Ep. 189: "Technicolor Irony Coat"
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Why can't they see they're just like me?
It's the same, it's the same in the whole wide world.
We ever goth at all, John?
You might have been secretly goth, right?
At some point.
No, not at all.
Never?
Not at all?
Not the least bit goth.
Your tongue has been dipped into so many subcultures, it seemed like you must have gotten into a little bit of goth at some point.
No.
No, I am not at all goth.
I've never been goth.
But I have to say, I left a recording session open on my computer, and when I logged on to this program,
which is what I do, I had the most amazing echo on my voice, and I just went through the different levels of my computer, as you do, and I found an open recording track where there is some bass reduction, some chorus, and some echo, plus some reverb, and a little bit of EQ on my voice today.
It's kind of like Neil Hamburger meets My Bloody Valentine.
It sounds like I'm in a Greek temple.
Underwater in the future.
And so when we started going, I was fucking jamming on it.
I was really, I wish we were still doing it.
Oh, man.
You know, if you want, I could put some chamber reverb on the whole track.
It's the entire show.
Add spots the whole nine.
If everybody could hear what I'm hearing right now.
Now I'm going to turn it off.
Oh, man.
Because it's very distracting.
Does it give you confidence, John?
You can't hear it.
No, it's very distracting.
It's kind of like when you used to get on a phone call and there would be that crazy delay.
I like a little bit of like a slapback.
It's just a little too much slapback, and it's distracting.
Do you need a minute to take care of that?
No, I'm going to do that right here.
I can keep singing that ministry song if you want.
I'm going to save this file, and it's gone.
Hooray for me.
I know how to use computers.
Atta boy.
No, I was never goth because ridiculous.
I don't know.
A lot of people were goth.
There are certain things that I feel like,
are generational things that I'm just like two years too old for.
Oh, brother.
Sing me the story of my life, brother.
Yeah, if you graduated in the class of 1988, that meant that in 1984 you were just young enough to feel like goth was a reasonable choice.
You might, you know, get some, what, some Cocteau Twins.
You get some Dead Can Dance.
You get some, what, some Bauhaus?
Well, Bauhaus.
Bauhaus was, you know, there's a lot of those bands that got lumped in that were actually pretty good.
Bauhaus, very good.
Love and Rockets, very good.
Love and Rockets, they were a pop band.
You know, they were gothy, but they were so poppy.
Or, like, for a long time, I eschewed Echo and the Bunnymen because I thought erroneously...
that they were a goth band.
Ditto The Cure.
I was like, I don't listen to music like that.
And then I actually listened to it and I was like, this is amazing pop music.
Well, so The Cure, of course, being the incredible example of a band that is so extraordinary that they transcend all genre.
But when I was first introduced to The Cure, I was introduced to them via their pop hits, which I didn't like.
Yeah, they're, I mean, you know, they had some really great pop songs in the late 80s, but the stuff, you know what it is for me, this is one where, thank God for greatest hits.
I had heard A Little Bit of Cure, I think I had Head on the Door, and then I got The Standing on a Beach.
I got the cassette version.
They were all different.
But yes, but I mean, like each song was better than the last.
They were improbably great pop songs.
Yeah, but like Love Cats or whatever.
It's a great song, but I could take it or leave it.
Right.
It was kind of like more of a hanging garden kind of guy.
Well, what happened to me was I got someone dropped the entire album Disintegration on me.
And Disintegration happened already at a point where I was like, ah, the cure.
The guy's got funny hair.
He wears eyeliner.
He's got these Love Cat songs.
You know, I'm still listening to that first Iron Maiden record.
Right.
It was a weird time.
Yeah.
And I don't need all this like, oh, bop, bop, beep, beep.
But then Disintegration landed on me.
And I feel like that is an album.
It's one of those complete works.
You do not take a song off of that and listen to it separately.
It is just you put it on and you drive all night until you are so hypnotized.
Yeah.
That was later than I thought.
That's 1989 that came out.
That's right.
Jeez Louise.
That is a record that has probably killed people, right?
Because they have driven off the road in the night.
They have gone down into a ravine.
And as they fell into the ravine, they were not sorry because their death was as dramatic as the music they were listening to.
Don't think it hadn't gone through my mind.
Sure.
I mean... I used to time music to like when I arrived at somebody's house.
I used to figure out what song I wanted to be playing when I pulled into someone's driveway, let alone how I wanted to die on a road.
I hear a lot of people tell me that both the Commander Thinks Aloud and also our song, the Long Winter song, Blanket Hog.
Oh, that one's big.
That gets big at the end.
They put those songs on when the captain says, please fasten your seatbelts, we're on final approach.
Yeah.
They put those songs on their headphones because they want to ride that wave.
If the plane is going down, they want that to be happening.
They break the glass on the special iPod they carry around that just has those two songs on it queued up.
So I totally relate to that.
And
The Cure's Disintegration and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless were always the records that I put on when I was the only one awake and I was driving the van through the night.
Oh, yeah.
Both of them terrible records for that because you're exhausted at that point.
Everyone else is asleep.
No one's there to keep you alive.
Well, with MBV, man, you might just start hallucinating while that record's on.
You absolutely do.
And so you're driving through the night.
It's like a sensory deprivation thing.
It's like, what is that noise?
Where is that coming from?
What is happening?
And your brain's going to try to fill in, like, tween in all of these aural details to help you understand what the assault on your ears.
That's right.
And so you're seeing the glowing...
The glowing eyeballs of little deer that are waiting on the side of the road to jump out.
Sure you are.
And you're just like, I am with you, world.
I'm flying.
And, you know, Swerve Driver.
I mean, there were a lot of bands that were in that zone.
But I just picked those two records for if I wanted something that had a lot of sound.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, the shoegaze bands were weird for me because, like goth stuff, it was something where I felt very comfortable writing off, unfairly perhaps, but I would write off basically the entire genre except for a handful of utterly amazing bands.
As a genre, it seems like such a nothing burger.
But then, you know, MBV and maybe Ride?
Like, there were a couple of those bands where I was like, there's a lot going on here.
This was the problem with the Stone Roses for me.
I had this conversation literally this week.
You're kidding me.
Scott Simpson and I had this – oh, you ready for this?
I don't want to interrupt you, but can I tell you a quick anecdote?
Go, go, go.
We're in there, and long story short, the bartender at this place where Scott and I are, he's wearing an Unknown Pleasures shirt.
So, of course, I feel the need to discuss Joy Division with him at length.
We end up talking about 24-Hour Party People, one of the great films of our time.
Right.
And how, like, the first half of that movie, I double, triple loved.
The second half, never got into the Happy Mondays.
And Scott's like, I never got into the Happy Mondays.
And they were like, Stone Roses.
Sorry to interrupt.
Yeah.
And this is going to infuriate our English friends.
But the Happy Mondays were garbage.
They're a terrible band.
Yeah, they're awful.
Nothing they did was good.
They had the dancing guy.
And then it was, as they say, rubbish.
It was rubbish.
And then, you know what I said?
