 Breeders Syndicate Update. Not only is our mark store up at syndicategear.com, but all episodes will remain free. But what we need from you is interaction. If you're watching the show for your first time, kick back and enjoy it. If you like the show, feel free to like it. But if it's your second viewing, we ask a gentle person's agreement that you click the subscribe button. It costs you nothing, but it helps us tremendously with the sneaky YouTube algorithm. Leaving comments, telling not so his voice lulls you into a trance works as well. We hope you take the time to do this. We try to put out the best possible shows for you we can and want to build this community. Thanks again from all of us at the Breeders Syndicate family. Welcome to Breeders Syndicate, everyone. I'm Matthew. Meltz is not with us today, but we do have Mad Jag and Raho for episode number four of the Mad Jag and Raho Chronicles. Today, we were talking a little bit earlier. We kind of wanted to go over someone that we've mentioned a lot in the past few episodes, who are the Connoisseur. We've been going over some of his past work, and we all have a special admiration for the guy. We keep bringing him up, so we thought that would be a neat idea to talk a little bit more about some of his work and what we admire so much about the man. Welcome, guys. Good to have you. Hope you had a happy new year. Where do you want to jump off at? The first article we were reading was a five-year review. Yes. September 1979. I found high times, I think, about when it started in 1974, and started reading it avidly and collecting it. Once R showed up, I don't know what issue it was exactly, it was really cool to have someone who was in New York City, right in the middle of everything, and had access, obviously he had lots of dealer friends, he had access to all the strains that were coming in. That particular issue, the fifth anniversary, 1979, was largely about the advent of gold. When Santa Marta Gold first showed up, Colombian gold, and how it blew everyone away, and they were just digging it, and over the course of a year or two, it made the brown weeds and other weeds like Oaxacan, let's just say, or Michoacan, Guerrero in Mexico, and apparently he said even tie-stick, people didn't want them. They wanted something that was gold. All they cared about was that the weed would be gold. And he mentioned that a lot of the reasons they were gold were the way they sundried them, or the way they were fermenting on their trip to the United States in the hold of the ship, or warehousing in the U.S., because they would hold on to it and wait till the prices got higher in the summer when there was a drought and there was no harvesting being done immediately, and just holding it in the warehouse helped change its color. But on the other hand, he said it also precipitated the weeds that had mold. It hadn't been initially dried correctly or packaged. The thing that's so important about the article is he's really documenting one of the first times, well, it's maybe the first time a major market shift based on appearances was ever really documented. And it's swept through the United States markets multiple times over the last 20 years, whether it was moving from just green bud or a kind bud to purple, and everybody had to have purple. And all of a sudden, you know, plants and cuttings that had been around for 15, 20 years, just, you know, foundation lines that people had bred with and kept around for forever. You know, cuttings got lost. They were neglected. They got pushed to the side because everybody had to have, you know, in order to sell, you had to have weed that looked like what the buyers were looking for. And that turned into purple, just like R was talking about in what, 78, 79, everybody, you know, wouldn't buy it unless it was gold. So the dealers started, you know, coming up with ways to make not gold look like gold so they could sell it. And, you know, it's just the same story over and over again, repeating itself. I'm sure it took place in Amsterdam, you know, multiple times where some new thing came in and everything had to have those superficial traits. But, yeah, that's, you know, the market drives towards those things. You know, we assess the product with our eyes first. Usually, smell comes next. You can really get all the different senses. But, you know, in today's market, unfortunately, I think like that, that's a thing of the past, being able to see it, smell it, you know, touch it, feel the consistency with the invent of mylar bagging and, you know, all this stuff at the corporate level that people have to do. It's crazy to me that people can't smell their bud before they smoke it. Blows my mind. Yeah. And I mean, look, that's, you know, always talking about these same things in 1979. Yeah. Right. So, I mean, you know, people, people lamenting, you know, cookies and, you know, mylar bags that you can't see what's in them and, you know, sticker with a lion's side, you know, I mean, but it's, this is an old story. It's been going on a long time. It drives, it drives breeding in, in the wrong directions, unfortunately. So, one of the other things that I noticed about R in his, in his ability to be prophetic was his really famous article that pissed a lot of people off, which was Ban the Indica. Right. Do you remember that article at all? Is Ban the Indica article where he, in my opinion, prophetically tells everyone that, you know, this thing's going to come in, it's going to dumb down weed, weed's never going to be the same. Like he was more of the trippy sativa, you know, like he liked that high, that clear-headed high or that speedy, racy high. And he felt like Indica was just going to completely come in, dumb it down and the market would be mostly Indica dominant because of the ease of growth for, for indoors. And I mean, it almost like told the tale of what happened with cookies and push, like prophetically. Yeah. Timing, the timing on that article was right on the money because, you know, the, the