 Welcome to Breeder's Syndicate 2.0, where we explore the history of a clandestine scene. Researching everything from cannabis strain history, old smuggling tales from the first person perspective, to breeding science and news on current subculture. I'm your host, Matthew, and I'll occasionally be joined by my homey not so dog, Breeder and Grower from Mendicino, to speak on these subjects and sometimes interview other participants. Our goal is to document this history before it's written by corporations and others who just weren't there. Let's start writing some wrongs. Welcome to the Underground. Welcome to Breeder's Syndicate. I'm here with Barry from Truecanna Genetics and Truecanna Podcast. He's got an awesome history in our scene, been around forever, been around in the seed game forever, the forum game forever, knows the ins and outs, and he's from the UK and is integrally involved with helping spread cheese as well. And so welcome, dude. I'm interested to get this going with you and trying to figure out where to start with you. Where does your interest in genetics even begin? Do you know what is an interesting one? With me, being a European grower, there were certain things that obviously stood out to us. We kind of had the Dutch seed banks, so that was kind of a lot of our influence. And the thing with me is I became just obsessed with cannabis in my youth. So then I was starting to hunt all of the different magazines, to look at different things, and it eventually led me to hashish by Rob Connell-Clock. And that was the pivotal moment that upon reading that book, I got to the end, decided one, I was giving up tobacco, because as a European, we'd been taught that you needed tobacco in joints to help you, et cetera, et cetera. It was foreign to me. It was like only rusters, smoke pure, and it was called alcohol. You occasionally met a Jamaican guy and he'd smoke idols and wouldn't smoke tobacco. That was the only knowledge we really had of that in England. So all of a sudden discover that I didn't need tobacco and to learn so much about the plant from the book hashish. That was what kind of sparked me wanting to grow and get into it myself. It's so wild how many people Rob Clark influenced, like in our sphere? Bro, to have read that book and been inspired to grow, and then many years later to have hung out with Rob and Dave Watson and smoked with them and picked their brains. And yeah, I don't know how to equate it for anyone else, but it's like, yeah, to hang out with the people that inspired you and your heroes and then for them to live up beyond your expectations, those are some of my greatest moments as hanging out with people. Rare for them to actually live up to expectations too, as I've learned, especially in the seed world, bro. Yeah, it's hard. So when you take it from there, you finish the book, like when did you start buying your first seeds and getting into the seed game? But you know what it was? After reading hashish, I then got myself, Jorge Cervantes, grow Bible. Decided that I needed to read that front to back before I properly got all the equipment. Because I'd grown a plant outdoors, grown a few of a friend, but made silly mistakes. Dried outdoor plants by putting them in plastic bags and putting them in the air in a warm place. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So we knew, like, I decided I'm going to read the book. Once I read that book, at the back of the book, there was websites, and we're talking 99, 2000 now, just on the millennium point. And in the back was Seeds Direct and Overgrow.com. Yeah, that's right. And that was it, bro. The minute I looked into Overgrow.com, Heaven's Stairway, all these different websites, blew my mind, bro. It's making a hair stand up on my arm. I must have spent, like, months and months, just like through the night, just spending hours upon hours refreshing threads. Reading through the strain guide on Overgrow. I dismissed half my school knowledge in my brain in favour of the strain base of Overgrow. That just replaced, like, I'm like, chemistry, I can push that out. You don't really need that for a while. History, don't worry. Strain-wide, grow Bible, sheesh. These are the things that became a priority to me. Yeah, I just became obsessed with a nerdy genetics from there, bro. And then to begin with, like, a lot of growers, I was afraid to spend money on seeds. You know, it's like, when you work a job, you're getting paid £200 a week, a pack of seeds, even back then. It was still, like, £80. Yeah. A pack of serious seeds, or T8 seeds, or, you know, the big, the big fours that were kind of like that. God forbid you want sensey, and you got to pay £350 or something. Oh, ridiculous. It was just not fathomable. So I started with, like, a lot of people back then, Nirvana seeds. Yeah. Casey Brains and Nirvana. Yeah, they were the one, bro. They were the deepest ones. So I started with a few different ones of those. And then it was kind of, like, just constantly, like, obsessing over, like, overgrowing things like that. But at that point still, I was terrified about actually ordering seeds from a website. Sure. So these times, I was buying them from head shops that were, like, I could actually drive to and pick up the seeds. So it gave me a very limited amount of what I could actually grow. Yeah, for sure. So I was growing, like, those kind of Nirvana things where I went through, like, the white widow that they did, the white rhino that they did, skunk number 11, which was a lemon skunk. Yeah. I did a few, a Shimatra, like, a few different kind of ones. Did you do AK-48 at all? No, what? I didn't, you know. That's the one that I went for. That was so popular back then. That was, like, one of the big rip-off ones. Yeah, it was that crystal, crystal or roostery. Yeah. And then there was, oh, double liches. Yeah, double liches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their version of bubble gum was the one that I wanted so bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So after a little while, I discovered, like, the seeds direct was actually in Kingston, which was kind of just outside London. Oh, no shit. So I phoned them and said, like, can I come to your store? Do you have a shop? Yeah. Sure enough, they had an actual walking stock shop. There was a little road, and when you went there, Gypsy Nirvana and his wife at the time, who later split from him and had an affair with plural of mongoose. Mm. But at this moment, they had free shops. Yeah. They had the speed shop, the head shop, and the grow shop. So I went down there and I bought some bubble gum, because I wanted to try something American. Yeah. The bubble gum things. Bob was online. He was so active. He was helpful. Yeah. He interacted with people. He just came across like a good person. And the fact that he communicated with you made me want to choose him as the kind of brand that I went with. Yeah. So I got some of those seeds and there was other things like, the thing that always appealed to me about seeds direct back in the day was all the freebies. Yeah. You would buy one pack of seeds and you'd get like five other different things. Yeah. And back then I remember Gypsy was giving away freebies that were like G13 hybrids. Yeah. They were. G13 cross orange something. G13 cross something else. Like I'm not sure who made them where, but I remember I got some of those and a few different things. So that was kind of my first foray into like some American genetics and some different things like that. Wow. Yeah. I remember he carried that G13 stuff all the way up until they got busted, I think. Like he kept doing the project all the way through Dutch groan. Like when Dutch groan popped up with selling seeds, I remember they did a G13, the ax, I want to say. Yeah. And that, but I don't know who made those original ones. I'd love to know what their source was. I was thinking, you were something in Switzerland, like what Swiss made, one of those kind of places. Yeah. Like out that way, I would presume because yeah, so many of them, it gives you the thought that it came from those kind of places where there was excessive amounts of seeds. Yeah. Bulk. Bulk buying. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the days when you have to remember you start to skunk number one from Sam Skunkman. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's as well. Yeah. There was also the Skunk Taihaze freebies. Yeah. Durban. Yeah. There was a Durban one as well. Yeah. There was a Durban cross. Yeah. That Skunk. Yeah. A lot of those went out. You know what? That Skunk Hayes, I remember Crazy Composer grew one out. It grew for almost like a year. One of the most disappointed things I've ever smoked in my life. I bet, dude. I can't even imagine. I was so heartbroken. You know when you're like, ah, you're thinking to yourself, man's gone through so much effort to clear this thing out forever, basically. And man, it just didn't fucking bang. Those ones are just so hit and miss. Those kind of plans. Oh, yeah. They're so variant. Highly variant. Yeah. So after, after Nirvana and your foray into the forums, when did you start to get into the forums? When did you start to get into the forums? When did you start to get into the forums? When did you start to get into the forums? When did you start getting like kind of more tight in genetically and start more experimenting on your own? Do you know what the key thing was was to start going to the icy mad cup. That was the key thing because up until that point, you didn't know anyone. You weren't meeting no one. Like I, I told nobody one of the first rules in the book. Yep. For this event is one is tell nobody. Tell nobody. Nobody. Yep. This was a tie. I don't think people nowadays can conceive the level of secrecy. I would sit, I sat and smoked with good close friends of mine for years without them knowing that what we were smoking, I had grown. And that's so hard not to want it. You want to tell your best friends. Bro. Bro. I know dude. Like you have to pretend you went and picked it up and do the whole facade of Oh, do you know what was so funny me and another icy mag member, Dr. D. unsaid at the kissing team. It was the. Out. Free. He's like he used to live in the Midlands and when he would come down to London, everyone would be like, oh, is that your weed kind. I'd be like, Yeah. Yeah. That's who I get my weed from And when I wasn't in him, He'd be like, yeah, That's why I get my weed from so least we kind of separated ourselves from being the guy that someone also kind of distract people with because yeah, it was such a worrying time then. And when we went to the talking with English people. So I'm more communicative of the American people that I'd spoken to. And it's those kind of connections that started to get me a lot more genetics. I also met Brightside, the ICMAG member. That's right. The person that had the cheese cut. And that was the first elite cut that I got. And that was because I kind of, back in the day, you had to earn your stripes to get cuts. Absolutely. With bud, show some passion, show some good bud. And then if you were a good person and you were doing good work, people would offer you cuts. You never really asked for cuts. It was kind of taboo. Never had to. Yeah, it was improper. It was improper to ask for cuts. We all knew that you find your place in a group. And if people trust you, something, sometimes should happen. Sometimes it doesn't. And you don't, you know, you're not in control of that, but it