And Scott was like, ah, yeah, I could never get into a lot of that, Scott.
Scott's like, yeah, you know, I was like, Stone Roses, though.
they had two songs i like they had uh she bangs the drum and uh what's the one i don't have to say my fool's gold yeah the first song oh and then they had like three songs my hand to god we're having this conversation and guess what comes on the stereo
i don't have to sell my soul and i was like wait a minute i'm literally hallucinating right now i've not heard this song in three years and it just came on you guys manifest that's what we conjured it we conjured it like an orb that's what my sister would say you manifested it
I should talk to her.
She could probably help me a lot.
She's all about manifesting.
She's very positive.
The Stone Roses are the thing where you're like... The exception that proves the rule.
If this song... Well, it's like the Smiths for me, frankly.
If this song is indicative of the quality of their catalog, then I have found my new favorite band.
And then you dig in... I'll stop there.
And you're like...
Some girl's mother's other girl's mother.
And you're like, I made a mistake.
I made a horrible mistake.
He's having fun in that one.
He's having fun.
I'm backing out of the room.
He's taking the mickey.
I'm turning the lights off.
Jesus Christ, John.
Thank you.
I'll leave the stereo on in case the cats want to hear it.
They get lonely during the day.
There is a light and it never goes out.
There is a melody that only has two notes.
It's only got four notes.
The Stone Roses were one of these like, oh, my God, this song.
I mean, I always felt that they kind of reintroduced the idea of that.
Yeah, the drummer was awesome.
Dance beat.
And then there's like this pop tune over the top.
I was like, this is transforming me.
And then nothing else rose to the level of those first two.
But I mean, like, OK, so like I said to Scott, just this previous Wednesday night, I said, you know, for me, when you look at like the Manchester scene and all the like the dancey stuff that happened in the 90s, I honestly thought Happy Mondays was some kind of a trap street.
Because so many people, I'm like, I must be missing something.
Yeah, they're gaslighting you, the entire culture.
There's nobody that actually likes this band.
Who would put this record on deliberately?
So I'm going to go with a couple songs from Stone Rose, and I'm going to say Primal Scream.
Primal Scream was pretty great.
Primal Scream was great.
You're absolutely right.
But, I mean, all of that stuff...
Groove is in the heart.
If you're talking about dance music or any kind of fun party music or take ecstasy and dance on the beach in Goa music.
That's new order for me.
Well, sure, sure, sure, sure, but like
But like, I'm talking about post-1990.
Oh.
Post-1990 when that thing was happening with all the glow sticks and shit.
Yeah, they call it the rave culture.
The rave culture.
You know, have a little funk.
Have a little funk to it.
Sure.
But here's... You want to talk about... You can just go out and you hire Bootsy Collins.
That'll help.
You want to talk about controversial opinions.
Oh, boy.
I better get a seltzer.
Go ahead.
Controversial opinions.
I feel this way, and I'm embarrassed.
I'm still ashamed about this feeling.
Like, I'm not ashamed about feeling the way I do about the cure.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
The Smiths.
Because the Smiths... Jesus.
The way people feel about the Smiths
I want them to stop feeling that way.
It's not that I want them to stop feeling that way about the Smiths.
I think this is because you and Sean have a lot of unresolved shit, and you take it out on the Smiths.
This happened to me.
This was true of me.
In 1984, I felt this way about the Smiths.
You deserve it, deserve it, deserve it.
I put on Meat is Murder because I loved the cover.
Yeah, a little overrated.
I loved the deal, right?
The Smiths.
Look, he's asexual.
Yeah, their album covers are cool.
Cool.
He's beautiful.
Even the logo, you know, the typeface of the logo, everything about it just seemed perfect.
It was timeless.
The guitar player is so amazing.
And I was like, I am going to do this.
I'm going to get new wave.
I'm going to go for it.
I don't need to just be listening to, you know, Mark Bolin or whatever.
I'm ready.
Uh-huh.
and I put it on and it made me so angry
I was so angry that you would put all this.
I felt like the Happy Mondays.
Like, what are you people talking about?
Anathema.
Well, how can you even put them in the same?
They shouldn't even be on the same continent.
How can you say that?
Oh, they were.
They're not only from the same continent.
They're from like within 600 miles of each other.
No, they are practically in the same neighborhood.
They're both from Manchester, I think.
Manchester.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
You know what?
My Manchester geography basically comes down to like everything in 24-hour party people.
That's what I know.
Yeah, everything from Leeds to Permit.
He was a Salford lad.
But yeah, it made me so mad.
And then all the hero worship and all the fawning and the falling over.
And I was just like, this is an emperor has no clothes situation.
There's nothing here.
I'm just going to imagine you're talking about Happy Mondays whenever you talk about the Smiths now.
And so it continued into adulthood.
I thought this was one of those things where everybody in the 80s was having a collective delusion.
And then...
There would be this moment of reckoning where it was like, oh.
It would be like Timbuk3 if people were still really into Timbuk3.
I liked that song.
Sure you did.
There was an afternoon in, what, 1988 where we all liked it and then we moved on.
But that isn't the case.
And Colin Malloy and Sean Nelson and you, you guys have all just bored the shit out of me talking about the Smiths.
There's 33 and a third books.
It just, and it feels like, you know what it is?
It feels like that 33 and a third culture where it's like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like people who are unironically into pro wrestling.
Yes, thank you.
Exactly.
And I said something.
Like I am.
I said something shitty about the Smiths the other day.
And you know, our good friend.
uh, from, um, the new pornographers.
Uh huh.
Oh God, you guys get a room publicly took me on and said, uh, said anyone that doesn't like the Smiths is, uh, is like a garbage person.
Yeah.
Did you notice I favored all of his tweets and none of yours.
And I said, you know what, first of all, garbage person is not a thing we use anymore.
That's really from a different time.
Well, it is, and it's normative against garbage people, and I feel like, first of all, let's stop doing that.
It's one of those words like gypsy or mathlete.
You know, we just got to stop saying it.
That's right.
Oh, my God.
I'm looking out the window right now, and a BMW just pulled into the parking lot and did that thing where he parked...
completely across two parking spots.
Like the line is running straight down the middle of his car.
Parked it, and I was like, are you about to back up or something?
Probably jamming some Happy Mondays.
And then just turn the car off, turn the lights off, and just sitting in there.
Fuck that guy.
I'm so mad right now.
But here's my controversial opinion.
This is going to make people very mad.
Except that nobody, you know, our audience is actually 24 years old.
They have no idea what we're talking about.
They don't know what these bands are.
but they get everything they're streaming whatever people give them they stream it yeah they stream it they just stream it what's this doesn't matter it's a stream yeah it's like tom petty right up against ten dollars a month you get a stream marilyn monroe and then it's you know and then it's like that commercial for tuna
It's like that.
Direct TV, Robert Evans.
That picture that you see in certain bars where it's like Bob Marley is sitting with James Dean around a pool table with some cats and it's painted in velvet.
They're all smoking cigars.
