Fundamentals
X: @Fundamentals21m
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READ THE BOOK: https://zeuspay.com/btc-for-institutions
Jason
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READ THE FCKING BOOK!!^^
Intro:
Back on the Train - Phish 09/13/25 Birmingham, AL
Alternate HD Video 04-18-24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cySKvPB62k
Outro:
And It Stoned Me - Jerry Garcia Band 09/01/90 Mountain View, CA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63QG8Fss6b4
Louis CK "Half a 9-11" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG9jayrmjb8
Other Mentions:
The War on Drugs - Black Water Falls 03/23/12 Portland, OR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJsCrrd6apU
Twiddle - White Light https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS3C3Jy_t8g
In this episode, we dive into the world of Phish and their recent performances, including a memorable show in Birmingham, Alabama, where they opened with "Back on the Train," a nod to our podcast's namesake. We explore the unique atmosphere of Phish concerts, where the outside world fades away, allowing fans to immerse themselves in the music. We also discuss the band's ability to create a transcendent experience, contrasting it with the healing qualities of other bands like the Grateful Dead and Twiddle. We further explore the concept of "building music" versus "healing music," examining how Phish's innovative and complex compositions have carved a niche in the music world. The conversation extends to the broader implications of music as a tool for healing and building, especially in the context of recent events that have shaken the community. We reflect on the importance of sharing oneself and the challenges of navigating a world that often feels at odds with personal commitments and beliefs.
In this episode, we finally live up to our name: Phish opened Birmingham with Back on the Train, and we revel in the serendipity. We talk setlist nods (Cities in Birmingham), Southern shows, and the quirky pop-culture syncs that soundtrack fandom—from Muppets and DuckTales on mute to cartoon-era train animations perfectly shuffling to Back on the Train. From there, we pivot into a deeper conversation: music as healing vs. music as building. Using Phish, the Dead, TAB, Twiddle, Pink Floyd, and more, we explore how some music helps us grieve and some helps us create—and why builders occasionally need the balm of healing songs. We reflect on recent events shaking our community, the role of art and live shows in holding a protected space, and what it means to share ourselves authentically (not to “orange pill,” but to build with integrity). Along the way, we shout out scene lore, favorite videos, and the small rituals that make this community feel like home.
Resources promised in-show: vintage YouTube edits (Muppets Llama; 1930s-style Back on the Train animation), Talking Heads “Cities” lyric reference, and starter tracks for War on Drugs and Twiddle to pair with your healing-vs-building listen.
[00:00:22]
Unknown:
When I jumped off, I had a bucket full of thoughts.
[00:00:45] Unknown:
Hey. We're here. We are back on the chain.
[00:00:52] Unknown:
Here we are.
[00:00:53] Unknown:
Took us a long time to get back on chain. We should just start saying that since we don't know how to start any episode. Yeah. We just started it took us a long time. Took us a long time to get back on the train. Did you have you did you see last night's show at all? Hey. Do you Fish is on tour right now. Did we know that? Yeah. I caught
[00:01:16] Unknown:
I stumbled into the chalk dust into light from the twelfth.
[00:01:20] Unknown:
Mhmm. The old chalk dust into light. Gotta love it. And, you know, I'm a huge John Fishman fan. And
[00:01:27] Unknown:
this is the first time I've ever actually actually done this where I saw a new I was gonna play, a track from late summer and drum along to it. Because my wife's in Boston, and I can just do whatever the fuck I want when she's not here.
[00:01:44] Unknown:
I can play chalk dust if I want to.
[00:01:47] Unknown:
Right. So I sold the chalk dust into light and just decided without listening to it to pick up, like, mid Chalk Dust Jam Yeah. And just play along with the band. And it was a blast. It was a lot of fun for me to to go in raw dog like that and play along for twenty minutes.
[00:02:09] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna say, we're sitting recording it's September 14. And what is what I'm about to say happened is probably the only time in the history of this show I'll ever be able to probably say this. But, the most recent show was last night in Birmingham, Alabama. Dude, I love I love when Phish plays in the South, dude. I feel like it. You know, let's, like, just piggyback off of, last episode of Grafton. Yeah. And, like, I love when fish is in the South.
[00:02:45] Unknown:
When I see fish in in in Alabama,
[00:02:49] Unknown:
I get so happy. You know? And when they're in Kentucky, I get happy. Yeah. You know, there's nothing like, like, the best the thing that makes me happiest would be an October slash November tour in minor league hockey arenas in the Northeast. Yes. That to me okay. Nothing would be that. Right? But, otherwise, dude, just seeing them in Alabama in the South, I don't know why it makes me so happy. Like, it some really strange things happen when they play in the South. Like, for example okay. When they were in Arkansas a couple of years ago, the most unlikely of people were was seen there.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders was seen at the fish show.
[00:03:38] Unknown:
Wow. I didn't know that.
[00:03:41] Unknown:
Like, you know, like, wild shit happens when they're in the South. Like, you find out, holy shit, dude. These people love fish, man. And Mhmm. It's not it's not like the guys traveling from University of Florida, traveling over to Birmingham to go see the show. These are Alabamans. These are Yeah. Arkansas inns.
[00:03:58] Unknown:
Yep. You know? Guys that work at Walmart are, like, fucking
[00:04:02] Unknown:
waiting years for fish to come to them forever. Like, I don't think they ever played in Arkansas prior to that prior to that. I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah. You know? And, so so cool. Okay. Very cool. And, so opener show opener last night, Birmingham, Alabama. None other than back on the train. Oh, wow. What a nod. Our namesake. The namesake of this podcast. I don't think I'll I don't think we'll ever record at a time that that ever happens again because first of all, it's not a very popular opener, I don't think. You know? It's not. It's not. Super common opener. No. Like, I think one of the, trade tour shows in '24 opened with back on the chain, and it was in, like, back on the train. And it was a half step too high. It was, like, in the wrong key.
Oh, really? And they played it the whole song. They played the whole song that way. Like, they traced song in that key. They never changed out of it.
[00:05:04] Unknown:
Pretty cool. Interesting. Because that happens quite a bit with back on the back on the train. I I need to make sure I I enunciate that because I wanna say the title of the podcast. We're back on the chain. We're back on the chain. But Fish got back on the train and, you know,
[00:05:18] Unknown:
I was really like, so I was because it was the show opener, it's on YouTube. Right? Because they they show they always show, like, the set one, set two openers.
[00:05:28] Unknown:
Yeah. I have to click into the live the live, column on YouTube to see that. I'll check it out. I definitely made a mental note, like, dude, we're finally opening one of our podcasts with the song. That's so cool. Right.
[00:05:41] Unknown:
Definitely gonna happen. Yeah. And while we're talking about back on the train, it's I should mention that it's my daughter Kayla's favorite fish song.
[00:05:51] Unknown:
Interesting. It's in my top five. It's in my top five. Really? It's in your top five song. I didn't sound like a top five. Because it's a drumming. It's a it has a cool shuffle to to if John Fishman has a shuffle, it's it's that it's that song. So for the same reason,
[00:06:06] Unknown:
the reason my daughter loves it so much okay. There are some really cool YouTube videos that are just set to Phish songs. Okay. There's a couple it's funny that Grafton brought up the Muppets last time because he said that Paige is like Paige looks like a Muppet, and he nailed it. You know? So funny. He did. And, but there are a couple of really good, YouTube videos somebody made, like, really long time ago. If you look it up, you'll say they'll say it was posted, like, sixteen years ago. But, the the picture of Nectar version of llama is played and, like, it's like Doctor. T's and the electric, the electric mayhem.
You familiar with the Muppet band? Vaguely. Yeah. You know? And it's funny because back in the nineties, right, people used to compare Fishman to animal of that. Animal was, like, the character, the Muppet of that band. He was the drummer. Yeah. But there was a lot of that. There was, like, a lot of that talk. Like, Fishman is like animal, and they were like, you know, we didn't have memes back then. Yeah. You know? But every once in a while, somebody would post a cool picture or make a cool T shirt, and, you know, the drummer of Fish would be portrayed as animal from the doctor teeth. But then somebody made just a really great clip video of doctor T's, the electric mayhem, you know, the that's the Muppet Show band playing llama. There were a couple of others that weren't as good, but that was a really good one.
Well, again, I put these in the show notes. Yeah. That's funny. There is a YouTube video set to back on the train that's like a like, circa, like, '19 it's like an it's like a nineteen thirties Disney. I've seen that. No. I've seen that. Right? And it's like you see that, like, with the shuffle you speak of is like the train going up and down. Mhmm. Just chugging along. Yeah. Syncopated. Yep. You know? And then you just see that train barely chugging up the tracks and it's picking up tracks with them. It's really well animated. Yeah. And for some reason, I think that just resonated so much with my daughter. Like, visually, you know, visually, odd in an audially, however, whatever that word is. Yeah. Yeah. And that It all comes together nicely. Yeah. So that's always been our favorite song. Yeah.
[00:08:19] Unknown:
Fun fact. The guy who brought me to my first fish show that I live with for just one summer, which in college is eight weeks.
[00:08:26] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:08:27] Unknown:
He used to do this thing habitually, and I kind of I thought it was stupid at first, but I learned to enjoy it. He would put fish on. This is before I'd ever been to a show and put on the Cartoon Network Yeah. And would on mute. And what would happen is there would be there would be portion just like when you play Darkseid with whatever, like the Wizard of Oz or what you know, the things that people have done to sync up things visually with music, eventually, your brain would because your brain interpolates. Right? It draws connections that maybe aren't really there. But given enough time, it will draw, like, a synchronicity between the two, and it's it's it is it's fun. I got I got two words for you.
[00:09:13] Unknown:
DuckTales.
[00:09:15] Unknown:
100%.
[00:09:18] Unknown:
I feel like every fish fan has experienced DuckTales on mute with fish in the background.
[00:09:23] Unknown:
Oh,
[00:09:24] Unknown:
absolutely. And it like, the fucking speaking ends up lining up completely. Like, it is Oh, that's funny. Same. It is absolutely like, I mean, I don't know how I don't know if, like, today's this is back to, like, the difficulty adjustment on weed. But, like Yeah. If you if you had nineties weed, DuckTales, and some fish tapes, you were in for a ride.
[00:09:48] Unknown:
Oh, oh, yeah. And by the way, all these all these sit downs with, Cartoon Network on mute was, there was definitely kind involved every time. So it wasn't just I mean, it's just for some reason, it's it's the store it's like the straw that stirs the drink there, but, like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I'm gonna tell you, DuckTales is is there. DuckTales is interesting. You bring that up because, you know, Scrooge McDuck and what famously in the intro dives into a silo filled with gold. Maybe that's maybe that's a hidden hidden connection.
[00:10:16] Unknown:
It might be. You know? We might have to do an entire series of just this weed based cartoon. This is like a thing. You have to do a whole episode on this. It is a thing. Yeah. My barber. Shout out Rick. Rick Job. That's his name? Rick Jeff? His name is Rick. Job. And if Okay. But I think I'm gonna go over it. You've seen Rick Job stickers. He He was in the sticker game a long time ago, and he's just started he's one of these guys that, like, if like, every aesthetic he has is cool. You know what I mean? Every choice he's this guy every choice is so I knew him from, doing stand up, and he, like, was that guy. He, like, had that he had that cool factor about him. Just everything, you know, everything he did. You know? Like, they're the hipsters were in, but he was, like, above it. And there you know? Pre hipster. Yeah. Yeah. So he cuts hair, just, you know, Rick jobs. And I go, you know, I go once a month, and I do the coffee meetup at La Colombe in Fishtown.
Shout out coffee meetup at La Colombe. Mhmm. And then I go to Rick's. And he always has something. Did he had okay. So he had, like, a video game that was on it was on his TV, and it was just like some role playing game that was being broadcast. But then there was this music behind it that it real again, like, I I had a DuckTales Fish flashback, and I was dead sober. That's awesome. Yeah. And I don't I've never seen this video game, but it was like an kind of an old school RPG with, like, you know, some care elf character with a sword, you know, and talking to people in old, you know, old school RPG way. And I don't know. It all just fit it fit with the music. Every yeah. I think it's, like, hard to unsee. Whatever that is that you see, the ductile sync up, the Cartoon Network sync up. Once you see it, you can be sober as hell for the next thirty years and never unsee that.
[00:12:17] Unknown:
Yep. Right? Yeah. It's a phenomena.
[00:12:21] Unknown:
Yeah. So, anyway, this is all because, back on the train was done. We we gotta find the we're gonna dig these up. I promise we're gonna dig these up and put them in the show notes.
[00:12:30] Unknown:
Yeah. And and the fact that it's Alabama on the heels of the Grafton episode is pretty is pretty curious as well. And, of course, and for some reason
[00:12:38] Unknown:
you know, so you in on YouTube, they always play their opening song, and then they play, like, a minute of the second song.
[00:12:45] Unknown:
Yep.
[00:12:46] Unknown:
The second song caught me by surprise, and it shouldn't have. The second song was Cities, and they're in Birmingham, Alabama. That's so good. And for those who don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, there's an explicit list. The Cities is sung by Talking Heads, and there's a song there's a lyric that I forget to mention forget to mention Birmingham, home of Elvis in the ancient Greeks.
[00:13:10] Unknown:
Well, that's Memphis.
[00:13:12] Unknown:
Oh, sorry. Well, that's What was Birmingham? Oh, it's in there. Memphis. What's there's a lot of, god. What is it? There's a lot of something A lot of ghosts. A ghost ghost in Birmingham. A lot of ghosts in a lot of houses. Do I smell it? Yeah. A lot of ghosts in a lot of houses. That's right.
[00:13:29] Unknown:
Do I smell I have to pull I have to pull up the lyric. Yeah. A lot of people. Home cooking. It's only the river.
[00:13:35] Unknown:
So, like, Birmingham yeah. Obviously, they've never been in Burn I don't think they've ever played in Birmingham, Alabama.
[00:13:41] Unknown:
I don't think so either. They always play Oak Mountain.
[00:13:44] Unknown:
Yeah. So I'm sure they made a mental note to play that song when they're in Birmingham. Right? So back on the train is like we're back on the train in Alabama. It took us a long time to get back to Alabama. So I feel like that is a pretty cool nod. And I didn't really analyze the set list. I don't know what else is in the set list. I just know those two songs. Alright. I got the lyric. It's like they put a little thought into playing those two songs.
[00:14:09] Unknown:
And No. They, like, they they absolutely did. And, Fish does Fish does this.
[00:14:15] Unknown:
Fish is a genre. Like, Fish is a genre that does this shit. They'd act I mean, you know, like, how Spinal Tap makes made fun of, the band, you know, that's, like, you know, got the wrong got the wrong city. Right? They made fun but that's, like, what bands used to do to acknowledge the city that they were in and you know? Yep. That's how Fish does it. But that's good. They do it. That's that's good. You know, they do it that way.
[00:14:40] Unknown:
So it's verse two. A lot of rich people in Birmingham, a lot of goats in a lot of houses. Look over there. Dry ice factory. Good place to get some thinking
[00:14:55] Unknown:
There we go. That's the verse.
[00:14:58] Unknown:
There it is. So if you're just getting into fish, just know, like, they do do that shit. Like, they will, in a very sly roundabout way, acknowledge the city they're in, especially if they it's a rarity that they're there and they're, like, they're definitely excited about it. If I'm excited about it, they're excited about it. Right? How fucking cool is it that they're in Alabama for fuck's sake? Right? Yeah. And they've done Sweet Home Alabama.
[00:15:25] Unknown:
Yeah. Good. In that state in in in Oak Mountain, they've done Sweet Home Alabama. They did it one time. Yes. Like, that's a gay way to do it. Right? That's the obvious kind of the gay way to do it. It was more of like tongue in cheek. Right?
[00:15:36] Unknown:
And it's like sometimes Fish will do that. Roundabout. Fish will do that enough so that, you you know, you might think they'll do the obvious thing. Right. They're like a perfect, poker player where they, like, you know, they give you enough to to make you think all options are on the table, but they always they always pull the right one.
[00:15:57] Unknown:
Yeah. And you, you know, you can say the baker's dozen was that, like, compressed into into a t. Yeah.
[00:16:04] Unknown:
Okay. So there well, I I told you I had a pretty good I had a pretty good start start conversation.
[00:16:11] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:16:12] Unknown:
That was, that was a good show opener for us right right right there. And now it's gonna be, like, we don't I don't have a smooth segue into No. There's no way to do it. There's no smooth way to do this. You just jump right in. I have a I I I have a clear intention for what I wanna talk about today. By the way, I think this is episode 20, so that's kinda cool. It is cool. Alright. Let's just do this, dude. So
[00:16:37] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:16:38] Unknown:
You know, I wonder if I wonder like, the conversation we're about to have, I wonder if it's happening on tour. So, like, Fish is really good at being insulated from what's going on in the world. In general, I find that whatever's going on in the world isn't it's not happening inside the arena. When you enter that arena, you're not even thinking about you're, you know, you're not you're just not thinking about the world. It's and in forty years, it's just everyone's gotten a really strong muscle for the most part at, being present and being in a bubble. Right? The show itself is a little echo chamber of, like, this is it. There's nothing else going on. Yep.