shouldn't matter anyways. You know, like that's the attitude of it. For sure. Yeah, still there. So yeah, that was kind of that point there. And yeah, like for me, I was just obsessed with American genetics, but like once I started to read, like I'd always been obsessed with things like high times, you know, when it told you the different bud in different states. Oh yeah, yeah. The THMQ, yeah. So I was always curious of these different strains, different names, and these are the things that I wanted to hump for. So that's when I started to kind of like use the people that I'd met to kind of get different seeds, to hunt out the different genetics that had like cushion and some blueberry things. Some like things that weren't trainwreck, you know, like there were certain cuts, a deep wreck, I remember, which was a deep chunk cross trainwreck. Like I was just trying to get all the different things that were either in cannibal war that I'd seen people growing. So it was just then an obsession to just phenohunt and try as many seeds as possible and grow out as many things as possible. And once you'd been to an ICMAG cup and met people, now the buying seeds wasn't really an issue because at this stage I'm a grower, I don't sell no bud. I never sold any bud. I just brewed for myself, smoked it all. So spending big amounts of money on seeds weren't possible. So once I went to an ICMAG cup and met a whole bunch of growers from America, Canada, all around Europe, met a couple of nice English people that I could then feel safe with. It just opened up the world of genetics and all of a sudden, yeah, we were able to trade cuts and I got a Cinderella 99 cart, I had the cheese cart. There was a few different ones that were like being passed around, NL5 haze, that was like a cut from in the south of England. Oh wow. Yeah, that's why I'm really curious to try a lot of these American cuts that are potentially NL5 haze cuts because we had our different areas around the country that had little famous cuts. Like North London was famous for like the hazes, super silver haze, there would be nevels, there would always be solid hazes out of North London. In South London there would always be lemon, lemon scum, lemon haze. There was like lemon was always famous in that part. Like every little part of London, there'd be pockets of famous little strains that would make a little mark. Did cheese like kind of permeate all of London? That's exactly, what happened is Exodus Luton, where the collective was that spread the cheese, that was like 40 minutes outside of London. Okay. And it was a free party thing. So then the cheese cut would spread and start to hit different places. So it was down in Bristol, it went up to Liverpool, it was in London. So slowly it was spread around and you'd all of a sudden start to hear more and more people having it. But early 2000s, a lot of people didn't have it from it. It weren't something that was a myth. Like most cuts back then, it was a myth. You had to find someone and then Big Buddha bought the cheese seed line out and that like made the water murky for the original cart and it got a little confused in. Can you talk a little bit here about the actual history that you know as you know it for the cheese? Yep. Well, basically there's a story in like one of the Weed World magazines that talks about the guy who actually passed it to the person that we know to have the cut as the originator, which was an online member called Of The Hill. Yeah. And Of The Hill was on UK 420. He was the grower who passed it to the Exodus Collective, which was the three party like little society that lived there and kind of done all of the raves. And what happened is it was started by someone else, passed on So Of The Hill and then he took it to the Exodus Collective where it was crossed, passed out, et cetera, et cetera. Was he one of the people who knew it was Skunk One originally and is he? I believe so, yeah. He was friends with the person who actually popped the seeds and bought the seeds back from Amsterdam. Yeah. And then there was a thread on UK 420 where Of The Hill references crosses being made with his cut. And one of the crosses he mentions is something called Back To Cheese. And the Back To Cheese was a cross that Brightside did with a Casey Brains mail. Oh, wow. So that was kind of why the Brightside cut had such reverence because it was verified by the guy who passed it to the Exodus people. So Brightside knew this guy. So in essence, it's what they're like to get to the point of term pre-Exodus. Yeah, the pre-Exodus. Yeah, that's just had to be said for the sheer joke. It has to, but it is, it's the pre-Exodus. I've always wondered about the story because over here, I would hear about cheese. We had a cheese cut over here that I believe came down by a vision creator somehow. And we all run that one and it's highly variant. Sometimes it'll smell a little berry, sometimes fruity, sometimes foot-funk cheese. And this is- And this is sometimes- Yeah, yeah, it's all over the place, bro. And it's hard to explain to people. Like I remember when I got the cut a few times from people, I've got, oh no, this is a fake one, toss. This is a fake one, toss. Like after blooming it, it looks the part, but it's not it. The real one grows kind of almost lateral. And when it gets to week five, it all just flops over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's woody, woody as fuck. The stems are super woody. That's wild, yeah. So after growing this, I started hearing from the UK, no, man, you need to grow the psychosis. You need to grow all these other ones. And then I heard about the bright side and I'm like, well, which one is it? So what is the psychosis? What's the, there's another one too, I think. I think the psychosis is like another seed was from a different cross or it's a cross. I'm not sure exactly what the psychosis is, but there's also another one called Delivers. Yes. This is a cut up in Sheffield, which is a kind of blue kind of cheesy, more like on the very side of it. They're all in that kind of very similar family. And over the years, I think with a lot of people, they've been muddled, mixed up into change, and that's where a lot of the confusion comes from, because they do all have those similar notes in different varying degrees. So it's always been difficult to kind of verify which ones are which, unless you can trace them back to the original people. That's why it's so important and people don't get it. Like if you can't trace it back to the original person, you're almost playing in a way and always kind of just playing it, trying to figure it out. Like, I mean, even the American cut, we can trace it back to vision and then a little bit past that. And then it's just kind of like, well, which one is it? We'll never really know unless we have like, you come over in here and check it out, a few different grows, so you can see how different it is and each different growing, getting an idea of someone that has good experience. Inspectors got the one that Vision Korea has, right? Yeah, yeah. To be honest with you, I think that is the bright side to that. You think so? I think it is just because of the time span. Yeah. When he got it, it fits the time when bright side had passed it out to a few people and it then got passed on to a few more within a short space of time. And I think I do remember during that period the crosses that were made with it and it being verified. So for my money, I would put a strong possibility on that being the legit one, but I know recently the bright side one's been sourced. I know psychosis has been sourced, the blues, AK livers, that's been sourced. Is it over here in the US, you mean? Do you know what I should mention specifically? Rest in Paradise, Stoney NYC who died recently because he was one of the most elite people as far as connecting genetics, passing them to different people, having a stable of genetics. And he was one of the people that kept things like the psychosis around. He got it sent to America recently. I believe it arrived the day he died and it was saved by friends. So I believe that that cut has managed to be salvaged and is over there. I hope so. Yeah. Stoney would definitely want that. That was heartbreaking. This guy, honestly, when people realized the part that he played in so many different seed companies, so many different genetics, so many different forms, so many different things by preserving and connecting people and passing genetics on, there's a whole bunch. He was always trading. Yeah. Always trading. This was a cut that we just wouldn't have if it weren't for him that everyone's gonna stoop on this, that guy. I got the sour dub to him and I think that went out everywhere by Stoney and F1 Derb came back to us by Stoney. Yeah, F1 Derb, one of my friends has got the F1 Derb. I'm getting that. Also, he's got a Panama red that he wanted me to get and do you know what? I was heartbroken. Oh, the Stoney's Panama. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but do you know what? He actually sent it to a mutual friend of mine by mistake. Oh no. So my friend has got the Panama red to pass onto me. So it was like my sheer accident, we got the Panama red. So that's how it goes. I had that one for a few years but I never bloomed it because it was so long. So it sat in my veg for years just getting big as hell. Like Panamanians do. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, so yeah, shout out to Stoney. That was wild. That was so fast at random. Honestly, that was a lot. I spoke to him on Friday and Tuesday, he died. Yeah. And like that guy, I say, yeah, this guy, he was like the two pack of clone traded because he had out so much stuff that even after he died, it was still coming out and landed. Like he's still receiving it. Like it's still happening. Even after he died, he was that busy that we laughed at people are receiving packages. The guy, no joke, yeah. When I, when he passed and everyone came out, I said, how did this guy have time for anything else? Because he was spending two hours a week on the phone to me, three hours to English Rick, another three hours to this guy. He was doing like a full-time job just talking to 20 growers. Plus he was in 20 gardens. Plus had a family and was doing the normal life. So yeah, this guy did so much work in a short space of time. He's just such a beautiful human being. He lived it, dude. Like he's, he's like me and you just obsessed. Like that people don't get it. When we say this is 24 seven, like we go to sleep. You know, like we're in bed, like texting each other. What do you think about this fucking strain? It just is what it is. And it's, you know, that's why it's happy to do this podcast now because normally I'll finish my gardening, which is always nighttime. And then our phone Stoney will have these chats with people at like midnight here. And sometimes I'll be up till four in the morning just talking about random old forum history and this cart and that cart. And yeah, so easy to just lose yourself with your friends talking about the past and different characters that came and went. You know, you mentioned something that was also integral to my era. Cause you came before me. Like you were doing this shit. You were on the forums before I was. You were interacting with a lot of people, something we both had in common was like the can of Bible and how influential that also was in our, in our clone searchings. That was wild to hear about all these different things, to hear about