AFI, the Indicas had basically made it into every nook and cranny of the American market by that point. Anybody wanted seeds to grow a, an AFI could find them. And there was just so much variety, you know, when you think about the various paths that these seeds took, the connections that were made, you know, the, it's, it's amazing to think about that, that network of, of genetics just, just exploding overnight and spreading around the country. Because two years earlier, you know, it was scarce as hen's teeth, you know, getting, getting Indica in 19, 1981, you know, hard to find rare, at least, at least, you know, not, maybe not in the hills of NorCal, but everywhere else. But in two years, it was turned, you know, up overnight, just it was everywhere. Everybody had their own seeds and we're growing it. Maybe we can expand on this just a little bit because it's something I want to drive home to a lot of the younger people, because I think, and based on how, how often I see people make claims of having these Afghanis from the early 60s and even 40s in some cases. Can we, can we kind of drive home the point when Afghanis, when you both saw Afghanis enter the market? Either one of you on that one. Well, for me, it was when I met Rob Clark and bought my skunk number one season, he had Afghani number one. Yeah, that was the first time I had heard of it or really seen. And I grew some, I don't remember them. I just, he gave me a little free pack of a few. Yeah. Compared to the mass of skunk number one that we bought. And I, I know I grew them maybe in a little side patch or something. And it was definitely, well, it was part of the genetics of skunk number one. Anyway, it had African in it. And the leaves were medium sized. They weren't these needle, beautiful, long needle sativas. So maybe it was, it piqued our interest and we were going, wonder why these leaves are so wide. Sure. But did they smoke? Afghani? Pardon? Do you remember them being smaller plants compared to the rest and thinking, what the hell's wrong with them? I don't remember growing those Afghani number ones, but that's where I first heard of them. When Clark told me the genetics involved in skunk number one, I went, oh, wow. So it's in here too. And I don't totally agree with R on that because we have the ability to have all of them now. I mean, you can have land race, beautiful sativas from Nepal, some remote little, you know, Zomia that you've discovered in a real seed company. And then you can have pure Afghans if you want them. And I guess was it Tom Hill who had maple leaf or deep chunk? Deep chunk, yeah. Wasn't that a pure Afghani? It was, I think, a hybrid of a few Afghanis. He says it is. He says it's pure. Yeah. Yeah. The maple leaf was Neville's stuff. Yeah. As it spread around, you know, he sold it under different names and other people got the seeds from him, did their selections and sold stuff under different names. Yeah, that was one of the early baselines, the maple leaf from him. One that an Afghani that kept passing into other lines under different names. Definitely. Supposedly it's the maple leaf is the possibly, supposedly the back end of super skunk and what is making super skunk so skunky. Thank you. Well, you know, you know, it's Afghani, but yes, Afghani is maple leaf. And the reason I say maybe is because there are also some theories, even among Neville's old partners that it was really Afghani one remained Afghani, which is possible, you know, especially knowing Neve. It's very possible because he disliked, he disliked, you know, Sam Scott been quite a bit by that point. And giving him credit for one of his best lines when he already had half the credit for NL5 Hayes, you know, was probably not Neville's idea of things he was going to let happen. That's my personal opinion. And I know some of the other partners kind of share that Afghani one theory. So yeah. Yeah, he certainly, you know, spoke had nothing good to say about Afghani number one when he was back on the forums, but exactly. You know, it was interesting the language that he used. It was very non specific. He called it toxic in a bad way. Yeah. Like you needed to say, like there's that good toxic, you know, right? But it's not that one. It's the other one. That toxic. And that goes to the point of like, I saw him, like it constantly referencing Afghani one, even at points where I'm like, huh? Why? Why are you bringing it up right now? Like stuff and they're talking about Super Scott to stuff and he's bringing up Afghani one. And I'm just like, it's almost like he's guilty to me, not guilty, but maybe his conscience coming out and being like, he's a little hit. He's a little hit for the people actually did a shit. Little bread crumbs that I don't know. I could be all in my head too. You know, there were there were a lot of good lines around that didn't turn into these legends that are sought after. Those are the ones I wonder, you know, what happened if they if they would ever pop up again. But I mean, Kyver, right? Yeah. That was that looked a lot like stuff I grew at the time and, you know, it was fire. So, you know, I always wanted to get that. But by the time I, you know, discovered seeds online, you know, it was already. Yeah, it was already kind of the market was all screwed up to Dutch and totally screwed everything up. You know, it's interesting to a side note. I just got this in. Okay. This in and it's something that me and actually CSI mostly I found out about it much later. And we were told about it by mustafunk. And it is from the breeder of the Pakistani Chetral Kush and it's the whole record of the dude who bred it named Isadora Rodriguez, but it's all in Castilian. So it's going to be fun to try to read it. But the breeding of Chetral is all laid out in here in pictures and everything. So props to mustafunk for putting some direction on that. Yeah. Now, there's a guy you need to get on the interview. Oh my God, right? Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Santa Marta, you know, Yeah, or Ecuadorian or Peruvian or Bolivian. It's true. They were more into coca, but I'm sure someone there had the ability to grow. I'm looking for the article. Can you tell me the date on it? For which? For the R. Yeah, the fifth. This one is September of 19. 79. 79. 79. Yeah. Oh, 9. 79. And so it talks about the past five years that he's been there. And it's in the first division he has at the age in plenty of variety. Then they have the rise of the exotics, which is hilarious considering what they consider exotics now, you know, the narrowing of the market. We have the Colombian Gold Rush, the rise of Fools Gold and the decline of Colombian, the advent of Sin Samia, which I still think magic has something to do with and the embryonic third generation and first signs of new hope, the age in plenty of variety. And I mean, I don't know if I should be reading the whole thing, but generally speaking, we have the menu here. Here's an Ethiopian emperor stash. Nice little dense nuggetry there. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And along with some kush. This is an old picture of Afghani, if it's 79, kush smoke. Yeah, I remember these pictures. I remember when this magazine came out and the colors on that page from that Ethiopian emperor stash, the bright emerald green and the red. Oh yeah. You know, it's just gorgeous. And the way it was kind of similar condition to that, what they call kush smoke down below it, you know, they both look like this wasn't something that was manicured and, you know, putting up and protected. It was something that was thrown in a baggie and carried around or in a backpack for for sure weeks, you know, it looks like that. And. But I don't see a lot of seeds in the in the kush that Ethiopian definitely lit my imagination all of all the while back then. I still think about, you know, could there be some something special in an Ethiopian line? I'm sure. Yeah, especially these old ones. And it has the menu here from the week of June 16th, 1974 for the prices. So it shows like Mexican commercial at 200. Well, Hawking tops at 330. Misha Wakhan at 550. Then you have the Colombian reds, multi and gold. And I remember when I was talking to one of the guys who would bring Colombian in Florida, you would always talk about how you had to buy a certain amount of Colombian rainbow, I believe he called it, which was the multi. Like they're referring to you here, just like all of it kind of compressed and combined the reds, blacks, gold and or the bottom end of that. And then for every 10 kilos of that you would buy, you'd be able to buy like two kilos of the black or one kilo of the red or one kilo of the gold. I thought that was fascinating that there was like some kind of market trade like that where you can get, you have to buy a certain amount to get the higher tier. Looks like Panama reds at the top in 74 as far as the highest priced demand. Look at that. 600 a pound, whereas, you know, commercial Mexicans at 200. So three times the price of shitty commercial Mexican. So it's talking about the rise of exotic tier. Yes. By the end of the first year, in addition to all the goodies on that menu above almost every time you showed up at Crosby's or similar smoking saloons. And I guess there were smoking saloons somewhere with that sounds fascinating for the time. Well, needs more saloons. Yeah, right. I knew an exciting sample example of by the surprising second generation dopes. By the end of the year, the menu would include the following premium priced entries. We have the Chaco Chiba or at least Chiba 65, Colombian per ounce, wacky weed, which is what our talks about all the time, 75 an ounce, and the Santa Barbara gold for 60 an ounce. So at that time, wacky weeds killing it. Whereas the ties at 200 to 240 an ounce per stick at 15 to 20 and Hawaiian at 160. So significantly above the Colombian at the time. Right here, you can see a picture of the Jamaican lamb's bread. Very early picture of it. And there's the wacky weed, the Colombian wacky weed. And do you want to explain why he called it wacky weed? Rob? No, I don't think. No, honestly, I never had anybody sell me anything called wacky weed. Right. So hearing these descriptions of it. I know Jaggy and I probably both are thinking this, you know, sounds familiar. But it's, you know, like mad Jag source or the candy bar, the black, highly compressed, you know, super, super weed that was, you know, sliced off with a razor blade like cash. Yeah. You know, that's, you hear similar kind of attributes or traits to the effect to this, but it's, it's definitely not the same thing. Because, you know, there was just that one farmer up there crafting that out. I never saw anything like, like what they said of wacky weed. Yeah. Okay. It's a nickname in 1970 in Denver. There was a weed that I never saw again that they call cartoon weed. And when you smoke this, everything, you couldn't stop laughing from the moment you took the first few puffs and you're just, everything became a cartoon in a sense that you couldn't hold back and let stop laughing. And it was just fabulous. More typical from when people eat cannabis, you know, they get into the giggles and then maybe into just laughing so hard. They have tears running down their eye out of their eyes, but cartoon weed, wacky weed, you know, nicknames that I guess if you smoked wacky weed, you'd get whacked and it was just overly powerful. Yeah. He refers to in a lot of these articles as we almost refers to it as if he thinks maybe it's either a strain or expression or something that can be gotten more than once, you know, from the same farmer and that it's an actual, it seems like he's talking about like it's a strain, but I think more than likely it was just highly compressed, really high end Colombian where the oils have really soaked in, you know, to that bud, maybe even hash coated like or oil, hash oil compressed. But yeah, it sounds like it just made people absolutely stupid and there's control of their limbs. A fellow I knew in Chicagoland