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The Under the Scales studio is back in its hometown, Princeton, New Jersey. It's been a mobile of late and I like to be home in my hometown. It's especially appropriate since this is the final show of the first season of Under the Scales. And that's also appropriate, Andy, who's my guest, who I'm going to introduce properly in one minute. But I wanted to say it's especially appropriate because when I had the idea of doing Under the Scales, I put a list of people down and you were right like in the top three of the list. So it's great that you're ending this season with me. Anyway, hi, Andy, Gadiel. How are you? - Hello, it's an honor to be here, Tom. Thank you so much for having me. - Absolutely. And we just did the standard romp through Princeton, which has now sort of become sort of a thing that I do if people are willing to make the trip to me. And that is to go see the rhombus, to go see the Princeton battlefield, to see the glide monument, and often to hoagie haven and a couple of other things. - It was quite a pilgrimage. It was really to see where it all began at the rhombus I'd never been before and to touch the rhombus and sing the lyrics to Divided Sky. I feel like I've portaled into Gamehenge. And I communed with Oculus, I think, in the mockingbird. So I appreciate you taking me there and it really brought it all together. - Well, I'm glad that you appreciated some people appreciate it more than others. I could tell you were super appreciating it, which is great. - Well, I think big part of my love for fish was about the stories and about Gamehenge. I listened to it a lot and the whole senior thesis and this weaving together, these characters. And I mean, the helping-friendly book, it seems, possessed the ancient secrets to eternal joy and never-ending splendor. The trick was-- - That's very eloquent to surrender to the flow. Those words, in a certain part of your life, when you're learning how to be a human being, like really resonate and I think that's-- - I think we all still have to always teach ourselves that-- - There's a trick to surrender to the flow. - Yeah, it's hard to surrender to the flow. - It is, but you try to swim upstream and you'll turn into smoked salmon, I guess, but I never, I never, first time live for that one. You're welcome to add out or keep it in as you choose. (laughing) - So the reason that I put you on the list, Andy, of among the first people that I knew that I needed to talk to was because, very early on, in a lot of our experiences, at least my contemporaries, ways of finding out about fish was through something called Andy's page or gadiel.com. And I've been thinking a lot about it lately. And actually, just let me go in my little rant, if you don't mind. - Go. Before you comment, but you had one of the very first early amazing fish pages that sort of mobilized fish fans and enabled us all. And while I wanna thank you for that, and that's kind of the reason I wanted to talk to you, it also made me realize and it had something to do, there's this sort of unintentional theme to under the scales when we started, when fish started, there was no internet. And so, and I hope I don't leave anyone out, but it started with Philip Zerbo, who was on under the scales, Benji Ison, Paul Glace. And of course, I would even include like Lenny Stooby, the taper and Phil Mueller, the taper. All these people had sort of an interest in getting information to other fans. And prior to there being an internet, it was kind of done on pencil and paper. Like, I don't know exactly how the Grateful Dead did it. I bet you do. And I see Andy is now picking up, it looks like a very, very shop-worn set list book. Why don't you describe what you're holding? - Well, yeah, so I have an analog copy here of my set list book, it's a little notepad that I would bring to shows and write down the set list because we didn't have cell phones there. And I wanted to remember the song so I could post them after the show. And so I brought a little book with me and I wrote them down and I would script a little notes in or I'd doodle it, separate. And I post occasionally online on the miniversaries like the Great Went came up recently. - You take a picture of your old book. - Of the book. - And just kind of post that. It's kind of fun. I haven't documented all of them and it's kind of deteriorating at a level. I hadn't, it's been kind of stowed away in the archives. - Nice. - And so I probably should bust it out of it. But yeah, I mean, back in the day, I remember going to a show once with a friend who left his cell phone in the car. He's like, anyone I wanna talk to is gonna be here. So why do I need this? And that would be unfathomable today. - Correct. - You need your cell phone almost to do anything, but certainly enjoy music for some reason. - But that was a friend with one of my early friends, got John who really introduced me to fish in college. And he would play the alive one. You enjoy myself every single day at exceedingly loud volumes. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - In our fraternity house, and that didn't drive you away from fish. - It actually somehow drew me in. - Well, let me finish before you-- - Please go ahead, yes. - Before you tangentialize me. Is that a word? - Before you. - Before you take me away, I'm a tangent. I do at least wanna finish, and maybe you can help me articulate or agree or disagree with this theory. But my theory sort of, with all those people that I mentioned and all with this common goal, I think that fish may have been among the very first bands, if not the first, to really take advantage of the internet in that way. And I don't necessarily mean first band to have a webpage or first band to perhaps sell merch through e-commerce. I'm talking about the first one where the fans really mobilized together and actualized each other and enabled each other. And I think you guys really spread the word. But what do you think about that? - I think you're onto something. I think they were the first band whose fans really mobilized the internet because the band didn't have an official website back in the day. And Fishnet was what it was. And I remember listening to a show, I can't remember what it was, where Trey kind of announced from stage, but there's this thing called the Fishnet and go out and spread the word on the Fishnet. And it was like a bulletin board system. Because the internet in 1994 was not, was just really in its infancy. And it was, for those of us who were dialing in, we were participating in chat rooms or in message boards or bulletin board systems. - Yeah, rektomusic.fish or even the AOL. That was an early one in the Fishbowl. - We heard stories of Mike Gordon popping into the Fishbowl every now and then. - Fake Mike. - He was fake Mike. But he was really Mike. And he was real Mike himself in the studio when they were recording. I guess it was made up of Billy Breeze or, I think the Grateful Dead had rekt music G-Dead. And I remember going to a Grateful Dead show in '95 and someone had printed out rekt music G-Dead and brought it to the show to flip through it and read about what fans were talking about. But I think, generationally, dead fans in '95, at being kind of the tail end of that movement, maybe were older and not as exposed or maybe didn't have access. Whereas fish fans who were in college, we