That's what contemporary.
I and I go for three ball in corner pocket.
No, I feel that way about the Psychedelic Furs.
Oh, yeah.
The Psychedelic Furs have... They have five outstanding... They have four outstanding world-beating songs.
I was going to say four.
Four songs that just make you fall to your knees and cry.
You've got Original Pretty in Pink.
You've got Love My Way.
You've got... Oh, The Ghost in You, their greatest song.
The Ghost in You, oh my God.
You ever heard Robin Hitchcock cover that?
I can't... You know, I've heard Robin Hitchcock cover 450 songs, and that was all in the first night I met him.
So I'm not... I can't say for sure that I've heard it.
I have not heard it before.
You're right.
You're right.
They're records.
I mean, you take... I'm trying to think of another band I listen to on cassettes at the same time, The Cars.
Like, The Cars, I mean, Jesus Christ, for the first four or so Cars albums...
They had six really good songs on every album.
Per record.
I mean, the first record is an anomaly.
The first record is like, where do you even put that?
It's just one of those complete works.
It's like rumors.
Yeah, you're like, I know every song on here, and they're all good, and I don't skip them.
Well, and so, but the Psychedelic Furs are like a music critic favorite.
Yeah.
But they have the, I mean, they're just one song favorite.
better than a flock of seagulls right like flock of seagulls have two incredible tunes i ran in space age love song no not space age love song okay that's the third i was falling in love it's that's the third one oh if i had a photograph of you something to remind me yes that's a good song amazing tune so so we we mock flock of seagulls
But they have two and a half.
The first band I ever saw live.
Is that true?
Opening for the Go-Go's.
My fucking God.
Yeah, 1982 or 83.
That's genius.
You saw them live, let alone that that was the first.
The first band I saw live was fucking Dokken.
It was the Go-Go's on their vacation tour.
Vacation, all I ever wanted.
Jane Wheatland.
I saw her live.
Stop it.
Stop it.
You're killing me.
Jane Wheatland.
She was just up there playing guitar like it was a normal thing.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
She was wearing a baby doll dress and some kind of frilly panties.
I think she had like a little flouncy skirt.
And she would hop when she played.
You're destroying me.
None of these people came to Alaska.
They didn't even know Alaska was an American state.
But so, yeah.
So, I mean, I was listening to some flock of seagulls the other day because I think they are good.
But I think the ultimate example of this is in excess.
Over the course of their career, they had no fewer than 10 great songs.
They had a lot of really good songs, but it's not the ones that people remember.
What you need is not a great song.
Now, wait a minute.
No.
I'm going to go on with that dream on black boy, dream on white girl.
What's that song called?
Remember that song?
Yeah, it's called... White, white, white, white, black girl.
Space Age Love Song.
Space Age Love Song.
And they also got that one, This time will be the last time.
But those were big hits off of those first records.
We just don't remember them.
We don't remember those first records.
What about The One Thing?
Do you like The One Thing?
I like... Shabu Shabba?
Why do I remember this?
Here's the thing.
I like every In Excess single, Until Kick...
And then at Kik, they did a little bit of the Def Leppard adrenalize.
They're like an AI that became just slightly self-aware.
Too self-aware, right?
Like Kik was their biggest record by a thousand points, just like Def Leppard's adrenalize, just like Van Halen's 1984.
And it was when they jumped the shark.
oh boy you know it's it's i am so reluctant to put it in terms that dumb and simple and unfair but it's true it's true those are junk that's a jump the shark fucking album it's 1984 oh my god well and 1984 was good but you know what was the one after that was sammy hagar that's the one 51 50 garbage that just made me fucking angry it was fucking garbage and and it got what it takes and tell me why can't this be love i was at the tasty freeze and
Sucking on chili dogs?
No.
You're inside the Tasty Freeze.
I was in the Tasty Freeze.
I was not sucking on a chili dog.
I have never done that.
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I wouldn't suck on a hot dog for all the tea in China.
You don't want that.
You want to eat that and forget that it's there.
Sir, is everything all right with your meal?
No.
You don't want to suck on hot water.
But no, I was inside the Tasty Freeze.
I'm sure I was playing Dig Dug.
And Chris Gills showed up.
Now, Chris Gills lived a couple of doors down from me.
Chris Gills was not a, he wasn't the tallest kid.
But Chris Gills was a good skier.
He was a better skier than I was.
And he was very cool.
He was much, much cooler than me.
And my best friend, Kevin Horning,
went through a phase early on in high school where Kevin wanted to hang out with Chris Gills.
Chris Gills was too cool to hang out with me.
So what that meant was that Kevin was hanging out with Chris and not with me.
I did not get invited along to the Chris Gills party.
Just out of reach.
Chris was always kind of... He found me a little contemptible.
But he was friendly enough.
But it was one of those scenes where...
I would, you know, we'd be sitting around and I would say something funny and everybody be like, ha ha ha.
Yeah.
Roderick funny.
And then I would take it too far.
And I'd say the next thing.
And Chris Gills was the one that was like, uh, yeah.
I know that.
I know that phenomenon too.
It's like, you just got like a B, a B minus laugh.
And then you completely undid all of your work with the one joke too much.
One, one joke too much.
And then everybody.
It's a permanent F minus.
They all turn their backs on you.
And, you know, Kevin was my best friend, right?
So he didn't turn his back on me.
He wanted me to make it.
He wanted me to make it over here on the other side where the cool kids were.
But I just couldn't do it.
I couldn't put it together.
It's not that I didn't want to.
I just couldn't put it together.
And Chris Gills, for me, everybody's got a guy that personifies that.
Chris Gills was the guy for me.
And even now, I mean, Chris has lost all his hair.
But he lives in the Bahamas on a sailboat or something.
Like Chris is still – I don't know how he pulls it off.
You look at his Facebook page and there's a picture of him in the Himalayas.
But he's not riding a camel.
He's not being a dummy.
He's just there because he's got some business to do there.
And then he's going back.
He's living on his sailboat somewhere in the Bahamas.
He drives a powder blue –
like 72 Oldsmobile.
Like what is going on with this guy?
This isn't what you would expect.
But anyway, so I'm playing Dig Dug at the Tasty Freeze.
Chris Gills for some reason offers me a ride.
And Chris Gills' dad was the first guy to get one of those Ford Thunderbirds that looked like a lozenge.
Yeah, like an ibuprofen.
And Chris Gills' dad was a doctor.
He had a Nakamichi stereo.
Oh, sweet.
A Nakamichi stereo where it popped the tape out and flipped it around mechanically and then popped it back in so that you didn't get the slight distortion of a tape being played backwards.
Yeah.
True audiophiles look for a cassette deck that can do something like that.
That can pop it out, right?
Sure.
Think about the magazine advertisement for the Nakamichi tape deck that popped it out and flipped it over.
It's so hilarious.
At the time, it seemed impossibly modern, and now it feels like something from the Flintstones.
I mean, it was so great.
It's a living.
And I remember watching... I remember it wasn't something that you watched.