And, you know, I saw that breakdown in four point o. By four point o, for those that don't know, that was the beginning 2020, 2021 when they get like, came back on door in 2021. I mean, I knew everyone was gonna bitch about it on the Internet in 2020. But in 2021, you know, I definitely saw a break what I would call a breakdown of, you know, I was at Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve of 02/2002. And I remember, like, I remember walking there were there were there were cops with AKs on every corner. I'd never seen New York so militarized, yet nobody talked about nine eleven or anything inside that building. Like, I really, really could distinctly remember this.
And it it's one of those things that, like, all every time that happens and you you don't even notice it till you leave. You're like, you know, it's messed up. No one talked about any of that shit. Right? Yeah. And that's why I say it was kinda noticeable in 2021 that things were, the walls were breaking down a little
[00:18:33] Unknown:
bit. Yeah.
[00:18:35] Unknown:
Because in like, you know, there were fucking mask there was mask shit going on out in the fucking outdoor venues. I remember Hershey. Yeah. Yes. Hershey was, like you know, it was annoying and stupid. Right? And people were like He was so dumb. Annoyed, getting annoying about, like, mask and shit. And mind you, like, I don't wanna I don't wanna take us back to that moment or anything like that. No. No. You know, fish shows we talked about whoops and the whoop flu. You know, fish shows aren't exactly known for their cleanliness and sanitary you know, fucking sanctity.
So, like, it's you know, the deranged went went deranged. And all like, I I only say this to say and this is maybe like, as I started getting into Bitcoin right at that time, I couldn't like, it was it really bothered me and upset me that it felt like it felt like the end of an era. It felt like the fish thing was over from that standpoint as being an assist. Interesting. Now maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe I was premature because I tend to think that I tend to think they got it back. And I so, like, okay. The elephant in the room right now is, you know, look. We the Charlie Kirk assassination was is now, what, four days ago?
[00:19:54] Unknown:
Yep.
[00:19:57] Unknown:
I don't know if anybody in Birmingham, Alabama or Louisville, Kentucky when they're all riding the rail or sitting at the show is talking about it. Okay? Right. But Jason and I wanna talk about it. Yes. We do. And we wanna talk about it in the context of music. So that's the thing that I wanna talk about today. It's not that I wanna talk about Charlie Kirk per se. I wanna talk about, us, the crowd, and what happens to us when we have to deal with something like that. And just in case there's any confusion about where I stand, like, I'm very shook.
Okay? Yes. I'm not a celebrator.
[00:20:45] Unknown:
No. And I would have a We are not celebrators.
[00:20:48] Unknown:
I would have a big problem in public dealing with somebody doing that in my presence.
[00:20:53] Unknown:
Yeah. Me too.
[00:20:55] Unknown:
And, look, I've read I read a lot like, in 2020, you know, I read a lot of, anthroposophical material. That anthroposophical, I mean, is like, it's sort of the way of thinking that, is known it's, like, known to have, been, like, pioneered at least in modern times by Rudolf Steiner who founded the Waldorf schools, and he was, like, an incredible renaissance man. And, you know, he was championing. He didn't invent it, but he was championing certainly. And he was prop he's probably the person responsible for bringing this way of thinking into modern times.
Check it out. It's anthroposophy. I have friends. Maybe I'll bring a maybe I'll bring a friend on one of these times to explain it. What it, like, what it really is all about. But, you know, it's very, you know, it's very focused on human being, in my estimation. Dude, if anybody is, like, screaming at at the fucking phone right now because they know and I'm fucking this up, like, send me a boot. Send, yeah, send a small boost and just go off and correct me. But, the the way I understand it is there's, like, there are three selves. You have a physical self, a spiritual self, and an astral self.
I'm not even that sure really what astral self means. I just know that it's not something that is here.
[00:22:30] Unknown:
Yeah. The cosmic self. Let's say. Yeah.
[00:22:34] Unknown:
What I was reading in 2020 in that literature is even Steiner's writings. And Steiner died in the early nineteen hundreds, his main like, the main time of his life Well, he was alive long enough for Hitler to hate him. So, like, the main time of his life, I think, was mid eighteen hundreds to mid nineteen hundreds.
[00:22:55] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:22:57] Unknown:
But there was a book written called it was about pandemics and how, like, you know, they could be caused by basically, like, global trauma. You know? Mhmm. Like, everyone kind of experiencing serious trauma at the same time ends up causing, like, sicknesses. You know? It'll manifest that. Well, it could actually be caused by it because of the actual Because everyone is Because of the actual physical reaction and what the Reduced immune system or something like that. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Something like that. So, like, that's like, in that backdrop, you know, where does music fit in in a where does music fit in an event in an in an event like that? Right?
Like, I think music is very can be very healing. Can be if it's meant for that or if it's if, you know, some if if you re if people are really using it for healing, it could you know, music has a real place there. Right? Absolutely. And when we were talking about, you know, we talked on Thursday right after it happened. Kinda, you know, we were just kinda both blabbering. Like, didn't re you know, it's just impossible to make sense. Right? Yeah. In my mind, it was just, like, one of the most senseless things I've ever seen in my life, and I'm still really coping with the loss of it. You know? And for the record, you know, I, like, I don't know why I don't know why I hate that people have to reflectively say. It's almost like say the, you know, say the line, Bart. Well, you don't have to agree with everything he says. You know? Like, it feels like a say the line Bart thing already.
Yeah. But I happen not to align with them on a lot of things. Happy not to. Same here. Yeah. I don't That's not the point. I just I can't believe what was lost. I just can't believe what was lost in a second, and it's it's, it's shaken me. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of the way I've chronicled my life in the last thirty plus years is where, you know, kinda where I was at fish shows. Like, what was I feeling at fish shows? Did I did I know about this? And that's why I think I, you know, I remember the MSG show and thinking, wow. It's not that we were all over nine eleven or anything, but we were over it enough to enjoy the fish show and not have it in our consciousness at all.
[00:25:27] Unknown:
Right.
[00:25:28] Unknown:
Except except when the song balls of the cave and everyone at the same time decided it was that it was WTC, World Trade Center, and about that when it wasn't. But everybody decided to see it. So so it's interesting that, like, we all got over it enough to, like, be present for the show. But then, like, the then, like, the entire fandom of fish just, like, all locked in that, oh, no. Walls of the cave must be like, there obviously has to be a song about it. There can't like, there's no way there's not. And this song is very weakly coded and has very suggestive lyrics. Right? Like, if you ever need the names of those you couldn't save, you know, there, you know, there might have been an etching or or a marker of a grave Mhmm. Maybe on the walls of the cave. You know? Like, it was very suggestive, and we all, like, holy shit.
But at the mall you know, on on 12:31 in that building, walking through cops with AKs throughout the whole city, it was never there. It was not in anybody's mind. And so, like, I think of myself at those shows, all these shows, and I'm like you know, and I kinda judge where I was in mentally. Like, where was I mentally? Was I okay mentally with a lot of this? Right? Yeah. This is something that's I can't imagine. I mean, I feel like I need a show pretty bad too. Yeah. You know? But, like, I just can't I can't imagine not thinking about it right now. I can't imagine the show being that powerful to just completely take me out of my grief at the moment.
[00:26:58] Unknown:
Yeah. Especially given that we're, you know, post Bitcoin. And I don't wanna sound too trite.
[00:27:06] Unknown:
But, I know. I totally get you. Keep going. I I
[00:27:10] Unknown:
I discovered Bitcoin or I went down the rabbit hole. I was you know, I discovered Bitcoin in 2017, but I didn't really do the deep dive until early late twenty twenty, early twenty twenty one. And you brought up, like, the Hershey shows, which were, I think, were '22. Nope. They were '21. Okay. So twenty twenty
[00:27:36] Unknown:
to two, we got AC. We got the Atlantic City. That's right. That's right. We got the Beach Run.
[00:27:41] Unknown:
But, and I'll say this. I don't know if it was the only shows of 2020, but I was in Mexico February 2020.
[00:27:48] Unknown:
They they were. They were the only on fish shows. These are the only shows. So
[00:27:54] Unknown:
They were the big names. Nobody to not comp nobody went to those. Yeah. It was a small room. But, not to compare COVID with nine eleven because I think they're two totally different events.
[00:28:07] Unknown:
But Okay. I will tell the Louis CK joke when the time is right.
[00:28:12] Unknown:
Okay. I like that. But we were when we flew down to Mexico and I we had a big crew that year. We had, like, fourteen fourteen of us went. Yeah. And it was my second year going. Some of them, it was their they had to come to everyone. So sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, fifth one. And I was blown away. This was at Barcelo, by the way. It wasn't at the New Moon Palace, which is where they hold on now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was the Barcelo. Last year, the Barcelo. Purple chairs for anybody that went to, Barcelo. The you know what purple chairs means? And No. Is this a Noster reference? No. It's it it it should be.
There was just the way Barcelo was set up when you walked out of the venue, there was a bar. The closest bar to the venue was outside, and they had purple chairs. So everybody was like, where are we gonna meet purple chairs? It was the meeting point. It was like the like the Ferris wheel. I had a festival.
[00:29:08] Unknown:
It's like the old Greenpeace table.
[00:29:11] Unknown:
And there were glass tables everywhere, and every there was free and open drug use. It was like I felt like I we were in Bolivia.
[00:29:17] Unknown:
Glass table in a five star room.
[00:29:20] Unknown:
Yeah. Good one. But when we flew down, shit was getting pretty dicey.
[00:29:26] Unknown:
Dude, my experience in Mexico was very similar in '22, by the way. And that's, like, probably that happens to be the last last fish show I was at.
[00:29:35] Unknown:
Wow. We gotta take you to a show. We should've went to the man. But, like, dude, I think I was really shocked by, like, the extremity of the drug use that I was doing there down there. It was so open, and and I almost felt like I got the false insecurity like, oh, drugs are illegal in Mexico. I was like, no. They're not. You're gonna get arrested. But, anyway Anyway,
[00:29:53] Unknown:
we digress. Go ahead. Knew that
[00:29:56] Unknown:
the gravity of COVID was already starting to take hold of everyone before we even left to go to Mexico. And I have to I'm I'm just gonna say this. When we were there, there was very when when when Fish was playing, there was very little feel that people were thinking about that in those moments. Like, it really was an escape.
[00:30:18] Unknown:
It really does. Day. There was the day the day was the twentieth. I wanna say it was the twentieth that the market shit itself. And it was like that's when everybody just sort of panicking and losing their minds. Like, oh, shit. This is a night now. And I think Of course, there was, like, a little bit of a moral panic prior to that.
[00:30:38] Unknown:
But Right. And I think we flew home on the twenty second. Yeah. So that Friday was was the, like, night night one of the run.
[00:30:46] Unknown:
It's just like that in '22 was the day like, we were there in '22, but the third night was the day then the the day we went into Ukraine.
[00:30:56] Unknown:
Oh, no shit. Okay. I forgot about that that there was a tie in there. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. So yeah. So I just wanted to reaffirm that Phish, it's so focused on the music. People are so present during the shows that it it we just gave two pretty pretty pretty supreme examples of, like, world events that were should be all consuming. That that fish seems to even rise above that.
[00:31:26] Unknown:
Yes. It's the the yeah. The immune system in a show is incredible. And, you know, the it's characterized as what official really means. Like, you could be you could have the weight of the world on top of you, But it all goes away when you walk in those doors. It's incredible. And then there's a reason why we give our lives to this thing. There really is a reason. You know? It's very special. Like, it's a special atmosphere. It's not just the band. It's just a special special atmosphere where it all goes away for three hours.
[00:32:03] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:32:08] Unknown:
So what we were talking about, what I think we wanna talk about is this notion of healing. And, this is on the heels of, like last our last episode was a lot of fun. Fun. I loved it. I loved Grafton. Shout out Grafton. Hope you're listening. Hope you, you know, hope you got back on the back on the chain with us here. Well, my like, literally, one of my favorite parts of the episode is when he started roasting just roasting fish
[00:32:40] Unknown:
so much. And And then he's like, dude, I'm making fun of your favorite band, and we're like, we don't care. I gotta tell you, dude. It's one thing
[00:32:47] Unknown:
as a comedian. Okay? Like, it's one thing to roast what these guys look like. It's another thing to just, like, roast the musical, like, the worst parts of it and be hilarious. And Grafton def like, you could tell he was in with a crew of people that could that had the ability to just lock in on some of the funniest things about fish that suck. You know? Yeah.
[00:33:10] Unknown:
And I was music. It's like, yeah. Maybe maybe he's got a point there.
[00:33:15] Unknown:
So that was, like, that I wanna say that was my favorite part of that episode.
[00:33:20] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:33:21] Unknown:
Having said that, I think we had a little bit of an insight this week because, we started thinking about healing music. So I have a friend, Asher. Met him at Lake Satoshi. Shout out, buddy. Mhmm. You know, at some point in the last four days, he just sent me a text. No words. It was just a link to, a Jerry song Jerry Jerry Band song. God, this would be a better If you if you said it to me, it would be a better story. To me, I can play it. I can do it. No. I understand. Yeah. I can get that If it didn't escape me, but, oh, and it's that's right. And it stoned me. That's the song.
And, like, you know, it's like, okay. A buddy sends me a link to a song in this time. Doesn't need to say any words. Right? And he did literally sent sent no other words for probably a day. Right? Mhmm. I did and I listened to it. It really was like it really hit. You know? It hit nice. It made me think, like, that certain music is just ideal for healing. You know? Jerry's voice. Jerry's voice, the dead. You know? And so then I clicked back I clicked back to this conversation we had how it's like one of the, like, like, the legitimate criticisms of Fish. And then it's like, I don't think he would have said it if he wasn't on if it if this podcast wasn't like a fish based podcast. Right? But when he was talking about how, you know, deeply feeling widespread is, right, how deeply feeling the dead are, and he's like, you don't get that from you enjoying myself. Right? And he's not wrong. Right? Mhmm. Not wrong. He's not wrong.
The so I think the insight I had is that fish is not healing music. At first that first and foremost. Right? Like, fish just isn't so then what are they? Right? What distinguishes, like, what distinguishes what they do from, like, the feeling healing music? Right? Yeah.
[00:35:29] Unknown:
And do you mind if I if if I I wanna take a stab at that when you're done. Okay.
[00:35:33] Unknown:
You wanna take a stab at it now, or you want do you want me to Sure. Yeah. That way, I won't interrupt your flow.
[00:35:39] Unknown:
If if I were to retort Grafton, which I didn't wanna I didn't wanna to retort. Yeah. I didn't wanna I'm pretty fucking far from okay, which Huddl quoted in one of his master blog post. It wasn't this blog, but, which I I noticed. Very very few people I'm sure did. But, my retort would be, I think Fish's music is more transcendent than White Trapani could even ever dream to be. Call it spiritual. I don't wanna call it spiritual because it's really not, in the traditional sense. Most people tie spirituality into religion, and it's I'd say it's transcendent. It's, if you wanna get into the, like, what you were talking about with, like, astral, like, astral projection, like, you can do that with fish music. You can beam yourself to another reality,
[00:36:34] Unknown:
another universe. This is the most retorted take I think I've ever heard.
[00:36:42] Unknown:
I am highly retarded, so
[00:36:45] Unknown:
that means then. But but it's like it's like, I'm with you. Keep going, please. This is like like, you're blowing my mind.
[00:36:51] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, that's just my that's my that's that's it. So yeah. So
[00:36:56] Unknown:
so I think to I think to boil it down and make it really simple, I I thought of fish as, like, building
[00:37:05] Unknown:
music. Yeah. I like that because it obviously ties into Bitcoin. Right? The dead
[00:37:10] Unknown:
Accuracy. The dead is healing music. Fish is building music. And, like, building so I started I guess, I was on I had a lot of conversations in the last two weeks. You know? I had, we did we did our podcast Sound Coffee with Otis and John. Yep. Two builders. I haven't listened to that yet, by the way. I need to listen to that. Yeah. Check it out. Listen the whole way through because we had two I had a second conversation with Otis about building. And Okay. It was like we were supposed to read the boosts, which we really should do here too.
We got some really sweet boosts, and I I I wish we paid tribute a little more. I don't Yeah. I think on on this is just a interlude, but Otis is the first one of my podcast partners to really figure out how to feel boost without breaking the flow of our conversation. Yeah. First, the flow of the show, which is that we do a second segment after the after the post show outro music, and then we just have the conversation about the boosts. Oh, that's cool. And so if you wanna listen, listen, but we wanna make sure that it's there and people are acknowledged.
