Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Harpua", 1996-12-29

TREY: Um, on the outskirts of Gamehendge, this little thing took place here. If you think about this, it was the, uh, they’ve got this little town with all of these innocent people who come out every Christmas and hold hands in a circle and sing Christmas carols and all that.
There is this really mean guy that lives up on the hill with his dog. Of course, I’m talking about… [large portions of the crowd yell Harpua] He comes sledding down with all this… Anyway, in this particular town, on this particular Christmas, Christmas season, a strange thing happened.

There was a day. The man was up there with his evil dog, and he was coming down on his big sled with all his presents to the innocent people. He was coming down the big hill into the suburbs of this beautiful little town [mumbles something] Anyway, one of the houses in this little town there was a boy named Jimmy who you’ve all heard of. On this particular day, Jimmy was sitting in his house as he did on many afternoons, petting his beautiful little cat Poster Nutbag.

He’s sitting here on this day, he’s petting his cat Poster Nutbag unaware of the man on top of the hill coming down with the evil dog. I am skipping the beginning of this story because I assume that most of you have heard it before. For those of you who don’t know what’s going on in the beginning of this story, there is a lot of preliminary stuff. Just ask the person next to you… There’s this a guy and this dog and he comes down…Because, I really wanna get to the meat of the story here…

FISH: Meat!

TREY: The meat!

FISH: Meat of the issue! Meat of the issue.

TREY: Anxiously rushing through the preliminaries to get to the meat of the store. Yes, there he is with his dog. Poster Nutbag, and he goes, Jimmy, goes to open the door and lets Poster Nutbag out the door. Dog, as he does in every story, coming down the hill. Dog, cat, coming towards each other. They get into a fight. Now we are at the meat of the story.

Picture the dog. Picture the cat. Fighting. The incredible thing about this particular day is that the fight between the cat and the dog is so ferocious, that they began spinning around each other. Clawing and, and biting and hissing and drooling and tearing at each other’s flesh so viciously that they began to spin in a circle. They actually spun so fast that they created a tornado. So, the dog and the cat are fighting, spinning, creating a tornado. The tornado is spinning faster and faster. Sucking all of the suburban houses into it, the Christmas presents, the trees… [Music becomes swirling cacophony]
All sucking in. More and more, just… The tornado begins to spin so, so fast and so viciously that it actually begins to dig a hole in the ground. So, it’s spinning and spinning and spinning and digging a hole in the ground. The hole gets deeper and wider and deeper and deeper until it becomes a direct hole to HELL!!!

Everybody in Gamehendge gets sucked down to Hell. They are all down in Hell. They get sucked down. Jimmy is down there and the dog and the cat and all the people and Harpua and the evil man from up on the hill, and they’re in Hell. They’re down in there, Hell, and they are looking around. Jimmy looks around, and he smells the horrible, evil, rotting flesh smell of Hell, the burning brimstone, and he feels the heat, the horrible heat of Hell burning on his skin. He’s terrified. He looks around, and he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do. He looks for it, and he sees the horrible face of Hell, the, the Uber-Demon coming towards him. [Fish screams] Terror fills his head. The Uber-Demon comes toward him, and he opens his mouth. The horrible sound of Hell comes out of his mouth and Jimmy, Jimmy hears the horrible sound of Hell...

FISH: Oh, the horrible sound of Hell, speak to us…

[Tom Marshall sings “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis]

TREY: So, he hears the horrible sound of Hell. He sees the dog and cat fighting, and he feels himself start to melt into the lava below. He sees the dog melt. He sees Harpua melt. And, he sees Poster Nutbag melt. They all melt and begin to drip into the hot lava below...

Look, the storms gone...