Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "McGrupp", 1989-04-30

TREY: [Before "Mcgrupp"] We’re going to go on a tour here, through Gamehendge. So what we’re going to do here is do four songs in a row to give you sort of an overview of Gamehendge. For those of you who’ve never seen us, we are travelling minstrels from Gamehendge; that’s where we come from. We’re going to give you guys a little bit of the history because it’s important to us to let everybody know where we’re from.

So we’re going to start out with a song named “McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters.” This is a song that i learned from a peasant out in the field. He was getting out of the field, and he sang it to me one day. It was Gamehendge went through a huge revolution, and this was after the revolution, after everything had fallen apart. He told me this story, this poem, and we put it to music. This is sung by a shepard out in the middle of a field in Gamehendge, and he’s had a horrible time in the revolution. The war has upset his entire life. He’s had to move his flock of sheep away from the city, out in the fields, because there’s no food left in the city.

After that, we’re gonna play a song sung by a guy named Col Forbin, who is somebody that came from the 20th century into Gamehendge, and that’s called “The Lizards.” That gives another point of view from a different guy. The first is sung by a shepherd in the field; the second one is sung by Col Forbin, who made the transition in Gamehendge from 20th century America. You’re gonna see it through his eyes, that’s during the revolution.

After that, we’re going to play a song that was written before the revolution, and it’s called “Divided Sky, the Wind Blows High.” It’s written about a chant that was done. Before the revolution, Gamehendge was a paradise, there was no evil in Gamehendge at all. Every year, two of the people of Gamehendge would go to the base of this mountain, and they’d eat this root. They would go out into this huge, vast green field, and, in the middle of the field, is this Rhombus. Does everybody know what a rhombus is? It’s like a square, but it’s tilted. It was a big black Rhombus. They would climb the Rhombus, and they would beat on the Rhombus and they’d sing “divided sky, the wind blows high” [Fishman accompanies on drums]. They’d pay homage to the gods of the sky that dropped the water down into the [unintelligible].

So anyway and then finally, after that, we’re going to sing “Wilson, can you still have fun?” which is of course the song the peasants used to sing when raising their fists in anger after their beautiful paradise was taken over by the Evil King Wilson, who came in and enslaved all of these people. They used to raise their fists in this chant, “O back in Stonehenge, i lived in alone, O out near Gamehendge, i chafed the bone. Wilson, king of Prussia, i lay this hate on you. Wilson, duke of Lizards, i bet it all trune for you.”

So this is Gamehendge...