[00:38:15] Unknown:
And if you have to, you could record it. You could record it in two parts if you actually had to. Right? Yeah. Because it's like the it's bifurcated.
[00:38:23] Unknown:
I mean, my I get so I get boosted so rarely that it's normally not a thing. But we do get some sweet boosts on the show now. We're starting to find some guys that are, like, really, wanna reach out, and I appreciate you guys. And so we we'll figure out what to do with the boosts. But, I was doing the boost the boost segment with Otis, which we couldn't actually do because fountain I couldn't read them. But we had a whole another conversation about building. Building it was building physically versus building digitally, But the light bulb went off for me that, like, building is violent.
Building is like, you are really, taking a world that doesn't want to be built, and you're building on it. You're creating you're creating order,
[00:39:12] Unknown:
out of out of entropy and this is chaos. Right? But you're physics there's physics involved. You're moving atoms around. It's painful, and there are consequences.
[00:39:21] Unknown:
Yeah. Right? And to me, that's fish. Fish is especially, like, you know, when they came up in the eighties and nineties, and they they were not very accessible. Even today, we still see the jokes on Twitter. Right? That life saving gun segment, you know, and somebody posted it and said, this is what fish fans this is what people don't listen to fish. The fish sounds like. Like, that old joke is still going on.
[00:39:50] Unknown:
Because The first comment did you did you catch the first comment, by the way? Fans that could yeah. Yeah. This is this is what fish sounds like to fish fans. Yeah. But, like, the fact that joke is still going on because
[00:40:01] Unknown:
fish is, because they're building music. They're like Yeah. And it's not not to say that all music that's inaccessible is necessarily building. Right? Right. Some of it's just not good.
[00:40:14] Unknown:
Yep.
[00:40:17] Unknown:
Like, there's this guy, Bubba, who's the man. Met him at Lake Satoshi. I know I know Bubba. I've I've listened to two angry cons a couple of times. It's something else. Bubba's the fucking man, and Bubba's a radio guy. And, you know, we I didn't realize how much he was on Twitter until it's like one you know? It's like, you're, like, really in the matrix. Like, I met him, and then all of a sudden, I see him on Twitter all the time. Yeah. But, like, he, like, was saying, like, yeah. Phish is awesome. I just don't like them. I but they're awesome. Like, they're clearly awesome. They're they're they're, like, they're you know? Which is, like, that's typically what people who know music who don't like them think. Like, oh, they're excellent, but they not my thing. Right?
Because it's painful. Like, for for me personally, I think I've talked about it on the show before. Like, for me personally, it was healing. For me personally Yes. I felt like I found something that was, like, a puzzle piece. That Yep. It was like a puzzle it was like a missing puzzle piece or rearranged everything in a in a correct way in my brain. Yeah. But I think to the common person, you know, it's not that it's not very accessible. It's It's not very accessible. I'm trying to You're what Phish is trying to do is like, what they were trying to do was pioneer, like, the style of music that was heavily composed, highly instrumental, but danceable.
Mhmm. And, you know, because you had a guy who was a gifted composer, and Scott Trey, who's it's just an incredible like, you know, 16 years old composes the divide you know, divided sky and Right. You know, just place it for his dad, and his dad's like, well, I no longer worry about you making it as a musician. Like, that is you know, like, these little he has these moments in his life. And that sounds beautiful. So then it's like you can be beautiful and yet not feeling. Right? Yeah. You're still building. You're really rearranging.
You you know? I I think they were building foundation, and you don't go forty years with the same band. It's unprecedented. So, like, I'd say that they built some they really did build themselves into something that could exist for forty plus years. Yeah. On the back of music that's not maybe the most heartfelt. Right. Not very you know, not the kind of music you look for when you're down I mean, we all have used look. Fish is the soundtrack of our life, and so we've all been down and out and have been we use them therapeutically. Right?
Yeah. But it's not that kind of music for people.
[00:43:06] Unknown:
Yeah. And I agree this whole builder idea, and I'm, you know, I'm things are clicking. Gears are turning in my head. In order to be a builder in this world and have it be you know, we live in a world where you the the main the main reason why humans do anything is is money. Money drives human action for the most part. So when we talk about building, typically I might argue building But that's okay. Let's keep it going. But but just to make my point, I'm gonna Let's call money something portion of it. Very general. Let's call money something. Maybe it's maybe it's capital. May Is it about capital? Yeah. Let's say capital. Let's say capital.
[00:43:47] Unknown:
We need to we need to suspend how you didn't care about sounding trite when you said that. No.
[00:43:54] Unknown:
Well, Bitcoin is money. So let's just check that off the list.
[00:44:00] Unknown:
And gold is money. But, I thought I thought you were make I thought you were making a dir like, some dirange knots statement. Snow. So Bitcoin is money.
[00:44:10] Unknown:
No. No. Say something obvious. Yeah.
[00:44:14] Unknown:
I think Bitcoin is money.
[00:44:17] Unknown:
Sorry. It's I I don't think it. It just is. I don't my my opinion doesn't doesn't doesn't matter.
[00:44:24] Unknown:
Anyway, sorry. Go ahead. Anyway, so
[00:44:28] Unknown:
as somebody who's built myself, and I've usually done it for a, you know, corporation, but I've I've built products. I've built physical things that you know, medical devices that people walk around permanently in their body. And in order to do that successfully, you you can't just build stuff just for the sake of building stuff. You need to improve upon what's already there. You need to innovate. And what just occurred to me is the reason why fish is maybe not accessible is I think you're dead on, that they were really trying to do something that wasn't done before.
And you could argue the dead did type two jams, but I'm sorry. I've listened to a lot of dead jams, and it's not fish. It's not they don't change fish. I've heard someone describe early, like, when I was first getting into fish, this is still in the nineties, that Trey's ability to change modes of playing. Moe he they they use the term modes, and I don't know as a guitar player if that resonates with you. But I think, like, over time, the whole band can now change modes. Unlike any other band on a planet.
[00:45:34] Unknown:
Like, there's a technical term for a mode, which I don't think that's how you're using it. Like Okay. The the mode just repeat. Like, Dorian, Millox, Idian, and Phrygian. Like, there's a technical term for, like, what mode you're it's almost like the key you're in, like, the Yeah. Whereas they can go from they can transition from, like, styles of music too, like, on a dime. On a dime. Yeah. And no other bank can do got a bluegrass, like, on a dime.
[00:45:58] Unknown:
On a dime. In in a in the context of a of a jam. Yeah. So in that regard, I think Fish really was building something
[00:46:07] Unknown:
in the Let's make it I wanna make it clear because I wanna be I wanna be clear about Okay. The dead. Like, when they were doing the acid tests, I think in those in that moment, they had a point of view that, that it was gonna work. And that was the world had never seen that before.
[00:46:28] Unknown:
What was the goal of that? Describe the acid test for for me and for everybody else. Everybody would be on acid and enjoy the show, including the band. What what was it sounds like there was a there was a they were hoping they would had a certain outcome. What were they what were they trying to do? The outcome was that it would be good music and they would It would just be a good show. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. And
[00:46:46] Unknown:
at the time, this was, I wanna say, in the PigPen era. The dead might have been a building band back then where they were not you know, like, they they didn't really become this heartfelt Americana until Jerry took over, until Pig Hen was gone. And they I see. They were a blues band, really. Right? They were a blues band that was very psychedelic. It's like a you know? So, like, they and I think they were pretty hard driving even in the the the sixties, early seventies. And then when they became more of a spacey Americana Americana band with the space space was still new, and they were fucking around with that.
Mhmm. But as an Americana, right, like, you'd listen to the song, like, Deal. It's like, dude, that's just Americana. You know what I mean? Like, it's the it's like, when I'm down and out, that's the kinda that's what I wanna really hear. I wanna hear songs like that.
[00:47:48] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:47:49] Unknown:
I wanna hear songs about guys getting beat up in card games for some reason. You know? Yeah. Like, just take me to, like, that time. Take me to, you know, fucking Amarillo, Texas. It's somehow yeah. Like, somehow Jerry Garcia, this, son of a fisherman, folk folk guitar master is just can can paint the perfect picture of an underground poker game and, like, that scene. You know what I mean? Like, somehow, this band was able to do that, this Americana. Yeah. It's like Norman Rockwell and Fish is like Picasso or something. Or something, Romeo. Yeah. Something. Immortal you know, the thing is so with Fish Phish had a point of view that was not accepted in the world, which is that this style of music, this composed instrumental danceable music was gonna work.
Like, it was gonna work. It was not just gonna be bars in Burlington, Vermont, and it wasn't just gonna be colleges in the in the Northeast. It was going to MSG. This this version of a band is gonna end up in Madison Square Garden. Right? And that was, like, unheard you know, it's really I've talked about this in the show before. I I love listening to shows from, like, 1991 and just, like, trying to get in a tray's head. Like, how could he possibly have thought this was all gonna work? This, you know, narration, you know, like, all the narration and all of, like, the just the stuff that note like, secret language to fuck with people.
Yeah. A a chess match with the with the audience? No. This was so this is all this is all builder shit. You know? This is visionary builder shit. Yeah. Innovation.
[00:49:36] Unknown:
Innovation.
[00:49:38] Unknown:
And it's painful. Right? It's it is it's, like, a little bit painful. It's always painful to build things. Yeah. It's destructive. So, like, I that's the con that's the contrast I wanna have, and I and I wanna say that we also we need healing music sometimes. Mhmm. So, like and I think I think it's easy I think it's easy to lose sight of that, especially you go through a large part of your life and you don't I, you know, I think that Trey Anastasio band has more healing aspects to it 100%. Than Fish does. Right?
[00:50:16] Unknown:
Yeah. And we all want to be did it. Like, maybe that's how we got through a little bit. Right? Yeah. And and for me, when Fish was broken up, you know, I discovered a few what I would consider healing bands that I still listen to. Twiddle Now one of these one of the ones that I would say. Yeah. So so I'm gonna I'm gonna hand this off to you so you can talk about Twiddle, but I just wanna mention Okay. Yeah. The war on drugs, which is a Philly band, which I was exposed to what before Phish came back. Again, through my friend who introduced me to Phish, he introduced me to War on Drugs early on, like, and then they won a Grammy, and they kinda sold out. And Arcade Fire was another heard a single song by the War on Drugs.
Oh, I need to I'll send you,
[00:51:01] Unknown:
I'll send you one. Make a note check it out. To put one in the show notes. Okay. Will do. By the way, dude, shout out to Jason. Jason does an incredible job on the show notes. I'm retorted. I can't I can't do it. Well, you edit the show, so let's let's let's Yeah. But thank you. Like, thank you for all thank you for giving the audience incredible show notes. Like that Oh, thank you. When when we mention it, it always ends up in there. Yeah. So I try not to ask for too much.
[00:51:32] Unknown:
Yeah. I try to if we say we're gonna add it, I try to comply and, Yes. Compliance. I'm I'm pretty much into compliance.
[00:51:43] Unknown:
So war on drugs, Arcade Fire. Yeah.
[00:51:47] Unknown:
It's about it. This is the two I wanted to mention. See that. I can see it. Yeah.
[00:51:51] Unknown:
I think a lot of pop music is good for healing too. Right? Yeah. Like, sometimes you just want Wouldn't feel good. What everybody likes.
[00:52:01] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:52:02] Unknown:
Alright.
[00:52:04] Unknown:
Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. Don't think we listen to fish. Dear audience, don't think we listen to fish twenty four seven because that would be that would that wouldn't be the right thing to wouldn't be the right way to approach it.
[00:52:16] Unknown:
It wouldn't. But I will I mean, you know, I've had my certainly, I have my moments. Right? I have my moments. You know, at my age now, it never happens. But, like, when I was when I first got into fish, you know, 90 I'll say when after the after I stopped kinda with the dead, '95 there was a time where it was only fish for the most part. The first year Well, yep. And this is, like, how long ago
[00:52:44] Unknown:
Yeah. Forty hours per week of fish was probably if there was if that meme existed, that would apply to someone that first got into fish. I would do forty hours a week on IRC
[00:52:54] Unknown:
and then forty hours a week listening to listening to tapes. Right. Yeah. And then when Moe came along, you know, okay, then all of a sudden, you started getting an appetite for other bands. You know, the appetite really was to go back to smaller venues.
[00:53:11] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:53:12] Unknown:
And, you know, be, you know, be a bigger fish in a small pot smaller pond.
[00:53:18] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:53:20] Unknown:
And feel like you're seeing a band that you, are gonna raise.
[00:53:25] Unknown:
Right. Exactly. And that was my drawing. Like, I saw our kid fire in small venues. I saw we're on drugs at, like, union transfer, like, a thousand people, like,
[00:53:34] Unknown:
small before they got big. And it's Moe Moe makes fish look like a healing band.
[00:53:41] Unknown:
Okay. Alright. You're saying you're saying they're technical?
[00:53:45] Unknown:
They're they're not a healing band. Moe's best described as the Grateful Dead on crank. In that that's how they were described in 1995.
[00:53:59] Unknown:
Well, the Grateful Dead was on weren't weren't weren't weren't they doing some crank at one point?
[00:54:04] Unknown:
It's possible. Like, a lot of deadheads ended up ended up with Moe.
[00:54:08] Unknown:
Interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah.
[00:54:13] Unknown:
And, the first gathering of the vibes
[00:54:16] Unknown:
I remember. Which,
[00:54:18] Unknown:
you know, isn't it great that the Bitcoin scene has taken over the vibes now? I do like that. Right? And this is the year 2025 is the year of the vibe in the Bitcoin scene. Right? It's the year of the vibe with paper Bitcoin summer. And the first gathering of the vibes was in, Purchase, New York, and Moe is the headliner. So there was a company called Terrapin Tapes. I don't know if you remember them. I don't. Terrapin Tapes, like, used to sell blank tapes and sell audio equipment, and he used to have to buy blank tapes. And, you you know, if you're buying blank DATs, there weren't a lot of places to buy blank DATs. No. No.
So anyway, they the gathering of the vibes is something that has persisted. I think still in some form today.
[00:55:07] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:55:09] Unknown:
But, you know, it was a Moe headline that I always I like, they, you know, they were they used to do some dead covers, but I think at the at the Gathering of the Vibes, it was, there are some special dead covers like, kid slips my mind, but they were very atypical.
[00:55:30] Unknown:
Okay. Like, I'd like deep like, deep cut covers. Yeah. I remember that 1995,
[00:55:34] Unknown:
I got the worst case of sunstroke like you can imagine. Oh, no. So, like, after the first day, I just spent I spent, like, eighteen hours in a tent just, like, trying just coping with how how scorched I got to let myself get. I mean, I I went to all the sets and everything. Right? It was a camping it was a camp it was a camping festival.
[00:55:57] Unknown:
Sure. Sure. Yeah. I remember those were camp fest. But, is that why you got into Jack Crews after that?
[00:56:02] Unknown:
That was 1995,
[00:56:03] Unknown:
so no. I'm I'm just joking. Yeah.
[00:56:07] Unknown:
So, anyway, you know, I think, you know, we do look to other bands, but they, I think honestly, I didn't really find a healing band in the jam scene that I liked a lot until I found Twiddle. And, I think it's sad that they are not around right now. I really wish they were. Like, I really like, that's a band I wish I could pop in right now and Right now. See where see what city they're in right now Mhmm. And what's happening. You know? And just a little backstory on them. I don't know them that well. I only know them through their music. Like, I don't even I don't know the names of anybody in that band. So, like, I'm not, like, just I'm not, like, a big super fan from that perspective where I can tell you I can tell you who's who and what's what. Right? Right. But you know their backstory. Right? You you know I know the backstory. Yeah. I know the backstory of and this is the thing that I've said in the past that I'm a personal sucker for.
But they had a I don't know if this was a Sid Barrett type character in the band or if it was just a close friend, but this guy died who is this guy very close to them died. And it's a song. They made a song, and the name is Hadda Bagan McRatt. I might have this I might have the story wrong, but this is somebody who is very close to them. And if you follow the lyrics of these songs, he teach it you know, he taught the if the lyrics are correct, he taught the guitar player how to play, basically, how to be as great as he is at guitar, and he's great. Guitar players outstanding. Clearly also plays a hollow body, has that tone, but also has that fluidity with the tray like compositions.
[00:57:56] Unknown:
Yep. But they're openly openly him and the drummer were both very vocal about how much fish influenced them. And they are from Burlington, Vermont.
[00:58:05] Unknown:
Yeah. As it as it happens. But they are a feeling band, and their energy comes from their you know, like, Trey didn't start writing about the death of friends until, you know, act four of his of the career. Right? Yeah. Whereas this this started the band. Yeah. Oh, and you know what this reminds me of? Because I I mentioned Sid Barrett. Right? So when I was, like, thinking about, feeling music, some of it is, like, dangerous. Have you ever felt scared listening to music? Just think along these lines. You know? And Occasionally. Yeah. You know, like, I like, the first time I heard Black Sabbath, I was in seventh grade, and I was like, literally, the music itself scared the shit out of me. Like, I didn't know it was I didn't if I knew the name of the band, I would have been even more frightened. Right? But, like, I I don't even know where I heard it. It just came on. I was like, what the fuck is this? It's it's terrifying.