all went to the computer lab. And we had the state of the art systems and high-speed internet. We didn't have to dial in from the computer lab. And so we spent a lot of time there without having to be, you know, when we were at college, you have this unlimited time to spend doing what you wanna do and playing around. And so I think it crystallized for fish fans of a certain age at a certain era who had access to technology. So fast forward us from those times. Where were you in school, by the way, during this? You were saying in a computer lab. - So I went to school at Michigan State University. - Okay. - And I was always into computers. We had an Apple IIE when I was growing up at home and I used to make these bouncing ball programs. - Oh yeah, I did a rocket. - Rocket program in basic. - Right, and I would look at a magazine and copy literally the line by line. And you're like, hey, cool, a ball. - Yeah, and then what the best part about it is you could control gravity with a little variable. And I remember you could make two balls hit each other. And that really left an impression on me that you could control what was happening on the screen and not just be reading it, like it was, you were creating something. - Right. - So the point I'm trying to drive at is that you eventually kind of took the reins and created gadiel.com. And how did you do that? What made you-- - So when I went to college at Michigan State in 1993 and '94, the internet, and I was dialing in to de-dial systems and chat boards, 300 baud modem. (electronic beeping) - I learned how to type that way with other people. I learned how to type very quickly 'cause you were having conversations with people. - Yeah. - And realized there was something about the feedback loop of conversing with other people online and that information flow. But then they said, but there's this thing called the internet, World Wide Web. And I remember being in the Apple-esque store at the computer store in college, seeing NCSA Mosaic for the first time, which ended up becoming Netscape Navigator. - The first browser. - The first browser. I remember seeing it when it first came out in the store and I said, there's something there. And it really hit me and I said, that's the visual web is something in the hyperlink and being able to link to another site. - Yeah. - Took it to the next level. And it was-- - Everyone hearing this who was born like 1990 and-- - Yeah. - And later is not excited about this, but that was exciting. I remember that. - It was incredible. And what happened was, I think I might have had a class where they said, your project is to make a web page, which at the time, a web page was save this file on our file system and it will be available on the internet. - You could go and find it on another computer. - And so I saved, I created AMD's page, whatever it was. It's just my little homepage. And it was that, for those that may remember, cps.msu.edu/tilde_gadiel_an. And then they're like, talk about something you like. And so at the same time, I was getting into fish and hanging out with people cooler than me. And they said, make a project about something you're interested in. And so I created slash fish. And for lack of a better naming convention, I called it Andy Gadiel's fish page and it just somehow stuck, stuck. But what happened along the same time was I was spending time on rec music fish and other sites and I have to throw another name out to those folks 'cause we all stand on the shoulders of giants that come before us. And it's very much a whole community of people that participated in that. But there was a guy, I remember named Mikey Perro who I've never connected with since, who somehow got the set lists and somehow would email them out to people. And I was on that list and I would go on rec music fish and people would say, what was the set list? I can't find the set list. And I'm like, well, I'm getting it on my email. So I started copying the emails into rec music fish but then it was kind of getting lost in the conversation. So I said, well, I got this web page that I've created. I'll just put them there. So I started literally copying Mikey's emails that I was getting every day that somehow other people weren't getting that he wasn't posting anywhere else. - Amazing. - Onto this page. So thanks Mike, if you're out there and let's find me. - Yeah, I'm in your beer. - Let's have beer, yeah. - And so the site evolved from the standpoint of people who got on the internet for the first time at that time and those who were there and remember, what's the first thing a college kid when they get on this information, the world's information is at your fingertips. What's the first thing you're doing? You're doing a search for your favorite band and they search for fish and they found me. And the search was Yahoo or Altavista or whatever the early days were before we Googled everything. When they found me, it would be pretty amazing what happened. They would come and see what I had posted at the time, which maybe was a set list or a piece of news and people would know something that wasn't listed, like either a rumor or something we would get announced and they would email me. My email address was right on there, gadeylam@pilot.msu.edu. - Well, that was kind of one of the coolest things and you'd think that I, you know, I being the lyricist and friend of trays would know stuff. I would go to your page to find out rumored concert dates and you were, you know, you actually had more information than I did. - I had a few good sources 'cause you did tour dates too. - Oh yeah, it was, when they announced tour dates, rumors, set lists and then links, links, links, links. I have this early philosophy of the web is a link exchange. The hyperlink, you can connect to other sites, you connect other people and it was a benevolent-- - Every one of my friends used your page religiously. - And I thought early on was if I can get people, either high of the information or it's somewhere else, if I can get them to where they wanna go, they'll come back. So I don't have to worry about like keeping them in my walled garden. Let's just get people the information and then ultimately they'll come back, and it was really just a community effort. There was not a real fish page and then when the, I think when the first fish.com came online, it was the official page and certainly was not gonna have rumors. And a message board, and so the message board was also a really big part. And that was where the people communed and I would use an old WWW board CGI plugin that inevitably, every now and then, somebody would figure out how to bomb and turn into like a blinking text. And I'd get an email from someone that said, "Hey, you gotta clear the board." And I'd go on and I'd clear the board and-- - Early trolls. - Total early trolls and what would be amazing about it was I would meet people years later who said that they are married and met on the message board. - Ah. - And then they're like, "Here's the beer." - Oh, I thought you were gonna say, like you had a troll confess. I'm sorry. - I don't know if I've ever had a troll confess. - I don't think they do. - You're getting, yeah, that's kind of why they're troll. But no, it was so sweet is that people connected and that was what it was all about was-- - You and I connected, we didn't get married, but you and I connected. - We did. - We had