He has a gold record for an album he appeared on as a trombone player. Apparently the band phish saw an unusual mailbox when they were driving up to meet a record company guy and the guy from the label told them that his neighbor with the strange mailbox was in fact Lt Riker. Knowing he played trombone from the show they asked to be introduced and invited him to join them in the studio on a record they were working on (Hoist). Well as Jonathan tells it he got to the studio and pretty quickly realized that the charts for the part were probably beyond his ability, but he bravely recorded a few attempts and everyone was very nice about. The band did not use the his takes for the intended track but they did cut them up and make a track out of them called “Riker’s mailbox”. When the record went gold the band made sure that a gold record plaque was also sent to Jonathan.
Story pieced together from interviews with Jonathan and Trey, heard on a podcast at some point but I would have a hell of a time sourcing it further. The song, which also feature bela fleck on banjo, is pretty much just noise and not worth the effort to chase down. If a phish fan tells you NOT to listen to a phish song you should listen!
I mean it’s only 30ish seconds so it’s not a lot of investment, BUT, it really is just noise, you can barely pick out the trombone until the last 3seconds.
It is grating and unapproachable, but the rest of the album feels like it could have had half a dozen radio hits in an alternate version of the early 90s.
Edit: just re-read my comment and noticed the ambiguity in my closing sentence. Sigh… sloppy writing. Anyway I was playing with the fact that phish fans are known to be a little bit evangelical (not unlike trek fans tbh). And if one tells you not to listen to a song you should listen to THEM, and avoid the song.
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