in 1970-71 had high school kids making tie sticks. You had the same, same little splinters of, they were like bamboo stakes, little tiny ones and he would pay these kids to sit and it was Mexican and it was good since Amir, early stuff and he had them wrap the buds very carefully on these sticks because he could quadruple the money he charged. That's brilliant though. He was an early entrepreneur. Yeah, that's an entrepreneur, definitely an entrepreneur. So lately a lot of people have been talking about the Chaco Chiba Colombian, especially since we did the chocolate tie episode a few days ago and right here it talks about the entrance of the Chiba, at least that region in Colombia where stuff was imported from. And it says, while tie was certainly the most clamors among the new treats served up, I think not enough credit has gone to Chiba, which for the sake of historical justice deserves a footnote as the first high level breakthrough to second generation quality grass. They're referring to Chiba maybe as a second generation type Colombian gold type. Chiba hit the stage shortly before tie and opened up a lot of minds to the higher possibilities of grass. It opened up a lot of wallets too. It was closer to a psychedelic than any other previous grass available. Breathtaking. Rushy, super energetic and cerebral grass and demonstrated to the marijuana marketers that people would pay $75 an ounce. Almost double what they were accustomed to if the grass was like Chiba a quantum leap above the ordinary. Chiba established the reality of the high priced gourmet market and after that the supply began to match the demand. And then it talks about Chiba followed by other Colombian specialties like the wacky weed and the tie and other stuff like that coming in. And then it talks about the narrowing of the market and one of the first things to go was the Panama red. And today I know like there are people that sell different kinds of Panamanians out there. But as far as what a true Panama red is, I don't know if anybody agrees. Can either of you comment on Panama red or your experience with the red? Or did you have any? Well, you know, I didn't know whether what I got was Colombian red or Panama red. I like to think it was Panama red. It was certainly an amazing plant. The weed itself was amazing. You know, it's pretty, pretty lame descriptive words, but you know, I just looked up to see if when we gave up the Panama canal to back to Panama, I was trying to figure out what might have, you know, besides maybe they just got tired of growing weed down there. I don't know, but what would be the reasons why something like that might happen? Sure. Yeah, it didn't. It looks like part of it happened during the Carter presidency, which would have been around the right timeline. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not sure why, but, you know, as far as the quality of that of that weed, you know, potent, tasty, unique effects, good effects, but you know, definitely in kind of there, like, you know, man, I, you know, I hope I ever get to smoke something this good again when it happens, you know it. Yeah. And, you know, it just was so uncommon that talking about it disappearing, you know, would have been like what, you mean, it's true, I am never going to get to smoke this again for the rest. I already believed it, you know. Yeah. You know, maybe different people have got that connoisseur stuff flowing through non-stop like that. That would have been amazing, but that wasn't my experience. What about you, Jaggie? What was your experience with the Panama Fitty? Four finger baggie for $15 in Denver, 1970. 1970. That's early, man. Well, 69 and 70. I was in Denver, 69, 70, and 71. It was excellent weed. It was right up there. It was at the advent of Sinsamea where seedless weed was starting to separate itself from the traditional seeded weed. And less pressed from the super-pressed. Started to see, you know, even will-hawken spears in entirety. Just colas wrapped and pressed lightly, but some big bundle in your arms might only weigh four pounds or five pounds, because it was... And true, there was more stem that way, but, wow, for the quality of the spears of what didn't matter. Panama Red, to me, was in that top tier back then, 1970. Quality-wise. I don't remember Roma. But... Yeah. Do you remember it standing out any more than Colombian gold or anything else? I think it might have had an edge. Well, it disappeared at some point pretty quickly and has as R has explained, his gold just, you know, the Colombians don't do anything small. They're organized. So they started shipping not just tons, but freighters. I met a guy who brought in freighters in, like, the East Coast of Florida with 250,000 pounds in a load. He eventually... He had too many employees. I mean, just the offloaders on the dock so there was like 30 people and got in trouble and they were facing big time and they rolled and it went right up the chain to him. And I probably bought my first ounce of weed in Denver from his group because they were sending from these freighter loads to Chicago, Denver, New York, all the major cities. And it... I think Colombian just eclipsed the Panama Red along with Mexican too. It wasn't until Mexico got really focused on high quality you know, the Guerrero and the Sinaloa and the Oaxacan. And they were mostly people bringing small loads like airplane loads where they didn't have to have them sitting in a freighter for three weeks while it's coming up from Colombia. But gold was very a big presence when it came and it came big. That's why I think people wanted it so badly you know because you might get some one time that was super potent and then another one next time that was super moldy. It was very difficult unless you had an inside line to the importers themselves. Yeah, where you could get the tops and the best parts of each pack definitely. Yeah, that's fascinating man. I wonder if because I noticed in a lot of these bold articles he repeatedly talks about the disappearance