a great connection. - Do you remember our major connection that we had? - You must. - The first? - Well, no, I don't know about the first, but yes. - Yeah, so the big one. - Well, and the interview kind of came later in the jam-based era, but the interview, I mean, it kind of naturally was an evolution when I interviewed you, I didn't interview you. I said, "Why don't we have the fans interview you?" And so what we did was put up a form that anyone could ask a question, but then I made a little backstage, so only Tom could ask a question and he had a little password, or could read the questions, excuse me, that were asked. And there was a little password that I think was a Hellborn elf child, or which was not actually a lyric. He wrote more the correct lyric, but you liked it anyway and you stopped it. I was like, "What do you want the password to be?" - It is the correct lyric. - Right, Hellborn elf child. But you're like, "It's great, I have no mind." And the idea was that if you read through the questions and you answered one, then that would get posted live. - That's right. - So the database allowed me to hide everything and it was submitted until you answered it. And then once you answered it, it got on the page. And it went on, we were thinking of a couple of weeks, it went on for months. You became your own personal little communication. - That was like my first experience with blogging or anything like it. - It was amazing, that was fun. It was kind of people's first, I mean a lot of people didn't know anything about me, right? So it was kind of, I think they were learning about who I was and getting emboldened by other answers and questions. And then they would ask slightly more insightful. I think it got better as it went along. - I can't believe I gave away the password to it. Just now, I mean. - Damn it. - People could go back in time. And that happens to be your password for everything now. (laughing) - What? - Good luck. We ended it because you said, "Okay, this has gone far enough and I'm starting to have conversations with people, but maybe I shouldn't." - Really? - I can't remember now. We have to go back to the videotape. - Yeah, I don't think I was ever creeped out or anything like that. It was probably just common sense. You got to end this at some point. - It had run its course. - Yes. - And I think I did another one of the same vein, but that was really the only time we had done something of that nature. But it kind of spawned into bigger ideas of how to do artist interviews and interactions with the community. - Yeah. Now, when I asked if you remembered our interaction, you alluded to our first one. Do you actually remember our first one? 'Cause I sure don't. - Well, the first time I met you was at Madison Square Garden. - Oh, it was the-- - The hiatus. - It was hiatus number one ended. - It was the comeback show. - Yes. - With the Piper-- - And seven below, I think. - Yes. - A pipe debuted. - 1,000 and-- - I wanna say. (laughing) (laughing) New years 2002, 1231. - You were two. - You were signaling three. - Two. - Piper, Gailoudi, and I see you. - There's two end of three. And I remember they ended the third set with walls of the cave for the first time, played live at Madison Square Garden in New York. And I came up with you after the show 'cause we were waving. And I introduced myself and we said hi. - My wife had thought you were waving at them. My wife was with a friend, Lindsey. Hi, Lindsey, and hi, Lily. And you were in the crowd on the floor. And you were waving at me and Lindsey and Lily were kind of waving at this dude, waving at them. And they still remember it. - Yeah, I mean, Tom, it was funny. - I don't really, I didn't really wanna say this and break it to you, but I gotta admit, I was waving at them. - You were waving? - See, you think that-- - They're prettier than I am. - We're waving at the dudes in the front row, but we're waving at the girls. - It's always the girls, right? - Right. - So I came up to you and we talked about walls of the cave 'cause it was the first time, it was a beautiful song. And what's a call walls of the cave? And you said, when probably the first time, I had heard it, obviously, live. ♪ I'm leaving you a message ♪ ♪ I'm leaving you a trace ♪ ♪ I'm leaving thoughts for you ♪ ♪ I hope that time will not erase ♪ ♪ And when the moment comes to read the words ♪ ♪ That I am grave ♪ ♪ You'll find them on the walls of the cave ♪ - It was amazing. And a bunch of songs were debuted that night and that was a great night. That was an amazing night. There were people walking around in stilts in the audience. Do you remember that? - I do remember that. - Yeah, that was pretty cool. - I remember they played Waves in the second set, which was one of the newest songs ever at the time. And then they followed it up with Divided Sky, which was, of course, one of the first songs ever. And I had this moment of them obviously coming back for the first ever and opening their second set with the newest song into the oldest song. And it was like a bookend kind of feeling of completeness. - You've done this to me before. Like, as we were walking around town, I became aware Andy likes to read deep messages out of fish's positioning of songs and also their set lists and the meaning, everything. So you're like the quintessential fish fan and the perfect person to create a site like that. Please tell us step two in your progression on the internet. - Backing up a bit, in college, I actually got, listening to fish, of course, before seeing them live, getting exposed to them through my friend who was playing a live one. You enjoy myself at loud volumes. And then they had gone to some shows in the area at Michigan State. I somehow missed them coming through town. And my first show was actually not until 1995. So I'm a bit of a noob, but thanks for having me on your show. I'm a quick study. I got into it real, real quick. And when fishing, I was way into it by the time that they announced summer tour '95 and was all over mail order and all over Ticketmaster or not even the time it was something else. I don't think I slept out for those tickets, but later we did. But the first show was Deer Creek, June 19th, 1995. First time the band played Deer Creek. And it's an amazing show. - What song stands out for you there? - Well, they opened the show with a beautiful song called "Theme from the Bottom", which has some pretty nice lyrics for those who enjoy that kind of thing. And we listened to it on the way over here to get into the mood on the way down to CCU. - Oh, cool. - And the amazing part about that show, there's a number of things that happened on the way to that show. Driving from East Lansing, Michigan to Noblesville, Indiana, you follow the lines going south. And we spent the night, the night before at a campsite and 'cause we drove the day before and then drove by halfway. And when we got the campsite and set up, we took a walk around and there was another group of people at the campsite that were obviously going to the show. They were sitting around their campfire playing songs and they welcomed a join us and we hung out and one of the guys in the guitar was playing fish songs like AC/DC bag and he played fluff head and it was a fun little pre-show hang. And then he played a song that he had written about a reincarnation called T-Rows. It was this beautiful song and we really enjoyed