Latest / DISGRACELAND / Phish: Community, Hippie Crack, and the Nitrous Mafia

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Phish: Community, Hippie Crack, and the Nitrous Mafia · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a
0:15
Speaker 1: story about community, about four self described dorks from Vermont
0:21
Speaker 1: who built one of the most devoted fan bases in
0:24
Speaker 1: rock history. It's a story about making music with your
0:28
Speaker 1: friends and about musical euphoria. But it's also about the
0:33
Speaker 1: shadows darkening the margins, about hippie crack hissing tanks and
0:39
Speaker 1: the nitros mafia. And it's about how a seemingly idyllic
0:43
Speaker 1: scene could be infiltrated by hard drugs like cocaine and heroin.
0:49
Speaker 1: This is a story about fish, which means it's a
0:53
Speaker 1: story about I don't know, man, is it great music?
0:57
Speaker 1: Unlike that clip? I played a few at the top
0:59
Speaker 1: of the show show that definitely wasn't great music. That
1:03
Speaker 1: was a preset loop from my melotron called Peace, Love
1:07
Speaker 1: and ice Cream MK one. I played you that loop
1:12
Speaker 1: because I can't afford the rights to slow Motion by
1:15
Speaker 1: Juvenile featuring Soulja Slim. But why would I play you
1:19
Speaker 1: that specific slice of ass successfully backed up Cheese?
1:24
Speaker 2: Could I afford it?
1:26
Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
1:29
Speaker 1: August fifteenth, two thousand and four, and that was the
1:33
Speaker 1: day that Fish played what was billed as their final show, when.
1:37
Speaker 2: In fact, no one, not even the band.
1:40
Speaker 1: Knew that their story was far from over. On this episode,
1:45
Speaker 1: four Dorks, Musical Euphoria, Shadows on the Margins, Hippie Crack,
1:50
Speaker 1: The Nitrous Mafia, and Fish. I'm Jake Brennan and this
1:57
Speaker 1: is this Graceland. Earlier this year, in the spring of
2:22
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, Phish was one of fourteen musical acts
2:27
Speaker 1: nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
2:31
Speaker 1: and though they didn't get in, they dominated the discourse
2:34
Speaker 1: surrounding the nomination in voting process because they received the
2:38
Speaker 1: largest number of fan votes in Hall of Fame history,
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Speaker 1: over three hundred and twenty nine thousand votes, to be exact,
2:44
Speaker 1: and that's nearly fifty thousand more votes than the runner
2:48
Speaker 1: up Bad Company received. Now, the fan vote isn't part
2:51
Speaker 1: of the official vote, so that doesn't count toward getting
2:54
Speaker 1: you inducted, but it does offer an outlet for jo
2:58
Speaker 1: Q public to expresses a pain. And here's the thing
3:01
Speaker 1: about Fish's three hundred and twenty nine thousand votes. Many
3:04
Speaker 1: myself included, were shocked to discover that a band that
3:07
Speaker 1: has never had a single on the Billboard Hot one hundred.
3:10
Speaker 1: A band that has only been nominated for one Grammy
3:13
Speaker 1: in their forty plus year career, A band that, frankly
3:16
Speaker 1: has always seemed a little goofy, that that band has
3:20
Speaker 1: so many Joe Q publics hiding in the woodwork. And
3:24
Speaker 1: I can explain this Fish Hall of Fame.
3:26
Speaker 2: Phenomenon in one word. Community.
3:30
Speaker 1: Fish's devoted fan base as a ride or die community
3:34
Speaker 1: that began assembling at Keggers on Friends Farms in the
3:37
Speaker 1: mid nineteen eighties and then evolved into record breaking multi
3:40
Speaker 1: day freak flag festivals in far flung parts of New
3:44
Speaker 1: England in the nineties, eventually staging the largest ticketed concert
3:48
Speaker 1: on Earth for the millennium, some eighty five thousand people strong,
3:52
Speaker 1: on and on through unpredictable Halloween shows, marathon New Year's
3:56
Speaker 1: Eve sets, and record breaking runs.
3:58
Speaker 2: At Madison Square Garden.
4:01
Speaker 1: And so, when Fish's guitarist and primary songwriter Trey Anastasio
4:06
Speaker 1: first received the call from his manager that he and
4:09
Speaker 1: his three bandmates.
4:10
Speaker 2: Bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist.
