1st ballot rock n roll hall of famers...anyone wanna take me up on that bet?
I don't know, Jay. Phish's biggest credit for being in the R-n-R hall of fame rests primarily on......longevity.
They weren't inventive musicians, really. Nor were they big sellers, in terms of records/DVDs/whatever format is being measured these days. They didn't seem to have a big influence on anyone else -- the Dead (who I think may be the most over-rated band in the history of rock music) paved the way for all of the latter-day touring bands like Umphree's McGee. Phish in fact seems largely derivative of the Dead's ouevre and methodology -- crank out listenable music, be cool to your fans (like allowing recording/video-taping of concerts long before hand-held stuff made that accessible to everyone), nurture an audience through years of touring, and generally be well-meaning fellows who seem like a fun group of guys to hang around.
It seems kind of..........light. Forty years from now, will we really be thinking of Phish the way we (today) think of what Springsteen was doing in the early 1970s, or the Beatles 10 years before that? I don't know; I kind of doubt it. Every once in a while, I get out some old Beatles -- pre-Rubber Soul -- and it still amazes me how fresh music that sounds, today, now nearly half-a-century later. Will Phish sound as fresh, or more like dead fish?