of Colombian too at some point that Colombian kind of died off for a while and you know at first was a Panama then came Colombian and I wonder if it was just the push of Mexico being so much closer to the US and being that it was so much easier to smuggle from Mexico than having to go all the way down to South America for Colombian all the way up until they had some kind of in route worked with the groups in Mexico to smuggle up for them and eventually Colombians did come back they made a return for a little bit and he talks about that in some of the later articles. I think a lot of the rise of home grown in America happened about the same time that cocaine started taking over as far as what they wanted to fill their airplanes with the smuggle. You know those two things happened about the same time so commercial Colombian the heyday of Colombian dominating the weed market it literally went away like it seemed like it was almost overnight you know it's definitely over the course of one year it went from Colombian was everywhere to who wants that shit to you can't even find it anymore. It just happened so fast with good home grown showing up around the country the Indica seeds showing up around the country all around that same 1982-83 time frame really is when it was everywhere. I have a photo here I'll see if it'll show up it goes along with what we're talking about on the share thing well here go to present Colombian is green right this is an article that was I think let's see in 2019 this was published but it shows all the major weed growing areas in the Calca Valley Cali is right up here but at the bottom Popayan down here is a famous area too so they have a lot of famous areas yeah I guess so these are all Highlands Corinto yeah purple Corinto that's a famous one really I had not heard that so one of the quotes that R has here it says gold looks so good that people became conditioned to the notion if grass wasn't gold it couldn't be good all the glitters is not great grass and not all great grasses gold and this to me like as a person who grew up post really heavily started smoking in the 90's the idea of gold or brown weed to me was just like bummer but at some point in the US like we've talked about people really did genuinely expect gold and people were trying to figure out home growers were trying to figure out how to get their plants to dry gold because it just wasn't selling for a while and that's kind of what this is referring to well you know this is this is like 76 or 77 there 79 yeah yeah this is I mean you just have to understand that it a very small window of time where markets transitioning and reacting to demand for something like a color and how growers and middlemen around the world are trying to make what they have sell so I mean we saw it with cookies and the wide variety of dessert weed out there when cookies first came out the cut was hoarded didn't exist in seed form the people that had it everybody wanted it but it didn't exist so the market invented it just like what we were talking about Matt the other day if you give people the traits that the product has they will change all their labeling without changing the content to the package exactly so I mean all of a sudden everybody had cookies but nobody had cookies and that's the same thing with this gold except back then we were stupid because it was the 70s and you could get away with being stupid but people would do things physically to the weed to try and change the color putting it out in the sun if you want to know how to kill cannabinoids that's how you kill cannabinoids right in the sun just stick it right out there it's gold but now nobody gets high yeah or girdle it like they talked about that stabbing the stem in the middle all that sort of things to stress the plant and make it die a particularly colorful death well you remember hanging a plant upside down at harvest was supposed to make it more potent because the red tops were on hill from the stock into the flowers I remember that old wise tale that if you hung it upside down the THC would spike to the top of the tops oh yeah gotta have the juices yep so this is interesting people understood trichomes exactly this is interesting so it looks like right here our answers the question on if Santa Marta was the first gold to hit it actually looks like chiba was the first wave of columbians and Santa Marta started in 74 to 75 Santa Marta was an authentic high level gold it didn't have the psychedelic upper reaches of chiba but it was powerful and energetic a very up high more than that Santa Marta set a new standard for beauty that pleased the physical senses it was pretty to see with its plump blonde buds bursting with pollen it smelled delicious with the fresh spicy pequot peppery flowery fragrance it tasted especially good tangy warm and spicy on the tongue with a fruity tinge that it tested ah I hate when it does this it attested to its flowery freshness so there's some pretty good descriptions of columbia would you guys agree with some of those descriptions of what you saw yeah I mean he dances around some of it I think some of the wood or incense type traits that are there it's an amazing combination with you know the buttery hashy citrusy kind of tangy I think is what I read a word he used in some of these articles um you know still got that to have those kind of high notes mixed with the earthy wooden incensey stuff it makes it very hard hitting as a terp combination incense with with citrus can really can really deliver the goods oh I bet well being 45 years ago I can't really tell you yeah honestly it would be a stretch but I'm sure did you think it was hashy Jack did you think it was hashy tasting um no I wouldn't call Santa Marta hashy or maybe those blacks the blacks from columbia could go that way but even the wacky weed or the candy bar my friend had though you had to cut it like it was hash it didn't smoke like hash it was well I'll take that back it might be equivalent to smoking hash in a joint because