Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Harpua", 1993-07-25

TREY: So as we go on our way down South here, just wanna leave you guys with a little story about the way things go up in Vermont, where we’re from, which is really kind of the Gamehendge Vermont Green Mountain area of the whole thing up there. It all kind of blends together up on top of those mountains.

This is a story that happened a long time ago. It’s about Harpua, the mangy dog, and his evil master with no name, who is a one-legged kind of grumpy old man. The two of them lived way up in the cliffs in this whole green valley beautiful kind of Gamehendge-y Vermont-y place up there. They lived far far up on the mountains. Actually, it was really incredible. They would live up on these cliffs.

What would happen was, this dog, he basically got his thrill in life by going down away from the mountains into these suburban areas and sort of wreaking havoc with all the pets and the little kids living there and everything. The way he would do it, he would actually be able to, with sort of the powers of his mind, call on the all the clouds floating up above him, and the clouds would kind of come down into a bundle together. Then little drops of rain would start falling down out of the clouds. The rain would come faster and faster until it looked like little tiny little threads actually hanging down from the cloud.

The cloud would move over and slowly as the cloud was hanging above his head, it would turn upside down so that rain was actually going straight up into the air. And Harpua, this dog, would climb on to the pillowy softness of this cloud, and he’d sit there on the cloud at the edge of his cliff. Slowly the rain would lean over the side, and these kind of rain threads would pull this cloud off the cliff and they would start swinging like a hammock, swinging the cloud back and forth with Harpua sitting on it.

So here’s this dog sitting on this cloud and the rain thing swinging it around until it goes all the way around in a circle. [Trey pauses the narration while Mike plays circular notes up and down the neck of his bass guitar and Fish following on his cymbals]. Anyway so finally it would get up enough steam and just fling him up off into the air. The dog would come flying through the air and as he’s floating through the air, [with Fishman accompaniment on cymbals] he lands, poof, and he’d be off his cliff in the middle of town.

This would be his thing, he’d start walking down the street, walking down among all the houses. [Trey plays narration theme] So on this particular day, he’s done his little cloud ride that he loves to do and he’s walking around the town. He’d go around looking for a little fun, what he considered fun, so he’d go past some stores, like a 7-Eleven kind of thing, kind of turn right into a little street, until he was in a real typical suburban area with a different house over here and a house over here and a house over here and a house over here.

Then meanwhile, inside one of these little houses, there lived a small boy, and his name was Jimmy. Jimmy lived in this house, and he had a great time. On this particular day, Jimmy’s sitting in there and he’s watching his TV, sitting there with the flicker, watching his favorite show with Latka and everything, Taxi. He’s watching Taxi, his favorite show...[Page plays a little bit of the theme song on his Rhodes electric piano]

So he’s sitting there watching Taxi, and it’s that episode where Famous Amos comes down off ?the wall?, don’t know if you ever saw that episode, he’s making pot cookies or something, Famous Amos and all. So he’s sitting there watching Taxi… Oh he looks down next to him. That’s right, he looks down next to him.

He says “Boy, this is a beautiful day. There’s nothing i like more than this, sitting here watching Taxi with my clicker, sitting in my beautiful little suburban house, the sun… [Fishman says something about eating cookies] eating my Famous Amos cookies, the sun is coming in, beaming in through the windows and everything. To top it all off, i’m sitting here petting my favorite little friend, my special, i’m sitting here petting my special friend on the couch.”

Petting him, he looks down, it’s his cat, his little pussy cat. He picks the cat by the scruff of his neck and holds in front of his face and says, [in a strained whisper] “I love you… Just… oooo, ooooo, oooooo you’re just, oooooo i love you so much.” He looks at the cat, sees it hanging by the scruff of his neck and he says[in an even more strained whisper] “I love you so much little pussy cat. You’re my special pussycat, my special pussycat, you’re my special special….. POSTER NUTBAG!!! [band erupts into a cacophonic outburst]

“Poster Nutbag. Poster Nutbag. My little cat. I put you on the couch.” Poster Nutbag, after being hung by the scruff of the neck, is getting a little sick of this, decides he’s going to go for a little walk, walks over to the door. Jimmy puts down the clicker, gets up, opens up the door, lets Poster Nutbag out for a walk.

So now Posterus Nutbagus is walking through the park here, goes out the driveway, out the lawn, turns around the corner, past the street, goes around the corner. Suddenly, he sees Harpua. They look at each other. There’s hatred going back and forth between their eyes [Page swingily playing Harpua theme]

Poster Nutbag’s standing there, and Harpua’s standing there… Let’s get some music going [Trey starts playing partial theme in interesting loop] They look at each other, and they know there’s going to be a terrible fight. Poster Nutbag coils his body into a deadly arch. Harpua growls, bearing his ugly teeth. There’s going to be a horrible fight. A hungry drop of saliva drips on the ground out of Post… Harpua’s mouth. OH MY GOD!!!

Look the storm’s gone...