I remember at the same time same time frame, hearing Guns N' Roses' appetite for destruction. No. And Yeah. I mean, that that frightened me. Like, there was something so raw I remember hearing in there that I was like, it kinda it kinda frightened me. And I it was the first one of the first times I noticed getting frightened by music. I thought it was kinda cool that that was possible. Lo and behold, like, you know, you find out that Ozzy Osbourne was literally trying to make horror movies out of music. Right?
Right. Like, it was a genre that he was trying to pioneer. But, the the song that scared the shit out of me the most, this is gonna sound insane, but, I was I was in overnight camp, and I was sleeping in my bunk. You know? And my counselor came back after a night of drinking, probably smoking a lot of weed, and he throws on shine on you crazy diamond. And, dude, that first, like, that first, like, three minutes of ethereal, like, it's just it's like a organ in the background and David Gilmore doing a little bit of what he does. Yeah. Yep. And and
[01:00:24] Unknown:
the dude, I I wanna say the entire song, dude, it, like, frightened the shit out of me. Yeah. I was gonna I was gonna say, it was my was my the the first music that I heard that was frightening to me. And I forget the one that has, like, a,
[01:00:38] Unknown:
it's almost like a helicopter kinda sound going on in the background. I don't know if it's run. That And you're supposed to be walking away. Gene, the next song on the Yeah. So it's The next album. After shine on you crazy diamond. And this song is about Syd Barrett, like, losing his mind and Yeah. To how they you know? That you know, I guess that's a version of healing too. Right? It's just, like, you know, dealing with trauma. And I I I I thought a lot about it over the course of this week, because, like, it's not, like okay. So, like, I had this insight about maybe, like, what it's such a shame that Twiddle's not around, but, like, Twiddle's overly healing.
Like, the you know, they're like their lyrics are very uplifting. There's a lot of lyrics. Yeah. I don't think there's a band that has more lyrics. They're like Eminem. You know? Like like, the M and M like in the way their songs are. It's just like a lot of words, but they're all very uplifting. And, I don't know. I I I also had this thought that, like, people who are oh, so, like, you know, we talk about builders need healing every once in a while. Right? Yeah. Builders need a little bit of healing. There's people that go through their life healing full time.
[01:01:58] Unknown:
Yeah. Their whole life is in their feelings. They're the Yeah. And they're and they're I think they with their feeling with their healing process. Yeah. That's their identity.
[01:02:06] Unknown:
I think this is the majority of, like, the fucking people celebrating somebody's death. Like, anybody who set like, it's like anybody who threatens their healing is like a becomes the enemy. Like, how dare you yeah. Like, they need their safe space. They need to be healing. They need to be healing all the time. And you see this recovery culture a lot, especially in jam bands. Recovery culture. You know, a lot of people who are just in full time recovery forever. Like, god bless god bless people in recovery because that shit is hard.
[01:02:37] Unknown:
Yep.
[01:02:38] Unknown:
But at some point, you gotta start building again. Yep. Keep them moving. End up you you, like, are in this full time recovery where everything hurts you. Everything's a threat. Everything's a threat to your recovery, and you're not exactly building a strong no. But you're you're not exactly building a strong life Yeah. From that context. So, like, I so I think that, like, in general, the right balance it's like, I love picking on vegans. But, like, if you take a vegan if you take a vegan that, like, once in a while, just sneak some liver in, they probably dominate. They would probably dominate life.
They would do very well in my opinion. So my point is it's like Compared to other vegans. Oh, they would crush other vegans. But, like, you know, builders just need a little bit of healing every once in a while. You can't be like a you can't go through life building nonstop. It's like building muscle. You have to rest. Yep. Every just so you could build more. But our community that we are building is builders. And we're gonna overuse the word and make it really shitty. I hope that doesn't happen. But, like, it is a community of builders. Right?
We're built we are pioneers.
[01:04:05] Unknown:
We are pioneers.
[01:04:06] Unknown:
And, you know, we need building music, and I think we need a little bit of healing music every once in a while.
[01:04:15] Unknown:
Yeah.
[01:04:20] Unknown:
I'm really tempted to stop it there.
[01:04:23] Unknown:
Yeah. I'm with you.
[01:04:24] Unknown:
So I was I waited to see if you had something.
[01:04:27] Unknown:
I was gonna would I I was gonna go into soft spot, but I it would take me too it would take it would take too long. But I could do it. You wanna save it for next time?
[01:04:37] Unknown:
What is it?
[01:04:39] Unknown:
Well, I just wanna talk about and if you're still recording. We can. Yeah. We can just edit that section out. What I've noticed in in Bitcoin since Charlie Kirk, first, obviously, there was an immediate reaction, I think, we all shared of just shock. Yeah. And then there was a little bit of anger, and you could you could probably draw parallels to stages of grief on this. But what I wanna get to is I don't know if I even hit the anger stage yet. I don't I don't know if I felt angry right about it. I I I'm seeing I'm seeing others that are more maybe right leaning, that are a little bit more politically inclined than you and I Yeah. Inclined than you and I Yeah. I get it. With the anger just because they're it's more it's more threatening to them. It's more of their identity.
Yeah. But I'm seeing this uncovering taking place. And it was something that I always thought was absent in the space. And I know I believe his name is Bob Burnett, and I know you have Yeah. Yeah. In private, and I won't I won't divulge here, but have basically uncovered that. Like, you know, Bitcoin isn't all fucking roses and profits, fiat gains. It's not all, you know, we're all fucking rich and our our lives are all perfect. It fixes everything. Bitcoin fixes this.
[01:06:01] Unknown:
What are you talking about? Bitcoin fixes Bitcoin fixes this. What are you talking about?
[01:06:06] Unknown:
Fucking far from it.
[01:06:08] Unknown:
What do you mean? It's the best.
[01:06:13] Unknown:
Even if I was in a fucking vacuum, if I reflect on just just take all my everything that I have to relate to in my world, all the relationships, all the the work that it needs to get done, all the institutions that I interact with, rebuilding my understanding on how to look at that. All of those things. It was hard enough just as an individual, just reconstructing what I thought to be true and kinda rebuilding this sense of, I don't know, presence in in the world that isn't me just being a fucking alien is hard enough. And I just felt like there was always I know it was hard for me, and it's been a strain. Maybe it's because I live in an area that's predominantly left leaning, and Bitcoin, I think, creates independent thinkers, or maybe it just attracts independent thinkers.
And that's what kinda pulls us into the quote, unquote rabbit hole of discovery or rediscovery, relearning. But what comes along with that is is is a lot of, a lot of suffering to be to just put it into a word. A lot of a lot of difficulty, a lot of friction, a lot of disruption into what is normal in our lives. A lot of building. A lot of building. Yes. Any kind of rebuilding. But I don't wanna but it yes. You are you are constantly moving, reconstructing, and trying to create order out of chaos. The chaos that has just now Bitcoin forced you to accept. If I may just add on to that real quick.
[01:07:46] Unknown:
Basically, what Bitcoin has created is a a new goal, a new commitment. For me personally, it was a commitment to a type of freedom I thought was possible now. And whenever you make a commitment, you are now at odds with the world. If you were not at odds with the world, you would not have to make the commitment. You would just be it. You just be it. Right. Okay. So you have to make this commitment and be at odds with the world. And the first thing that you see when you make this commitment is this world that is not is the fucking opposite Yeah. Of what you're committed to everywhere.
It's all you see.
[01:08:42] Unknown:
All you see.
[01:08:44] Unknown:
Right? And it's it's fucking painful. It's painful. And then, you know, there's certain people maybe that you didn't expect to make it so fucking hard. You thought maybe there's certain people that you thought would come along without a lot of without, like, a lot of pain. Yeah. And you're like, fuck, dude. Come on, man. Just Yeah. Can't you just be cool and, like Or just just trust me, bro. Yeah. Like, trust me. Like, I've been enlightened. This is what I might joke. I know. It's kinda it it kinda is it has that.
[01:09:20] Unknown:
And very few things are like that in life. Really, there's only three things in in my experience. And by the way, fish is one of them, and Bitcoin is the other. And the other is Buddhism or meditation. I I think I think everyone could benefit from sitting practice. That could include prayer. I'm not I'm not a I'm a secular Buddhist, if you wanna call me that.
[01:09:40] Unknown:
You can't orange pill people, and you can't fish pill people. Like, it's one of those things where all you could do is live the life, present the case, and be okay with whatever happens.
[01:09:51] Unknown:
So I think you brought up a good point. I think that and you can you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that in the last two years, just about every Bitcoiner I know that has been around for more than a couple years has given up on orange billing. Because it because what what you just said, it just doesn't it doesn't work.
[01:10:11] Unknown:
That whole You know what else doesn't work, though? You know what else doesn't work? Giving up. That's true too. So it's a this is this is a dicey, strange world we live in where, like, you it doesn't work to do either. So that well, all that you have is your commitment and who you wanna be. Yep. And when I want my school to accept Bitcoin, I have to talk to the head of the I have to talk to the head of the school. I don't have to orange pill him. I have to talk to him and let him know why it matters to me. And if orange peeling is a stupid term.
It is. It's the kind of term, like especially, like, I wouldn't say it to fish people. Right? No. It's like, No. It's it's almost it's almost embarrassing to say it in mixed company. You have to you can only say it in a mixed company. Reminds me of the line I wrote about in in Fluffhead, you know, where, like, he fluff it Fluff goes to a banker, asks him for some bills. The banker says, I ain't got that, but I sure got some powerful pills. Right? It's like goes wild. I don't have your money, but I got some drugs if you want some. It's not a pill. You know? It's like No. It's it's you know, I've I engaged in a work in my life that was central to that work was sharing it because, you know, if you couldn't share the if you couldn't share it and you didn't have people in your life on board, then what the things you were committed to were gonna be the difficulty adjustment was gonna be the difficulty is gonna be way too high for you to overcome. Like, we don't have the you may not have the strength to overcome the difficulty of going it completely alone.
So, like, I would say don't give up on orange peeling. Never start orange peeling. Never start. And just share. Just share. Yeah. Just share yourself. You know? Learn to share yourself without an expectation of people, agreeing or getting inspired by you or caring. Like, I mean, this comes from somebody who has four podcasts. You know? Yeah. Like, let my advice on this is learn to share yourself. Never never and then never and never give up on that.
[01:12:26] Unknown:
That's important.
[01:12:28] Unknown:
Because if you can't share yourself see, the reason why this it was so central is because it takes personal it takes power to share yourself. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe you have something worth sharing. You have to you have to really and if you can't and you have people you can't share yourself with, that's you are disempowered to with those people.
[01:12:48] Unknown:
Yeah. It puts you in a little bit of a vulnerable spot. And what I'm seeing as of late, because I don't know if Charlie Kirk was the tipping point, but I'm I'm seeing I'm just observing what I'm seeing. Mhmm. And I feel like there are people's people are there's an uncovering of a little bit of soft spot. Oh, he was a master of sharing himself. That guy Yes. Was a master.
[01:13:07] Unknown:
Talk about vulnerable. And you wanna talk about the on display, the personal power that comes with being good, being a master at sharing yourself Yeah. To anybody in any situation.
[01:13:20] Unknown:
And and never getting hooked emotionally.
[01:13:24] Unknown:
But there's very few people that I've experienced mastery, dude. That's mastery.
[01:13:28] Unknown:
It's mastery. And, he perfected it to the extent that he could in thirty one years. And I like seeing what I what I really just wanna wanna kinda close on is we all have a soft spot. Every human being, even the most evil person in the world that you can think of has a soft spot for their dog or something, maybe tortillas, whatever. And it's good to see that people that I've looked up to in the Bitcoin space, they are kind of revealing their soft spot. And I think it's important that we put ourselves in a little bit more of a vulnerable spot, and maybe this event was was the beginning of that.
[01:14:15] Unknown:
I mean, you know, I it it it goes back to sharing. Right?
[01:14:22] Unknown:
Communication, which is what Charlie was all about. If you wanna get through to people,
[01:14:28] Unknown:
you have to be relatable. Right? And you have to be, you have to have enormous integrity. And remember, not morality, just integrity. Like, you are who you say you are, and people can rely on you when they listen to you and that you're that. Right? Yeah. And then, you know, that's a place that when you start sharing yourself with people, you know, you can build. Right? You can you can have somebody say, I don't give a shit about any of that, and be like, okay. Next person.
[01:15:06] Unknown:
Yeah. Exactly.
[01:15:08] Unknown:
Right? Which that, you know, is what it takes to be successful in the world. It and not like George Costanza. Like, you get fucking flipped out over one person not liking you.
[01:15:22] Unknown:
Right. Right.
[01:15:24] Unknown:
Jody. Jody was her name, if we remember.
[01:15:28] Unknown:
I do remember.
[01:15:30] Unknown:
Why does everyone have to like you? I don't know.
[01:15:33] Unknown:
But they do.
[01:15:35] Unknown:
They have to like me. Yeah. Like, and not, you know, not getting caught up in people not liking you. Yeah. Every Phish fan knows what I'm talking about. They do. Right? Every single one. And I, like, I know that, like, a lot of the people that listen to the show are just Bitcoiners who kinda are on the periphery of fish. Yeah. But they're probably laughing because they probably you can at least get it. You can get why I say that. Right? Yeah. It's to share our love for this band. And, you know, like, I have, on one hand, the amount of friends that decided to go all in with Phish, and I'm lucky that that I'm lucky I got any of them.
[01:16:22] Unknown:
Right.
[01:16:23] Unknown:
But, same you know? So, yeah, I've had thirty years of training before discovering something like Bitcoin being important. Yeah. Really important. Right? And you wanna evangelize, but, like, you really should just share. Just share yourself and just commit commit to being good at sharing.
[01:16:44] Unknown:
Yeah. Don't worry about the outcome.
[01:16:46] Unknown:
Just focus on the process. Well, people can see through it, dude. People can see through The the salesmanship. Yeah. If what's called in order to. Right? People can fucking see that from a mile away. Just be. I guess, is what I'm trying to say is just be. Maybe that's where we cut it.
[01:17:22] Unknown:
And the rain came home down. Me and Ben are standing there with a silver half a crown. So we put our fishing rods, and they tackled on our back. We just stood back and went with our backs against the fence. Rain lit up and the sun came on. We were getting dry. Almost fed a pickup truck that nearly passed us fishbowl. We'll sing songs as we woke up, and we were getting drunk. Met a man from across the road with the sunshine in his eye. He lived all alone in his own life with a great big gathering job. There was fathers
[01:23:46] Unknown:
But it really was an interesting social experiment, COVID, because everybody got told the same thing. The whole world got told the same thing. If you go out unnecessarily, millions will die. And a lot of us said, oh, I'm going out. Yeah. I'm going now and a lot. Yeah. And millions died. It's just we're not that different from the turtles that you're trying to get them not to cross the fucking highway. And they're like, this is where I fuck. I fuck over there. Fuck you. And we're like, please stop. Putting little signs up, don't go. And then fuck you. I'm a turtle. It doesn't we're not that different. We're just a fucking species. And we're just rolling all I am. Many dying old ladies died.
That's what happened. Many dying old ladies finished dying. Here's the way you you gotta look at it. Okay? We're still making more. We're making new old ladies every day. There's a fresh batch coming. They're gonna be great. I was having sex with a woman once and she was so beautiful. I was having trouble not coming. So I pictured her face at 80 years old, and then I came immediately because she's 92. Anyway, One thing I found very interesting was that during the pandemic, a lot of people really liked counting the dead people. That got very popular, was counting the amount of the dead and dying. Do you know how many people are?
Just today. Just today. Do you know how many people died? A pollinator? Just today.
[01:25:59] Unknown:
When do why
[01:26:02] Unknown:
keeping a daily tally. We don't do there's a lot of shit going on that we don't keep a daily tally of how many babies were dropped in a bucket of paint. And I looked that up. I'm not kidding you. It's 30 a day. It's a real problem. I'm serious. A steady 30 babies a day are dropped in buckets of paint. It's not random. It's one guy that won't stop doing it. Yeah. We liked counting them. We liked counting the dead. And And when it got really high, we don't know how to count them anymore. People trying to find different ways to express the number or take it in. Remember January? It was really that was three thousand people every day were dying of COVID. So people started saying this, this is nine eleven every day.
[01:27:01] Unknown:
This is literally
[01:27:04] Unknown:
nine eleven every day. When did we start measuring deaths in nine elevens? When did that become the new how many football fields long is it for mass death? How many nine elevens was World War two? Can we look it up? I know the holocaust was February. 09/11 wasn't that bad. It was just one. Only one nine eleven of people died on nine eleven. That's like nobody died that day. See, it's all relative because then you have those, later remember January was really bad. January was the worst. And then in April, March, April, we all felt better. Everybody's like, oh, it's way better now. It's way better. Way better than January. I looked it up. It was 1,500 people a day.