it. It was kind of fun and it became kind of our running joke for the weekend. I'm like, oh, I wonder if fish is going to play T-Rows. As like T-Rows, T-Rows, they're going to play T-Rows. And so fast forward, I'll talk about the first show but fast forward about three months later. And I didn't see the guy again. I walk into a bar in college in East Lansing, the small planet in East Lansing, Michigan, and Michigan State and went to see this band called Acoustic Hookah and Lo and Behold on stage was Ed McGee, the guitar player for Gursus and he was singing T-Rows. (gentle music) ♪ She didn't mind when I leaned over near ♪ ♪ She didn't stop me from smelling her hair ♪ ♪ She had no idea what I was remembering ♪ ♪ When I asked her what sent to you where she said ♪ ♪ The T-Rows ♪ ♪ The T-Rows ♪ ♪ The T-Rows ♪ ♪ The T-Rows ♪ - Oh my God. - At that moment, and I, so acoustic hookah, kudos to them to connect it together. But we made our way from T-Rows campsite down to Deer Creek and we wandered into this amazing amphitheater and we had our pick of the leg, we sat front row and for the next two hours, the universe came around us and themed from the bottom really, you know, put it all into perspective. And it was a beautiful show, you know, themed from the bottom, poor heart, AC/DC bag, Tila, Punch, nice little game-henge trifecta there, and then a phenomenally beautiful Reba. Strange design. Ah, dripping in the strange design? - Yeah, as dripping in this strange design. - Yeah. - Rift, cavern, and a lope. And my friend looked at me and go, "What a perfect first set for you." And it was my first show, it was really just great. Set break, who knows what happened? Second set opened with simple. And then when you say who knows what happened, everyone knows what happened. And then I went to the bathroom and then I went back to the lawn. And then simple. - And then they play a David Bowie, which I would suggest everyone listen to. It is a 23-minute David Bowie that goes out there and there's some beautiful melodies. - How about if we listen to 30 seconds of it, right? - I would love it and you will really enjoy it. - All right, here we go. (upbeat music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - Wow, that really was great. And that riff, he brings that little thing back at the end too. So go on your own and listen to the end. It really goes places and it was amazing. 'Cause he said, "Oh, that was really cool earlier. "I'm gonna do that again in the fast part." And so when that Bowie ended and I was really just wow, the next song I think may have been when everything was kind of sealed, first show hooked during where they played the mango song. And 'cause I was feeling a little scattered after the Bowie as Bowie's content to do and I needed some grounding and I needed to know that I was gonna be okay and everything was gonna work out and be all right. And this is a little intense, my first show. - Mango helped you sort of get back to your hands. - My hands and feet were literally mangoes at that moment, but I was like Einstein, maybe not quite. We were just at the place where that happened. - Well, it's also funny that you say that. So we were just at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, which is the home of the rhombus. And I don't know what the Einstein reference was in your head, but I had pointed out my friend, Aaron Wolf's house, whose dad was the head of the Institute at the time. Aaron Wolf wrote mango song with. - Albert Einstein. (laughing) - Yes. - Two of them. - An homage to Albert Einstein. Yes, so it made a lot of sense at that moment. And then they played "Loving Cup Sparkle" and you enjoy myself, that was, of course, the song that I knew, like the back of my hand, because I heard it on high volumes from a live one every single day up until that moment. And I turned to my friend who played it and I went, "Dude, thanks." - "Dude." (laughing) And then they encored with a day in the life and it was perfect. So I was with Art, Kenny, John, and Josh. - And he's looking at his analog set list book. - And his analog set list book. And then the next night we went on to the Blossom, Ohio, Amphitheater, where they played Spock's Brain, Second Show, Spock's Brain, Chiching. If I could, I got, it was really amazing. I remember before that show, Mike Gordon was walking through the lot. And so leisurely nonchalantly. And I was like, "Hey, nice to know, it's a thanks." He wandered off. - He didn't need security because he had that haircut back then. - Pretty much. Many of these people listening may have called me as shows on the pay phone at separate. People would run to the pay phone at separate. - To get. - To tell me. - The info on your site. - And then other people would be home refreshing the page. - Yeah, incredible. - And I was strategically located in the Midwest, which worked really well for East Coast shows. And West Coast shows they stayed up a little later, but I would get, 'cause there's no texting, there was no Twitter, it was people would call me from pay phones. - Did we call you? - Collect. (laughing) You have to, maybe. I may have accepted. - I got a quarters. - Will you accept a collect call from David Bowie? No. - Okay. - Then we would collect the stuff to collect call from the Mango song? No. That was how we could have done it. - I would have to pay for it. They'd just been like, each song. If we could go back and do that, that would be, that would how we would do it today. So for those of you who called me, and what I would always try to do is cite who they are, like thanks to, thanks to. And so if you go online and Google yourself, you may find an old fish page that's not linked necessarily directly, but it's back in there. Thanks to Scott Boyarski for the set list. And the seating charts. A lot of seating charts came in through, we wanted to know where we were sitting and what the venues looked like. So we documented every venue where Scott did. And I basically was like, all right, I'm not going to do that, but I'll link to you. Andy, tell the audience who the two people in the room are since you mentioned Scott a couple of times. And so by Scott Boyarski and we have Deann Herman Berkowitz, who was an early, early fish fan, and jam-based co-founder. There you go. - Now, we can transition and-- - You started, you opened the door. So it's kind of like a lawyer. Now I'm going to pursue that line of questioning. - Sure. - Jam-based co-founder. Hit me with some jam-based trivia, some history. - So the story of jam-based.com. - So the story of jam-based does really start with the fish page. And what happened was I started to get into some other bands. I know, I started seeing other bands. Sorry, fish, it's not you, it's me. We're seeing other bands. And I would start to link those other bands' official web pages from my fish page. Just to continue being geeky, it was called "The Friends of the Federation." It was the little section. And then pH, of course. And so why not? You're already there. And it's actually still up, although I think Federation is spelled with a F. Yeah, if you go to gadell.com/fish/federation.html, you will see "The Friends of the Federation" with links to every official website of the bands at the time of six degrees in agent porridge and agents of good roots and amphibian. - Yes. - And even some folks like "The Great Boy All-Stars" and "David Grisman" and "The