my friend in Tempe used to roll joints out of hash that he crumbled up and they were little pin joints but boy they were potent so maybe there but I don't remember this being at all Santa Marta being at all hashy it was just a delicate high you know it was an up high maybe that's what was so special well Hocken was similar at the beginning just a super space shot you know you just went up higher and higher kind of psychedelic I think that's where they applied the word psychedelic to some weeds though at the time most of us were also experimenting with psychedelics so it's kind of hard to decide when we were and when we weren't here's a new interesting one it says a promising new entry in 77 for instance was the Manizales Black have you guys ever heard of this one not by that name but I know where Manizales is where's that at well that map of the Kaoka I think it was on in that era let me look at it I can look it on my desktop here yeah nope Manizales was one of the lowland west coast areas I'll bring up a quick google view yeah that's Mexican here for sure well Hocken tops and right here is a picture of the Chiba and like I said this has been brought up a lot lately the Chiba the Chaco Chiba I guess maybe some C companies are playing with some purported Chiba but this is what it actually looked like documented back in 1979 right here as best we know it's the real Chiba anyways well it's a real name yeah well the thing is like I was trying to remind people I'm not sure about it this time but later on high times would use pretty much any picture they wanted to and insert it and just put a name on top of it and that did happen like they didn't have a picture handy for something wow so a lot of times especially during the 80s and 90s and on into the 90s it became standard practice if you look at like some of the chem dog pictures like the pictures of chem dog over the years are not even related to it it was just stock photos but I think during this time these probably are not stock photos I'm guessing no that a walk and that's that looks legit I remember when it came out thinking yeah so looks it sounds like during the summer of 76 was the big drought like the first real hit of drought in the United States and just getting really crappy weed was coming in you know it's one thing that people get confused about this they don't understand that the the United States was not just this one monolithic market yeah right and so even though high times writes about it that way often because you know it's just a much better story to just tell intimately what's happening right there around you you know instead of saying I think it might be dry and too Sean you know I mean yeah you know talk about where you are as if that's the center of the world and everybody else will kind of ride along with you but you know the market was divided up into you know thousands of little micro markets that yeah you just you know one place you could get one thing all the time another place you know they would kill to have that but they've got everything else I'm sure and it's just you can't people today they get really confused when they read this old stuff they think you know that's that was America yeah right America's too big for that for that to be you know it's this is a tiny little snapshot of and it's accurate you know for that moment in time in that place yes but it's America's big place yeah it was probably accurate for New York which is where they thought the center of the world was at high times like notoriously you know right like the group of the 20 most famous pot heads in New York exactly right with everybody bringing them all their best shit on a regular basis interesting Ed Rosenthal's reference to here according to the grass growing expert Ed Rosenthal the longer grass lies around the greater the disintegration of the high inspiring cannabinoids into the creator cannabidiols these latter according to Rosenthal give us confused sleepy dizzy fuzzy undertone that undercuts the clarity of the cannabinole highs so he's talking about early CBD and stuff I don't know I know a lot of people say CBD sleepy and CBN when CHC degrades it turns to CBN. Manizala is the straight west of Bogota it's the Colombians coffee growing region and it's 7000 feet elevation so wow Manizala's black would be probably pretty potent yeah I would think so high elevation probably really dark black weed from the from the weather yeah sounds good might have been yeah yeah it sounds delicious I always wanted to go down there and visit my friend but it was the kidnap capital of the world at that time and into the 90s even then Mexico took over as the kidnap come but if you were an American there was someone who's always willing to grab you because someone would care about you enough to pay money and I just couldn't see doing it so I never went down yeah sorry let's say they would have gotten all your stickers too yeah right they confiscated them right so right here he says oh hey Cincinnati is the surfer girl of dope missing the wild trippy exoticism of the best imported weed and the soaring cerebral central reaches of Thai and Hawaiian so I guess when he's referring to Cincinnati here is just a general term for stuff like homegrown without seeds even local homegrown it looks like based on what he's writing around here you know one thing one thing you pick up from that you know it's he's talking about basically it just doesn't have legs it doesn't have the depth of power and complexity and effects but you know that's honestly those first couple years when you know domestically grown weed was taking over that market there was a lot of stuff that didn't that was harvested before it was mature oh sure yep and so when you read what he says you know it's kind of like this empty headed surfer girl you get high and then you're not high and it's over you know that's think about it for a second this is these are new growers their first crop or two you know harvested early it looks good but it's not packing the full punch