4:12
Speaker 1: Page McConnell, and drummer John Fishman have been nominated for
4:15
Speaker 1: the Hall of Fame, His initial reaction wasn't that it
4:18
Speaker 1: was a win for the four of them. He said
4:21
Speaker 1: it was a win for the community. Years earlier, in
4:28
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, that community unexpectedly surged in number when
4:33
Speaker 1: Jerry Garcia died at the age of fifty three, and
4:37
Speaker 1: thousands of Deadheads were left looking for another band that
4:40
Speaker 1: they could pour their energy into. Like the Grateful Dead,
4:44
Speaker 1: Phish was just as much a movement as it was
4:47
Speaker 1: a musical experience, with fans following them from town to
4:51
Speaker 1: town and showed a show like a movable village. This
4:55
Speaker 1: is one of many comparisons that have been made of
4:58
Speaker 1: the two groups for decades. And yes, both bands love
5:02
Speaker 1: to improvise, and both are better known for their live
5:04
Speaker 1: shows and their studio albums. That said, musically speaking, at least,
5:10
Speaker 1: Fish is more like a fever dream hybrid of Yes
5:13
Speaker 1: talking heads in the Rocky Horror Picture Show than they
5:15
Speaker 1: are the second coming of the Grateful Dead, and even
5:18
Speaker 1: that is a reductive description. But Fish fans welcome the
5:23
Speaker 1: incoming wave of dead Heads with open arms because one
5:26
Speaker 1: of the things that both bands do share is their
5:28
Speaker 1: love of community. It's designed as an idyllic circle of
5:33
Speaker 1: fellow travelers, one that hangs on every note and chases
5:36
Speaker 1: the euphoric high at the center of an extended jam,
5:39
Speaker 1: perhaps aided in part by the high of some weed
5:42
Speaker 1: or mushrooms. You can get caught up in that high
5:46
Speaker 1: and caught up in the music, in the swirl of
5:48
Speaker 1: people dancing around in ecstasy, the lights flashing from the stage,
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Speaker 1: the band reaching the next rung, the next precipice, the
5:55
Speaker 1: sustain and Tray's guitar ringing out for what feels like
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Speaker 1: an eternity, and suddenly the seeming idyllic community becomes the
6:03
Speaker 1: perfect mark for the darkness.
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Speaker 2: Loitering there in the margins.
6:10
Speaker 1: Twenty seventeen, Madison Square Garden. The house lights come on
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Speaker 1: and you're still reeling over that set list, and they
6:19
Speaker 1: covered Jimmy's Bold as Love and Radioheads Everything in its
6:23
Speaker 1: Right Place and then encored with Frankenstein. Some dude next
6:28
Speaker 1: to you is bitching that they didn't play fuck your Face.
6:31
Speaker 1: There's always a dude complaining that they didn't do this
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Speaker 1: or didn't do that.
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Speaker 2: You don't care, though you're on cloud nine.
6:38
Speaker 1: The gummy you took kicked in early in the second set,
6:40
Speaker 1: and it didn't matter if they didn't play fuck your face,
6:43
Speaker 1: because fish literally fucked your face. Okay, not literally, but
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Speaker 1: it really felt like they did. As ridiculous as that sounds,
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Speaker 1: that you don't even care if someone hears you say that,
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Speaker 1: because it's the truth. It's all part of this wave
6:57
Speaker 1: you've been writing, and you keep writing it as you
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Speaker 1: push your way toward the exit with the rest of
7:01
Speaker 1: the crowd, and you pass through the door and out
7:04
Speaker 1: onto the street, and now you're hit in that fucked
7:07
Speaker 1: face of yours with clouds of weed and cigarette smoke.
7:12
Speaker 1: They both smell sweet in the summer heat, and though
7:15
Speaker 1: you don't smoke personally, the scent and the aroma coated
7:18
Speaker 1: and humid air, it's all wrapped up in the experience,
7:23
Speaker 1: and so is the hissing. It's like that Joni Mitchell record,
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Speaker 1: but instead of the hissing of summer lawns, this is
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Speaker 1: the hissing of nitrous tanks on asphalt. You hear them
7:36
Speaker 1: whistling as soon as you're outside. Now you turn and
7:39
Speaker 1: see twelve or thirteen tank rats sitting on the sidewalk,
7:43
Speaker 1: slouched against the wall, balloons in their hands, stone to
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Speaker 1: the gills on gas. One of them, falls over and
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Speaker 1: hits his head on the pavement, and another says that
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Speaker 1: he thinks his head is floating away, but he says
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Speaker 1: it with speech that's so slur that you can only guess.
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Speaker 2: That that's what he's talking about.
8:00
Speaker 1: And then the balloon people, the cellars, the pushers, they're
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Speaker 1: pushing up against you, blocking you from walking down the street.
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Speaker 1: One of them is yelling in your face, it is
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Speaker 1: cold right off the tank. One for ten bucks or
8:13
Speaker 1: four for twenty. What do you want? He thrusts the fissful,
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Speaker 1: swollen balloons in your direction, red and yellow and pink, daring.
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Speaker 2: You to try to step around it.
8:23
Speaker 1: You know he's not gonna let you get away that easily,
8:25
Speaker 1: because that's what these guys do.
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Speaker 2: They intimidate, they're overbearing, and they.
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Speaker 1: Do it all while keeping their heads on a swivel.
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Speaker 1: The cops rarely come down on these guys, but still
8:36
Speaker 1: they run around like animals have just been released from
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Speaker 1: a cage, and they're always aware that one wrong move
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Speaker 1: will send.
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Speaker 2: Them back there. God, you can't stand these fucking balloon people.
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Speaker 1: They're a trashy blemish on an otherwise chill scene. And
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Speaker 1: it's not just the gas like whatever, man, no shame,
8:52
Speaker 1: and how one gets one's rocks off. It's more about
8:55
Speaker 1: how they block the exits and gum up the works.
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Speaker 1: And right then a car siren whoops nearby, and the
9:02
Speaker 1: dealer who was crowding you suddenly vanishes, no doubt, off
9:05
Speaker 1: to another patch of real estate right around the corner.
