Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Harpua", 1997-12-30

Original transcription by Yance Davis, Harpua Files

TREY: Welcome everyone to this very festive three night stand here. We're very happy to be here. I will say one thing before I get started, that I specifically like about playing in this room. Some of you probably know that we're up kind of like on the fifth floor or seventh floor or something so we're very high off the ground, and when certain grooves start happening, you probably feel that the floor goes up and down.

Well, however cool it feels to you up there, it feels even cooler up here. You might see us sort of going back and forth,and so as the next night and a half keeps going on, if you guys could get the floor bouncing, it feels very cool here. It's like riding on a boat or something. Try to get it going. Try to find that magic groove where the floor is going up and down.

I also want to apologize for our light... [chuckles] Chris Kuroda for those of you who saw him back there wearing that flyers shirt... in the home of the Rangers [crowd boos] Just to....So you don't start throwing things at him, he lost a bet and he had to wear the Flyers shirt. Or so, Chris did you take it off? Light… Light yourself up. Light yourself up Chris. It's off. He took it off. Ok.

FISH: He's been having a rather bad year you know.

TREY: So anyway, as we come in here to play here, we're doing the Harpua thing and I'm gonna tell you about this morning, when I was waking up, I started thinking about 1974. Some of your probably weren't even alive in 1974, but I was ten years old. I was born in 1964 and I was going to John Witherspoon Middle School.

I was in fourth grade, and something happened that year that was very profound. It had an effect on me and changed the whole course of my life, and changed the course probably of the band, the life of everyone in the band. I suppose, in turn, some people out there who come see the band and what happened in 1974. I was in fourth grade, and I really wanted my parents to get me a TV in my room. So this was the thing that when, every couple years I would ask my parents to buy me a TV and let me have a TV in my room. They're like, “No no, you're gonna watch too much TV.”

Finally they let me have a TV in my room. They gave me a black and white TV, and the bad thing that happened was I started watching TV like six hours a day. What would happen would be, on Saturday mornings, I would wake up… I had this ritual. I would wake up, and I would get four slices of Pepperidge Farm white bread and a stick of butter and an electric frying pan. I would melt an entire stick of butter in the electric frying pan and make french toast, then sit down in front of the TV and watch like, you know, seventeen hours of TV over an entire day of… my Saturday afternoons.

So, this would go on for the entire year there when I was in fourth grade. That's what I would do on Saturday. I'd sit around and watch TV. At Five o'clock, there was a show that used to come on called Lost In Space.. any of you seen Lost in Space? I remember waiting for lost in space to come on. There was this one particular Saturday where I made my french toast, and I sat down in front of the TV. I'm sitting there, and I'm waiting for Lost in Space to come on. Five o'clock comes around. Lost in Space comes on. I'm sitting there eating my french toast, and I had this little rubber ball that I used to play with, sort of like shaped like an udder. It had udders coming all off. And, I'm sitting there watching Lost in Space.

About halfway through the TV show, there was this part where Will Robinson and the robot, you know, they're walking along one of those cheesy sets in Lost in Space. They go around the corner, and they end up in this sort of clearing. And, um, this clearing.. the weird thing about it was, I'm sitting there watching TV and this clearing is the identical clearing that was behind the school that I went to, John Witherspoon. The school that I mentioned before. It was a place that I'd been before. So, I'm watching TV and I'm thinking “Here's Will Robinson and the robot, hanging out in this clearing that I go to on, you know, during recess in fourth grade. Completely strange moment!

And, i look down at the foot of the robot… I know this is a long story, but it's very profound and important so please listen… Changed my life! And, at the foot of the robot is this udder ball squeezing squeak toy that I also had in my hand. This completely... I'm sitting here looking and here's this clearing and the udder ball, and suddenly I realize that the robot is sending messages directly into my brain from the TV. The messages are telling me, “For the next week, I want you to collect little bits of food from the kitchen table whenever you have a meal, and put 'em in your
lunchbox you take to school.”