It was something that you read in magazines.
If you saw that Nakamichi tape deck...
you knew you were reading the right magazine because they would only advertise in the cool magazines.
So Chris Gills' dad, he was supposed to buy a BMW 740i.
But instead he bought this Ford, this lozenge-shaped Ford, and that was a symbol to me at least of how cool that Thunderbird was.
Like Chris Gills' dad would even drive.
God, both those things are so dated now.
Oh, yeah, I know.
But at the time it was very modern, very forward.
So Chris Gills picks me up, like says, hey, do you need a ride?
And I'm like, Chris Gills is offering me a ride?
What's going on?
Is this some kind of thing where he's going to take me out and like pants me somewhere?
Yeah.
And we're riding and we're just being cool.
We're just chilling with each other.
And I'm nervous, right?
Because I'm going to say something funny and he's going to be like, yeah, Roderick, yeah.
And then I'm going to take it too far and I'm going to say something unfunny.
And then he's going to think to himself, it was a mistake to give John Roderick a ride.
But this is this moment.
Maybe this is the beginning of something.
Right.
But you're in that mode, right?
You're in that mode.
Yeah.
And then we're driving along and Chris says, did you hear Van Halen picked a new singer?
I was like, what?
No, really?
They're going to keep going?
And he was like, yeah, they've been looking for a new singer.
They've just picked somebody.
And I was like, who?
And he said, Sammy Hagar.
And I knew, I mean, that appalled me.
Right.
Because, yeah, Sammy Hagar had a really good song on the heavy metal soundtrack.
Sammy Hagar has had at least four extremely good songs.
But even by that point, even the album of his that I liked.
No, no.
Three Locked Box?
Well, Three Locked Box was great.
But I think I Can't Drive 55.
Is that the one that had Your Love is Driving Me Crazy?
Hmm.
Because that's a pretty perfect pop song.
But anyway, even by that point, he was excruciating to just even be aware of.
The Red Rocker.
He'd run around at his shows with that little wireless mic climbing things.
No thank you, right?
He was like a capuchin monkey in a wig.
Except that it's a one-way ticket to midnight.
Call it heavy metal.
Call it heavy metal.
That was a kick-ass song.
I mean, that was a song that early Billy Squire could have done.
Sure.
But anyway, Chris Gill says Sammy Hagar is the new singer for Van Halen.
That's just the news you never want to hear.
It's like finding out your mom married your guidance counselor.
In the context of this car ride, it was fantastic news because I now had something that I hated, just naturally hated.
So much.
And Chris, and I could tell that Chris Gills naturally hated it.
And it was like we were brothers now.
We had something to hate together that was so hateful.
Sammy Hagar in Van Halen.
That the entire rest of the ride.
It's 30 years and it still bothers me.
Yeah, the entire rest of the ride we were like, can you believe it?
Oh, my God.
And then he dropped me off at my house and I was like, wow, see you later, Chris.
And he was like, right on, see you later, Roderick.
And then, of course, I never saw him again.
Oh, man.
He never rode in his car again.
But you nailed it.
You did what you needed to do that day.
That's right.
I got out of there.
I made some jokes about Sammy Hagar and Van Halen.
I don't think we came up with Van Hagar.
Somebody else came up with that.
But we definitely had a good time.
And I'll always be grateful to Van Hagar for giving me that afternoon with Chris Gills.
But, oh...
Don't go.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Don't.
All right.
I'm done.
Don't go back to the Smiths.
I'm done.
I'm done.
Ian McCullough of Echo and the Bunnymen.
Won't you come on down to my rescue?
In the early 90s, let's say early to mid-90s, he went around...
He went around on a tour, a solo tour or something, where he was playing really small clubs.
He played the Crocodile Cafe here, like, you know, 300 capacity.
And it had about 80 people in it.
And all 80 people were girls.
He was gorgeous.
He was very pretty.
And I was at the show.
and he had this he held this this 80 person audience completely captive and after the show it was one of those rare things where every single one of the 80 people stayed to shake his hand and i watched the entire show just uncomprehending like why
what is going on here?
I'm sorry, I missed.
Was he playing solo?
He was playing solo, but with a band.
Oh, okay.
So he was just front guy.
It's not like he had an instrument.
He just was holding a microphone.
And they played a lot of Echo and the Bunnymen tunes.
Oh, kind of weird.
And everybody was, because, you know, the one guy from Echo and the Bunnymen died.
So they could never really get back together.
What?
But the guitar player was the one who did all the heavy lifting, right?
Was it Will Sargent?
Was that his name?
Yeah, but it was like the bass player or the drummer or something.
And I guess, yeah, it was mostly drum machines.
But their drummer died, right?
And so it's a spinal tap situation.
Oh, sure.
But anyway, it was this weird event.
You know, when John Doe goes around on his own...
And John Doe is a beautiful man, and John Doe puts on an unusual show.
He's very charismatic.
But he's very charismatic, and I understand it.
And I understood Ian McCullough because he was beautiful and also very charismatic, funny guy.
Not Robbie Williams funny, but funny.
But watching the show, I was like, there's nothing for me to, I can't sink my teeth into any of this music here.
And Echo and the Bunnymen, I mean, I was a Love and Rockets fan.
Why wouldn't I like Echo and the Bunnymen?
They also have an ampersand in the middle, but just couldn't do it.
Couldn't do it.
Ian McCullough, I just feel like Echo and the Bunnymen is kind of like a slightly better Smiths, but not a thing that I could really sink my teeth into.
You know, I don't use this word much, but I think you're trolling me.
I think you're deliberately making this more difficult than it needs to be.
Working on the show art for this episode, it's going to be more soon.
I'm trying to bring the pedants out of the woodwork, because I know whenever I really hit on something that's true...
I get a lot of pedantic... You're breaking people's frame.
People don't like their frame broken.
If it doesn't fit in the frame, oh, booga booga.
I get a lot of actuallys.
You get Professor Actually giving you a call.
My other one I was going to toss out... I don't know why.
Have we talked about Godspeed, You Black Emperor?
I feel like we should talk about Gatsby G. Black Emperor at some point.
I think they're phenomenal.
Oh, good.
Good, good, good.
I'm so relieved to hear that.
They're part of that loudness is our sixth instrument, right?
We have guitar, bass, drums, other guitar, keyboards, and loudness.
They got strings.
Strings.
They got like 60 guitars, and then they got like a little miniature string section.
String section and loudness.
But they just did a tour and everybody was at the shows and they were raving about it.
And I was in Maui and they didn't come to Maui.
They played all these places that I could have been, should have been, would have been.
But no, I think they're phenomenal.
The reason I mention it is because when you think about it, there's certain bands that are so atmospheric.
And MVV was one.
What was your other one?
The Cure.
But sometimes when I first started getting into them, what, 2000, 2001, 2002, something like that.
It must have been when I had an iPod, though.
But anyway, I'd be listening to them when I was on Muni and when the train would go into the tunnel.
Ooh.
It's a bad time to be listening to Godspeed You, Black Emperor.
