Phish

Besides the Rolling Stones, U2 and Bruce Springsteen, it's hard to think of many rock acts that could crowd the Empire Polo Club in Indio for a three-day festival featuring no supporting acts or other live entertainment. But the legendary Vermont jam titan Phish has long operated outside the realm of normalcy, with a rabid fan base closer to addicted acolytes than casual admirers. When long-gestating message board rumors were finally confirmed months ago, Phish fanatics instantly began making preparations to trek to the site of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where the band held its eighth festival -- the first in five years.

Major tech firms including Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have teamed up to fight email phishing scams. Members say the partnership will lead to better email security and protect users and tech brands from fraudulent messages. The group, which calls itself DMARC — for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance — says it wants to help reduce email abuse by standardizing how email receivers perform authentication. Now email senders will get consistent authentication results for their messages at Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and any other email receiver using DMARC.

The lost children of the Dead Head diaspora came from far and wide to see their new folk heroes Phish at the Greek Theatre on Thursday. And the Vermont-based quartet in turn demonstrated why it has become the master jam band of the post-Grateful Dead era, turning in a performance that alternated technical rigor with feathery delicacy. It's too easy to dismiss Phish as a Grateful Dead facsimile.

Ab Force ? The Federal Trade Commission will mail refunds to more than 34,000 buyers of Ab Force electronic simulation devices, which had been advertised as being able to help people lose weight without exercising. Marketers including Telebrands Corp. and TV Savings violated federal law by making false claims about the product's effectiveness, the FTC said in a news release. Phishing ? The FBI's New York office is warning the public to be careful about responding to e-mails purportedly from their banks.

Grab your tackle box: Phish is back. The Vermont-based jam band, which became one of the top draws in the concert business during the 1990s and early part of this decade, will reunite for shows March 6 to 8 in Hampton, Va., and is expected to announce additional performances for 2009. When the group called it quits in 2004, guitarist Trey Anastasio said his thinking was that "Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it's still on a high note." The band's final shows Aug. 14 and 15, 2004, in Coventry, Vt., drew about 80,000 fans and movie theaters around the country carried some of the performances.

Remember fusion? It's back. Phish, an egghead rock quartet from Vermont that has tapped into American youth's resurgent hippie vibe, headlined the first of two shows at the Palace on Wednesday and jammed the night away. The band induced impressionistic dancing to undanceable jazzy shuffles, and no doubt blew a few altered minds with their tight and technically resourceful interplay.

Tourism officials in Virginia say Phish heads brought their appetites and wallets -- not just dope -- to the jamband's reunion last weekend. The Hampton Convention & Visitors Bureau reported Tuesday that the estimated 75,000 fans who flocked to the coastal city generated $5 million in hotel, restaurant and retail sales. A manager at Hooters said the restaurant sold a week's worth of wings and beer over three days. Monday, police said they seized $1.2 million worth of drugs during the encampment of Phish fans.

Trey Anastasio "Shine" (Columbia) * * * ANASTASIO was wise to let it all go. Phish was everything, the meaning of life itself to a dedicated caravan of cultists, an endless jam session of sunshine and formless noodling, and profoundly uninteresting to most everyone else. By dissolving Phish last year, to the great horror of true believers, Anastasio finally set himself free. It shows on "Shine," his first album (in stores Tuesday) since that breakup.

So you've got Dave Matthews in your movie playing the part of a musician, and he's written a song for the character to sing. It's a no-brainer that to highlight the song, you'd get him to record a fully produced version to be used over the end credits and make it the centerpiece of a soundtrack album and of the film's marketing campaign, right? Maybe not.

Just for a moment, as Carlos Santana was outlining the philosophy underlying his latest business venture, it started to sound as if he might be branching out into the food service industry. "What we do is focus on making everything fresh," the veteran musician and bandleader said. "I remind people: 'Ooh — don't bring last night's leftovers! Make it fresh and new and people will feel it.'" He's not launching a new Subway sandwich franchise but a two-year residency at the House of Blues in Las Vegas, where beginning May 2 he'll be holding court for 80 nights a year with a reimagined show he's calling "Greatest Hits Live: Santana — Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.

Besides the Rolling Stones, U2 and Bruce Springsteen, it's hard to think of many rock acts that could crowd the Empire Polo Club in Indio for a three-day festival featuring no supporting acts or other live entertainment. But the legendary Vermont jam titan Phish has long operated outside the realm of normalcy, with a rabid fan base closer to addicted acolytes than casual admirers. When long-gestating message board rumors were finally confirmed months ago, Phish fanatics instantly began making preparations to trek to the site of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where the band held its eighth festival -- the first in five years.

More than 50 people have been indicted in Southern California, Las Vegas and Charlotte, N.C., in connection with a "phishing" scheme to steal bank account information from thousands of victims in the United States, authorities said Tuesday. The federal grand jury indictment, which was unsealed Wednesday, names 53 suspects -- 33 of whom have already been arrested -- as well as 47 unindicted co-conspirators from Egypt, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller. All of those who were indicted face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.

Phish "Joy" Jemp Records 1/2 Phish fans generally agree that the band's albums are just an appetizer for its anything-can-happen concerts. That's because the songwriting generally lags behind the band members' skills as performers and improvisers. But each album usually boasts a few tunes that benefit from the more concise treatment, and "Joy" -- the group's 11th studio album and its first in five years -- is no exception. Singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio (again writing with longtime lyricist-collaborator Tom Marshall)

West Coast Phish fans may have been left out of the band's initial run of spring reunion dates, but the act is making a grand overture to its Pacific Time Zone fan base this fall. After much rumor and speculation, the band confirmed late Thursday that it would stage a three-day event in Indio beginning Oct. 30. The jam band will take over the same Empire Polo Grounds that host the Coachella and Stagecoach fests for what Phish is calling "Festival 8." The band will perform a total of eight sets throughout the Halloween weekend.

Jam band Phish isn't forgetting about fans who can't attend any of its sold-out reunion shows this weekend in Hampton, Va. The group will make high-quality MP3 downloads of each performance available free the following day. "We really wanted to show our gratitude to all the Phish fans for their support and the overwhelming response they've had to these shows," lead guitarist/vocalist Trey Anastasio said in a statement issued Wednesday. "We only wish everybody could be there."

It was a rough day for Gmail. First, Google Inc.'s e-mail service experienced an outage that lasted several hours in the early morning. Then, a phishing scam made its way around Google Talk, the chat protocol embedded within the Gmail Web interface. For the former, Google issued an apology and an explanation via its Gmail blog. For the latter, Google added the apparent perpetrator of the phishing attack, a website called ViddyHo.com, to its blacklist.

Jam band Phish isn't forgetting about fans who can't attend any of its sold-out reunion shows this weekend in Hampton, Va. The group will make high-quality MP3 downloads of each performance available free the following day. "We really wanted to show our gratitude to all the Phish fans for their support and the overwhelming response they've had to these shows," lead guitarist/vocalist Trey Anastasio said in a statement issued Wednesday. "We only wish everybody could be there."

Phish, the Vermont-based jam band whose legions of dedicated fans made it one of the nation's top touring acts, announced Tuesday that the group will break up at the end of its summer tour in August. The surprise announcement came as the band prepared to release a new album, "Undermind," on June 15 and embark on the tour, which will kick off June 17 at Coney Island in Brooklyn.

The economic meltdown is not devoid of economic opportunities. There's one group of folks who might do just fine: scammers. Security experts have spotted an increase in phishing, the scam that uses fake e-mails to get people to hand over personal financial information that could be used to drain bank accounts or for identity theft. It was no surprise to Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee Inc., one of the largest computer security firms.