricist Tom Marshall serves as narrator for an episode that provides a history lesson regarding how tape trading and online conversation evolved along with Phish in the 1990s. “Phish was perhaps the very first band to go viral,” Marshall states in summing up the rise of the internet and the quartet from Vermont.
John Greene, Shelly Culbertson, Charlie Dirksen and Craig Hillwig are among those that played a role in bringing Phish discussion to the internet who provide insights. “One of the reasons that the internet was a great place for Phish fans to gather in the early years was that since the internet was all non-profit, really the only folks who had internet access were people who were associated with research institutions or with universities. So most people who were in college in the ’90s did have access … at least on campus … to computers that had email and potentially usenet access,” Culbertson — who worked for Phish’s management company and was instrumental in the creation of Phish.net — explains.
Entitled “Hey, Check Out This Band,” the episode spans the founding of the first mailing list devoted to Phish on the internet to the rise of the rec.music.phish newsgroup to the launch of such Phish-related websites as Andy Gadiel’s Phish Page and Phantasy Tour. Andy Bernstein also shared the story behind the first Pharmer’s Almanac book. Future episodes this season will continue a deep dive into various aspects of the Phish community.
Stream Undermine’s second season premiere below:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/undermine/id1163226019?i=1000534674741