Well, when the train goes into the tunnel, it's... Right, like with a finger here, right?
Yeah, it's an allegory for when the sailor meets the girl in the surf.
It's like, you know, beyond kissing.
It's beyond kissing.
When a boy loves a girl very much, he's listening.
Can't keep his mind on nothing else.
Listening to Godspeed Black Emperor.
Open my wallet and it's full of blood.
Into the Terravel tunnel.
Oh, the local merchants.
So the merchants are mad.
Your local merchants there?
Yeah, because they're going to make things to make the Terravel safer and run better.
And they're mad about losing parking.
Oh, they always do that to make it run better.
Yeah, it's a lot like a Godspeed you Black Emperor song.
I'm glad to know you've checked them out.
That makes me feel good.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
For shizzle.
I have not seen them live.
I tried to introduce my mom to Godspeed Black Emperor because it seemed like the type of thing that would like that she would turn up and her whole house would like resonate like a like a drum.
But by that point, she had really gotten too far into Slash's snake pit to really back out.
What?
Mom has taken a left turn.
For many, many years, she had impeccable taste.
She would play all the early Pink Floyd records.
She would just crank Uma Guma.
What?
She had every Sabbath record.
And when Sabbath transitioned to Dio, she had no problem with it.
She made that bump just fine.
But not at the time.
No, not at the time, but later.
Yeah.
You know, all the Zeppelin, everybody, she was completely down with the struggle.
She had a hard time with late 80s metal because she just didn't like the screechy singing.
But somewhere along the line, and this is, I can't say for sure, I don't know whether indie rock got in her head and threw off her natural balance, but
What she was trying to do was she was trying to replicate the feeling that she had listening to Rachmaninoff in metal, right?
She said, I get it, this is,
This is Rachmaninoff in the form of guitar music and I am into it.
And she had a parametric EQ and she would EQ kind of the vocals out and push the bass all the way up.
And she would sit and just like her house would just thunder.
Wow.
But somewhere along the line, and this is, I'm embarrassed to say this.
She listened to Creed, and she responded to it.
They're very anthemic, John.
And from Creed, well, she went two directions.
She made a little leap.
She heard Muse, and Muse was her favorite band all of a sudden.
And whenever Muse would come to town, she would go to the show.
She would buy a ticket.
She didn't want to sit in the front row.
She was fine sitting up in the stands, way up in the stands, because the bass would really develop by the time it got to her.
And so if you can picture my 77-year-old mom at the time sitting way up in the stands at a Muse concert by herself, having the time of her life, right?
She would just go by herself.
I wouldn't be in town or something, and she's like, I'm going to go see Muse.
really into Muse, but then also into Creed.
And then here's where it goes crazy.
She got into all the bands that were offshoots of the Creed family of bands.
Okay.
So a lot of... What would you call that genre of music?
Grunge.
I mean, it's what grunge evolved into after everybody renounced grunge as a title of things.
Oh, sort of like the way New Order was a disco band.
Nobody listens to disco anymore.
Except... Post grunge.
It's like seven string guitars or a lot of drop D tunings.
And people going... It's fucking grunge.
And it's the worst part of grunge.
And it was turned into a whole genre.
that I kind of lump in with like the kid rock family of bands.
Yeah, sure.
Where it's just like... What about Limp Bizkit?
What's Limp Bizkit?
Limp Bizkit is the biggest crime against humanity.
Like Limp Bizkit... Are there the ones that are a little rappy?
Yeah.
Who am I thinking of?
They were like a grunge band, a seven-string guitar grunge band with the worst human ever produced by the collision of a sperm and an egg.
Like, there is a room in my Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, underground desert isolation chamber.
Concentration dungeon.
Concentration dungeon and LSD test facility.
Yeah.
It won't say that on the sign.
No, there is no sign, right?
The sign says biological research area.
You have a GPS coordinate that's closely held and a team.
It looks like regular desert on top.
But there is a room for Fred Durst there.
and it might be right next to Cheney, and they might have lunch together, right?
I mean, because each would be a form of torture to the other, right?
But Fred Durst makes me so angry.
He made me so angry the day he arrived on the scene.
Any success he's ever had makes me angry.
Even things that I would consider failures, but he would consider successes, I hate on behalf of the world.
And I do, I would, I would put him in a room with a sink and a steel and a metal bed, a prison bed.
And I would gradually over the course of many, many months add just trace amounts of LSD into his water.
And then I would gradually move the walls of his room so that it was no longer square, but not, not really.
No, you couldn't, there's no reference point.
like the like gradually the bed would also stop being square it would be a little bit narrower at one end and a little bit wider at the other but that would be true of the room too what if the bed inexplicably rose about an inch over the course of a month
That's exactly right.
So you think he's getting shorter.
He's getting shorter, right?
His shoes are getting bigger.
It's like the scene from Amelie, right, where the shoes are just slightly getting smaller or bigger.
And then the dimensions of his room are changing, but all the other things in the room are also changing, so the lines still look parallel.
So he's looking down the line of the bed, and it's still parallel with the wall, but it seems like a rhombus now.
Yeah.
I would do that to him.
I would do it and I would watch the videos.
I would watch the closed circuit camera of him trying to navigate this new space, slightly tripping on LSD but not quite enough to identify what was going on.
I would do that for hours.
I would cackle.
I would eat microwave popcorn inches.
Would he have a chance to make good?
No, he's unbelievable.
I would just do this.
I would do this as a form of pleasure torture.
And then ultimately, when I had exhausted the pleasure of driving him insane, I would throw him into a pit.
I would throw him into a poo pit, and then I would set it on fire.
That is how I feel about Fred Durst.
Wow.
I would do that.
That's a very strong feeling, John.
I would quit my job, which I don't have to do.
I would quit my non-existent job.
You'd get a job and quit it.
And make my job.
Buy some corn.
Torturing Fred Durst and Dick Cheney and Donald Roswell.
You know, all the, like, hagiography that's happening for Scalia now.
Oh, boy, here we go.
Where everybody's like, you know what?
We all hate him.
Let me get a marker here just for purposes.
We all hated him while he was alive, and we still kind of hate him.
He's got a family, dude.
But you know what?
He was a smart guy.
Oh, yeah, he's a good writer and a funny guy.
Yeah, and all this, like, oh, you know what?
He was the one that recommended Elena Kalin.
RBG considers him a good buddy.
A good pal.
I bet they had some fun.
I bet they had some times.
Ruth Bader.
They laughed.
They cried.
Everybody loved him.
And the fact that he was a monster.
In another age, you would have called him a garbage person.
And turned back the clock and ruined not just the judiciary, but America.
Yeah.
Being articulate about hating people does not make you a good person.
That's exactly right.
It makes you a good writer, but does not make you a good person.
Very, very articulate and very clean.
He was very smug.
He was a clean old man.
But yeah, unredeemable.
But the thing is, in all the years, I never wanted him in my torture dungeon, right?
That torture dungeon is reserved for, well, I mean, Lawrence Eagleburger has a room there.
