Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Mockingbird", 1993-03-25

TREY: Drinking the magic glass of wine. That’s right, this is the secret, magic glass of wine that we brought out on stage with us tonight. Looks like an ordinary glass of wine… smells like an ordinary glass of wine… incredible thing about this glass of wine is that, when you give it to the right person to have a sip of this wine, crazy things start to happen. [Mike drinks the wine]

[Maniacally] Ha ha ha ha! Mike has drank the magical glass of wine! It’s starting to — ha ha! — it’s starting to flow through his blood right now. What’s gonna happen is, it’s gonna start at his head and go through his blood, all the way down to his fingertips, and he’s going to start playing the mystic, ancient, ritualistic riff on his bass now. He doesn’t even realize this is going to start happening. Without knowing it, his hands are going to start playing the ritualistic ancient riff. He’s doing it, it’s starting, I can hear it coming, I can hear it coming…. [Mike makes strange noises on bass]

AHHH, YES! And he plays the ritualistic riff, he’s going to start a magical thing happening to all of you out there. Keep playing the ritualistic riff, Mike, let’s see if it starts to happen. Feel anything funny happening out there? Feel okay out there? What you don’t even realize is that, as you stand there, your blood is starting to fizzle. That’s right, your blood is going to start to turn into carbonation from the magical riff, which came from the magical glass of wine.

So right now, as you’re standing out there, all of your blood is starting to carbonate and bubble inside of your body, and you probably didn’t even realize it. But slowly it’s starting to bubble and as it bubble you guys are all kind of turning and melding together into this thick sea of bubbling… ooze. And the bubbling ooze is turning worse, it’s kind of sugarizing, and I look out at you and you’re all turning into this kind of… this bubbling sea of soda.

That’s right, you’re turning into this bubbling sea of soda, and the whole venue is turning into this enormous soda can. And you’re in, you’re trapped inside this soda can now and you’re all bubbling around and carbonated, trapped inside the soda can, and the soda can is sitting there. It’s on the outside there, on the sidewalk, and now, without knowing it, there’s this little kid who’s coming home from school, walking up outside. As he walks up, he comes up to the soda can and he sees it and picks it up.

So all of us now are trapped inside of this soda can, and this kid is looking at the soda can and he decides he’s gonna take the soda can home, but he’s not just going to carry the soda can home. So, he puts the soda can down on the ground and he walks up to it, decides he’s gonna kick the soda can all the way to his house, which is about a mile and a half or so.

[Trey shouts Boom as Fishman hits the drums, signifying kicking. Fishman pounds on the bass drum to represent the kid’s walking. Soon, the audience is marching in time as Trey and Fishman “kick” the can.]

TREY: He picks up the soda can, he’s all the way home, picks up the soda can… It’s a little shaken up. The sides are swelling out. We’re all trapped inside of it, decides he’s going to poke a little hole in it, spray the whole thing down in his mouth. So, he picks up the soda can, shakes it up that last little bit. [Trey makes buzzing noises, sort of.] Shake it up now. We’re all inside of it, vibrating around. He sees a little spike on top of this chain link fence that’s outside of his house. Goes up to it—

[Explosion noises from band]

TREY: We all come spraying out of this tiny hole in the top of the can and spraying up in the air, and as we spray in the air, the soda carbonation starts to turn into little clouds of mist coming up and floating around, clouds of mist now, floating around in the sky, floating up higher, and we start to mingle with the clouds. Now we’re a part of the clouds. We’re floating around, we’re part of the clouds, the wind’s blowing us across the land there. See us going across, and we start to go out over the ocean.

The ocean sort of turns from blue into black. We’re drifting along on this cloud. As we drift along, more and more clouds start to come up and they start to connect with our cloud until we’re one huge cloud, and we start to feel heavier and heavier, no, the feeling inside you starts to get a little meaner, and you start to feel a little electricity building up inside of you. You don’t really know what’s happening but you’re still floating up inside of this cloud. Suddenly, the electricity starts to bubble and boil and get to a point. Thunder and lightning start to crack around you.

[Explosion noises] You start to congeal with other people around you, slowly turning into raindrops, and you find yourself falling on the raindrop, falling now, falling now towards the ground… {Dark heavy feedback swirls] As you’re falling down, you look down and you realize that you’re falling somewhere you’ve never been before. You’re falling into a new place. [spooky voice] You’re falling into...you’re falling into GAMEHENDGE!

As we fall, we start to recite the ancient, ritualistic words to let yourself into Gamehendge.

[Band performs “Kung” and narration picks up at the end]

TREY: …from the hills rising out of the forest in the distance… from the hills that rise out of the vast, green forest that stretches across the field... from the hills that rise across from the green field that goes off as far as the eye can see… from the huge hill where Colonel Forbin is climbing… He’s climbing up the mountain… to find the great and knowledgeable Icculus. [“Mockingbird” music faintly returns] He’s climbing to find the great and knowledgeable Icculus, because Icculus is going to help him find the Helping Friendly Book.

[Trey softly begins “Icculus” and band slowly comes in behind]

TREY: That’s right because Icculus lives on top of the mountain. He is the great and knowledgeable man, and that’s why Colonel Forbin on this day is climbing up to find him, because he wants to find that great book. That great book that has helped to lead his life and all the people of Gamehendge. That great and wonderful book with all of the knowledge that you and I might need to run our lives in a beautiful way in peace and harmony with nature. Because, sometimes you know, sometimes it’s hard. You get stuck in places and you look around and say, “What can I do? What can I do to help? You know, the world is becoming this way, and if I only had someone to guide me. Help me out! Help me out!” [backing vocals begin]

“If I had someone to guide me and tell me how I should run my life, my life, not my life, not your life, in fact, not life at all. But if I can just find that person, that thing.” Well let me just tell you people something. Let me tell you something right now. I know something because I found that book. I found the book to tell me the way to run my life. And you, you can find the book. You can read the book. You guys know how to read. You can read a book too. [unintelligible] And you can stop making these awful decisions every day. [unintelligible for a while]

So why don’t you go on, find this book! Read it! I’m telling you to read it! Don’t just stand there! [unintelligible] Find the book! Read the book! Find the book! This book it’s written, it’s written by, it’s written, it’s written by the great and knowledgeable Icculus!

[“Icculus” continues and “Mockingbird” begins afterward]

So there he goes up there. He’s trying to find the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus so he goes up to the top of the mountain, and Icculus says, “I will now send the Famous Mockingbird to fly down out of the sky, steal the book from the castle, bring it back to the people of Gamehendge, and all of you people out there will have the great book to help you make these tough decisions.”

So here he comes, to help you make tough decisions, the Famous Mockingbird...