these chem dogs, these OG cushes, these different cat piss, dog shit, all of these different things, abusive OG. Perps. Yeah, perps like Mendo perps, just purple in general. Bro, I was obsessed. I was obsessed. I just wanted purple buds. I was desperate for it. I'd seen the Blackberry. Who was it? The guy? Nebu? Nebu, that's it. Nebu. Bro, I just saw that neon purple shit and I was flipping out. I would have obsessed forever till I got my hands on it. You know, I needed it. That drove a very big, like purple magenta. It's crazy. We ended up with the S1s, the Blackberry S1s. Cause remember like, I think like Jitzi Mavana took them off Oregon, he never paid them or some crazy shit. But he then gave them away as freebies or I got them with that hand or something. I grew them out and had one that was that color. But it was PM. It just had PM. I'd never had PM in my whole life. I'd never had PM ever again. And this one plant in a small little shed would get PM, I'd wash it off, it would come back. No other plant would get it, never passed over. I'd wash it off, I'd get rid of it. So it's all broken. I bet finding that and then being like, what the fuck can I do with it? Nothing. And also a lot of that Blackberry stuff, people didn't realize that it tends to dry brownish looking, not as pretty and it smelled very dusty. It just didn't keep the smell very well from the black rush in. Yeah. It had a licorice, like a bit of licorice kind of flavor. Yeah. And you know the Bible was wild, bro. That whole thing of photography to see such beautiful photographs was revolutionary, like the descriptions, whether he was full of shit or not, how much truth there was to it. It was so beautifully written. It was so detailed. It was just wonderful. For the time, like even though like looking back, we can say this is accurate, this isn't, or we think this is less accurate or whatever. For the time, he still nailed it, dude. Like it's hard to, even at this day and age to be like, I'm going to write a book and try to be as accurate as I can. I would have a hard time being as accurate as he was looking back. Oh, bro. And now, I didn't know I wanted to talk to people. Yeah. So to actually get people to discuss things and take responsibility, now you'll get 20 people claiming the cup. Exactly. But then no one was claiming it. It was alright. Exactly. Ashasha, no one wanted no one to know. It was, yeah, it was super different to how it was now. Yeah. And finding out later on, like, I remember reading the candle Bible and stuff and like chasing the super dog and whatnot. And then later on, becoming friends with not so dog and realizing he's one of the super dog guys and then he's the perp's guide to help Jason King with that. It was a trip. It's a trip. Bro, for me, yeah, it's like, there was at the pivotal moment was going to the ICMAG cup, the year that Rez, Smokey the Puff Master, and Gina Nitts all entered the sour diesel. Oh, how was that? That was the year, like 2000 and, I believe, six. Yeah, where they had to been. Yeah, I believe six. And also at that was the heads, Grateful Head and Mrs. Head. And I love those guys. They became like family to me. I've never met him. Like, Rez was a dick. Rez was always a dick in real life to everyone. Like, that's how he was. I never had no desire to be cool with Rez. But then what happened is they became friends with him. Yes, the heads. So because I was tight with them and the crazy thing was, was that as much as a fucking shitbag as Rez was, he had all these good people around him. Yeah, smokey the Puff Master and his wife. Amazing people, the most beautiful people. Jimmy Nitts, the most insanely good grower. I'd love to know what happened to him. He's, I think he was so burned and so traumatized and so dragged into the whole situation. It probably like put him off the life road. He probably had like effects on his real life in ways that he never did before. Like things are super crazy. So it's like that year there when I got to go to Amsterdam and all of a sudden I got to smoke East Coast sour diesel grown by all of them. Rez is was trust similar. How similar were they between the three? Jimmy Nitts was by far the best grower. He was leaves a good ground above everyone else. That was the funny thing. Like I'll get on to later about the levels of growers and the revelations as I started to find out what people were doing and capable of what growers had because a lot of people talk smack about Rez's growth. I'll tell you all about his growing a bit. So basically what happened is I got real friendly with the heads and they gave me the Casey Jones seeds later on when they went back to America. They sent me a bunch of seeds. So that then was my thing. I started growing out a bunch of head seeds. I grew out the Casey Jones fire 2007. I turned up with the Casey Jones from seed entered it and got second place and I got second place to JLP who entered sour diesel. Oh wow. JLP for anyone who doesn't know, John Lee Pendamore. Yeah, John Lee Pendamore. This guy is a legend beyond levels of beyond levels, beyond levels. This guy must have given out a million seeds. Yeah, easy. He was the only person that was allowed to get addresses from people on like overgrow, ICMAG. Like every forum that he was on, they would allow him to interact with growers directly like ICMAG. He was the only person that could get addresses and send seeds to people. Otherwise he'd be in trouble for that shit. Get banned so fast. But JLP, he would do all kinds of crazy F2s and hybrids and all stuff like that. But because he was doing a lot of F2s and things like that, he never sold anything. He just gave the seeds away. And what you would get is a little envelope with one of those little round-disc with the seeds in it and on the back it would say 21 Jump Street as the return address. Because his name was John Lee Pedramore, JLP. And there's some connection in a TV show or something like that. I don't know if this is an English person, but years later, I found this out years later just out of curiosity about it. Because I noticed it somewhere and this guy gave out just constantly to thousands of growers, he'd send seeds out. His own money too. It was amazing bro, the amount of genetics that he gave out. I would love to know what happened to him too. There's so many dudes that have just... Yeah, there are. There's so many of them. So many of them. It's awesome when people do pop back up on my Instagram, find people. Yeah, it is, man. I grew out that and once I won the IC MagCut the second place, not long after that, I went out to Maine. Okay. And Maine, as a composer? Well, as everyone now knows, Maine is where Rez, the heads, and everyone involved in that crazy shit was living. Yes. The heads were like family to me. And this is the thing, yeah? The heads, this is what breaks my heart. It's like the heads got caught up in a crazy thing. It's like, and they cooperated with the authorities. And it's like, those are like family to me. I spent, Mrs. Head and the kid came to England, stayed at my house because Dutch Bro was such a cunt. They left her house and come and stayed at my house when they visited England. And that's how we became really tight because Dutch Bro was such a cunt to them that they were like upset. And I said, just come and stay at my house and I'll go and stay at my cousin's house. For the folks who don't know, Dutch Groen was a ex-cop. Ex-cop. Warfus Getty. Yep, Karen, ex-cop. And you know what? I had that confirmed by two different people as well. The first person that told me was someone who worked for Gypsy was told by Pomp Plural of Mongoose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Mrs. Head was told by Karen's mum. Oh, well, that'll solve it real fast. So that one is the fucking 100% confirmation that there's no denying. And the thing is, what breaks my heart, yeah, is that I know how the domino effect went. And by the time it got to the heads, they're the only ones that actually had kids. Dutch Groen had nothing, Rez, nothing. And by the time they got to the heads and the other two had all rolled, there was nowhere else for them to go other than to roll too. Yeah, I mean, they were only rolling on themselves. That's it. And the sad thing is, yeah, the heads had fallen out of Rez because they realized what a toxic person he was. And that's the saddest part of all is that they had broken away from him almost a year prior to that and had enough to do with him. So when he got busted, I'm sure he had no qualms in dragging them into it. And the difference between them is, is that their heads have never come back onto the scene because they feel so burnt, so hurt, so ashamed, so sad, so distressed by the whole thing, that they don't feel that they have a place back in the scene. So for these other people who are rats to think that they can come back in, it's crazy. Mind fucking, you know, it's weird though, like, I don't think the heads would have an issue coming back in these days. No, I wish they would. They would snitch on people. Yeah, like, they're actually good people, but they're openly snitch on people that are real bad people that people still support to this day. So to me, it's like, like, if they have guilt over that and shit, like, we know how it went down. We know how everybody folded. We know how it all wrapped up at this point. You know, like, we know who the real bad people are in that whole situation and who worked, and who weren't, who are the victims of the situation. Bro, it was crazy, you can imagine, yeah. I go out to America, I meet, I'm staying with the heads. We go meet Rez. This guy is the biggest breeder. He's moving 80,000 cells on a weekend drop. Like, I- He's the DNA of America. Yeah, and like, online he's a prick, but obviously I've got some reverence for him because he's doing good work and I can see what he's got, his quality. I've grown out some of these stuff. There's some fire there. Like, I'm not a fool to what he's putting out. And like everyone knows at the time, there was certain stuff he had that no one else did. So it was like, if you were to grow this stuff, regardless of his character, you had to get it from him. So I had high expectations. And when I went there, bro, I'll be honest with you. When people say that he had a shitty little bro, he didn't. He had a beautiful bro. His bro was underground, beautifully hidden, all nice lights, separate bedroom, all the lights, ventilation for the time. Yeah, yeah. So it was. Any people that chat shit, really? The guys are cunt. I don't like it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But his bro room weren't terrible, bro. Because he got the workers to come in and people done stuff like. Yeah, yeah. But that being said, this guy didn't know what the fuck he was doing. It was all by chance. Like most of them. He got to where he did, bro. Yeah. He went to a local grow shop. He had New York City diesel from Soma. And the grow shop guy had the East Coast sour diesel cut and swapped him for Soma's New York City diesel. And that's the berth of Rez making it, just by that one person giving him that cut. And the thing is. Just by accident. That's it. And when I went to his house one time, bro, his whole crop was just covered in powdery mildew. And I'm like, bro, the crop's covered in PM. He's like, what? What's that? What? Like, I'm like, no. Surely this motherfucker I'm looking to tell me stuff knows what PM is. Sure enough, he didn't have a fucking clue. And it was, a lot of these three didn't, was the