Um, and he was just following orders, right?
He was just, he was just following orders, but he's got, I think we're out.
All right.
All right.
Lawrence Eagle burger.
I'm going to let him, I'm going to sit him in a, in a concrete room.
Could you make him a trustee John?
Could he maybe do laundry?
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
I'll let him make a case.
Uh, and he can, you know, he can, he can do the sweeping up the laundry.
He can take, he can take the twins out of their cold bath.
The twins you call them?
The twins.
The focus of your existential punishment dungeon being Fred Durst and Dick Cheney.
They would be the two sides of, you know, like there's the Fred Durst side and there's the Dick Cheney side.
I just call them my boys.
Keep the hot side hot and the cold stays fresh.
So yeah, Limp Bizkit, unredeemable.
I mean, you know,
Their song, I Did It For The Nookie.
Oh, that's right.
They did do it for the nookie.
I forgot about that.
So you can have this cookie and shove it up your ass?
Is that a line?
That's a line.
Huh.
What was the other band that was like Limp Bizkit?
There was so many.
There was another band that was like that, right?
Are you talking about the one that had two lead singers, the rapper and the singer?
Oh, maybe.
I'm trying to think.
What do they call it?
They call it Nu Metal.
Is that what that's called?
Nu Metal.
N-U.
N-U.
Metal.
Okay.
You're thinking maybe of Linkin Park?
Linkin Park.
That's exactly what I was thinking of.
Seven string guitars.
Linkin Park.
But Linkin Park had a curious thing.
They had a singer and a rapper.
In my estimation, the rapper was somewhat superfluous, but the singer actually could sing and their music did not take on the grossly misogynistic and genre bending garbage person music, if we still called it that, that is Limp Bizkit.
Linkin Park was just a band that you were like, do I like this?
Do I not like this?
Yeah.
There is no way you could like Limp Bizkit.
I don't care if you were seven years old.
None can be forgiven for this.
None can be forgiven.
What about the band Korn?
They had a backwards K, and then they got Slipknot and Korn.
See, that was grungy metal or metal-y grunge.
Slipknot was kind of a joke band, though, right?
What, Slipknot?
Who am I thinking of?
I'm thinking of the Insane Clown Posse.
Don't start with the insane client policy.
You haven't talked about juggalos in a long time.
Slipknot.
Well, juggalos kind of, they went through the looking glass with me.
And we're on the other side of it now.
It's like cosplay.
You start to respect it.
Yeah, I respect it.
Because that kid came up here and explained to me the philosophy of juggaloism.
Yes.
Ever since then, I've been like, you know what, I'm going to give them a pass.
I mean, I don't want to go to the gathering.
I don't want to accidentally be, I don't want to be on a plane that crashes and actually crashes into the gathering.
Oh, like where it would be like a juggalo convention and they'd be like Shriners on the plane.
I don't want somebody to drug me, put me in the trunk of a car, and I wake up at the gathering.
Amongst the juggalos.
That's not what I want.
But it's like live and let live.
I feel like Slipknot was only a joke band in the same way that Guar was.
Okay.
I mean, would you give Guar a pass?
That's interesting.
That's interesting.
Because this gets us, I don't know, this is where we want to go.
But you've got these bands that are kind of like humorous rock bands.
You've got joke bands.
You've got bands with a bit.
Right.
And there's this weird Venn diagram, though, where you could in some really weird Venn diagram, a person could put they might be giants and Slipknot on the same Venn diagram.
Kind of.
You're right.
I see what you're saying.
You see what I'm saying?
Yeah.
But how do you feel about how do you feel about the dwarves?
I don't know the dwarves well, but like Weird Al.
Weird Al.
He does comedy rock.
Yeah, he does.
Weird Al and they might be giants don't belong in the same universe.
Really?
No, I mean, Weird Al is a wonderful man, I understand, and he is a cultural treasure.
Yeah.
But they might be giants are...
are giants they are songwriting genius i i don't disagree i'm talking somewhat about what where people would put them you know genre wise oh sure i mean that's saying i agree i think i mean i'm not here to kiss their butt they they get plenty of good uh attention they're one of my favorite bands that's right that's you've you've covered that band uh i have yeah you did their pet name song yeah i don't know if they've ever covered me and that seems like something that they should probably do i used to cover um that sad song about divorce
You know what?
Sad songs say so much.
Mm-hmm.
You turn them on.
How do you feel about... Love sees love's happiness.
John Linnell does not sound like that.
Why do I do that?
No, I don't know.
Love sees, loves happiness.
Is that Jerry Lewis?
Am I doing Jerry Lewis?
There's a little teeny, you kind of got a teeny yes.
Love happiness can't see that love is sad.
There's a little similarity, but you are making a Muppet voice.
Sadness is hanging there.
Oh.
No.
You know what?
Who sounds like that?
The Smiths.
They need a change.
They need a change.
I didn't hear that last part, John.
How do you feel about Marilyn Manson?
Joke band.
I would take that as a joke band.
Wow.
I had a friend that used to work with him at Peaches in Boca, and he was a laughingstock.
He was a silly goth boy who wore long underwear under his torn-up jeans, and he was a very silly guy.
But, you know, good for him.
Good for him.
Well, now here's my Marilyn Manson experience.
I went to see them in a big stadium show with a hole opening.
And I went as a joke.
I was like, I'm going to go see Marilyn Manson and Hole.
Right.
Right.
The two worst things.
You didn't like Hole?
Melissa Aftermore?
Live Through This was a spectacular record.
It really was.
I really loved it.
They had some pretty great tunes.
But there was nothing about whole that I could, I mean, you know, like the whole like we're a band.
It's not that we're, it's the no doubt problem, right?
That everybody was like, yeah, you're, it's Gwen Stefani.
And they're like, no, we're a band.
Everybody's an equal part in Destiny's Child.
And so whole, you know, like.
Eric Erlandson and Patty Schmel.
Am I saying that right?
Melissa Oftermar?
Is that the right band?
Oftermar, yeah.
She was great.
Oftermar.
She was very attractive.
She's only in that band because they lost their other bass player.
Huh.
To the drugs.
Oh, right.
The drugs.
Yeah, the drugs.
But, like, Courtney was just so problematic.
And by that point...
By that point in their career, they had made the record that she did 10,000 interviews about, like this was their Rumors, right?
Is this I Miss One?
Yeah.
No, no, no.
That's a great tune for a great record.
I like that album.
Great record.
But by the time she was touting her new record as the new Rumors, and then it came out and it was like, not only is this not the new Rumors.
Oh, Celebrity Skin.
Celebrity Skin.
Yes.
I remember there was a lot of press about that.
This is not only the new rumors.
This is the new, this isn't up to the standard of the third Whitesnake album.
right like this is this is no good no good this is no this is white snake level no good and so i went to this concert marilyn manson come on the beautiful people and whole this is gonna be i am gonna have so much fun i am gonna fill a 64 ounce cup with semen having fun fucking with this show right and i was standing on the side of the stage because of who i am i get to do things like that because i'm i because i have both privilege and i'm also very important
Oh, wait.