And everybody's like, it's way better than January. Really? It's half of 09:11 every single day. But that's way better. That would be like if on 09:11 after the first tower went down, you're like, it's not that bad. It's just one. Still got the other one. That's why they made two. It's okay. It's alright to make fun of 09:11. It was a hoax. Alright. Sorry. Anyway.
When I jumped off, I had a bucket full of thoughts.
[00:00:45] Unknown:
Hey. We're here. We are back on the chain.
[00:00:52] Unknown:
Here we are.
[00:00:53] Unknown:
Took us a long time to get back on chain. We should just start saying that since we don't know how to start any episode. Yeah. We just started it took us a long time. Took us a long time to get back on the train. Did you have you did you see last night's show at all? Hey. Do you Fish is on tour right now. Did we know that? Yeah. I caught
[00:01:16] Unknown:
I stumbled into the chalk dust into light from the twelfth.
[00:01:20] Unknown:
Mhmm. The old chalk dust into light. Gotta love it. And, you know, I'm a huge John Fishman fan. And
[00:01:27] Unknown:
this is the first time I've ever actually actually done this where I saw a new I was gonna play, a track from late summer and drum along to it. Because my wife's in Boston, and I can just do whatever the fuck I want when she's not here.
[00:01:44] Unknown:
I can play chalk dust if I want to.
[00:01:47] Unknown:
Right. So I sold the chalk dust into light and just decided without listening to it to pick up, like, mid Chalk Dust Jam Yeah. And just play along with the band. And it was a blast. It was a lot of fun for me to to go in raw dog like that and play along for twenty minutes.
[00:02:09] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna say, we're sitting recording it's September 14. And what is what I'm about to say happened is probably the only time in the history of this show I'll ever be able to probably say this. But, the most recent show was last night in Birmingham, Alabama. Dude, I love I love when Phish plays in the South, dude. I feel like it. You know, let's, like, just piggyback off of, last episode of Grafton. Yeah. And, like, I love when fish is in the South.
[00:02:45] Unknown:
When I see fish in in in Alabama,
[00:02:49] Unknown:
I get so happy. You know? And when they're in Kentucky, I get happy. Yeah. You know, there's nothing like, like, the best the thing that makes me happiest would be an October slash November tour in minor league hockey arenas in the Northeast. Yes. That to me okay. Nothing would be that. Right? But, otherwise, dude, just seeing them in Alabama in the South, I don't know why it makes me so happy. Like, it some really strange things happen when they play in the South. Like, for example okay. When they were in Arkansas a couple of years ago, the most unlikely of people were was seen there.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders was seen at the fish show.
[00:03:38] Unknown:
Wow. I didn't know that.
[00:03:41] Unknown:
Like, you know, like, wild shit happens when they're in the South. Like, you find out, holy shit, dude. These people love fish, man. And Mhmm. It's not it's not like the guys traveling from University of Florida, traveling over to Birmingham to go see the show. These are Alabamans. These are Yeah. Arkansas inns.
[00:03:58] Unknown:
Yep. You know? Guys that work at Walmart are, like, fucking
[00:04:02] Unknown:
waiting years for fish to come to them forever. Like, I don't think they ever played in Arkansas prior to that prior to that. I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah. You know? And, so so cool. Okay. Very cool. And, so opener show opener last night, Birmingham, Alabama. None other than back on the train. Oh, wow. What a nod. Our namesake. The namesake of this podcast. I don't think I'll I don't think we'll ever record at a time that that ever happens again because first of all, it's not a very popular opener, I don't think. You know? It's not. It's not. Super common opener. No. Like, I think one of the, trade tour shows in '24 opened with back on the chain, and it was in, like, back on the train. And it was a half step too high. It was, like, in the wrong key.
Oh, really? And they played it the whole song. They played the whole song that way. Like, they traced song in that key. They never changed out of it.
[00:05:04] Unknown:
Pretty cool. Interesting. Because that happens quite a bit with back on the back on the train. I I need to make sure I I enunciate that because I wanna say the title of the podcast. We're back on the chain. We're back on the chain. But Fish got back on the train and, you know,
[00:05:18] Unknown:
I was really like, so I was because it was the show opener, it's on YouTube. Right? Because they they show they always show, like, the set one, set two openers.
[00:05:28] Unknown:
Yeah. I have to click into the live the live, column on YouTube to see that. I'll check it out. I definitely made a mental note, like, dude, we're finally opening one of our podcasts with the song. That's so cool. Right.
[00:05:41] Unknown:
Definitely gonna happen. Yeah. And while we're talking about back on the train, it's I should mention that it's my daughter Kayla's favorite fish song.
[00:05:51] Unknown:
Interesting. It's in my top five. It's in my top five. Really? It's in your top five song. I didn't sound like a top five. Because it's a drumming. It's a it has a cool shuffle to to if John Fishman has a shuffle, it's it's that it's that song. So for the same reason,
[00:06:06] Unknown:
the reason my daughter loves it so much okay. There are some really cool YouTube videos that are just set to Phish songs. Okay. There's a couple it's funny that Grafton brought up the Muppets last time because he said that Paige is like Paige looks like a Muppet, and he nailed it. You know? So funny. He did. And, but there are a couple of really good, YouTube videos somebody made, like, really long time ago. If you look it up, you'll say they'll say it was posted, like, sixteen years ago. But, the the picture of Nectar version of llama is played and, like, it's like Doctor. T's and the electric, the electric mayhem.
You familiar with the Muppet band? Vaguely. Yeah. You know? And it's funny because back in the nineties, right, people used to compare Fishman to animal of that. Animal was, like, the character, the Muppet of that band. He was the drummer. Yeah. But there was a lot of that. There was, like, a lot of that talk. Like, Fishman is like animal, and they were like, you know, we didn't have memes back then. Yeah. You know? But every once in a while, somebody would post a cool picture or make a cool T shirt, and, you know, the drummer of Fish would be portrayed as animal from the doctor teeth. But then somebody made just a really great clip video of doctor T's, the electric mayhem, you know, the that's the Muppet Show band playing llama. There were a couple of others that weren't as good, but that was a really good one.
Well, again, I put these in the show notes. Yeah. That's funny. There is a YouTube video set to back on the train that's like a like, circa, like, '19 it's like an it's like a nineteen thirties Disney. I've seen that. No. I've seen that. Right? And it's like you see that, like, with the shuffle you speak of is like the train going up and down. Mhmm. Just chugging along. Yeah. Syncopated. Yep. You know? And then you just see that train barely chugging up the tracks and it's picking up tracks with them. It's really well animated. Yeah. And for some reason, I think that just resonated so much with my daughter. Like, visually, you know, visually, odd in an audially, however, whatever that word is. Yeah. Yeah. And that It all comes together nicely. Yeah. So that's always been our favorite song. Yeah.
[00:08:19] Unknown:
Fun fact. The guy who brought me to my first fish show that I live with for just one summer, which in college is eight weeks.
[00:08:26] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:08:27] Unknown:
He used to do this thing habitually, and I kind of I thought it was stupid at first, but I learned to enjoy it. He would put fish on. This is before I'd ever been to a show and put on the Cartoon Network Yeah. And would on mute. And what would happen is there would be there would be portion just like when you play Darkseid with whatever, like the Wizard of Oz or what you know, the things that people have done to sync up things visually with music, eventually, your brain would because your brain interpolates. Right? It draws connections that maybe aren't really there. But given enough time, it will draw, like, a synchronicity between the two, and it's it's it is it's fun. I got I got two words for you.
[00:09:13] Unknown:
DuckTales.
[00:09:15] Unknown:
100%.
[00:09:18] Unknown:
I feel like every fish fan has experienced DuckTales on mute with fish in the background.
[00:09:23] Unknown:
Oh,
[00:09:24] Unknown:
absolutely. And it like, the fucking speaking ends up lining up completely. Like, it is Oh, that's funny. Same. It is absolutely like, I mean, I don't know how I don't know if, like, today's this is back to, like, the difficulty adjustment on weed. But, like Yeah. If you if you had nineties weed, DuckTales, and some fish tapes, you were in for a ride.
[00:09:48] Unknown:
Oh, oh, yeah. And by the way, all these all these sit downs with, Cartoon Network on mute was, there was definitely kind involved every time. So it wasn't just I mean, it's just for some reason, it's it's the store it's like the straw that stirs the drink there, but, like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I'm gonna tell you, DuckTales is is there. DuckTales is interesting. You bring that up because, you know, Scrooge McDuck and what famously in the intro dives into a silo filled with gold. Maybe that's maybe that's a hidden hidden connection.
[00:10:16] Unknown:
It might be. You know? We might have to do an entire series of just this weed based cartoon. This is like a thing. You have to do a whole episode on this. It is a thing. Yeah. My barber. Shout out Rick. Rick Job. That's his name? Rick Jeff? His name is Rick. Job. And if Okay. But I think I'm gonna go over it. You've seen Rick Job stickers. He He was in the sticker game a long time ago, and he's just started he's one of these guys that, like, if like, every aesthetic he has is cool. You know what I mean? Every choice he's this guy every choice is so I knew him from, doing stand up, and he, like, was that guy. He, like, had that he had that cool factor about him. Just everything, you know, everything he did. You know? Like, they're the hipsters were in, but he was, like, above it. And there you know? Pre hipster. Yeah. Yeah. So he cuts hair, just, you know, Rick jobs. And I go, you know, I go once a month, and I do the coffee meetup at La Colombe in Fishtown.
Shout out coffee meetup at La Colombe. Mhmm. And then I go to Rick's. And he always has something. Did he had okay. So he had, like, a video game that was on it was on his TV, and it was just like some role playing game that was being broadcast. But then there was this music behind it that it real again, like, I I had a DuckTales Fish flashback, and I was dead sober. That's awesome. Yeah. And I don't I've never seen this video game, but it was like an kind of an old school RPG with, like, you know, some care elf character with a sword, you know, and talking to people in old, you know, old school RPG way. And I don't know. It all just fit it fit with the music. Every yeah. I think it's, like, hard to unsee. Whatever that is that you see, the ductile sync up, the Cartoon Network sync up. Once you see it, you can be sober as hell for the next thirty years and never unsee that.
[00:12:17] Unknown:
Yep. Right? Yeah. It's a phenomena.
[00:12:21] Unknown:
Yeah. So, anyway, this is all because, back on the train was done. We we gotta find the we're gonna dig these up. I promise we're gonna dig these up and put them in the show notes.
[00:12:30] Unknown:
Yeah. And and the fact that it's Alabama on the heels of the Grafton episode is pretty is pretty curious as well. And, of course, and for some reason
[00:12:38] Unknown:
you know, so you in on YouTube, they always play their opening song, and then they play, like, a minute of the second song.
[00:12:45] Unknown:
Yep.
[00:12:46] Unknown:
The second song caught me by surprise, and it shouldn't have. The second song was Cities, and they're in Birmingham, Alabama. That's so good. And for those who don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, there's an explicit list. The Cities is sung by Talking Heads, and there's a song there's a lyric that I forget to mention forget to mention Birmingham, home of Elvis in the ancient Greeks.
[00:13:10] Unknown:
Well, that's Memphis.
[00:13:12] Unknown:
Oh, sorry. Well, that's What was Birmingham? Oh, it's in there. Memphis. What's there's a lot of, god. What is it? There's a lot of something A lot of ghosts. A ghost ghost in Birmingham. A lot of ghosts in a lot of houses. Do I smell it? Yeah. A lot of ghosts in a lot of houses. That's right.
[00:13:29] Unknown:
Do I smell I have to pull I have to pull up the lyric. Yeah. A lot of people. Home cooking. It's only the river.
[00:13:35] Unknown:
So, like, Birmingham yeah. Obviously, they've never been in Burn I don't think they've ever played in Birmingham, Alabama.
[00:13:41] Unknown:
I don't think so either. They always play Oak Mountain.
[00:13:44] Unknown:
Yeah. So I'm sure they made a mental note to play that song when they're in Birmingham. Right? So back on the train is like we're back on the train in Alabama. It took us a long time to get back to Alabama. So I feel like that is a pretty cool nod. And I didn't really analyze the set list. I don't know what else is in the set list. I just know those two songs. Alright. I got the lyric. It's like they put a little thought into playing those two songs.
[00:14:09] Unknown:
And No. They, like, they they absolutely did. And, Fish does Fish does this.
[00:14:15] Unknown:
Fish is a genre. Like, Fish is a genre that does this shit. They'd act I mean, you know, like, how Spinal Tap makes made fun of, the band, you know, that's, like, you know, got the wrong got the wrong city. Right? They made fun but that's, like, what bands used to do to acknowledge the city that they were in and you know? Yep. That's how Fish does it. But that's good. They do it. That's that's good. You know, they do it that way.
[00:14:40] Unknown:
So it's verse two. A lot of rich people in Birmingham, a lot of goats in a lot of houses. Look over there. Dry ice factory. Good place to get some thinking
[00:14:55] Unknown:
There we go. That's the verse.
[00:14:58] Unknown:
There it is. So if you're just getting into fish, just know, like, they do do that shit. Like, they will, in a very sly roundabout way, acknowledge the city they're in, especially if they it's a rarity that they're there and they're, like, they're definitely excited about it. If I'm excited about it, they're excited about it. Right? How fucking cool is it that they're in Alabama for fuck's sake? Right? Yeah. And they've done Sweet Home Alabama.
[00:15:25] Unknown:
Yeah. Good. In that state in in in Oak Mountain, they've done Sweet Home Alabama. They did it one time. Yes. Like, that's a gay way to do it. Right? That's the obvious kind of the gay way to do it. It was more of like tongue in cheek. Right?
[00:15:36] Unknown:
And it's like sometimes Fish will do that. Roundabout. Fish will do that enough so that, you you know, you might think they'll do the obvious thing. Right. They're like a perfect, poker player where they, like, you know, they give you enough to to make you think all options are on the table, but they always they always pull the right one.
[00:15:57] Unknown:
Yeah. And you, you know, you can say the baker's dozen was that, like, compressed into into a t. Yeah.
[00:16:04] Unknown:
Okay. So there well, I I told you I had a pretty good I had a pretty good start start conversation.
[00:16:11] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:16:12] Unknown:
That was, that was a good show opener for us right right right there. And now it's gonna be, like, we don't I don't have a smooth segue into No. There's no way to do it. There's no smooth way to do this. You just jump right in. I have a I I I have a clear intention for what I wanna talk about today. By the way, I think this is episode 20, so that's kinda cool. It is cool. Alright. Let's just do this, dude. So
[00:16:37] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:16:38] Unknown:
You know, I wonder if I wonder like, the conversation we're about to have, I wonder if it's happening on tour. So, like, Fish is really good at being insulated from what's going on in the world. In general, I find that whatever's going on in the world isn't it's not happening inside the arena. When you enter that arena, you're not even thinking about you're, you know, you're not you're just not thinking about the world. It's and in forty years, it's just everyone's gotten a really strong muscle for the most part at, being present and being in a bubble. Right? The show itself is a little echo chamber of, like, this is it. There's nothing else going on. Yep.
And, you know, I saw that breakdown in four point o. By four point o, for those that don't know, that was the beginning 2020, 2021 when they get like, came back on door in 2021. I mean, I knew everyone was gonna bitch about it on the Internet in 2020. But in 2021, you know, I definitely saw a break what I would call a breakdown of, you know, I was at Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve of 02/2002. And I remember, like, I remember walking there were there were there were cops with AKs on every corner. I'd never seen New York so militarized, yet nobody talked about nine eleven or anything inside that building. Like, I really, really could distinctly remember this.
And it it's one of those things that, like, all every time that happens and you you don't even notice it till you leave. You're like, you know, it's messed up. No one talked about any of that shit. Right? Yeah. And that's why I say it was kinda noticeable in 2021 that things were, the walls were breaking down a little
[00:18:33] Unknown:
bit. Yeah.
[00:18:35] Unknown:
Because in like, you know, there were fucking mask there was mask shit going on out in the fucking outdoor venues. I remember Hershey. Yeah. Yes. Hershey was, like you know, it was annoying and stupid. Right? And people were like He was so dumb. Annoyed, getting annoying about, like, mask and shit. And mind you, like, I don't wanna I don't wanna take us back to that moment or anything like that. No. No. You know, fish shows we talked about whoops and the whoop flu. You know, fish shows aren't exactly known for their cleanliness and sanitary you know, fucking sanctity.
So, like, it's you know, the deranged went went deranged. And all like, I I only say this to say and this is maybe like, as I started getting into Bitcoin right at that time, I couldn't like, it was it really bothered me and upset me that it felt like it felt like the end of an era. It felt like the fish thing was over from that standpoint as being an assist. Interesting. Now maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe I was premature because I tend to think that I tend to think they got it back. And I so, like, okay. The elephant in the room right now is, you know, look. We the Charlie Kirk assassination was is now, what, four days ago?
