Given’s Phish’s impending retirement, this month we decided to feature Phisharchive.com. Here is what site founder Julia Mordaunt has to say…
The initial project that would become The Phish Archive started in 1997, as a means of sanity (completely immersing my free time in Phish) and a way to attempt to teach myself how to put together a website. I launched "FahtHarpua’s Phish Page" as a simple one-page frame to house news items and articles. It was at this time when I was becoming more and more interested in the way the Media projects (or in this case, does not project) images of our world. I was always stunned to see just how below the radar Phish fell.
While attempting to explore Phish’s history with the media, I was faced with the daunting task of locating specific articles and interviews about the band. I spent hours and hours wading through hundreds of web sites (coming across way too many broken and missing links), through my own personal filing cabinets, attempting to locate Phish interviews and articles.
The Phish Archive was born, and a digital vault was launched; a place to fully archive Phish’s involvement (and noninvolvement) in today’s media. This meant the archiving of articles, interviews, reviews, transcripts, etc. There is a huge importance placed on the archiving of such material — in order to fully understand the phenomenon of underground Phish culture, you must have a grasp on their past.
I have been archiving every single printed Phish related article I’ve come across since that time, and have dug deep into the archives of Phishtory to locate lost pieces. So far, I have been able to archive over one thousand articles. It’s a HUGE database. Yes, this site excites the hell out of me, and I am not afraid to admit it.
The Phish Archive is currently the LARGEST Archive of Phish Articles, Transcripts, Interviews, and Reviews available online. The Archive is a strictly noncommercial, fan created and operated site for educational purposes.
Lastly, this site was created out of eons of love and respect for four men on this planet, who share their talent and creativity with us every day.