On the one end, you got privilege, which you acknowledge.
Right.
But then there's a different thing, which is that you actually are legitimately important.
Yeah, that's right.
You're different from a lot of people who just have privilege.
There's a lot of privilege that's unexamined.
I have examined mine and found it to be appropriate.
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So I'm standing on the side of the stage, and next to me is Dan Savage, who reports that this is the first rock concert he's ever been to.
Oh, man.
Up until this point in his life, he had only gone to drag shows and Broadway shows, right?
Because he was from a certain era of being a gay man where you just liked Broadway.
Yeah.
He'd never been to a rock concert of any kind.
He had no rock knowledge.
That's so weird.
And so he stood next to me throughout the show and I was...
like whispering in his ear what was happening.
Do you see this, Dan?
This is a bass.
This is an electric bass.
Oh, you were like his spirit guide.
Yeah, but it doesn't sound like an electric bass right now because he's running it through a machine that makes it sound all grotty.
And Dan was like, okay, grotty.
And I was like, yeah, bass is low sounding, but it sounds high right now because of this box he's running it through.
And Dan's like, okay, is that something I should care about?
And I'm like, no, no, no.
You don't have to care about that.
And he would be like, good, good, good.
Okay, I got it.
So tell me what I should care about.
And I'm like, well, here's what you should care about.
It was fun to do, to take somebody that I knew and liked and walk him through rock music as though he had never heard it because he actually had never heard it.
So this is going on through all the opening bands.
And the first band was Monster Magnet.
Right.
Which I actually kind of liked.
They were a little bit of a funny metal band, but they were more metal than funny or like rock metal.
Mm hmm.
Liked Monster Magnet.
Walked down through Monster Magnet.
Hole came on.
We both shared an intrinsic understanding of what Courtney Love was.
Because of his background.
Because of his background.
At that point, he probably brought a lot of knowledge.
He did.
He was like, aha.
I've seen that before.
I see this now.
And I was like, yes.
This needs no explaining.
But then Marilyn Manson took the stage.
And I had I was wearing my Technicolor irony coat and was ready for this show.
He comes out and proceeds with all of his serial killer named clown bandmates.
proceeds to put on an extraordinary rock show a fucking massive stadium grade rock show that I sat back in my heels and was like this is phenomenal there is nothing funny about this it is huge like the music is huge the show is huge I was completely converted to the Marilyn Manson cause not not
Even not, not so there was no irony left in me so much so that when he came back to town, I went of my own volition, not to laugh, but to celebrate.
Whoa.
Like this is, this is rock and roll.
And the next time he came through, he wasn't a stadium band anymore.
He was playing the big theater.
And it was fucking great.
He threw a microphone at a roadie.
I mean, all the things that you're not supposed to do.
He transgressed not only our societal expectations of gender and power.
But he also challenged my knowledge of how you're supposed to treat your staff.
It was terrible.
Just from an HR standpoint, he was bringing something new.
He wasn't just walking around in a dirty jockstrap.
He was throwing microphones at his own guys.
And I was like, that's pretty rock and roll.
That seems like something you would do if you were legitimately on drugs.
And when I see a stadium rock show, I assume that every single thing that happens on the stage is choreographed and part of the show.
Sure.
I saw Metallica one time where they set the main PA on fire.
Oh, you don't do that without a plan.
And they had to turn on the house lights.
and move the audience back 80 feet from the stage, and the fire department came in, and I was like, this is all part of the show.
I mean, I was fucking baked, right?
But I was like, this is part of the show.
Now, I don't think you could do that as part of the show, but they set the PA on fire.
Come on.
If that's not part of the show, they should make it part of the show every subsequent night of this tour.
Yeah, if you didn't have a plan for that, you'd be filling out a lot of forms every night.
Yeah, right, exactly, exactly.
Nobody wants a gray-white situation.
Oh, God.
But but Marilyn Manson, you know, they did something that that no one can ever take away from me, which is that I saw a Marilyn Manson show and I came out the other side and I'm sitting next to Dan and I'm like, this is blowing my mind.
And Dan's watching it as a Broadway show.
Sure.
Well, I mean, you can't take it away from the guy as a performer.
It sounds like, you know, I mean, he's taken more than one note from Alice Cooper about how to, like, put on a mind blowing show.
But with the technology that he's got available, that must have been pretty amazing.
And he didn't do the Alice Cooper thing where he's like, I'm going to behead a knight on stage with a guillotine.
He was doing a thing that was purporting to be live and in the moment.
It didn't feel campy.
It was extremely campy.
My God, they were dressed like...
they were dressed like, they were all dressed like the main villain in Road Warrior, right?
And they were doing that thing.
Remember when he, remember when the bad guy, and I forget his name, but the bad guy in the Road Warrior, he jumps on the back of a car and he rides it in through the gate, and then he's inside the compound, and he looks around and everybody's like, it's him, the Mohawk.
And now it's like, what do we do?
And he jumps from on top of the car to on top of the truck, gets up on the wall,
Kills a guy, runs along.
Everybody's there.
Mel Gibson's there.
They're all like, got to get him.
And he stops right on the gate.
And he looks back and he goes, ah.
And it's an overdub sound.
You know, it's like him going, ah, but it's too stereophonic to really be from him.
But that's exactly how he would sound.
Like, that's exactly right.
Sure.
And then he jumps down and he gets away.
How does he do that?
How does he get from inside to outside?
That is what Marilyn Manson's band looked like to me.
And they were all saying to this audience of 14 year olds, do drugs, do drugs, which was hilarious on the face of it.
As a kind of response to the PMRC that's 10 and a half years too late.
Yeah, all the say no to drug stuff hung around for a pretty long time.
Yeah, that's true.
But he was like, do drugs.
And all the 14-year-olds were like, I will.
And Dan Savage was like, this is fantastic.
And I agreed.
I agreed that it was fantastic.
I'll give it another try.
I'll drop the needle on some Marilyn Manson.
I don't know if it's just a live thing.
If you can put it on the stereo and really dig it.
But I think there's something there.
There was something there.
What about...
See, for some reason, a funny one for me is Nine Inch Nails.
Because Nine Inch Nails had their first big single at a time when I was going to lots of new wave nights at gay bars and dancing a lot.
And at the time... God, if I could watch a VHS tape of you dancing.
Had a lot of amaretto sours, buddy.
I would pay.
But this is at a time where, like, so you would still hear... My heyday for this was...
I'm going to say 89, 90, 91-ish.
But especially I'm going to say 89.
That was the time.
There was a lot of, that was a fun time for me.
There was a lot of great rock music and a lot of great, but at the same time, I was, well, I was far away.
Well, I was going to say I was far and away most into bands like Pixies, but I was also super into hip hop.
That's the most I've ever been into hip hop was that summer of the summer of Fight the Power.
But also I love dance music.
I really love and I especially love stuff like Peyton Full.
Like I love the like the acrobatics of like hip hop as dance music, which, you know, wasn't always a thing.