9:10
Speaker 1: Nitrous has always been around long before Fish. The Dead
9:15
Speaker 1: themselves were huffing gas through old army surplus aspirators in
9:18
Speaker 1: the seventies, but that was before the nitrous racket became organized,
9:23
Speaker 1: before it was controlled by dons and bosses and kingpins
9:26
Speaker 1: who were pulling the levers and calling the shots behind
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Speaker 1: closed doors. It was before the balloon people were bringing
9:32
Speaker 1: more than tanks full of gas to fish shows. They
9:35
Speaker 1: were bringing guns and knives in order to scare off
9:37
Speaker 1: the competition. And it was long before they were known
9:41
Speaker 1: not only as balloon people, but by a far more
9:44
Speaker 1: menacing name, the nitrous Mafia. There's a much more innocent
9:50
Speaker 1: view of the nitrous scene in Todd Phillips's documentary on
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Speaker 1: Fish Bittersweet Motel, which includes this moment where a girl
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Speaker 1: huffs some gas and dances around and then hundreds fans
10:00
Speaker 1: get Buck naked for an impromptu photoshoot. That footage is
10:04
Speaker 1: from the mid nineties, and it was right around this
10:07
Speaker 1: time that for the first time, Trey Anastasia was really
10:11
Speaker 1: beginning to notice the depth of the drug culture surrounding
10:14
Speaker 1: his band. It was also at this time, roughly thirteen
10:19
Speaker 1: years after Fish began, the Tray began to participate in
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Speaker 1: the drug culture as well. Listen, I know that sounds
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Speaker 1: weird thirteen years in to first get into drugs when
10:29
Speaker 1: you're in the band Fish, But Trey was a self
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Speaker 1: described dork. All the guys in Fish were dorks. Many
10:37
Speaker 1: and their crew, though, were doing harder drugs, but Trey
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Speaker 1: had no idea. He had his head down, his nose
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Speaker 1: to the grindstone, completely immersed in the music he was creating.
10:48
Speaker 1: But just like the nitros mafia's minions pedaling fatties to
10:52
Speaker 1: every warm body passing by, that harder stuff was out there. Coke,
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Speaker 1: heroin and the kind of drugs that trick you into
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Speaker 1: thinking that you're making the community stronger by doing them,
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Speaker 1: when in fact they are separating you from the pack
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Speaker 1: so that the drugs have you to themselves, and then
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Speaker 1: they bleed you dry, until you yourself are just another
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Speaker 1: shadow out on the fringes, and maybe even worse, maybe dead.
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Speaker 1: And Trey himself was about to find out some of
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Speaker 1: these truths the only way you can, sometimes the hard way.
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Speaker 1: Long before nitrous oxide was known on the jam bands
12:00
Speaker 1: circuit as hippie crack, it was more commonly referred to
12:04
Speaker 1: as laughing gas. It was first synthesized in seventeen seventy
12:09
Speaker 1: two by the English chemist and philosopher Joseph Priestley, and
12:13
Speaker 1: some of its initial applications were to treat patients with
12:16
Speaker 1: lung diseases and other illnesses. These days you know it
12:20
Speaker 1: as the stuff your dentists has you inhale when he
12:23
Speaker 1: needs to gouge away your gums with a lethal scalpel.
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Speaker 1: But as early as seventeen ninety nine there was evidence
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Speaker 1: of nitrous being used not for medicine but for recreation.
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Speaker 1: Seventeen ninety nine, in England and in America, an entertainer
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Speaker 1: would pretend to be a doctor, pick someone from the audience,
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Speaker 1: bring them on stage, have them huff some gas, and then,
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Speaker 1: for the amusement of the paying crowd, the audience member
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Speaker 1: high on nitrous would quote laugh, sing, dance speaker fight, unquote.
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Speaker 1: And that's according to a poster advertising one such event
12:56
Speaker 1: from way back when the allure of a nitrous high
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Speaker 1: is that it's fast and cheap. You disconnect from your
13:03
Speaker 1: body for thirty to sixty seconds, float off into oblivion,
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Speaker 1: and then it's over and all you want is another hit.
