Phish

Phish formed at the University of Vermont in Burlington in 1983 — guitarists Trey Anastasio and Jeff Holdsworth, bassist Mike Gordon, and drummer Jon Fishman, with keyboardist Page McConnell joining in 1985. Holdsworth left in 1986, and the four-piece that remained has never changed since. What set them apart from the start was the Grateful Dead's old playbook, executed for a new generation: the band openly let fans tape shows and trade the tapes, and since no two improvisation-heavy concerts were alike, the tapes became currency. The fanbase grew show by show, dorm by dorm, almost entirely outside the mainstream.

The mainstream noticed anyway. "Down with Disease" (1994) — with a music video directed by bassist Mike Gordon that even turned up on Beavis and Butt-head — gave them their first rock-radio hit, and 1996's Billy Breathes reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200, their commercial peak. But charts were never the point. The point was the tour, and by mid-decade the tour had outgrown every venue in it, so Phish started building their own: the Clifford Ball, held on a decommissioned Air Force base in Plattsburgh, New York in August 1996, drew some 70,000 fans — the largest rock concert in the United States that year. The Great Went followed in 1997 on another Air Force base in far-northern Maine (75,000 people, the top-grossing rock show of the summer), then Lemonwheel in 1998 and Camp Oswego in 1999. In 1997, Ben & Jerry's — fellow Vermonters — made the devotion official with a flavor called Phish Food.

The era peaked at the millennium itself. For New Year's Eve 1999, Phish staged Big Cypress on a Seminole reservation in the Florida Everglades, drawing roughly 80,000 people to the largest millennium-eve concert anywhere on earth that night. At midnight the band started playing and simply didn't stop — a single set that ran from midnight until after sunrise, roughly seven and a half hours, the longest of their career. It was the summit of the 90s run, and it turned out to be a farewell of sorts: the band went on hiatus in October 2000, returned, then broke up outright in 2004 after a mud-soaked final festival in Coventry, Vermont. The breakup didn't take — they reunited in 2009 and have toured ever since — but for the fans who were there, the tape-deck-and-festival years ending at that Everglades sunrise remain the definitive Phish.