Grateful Dead" and "Bail of Fleck." And we essentially, I would post a couple links. It was actually on the main page of my fish page for a while. Like, here's other bands. If you like fish, they're not touring. Check out these guys, or if they're not in your area. And just like the news, just like the setlists and rumors, people would look at that list and say, "Oh, I know a band that fits." And they say, "You check out these guys." And I'd maybe check them out or trust their judgment and I'd link their official website. And so string cheese incident and leftover salmon and strange folk, and I'd bold the ones that I had seen, or, and it became this link, hundreds, there's a hundred or so band, official website links, that still are there. And at some point, it got so big, I moved it to some page and, and then one day I was staring at it, and I was looking at it, and I started clicking around to different bands' web pages to see who was gonna come to my town. And I said, this is a really inefficient way to find out if any of them are coming to my town. But I have to go to all their official web pages every day to see if they've announced any shows. And I said, what if there was a database that had all of their tour dates in it, or some way, maybe not even a database at the time, but what if there was a aggregation of information? - Add venue or state to the information. - Yeah, or just not have to go to all of their official websites, just go to one website. - Cool. - And so that became, originally, gadiel.com/tourdates, which is this idea of just aggregating tour dates. And then I got invited back to East Lansing to work the summer of '98, like early '98 on a music festival that a guy was putting on. Because there was a group of community bands that there's a band in East Lansing called The Jowas. This is a great name, and they're a band called Next Stop Willoughby. It's a funny name. And this guy who, I don't know how he did it, but he put together a music festival one year called The Grateful Gathering, I think it would. So while we were making these magazines for the festival, I was calling up people for advertising, one of the people I was Ken Hayes from Gathering the Vibes who bought Terrapin Tapes, bought an ad. And it was one of the first ones, thanks, Ken. And then I was doing this and they said, "Hey, you should really meet Dean Budnick." Or talk to him. He's writing a book about jam bands. I was like, "Sure." And so I talked to Dean, he was telling me about his book and fit with the festival lineup, and maybe he'll buy an ad for the thing. But then he said, "I wanna make a web page for the book." And I was on, and I said, "Sure, I can help you figure that out." And then, but I was on this kick where web pages should be about what you expect them to be about when you go to the web page. So if I go to news.com, I should get the news. And if I go to shopping.com, I should shop. And it's like, if I go to jambands.com, I should not just get to buy the book. I should read about jam bands. So why don't we take the book and make a web page? Like take the book and the idea of the book. And yeah, or sort of take it to the next-- Rather than be a way of buying the book. Right, yeah. Oh, in addition to buying the book. Okay, so we promoted the book, but then we said, "Why don't we publish a magazine?" Nice. And he loved it. And we worked together on this. And I did the tech. He'd got all the writers. And it was September '98. It was after the festival kind of wound down and we launched. And the book came out and it was October 23rd, 1998 at the wetlands, 1023, '98. The disco biscuits, headlined, Mike, Canelia, and Beer for Dolphins. And Beers for Dolphins. And the slip. The stairs and lounge. And it is still this day, I think, one of my favorite disco biscuit concerts. They play a beautiful, beautiful show there early, early days. And that's where I met DM that night. And we didn't know the time, but we would go on to make some things on the internet. But that was a great night. And that was the Jamban's book and dot com release party. So that was the formation of Jamban's dot com. Jamban's dot com started out of that. So I think people might associate you with Jambase, but don't know that you also were involved with Jamban's. - Absolutely. And Dean and I worked together, great. He did all the editorial content and sent it to me every month. And I put it up on the web. And there may be some old pages on the Wayback machine that we did and formatting and people would contribute. And you'd read about bands. It was articles, Benji contributed, early days. - Oh yeah. - And throughout that, I was still noodling on these databases and these ideas of tour dates and the links to official band websites. And so I was trying to figure out what to do with that. And so I took gadial.com/tourdates and I ended up at one point moving it to jambands.com/tourdates. And in fact, if you go to that Federation page, you still see a link to jambands.com/tourdates which just takes you to the jambands.com homepage. - Okay. - You're welcome. Enjoy that. But so we put it there. But what was starting to happen was the editorial side of it and the tour date side of it was kind of like they were sort of taking their version past and kind of giving a life of their own. And I saw that this internet thing was not going away. And the utility and the concert search function kind of was taking on a life of its own. - Pretty useful. Were you able to see stats back then? - Yeah, I think so. - You could see people come and visit. - To some extent, but I felt it. And when I talked to people, they were like, "It's great to read." But I also like, I really liked, you know, finding out the shows. And jambands and that function, that utility, that idea was really born out of my own desire to simply know when my favorite bands were coming to town. - Nice. - And if I missed a show, I was like, why can't I get an alert if my favorite band announces a show in my area? - Right. - And that still today is kind of the North Star guiding light of, can I find out about live music? And so we took that function that, and Dean and I amically said, okay, yeah, he was gonna take the magazine and the editorial stuff and I'll take the utility stuff. And so I spun off jambase. I think maybe originally we have jamdb.com registered, which might be disco biscuits or Dean Budnick or database. So I said, you know, let's call it base 'cause dead bass and jam base. And I don't remember where we came up with him. And I remember one early day Ted looked at me in the office and said, we need a motto, you know, jam base. And I said, I don't know, go see live music. Okay. And that was how that was born. It just kind of stuck, like what's our mission? Go see live music. And then somebody said, well, you don't see live music, you hear live music. And I said, well, maybe you need to try harder. (laughing) So jam base really started from there, that natural progression. And I think back to how it came into being in early days, you know, a show was a band at a venue in a city in a state on a date. But then we realized that there are multiple bands that play a single show. So we had to redo the database to allow there to be events which are multiple bands. Interrating on database design and there is something not, you know, coincidental and very synchronistic about improvisational live music and relational