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Speaker 1: But ask any dentists who's not Steve Martin in a
13:13
Speaker 1: little Shop of horrors, and they'll tell you that the
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Speaker 1: danger of even one hit of nitrous is that it
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Speaker 1: starves your brain of oxygen, and then best case scenario,
13:22
Speaker 1: you're fainting in falling in cracking your head open. Worst
13:26
Speaker 1: case you're suffering a seizure of brain damage. These days,
13:31
Speaker 1: hippie crack is no longer confined to shakedown steep, which
13:34
Speaker 1: is the tailgating area outside any content venue where you
13:37
Speaker 1: buy grilled cheese's, hash brownies, handmade jewelry, bumper stickers, and
13:41
Speaker 1: whatever other wearers the vendors are hustling that day. These days,
13:46
Speaker 1: it's big business pulling down big money nitrous Mafia crews
13:51
Speaker 1: out of hubs like Philly have little overhead, often employing
13:54
Speaker 1: dealers straight out of the pen on the cheap to
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Speaker 1: sling gas that shows. The balloon men say up in
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Speaker 1: one spot, one guy filling, another handling the cash, a
14:03
Speaker 1: third on the lookout, and within ten minutes they've sold
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Speaker 1: hundreds of balloons and pocketed thousands of dollars, always ready
14:10
Speaker 1: at a moment's notice to jump to another spot if
14:12
Speaker 1: five O is moving in, because there's only an issue
14:16
Speaker 1: if you're caught selling. The DEA doesn't regulate it. It's
14:20
Speaker 1: not classified as a controlled substance. It's legal to own nitrous,
14:25
Speaker 1: it's just illegal to purchase or sell it for the
14:28
Speaker 1: purpose of getting high. You'd think, however, that you'd hear
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Speaker 1: more about nitrous dealers getting busted, But the mafia is
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Speaker 1: highly organized, and the mafia is also a cutthroat, and
14:39
Speaker 1: with the increased presence at Fish shows and other music
14:42
Speaker 1: festivals came increased tactics to dominate the market by any
14:46
Speaker 1: means necessary. In two thousand and nine, according to one
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Speaker 1: Fish fan, a parking lot of Tendant was beaten to
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Speaker 1: shit by a nitrous dealer outside of show in Portland, Maine.
14:57
Speaker 1: That same year, at the gathering of the Vibes Festival, Bridgeport, Connecticut,
15:01
Speaker 1: where Fish was not performing By the Way, a twenty
15:03
Speaker 1: nine year old man was found dead of an apparent
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Speaker 1: drug overdose, but fans online were quick to point fingers
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Speaker 1: at the Nitrous Mafia, saying that they'd beaten him with
15:11
Speaker 1: a tank prior to his death many years earlier. In
15:19
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, the year Fish first formed in Burlington, Vermont,
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Speaker 1: the only viable connection between Nitrous and rock and roll
15:27
Speaker 1: was this one bootleg going around to the Grateful Dead
15:29
Speaker 1: show in Baltimore from the year prior, the one where
15:33
Speaker 1: Jerry and Phil Lesh were allegedly taking hits from a
15:36
Speaker 1: nitrous tank on stage while Phil did a psychotic reading
15:39
Speaker 1: of Edgar Allen Poe's poem The Raven. But this was
15:44
Speaker 1: a more naive time. The Nitrous thing was a real,
15:48
Speaker 1: if you know, you know kind of deal. In nineteen
15:51
Speaker 1: eighty three, Bernie Sanders was in his second term as
15:54
Speaker 1: Burlington's mayor, and Ben and Jerry had just created that
15:57
Speaker 1: cow design that would become so ubiquitous they're popular but
16:01
Speaker 1: still hyper local ice cream, and Trey Anastasio was about
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Speaker 1: to transfer from UVM to Goddard College, where he composed
16:08
Speaker 1: a concept album called The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday
16:11
Speaker 1: as his senior study. And just like Bernie and Ben
16:15
Speaker 1: and Jerry Trey, along.
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Speaker 2: With Mike Page and Fishman, was.
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Speaker 1: Interested in something completely different than what was being offered.
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Speaker 1: So that's what Fish delivered. Their regular performances at a
16:27
Speaker 1: local bar called Nectar's were marathon affairs, three sets per night,
16:31
Speaker 1: each set increasingly less traditional and more abstract, and they
16:36
Speaker 1: tried to not repeat themselves, not just in how they
16:39
Speaker 1: played a song, but in what songs they chose to play.
16:42
Speaker 1: So from very early on, the promise of a Fish
16:45
Speaker 1: show was a promise of something unexpected, which included their
16:50
Speaker 1: improvisations where moments of great transcendence would frequently emerge from
16:54
Speaker 1: even greater moments of absurdity, and experiencing that transcendence, well,
16:59
Speaker 1: it's like watching a movie in a crowded theater. It
17:01
Speaker 1: just hits different when you're surrounded by a community. That
17:07
Speaker 1: community grew on grassroots DIY level through the nineteen eighties
17:11
Speaker 1: and into the nineties. When major labels flush with cash
17:15
Speaker 1: could not corral enough new bands, Fish signed to Elektra,
17:19
Speaker 1: who released their third studio album, A Picture of Nectar,
17:22
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two, while simultaneously reissuing their first two
17:26
Speaker 1: independent releases, Junta and lawn Boy. All three records were
17:31
Speaker 1: marked by a signature combination of goofiness and virtuosity, but
17:36
Speaker 1: a picture of nectar boasted the single chalk Dust Torture,
17:39
Speaker 1: which endeared them to the likes of David Letterman. More
17:43
Speaker 1: albums followed, more fans too, and before long, tens of
17:47
Speaker 1: thousands of devotees seventy thousand to be precise, were shutting
17:51
Speaker 1: down the two lane stretch of I ninety five running
17:54
Speaker 1: up northern Maine all the way to Louring Air Force Base,
17:56
Speaker 1: where a Fish staged a two day festival called the
17:59
Speaker 1: Great Went in August of nineteen ninety seven. They turned
18:03
Speaker 1: the tiny town of Limestone into the biggest city in
18:06
Speaker 1: the state of Maine. That weekend, just as the members
18:10
Speaker 1: of Fish were beginning to tune into a dangerous new frequency,
18:17
Speaker 1: Trey was drooling. The saliva oozed from the side of
18:20
Speaker 1: his mouth and ran down his chin. More followed, glistening
18:25
Speaker 1: in the red hairs of his beard. He was totally
18:27
Speaker 1: out of it. His mouth hung open, his eyes were
18:31
Speaker 1: rolling into the back of his head, and his.