blind leading the blind. It was miss, it was luck. He had other people doing projects. He was like, the other people, he was saying, oh, this guy's a buffoon. While I was there once, the house burnt down. Like we were growing it. Like crazy shit happened, bro. Like the house is burning down. We were like, everyone's worried, bro. Is it all fucked up? It just has like a cluster fuck waiting to happen over there with everybody. If you give someone enough good genetics, no matter how much of a cluster fuck they are, they'll do some good work. And it's, it's, it's real. Yeah. That's it. Swerve, exactly. And the thing was, where he really hit gold is when he had someone like Grateful Head around, all of a sudden Grateful Head was doing the real fucking hard work and the selections and the, and the solid work. When it comes to a lot of the chem work, it was like the original cross to the, was it the Hindu Kush, you've done it too? I believe so. The Hindu Kush or M39, one of the two. He done the first cross. A lot of the back crosses and server work for the chem stuff is done by Grateful Head. I didn't know that. Yeah. Because what was happening is Head was doing some chem stuff. He was doing some sour stuff. Someone else was doing some other stuff. And they had different projects everywhere. And like I say, a lot of the things from Rez, it was all hit and miss. Like one of the, do you remember when he done his first FEM project, when it was abusive reverse? No, I don't remember that. What was that about? Because they fucked up the room and the abusive home. So they just fuck it. Let's release them. And it was some of these best work. Oh fucks it was too, huh? There was some cross out of that. But that was the thing, once I was over there, bro, I got to see so much genetics. Can you imagine coming from England and having tried a couple cuts here and there, tried some crosses, tried some OG Kush S1s, tried little bits and pieces, tried some different cuts. But now I'm on the East Coast. I'm smoking the East Coast sour diesel. I'm smoking all the chem family that chem dog had that time and passed on to Rez. Plus we're smoking everything that Jimmy Knitz was having around that time. He had a great question. He was also getting all the stuff from OG Raw School. So I was smoking everything from the Romulans to the, to little, yeah, to the Jeezels, to the Massachusetts Super Skunk. I smoked Massachusetts Super Skunk. I smoked Snow Dog, Chem Sista, Chem Four, Chem Four, like all of them. For me, Chem D, that's the goat for me. Like I love that girl. I have such fondness for her. Is that made it over to UK in cut form? Yeah, I believe a couple of people have got it. I haven't verified it or seen or known who it's come from. And in recent years, hearing how many fake ones there are, I'm getting my one from my own source rather than getting the one that's already here. I just wish we had an easier way to get stuff across the, it still sucks. Like if you're not really good at tissue culture, it's still a pain in the ass. That's really where we're at now. Luckily, people are picking up on the tissue culture thing. Yeah, I never got good at it. We've got people in Barcelona that are getting onto the tissue culture now. So slowly but surely things are coming together with that and it just makes it so much better. We can really preserve all these genetics for a common. How many times have you had to get rid of a genetic because it's like, how many mums can you actually keep? Oh yeah. Back in the day, there was a very different place we were living in the world and so many times. I always used to have a hit list of genetics and for a new one to come in, it had to be better than one of the ones that fitted a certain aspect of my life because for me, cannabis is about a feeling. It's about the effect. It's like, I love flavors. I smoke cannabis because of how it makes me feel and what it does for my personality, character, my well-being, my feeling of wellness, my health, pain, medication, all of these kinds of things. So to trial the different things, that's kind of the real key thing. And that's rare, dude, for a guy from the UK to be able to say, I had the, I smoked the Kansas, I smoked the Giesel, I smoked the Snow Dog because people listening now, I think that come into cannabis later, they've always assumed that these things just make it across the pond super easy. Back in, I remember in 2007, I was trying to get clones to someone in Spain and it was super hard. We were spending tons of money trying to do this before. We were really, foreign tissue culture was really an option even at that point. We were trying super hard. We spent tons of cash trying to get it there and it just didn't work. Right, we're just making things, yeah. The amount of time that I picked up, yeah. Boxes from the post office that was just like soaking wet, soaking wet. But they're like, who, how the fuck did you send this to me international? The things just coming through like, what have you fucking done? I know, you're shocked that it didn't get you popped. And then of course, the thing that could have gotten you popped, you opened it up and it smells like wet cooked lettuce. And you're like, oh. Yeah, bruh. Yeah. Bruh. Yeah, all my first lot, I think like the first two or three attempts that we had all died. There weren't until like, towards probably 2009, around 2009 we started getting a lot more luck with the cuts coming over. Like, because basically to finish off where I was going, what ended up happening is that after a while, you realize that Rez doesn't do a lot of the breeding. And then he hits me up and says to me, do you want to do a seed project? So up until that point, I had such high regard for breeders that I never even thought about breeding. My new friends that have done a little project is that I had no, I thought this was such a high level thing that for me, I was still learning about cannabis. I was still trying to try everything I wanted to try. I didn't feel that I knew enough about everything to do anything. Yeah, but that's a fair way of looking at it too. Right? That was it, honestly. And it's like, but that being said, by this stage, when I'd done the project or started to do a project for Rez, at this stage, we're talking 2009 now, I think. I had motor breath because Jimmy Knits was my friend. So I had no seeds before they even had a mane. Yeah. So I had motor breath. I had a motor breath cut that to this day, I think was better than Kendi for Terps and better than OG Cush like it was the perfect two. I haven't tried the motor breath 15, but if it's anything like the keeper that we had at Connoisseur Genetics at the time that I selected, that's one of the top five cuts I've ever had. And all of the stuff Jimmy Knits done, he was one of the people that changed my mind for feminized seeds. Yeah. Because I had brainwreck cross SFV and the chem cross SFV from him. I had abusive cross diesel, original diesel. Like I had lots of elite stuff. I had a stable of maybe 15 mothers at that stage with a little bit of everything. And then Rez wanted me to do the chem IBL. Oh, I think I saw that scene to that. So what, obviously, because this is the thing, Rez had been burnt so much by giving out cuts to people that even people who were meant to be his friend like me that he had promised cuts to, he didn't want to give them to. Like Rez was a weirdo. At one point, I remember Rez promising someone a cut. That person went to a mutual friend's house, said, oh, is that the cut? Because Rez said I could get one, but he didn't have none ready. And the guy goes, yeah, yeah, that's the cut. You can take it. And Rez didn't really want him to have the cut. So then Rez drove to the house and poisoned the cut with coke. While the guy weren't looking to try and kill it so that by the time he got home, it died because he didn't really want him to have the cut. Yeah, that's just above and beyond. Loopy shit, bro. Yeah, it's just a cow or just a guy, no. So you know, looking back, that's why I realized, oh, that's why you wanted me to do the IBL. Because with the IBL, he didn't have to send me to ChemD cut. All he needed to do was give me ChemBX2 and say to me, oh, get the best females, hit them with the best males, IBL done. Done. Yeah. That's it. And this is the thing, bro. It sparked a fascination with selecting males for me because that was something I'd never done, you know? Like normally when a good male pops up, you're pissed off and you want to get rid of it. But now all of a sudden I did like 30, 40 seeds which was a high population for back then and living where I'm living and selected out three insane males, bro. Like these males are insane. So good. Had the seed project going and then as what often happens in a prohibition era, a house got robbed. Oh my God. So I lost everything and Rez was just a piece of shit about the whole thing. Oh, I'm sure. It was kind of during that period that I kind of like phased out from him and realized like, well, you're just a cunt. Like the heads had cut him off. He was acting like a little bitch about certain things. He basically blocked me from getting the salad diesel from crazy composer who was a mutual friend. I'm like, oh, that's sad. Like I talked about that last episode and it's for people who don't understand like people would lock specific people out of cuts just to be dicks. Like that was a thing that people did and it was really annoying. Bro, it's really annoying when you've been at the guy's house and broke bread with him and you're meant to be like family to the guy and then all of a sudden you realize, you're just out to serve yourself and you're just using everyone and when push comes to shove, you ain't got no loyalty and you're just a fucking viking poppin' douchebag who ended up being a rat at the end of it all. And it's like the only good thing come out of it is that by the time that project went, I had the most incredible males and now I was excited about seeing what would happen if I bred them to all of my stable because now I'm like, oh, I've got a stable of plants. I've got these males that just have to be bred with. I need to breed with them. And that was kind of the spot for me to wanna breed for myself. And was that the first actual breeding project or did the males get robbed and that was it? Oh, do you know actually, bro, this is it, yeah. I then had a breeding project ready to go. A friend of mine was selling some bud to someone he knew. They came to get the bud, turned up with two other guys, pulled a gun on him and basically it was almost a hostage situation. I just got out of the shower. I heard the room go silent. You know, like the guys came in and they went to the back room and I'm getting dry and all of a sudden I just felt an energy shift. You know, from another room, I felt an energy shift through the wall row. Yeah, I believe it. I walk out of the door, turned left to look into the other door and as I do the geezer turns and he's got a little 22. Is that the like small little woman's gun? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it was. It was like a 22. I know he shot someone point blank in the head and never killed him. So- Oh my fucking god. Because that's what I heard. It was only a 22. So I've seen that and run for the door. Now in these old Victorian houses, they often have two doors. You know with the little porch? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what the fuck we've done is put the latch up so that as I go to the door, it wouldn't turn. Luckily, I unlatched it, went through the first one, got through the second one, run out, jump the gate. Now it's like three o'clock in the afternoon. I'm stood wrapping myself back up in the town and this time stood there with the 22 in the doorway and I'm like, bro, you better fucking make a move because I'm gonna stop making a scene. So I just fucking, the three of them run out and now we've had people running out of the house with a gun, baggy weed and I've got to grow upstairs. So now I'm in a situation where I'm like, fuck, I've got to get all of these plants out of here. So at this point, I've got a friend at the time who was breeding and had a little seed company called Connoisseur Genetics. Oh, okay, yeah. So I hit him up and say to him, bro, if you've got somewhere that you can look after some plants because I've got these big plants, I'm about to do a project and I don't want to lose all the genetics and I can't keep them here. So he's like, yeah, we can figure something out. So my dad, who's like normal working guy, not a smoke car, just a normal guy, I end up having to get him to come and help me. We moved fucking 36 big fucking five foot tall plants in TV boxes on this side. Yeah, yeah. They're mad ones like that. Yeah. And then Connoisseur Genetics just decided, fuck it, I'm gonna pollinate your project and he just fucking made the seeds with my whole selection with all my plants. He just done the seed line. He decided fuck heaping your things. I'm just fucking with him. Well, that's kind of him. I'm just gonna do your seed line. I'm just gonna do your seed line. What project are you? I can't work out. Bro, so that might've been too blown. Yeah, I'm like, well, bro, I might as well come in with you on Connoisseur Genetics, bear it in mind, the only seed lines he'd ever done were G13 haze crosses. And the G13 haze was a male that someone else gave him. That was Soma's male. Yeah. So this guy didn't know really about no selection. He was breeding niche little weird haze things that no one really cared about. I remember it was like, there was like a purple bastard haze, stuff like that. Yeah, Titan's haze, which was like Titanic cross G13 haze. Yes, yes. I remember all that. There was little niche haze things with weird names. There was also like weird SSSDH G13 haze. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All of those. Then all of a sudden my line drops. I come in, brand it, I get him distribution. We get logos. We start naming things proper. Like we hit a time when things were hot, bro. Yeah, dude. I remember all genetics back then when we dropped that ChemBX line with the OG Chem secret recipe, cheese dog, Kemi Jones. Yeah. Like there was so much fire. And where we really hit it was that the people that test for our stuff were just legends of the game now. Like looking back at it, the people that test for connoisseur genetics now, I looked up to because of what they're doing in America. Yeah. So it's like those people inspire me now. So it's like, That's why that works, huh? Bro, it's nuts because I'm telling you these people like are doing crazy things. And I remember when they were doing test pros for connoisseur genetics. Yeah. Yeah, that ChemLine hit and that one was just wild, bro. We've done so well with that. And then we kind of had to phase into the FemLite stuff. Yeah. Because the market demanded it. That's what it demanded. We broke into full distribution, attitude, all of those kinds of things. It was like regs weren't really doing it no more. We kind of that era phased out and it was more feminized stuff. And like, this is one thing I'll say, yeah, because it's always a contentious issue where OJ from connoisseur genetics always likes to come out and say, like, ah, he never made no seeds during that time, blah, blah, blah. I'll put my hands up now and say, the first batch of seeds I didn't make, he made them. But it was my male selection and my female. Yeah. I never made the seeds, but I did all the selection. Yeah. I then remade a batch of those seeds myself. When it came to feminized seeds, I only ever done two feminized reversals. One was a GDP and one was Girl Scout Cookies. The GDP won. I only did a few little things. Some of them got released through connoisseur genetics. Some got released through True Canogenetics as I broke away onto my own. Yeah. Because that's what eventually happened. And that's what happens, which you have to do. Yeah. Because yeah, connoisseur genetics, we were working together for a year or so, and then we went to go to Amsterdam to enter the high times with the chem crosses, all the chem BX stuff that we've done. We were ready to go and enter that, and we got busted going to the high times. Jesus Christ, both of you did. Yeah, both of us got busted. And how did that work? We got busted leaving the country. Okay. So, yeah, this is all I'll say on that one is... Jesus Christ. Loose lip-sync ships. Yeah, man. Yeah. Oh, God. That's it. That's the life lesson on that one, guys. Yeah, dude. Yeah, by the end of it, we ended up doing six months in prison. Fuck. The six months in prison was just tedious. Like, it's all it taught me is that OJ, my business partner, was not my kind of person. Yeah. I was locked up in a cell with him, and it was just a nightmare. I was going to ask, did you have to spend time with him the whole time? Bro, it was a nightmare. When he eventually... We smoked so much the day that we got sentenced, because we knew they said to us, like, yep, you're getting banged up. You've got an hour, then come back, and they're going to sentence you. So, we went and smoked about 10 grams in like five joints. I bet. Carl spoke, come back in stone to the bone, but three months into the sentence, he got piss-tested and failed. Three months later. Three months later, and he got shipped out. And I'll be honest with you, it was the best thing that ever happened. The minute they fucked him off out of our prison, my life got easier. Because it was just, ah, it was much better. And when we come out of prison, I tried for a little while to like, you know, when you've been through so much, I was overlooking the fact that the guy talks to people like shit. Yeah, he's been through a traumatic experience with each other. He's just disrespectful to people, bro. So it's like, I was like, man, how can I break away from this after we've tried so much, you've been through so much, we went to prison together, we've come out, we've maintained the business while we were in prison. Like, we had other people making siege for us while we were in prison. We were like on the phone, telling my dad, yeah, this is the name for this one. My dad was getting the siege, packaging them, taking them, like we were still running a siege company from prison in 2010. And it's like, when I came out, we had a grow together, we were going for the high times again. And basically, where it got to the point, yeah, where I was living in the grow house while on probation. Yeah. And the geezers having a shouting argument with me in the house that's got me ruling it. And I'm like, I can't part with this no more because I'm not a child. I'm like, I have a fight me or have an adult conversation, but I'm not going to scream and shout, especially not when I've got a liquor and sleeper and there's a grove here. And I'm like, I don't need this in my life. And literally about three weeks before the crop was done, I spoke to a mutual friend and said to them, look, bro, I'm done. I'm walking away from this. Will you just help him with the last little bit and finish all this off? And I walked away from it completely, never asked for nothing, nothing's gone. You know what I tried to do, yeah? I tried to salvage a friendship. I tried to say to him like, look, I've lined up someone to come in and help. I'm not going to do none of the same seed projects. I'm going to go in a different direction. I tried to be super cool about it and still the geezer was so bitter that he still backstab me and done a bunch of sneaky things. Got my own little cousin to steal genetics from me. Wow. Ruin the grove that he was looking after for me and then do a project for connoisseur genetics with the genetics that he stole from me, i.e. the triangle cushion, the Girl Scout cookies. Wow. So he just did scumbag stuff and it's like, when I called him out on it, he said, no, honestly, I'd never do that. I didn't know he'd done that. I won't do it. And then three months later, my little cousin couldn't keep his mouth shut and went telling everyone that he got paid the money for the seed project. Yeah, that's how it goes. That's how it goes. You know what I mean? It's just a dirt bag. But it spurred me to start true connoisseur genetics. I went out on my own. I ended like ICMAG again with the 2K, with my cousin ended with the Terps Zilla. And the year after coming out of prison, we got first and second place at the ICMAG Cup. That's awesome. So that was beautiful. What year was that? 2000. That was like 2013, I believe, I think. Maybe 40. Fuckin' A, man. What a long storied career, dude. Because you know it was, yeah. You know, you're from that era where high times, I know everyone talks shit about them. Everyone says, oh, your awards are bought and all of that. Yeah, yeah. I'm from an era where winning a high times meant something. It did in one time. And the thing was, for our era, we were all fighting for third place. Between us, we all kind of felt that first and second was for the big spenders. Yep. I'm not saying that they bought the awards, but what I'm saying is, the people that spend a lot of money have got the best part a lot of the time and the best push and the best promotion. And they put themselves in the position to win on a regular basis. And the smaller companies are fighting for a third place. Yeah, I mean, the way it was, and I mean, at one point, Arjan got blocked from going to the Cup because he bribed the judges openly. It was, I mean, these things happened. As I explained it, even today, you pay for events, you pay for parties for high times, you pay for ad, then you get the articles, then you get this. But it's not a one-to-one exchange like people would think, I'm gonna buy this cup. That's not how it works, you know? In this area, I can hand and heart say, I never pay for sponsorship or bought any high times judges' cocaine. Yeah, you never did. Because I've heard that those two things work favorably well. Yeah, they do. I've heard the same thing. I've never had to do it. I've been banned the whole time, but I assume that if one wanted to do it, Coke would be a good choice. Yeah, people were fighting for third place at every point because it was either Barney's Farm or Greenhouse or Greenhouse or Barney's Farm. And that was kind of the dream. And it's like, the year we came out of prison, I broke away from commercial genetics. Commercial genetics went and entered the high times. I never got to fulfill my dream. I tried the next year, failed again because I got kicked out of the house where I had to grow, had to take dry plants to another house to dry them. Yeah, yeah. Then had to send the bud to Amsterdam. And the whole experience aggravated me so much that I didn't even want to enter. I was like just disappointed. And I decided, you know what? The only way I'm going to win a high times is if I grow the fucking plant in Amsterdam, trim it, put it into Tupperware, walk the Tupperware up to the judge and hand it in. And that's what I decided, bro. And I moved to Amsterdam. I just left