it's not because of genetics it was because of you know growers learning how to deal with those with you know how to produce the product that their customers really wanted so yeah in their area I mean they were the pioneers of it so it wasn't like there was tons of books or tons of resources to go learn how to grow this properly or when to harvest or any of that this is also new at that time yeah yeah I mean it was you know just you know bringing it to maturity is is not easy especially when you you know this is before the full indica invasion took place so there was still a lot of highly worked hybrids that were just barely getting it done before the frost you know so it mentions even Congolese black here which I'm kind of surprised there's a it's something called tanganica green never you've heard of that never heard of it some kind of African grass one of the forums that I've been on there was a fellow from Namibia and he sent me some seeds from the country just north of him Angola and they've been they've been growing weed there for Angola Red is one of them and I've never grown them I still have them but it's supposed to be pretty potent was that the lamona negra Angola Red that you got no it's actually from a fellow who lives in Namibia and got them himself that's cool Namibia is famous for the the it's sort of like the lost coast it's sand dunes that come down to the ocean and from the longest time it was closed to people because diamonds washed up onto the shores wow that have been released from certain geological structures under water or something yeah he's he got on himself I know who lamona negra um Mustafa talked a bit about him yeah and that's another whole show in itself yeah yeah he's a very well admired guy but I think I think there may for people who are really anal about things being either pure or not that's where some of the fuzziness comes in with lamona negra but he did do some cool stuff released a lot of cool stuff you know this the whole thing about the tanganika green there and gongoli's black and all this stuff you know sometimes you read r and it's like he's a travel journalist you know telling you about these far off you know vistas and castles and you know raging rivers of you know far flung fantastic places um you know that's he's a storyteller he really is and you know he understood the power of evoking this sort of exotic you know life of adventure around all this stuff he was he was he was creating a a legend that about all the all the adventurous stuff people were doing out there and he was probably taking a lot of exotic uh license with the stories he told but um man i mean what a what a job he did you know i mean word smith definitely yeah well look at the different generations he's inspired just sitting here you know like uh many years separate us you know and if not so was here that's a whole another generation you know in there and and to this day he's still inspiring people um i i don't know how easy he will be or won't be to get a hold of i do hope that somehow someone shows him this episode whether i i mean his name is out there um you can easily find it his name is Ron Rosenbaum so if anybody does know him it can get in contact with the author Ron Rosenbaum i'd love to speak to all of us would so yeah maybe this is our our way to reach out to him yeah huge fan of r and you know the idea of getting him on the show and you know getting us to tell stories about what his life was like at the time and you know what i mean because he was so far ahead of his time as far as lifestyle uh you know i mean jeez man half the people on instagram are basically telling their own stories basically like he was telling the story of a generation of outlaws yeah influencer just you know viral marketing absolutely just like you know skateboarding did in the 70s for um you know for that sport this he was kind of like this did the same thing for anyone like i know sam beats his drum and stuff but i think this dude probably inspired quite a few more people than sam did or i mean honestly yeah this position yeah definitely the counterculture hero and a king maker and you know the scribe of an era really was i'm trying to hold back you know my praise for the guy um but if we can get him on that would be the best what an honor to treat you know i wanted to ask you remember i wanted to ask you about what your conversations with neville were like back during those mr nice days i guess we don't have to do it this time but i'm writing it down for the next one with devil yeah that would be cool i mean just from a personal you know here i am talking with you know the real king of cannabis no bobblehead yeah and you know just like he's another guy you know we share this passion and it's just i remember i remember the first time he responded um it was on the actual forum and it was just like him chiming in a little bit and responding to me directly and i remember that it's not sort of nerdy to say it now but i got this like exhilarating feeling in my chest like yeah i just i just spoke to the dude the dude responded to me you know like it was that really special feeling where you know and for me i had spent a lot of my my early career as you saw like rubbing a lot of people the wrong way with how i approached everything and to be able to get a response from someone like that and for him to take me seriously not only that take the time to talk to me and then to have some form of respect and admiration for each other and become peers was probably one of the most special moments of my life at that time because i didn't feel like i earned it but he was still giving me that respect so it was special he was very generous that way was me yeah he was absolutely he never treated me like oh you're just some dumb kid let me tell you how it was it was never like that he was one he wanted to know more about the american scene the american clones he was more specifically interested in so while i was asking him stuff about the old stuff that i was interested in and