18:33
Speaker 2: Mind was just gone.
18:36
Speaker 1: He heard someone laughing by his side. He slowly turned
18:39
Speaker 1: his head, only now having the slightest realization that he
18:42
Speaker 1: was a slobbering mess, only the slightest though. He was
18:47
Speaker 1: so fucked up. And that's when he saw the big
18:50
Speaker 1: black mustache. Oh yeah, that's right, Carlos Santana was there.
18:56
Speaker 1: He'd forgotten where he was for a minute.
18:58
Speaker 2: There I who was with him.
19:02
Speaker 1: Santana was laughing harder and louder, now nodding his head
19:05
Speaker 1: in approval as Trey fell deeper into oblivion. Trey then
19:10
Speaker 1: turned to look down at his own hands and realized
19:12
Speaker 1: that he'd been holding a single sustained note on his
19:14
Speaker 1: guitar this entire time. There was an audience of thousands
19:19
Speaker 1: out there watching as his epic solo came to its conclusion.
19:24
Speaker 1: Trey had gone into a trance state, drooling all over
19:28
Speaker 1: himself on stage, and he did this while getting ridiculously high.
19:33
Speaker 2: On the music.
19:35
Speaker 1: And the song ended, the crowd roared, and Trey leaned
19:39
Speaker 1: over to Santana, who had graciously sat in with Fish
19:41
Speaker 1: for a few songs, and apologized for making such a
19:44
Speaker 1: fool of himself drooling in front of Carlos. It was
19:48
Speaker 1: embarrassing and Santana shook his head. Nothing to apologize for,
19:53
Speaker 1: he said, you were tapped into something special. You know
19:56
Speaker 1: you've gone somewhere good when you start drooling like that.
20:00
Speaker 1: This was the recent memory replaying in Trey's head as
20:03
Speaker 1: he stood on stage at the Great Went Festival and
20:05
Speaker 1: scanned the community of seventy thousand Fish fans gathered before him.
20:10
Speaker 1: Just like he'd once tapped into something good with Santana,
20:13
Speaker 1: he was now tapping into something with each and every
20:16
Speaker 1: person out there. But this was a long way from
20:20
Speaker 1: three sets a night at Nectar's. This was much bigger
20:23
Speaker 1: than signing on the dotted line with Electra. This had
20:26
Speaker 1: gone bigger than he could have ever imagined it to be.
20:29
Speaker 1: It was scary big, the kind of big that changes
20:32
Speaker 1: you whether you wanted to or not. And things were
20:36
Speaker 1: changing out there. More people meant more drugs and not
20:40
Speaker 1: just nitrous but coke and dope, and more hissing tanks
20:45
Speaker 1: and more empty balloons trampled under foot across the grounds
20:48
Speaker 1: at Mooring Air Force Base. When the weekend was finally over,
20:52
Speaker 1: Trey was oblivious to most of these things. He just
20:55
Speaker 1: saw a sea of people, and he could sense that
20:58
Speaker 1: as the sea grew in size, so did the potential
21:01
Speaker 1: for a giant wave to build up and come crashing
21:04
Speaker 1: down on everything. In fact, he was so wrapped up
21:07
Speaker 1: and playing in the music and cultivating one of the
21:10
Speaker 1: biggest communities in rock and roll history, that he couldn't
21:14
Speaker 1: see that not only was that wave indeed incoming, but
21:17
Speaker 1: it was already hovering over the backstage scene. Cocaine and
21:22
Speaker 1: heroin weren't just new mainstays out in the parking lot,
21:25
Speaker 1: and on shakedown the crew had been doing them too,
21:29
Speaker 1: but just hiding them. Once Trey's eyes were really opened,
21:33
Speaker 1: and once he himself began to partake, all of those
21:36
Speaker 1: substances were suddenly now out in the open, and the
21:40
Speaker 1: shadow of that giant wave began to turn the daylight
21:44
Speaker 1: into darkness.
21:51
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after this. We're, We're, We're.
22:01
Speaker 1: January two thousand. Trey watched from his window seat as
22:05
Speaker 1: the plane climbed into the clear blue sky in Florida
22:08
Speaker 1: receded in the distance below. From this far up, he
22:12
Speaker 1: could still see the site below where Fish Should just
22:14
Speaker 1: staged the largest ticketed concert of the millennium. Big Cypress,
22:19
Speaker 1: was a three day festival on a Seminole Indian reservation
22:22
Speaker 1: outside Miami, and big was the understatement of the year.