So, the next morning I wake up and I go to breakfast, and they have fried eggs. So, I put a fried egg into my lunchbox. I brought it to school. I still don't know what all this means… Dinner that night we had a steak, and I put a steak into my lunchbox, olives… you know, olive loaf… The whole thing... Little bits of food. Every day I'm bringing this stuff in my lunchbox to school. Well, on Friday of that week, I suddenly had a profound feeling that I needed to be drawn to a spot out behind the middle school, and I started walking with my lunchbox full of food.

Now, when I got to this clearing I had seen in the Lost in Space episode, I noticed that, burned into the ground, there was a pentagram burned into the gras, a star, a five-pointed star. Now, I was ten years old so I opened up my lunchbox, and I take out the fried egg. I knew what I had to do. I placed it on one corner of the pentagram, one spot. Then, I reached in and took out the steak, and I placed it on the next corner of the star. I reached into my lunchbox and I pulled out... the olive loaf, and I placed it on the next corner of the star.

FISH: Ahh... Olive loaf...Tthe olive loaf.

TREY: I then reached into my lunchbox and I pulled out a carton of milk, and placed the carton of milk on the third star of the pentagram. I reached into my lunchbox. I pulled out the sloppy
joe. I placed it on the fourth star of the pentagram. I reached into my lunchbox. I pulled out the slim jim. I placed it on the fifth star.

FISH: A slim olive loaf!

TREY: The only thing left was the udder ball. I knew what I had to do. I took the udder ball. And, I knew from watching the episode of Lost in Space, from the telepathic messages that the robot and Will Robinson were sending in my brain, that I needed to place the udder ball into the center of the pentagram. I placed it into the center of the pentagram. At that point, strange things began to happen. [music takes eerie turn]

I felt the wind begin to rise up around me. It started to swirl around, and as the wind swirled around and swirled around, the leaves began to lift up off the ground. I started to get a little bit scared. The wind turned and turned, and a big fog began to roll in. A fog began to roll in, spinning and spinning, faster and faster.
Mrs. Sinkly, my fourth grade teacher, was wondering where I was. I was
supposed to be back in class. I'm out here in the clearing...

FISH: [in high pitched voice] Oh Treyyyyy...

TREY: All the trees began to disappear. The wind was spinning around, and soon, the next thing I know, there was like a tornado, starting to, emanating from the udder ball, spinning up, spinning around me. All the outside trees, all the scenery began to turn black, and I couldn't see anything anymore except that this tornado was spinning in front of me. And then, this bizarre thing: I realized that I was having a moment where I could see into my own future, and in the tornado, in the, in the... in the... in the cone of the tornado, little bits of my future began to come out in front of my face. I saw, you know, Page's face come out, and, I didn't know what it was at the time, and Mike and bits of the band and and… and bits of the band and then... It became very terrifying, you know that these strange apparitions were coming up to my face. The next thing I know, a strange white...

FISH: [interrupting] Olive loaf!

TREY: ...being started to walk towards me, and he started to sing a song. And, in singing this song, it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard. It was like music of the spirits… it was heavenly. And and… This man, this strange, angelic man walked toward me, and he had on white clothes and strange black square glasses. He walked towards me, and he sang me a song. And, in singing this song, he told me what my life would become.

[Tom Marshall walks on stage, dressed in white with square black glasses.]

TREY: It wasn't until years later... many years later, that I recognized who this person was. It was... It was indeed my friend Tom, and he had come into the past to sing me a song that would describe my future.

[Tom sings “500 Miles” by The Proclaimers.]

TOM: Big Phil, I'd love to turn you on. Thank you.

[Trey plays “Harpua”]

TREY: Well, it changed my life. It changed my life watching Lost in Space. Having Will Robinson and the robot climb into my brain. Then having my friend Tom, who I hadn't met yet, come out of the tornado into the clearing behind my fourth grade classroom, coming to life before me, my
fried egg, steak, and my good friend Jimmy, who had walked up while this whole bizarre scene was taking place.

[“Harpua” finishes normally with the exception of them changing the name of Poster to Pentagram.]