everything, left my life, left my family, left everything, can move to Amsterdam with the dream of winning a high times. And that was my next mission. Well, let's talk about that. Oh, bro, what a fucking wild one that was. Let's go there, dude. At the time, I just started an extract company, OCD Labs. Because we're talking like around 2012, 13, we started OCD Labs. We got the first across international into Europe. We got it to the UK. Without a shadow of a doubt, no matter what anyone else claims on the scene, because I've heard other claims, yeah? Yeah, yeah. We were the first people to have an across international in Europe. Like, no doubt. I got Mortimer Says, the secret cup winner. She was a girl called Mortimer Says. She won secret cup around 2012 or something like that. I paid for her to come to the UK to show us single solvent de-waxing. Oh, wow. So that we were open blasting, but we learned single solvent de-waxing where you freeze on dry ice, fill our fucking funnel, all of this. So we were so ahead of the curve. And what ended up happening is when I moved to Amsterdam, I took the oven with me and we started extract company out there. So that was the thing now. We had the extract company run in and we were kind of building an extract culture because it couldn't sell extracts in Amsterdam. So what we used to do is sit in coffee shops, dabbing, and then when people pay attention, it'd be like, you want a dab? And then all of a sudden we'd give them dabs and then that would spread on. And 10 years later, about 10 of those people have got businesses in the industry. Their lives have been affected wonderfully by being in the cannabis industry. And they've got amazing stories of their own to tell. And during that time, I had a growth. As you can imagine, we started growing. I was working with a coffee shop, had some nice carts. I was getting ready for the high times. I had my Turbzilla cart, which is a NYC from Soma, the Ruby Red Grapefruit cart across to the Grand Daddy Purple. I had an ICMAG cup with that cup. So I was going to enter that into the high times. So I had a growth with the Forum Girl Scout cookies as well. At that time, big shout out to the Always Be Flowering and all of those guys that were way early on. I'd get looked after like a king model of my ICMAG friends. Dude, yeah, I mean, that is very early for people that don't know. When I came out of prison, 2011, I got a message from a certain member of that crew. I won't say his name, because obviously he sent me the cart. So I ain't going to give you the name, but one of the crew said, look, we love what you're doing. He had grown a lot of our stuff and was a big fan. And he goes, we've got something special for you. And within three days, I had like 12 rooted carts and 12 unrooted carts of the Girl Scout cookies. That was so rare for that era. Like, it was so rare. Bro, I'm telling you, 2012, it must have been London, 10,000 a kilo for Girl Scout cookies. Jesus, I bet too, dude. I bet. And you could move it for that. And then the guy who would move it would double up and make 20, selling it in grams. Yeah, selling in grams, yeah. And say, whoa, people are going mad. I'm getting people coming and buying like 20, one grand. Yeah. Because people's minds have never seen nothing. Yeah, they've never seen this kind of bud before. There's times when bud impact the world differently. And that one hit at a time. So, which is why, when I'm now in Amsterdam, have my bro, everything's veg and beautifully, all of a sudden, the bro gets robbed for the genetics. Oh, in Amsterdam, of course it did. In Amsterdam, of course. The flower bro, they robbed it for the fucking genetics. It weren't even in flower? Bro, it was in veg. Imagine this year, it's all very suspect. But the next, I wake up, you tell me if it's a coincidence. Yeah. I love the same. I wake up in the morning because I go to the bro two times. I used to go to the bro in the morning and the evening so it looked like I was living there because I was painting a picture. When you live in a place where you're not meant to be growing, what I always used to say to people, if you paint a picture for the surrounding people, their imaginations won't paint a picture that paints you into a corner. So good people and ideas, you're doing normal stuff. Show them shopping, show them a toolbox, show them a job, a life, give them stuff. Play the game. Don't just be a fucking idiot about it and get lots of days in. Yeah, don't show up at a Corvette once a week. Yeah. Exactly. So I played the game properly at this place. Going all great. Morning time, I go to my car. Oh, I've got a flat tire. Okay. There's a nail in my tire. So I holler at the guy who I'm doing the project with. He's like, yeah, you can go around the corner. There's this place here. There's a tire shop. So I go, walk there, get the tire. Just as I'm getting, I get back, change the tire. I'm just getting ready to leave the house and I get a phone call from my business partner's brother. Okay. Who's a dodgy fucker at the best of times. Okay. Says to me, where are you? I'm like, I'm at home. He goes, okay, stay down, I need to speak to you. He comes, pulls out his phone and goes, yeah, the place got raided last night. Shows me the news article from that morning of the police loading the grove out of the block of flats. So I'm like, I wrote it out. I did my book. Yeah, yeah. What can I say? Like I've done everything that I can. So for me, I'm like, it is what it is. I'm heartbroken. I've lost everything. I don't know what to say to the geezer. Like, that's it. So it goes sour with my business partner. He's aggravated about it. I'm like, bro, I did work. You put in money. We've both lost out. I've lost 100x. High times is like 10 weeks, 11 weeks away from now. I'm fucked, like don't look at me. So that all goes sour. Now I'm left with such a short amount of time that the only thing I can do is pop a pack of each seeds that I've got, veg them for two weeks, flour right away, six days, dry for 14 days, three days, hand into high times on the fourth day. Yeah, that's just right. Just barely enough time to cram one in. And then listen to this for ironic. While I'm in my new apartment, which is a different that, because I've moved it where I do, I had coincidentally moved into a new spot at the same time as that was going on. So I'm in my new spot. I go to the mall across the street. In north of Amsterdam, there's like the pedestrianized mall. As I walk into the mall area, an American woman who lived in the flat below where the grow was, sees me and looks at me and clocks me straight away. I goes, oh, hello. Can I have a word with you, please? I'm like, fuck. This woman lived below where the grow was growing. Oh, shit. Fuck, what is this woman gonna say to me? So I walk over to her. She goes, first of all, can I shake your hand? Because every time you have a grow, you have. She goes, I'm also a grower. She goes, but those apartments, you can't grow. So then she goes on to tell me, yeah, just so you know, there was two Moroccan guys that robbed the grow. I heard them kick the door off. I looked out and saw them come down with plants. She goes, I'm not sure what plants you had, but they seemed very keen to take your plants that were still in veg. This woman's leaving with the veg plant. She goes, I obviously called the police. I've got children. Once that happens, I can't just leave the grow open like that and I didn't have your details. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what the situation was in future. If you're gonna grow, you need to grow in apartments like that one over there. And she points at the block that I'm now living in. Oh my God. Wow, so she saw the Moroccan dudes. So was your business partner, did he have any Moroccan or have a lot of Moroccan connects? Yeah, he's Moroccan. Oh, I don't think. And his brother wanted the genetics. Oh, Amsterdam, bro. And do you know where it was? Yeah, I had told his brother, look, I think I've got worldwide. I'm battling them at the moment with Swarski might and a bunch of other things. If you wanna take them, you're more than welcome to. But trust me, if you don't deal with it properly, it will ruin you and everything that comes in touch with it. And I think that he thought I didn't wanna give it to him. And he never pursued it further. If he would have said, fuck it, I'll take the risk. I would have said, go on, take it. But I think in his head, he built up and I was bullshitting him and then just robbed me. Hopefully he got Brahmites too. Bro, this is the funny thing. Months and months later, I saw a picture posted by someone. I put it side by side to my Terpzilla and said to a friend, what does that look like? He goes, that one looks like that one, but with Brahmites. Oh my fucking God. So, who knows? But the thing is, yeah, I genuinely don't believe that my business partner at the time had anything to do with it. I actually think if it was, because I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If it was, it was definitely nothing to do with my business partner. He lost out bigger than me. He fucking put it under his feet. This poor guy was heartbroken. We fell out because he was just so heartbroken and that's why I never held no feelings to him. I'm like, I could see he was annoyed, but it's like, bro, who do you blame? Yeah, he lost out himself, yeah. And then I ended the high times with like, I ended a few different things and the truth got me a second place, bro. I was shocked. The most shocking day of my life, I swear. So you jumped third and took a second, huh? Bro, I swear to you, yeah? As they announced third and it went to someone else, I looked at my cousin and said, well, we've had fun. It was a good week. And then they named me a second and shop. Just shop. Oh, I bet. Yeah, total shop, because like I say, third place was an achievement. So yeah, second place was wild. So yeah, that meant the world to me. Who got first? Oh, do you know what? The biggest prick of all. Rez. Swerve. Oh, even worse. Yeah, yeah. It's like that. The two of them. It really, like anybody from our era knows that like. You know what? It was like a dispensary that ended with him and they ended like Baba's gift or something like that. So it's like, basically, there's the Baba Kushner. Congratulations, you won first place with the Baba Kushner. You know, it's funny, Swerve had to go to Ohio to get his Baba Kushner. Couldn't even get one in California because nobody liked it. I love that story. There's another, I see Mad Guy in this. I'm bouncing down to that by over the years. It's hilarious. Yeah. I just saw him yesterday. It was a JD short post about how JD short thought Baba Kush was blueberry and Swerve was in there co-signing it. I was just like, what is going on? I entered a twilight in front of them, bro. Bah-ha, dude. So you made it through. You made it through to Amsterdam. Yeah, so yeah. You got your goal. Amsterdam was, it was like, it was a wild period in Amsterdam because extracts were just becoming a thing. Yeah. So we were running extracts for DNA, for soma, for a few different people, phenofinders, like there was a few different people. So it is an amazing time to be in Amsterdam, to be growing that culture, to be entering competitions, to be dabbing people out. Like, I think no exaggeration, I have probably given maybe 500 to 1,000 people conservatively their first ever dab. That's wild. How many people did you see white out for the first time? None, because I was trying