his experiences he was asking me more about bubble kush og kush what was in those where did they come from he was more interested in chasing down the lineages of stuff that he didn't know about and trying to trace it back to his own work yeah yeah because he was he was absolutely positive pretty much everything that we were coveting over here by that point had had come come all go gone through his hands and come back here yeah and you know worked and evolved but uh i'm not sure he's terribly wrong you know like he might be right still oh yeah the most nuts about all of it yeah at the time i thought he was a little nuts on a lot of it but um i did too time has proven it to be more true than we would have liked i guess yeah i thought it was a lot of arrogance to be honest with you like how how would you know how would you know you know but over time as i talked to him i realized he was able to see and identify traits long before he could smell the bud just by sight and that was something i'd never seen before someone who could identify traits and lines just through sight that's a special special talent a lot of people think they can do it but not a lot of people can do it with many many strains you'd be lucky if you could do that with one strain in your life you know yeah you know for me it kind of made me a little sad because um you know the realization that so much of what's around is directly related to his work um it makes me sad for all the thousands of heirlooms that got worked in the hills and the seeds never made it out to nevel um you know the diversity i mean just staggering you know and for the longest time it confused the hell out of me that people seem so obsessed with well okay if that's that then it must be this plus this plus this as if you know they were individual plants like skunk one was a cutting and when everybody used it they all used the same thing you know and northern lights was a cutting and everybody when they used that it was always the same thing you know but damn man there's just been so much so much reuse and renaming and um inbreeding on inbreeding on inbreeding and it just seems like so much of what we have to work with today came straight through nevel's hands at one point i think with the resurgence of legalization especially in areas like Mendocino and Humboldt i'm hoping anyways and i've seen some examples of this brief examples that some of these lines that didn't necessarily make it to nevel but stayed in certain areas of Humboldt and Mendocino and were kept worked by these guys who just wanted nothing to do with being in public some of those do still exist and being passed to their protegees you know as they're going to their next destination in spiritual journey you know before that some of them have passed it to their protegees i know i know Tom Hill's would you would consider probably a mentor type as recently talking about giving him a bunch of the stuff you know stuff that was used to make like ptk you know a lot of those lines so that's going to be interesting you know so there are little um little little treasure chests out there but i think it's way far fewer between than we could ever want or anticipate unfortunately and it seems like over time nevel really was the time capsule to save a lot of this stuff because it's the only way we still have a lot of it yeah and look if it does become available it's going to be crossed with cookies and og and cam and instantly you know i mean it's i don't know i just um i sometimes i get depressed when i think about what's been lost but then i look around and see what we've got right now it's it's pretty fantastic and um you know the idea that there could be some of those treasures out there like what you're talking about uh just just waiting to pop up again i i hope you're right it's trying to stay optimistic and you know maybe maybe it'll happen in my lifetime i've been waiting a long time some of this stuff to happen so it's very possible i mean we got treasures like you and madjag popping up so anything's possible guy anything's possible that's the way i look at it with the moustache like madjags for sure exactly exactly well pretty much go anywhere with a moustache like that it opens every door yeah so do you guys want to get anything in before we uh sign off um how did not so dog get his handle not so dog um so he was going and meeting up with a friend to buy some chem dog weed and his friend was showing him some of the bud and he looked at it and goes this is not so dog bro because they used to refer to chem dog as dog he's like this is not so dog and they just kind of stuck with him after that and it wasn't chem dog it was something else so that's how he actually got his thing and oddly enough it was at a really well well rest stop so yeah that's a hidden part of the story rest stop action if not so oh my god now i'm pretty sure that's the joke there you got anything raho no no i just uh you know always a pleasure to be guest here and and you know thanks for your interest matt oh man it's always a pleasure to have you too with me and um yeah next round we'll get into it further and hopefully i'll do a little more um so that i don't leave it all on you guys to try to figure out and we'll have some microphones too i think yeah brand new microphone should be there yeah that's right that's right we're gonna be styling with new microphones no no my pleasure my pleasure thank you all right all right you guys we're gonna sign off thank you from everyone here at breeder syndicate thank you madjag thank you raho and we'll see you next week okay want to sit at the table with the syndicate check out our patreon and our link tree or description below our merch site is officially live we have all sorts of shirts hoodies and goodies to sort you out and shipping is super fast and most importantly the quality is top notch i've been saving old designs for years for this purpose so please check it out syndicategear.com we also have an 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