[00:19:54] Unknown:
Yep.
[00:19:57] Unknown:
I don't know if anybody in Birmingham, Alabama or Louisville, Kentucky when they're all riding the rail or sitting at the show is talking about it. Okay? Right. But Jason and I wanna talk about it. Yes. We do. And we wanna talk about it in the context of music. So that's the thing that I wanna talk about today. It's not that I wanna talk about Charlie Kirk per se. I wanna talk about, us, the crowd, and what happens to us when we have to deal with something like that. And just in case there's any confusion about where I stand, like, I'm very shook.
Okay? Yes. I'm not a celebrator.
[00:20:45] Unknown:
No. And I would have a We are not celebrators.
[00:20:48] Unknown:
I would have a big problem in public dealing with somebody doing that in my presence.
[00:20:53] Unknown:
Yeah. Me too.
[00:20:55] Unknown:
And, look, I've read I read a lot like, in 2020, you know, I read a lot of, anthroposophical material. That anthroposophical, I mean, is like, it's sort of the way of thinking that, is known it's, like, known to have, been, like, pioneered at least in modern times by Rudolf Steiner who founded the Waldorf schools, and he was, like, an incredible renaissance man. And, you know, he was championing. He didn't invent it, but he was championing certainly. And he was prop he's probably the person responsible for bringing this way of thinking into modern times.
Check it out. It's anthroposophy. I have friends. Maybe I'll bring a maybe I'll bring a friend on one of these times to explain it. What it, like, what it really is all about. But, you know, it's very, you know, it's very focused on human being, in my estimation. Dude, if anybody is, like, screaming at at the fucking phone right now because they know and I'm fucking this up, like, send me a boot. Send, yeah, send a small boost and just go off and correct me. But, the the way I understand it is there's, like, there are three selves. You have a physical self, a spiritual self, and an astral self.
I'm not even that sure really what astral self means. I just know that it's not something that is here.
[00:22:30] Unknown:
Yeah. The cosmic self. Let's say. Yeah.
[00:22:34] Unknown:
What I was reading in 2020 in that literature is even Steiner's writings. And Steiner died in the early nineteen hundreds, his main like, the main time of his life Well, he was alive long enough for Hitler to hate him. So, like, the main time of his life, I think, was mid eighteen hundreds to mid nineteen hundreds.
[00:22:55] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:22:57] Unknown:
But there was a book written called it was about pandemics and how, like, you know, they could be caused by basically, like, global trauma. You know? Mhmm. Like, everyone kind of experiencing serious trauma at the same time ends up causing, like, sicknesses. You know? It'll manifest that. Well, it could actually be caused by it because of the actual Because everyone is Because of the actual physical reaction and what the Reduced immune system or something like that. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Something like that. So, like, that's like, in that backdrop, you know, where does music fit in in a where does music fit in an event in an in an event like that? Right?
Like, I think music is very can be very healing. Can be if it's meant for that or if it's if, you know, some if if you re if people are really using it for healing, it could you know, music has a real place there. Right? Absolutely. And when we were talking about, you know, we talked on Thursday right after it happened. Kinda, you know, we were just kinda both blabbering. Like, didn't re you know, it's just impossible to make sense. Right? Yeah. In my mind, it was just, like, one of the most senseless things I've ever seen in my life, and I'm still really coping with the loss of it. You know? And for the record, you know, I, like, I don't know why I don't know why I hate that people have to reflectively say. It's almost like say the, you know, say the line, Bart. Well, you don't have to agree with everything he says. You know? Like, it feels like a say the line Bart thing already.
Yeah. But I happen not to align with them on a lot of things. Happy not to. Same here. Yeah. I don't That's not the point. I just I can't believe what was lost. I just can't believe what was lost in a second, and it's it's, it's shaken me. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of the way I've chronicled my life in the last thirty plus years is where, you know, kinda where I was at fish shows. Like, what was I feeling at fish shows? Did I did I know about this? And that's why I think I, you know, I remember the MSG show and thinking, wow. It's not that we were all over nine eleven or anything, but we were over it enough to enjoy the fish show and not have it in our consciousness at all.
[00:25:27] Unknown:
Right.
[00:25:28] Unknown:
Except except when the song balls of the cave and everyone at the same time decided it was that it was WTC, World Trade Center, and about that when it wasn't. But everybody decided to see it. So so it's interesting that, like, we all got over it enough to, like, be present for the show. But then, like, the then, like, the entire fandom of fish just, like, all locked in that, oh, no. Walls of the cave must be like, there obviously has to be a song about it. There can't like, there's no way there's not. And this song is very weakly coded and has very suggestive lyrics. Right? Like, if you ever need the names of those you couldn't save, you know, there, you know, there might have been an etching or or a marker of a grave Mhmm. Maybe on the walls of the cave. You know? Like, it was very suggestive, and we all, like, holy shit.
But at the mall you know, on on 12:31 in that building, walking through cops with AKs throughout the whole city, it was never there. It was not in anybody's mind. And so, like, I think of myself at those shows, all these shows, and I'm like you know, and I kinda judge where I was in mentally. Like, where was I mentally? Was I okay mentally with a lot of this? Right? Yeah. This is something that's I can't imagine. I mean, I feel like I need a show pretty bad too. Yeah. You know? But, like, I just can't I can't imagine not thinking about it right now. I can't imagine the show being that powerful to just completely take me out of my grief at the moment.
[00:26:58] Unknown:
Yeah. Especially given that we're, you know, post Bitcoin. And I don't wanna sound too trite.
[00:27:06] Unknown:
But, I know. I totally get you. Keep going. I I
[00:27:10] Unknown:
I discovered Bitcoin or I went down the rabbit hole. I was you know, I discovered Bitcoin in 2017, but I didn't really do the deep dive until early late twenty twenty, early twenty twenty one. And you brought up, like, the Hershey shows, which were, I think, were '22. Nope. They were '21. Okay. So twenty twenty
[00:27:36] Unknown:
to two, we got AC. We got the Atlantic City. That's right. That's right. We got the Beach Run.
[00:27:41] Unknown:
But, and I'll say this. I don't know if it was the only shows of 2020, but I was in Mexico February 2020.
[00:27:48] Unknown:
They they were. They were the only on fish shows. These are the only shows. So
[00:27:54] Unknown:
They were the big names. Nobody to not comp nobody went to those. Yeah. It was a small room. But, not to compare COVID with nine eleven because I think they're two totally different events.
[00:28:07] Unknown:
But Okay. I will tell the Louis CK joke when the time is right.
[00:28:12] Unknown:
Okay. I like that. But we were when we flew down to Mexico and I we had a big crew that year. We had, like, fourteen fourteen of us went. Yeah. And it was my second year going. Some of them, it was their they had to come to everyone. So sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, fifth one. And I was blown away. This was at Barcelo, by the way. It wasn't at the New Moon Palace, which is where they hold on now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was the Barcelo. Last year, the Barcelo. Purple chairs for anybody that went to, Barcelo. The you know what purple chairs means? And No. Is this a Noster reference? No. It's it it it should be.
There was just the way Barcelo was set up when you walked out of the venue, there was a bar. The closest bar to the venue was outside, and they had purple chairs. So everybody was like, where are we gonna meet purple chairs? It was the meeting point. It was like the like the Ferris wheel. I had a festival.
[00:29:08] Unknown:
It's like the old Greenpeace table.
[00:29:11] Unknown:
And there were glass tables everywhere, and every there was free and open drug use. It was like I felt like I we were in Bolivia.
[00:29:17] Unknown:
Glass table in a five star room.
[00:29:20] Unknown:
Yeah. Good one. But when we flew down, shit was getting pretty dicey.
[00:29:26] Unknown:
Dude, my experience in Mexico was very similar in '22, by the way. And that's, like, probably that happens to be the last last fish show I was at.
[00:29:35] Unknown:
Wow. We gotta take you to a show. We should've went to the man. But, like, dude, I think I was really shocked by, like, the extremity of the drug use that I was doing there down there. It was so open, and and I almost felt like I got the false insecurity like, oh, drugs are illegal in Mexico. I was like, no. They're not. You're gonna get arrested. But, anyway Anyway,
[00:29:53] Unknown:
we digress. Go ahead. Knew that
[00:29:56] Unknown:
the gravity of COVID was already starting to take hold of everyone before we even left to go to Mexico. And I have to I'm I'm just gonna say this. When we were there, there was very when when when Fish was playing, there was very little feel that people were thinking about that in those moments. Like, it really was an escape.
[00:30:18] Unknown:
It really does. Day. There was the day the day was the twentieth. I wanna say it was the twentieth that the market shit itself. And it was like that's when everybody just sort of panicking and losing their minds. Like, oh, shit. This is a night now. And I think Of course, there was, like, a little bit of a moral panic prior to that.
[00:30:38] Unknown:
But Right. And I think we flew home on the twenty second. Yeah. So that Friday was was the, like, night night one of the run.
[00:30:46] Unknown:
It's just like that in '22 was the day like, we were there in '22, but the third night was the day then the the day we went into Ukraine.
[00:30:56] Unknown:
Oh, no shit. Okay. I forgot about that that there was a tie in there. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. So yeah. So I just wanted to reaffirm that Phish, it's so focused on the music. People are so present during the shows that it it we just gave two pretty pretty pretty supreme examples of, like, world events that were should be all consuming. That that fish seems to even rise above that.
[00:31:26] Unknown:
Yes. It's the the yeah. The immune system in a show is incredible. And, you know, the it's characterized as what official really means. Like, you could be you could have the weight of the world on top of you, But it all goes away when you walk in those doors. It's incredible. And then there's a reason why we give our lives to this thing. There really is a reason. You know? It's very special. Like, it's a special atmosphere. It's not just the band. It's just a special special atmosphere where it all goes away for three hours.
[00:32:03] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:32:08] Unknown:
So what we were talking about, what I think we wanna talk about is this notion of healing. And, this is on the heels of, like last our last episode was a lot of fun. Fun. I loved it. I loved Grafton. Shout out Grafton. Hope you're listening. Hope you, you know, hope you got back on the back on the chain with us here. Well, my like, literally, one of my favorite parts of the episode is when he started roasting just roasting fish
[00:32:40] Unknown:
so much. And And then he's like, dude, I'm making fun of your favorite band, and we're like, we don't care. I gotta tell you, dude. It's one thing
[00:32:47] Unknown:
as a comedian. Okay? Like, it's one thing to roast what these guys look like. It's another thing to just, like, roast the musical, like, the worst parts of it and be hilarious. And Grafton def like, you could tell he was in with a crew of people that could that had the ability to just lock in on some of the funniest things about fish that suck. You know? Yeah.
[00:33:10] Unknown:
And I was music. It's like, yeah. Maybe maybe he's got a point there.
[00:33:15] Unknown:
So that was, like, that I wanna say that was my favorite part of that episode.
[00:33:20] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:33:21] Unknown:
Having said that, I think we had a little bit of an insight this week because, we started thinking about healing music. So I have a friend, Asher. Met him at Lake Satoshi. Shout out, buddy. Mhmm. You know, at some point in the last four days, he just sent me a text. No words. It was just a link to, a Jerry song Jerry Jerry Band song. God, this would be a better If you if you said it to me, it would be a better story. To me, I can play it. I can do it. No. I understand. Yeah. I can get that If it didn't escape me, but, oh, and it's that's right. And it stoned me. That's the song.
And, like, you know, it's like, okay. A buddy sends me a link to a song in this time. Doesn't need to say any words. Right? And he did literally sent sent no other words for probably a day. Right? Mhmm. I did and I listened to it. It really was like it really hit. You know? It hit nice. It made me think, like, that certain music is just ideal for healing. You know? Jerry's voice. Jerry's voice, the dead. You know? And so then I clicked back I clicked back to this conversation we had how it's like one of the, like, like, the legitimate criticisms of Fish. And then it's like, I don't think he would have said it if he wasn't on if it if this podcast wasn't like a fish based podcast. Right? But when he was talking about how, you know, deeply feeling widespread is, right, how deeply feeling the dead are, and he's like, you don't get that from you enjoying myself. Right? And he's not wrong. Right? Mhmm. Not wrong. He's not wrong.
The so I think the insight I had is that fish is not healing music. At first that first and foremost. Right? Like, fish just isn't so then what are they? Right? What distinguishes, like, what distinguishes what they do from, like, the feeling healing music? Right? Yeah.
[00:35:29] Unknown:
And do you mind if I if if I I wanna take a stab at that when you're done. Okay.
[00:35:33] Unknown:
You wanna take a stab at it now, or you want do you want me to Sure. Yeah. That way, I won't interrupt your flow.
[00:35:39] Unknown:
If if I were to retort Grafton, which I didn't wanna I didn't wanna to retort. Yeah. I didn't wanna I'm pretty fucking far from okay, which Huddl quoted in one of his master blog post. It wasn't this blog, but, which I I noticed. Very very few people I'm sure did. But, my retort would be, I think Fish's music is more transcendent than White Trapani could even ever dream to be. Call it spiritual. I don't wanna call it spiritual because it's really not, in the traditional sense. Most people tie spirituality into religion, and it's I'd say it's transcendent. It's, if you wanna get into the, like, what you were talking about with, like, astral, like, astral projection, like, you can do that with fish music. You can beam yourself to another reality,
[00:36:34] Unknown:
another universe. This is the most retorted take I think I've ever heard.
[00:36:42] Unknown:
I am highly retarded, so
[00:36:45] Unknown:
that means then. But but it's like it's like, I'm with you. Keep going, please. This is like like, you're blowing my mind.
[00:36:51] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, that's just my that's my that's that's it. So yeah. So
[00:36:56] Unknown:
so I think to I think to boil it down and make it really simple, I I thought of fish as, like, building
[00:37:05] Unknown:
music. Yeah. I like that because it obviously ties into Bitcoin. Right? The dead
[00:37:10] Unknown:
Accuracy. The dead is healing music. Fish is building music. And, like, building so I started I guess, I was on I had a lot of conversations in the last two weeks. You know? I had, we did we did our podcast Sound Coffee with Otis and John. Yep. Two builders. I haven't listened to that yet, by the way. I need to listen to that. Yeah. Check it out. Listen the whole way through because we had two I had a second conversation with Otis about building. And Okay. It was like we were supposed to read the boosts, which we really should do here too.
We got some really sweet boosts, and I I I wish we paid tribute a little more. I don't Yeah. I think on on this is just a interlude, but Otis is the first one of my podcast partners to really figure out how to feel boost without breaking the flow of our conversation. Yeah. First, the flow of the show, which is that we do a second segment after the after the post show outro music, and then we just have the conversation about the boosts. Oh, that's cool. And so if you wanna listen, listen, but we wanna make sure that it's there and people are acknowledged.
[00:38:15] Unknown:
And if you have to, you could record it. You could record it in two parts if you actually had to. Right? Yeah. Because it's like the it's bifurcated.
[00:38:23] Unknown:
I mean, my I get so I get boosted so rarely that it's normally not a thing. But we do get some sweet boosts on the show now. We're starting to find some guys that are, like, really, wanna reach out, and I appreciate you guys. And so we we'll figure out what to do with the boosts. But, I was doing the boost the boost segment with Otis, which we couldn't actually do because fountain I couldn't read them. But we had a whole another conversation about building. Building it was building physically versus building digitally, But the light bulb went off for me that, like, building is violent.
Building is like, you are really, taking a world that doesn't want to be built, and you're building on it. You're creating you're creating order,
[00:39:12] Unknown:
out of out of entropy and this is chaos. Right? But you're physics there's physics involved. You're moving atoms around. It's painful, and there are consequences.
[00:39:21] Unknown:
Yeah. Right? And to me, that's fish. Fish is especially, like, you know, when they came up in the eighties and nineties, and they they were not very accessible. Even today, we still see the jokes on Twitter. Right? That life saving gun segment, you know, and somebody posted it and said, this is what fish fans this is what people don't listen to fish. The fish sounds like. Like, that old joke is still going on.
[00:39:50] Unknown:
Because The first comment did you did you catch the first comment, by the way? Fans that could yeah. Yeah. This is this is what fish sounds like to fish fans. Yeah. But, like, the fact that joke is still going on because
[00:40:01] Unknown:
fish is, because they're building music. They're like Yeah. And it's not not to say that all music that's inaccessible is necessarily building. Right? Right. Some of it's just not good.
[00:40:14] Unknown:
Yep.
