Phish - Recommendations?

As most of you know, I'm a bit of a dyed in the wool 'old school' prog fan, but I keep hearing more and more of the American band, Phish.

From what I can make out, they're definitely progressive in their outlook, very good musicians individually and in a group context and appears to have a huge following.

The only reason I've avoided taking a chance on them in the past is they're always referred to as a 'jam' band, and most fans seem to go for the live albums, rather than the studio ones - not difficult with Phish, as they appear to have a couple of dozen live albums to choose from, so they seem to be of the same opinion as their fans.

Now I'm not against bands jamming at all - so long as they can keep it together; The Allman Brothers were a classic case of a band who could happily wander off into long improvised sections, but the core of the song stayed true, so it remained listenable. On the other side of the coin, you have bands like The Grateful Dead who, despite every effort on my part to try to "get" them, bore me rigid (and I've tried several albums over many stages of their career).

So then - Phish... give me an overview; do you think someone with a love of 'classic' 1970s rock, but a broad spectrum of additional musical tastes (which do not include Grateful Dead type jamming) could get into them - if so, where to start?

Cheers guys.

JG