to build a culture and sell flags. That's true. So do you think I will, I never, every single person I ever dab, do you know what they said? What's that? I have another. Interesting. Because I always did the perfect, the amount of thinking low 10, we were already onto that. Like we were trying to get it as enjoyable as possible. So we didn't want people coughing. We didn't want it to be a bad experience. Everyone's doing stupid shit, making people cough and making it uncomfortable. I love this. I want someone to say, yeah, give me 10 grams. Oh, I'll get a 30 gram slab. I didn't want them to cough their guts up and never come back and think, fuck that, you crackheads. Dude, I've seen people totally be turned off to cannabis from their first dab because it's just too much. Like for people going from not smoking at all to, you know, getting a one gram dab. Like that'll kill someone's mind, dude. I have done it before. I remember my friends at the time, we're in Amsterdam. My friends the previous night have hung out with Wiz Khalifa and been smoking and dabbing with Wiz Khalifa. So the next day they're so gassed up about it. We're at like the Bulldog coffee shop. I had done an edible earlier. We're smoking and then all of a sudden for some reason my friend put his whole slab of oil, you know, like I'm talking a slab, like a gram of oil, like a rat, on the dab mark. And I'm thinking to myself, what's he doing with that? He goes, oh, you've got to do a big dab like we were doing yesterday. So I'm thinking to myself, you've never done the dab that big in your life. But if you want to give me your oil to do a big dab like that, I'll do it. And I've done those kind of dabs and it's like, me, I've got an iron lung. I've managed to do those ones. Like the most interesting time and the biggest test of the iron lung was when Tony Vazura and Bubble Man bought turps to Amsterdam the first year that Blue River had turps. And we were doing turp chasers where they were dabbing stiff and doing a whole drop of turps onto the rig. And I'm telling you that felt like what I imagined a 10-gram rocker crack would feel like. It just, like your whole, it cannot be healthy. Like looking back at it, Eric's being a single drip of turpine onto a dab cannot be healthy, but I thought it was tasty and turpy. And then it was done that without a shadow of a doubt. Everyone coughed like crazy. That was something people weren't holding on like just crazy potency on that. The most hardest kind of like a lot onto your chest. Have you ever, I'm sure you've done Whippets before, right? Yeah. Have you ever had vanilla flavored gas Whippets? I haven't, no. I highly recommend never, ever doing it because what it is, it's a special kind of gas that's vanilla flavored, not vanilla liquid added. So when you do it, you go to do the Whippet, you inhale this whole other gas and it makes your lungs just crack. I would imagine that's a lot like the turpine. Yeah, that's what it felt like, yeah. Yeah, 100%. This is like something that should not be in your lungs and could probably kill you if you inhale it because it's not oxygen and it's just not enough. Everything else there, it could jack you up pretty hard. Yeah. It was such a fun time like in Amsterdam because we saw during that period, there was like, it was during the transition where BHO was crazy and then all of a sudden, Rosen got discovered during that era. Yeah, yeah. So all of a sudden, Rosen era came in and then what ended up happening with me is as I won the high times at the end of 2014, I then went on a trip to Morocco on a reconnaissance mission because the people of Morocco were curious if what was left on the material of the, or the hashes cover. Oh, interesting. Because imagine if you have five ton of material. Yeah. So all of a sudden, there's 7% oil on it, BHO. Yeah. Because that's what it ended up being. There were two different strains that I tested. One of them was giving 4% and the other one was giving 7%. Yeah. So you could get 7% oil return off of the plant material that they were making in Morocco. Interesting. And they were looking at different methods of like, in Morocco, one of the issues is that they have to harvest things, dry it and then wait for things to get cold so that they can then process it. Yeah. So one of the evolutions that come into Morocco is to get a generator to air condition and refrigerate the room where you work. Yeah. So now you can process your whole crop, make your money, then go to your neighbor, offer them a fraction of what their crop's worth to take it off of them a month or two early. So now they've got no work to do. They get paid early and you take it to your facility and you process it and put it out. And it's much better quality. Yeah. And that was one of their evolutions. You start to notice like all these different evolutions. The first one obviously was the feminized seeds in Morocco. Yeah, yeah. Where what would happen is one farmer would grow feminized seeds and then what would happen is the neighboring farm would see the quality of that crop and they would be interested. And what would happen is this farmer who had paid say a euro per seed or feminized seeds, they would sell all of their material to the other farmer. We would now get Moroccan hybrid Dutch genetic seeds. They just take the plant material, throw it down like they normally would. But what it would mean is that their crop would be such a percentage more the next year that they got enough money that the following year they bought feminized seeds. God, yeah, that makes sense. And then they passed on to the next farms and it would spread and people were getting a little bit more yield by getting hybrid regular seeds. And once they got the cash influx from that regular seed hybrids, they would then invest with the extra money in feminized. And that was how it spread and everyone began to grow feminized, and that's how DNA took over Morocco. DNA, the Spanish brands, like Greenhouse, like a lot of, let's be honest, a lot of the first time I remember it happening, I'll give you my theory, you tell me. Sure, sure. The first hash that I remember coming back from Morocco that was named was Chemdog hash. And that was when Greenhouse tried to do a Chemdog seed line. And it was all over that. So they couldn't sell the seeds. So what happened to the seeds, it went to Morocco and they made hash out of it. And that was the real start of it. It was feminized seeds that couldn't be sold on the regular market and they then decided to sell them to Morocco. And that was the true beginning of the Moroccans buying feminized seeds. Wow. So why weren't they able to sell it? Why weren't they able to sell the Chemdog? Because it would just hurt. I think wherever they come with the Chemdog line, it was just such a herm line, they weren't able to release the seeds. That makes sense. And there was a few other ones that were out at that time and you kind of noticed that that was what the hash was that was coming from Morocco. And that's what people have done over the years is given the stuff that didn't do well went to Morocco. But now people are a little bit more fussy with what they want for them. I'm sure now, yeah, but they're just probably finding the new Morocco right now. I mean, Thailand or wherever, you know what I mean? It's been a weird evolution for Morocco because they kind of like, they got two carried away. They had some good hash making strains and they thought everything that's new is going to be good. That's how it goes. They got some. The hard way, not all resin is equal and not all resin is good for dry sift. Yeah, not all resin has a bunch of oil in it. As about to say, that's the problem, bro, is that what's happened over the last few years, being in Spain, Barcelona now, you see a lot of it, is that you'll get the blocks of hash from Morocco. They've been axiled and where they haven't been able to dry the plants properly. And the resin is a greasy type of resin that has more water content than the sandy type of resin that is traditionally used. When you didn't backseat it and it's left for a amount of time, it ferments. The whole thing just rolls up and when you open the block, it's just rotten and it's just gone off. It's like fermented. So that fermented hash is brutal too. Yep. So this is one of the things they're having to now be a lot more selective with what genetics they take to Morocco rather than just thinking, oh, it's got a Z in it. Everyone will want it. Let's go it. And then all of a sudden, it's greasy as fuck. They can't get it off the plant. They beat it and get fucking fucking and just have a bunch of greasy moldy hash when it arrives at destiny. Oh, Lord. Yeah, not all resin is equal for each environment and each extraction method. That's for damn sure. So we get to Morocco with you. What's the next step in your evolution to where you're at now? It was then to go to Spain because Amsterdam, as much as I love Amsterdam, the culture there to grow is just, it doesn't exist. They're like so suspicious, your neighbor will knock on the door when you arrive and ask them who you are and what you do. Jesus. They're the most invasive people I've ever known in my life. Yeah, I can live with that. The only reason I got away with growing in the place that I did is because my landlord was from Iran and he was like this beautiful Iranian guy that lived in the conflict in the 80s. He rode to the border on a motorbike from his parents with bullets which shot at him and had bullet holes where he got shot fleeing Iran. This guy was an OG, bro. But he loved me, bro. He was so nice. At one point, we had the vacuum oven in the downstairs kitchen. And what he realized is when you turn the light on, it was put in a little extraction fan on. So when you were fucking running the oven, all the turkeys that were coming out of the fucking pump were going into the extraction fan and going through every apartment. So the guy, bro, he come to us and goes, look whatever you're doing, don't do it in the front of the house because I'm getting complaints from the neighbors. Oh my God. Bro, he could have like just kicked me out because he's just in trouble. Like if you let someone grow in your house, they'll take your house from you. Yeah, they, yeah. It's that way. Yeah, brutal out there, bro. They don't fuck around. So they took big risks. And after the Morocco trip, it was literally a point of going to Barcelona. I had a bunch of opportunities that all fell apart. Like I was invited here. I already had plans to come to Barcelona, but I got invited on a whole bunch of promises and projects. Once I got here, that all fell apart and I ended up having to salvage things on my own. So it was quite an adventure, but getting to Barcelona, getting set up here and being a part of the culture, it was like the moment I had a smuggling conviction and I couldn't be in America, I needed to be in the next best place for the culture or who I am and for what I want to do with my life. And Spain and Barcelona, for Europe, it's at this point, they're epicenter of the cannabis culture and the industry. So for me, it's the perfect place to be. So that's what led me here. I envy it, bro. That's like my mecca to make it to Spain, just because it seems so awesome. Do you know what, bro? It's like anywhere. It has its ups and downs, but the pace of life is beautiful. Like people are just so blasé. My next door neighbors, like on one side, I've got neighbors that are a family, they grow, they grow. Like there's like the