[00:40:17] Unknown:
Like, there's this guy, Bubba, who's the man. Met him at Lake Satoshi. I know I know Bubba. I've I've listened to two angry cons a couple of times. It's something else. Bubba's the fucking man, and Bubba's a radio guy. And, you know, we I didn't realize how much he was on Twitter until it's like one you know? It's like, you're, like, really in the matrix. Like, I met him, and then all of a sudden, I see him on Twitter all the time. Yeah. But, like, he, like, was saying, like, yeah. Phish is awesome. I just don't like them. I but they're awesome. Like, they're clearly awesome. They're they're they're, like, they're you know? Which is, like, that's typically what people who know music who don't like them think. Like, oh, they're excellent, but they not my thing. Right?
Because it's painful. Like, for for me personally, I think I've talked about it on the show before. Like, for me personally, it was healing. For me personally Yes. I felt like I found something that was, like, a puzzle piece. That Yep. It was like a puzzle it was like a missing puzzle piece or rearranged everything in a in a correct way in my brain. Yeah. But I think to the common person, you know, it's not that it's not very accessible. It's It's not very accessible. I'm trying to You're what Phish is trying to do is like, what they were trying to do was pioneer, like, the style of music that was heavily composed, highly instrumental, but danceable.
Mhmm. And, you know, because you had a guy who was a gifted composer, and Scott Trey, who's it's just an incredible like, you know, 16 years old composes the divide you know, divided sky and Right. You know, just place it for his dad, and his dad's like, well, I no longer worry about you making it as a musician. Like, that is you know, like, these little he has these moments in his life. And that sounds beautiful. So then it's like you can be beautiful and yet not feeling. Right? Yeah. You're still building. You're really rearranging.
You you know? I I think they were building foundation, and you don't go forty years with the same band. It's unprecedented. So, like, I'd say that they built some they really did build themselves into something that could exist for forty plus years. Yeah. On the back of music that's not maybe the most heartfelt. Right. Not very you know, not the kind of music you look for when you're down I mean, we all have used look. Fish is the soundtrack of our life, and so we've all been down and out and have been we use them therapeutically. Right?
Yeah. But it's not that kind of music for people.
[00:43:06] Unknown:
Yeah. And I agree this whole builder idea, and I'm, you know, I'm things are clicking. Gears are turning in my head. In order to be a builder in this world and have it be you know, we live in a world where you the the main the main reason why humans do anything is is money. Money drives human action for the most part. So when we talk about building, typically I might argue building But that's okay. Let's keep it going. But but just to make my point, I'm gonna Let's call money something portion of it. Very general. Let's call money something. Maybe it's maybe it's capital. May Is it about capital? Yeah. Let's say capital. Let's say capital.
[00:43:47] Unknown:
We need to we need to suspend how you didn't care about sounding trite when you said that. No.
[00:43:54] Unknown:
Well, Bitcoin is money. So let's just check that off the list.
[00:44:00] Unknown:
And gold is money. But, I thought I thought you were make I thought you were making a dir like, some dirange knots statement. Snow. So Bitcoin is money.
[00:44:10] Unknown:
No. No. Say something obvious. Yeah.
[00:44:14] Unknown:
I think Bitcoin is money.
[00:44:17] Unknown:
Sorry. It's I I don't think it. It just is. I don't my my opinion doesn't doesn't doesn't matter.
[00:44:24] Unknown:
Anyway, sorry. Go ahead. Anyway, so
[00:44:28] Unknown:
as somebody who's built myself, and I've usually done it for a, you know, corporation, but I've I've built products. I've built physical things that you know, medical devices that people walk around permanently in their body. And in order to do that successfully, you you can't just build stuff just for the sake of building stuff. You need to improve upon what's already there. You need to innovate. And what just occurred to me is the reason why fish is maybe not accessible is I think you're dead on, that they were really trying to do something that wasn't done before.
And you could argue the dead did type two jams, but I'm sorry. I've listened to a lot of dead jams, and it's not fish. It's not they don't change fish. I've heard someone describe early, like, when I was first getting into fish, this is still in the nineties, that Trey's ability to change modes of playing. Moe he they they use the term modes, and I don't know as a guitar player if that resonates with you. But I think, like, over time, the whole band can now change modes. Unlike any other band on a planet.
[00:45:34] Unknown:
Like, there's a technical term for a mode, which I don't think that's how you're using it. Like Okay. The the mode just repeat. Like, Dorian, Millox, Idian, and Phrygian. Like, there's a technical term for, like, what mode you're it's almost like the key you're in, like, the Yeah. Whereas they can go from they can transition from, like, styles of music too, like, on a dime. On a dime. Yeah. And no other bank can do got a bluegrass, like, on a dime.
[00:45:58] Unknown:
On a dime. In in a in the context of a of a jam. Yeah. So in that regard, I think Fish really was building something
[00:46:07] Unknown:
in the Let's make it I wanna make it clear because I wanna be I wanna be clear about Okay. The dead. Like, when they were doing the acid tests, I think in those in that moment, they had a point of view that, that it was gonna work. And that was the world had never seen that before.
[00:46:28] Unknown:
What was the goal of that? Describe the acid test for for me and for everybody else. Everybody would be on acid and enjoy the show, including the band. What what was it sounds like there was a there was a they were hoping they would had a certain outcome. What were they what were they trying to do? The outcome was that it would be good music and they would It would just be a good show. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. And
[00:46:46] Unknown:
at the time, this was, I wanna say, in the PigPen era. The dead might have been a building band back then where they were not you know, like, they they didn't really become this heartfelt Americana until Jerry took over, until Pig Hen was gone. And they I see. They were a blues band, really. Right? They were a blues band that was very psychedelic. It's like a you know? So, like, they and I think they were pretty hard driving even in the the the sixties, early seventies. And then when they became more of a spacey Americana Americana band with the space space was still new, and they were fucking around with that.
Mhmm. But as an Americana, right, like, you'd listen to the song, like, Deal. It's like, dude, that's just Americana. You know what I mean? Like, it's the it's like, when I'm down and out, that's the kinda that's what I wanna really hear. I wanna hear songs like that.
[00:47:48] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:47:49] Unknown:
I wanna hear songs about guys getting beat up in card games for some reason. You know? Yeah. Like, just take me to, like, that time. Take me to, you know, fucking Amarillo, Texas. It's somehow yeah. Like, somehow Jerry Garcia, this, son of a fisherman, folk folk guitar master is just can can paint the perfect picture of an underground poker game and, like, that scene. You know what I mean? Like, somehow, this band was able to do that, this Americana. Yeah. It's like Norman Rockwell and Fish is like Picasso or something. Or something, Romeo. Yeah. Something. Immortal you know, the thing is so with Fish Phish had a point of view that was not accepted in the world, which is that this style of music, this composed instrumental danceable music was gonna work.
Like, it was gonna work. It was not just gonna be bars in Burlington, Vermont, and it wasn't just gonna be colleges in the in the Northeast. It was going to MSG. This this version of a band is gonna end up in Madison Square Garden. Right? And that was, like, unheard you know, it's really I've talked about this in the show before. I I love listening to shows from, like, 1991 and just, like, trying to get in a tray's head. Like, how could he possibly have thought this was all gonna work? This, you know, narration, you know, like, all the narration and all of, like, the just the stuff that note like, secret language to fuck with people.
Yeah. A a chess match with the with the audience? No. This was so this is all this is all builder shit. You know? This is visionary builder shit. Yeah. Innovation.
[00:49:36] Unknown:
Innovation.
[00:49:38] Unknown:
And it's painful. Right? It's it is it's, like, a little bit painful. It's always painful to build things. Yeah. It's destructive. So, like, I that's the con that's the contrast I wanna have, and I and I wanna say that we also we need healing music sometimes. Mhmm. So, like and I think I think it's easy I think it's easy to lose sight of that, especially you go through a large part of your life and you don't I, you know, I think that Trey Anastasio band has more healing aspects to it 100%. Than Fish does. Right?
[00:50:16] Unknown:
Yeah. And we all want to be did it. Like, maybe that's how we got through a little bit. Right? Yeah. And and for me, when Fish was broken up, you know, I discovered a few what I would consider healing bands that I still listen to. Twiddle Now one of these one of the ones that I would say. Yeah. So so I'm gonna I'm gonna hand this off to you so you can talk about Twiddle, but I just wanna mention Okay. Yeah. The war on drugs, which is a Philly band, which I was exposed to what before Phish came back. Again, through my friend who introduced me to Phish, he introduced me to War on Drugs early on, like, and then they won a Grammy, and they kinda sold out. And Arcade Fire was another heard a single song by the War on Drugs.
Oh, I need to I'll send you,
[00:51:01] Unknown:
I'll send you one. Make a note check it out. To put one in the show notes. Okay. Will do. By the way, dude, shout out to Jason. Jason does an incredible job on the show notes. I'm retorted. I can't I can't do it. Well, you edit the show, so let's let's let's Yeah. But thank you. Like, thank you for all thank you for giving the audience incredible show notes. Like that Oh, thank you. When when we mention it, it always ends up in there. Yeah. So I try not to ask for too much.
[00:51:32] Unknown:
Yeah. I try to if we say we're gonna add it, I try to comply and, Yes. Compliance. I'm I'm pretty much into compliance.
[00:51:43] Unknown:
So war on drugs, Arcade Fire. Yeah.
[00:51:47] Unknown:
It's about it. This is the two I wanted to mention. See that. I can see it. Yeah.
[00:51:51] Unknown:
I think a lot of pop music is good for healing too. Right? Yeah. Like, sometimes you just want Wouldn't feel good. What everybody likes.
[00:52:01] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:52:02] Unknown:
Alright.
[00:52:04] Unknown:
Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. Don't think we listen to fish. Dear audience, don't think we listen to fish twenty four seven because that would be that would that wouldn't be the right thing to wouldn't be the right way to approach it.
[00:52:16] Unknown:
It wouldn't. But I will I mean, you know, I've had my certainly, I have my moments. Right? I have my moments. You know, at my age now, it never happens. But, like, when I was when I first got into fish, you know, 90 I'll say when after the after I stopped kinda with the dead, '95 there was a time where it was only fish for the most part. The first year Well, yep. And this is, like, how long ago
[00:52:44] Unknown:
Yeah. Forty hours per week of fish was probably if there was if that meme existed, that would apply to someone that first got into fish. I would do forty hours a week on IRC
[00:52:54] Unknown:
and then forty hours a week listening to listening to tapes. Right. Yeah. And then when Moe came along, you know, okay, then all of a sudden, you started getting an appetite for other bands. You know, the appetite really was to go back to smaller venues.
[00:53:11] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:53:12] Unknown:
And, you know, be, you know, be a bigger fish in a small pot smaller pond.
[00:53:18] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:53:20] Unknown:
And feel like you're seeing a band that you, are gonna raise.
[00:53:25] Unknown:
Right. Exactly. And that was my drawing. Like, I saw our kid fire in small venues. I saw we're on drugs at, like, union transfer, like, a thousand people, like,
[00:53:34] Unknown:
small before they got big. And it's Moe Moe makes fish look like a healing band.
[00:53:41] Unknown:
Okay. Alright. You're saying you're saying they're technical?
[00:53:45] Unknown:
They're they're not a healing band. Moe's best described as the Grateful Dead on crank. In that that's how they were described in 1995.
[00:53:59] Unknown:
Well, the Grateful Dead was on weren't weren't weren't weren't they doing some crank at one point?
[00:54:04] Unknown:
It's possible. Like, a lot of deadheads ended up ended up with Moe.
[00:54:08] Unknown:
Interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah.
[00:54:13] Unknown:
And, the first gathering of the vibes
[00:54:16] Unknown:
I remember. Which,
[00:54:18] Unknown:
you know, isn't it great that the Bitcoin scene has taken over the vibes now? I do like that. Right? And this is the year 2025 is the year of the vibe in the Bitcoin scene. Right? It's the year of the vibe with paper Bitcoin summer. And the first gathering of the vibes was in, Purchase, New York, and Moe is the headliner. So there was a company called Terrapin Tapes. I don't know if you remember them. I don't. Terrapin Tapes, like, used to sell blank tapes and sell audio equipment, and he used to have to buy blank tapes. And, you you know, if you're buying blank DATs, there weren't a lot of places to buy blank DATs. No. No.
So anyway, they the gathering of the vibes is something that has persisted. I think still in some form today.
[00:55:07] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:55:09] Unknown:
But, you know, it was a Moe headline that I always I like, they, you know, they were they used to do some dead covers, but I think at the at the Gathering of the Vibes, it was, there are some special dead covers like, kid slips my mind, but they were very atypical.
[00:55:30] Unknown:
Okay. Like, I'd like deep like, deep cut covers. Yeah. I remember that 1995,
[00:55:34] Unknown:
I got the worst case of sunstroke like you can imagine. Oh, no. So, like, after the first day, I just spent I spent, like, eighteen hours in a tent just, like, trying just coping with how how scorched I got to let myself get. I mean, I I went to all the sets and everything. Right? It was a camping it was a camp it was a camping festival.
[00:55:57] Unknown:
Sure. Sure. Yeah. I remember those were camp fest. But, is that why you got into Jack Crews after that?
[00:56:02] Unknown:
That was 1995,
[00:56:03] Unknown:
so no. I'm I'm just joking. Yeah.
[00:56:07] Unknown:
So, anyway, you know, I think, you know, we do look to other bands, but they, I think honestly, I didn't really find a healing band in the jam scene that I liked a lot until I found Twiddle. And, I think it's sad that they are not around right now. I really wish they were. Like, I really like, that's a band I wish I could pop in right now and Right now. See where see what city they're in right now Mhmm. And what's happening. You know? And just a little backstory on them. I don't know them that well. I only know them through their music. Like, I don't even I don't know the names of anybody in that band. So, like, I'm not, like, just I'm not, like, a big super fan from that perspective where I can tell you I can tell you who's who and what's what. Right? Right. But you know their backstory. Right? You you know I know the backstory. Yeah. I know the backstory of and this is the thing that I've said in the past that I'm a personal sucker for.
But they had a I don't know if this was a Sid Barrett type character in the band or if it was just a close friend, but this guy died who is this guy very close to them died. And it's a song. They made a song, and the name is Hadda Bagan McRatt. I might have this I might have the story wrong, but this is somebody who is very close to them. And if you follow the lyrics of these songs, he teach it you know, he taught the if the lyrics are correct, he taught the guitar player how to play, basically, how to be as great as he is at guitar, and he's great. Guitar players outstanding. Clearly also plays a hollow body, has that tone, but also has that fluidity with the tray like compositions.
[00:57:56] Unknown:
Yep. But they're openly openly him and the drummer were both very vocal about how much fish influenced them. And they are from Burlington, Vermont.
[00:58:05] Unknown:
Yeah. As it as it happens. But they are a feeling band, and their energy comes from their you know, like, Trey didn't start writing about the death of friends until, you know, act four of his of the career. Right? Yeah. Whereas this this started the band. Yeah. Oh, and you know what this reminds me of? Because I I mentioned Sid Barrett. Right? So when I was, like, thinking about, feeling music, some of it is, like, dangerous. Have you ever felt scared listening to music? Just think along these lines. You know? And Occasionally. Yeah. You know, like, I like, the first time I heard Black Sabbath, I was in seventh grade, and I was like, literally, the music itself scared the shit out of me. Like, I didn't know it was I didn't if I knew the name of the band, I would have been even more frightened. Right? But, like, I I don't even know where I heard it. It just came on. I was like, what the fuck is this? It's it's terrifying.
I remember at the same time same time frame, hearing Guns N' Roses' appetite for destruction. No. And Yeah. I mean, that that frightened me. Like, there was something so raw I remember hearing in there that I was like, it kinda it kinda frightened me. And I it was the first one of the first times I noticed getting frightened by music. I thought it was kinda cool that that was possible. Lo and behold, like, you know, you find out that Ozzy Osbourne was literally trying to make horror movies out of music. Right?
Right. Like, it was a genre that he was trying to pioneer. But, the the song that scared the shit out of me the most, this is gonna sound insane, but, I was I was in overnight camp, and I was sleeping in my bunk. You know? And my counselor came back after a night of drinking, probably smoking a lot of weed, and he throws on shine on you crazy diamond. And, dude, that first, like, that first, like, three minutes of ethereal, like, it's just it's like a organ in the background and David Gilmore doing a little bit of what he does. Yeah. Yep. And and
[01:00:24] Unknown:
the dude, I I wanna say the entire song, dude, it, like, frightened the shit out of me. Yeah. I was gonna I was gonna say, it was my was my the the first music that I heard that was frightening to me. And I forget the one that has, like, a,
[01:00:38] Unknown:
it's almost like a helicopter kinda sound going on in the background. I don't know if it's run. That And you're supposed to be walking away. Gene, the next song on the Yeah. So it's The next album. After shine on you crazy diamond. And this song is about Syd Barrett, like, losing his mind and Yeah. To how they you know? That you know, I guess that's a version of healing too. Right? It's just, like, you know, dealing with trauma. And I I I I thought a lot about it over the course of this week, because, like, it's not, like okay. So, like, I had this insight about maybe, like, what it's such a shame that Twiddle's not around, but, like, Twiddle's overly healing.