databases. And if you ask anyone who was living in Palo Alto in 1965, creating really the truly the first version of the World Wide Web and was experiencing the Grateful Dead, those people will tell you that they absolutely conjured up connective tissues from the music that they applied to their technology. And so I took a cue. That's awesome. Like the people, it's almost like music is interrelated, musicians playing different bands. There's a whole like matrix of information hidden under there that maybe they were trying to make accessible or something. At least their brains work that way already because of music. And so they actualize that. Like taking a walk in the woods and you figure it out. And so when I would, early days of jam base, for better or worse, would listen to live music and write code for hours. And for people who program, they know that you need to stay focused and not interrupted because you're following a puzzle and you're trying to put together these pieces and you have a lot of stuff in your head while you're figuring it out and coding and writing. And if there's an error, you gotta sort that out. Music, to me, I have to follow the music. I can't, I could never code, listen to anything. In fact, I would put on headphones with nothing on or white noise when I was in too loud of an atmosphere for coding. I do that now, but I somehow managed to listen to music and when the crescendo would come, I would figure out that function and then hit refresh and the page would work. And I would have a triumphant moment. And I like writing code because when there's a problem, it usually gives you an error message that you can interpret in a line number to go to. And when you go to that line number and all right, I typo and you fix it and you refresh it, it's gone. And you solve and you control that and it doesn't complain about it or get emotional about it later. (laughing) It's different than middle- - Interesting thing about computer science, which is also maybe similar to music in a way. I mean, there's this underlying math under music and under computer science. And yet computer science is not a science in that a scientist can look at a bridge at the design of a bridge and say, oh yeah, this will definitely hold 30,000 tons without breaking and this can withstand side gusts without snapping, et cetera. You can't actually look at code and guarantee that it's gonna work, no matter how good it is, unless it's like five lines. But when you get into the hundreds of thousands of lines of code, like Facebook is millions and millions and millions of lines of code, you know, that kind of thing. I imagine the stuff that launches our battleships and nuclear missiles and all that war stuff has a lot of errors and there's no way of finding it. - There's definitely an art, I don't know if it's true, someone told me that we can't go to the moon again because the code that got us there is on an old compiler that doesn't run anymore and they'd have to rewrite it and the trajectories and the, I'm not sure they could figure it out now, but that's a big reason. I read a book once called What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly who is the founder of Wired Magazine and he talks about how one of the most advanced technologies in the world, the solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle are that size, they're a specific size. You know, they're kind of thin and they're that size because they launch in Florida but they get made in Utah and they have to travel by train. And so by traveling by train, they go on the top of those trains that have to go through tunnels so they have to fit through the tunnel and so they designed them to fit through the tunnel and of course those tunnels are the size they are because the tracks are that size and those tracks are that size because that's the old paths, the old roads, the trails and those trails and roads are that size because people would ride on horseback, you know, buggies down the road. You know, in the old days, that's how they, they paved over those roads and then they became train tracks and so he made the connection that the most advanced technology in the world, the design is based on the size of two horses ass. So remember where we come from. Well, that is awesome. That's really cool. That's a lot of, it's a lot of words. - You talk. - You talk well. - I play a lot of notes. - Yeah. (laughs) I see a lot of jam bands in my day. I absorb a lot of information. - All right, we took a little set break and we had a nice lunch. Thank you, Scott. And I also heard about CK5 that you came up with that. Can you kind of talk into the mic, is it possible? - Sure, I can talk into the mic. I don't want to steal the excitement of Andy's debut here. But I'm TM6, so I think maybe we should talk about future podcasts. - Maybe a future podcast is in the words there. - A future podcast might be in the words there. - This is a little, this is a little event today. - Yeah, so very, very quick story. A group of, I can't take all the credit. It was a group of friends, family members, if you will. Friends of ours that all sat next to each other, previous year, mail order got the same four nights and we actually went to our seats and got to know these folks. Hal Waterman, Jay Hayes, Hassan Wahid, my wife, Karen. I can't leave her out. And Jeff Hartzel, who unfortunately passed away. But the group of us were at the Providence Civic Center Show. They had come back for that little surprise island run. Yeah, and I believe it was general admission. We were on the floor and we were standing right by the boards and everyone knew Paul. And everyone knew that Paul did the sound. And we said, no one really knows this other guy's back there and it's like he's playing an instrument. Like, who is that guy? What is that guy? - And he's playing live too. - He's playing live too. And we realized it was Chris Corota. And we said, you know, people have to know that the lights are not controlled by Trey. People have to know that there's somebody actually putting this together. - This is before everyone knows now. - Everyone knows how nobody knew. - No one knew back. - No one knew. And so we said, we're gonna create this thing. Five Alive, I think was our first name. And then Hassan, I think came up with CK5. And then I said, oh yeah, we'll make it like CK1 Cologne. We'll make the logo. And that was, I don't know why. - That's how it started. And that summer '98, we handed out free stickers. CK5 stickers. Lots of people took it and they kind of tossed it over their shoulder. And they're like, oh, what is this crap? - That is incredibly valuable now. Each worth about $50,000. - Shine that thing in my face, man. - Shine that light in my face, man. That was a gop. Oh, that's who I left. - The gopber. - Gopber. - Amazing. - There you go. - And heavily promoted CK5 from the fish page, I remember, right next to the people for a Louder Mike Foundation, which is a different story. But there was people who wanted to-- - The two factions were very, very-- - Well, CK5 and people for a Louder Mike. And then there were all these little groups that-- - Page side rage side. - Yeah, I mean, there was definitely the funky bitches. I remember them. I met them, I mean, yeah. So anyone who had their own little community, it was just, I guess, the linker. I believe, at one point, you and I talked and you said