A Picture of Nectar by Phish

A Picture of Nectar, Phish's third studio album and their first for a major label, came out on Elektra on February 18, 1992. It's dedicated to Nector Rorris, who ran Nectar's, the Burlington, Vermont club that gave the band its first bar booking and then a string of monthly three-night stands; the band credited those nights with teaching them how to play.

And what a grab bag they learned. Trey Anastasio's guitar, Mike Gordon's bass, Jon Fishman's drums and Page McConnell's keyboards dart from jazz to calypso to country to neo-psychedelic rock, sometimes before you've caught your breath. There's a Latin jazz instrumental in "The Landlady", bluegrass and hot-licks country picking on "Poor Heart", and a romp through Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca" with the melody sung as goofy nonsense. "Chalk Dust Torture" is the one the countdowns latched onto. The record went gold in 2001, and a 2014 vinyl reissue finally put it on the Billboard 200.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.