I'm not sure that's generally the case, though I'm sure it does happen.
My dad and my uncles (all born in the 1950s and 1960s) were serious Deadheads. They've gone to over 100 Grateful Dead shows a piece. None of them really have any fondness for Phish, but I have no idea why.
I know my anecdote can be countered by several of the opposite side, but as a laymen to jam music, I can definitely hear a very fundamental difference between Grateful Dead music and Phish music.
None of them are ardent followers of a particular band. I know they still go see Phil Lesh and Friends or The Dead when they come around, and I think they've been to a few Dark Star shows.
They all had a heavy lean to the Blues/Country side of things, so they're all big fans of Steve Earle and the like.
They all got together to go see Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan recently, and they all went to Van Morrison a while back.
EDIT: I think it's important to note that my dad was so distraught by Jerry's passing that he took a day or two off of work and sat around listening to old shows on cassette tapes.
A bit. However (and this entirely dates me), I saw Phish off and on from the '93 period forward and it was clear the audience was growing at an unbelievable pace prior to Jerry Garcia's death. I remember a show in 1994 in Winston Salem where the opening band was Dave Matthews. And half the coliseum was curtained off (most of the top of Lawrence Joel?) . . .
I think later that same year I saw a really nice Phish show in Boone and the crowd felt larger. A few years later people seemed incredulous at the thought of Phish shows with four-digit-sized audiences . . .
What was super interesting to me at the time was how intensely the audience was "bonded" to Phish shows. We were already joking a bit about how they had a group of "lifestyle" followers. In the current lingo, I would have said they had gone viral already. Fun times.
'94 Murat (2000 seats sold out)
'95 1 night at Deer Creek (20k and not sold out)
Jerry's death
'96 3 sold out nights at Deer Creek
They were on their way up, but the deadheads swamped the scene. Also, that's when it became apparent the band was getting heavily into hard drugs. The musicianship was what brought me to their shows (these guys played a credible fugue based on the theme to NPR's "All Things Considered"). When that skill was gone, so was I.
Yeah . . . 20 years ago. If I'm not wrong, I saw Phish in Winston in '92ish in a small downtown venue, with something like maybe 500 or 600 people - tops - in the audience. My brother was very wired into the up and coming jam band scene then as well as being a student at App State (thus my attendance at the Boone show).
Winston had an interesting music scene back in those days (80s/90s, can't speak to since then). Phish, Widespread Panic (in the chapel at Wake Forest!), Dave Matthews, Leo Kottke, Alex DeGrassi (there was a guitar society that was active in promoting acoustic artists). Many of the MTV up and coming metal/hair bands seemed to pop into Baity's (a long closed Winston spot) for shows on their way to becoming bigger venue acts (all pre-grunge). Sometime in the late 80s and early 90s a number of blues guitarists would roll through the Triad area as well.
In hindsight, it's kind of interesting to consider just how many quality musicians came around central NC. I worked in a guitar shop for a summer and there were actually a surprising number of highly skilled amateurs playing. But for some reason, this translated into few active bands.
I always wondered the same thing. I grew up in that area code, and it seemed as if there was hardly any local talent. Fortunately, within the past few years, my eyes have been opened to the different bands lurking in the local venues around the universities.
That's really not the case. They were already selling out stadiums by the time Jerry died. Reread that last statement. There is so much hate for this band people stop thinking. More importantly, they're music is wildly different as well. All hippies aren't mindless drones with the exact same taste.
They did have a monopoly on trustafarians (wealthy college students that want to follow a band for the summer) after the Grateful Dead stopped touring. There is a new supply of trustafarians every year.
Yes: ones who were young enough to want a new band for their generation, but with much of the same cultural legacy. Absolutely. It's even been acknowledged by the bands. Sure they're musically different, but the festival vibe, touring vibe, acid trail: all similar.
This certainly helped, but they were already on their way. The jam band scene, as lame as it might have been, was a hot trend in the mid nineties into the early 2000's and I think Phish benefitted as much from this as they did Jerry's passing.
No they didn't but replacing a company that no longer exists (for reasons other than a lack of demand) is actually a really interesting business model.