something to me that stuck with me that I was an information broker, I think, is the term you use. - Definitely. - And I was realizing that, yeah, this whole notion of, if I can get people where they go and link out-- - You're a people person. - Well, there's a common theme-- - Like code. - Common theme with me and under the scales is that people that realize early on, and you're one of them, that people are very, very hungry for information about fish. - Feed the beast. - Yeah, you can feed the beast. And those that did it ended up doing quite well. - I remember when the hiatus ended, I just went like big text. Hiatus over in like H1 font plus seven. - The beast is gonna get hungry again. - Yeah, and it was, I printed it out and I picked it up on my bulletin board for years. - I am. - The front page of the paper. - Nice, very cool. So we talked a lot about sort of your background and your computer background and jam base and jam bands. Any cool shows or festivals stand out, especially for you, Andy? - Well, in the fish world, the early fish festivals, definitely, sure, let's talk about the fish. - You wanna talk about the show? - Sure, sure, yeah. - So when I went on tour in summer '96, I did the whole run, I did the Wolf Mountain, the tour opener in Utah, and the four nights at Red Rocks, which was kind of its own little festival, which was an incredible set of shows. That third night, tweezer with the rain was incredible. And kind of had a premonition. I think supposed to go to the Clifford ball, but logistically, it wasn't gonna work out, for whatever reason, there was some family stuff. And so I ended up staying back and sent my friends on, and they, of course, had an amazing time. But that gave me even more craving to want it more. So the next year, when the great went was announced, I was all over it. And at that point, I was as deep into fish and the fish page and everything as you can imagine. So the great went, that summer '97, and I traveled down to Virginia Beach for the tour opener, somehow missed the next night at Walnut Creek, I think, when they did the amazing transition from mics to disease, or vice versa. And then, but I drove all the way out to the gorge, and saw them turn off the lights, actually, for the first time during "Harry Hood", the first night encore at the gorge in '97, where the lights actually went out. They turned off the lights during the "Harry Hood" encore. And so the question was answered, "Where did Harry go?" He went to the gorge, when the lights went out. And then we decided somehow to drive all the way to St. Louis, from Washington, which, when you're driving through Montana, there's no speed limit. - Nice. - Pretty cool. Did that, and then went out to the Midwest, and then went out to the Midwest, to the Great Went. And the Great Went really was the pinnacle for me at the time. It was the manifestation of everything that had come before it. And if you could summarize, the Great Went into one moment, can you? Well, I know people who can. That's why I asked. The, I mean, it's probably the, what is it, the nine minute and 37 second of the bathtub gym? - The went gym. - Went into the went gym. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Are you tired of being tired? Are you ready to get eight hours of unbroken sleep? If you answered yes to either of those questions, today's sponsor may be able to help. Sunset Lake CBD is a hemp farm up in Vermont, making CBD products designed to help you get better sleep. As a former dairy farm that produced dairy and cream for another Vermont staple, Ben and Jerry's, Sunset Lake CBD is no stranger to quality ingredients, or standing behind their products. In fact, Sunset Lake tests every product for potency and purity and puts the results online for all to see. They'll even mail you a copy with your order. That includes all their nighttime products. Sunset Lake carries gummies, tinctures, and soft gels designed to help you get to sleep gently and naturally. I'm someone who tends to think a lot when I lay down to go to bed. So often I'll take a sleep gummy about an hour before I need to go to sleep. The combination of CBD, CBN, and melatonin really helps me fall asleep right when I want to. Sunset Lake CBD is offering our listeners 20% off all orders. Visit SunsetLakeCBD.com and use the code "Undermine" at checkout. Sleep sound knowing that they stand behind their products. Sunset Lake CBD, farmer-owned, Vermont, grown. - Hi, this is Henry K. Host to the number one music history podcast, Rootsland. Come with me on a journey to Kingston Jamaica where we explore the world of reggae music and the untold stories of some of the genre's greatest legends, from the ghettos and tenement yards where the music was born, to the island's iconic recording studios. We are so excited to team up with Osiris Media, the leading storyteller in music. Because as you'll hear, sometimes the story is the best song. - And the great one bathtub gin changed my life. I'm a card-caring member of the Facebook group. And I wish my friend down with gin, his email. I wish him a happy 817, it's Adam, it's his anniversary. And what happened there to me at the Great Went was I felt it. I felt everything going on that weekend. And it was really fun. I think I met Rosemary that weekend. - Rosemary's Dijia. - Yeah. - Who'd probably passed it on to Benji prior to that. And before that second set, the second night, they had done, I think the orchestra had played in between. And the first set was kind of that afternoon set. And it was just in the air, you could feel it. The tension was there, everything was lined up and dialed in. We were all ready. All the receptors were at full receiving capacity. And when they opened that second set with the down disease, and that went places. But then when they started painting on that wood and adding and realizing what was happening there, the art and that gin, still to this day I get crushed. - Yeah. - It's so great. And I walked around before that set, just saying to me, my favorite feeling this next set is gonna be something. And like, oh, you called it. No, I mean, it was like, you felt it. And when it happens after you feel it, it really validates. And after that, after that 2001 and they moved it over and they put the art on the top of the thing, I look at my friend and I go, "Harryhood is all they can do." And it just, that was it. I was like, I can't get better than that. And they turned off the lights again in the full moon. And then when the tweezer reprise came on and they burned, my friend looked at me and he went, "That's perfect. That's art." They burned the art. They burned the art. That is actually the perfect ending because art is... - And then Burning Man copied them after. - Right, of course. - But so the great went, yeah, what can you say? And I made a great, went page. - Yeah. - And the great, and there was some fun stuff on the Great One page. And I made a page page once, I remember now. It was a page about page, the page page. And people could submit their stories about page, about how the chairman of the boards is so great. And it got really long. And there's a page page out there somewhere. - A lot of bands, you were showing me this jam-based calendar from 15 years ago, and all the bands are still relevant, except maybe one. - Well, yeah, we produced DM made a amazing calendar in 2005 and 2007. Do you have it around