22:28
Speaker 1: For months, Cruz worked to build what was essentially a
22:31
Speaker 1: small city that had a general store, a downtown, a boardwalk,
22:36
Speaker 1: a post office, two Ferris Wheels, art installations, even a
22:41
Speaker 1: radio station, and like all Fish festivals, the sole performer
22:46
Speaker 1: was Fish. They played numerous times over numerous days, including
22:51
Speaker 1: a marathon set that went from midnight on New Year's
22:54
Speaker 1: Eve all the way to sunrise on New Year's Day
22:57
Speaker 1: that seven uninterrupted hours to give her take, So naturally,
23:03
Speaker 1: Trey was exhausted. In the next seat over, Fishman nudged him,
23:09
Speaker 1: and Trey turned to look at his best friend and
23:11
Speaker 1: band made him nearly seventeen years Hey Man, Fisherman said,
23:16
Speaker 1: I feel like we're on a train, you know. Trey
23:19
Speaker 1: furrowed his brow. Dude, we're on a plane right now. Yeah,
23:24
Speaker 1: I don't mean literally, Fisherman said. It feels like we
23:27
Speaker 1: the band, are on this train that's going like one
23:30
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles an hour and we're about to
23:33
Speaker 1: crash into a brick wall. Trey knew exactly what Fisherman meant.
23:38
Speaker 2: He was so right.
23:39
Speaker 1: The touring the ever expanding community. The bigness of it all,
23:44
Speaker 1: the fame and now the drugs. Not only was it
23:47
Speaker 1: all a super annoying cliche, but it all spelled danger
23:52
Speaker 1: dead ahead. So at the moment that they were at
23:57
Speaker 1: their height, after performing for around eighty five five thousand
24:00
Speaker 1: people at the largest ticketed y two k concert, Fish
24:04
Speaker 1: went on hiatus. But the infrastructure that Fish had spent
24:08
Speaker 1: years refining, and the bad actors conducting business in the
24:12
Speaker 1: shadows of that infrastructure, none of that went anywhere. While
24:17
Speaker 1: Fish were away. Festival organizers drew heavily from the band's
24:20
Speaker 1: innovations to create Bonnaroo, now one of the largest annual
24:24
Speaker 1: music festivals in the country when it's not being canceled.
24:27
Speaker 1: But I digress and in two thousand and one, federal
24:31
Speaker 1: agents along with the d C Police, arrested thirty people
24:35
Speaker 1: outside RFK Stadium, where the Dave Matthews Band were headlining
24:38
Speaker 1: a show. The Fed seized black tar, heroin, ecstasy, wheed mushrooms,
24:44
Speaker 1: and forty tanks at nitrous oxide, each weighing between two
24:47
Speaker 1: hundred and three hundred pounds, and none of the suspects
24:50
Speaker 1: charged with distribution of hippie crack were actually from d C.
24:54
Speaker 1: By the way, they were from New Jersey, New York
24:56
Speaker 1: and Philadelphia, the alleged hub of one of the large
25:00
Speaker 1: Nitros mafia operations in the country. This was the world
25:05
Speaker 1: that Fish found waiting for them when they finally returned
25:08
Speaker 1: from their hiatus on New Year's Eve of two thousand
25:11
Speaker 1: and two. Over the next year and a half, they
25:14
Speaker 1: tried to pick up where they left off, but during
25:16
Speaker 1: their break, Trey had become addicted to OxyContin following some
25:20
Speaker 1: dental surgery. In the moment he was back on the bus,
25:23
Speaker 1: back on the plane, backstage, he fell back into his
25:27
Speaker 1: old habits in his mind. These habits cocaine, for instance,
25:33
Speaker 1: would help him do the work, help him stay up
25:35
Speaker 1: longer and later for those mega intense, hours long sets
25:39
Speaker 1: that the community craved. But the secret addictions that once
25:43
Speaker 1: threatened to send Fishes out of control train into the
25:45
Speaker 1: brick wall, and they were now about to drop Trey
25:48
Speaker 1: from a plane at thirty thousand feet with no parachute.
25:52
Speaker 1: The drugs shut him off from the band, shut them
25:55
Speaker 1: off from the fans, and shut them off from the community,
25:57
Speaker 1: from his friends, from his family. So it was decided
26:01
Speaker 1: it Fish didn't stop for good. This time, then it
26:05
Speaker 1: was very possible that Tray was going to die, which
26:09
Speaker 1: is ironic because that's exactly the kind of language used
26:13
Speaker 1: to describe Coventry. The Festival Fish staged in upstate Vermont
26:17
Speaker 1: in August of two thousand and four. It was billed
26:20
Speaker 1: as their farewell show, but some fans weren't calling it
26:23
Speaker 1: a farewell. They were calling it a funeral. You wake
26:30
Speaker 1: up inside your tent to the sound of torrential rain
26:33
Speaker 1: beating down. You're soaking wet. There's so much water that
26:37
Speaker 1: it's seeping inside the tent and everything is a sopping,
26:40
Speaker 1: stinky mess. And when the rain lets up, you stumble
26:44
Speaker 1: outside and your whole world is now mud. Your feet
26:47
Speaker 1: sink into the ground, and as you pull one foot
26:50
Speaker 1: back out, the goopy mud just pulls the sneaker right
26:54
Speaker 1: off with this gross sucking sound. And now fuck, your
26:57
Speaker 1: other sneaker just got pulled off too, and you're like, whatever, man,
27:00
Speaker 1: fuck it, Just leave.
27:01
Speaker 2: The shoes and go barefoot.