mum and dad are probably a little bit younger than my parents. They've got kids, everything from like 14 to in their 20s. They've got to grow underneath their house. Like they grow in their back garden. On the other side, I've got an elderly couple. One year, the elderly couple, all my plants got blown over in a storm. The old man who must be 70 of called me over. He saw me stand in there like this. And he goes, Barry, Barry, come. Calls me over. He's got these big, like eight foot cast iron steaks. Asked me how many I need. Gave me 12 of these cast iron steaks. I was able to stake up all my plants. Oh man. I would have had, there was no solution other than that. So imagine that a culture where it's so accepted, like when you go to a grow shop out there, with just a normal, like, high base, like, like hardware, God, and stuff. On one of the aisles, you'll see some plant food. Cheap shitty plant food, but with cannabis leaves, or cannabis. So that sensitizes these kind of people. When they see me growing a few plants, the lady, she's complimented me on my plants before. She's like, oh, your plants are looking lovely this year. Like I felt so awkward. I'm like, I've got melons too. And I wanted to show that other stuff. I'm like, it's not just ginger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fucking wild though. Like in California, we still don't even have that kind of attitude here. Like where neighbors are okay. Like, I have neighbors where I'm just like, every day I'm just waiting, you know, like. You know, the universe was kind to me, bro. I could have been anywhere next to anyone to land in between two neighbors, one that are just partners that just farm their house. They only come on weekends. They love me. They put baskets of fruit on the fence. Like peaches off their trees. Like throughout the summer. And we just share back and forth. I just give them what they give me. And the same from the other people. So it's like, it's a beautiful place out here. And the culture is amazing. We have a cannabis social club scene, it's beautiful. It's not quite lived up to some of my expectations. There's a lot of things that I don't like about it. Like this same probably review, bro, the way the scenes dictated these days doesn't buy it with me. Like one of the things that I'll say, yeah, do you remember the times when growers decided what smoke was smoked and what we grew? Yeah, yeah. Now, not that way. Now I get people that hit me up and they want my stuff. Like, so they want niche things from me. But then they say to me like, have you got something with any hype in it? Because I've got to sell a couple of bits. And if you ain't got a name that people know or something can hear, I'm going to struggle moving here. And it's like, oh, I could, I used to be able to take someone something. And I didn't even need to give it a name. I could just be like, this, this, this, this, this. People just take my word because they knew that I'm growing fire. You'd get a variety. You'd like something more than others. Like, and that's how you found amazing things. Now the way things are marketed, the things that are on the beautiful things that are overlooked, like it's so warped. Like I'll give you an example. I had a friend that proves a beautiful pure Michigan, which is like a, it's an Oreos. Oreos, something, yeah. So anyone that knows Oreos, I've had the Oreos cut. I've bred with it, beautiful cut, but bland most of the time. Even grown well, bland, but great breeding cut. Great breeding cut, a lot of potential. The pure Michigan that you've done was amazing. Smoke-wise leaps and bounds above the Oreos. This is what turned me on to what a good breeding plant it was. So he takes some of the pure Michigan to a club in Barcelona. It sits on the menu for weeks. They change it to Oreos and it sells out. Instantly, yeah. Stupid. And it's like, I don't know how to get my head around that sometimes. And that's the way things are, sadly, like some of the market and over here, people are so caught up in the Myler bags that most of the Mylers aren't even real. So then it's like- That's what I hear. Mylar, Mylar, Mylar. Over there, from my buddy in Austria, he's talking about how like the seed packs over there have like Mylar's like this big and it's like how big your Mylar is. I think it's something to do with this. I think that people are fed up with feeling like criminals. And the minute you get something in a fancy bag that's branded and marketed, it's all part of the feeling of feeling normal, of feeling like a normal consumer, buying a normal consumer product, not feeling like a criminal buying a criminal a drug. Do you know what I mean? And I think that's what people tap into. And I think that's where it comes from, but we need to kind of breed some kind of more like educated consumer going for this. I mean, and it's a good time to talk about this. You have your podcast, right? Yep. You're trying to educate people. You're doing a great job over there, you know? And in Europe, we have to have just as much education as we do over here. And that was a big reason I wanted to bring you on with some people that are in the US, a breeder syndicate that was in our show can also tune into your show because you're just as educated as all of us. You've been around the scene longer than me and they can get great, great news and info from you over there. You wanna talk about your show some? Yeah. Yeah, do you know what? I'm glad you mentioned it. It's something I really need to get back into a lot more heavily. I've been going through a few ups and downs. And as you know what it's like in this industry, it's a stepping stone industry road. So time and time again, I give people opportunities and people use me as a stepping stone to serve themselves. And I've been through that roller coaster over the last year or so, and it's kind of left me pouring into other people's cup and not into my own. And one of the things that I have missed is the podcast because like you say, it does give people that kind of outlet information. I love getting people on and giving people the insight into the European scene. Find out what kind of flavors people are hunting here, what kind of genetics people are favoring, what old school stuff is being found and coming out of the woodwork, what's being revived, what people miss trying to piece together some history. So I'm slowly getting back into it. I started to write like a little list of different people that I wanna try and get on for episodes and start getting things together. So I'm definitely gonna be doing that. Getting a few. It's important to have the dudes that know their shit doing it. So like, I think every chance you get to do it, it's a plus to the whole community. And I think people will be able to hear in America about you is even better. Honestly, to breathe a Cindercup, I love it so much. You know, the stories and all the different people talking about different things and the different theories. Like that's what I was saying about with Stoney is like those are the conversations that we have. Well, you know, when you're theorizing, when you get Caleb on, he's talking about all the different, I've crossed this and I've unlocked this and I'm seeing this pop up in this and all the different things. And yeah, I just love it, bro. I love the history. I'm a genetic nerd, like. I know you are. Every time we've talked, it's just been dorking out about genetics. So yeah, dude, you know your people or doesn't matter where you're at. You know your people across the world. I mean, dude, we could talk for ages about all your stuff. I mean, I think we're going to need to do a second one and I'd really like to have you back on, too, to do like around table with a few of us so we could just nerd out about the forums. And all the crazy stories we have, because I know you have millions. Like you're on ICMAG or Overgrow and all that shit. Yeah, no, we should. With what we do, we need to do like one where we just talk about what I'm working with genetics and we're talking about actually my work. And then we need to do that forum round table. I'm thinking it about... Yeah, hi, I'm Loan Simone here. So you can talk about some res dog. You can talk about some... Dude, like, bro, there's so many little stories. Like one of the ones that, you know, like when we talk about different cuts and things like that, one of the ones that always gets confusing is the East Coast Salvador diesel. And they'll give you a reason why. Do you remember a point when there was a... I don't know if you remember, there was a big drama on ICMAG where it was like a dude called Friendly Friend. It's like, how more suspicious a name have you got to have a friendly friend? Yeah, right? There's some res for the East Coast Salvador diesel cut and kind of like used it on a bunch of weird projects and caused a whole bunch of drama. And like, yeah, it was crazy, bro. So like res didn't like to give out no cuts to no one. And what he'd done is he passed out the East Coast Salvador diesel cut to Sun Simulator. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't. It was a BX2. Fantastic, isn't it? And that's the kind of shit that muddied the wall up. Because imagine everyone who knew res said, yeah, I gave him the cut. Yeah. We got the cut. But secretly behind the scenes, he told me, yeah, no, that was the BX2 that you smoked last time. I didn't give him the real cut. So it's like, that's how quickly everything gets twisted and no one knows what's the real cut anymore. And that's how greedy it is, too, because he knows he's going to fuck up all kinds of people's provenance down the road, what people think they have. And it's all about greed in his mind. It's not about furthering the genetics, making sure shit's right. It's about greed in his pocket, shit like that. That's why I never got along with the dude, never, ever. Fuck him. Yeah, that's it. All right, brother. I think that's an hour and a half in. I don't think it's going to take much editing at all. Dude, nailed it, dude. Real good to talk, man. Dude, it's been a pleasure. And I'd love to have you back on again anytime. Let people know first where they can get your seeds at and your podcast, where they can listen to it, any of the past episodes, all that. Yep, seeds are on seedsherenow.com. That's my main US retailer in Europe from PureCetiva.com, Attitude, Advance, Canna, a whole bunch of other standard retailers. Awesome. The podcast is the True Cannacast. It's available on iTunes, Apple, Spotify, all of those usual podcasts. Are the usual suspects? Yeah, all the usual suspects. And online, I've got a couple of Instagrams. One is True Canna Bliss. That one, I've had to archive all my photos. Sadly, I had like 5,000 plus photos. Tells the whole history of like, the European scene from 2012, 2013 to now. And because of malicious people reporting shit, you know, it is... Stop reporting people shit, please, please. I've had to delete everything, but I've got another page, which is True Canna Genetics Gallery, all one world. And yeah, you can find a lot more plant pictures and post them a little bit more freely on there. And I'm on IC Mag as well. If anyone lives on IC Mag, I've got a little form there. Awesome, dude. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure and we'll be begging this out soon. I'll let you know when it goes up. Awesome. All right, brother, I'll talk to you soon. Want to sit at the table with a syndicate? 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