anywhere? That we gave all the profits to charity. - I think every single band, which is a tribute and testament to the strength of jam-bands. - And jam-based, yeah. - And jam-based. - Yeah, that's okay. - No, I meant jam-bands as like the bands themselves. - Absolutely. - The genre, that they're still playing, which is pretty cool. - 2005 calendar was widespread panic. The disco biscuits, Sound Tribe Sector Nine, Yonder Mountain String Bam, The Slip, Mofro, Carl Densonston, University of Galactic, Government Mule, Les Claypool, Umphorees McGee, Mo in the String Cheese incident. - Wow. - Who are all-- - Is Mofro playing? - If only there was a way for me to find out. - Yeah. (laughing) - I just wonder how would we find out. - If only there was some service that told me when bands were playing in my area. I kid you not, this is the conversation that launched, that's a maze of lines of code. - All right, let me ask you a question. Speaking of a thousand lines. I think it would be appropriate since this is the season ending under the scales podcast. If I end with this question, which is, how many shows have you seen? Fish shows this time. Live in person. - In the venue? (laughing) - 'Cause seeing them-- - Okay. - Okay, yes. - According to my fishnet stats, I have seen 118 shows. You see, I would have pegged you way higher than that. - Well, I moved out to the west coast. - Yeah, you're a west coaster and you don't come to a lot of the east coast shows and fish tends to be an east coast band. And you've been cheating on fish, it seems. - I have been, but I also have seen a lot of the webcasts and Brad Nuggsnet, who does an amazing job with live fish. - Yeah. - Bringing the music to the people. - And my friend, Ellie Tischberg, exactly who was on a previous guest, who was on under the show. - Yeah, friend of the show, thing. So I think I may have, at this point, seen more webcasts than live shows. - Oh, wow, you've entered that realm. - Well, I live in suburbs and have kids and don't go to shows anymore and I just watch television, which kind of is weird when I'm at my career. I live, and I do get out over to San Rafael. It was a great little community spot and, you know, feel from the dead. And then-- - Oh, yeah. - It's called Terrapin Crossroads. - Terrapin Crossroads, yeah. - And it's a bar that was free music every night. - Yeah, I think Trey played there. - He did, and I heard about it actually. So this is how out of the loop I am. I hear, at this point, like, I'm kind of retired from that. - If only there was a service for you. - Right, so I saw it on Twitter that Trey was at Terrapin during Fairly Well, and I looked at my wife and I said, "I gotta go." Like, okay, go. And I live probably five minutes away and I got there and there were a bunch of people out front and I walked up and I said, "Sorry, Andy." He just left. - Oh. - Oh. - I want to thank you on behalf of me and all my friends who used your site as the only site in the '90s to find out about fish and about rumors and all that stuff. So thank you very, very much, Andy. - I'm honored. - And thank you also for being the last guest on the last episode of Under the Scales for season one. - You know, I never miss a tour closer. I really appreciate it. - Never miss a Sunday show. - Never miss a Sunday show. It's really on, I'm a big fan of the show. - Yeah. - I've listened to many, many of them. - I appreciate it. - You've done the on couch tour that you've never been live before. - This is the first time I've been in the studio, but you turned me on to Holly Bowling. - Yes. - I think I really, she played at Terrapin and I got really into her-- - Awesome. - Through your podcast and there were several others that, you know, when Dan Cantor was on talking to Trey, that was really great. So I've just come, you know, built upon a great, already, your year, how many of you done now this year have you been? - 37, more than one every two weeks. - And I hit the math in my head, hold on. Yeah, that's a lot. And I hit a million downloads, which is pretty much. - Congratulations. - Yeah, within a year, which is kind of-- - On the scales, you're one of my goals. - Over the scales, either that's, you're gonna be-- - I'm gonna need scales. - I'm gonna need new scales. Tipping the scales. - Yeah, season two, how can we confirm season two or do we not wanna spread the rumors yet? - We can confirm season two, but it's gonna be, and I'm not quite sure, it's gonna be somehow different chemical composition. I don't know what that means. - Well, I will, I will, I will wait with baited breath. And we will look forward to tapping back in. - Yeah, man. Really wonderful hanging with you. - Oh, you too. - And Scott and Dan. - Thank you. - Thanks everybody. - Thanks so much. - This is fantastic. (upbeat music) - So my show total for the first year of Under the Scales is actually 36, not 37. It gets confusing sometimes because I have an episode number 000. So I've gotten used to adding one to my show count, but it's 36. I want to thank Andy again for coming into town to talk with me. Jambase.com is used by so many of us, it's almost second nature. So it was cool to meet the founder. Actually, the founders, I got to meet both founders. I want to also thank, again, my previous guest, Andy Bernstein. I have of course meant to mention him, along with the others we discussed in this episode as one of those who captured and distributed fish information to fans. And I want to thank all of you for a great first season of Under the Scales. For season two, I think I'll start it off by writing a new jingle. I know people have gotten used to this one, so I'm going to keep you on your toes. I'll still sing it with my daughter Anna though, I hope. Some other changes will involve the schedule. I'm going to be very freeform now with no actual schedule. This will let me go up and travel to Fish in Maine and Mike and Vermont and hopefully Paige and circle back with Trey again, conforming with their busy schedules and not limited by specific release dates or anything. It's a nice feeling, it's liberating. I'm also planning a potential Under the Scales musical event, so stay tuned for news about that. Enjoy the rest of the beautiful fall weather. That's what's happening outside my window at least right now in New Jersey. And I'll see you all back at Madison Square Garden before too long. - Hi, this is Chad Nisfield and this is Justin Press. We're the host of Making Waves to Shiprock Podcasts, a part of the Sound Talent Media podcast network. We're inviting you to sail away with us on an epic journey in musical enlightenment. Every week we bring you only the best artists in rock music and discuss everything from the crews, to the stage, to the saga of being a professional recording artist. We'll have lots of special guests along the way, so tune in every week. Your state room is available every Monday morning, so welcome aboard. (upbeat music) - Hey there, I'm Johnny Christ, we're a Venge Sevenfold, and I've got a podcast called Drinks With Johnny. You're gonna wanna check out. I sit down with a bunch of different people from all different walks of life, from professional wrestlers, to actors, comedians, fighters, musicians, everything in between. I'm just looking to make some friends and have a good time doing it. So if that sounds like something you're into, go check out Drinks With Johnny, streaming everywhere now.