Like, the you know, they're like their lyrics are very uplifting. There's a lot of lyrics. Yeah. I don't think there's a band that has more lyrics. They're like Eminem. You know? Like like, the M and M like in the way their songs are. It's just like a lot of words, but they're all very uplifting. And, I don't know. I I I also had this thought that, like, people who are oh, so, like, you know, we talk about builders need healing every once in a while. Right? Yeah. Builders need a little bit of healing. There's people that go through their life healing full time.
[01:01:58] Unknown:
Yeah. Their whole life is in their feelings. They're the Yeah. And they're and they're I think they with their feeling with their healing process. Yeah. That's their identity.
[01:02:06] Unknown:
I think this is the majority of, like, the fucking people celebrating somebody's death. Like, anybody who set like, it's like anybody who threatens their healing is like a becomes the enemy. Like, how dare you yeah. Like, they need their safe space. They need to be healing. They need to be healing all the time. And you see this recovery culture a lot, especially in jam bands. Recovery culture. You know, a lot of people who are just in full time recovery forever. Like, god bless god bless people in recovery because that shit is hard.
[01:02:37] Unknown:
Yep.
[01:02:38] Unknown:
But at some point, you gotta start building again. Yep. Keep them moving. End up you you, like, are in this full time recovery where everything hurts you. Everything's a threat. Everything's a threat to your recovery, and you're not exactly building a strong no. But you're you're not exactly building a strong life Yeah. From that context. So, like, I so I think that, like, in general, the right balance it's like, I love picking on vegans. But, like, if you take a vegan if you take a vegan that, like, once in a while, just sneak some liver in, they probably dominate. They would probably dominate life.
They would do very well in my opinion. So my point is it's like Compared to other vegans. Oh, they would crush other vegans. But, like, you know, builders just need a little bit of healing every once in a while. You can't be like a you can't go through life building nonstop. It's like building muscle. You have to rest. Yep. Every just so you could build more. But our community that we are building is builders. And we're gonna overuse the word and make it really shitty. I hope that doesn't happen. But, like, it is a community of builders. Right?
We're built we are pioneers.
[01:04:05] Unknown:
We are pioneers.
[01:04:06] Unknown:
And, you know, we need building music, and I think we need a little bit of healing music every once in a while.
[01:04:15] Unknown:
Yeah.
[01:04:20] Unknown:
I'm really tempted to stop it there.
[01:04:23] Unknown:
Yeah. I'm with you.
[01:04:24] Unknown:
So I was I waited to see if you had something.
[01:04:27] Unknown:
I was gonna would I I was gonna go into soft spot, but I it would take me too it would take it would take too long. But I could do it. You wanna save it for next time?
[01:04:37] Unknown:
What is it?
[01:04:39] Unknown:
Well, I just wanna talk about and if you're still recording. We can. Yeah. We can just edit that section out. What I've noticed in in Bitcoin since Charlie Kirk, first, obviously, there was an immediate reaction, I think, we all shared of just shock. Yeah. And then there was a little bit of anger, and you could you could probably draw parallels to stages of grief on this. But what I wanna get to is I don't know if I even hit the anger stage yet. I don't I don't know if I felt angry right about it. I I I'm seeing I'm seeing others that are more maybe right leaning, that are a little bit more politically inclined than you and I Yeah. Inclined than you and I Yeah. I get it. With the anger just because they're it's more it's more threatening to them. It's more of their identity.
Yeah. But I'm seeing this uncovering taking place. And it was something that I always thought was absent in the space. And I know I believe his name is Bob Burnett, and I know you have Yeah. Yeah. In private, and I won't I won't divulge here, but have basically uncovered that. Like, you know, Bitcoin isn't all fucking roses and profits, fiat gains. It's not all, you know, we're all fucking rich and our our lives are all perfect. It fixes everything. Bitcoin fixes this.
[01:06:01] Unknown:
What are you talking about? Bitcoin fixes Bitcoin fixes this. What are you talking about?
[01:06:06] Unknown:
Fucking far from it.
[01:06:08] Unknown:
What do you mean? It's the best.
[01:06:13] Unknown:
Even if I was in a fucking vacuum, if I reflect on just just take all my everything that I have to relate to in my world, all the relationships, all the the work that it needs to get done, all the institutions that I interact with, rebuilding my understanding on how to look at that. All of those things. It was hard enough just as an individual, just reconstructing what I thought to be true and kinda rebuilding this sense of, I don't know, presence in in the world that isn't me just being a fucking alien is hard enough. And I just felt like there was always I know it was hard for me, and it's been a strain. Maybe it's because I live in an area that's predominantly left leaning, and Bitcoin, I think, creates independent thinkers, or maybe it just attracts independent thinkers.
And that's what kinda pulls us into the quote, unquote rabbit hole of discovery or rediscovery, relearning. But what comes along with that is is is a lot of, a lot of suffering to be to just put it into a word. A lot of a lot of difficulty, a lot of friction, a lot of disruption into what is normal in our lives. A lot of building. A lot of building. Yes. Any kind of rebuilding. But I don't wanna but it yes. You are you are constantly moving, reconstructing, and trying to create order out of chaos. The chaos that has just now Bitcoin forced you to accept. If I may just add on to that real quick.
[01:07:46] Unknown:
Basically, what Bitcoin has created is a a new goal, a new commitment. For me personally, it was a commitment to a type of freedom I thought was possible now. And whenever you make a commitment, you are now at odds with the world. If you were not at odds with the world, you would not have to make the commitment. You would just be it. You just be it. Right. Okay. So you have to make this commitment and be at odds with the world. And the first thing that you see when you make this commitment is this world that is not is the fucking opposite Yeah. Of what you're committed to everywhere.
It's all you see.
[01:08:42] Unknown:
All you see.
[01:08:44] Unknown:
Right? And it's it's fucking painful. It's painful. And then, you know, there's certain people maybe that you didn't expect to make it so fucking hard. You thought maybe there's certain people that you thought would come along without a lot of without, like, a lot of pain. Yeah. And you're like, fuck, dude. Come on, man. Just Yeah. Can't you just be cool and, like Or just just trust me, bro. Yeah. Like, trust me. Like, I've been enlightened. This is what I might joke. I know. It's kinda it it kinda is it has that.
[01:09:20] Unknown:
And very few things are like that in life. Really, there's only three things in in my experience. And by the way, fish is one of them, and Bitcoin is the other. And the other is Buddhism or meditation. I I think I think everyone could benefit from sitting practice. That could include prayer. I'm not I'm not a I'm a secular Buddhist, if you wanna call me that.
[01:09:40] Unknown:
You can't orange pill people, and you can't fish pill people. Like, it's one of those things where all you could do is live the life, present the case, and be okay with whatever happens.
[01:09:51] Unknown:
So I think you brought up a good point. I think that and you can you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that in the last two years, just about every Bitcoiner I know that has been around for more than a couple years has given up on orange billing. Because it because what what you just said, it just doesn't it doesn't work.
[01:10:11] Unknown:
That whole You know what else doesn't work, though? You know what else doesn't work? Giving up. That's true too. So it's a this is this is a dicey, strange world we live in where, like, you it doesn't work to do either. So that well, all that you have is your commitment and who you wanna be. Yep. And when I want my school to accept Bitcoin, I have to talk to the head of the I have to talk to the head of the school. I don't have to orange pill him. I have to talk to him and let him know why it matters to me. And if orange peeling is a stupid term.
It is. It's the kind of term, like especially, like, I wouldn't say it to fish people. Right? No. It's like, No. It's it's almost it's almost embarrassing to say it in mixed company. You have to you can only say it in a mixed company. Reminds me of the line I wrote about in in Fluffhead, you know, where, like, he fluff it Fluff goes to a banker, asks him for some bills. The banker says, I ain't got that, but I sure got some powerful pills. Right? It's like goes wild. I don't have your money, but I got some drugs if you want some. It's not a pill. You know? It's like No. It's it's you know, I've I engaged in a work in my life that was central to that work was sharing it because, you know, if you couldn't share the if you couldn't share it and you didn't have people in your life on board, then what the things you were committed to were gonna be the difficulty adjustment was gonna be the difficulty is gonna be way too high for you to overcome. Like, we don't have the you may not have the strength to overcome the difficulty of going it completely alone.
So, like, I would say don't give up on orange peeling. Never start orange peeling. Never start. And just share. Just share. Yeah. Just share yourself. You know? Learn to share yourself without an expectation of people, agreeing or getting inspired by you or caring. Like, I mean, this comes from somebody who has four podcasts. You know? Yeah. Like, let my advice on this is learn to share yourself. Never never and then never and never give up on that.
[01:12:26] Unknown:
That's important.
[01:12:28] Unknown:
Because if you can't share yourself see, the reason why this it was so central is because it takes personal it takes power to share yourself. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe you have something worth sharing. You have to you have to really and if you can't and you have people you can't share yourself with, that's you are disempowered to with those people.
[01:12:48] Unknown:
Yeah. It puts you in a little bit of a vulnerable spot. And what I'm seeing as of late, because I don't know if Charlie Kirk was the tipping point, but I'm I'm seeing I'm just observing what I'm seeing. Mhmm. And I feel like there are people's people are there's an uncovering of a little bit of soft spot. Oh, he was a master of sharing himself. That guy Yes. Was a master.
[01:13:07] Unknown:
Talk about vulnerable. And you wanna talk about the on display, the personal power that comes with being good, being a master at sharing yourself Yeah. To anybody in any situation.
[01:13:20] Unknown:
And and never getting hooked emotionally.
[01:13:24] Unknown:
But there's very few people that I've experienced mastery, dude. That's mastery.
[01:13:28] Unknown:
It's mastery. And, he perfected it to the extent that he could in thirty one years. And I like seeing what I what I really just wanna wanna kinda close on is we all have a soft spot. Every human being, even the most evil person in the world that you can think of has a soft spot for their dog or something, maybe tortillas, whatever. And it's good to see that people that I've looked up to in the Bitcoin space, they are kind of revealing their soft spot. And I think it's important that we put ourselves in a little bit more of a vulnerable spot, and maybe this event was was the beginning of that.
[01:14:15] Unknown:
I mean, you know, I it it it goes back to sharing. Right?
[01:14:22] Unknown:
Communication, which is what Charlie was all about. If you wanna get through to people,
[01:14:28] Unknown:
you have to be relatable. Right? And you have to be, you have to have enormous integrity. And remember, not morality, just integrity. Like, you are who you say you are, and people can rely on you when they listen to you and that you're that. Right? Yeah. And then, you know, that's a place that when you start sharing yourself with people, you know, you can build. Right? You can you can have somebody say, I don't give a shit about any of that, and be like, okay. Next person.
[01:15:06] Unknown:
Yeah. Exactly.
[01:15:08] Unknown:
Right? Which that, you know, is what it takes to be successful in the world. It and not like George Costanza. Like, you get fucking flipped out over one person not liking you.
[01:15:22] Unknown:
Right. Right.
[01:15:24] Unknown:
Jody. Jody was her name, if we remember.
[01:15:28] Unknown:
I do remember.
[01:15:30] Unknown:
Why does everyone have to like you? I don't know.
[01:15:33] Unknown:
But they do.
[01:15:35] Unknown:
They have to like me. Yeah. Like, and not, you know, not getting caught up in people not liking you. Yeah. Every Phish fan knows what I'm talking about. They do. Right? Every single one. And I, like, I know that, like, a lot of the people that listen to the show are just Bitcoiners who kinda are on the periphery of fish. Yeah. But they're probably laughing because they probably you can at least get it. You can get why I say that. Right? Yeah. It's to share our love for this band. And, you know, like, I have, on one hand, the amount of friends that decided to go all in with Phish, and I'm lucky that that I'm lucky I got any of them.
[01:16:22] Unknown:
Right.
[01:16:23] Unknown:
But, same you know? So, yeah, I've had thirty years of training before discovering something like Bitcoin being important. Yeah. Really important. Right? And you wanna evangelize, but, like, you really should just share. Just share yourself and just commit commit to being good at sharing.
[01:16:44] Unknown:
Yeah. Don't worry about the outcome.
[01:16:46] Unknown:
Just focus on the process. Well, people can see through it, dude. People can see through The the salesmanship. Yeah. If what's called in order to. Right? People can fucking see that from a mile away. Just be. I guess, is what I'm trying to say is just be. Maybe that's where we cut it.
[01:17:22] Unknown:
And the rain came home down. Me and Ben are standing there with a silver half a crown. So we put our fishing rods, and they tackled on our back. We just stood back and went with our backs against the fence. Rain lit up and the sun came on. We were getting dry. Almost fed a pickup truck that nearly passed us fishbowl. We'll sing songs as we woke up, and we were getting drunk. Met a man from across the road with the sunshine in his eye. He lived all alone in his own life with a great big gathering job. There was fathers
[01:23:46] Unknown:
But it really was an interesting social experiment, COVID, because everybody got told the same thing. The whole world got told the same thing. If you go out unnecessarily, millions will die. And a lot of us said, oh, I'm going out. Yeah. I'm going now and a lot. Yeah. And millions died. It's just we're not that different from the turtles that you're trying to get them not to cross the fucking highway. And they're like, this is where I fuck. I fuck over there. Fuck you. And we're like, please stop. Putting little signs up, don't go. And then fuck you. I'm a turtle. It doesn't we're not that different. We're just a fucking species. And we're just rolling all I am. Many dying old ladies died.
That's what happened. Many dying old ladies finished dying. Here's the way you you gotta look at it. Okay? We're still making more. We're making new old ladies every day. There's a fresh batch coming. They're gonna be great. I was having sex with a woman once and she was so beautiful. I was having trouble not coming. So I pictured her face at 80 years old, and then I came immediately because she's 92. Anyway, One thing I found very interesting was that during the pandemic, a lot of people really liked counting the dead people. That got very popular, was counting the amount of the dead and dying. Do you know how many people are?
Just today. Just today. Do you know how many people died? A pollinator? Just today.
[01:25:59] Unknown:
When do why
[01:26:02] Unknown:
keeping a daily tally. We don't do there's a lot of shit going on that we don't keep a daily tally of how many babies were dropped in a bucket of paint. And I looked that up. I'm not kidding you. It's 30 a day. It's a real problem. I'm serious. A steady 30 babies a day are dropped in buckets of paint. It's not random. It's one guy that won't stop doing it. Yeah. We liked counting them. We liked counting the dead. And And when it got really high, we don't know how to count them anymore. People trying to find different ways to express the number or take it in. Remember January? It was really that was three thousand people every day were dying of COVID. So people started saying this, this is nine eleven every day.
[01:27:01] Unknown:
This is literally
[01:27:04] Unknown:
nine eleven every day. When did we start measuring deaths in nine elevens? When did that become the new how many football fields long is it for mass death? How many nine elevens was World War two? Can we look it up? I know the holocaust was February. 09/11 wasn't that bad. It was just one. Only one nine eleven of people died on nine eleven. That's like nobody died that day. See, it's all relative because then you have those, later remember January was really bad. January was the worst. And then in April, March, April, we all felt better. Everybody's like, oh, it's way better now. It's way better. Way better than January. I looked it up. It was 1,500 people a day.
And everybody's like, it's way better than January. Really? It's half of 09:11 every single day. But that's way better. That would be like if on 09:11 after the first tower went down, you're like, it's not that bad. It's just one. Still got the other one. That's why they made two. It's okay. It's alright to make fun of 09:11. It was a hoax. Alright. Sorry. Anyway.
Kicking off: tour talk, Chalk Dust jam, and drumming along
Phish in the South: Birmingham vibes and unlikely fans
Show opener serendipity: Back on the Train (namesake!)
Why Back on the Train hits: shuffles, Muppets, and YouTube edits
Cartoons on mute, DuckTales sync-ups, and nineties weed lore
Cities in Birmingham: sly setlist nods and lyric dive
From show bubble to the world: present-moment magic vs. 4.0 cracks
A hard pivot: processing a public assassination and grief
Anthroposophy, collective trauma, and music’s healing role
MSG after 9/11, Walls of the Cave lore, and memory at shows
Mexico runs, global events, and how Phish still eclipses the news
Healing vs. building: framing music after tragedy
Defining Phish as "building music" and the cost of innovation
Composition, danceability, and the long game to MSG
Dead vs. Phish jams, modes, and on-a-dime style shifts
Dead’s evolution: from psychedelic blues to Americana healing
TAB’s softer edges; other healing bands and show notes love
Moe., small venues, and the jam scene’s branching paths
Twiddle’s story: uplift, loss, and overt healing themes
When music scares you: Sabbath, Appetite, and Pink Floyd chills
Over-healing, recovery culture, and the need to build again
Builders need rest: balance, commitment, and community
Sharing vs. orange-pilling: integrity over evangelism
Soft spots, vulnerability, and mastering the share
Being okay not being liked: lessons from fandom and life