27:04
Speaker 1: So now you're walking from the campsite to where the
27:06
Speaker 1: stage is, and the mud is completely caked around your
27:09
Speaker 1: feet up to your ankles. It's a long walk, but
27:13
Speaker 1: not nearly as long as the walk that some of
27:15
Speaker 1: the other sixty seventy thousand people here had to endure
27:18
Speaker 1: when they decided to abandon their cars in the highway
27:20
Speaker 1: and leave most of their gear behind in march thirty
27:23
Speaker 1: something miles just to be here. You've never seen traffic
27:26
Speaker 1: like that before, and you've never seen this many empty
27:28
Speaker 1: balloons all over the ground.
27:30
Speaker 2: It's like a rainbow.
27:31
Speaker 1: Caked and shit, someone told you that you were camping
27:36
Speaker 1: out in nitrous Alley, and damn, that sounds about right.
27:39
Speaker 1: If not for the pouring rain, you would have been
27:42
Speaker 1: kept up all night by the symphony of hissing gas tanks.
27:45
Speaker 1: You passed by a kid doing a line on the
27:47
Speaker 1: hood of Avovo Sadan Royal blue and beat to shit
27:51
Speaker 1: in the contrast to that big white line of coke
27:53
Speaker 1: is visually arresting.
27:55
Speaker 2: It's like bolded text.
27:57
Speaker 1: You never would have seen this kind of thing way
27:59
Speaker 1: out in the open like this back in the Great
28:02
Speaker 1: Went days. Another guy walks by you and exhales whatever
28:06
Speaker 1: they're smoking, and well, shit, man, it's not weed and
28:08
Speaker 1: it's not tobacco. And the dude's smoking it looks like
28:11
Speaker 1: he's about to hit the deck you wonder if the
28:14
Speaker 1: Mud will swallow them whole, and maybe the Mud won't
28:17
Speaker 1: want them today. And when you finally get to the
28:22
Speaker 1: stage and Fish finally comes out for one of that
28:25
Speaker 1: weekend sets, You're like, what the fuck is going on?
28:30
Speaker 1: It's obviously very emotional. Page is up on that jumbo screen,
28:34
Speaker 1: playing keyboards and trying to sing, but he keeps bursting
28:37
Speaker 1: out in tears.
28:38
Speaker 2: But then when he's not crying, he's.
28:40
Speaker 1: Sort of half assing it. You wonder is he on something?
28:45
Speaker 1: Trey is definitely on something. His voice is raspy, he
28:49
Speaker 1: keeps fucking with his aunt, and then Trey's crying too.
28:54
Speaker 2: Something about the.
28:54
Speaker 1: Whole vibe is off, and that vibe lingers on long
29:00
Speaker 1: after Coventry is over. But you go back home and
29:04
Speaker 1: every time you listen to Fish, all you can think
29:07
Speaker 1: about is the Mud and the cocaine on the hood
29:09
Speaker 1: of that vogo and nitrous Sally and Trey looking like
29:11
Speaker 1: he's knocking on death's door. It used to be so joyous,
29:16
Speaker 1: and now the absence of that joy is the only
29:19
Speaker 1: thing you could feel. And then you wonder, is this
29:23
Speaker 1: It was the whole thing, the music, the people, the community,
29:28
Speaker 1: was that all too good.
29:29
Speaker 3: To be true?
29:44
Speaker 2: All right, dudes.
29:45
Speaker 1: A little later in this episode, I'm gonna mention a
29:47
Speaker 1: murder that happened outside of Fish Concert in Hampton, Virginia,
29:52
Speaker 1: from just a few months ago this year, and how
29:54
Speaker 1: that tragedy has been linked to the so called Nitrous Mafia. Unfortunately,
29:59
Speaker 1: we didn't have time in this full episode to get
30:01
Speaker 1: into the details of that particular story. But if you
30:04
Speaker 1: want to hear that whole story, and trust me, it
30:07
Speaker 1: is a wild one, you can hear it in this
30:10
Speaker 1: week's brand new mini episode of Disgraceland, which is available
30:14
Speaker 1: only to our All Access members. Just go to disgracelandpod
30:17
Speaker 1: dot com to sign up and to hear that bonus
30:19
Speaker 1: mini episode right now, all right, We're to get back
30:22
Speaker 1: to our main story here on Fish. On December fifteenth,
30:29
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, a little over two years after
30:32
Speaker 1: Fish took what was said to be their final bow
30:34
Speaker 1: at the disastrous Coventry Festival, forty two year old Trey
30:38
Speaker 1: Anastasio was pulled over in Whitehall, New York. It was
30:42
Speaker 1: around three thirty in the morning, and the cop had
30:44
Speaker 1: witnessed the black Audi swerving in and out.
30:47
Speaker 2: Of its lane.
30:48
Speaker 1: Upon a search, of the vehicle. Trey was found to
30:51
Speaker 1: be in possession of Vikingin, percocet, and xanax, all three
30:55
Speaker 1: of which were prescribed to someone else, but also the
30:59
Speaker 1: cop found heroin traded in even weigh one hundred pounds.
