Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Mockingbird", 1991-11-02

TREY: Okay, this is this the last gig we’re playing in Colorado, and we wanna thank you guys all for a great time in Telluride and Boulder and Denver and the Gothic Theater and Colorado College and everybody. I definitely recognize a lot of faces that were around, and we made a lot of friends so… Thank you so much. We’re gonna drive to Austin, Texas tonight after the gig, and it’s gonna be a whole new thing.

Now, we couldn’t resist playing this song on the last night because of anywhere, at least in this country, people who understand at least about the spirit of the mountain, there is no place more than Colorado where people understand that. So, we thought it would be appropriate that we played this song on our last night. And, some of you know about this and some of you don’t. I’m gonna tell you what it’s really about.

Now, this is about another place. Where we come from, we know about the spirit of the mountain too. Anyway, if you come with us now to a different place and different mountains… This is Gamehendge that we’re going to, and in Gamehendge, as most of you know probably, this used to start, it started out a long time ago as a beautiful, beautiful serene wonderland of beauty and peace and harmony.

The people that lived there, the people of Gamehendge, the Lizards, lived in harmony, peace and harmony, with nature for thousands of years. They lived in a place where you had a big, vast green forest and huge fields off at the end of the forest that reached out. And, of course, in the middle of the field was the big, black Rhombus. Which they used a long time ago, the people would go up the mountain and they would pray to the gods and try to keep in harmony with the mountain. Every year they had a ritual where they would go out into the field and climb up on the Rhombus and sing the Divided Sky prayer to the sky above them.

Now, later on after all this happened of course, a traveller came to Gamehendge named Wilson. And Wilson saw these innocent people. Instead of seeing it as a beautiful thing and harmony with nature, he saw it as an opportunity to oppress and exploit these people. So, what he did was, he took their book or their bible of sorts, the Helping Friendly Book, which had been given to them thousands of years ago by The Great and Knowledgeable Icculus, whose spirit lived on top of the mountain that rose out of the forest there.

He took the book. He stole it from them because he knew that without the book, they were helpless, and they would need to come to him. So, by stealing the book, he enslaved all the people of Gamehendge. He hid the book in a castle, and he chopped down all the trees and raised a castle in the middle of a clearing in the middle of the forest.


For years and years he had enslaved the people until finally Colonel Forbin, who’s the hero of this last song I was just singing about, made it into Gamehendge, and he decided that he would help a group of revolutionaries try to overthrow Wilson. A lot of attempts failed, and finally his last attempt was gonna be to climb up the mountain, which no one had ever done before, to try and find The Great and Knowledgeable Icculus and ask for help.

So, as it says in the last song, he climbs up the mountain. The mountain begins to quake and rumble. Rocks tumbling down around him. He’s on his knees looking up in awe as the mountain begins to take the form of Icculus’s face. Little pieces falling out, until the whole mountain becomes the face of the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus. Colonel Forbin is kneeling there in terror beneath this awesome sight.

And, Icculus says to Colonel Forbin, “I’m gonna help you. I’m gonna call on my friend The Famous Mockingbird, who’s gonna fly down. I’m gonna send him off to steal The Helping Friendly Book back from Wilson and bring it to the little, helpless people.” But of course, he does give him that one warning that “this book contains all the knowledge inherent in the Universe, and knowledge in the wrong hands, in the hands of avarice and greed, becomes a deadly weapon so you better beware.”

But, that’s a whole different part of the story. You can worry about that later, but right now, The Famous Mockingbird is flying out of the ground, out of the sky to go to the castle and steal the friendly book...