31:04
Speaker 1: Now he sat alone in a cell inside the Whitehall
31:07
Speaker 1: police station, charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance
31:11
Speaker 1: DWI and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle because
31:15
Speaker 1: his driver's license had been suspended. The station's phone was
31:20
Speaker 1: ringing off the hook. Reporters from all over the country
31:23
Speaker 1: were ravenous for details. They asked so many questions, primary
31:27
Speaker 1: among them heroin. This guy was doing heroin. This was
31:31
Speaker 1: a self described dork. Dorks don't do junk. It's hard
31:35
Speaker 1: to know if these kinds of thoughts were floating around
31:38
Speaker 1: in Trey's head while he sat in lock up for
31:40
Speaker 1: a day or two, but we do know what he.
31:42
Speaker 2: Was listening to.
31:44
Speaker 1: His polite cooperation led to an officer handing him a
31:47
Speaker 1: transistor radio and a pair of headphones to help pass
31:50
Speaker 1: the time. Trey scanned the radio dial for a station
31:54
Speaker 1: and found mostly fuzz Since the village of Whitehall is
31:57
Speaker 1: kind of in the middle of nowhere, his thumb slow
32:00
Speaker 1: turned the dial, and then there he got.
32:03
Speaker 2: Something and he turned it on.
32:04
Speaker 1: You up, and the music came through the shitty headphones,
32:07
Speaker 1: one hundred percent funky and one thousand percent prophetic. It
32:10
Speaker 1: was a song Higher Ground by Stevie Wonder. Stevie's lyrics
32:16
Speaker 1: hit him like one of his transcendental jams, hit an
32:19
Speaker 1: audience of seventy thousand. Yes, his last time on earth,
32:23
Speaker 1: he lived a whole lot of sin, And yes, he
32:25
Speaker 1: was so glad that he knew more now than he
32:28
Speaker 1: knew then. And fuck yes, he was so damn glad
32:32
Speaker 1: that he was going to get to try it all again.
32:36
Speaker 1: One traffic stock and one Stevie Wonder song was all
32:39
Speaker 1: it took. Trey pled guilty to possession, began a fourteen
32:43
Speaker 1: month court mandated recovery program, and then got back to
32:47
Speaker 1: the reason he did it all in the first place,
32:49
Speaker 1: the community. First, that looked like hundreds of hours of
32:53
Speaker 1: community service, grubbing toilets and picking up trash. Once that
32:57
Speaker 1: was done, Trey's focus became the community, the one he'd
33:01
Speaker 1: helped to create and build up so many years earlier.
33:05
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, Fish made their triumphant return
33:07
Speaker 1: to the stage led by a sober Tray, and they
33:10
Speaker 1: had never sounded better. The same fans who said the
33:14
Speaker 1: coventry felt like a funeral also said that this moment
33:18
Speaker 1: felt like a resurrection. Now, that didn't mean that the
33:21
Speaker 1: darkness and the scene had been completely lifted. In twenty eighteen,
33:26
Speaker 1: almost a decade into Fish's renaissance, two fans were violently
33:30
Speaker 1: attacked at a show at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington State,
33:34
Speaker 1: and again just earlier this year, in twenty twenty five,
33:38
Speaker 1: a man was stabbed to death outside of Fish show
33:41
Speaker 1: in Hampton, Virginia. Many online looked to pin these acts
33:44
Speaker 1: of violence on the culture that the Nitrous Mafia had
33:47
Speaker 1: created out on the margins. The Tray and Fish had
33:52
Speaker 1: taken back the center because their story wasn't one of
33:56
Speaker 1: mud and defeat and coke and Nitrous is a story
34:00
Speaker 1: of community and how being a part of that community
34:04
Speaker 1: can keep you out of the clutches of disgrace. I'm
34:08
Speaker 1: Jake Brennan and this his Disgraceland. All right, thanks for
34:36
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of Disgraceland. Question of the Week
34:38
Speaker 1: for you guys that I want you to call me
34:40
Speaker 1: six p one seven nine oh six, six six three eight,
34:42
Speaker 1: Leave me a voicemail with your answer, Send me a
34:44
Speaker 1: text with your answer. Is this what music do you
34:48
Speaker 1: like listening to most when you are well, you know, hi,
34:52
Speaker 1: stoned a little.
34:53
Speaker 2: Under the influence?
34:54
Speaker 1: What are you listening to?
34:55
Speaker 2: What are you vibing on?
34:55
Speaker 1: Is it fish? Is it the Grateful Dead? Is it
34:57
Speaker 1: someone else? You don't have to be stoned to do it?
35:00
Speaker 1: Just you know what I mean, that thing where you
35:01
Speaker 1: just listen. You just want to mellow out, You just
35:03
Speaker 1: want to chill. You want those specific kind of vibes.
35:06
Speaker 1: Six one seven nine oh six six six three eight
35:09
Speaker 1: voicemail and text to let me know at disgrace lampod
35:12
Speaker 1: on the socials Disgrace lampod at gmail dot com. Email
35:16
Speaker 1: here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly
35:21
Speaker 1: and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for
35:24
Speaker 1: this episode can be found on the show notes page
35:26
Speaker 1: at disgracelampod dot com. Rate and review the show and
35:30
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at disgracelamppod
35:34
Speaker 1: and on YouTube at YouTube dot com, slash at disgracelampod
35:39
Speaker 1: rock a roller.
35:44
Speaker 2: He's a bad man.