Like people did not really dance to run DMC.
The idea of turntablists doing something like taking – I had a 12-inch where they had the long version of Payton Full with I Want You Back by the Jackson 5 over it.
And it was like the greatest thing I'd ever heard in my life.
What genius came up with this?
It's perfect.
Originally, hip-hop was dance music because that's where they invented the breakdancing.
Yeah, I know.
But I mean –
But you think about the early run DMC, which was great for the time, but it was pretty stiff.
It did not have a lot of what we came to call flow to it.
It was on the top of the beat.
I would go to New Wave Night at a gay bar or whatever local bar.
There's a bar that we played at near school, our band played, that would also have New Wave Night.
We would go there a lot, and they had pretty cheap drinks.
Yeah.
So it was really the total package.
But like in a given night, you could expect to hear this same like amazing – in retrospect, amazingly dissonant handful of songs.
So you might hear that Harley, David, son of a bitch.
You might hear Bring Me Edelweiss, if you remember that track.
You might hear Leibach.
You might hear – you would certainly at some – I'm a cowboy.
Huh?
You can be my cowgirl.
That was more like 1986 though.
But then you would always hear the long version, the 12-inch version of Gigantic by Pixies.
And you would always hear, of course, once it got big, Head Like a Hole would bring the kids out.
Head Like a Hole really brought people out on the dance floor.
And the thing is, though, at the time, so what I'm trying to get at is that that was a funny pivot time for me in music, in my understanding of music, because you're going from the super kind of silly, gothy 80s-ness of the gothy bands, right?
And it's before...
And again, go back to the very beginning of the show.
Think about ministry.
The ministry of Every Day is Halloween, and then you've got the ministry of Psalm 69.
And those are like, that's a very, very different band.
So this is around that time.
Mm-hmm.
And so I wasn't sure where, where, uh, had like a hole and, uh, what's the name of the band?
Nine Inch Nails.
I wasn't sure quite where Nine Inch Nails fixed.
Cause, uh, cause I know them from that one tune, but like, I think in a way they were much more forward looking than I realized at the time.
Cause I was still kind of lumping them in with like an industrial dance music.
If you think about 1989, it's kind of a watershed moment, which is to say that throughout the eighties,
Popular music, within popular music, there was no aspect of it that was hard or tough.
And by hard, I don't mean like hard rock.
I mean hard like your soul is hard or your fists are hard.
I mean, the production of stuff was pretty thin a lot of the time.
Yeah, and soft, right?
Goth up until that point, the governing aesthetic of it was, we're sad.
We're sad.
things are things suck well and like one of my favorite bands from that time absolutely was uh the cocktail twins um and you know that was my god it was like it was like listening to a spider web being built right not like the thunderous stuff that would soon come along but in 1989 there was a moment where where goth got hard
And it wasn't sad anymore.
And it wasn't that it was mad.
It was resigned to the fact that vivisection was in our future.
Right?
That it was reporting now on a reality, on a future reality that they could see where we all became cyborgs that shit in a bag.
Right?
It's the one part they couldn't engineer out of us.
Cyborgs that weren't clean.
I still require a bag.
I have a colostomy bag.
I have all the information of the universe in my brain, yet I must poop in bag.
Do you remember during that?
That was the crop circle era where animal mutilation was happening.
Like you'd wake up in the morning and there'd be some goats laid on the fence.
It was this version of the future that was, well, dystopian.
Let's just call it what they called it.
So it went from like I am sad about my girlfriend breaking up with me
And so I'm on heroin to like, I know that, I know that one day I will be splayed on an operating table and, uh, and this is the music that sounds like that.
And you know, and in hip hop, it had gone all the way from like, we're tough to, we are killing cops.
Yeah.
And N.W.A.
I mean, Public Enemy was like I think about Public Enemy in maybe 1986 or seven.
And they were they were scary.
But those are plastic Uzis.
But it was N.W.A.
N.W.A.
was terrifying.
The thing about the thing about Public Enemy is it was protest music.
It was ultimately intellectual.
It was it was making a widespread cultural impact.
And it was much more obviously an artistic statement.
Not to take anything away from the seriousness of their material, but they were artists.
And what they were doing with what they call the Bomb Squad, like what they did with production, nothing, nothing like that had ever existed before.
It still sparkles.
Terminator X. Yeah.
I mean, I'm not going to do it.
1989.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
It's out of the funky drum.
Music's hitting you hard because I know you got soul, brothers and sisters.
Don't.
Don't.
NWA was much more reportage and it was much more localized, right?
They weren't talking about the world.
They weren't talking about even the other side of Los Angeles.
I mean, they had dancers with guns, but they were still dancers.
Like, there was a whole show to it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But NWA was scary as shit.
They had Flava.
Yeah, that's true.
Whereas, I mean, Eazy-E was the Flavor Flav of NWA, but Eazy-E was fucking hard.
He wasn't... I mean, it's not to say that Flavor wasn't hard.
But anyway, the thing that the world does not need right now is you and me talking about the hip-hop of 1989.
I don't know, man.
I don't know.
There's things.
I don't know.
It did something to me.
It did something to me.
Me too, but I would... I'm not here to try and sound like I'm hardcore or something.
I'm a white guy.
I was in college.
But at the same time, there's so much stuff that would not be interesting and happening today if it hadn't been for what was happening then.
The thing that makes me sad, personally, is that
is that the thread at the time, there was an equally powerful thread in De La Soul.
I was just going to say, that's exactly what I was going to say, which is you go from Do the Right Thing to like in the next, I think that same summer is when Three Feet High and Rising came out.
And the thing is, alongside Jungle Brothers, alongside Tribe Called Quest, alongside... PM Dawn.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was not super into PM Don, but I take your point.
All those bands, the thing was, there was no indication that this was peak hip hop, which I think it kind of was.
It was very much the sense of like, there is no, we have no idea where this is going to go next.
There is no stopping.
This could go anywhere.
After you heard Three Feet High and Rising, you're like, there's no limit to this.
There's so much you can do here then with rock and roll.
Considering that Three Feet High and Rising and Nation of Millions, you know, were setting the boundaries, what makes me sad is that that thread of Tribe Called Quest...
Lauren Hill in some ways, right?
It went over there and kind of just went, it ended up being, and that was a, that was a direction that like I was very excited about.
I mean, I was, I was also very excited about the other direction, you know, the, in the direction of NWA, but I was very excited about this, this direction of like socially conscious, uh,
Really clever and, you know, clever lyrics and clever, like groovy production that was this, that was the direction of tribe with Della soul being the, like having already made revolver.
And then where did it go?
It just kind of like... Nobody picked up that thread because the energy all went to... The energy all went into a different kind of anger.
And I'm still sad about it.
Well, you know, it's funny.
This is all from memory.
I'm not looking at anything here, but I'm remembering a funny...
like disappointing confluence of things at the time and this is not a value judgment this is just an observation one thing is that it was the part of it was the ascendance of miami bass music which was pretty dumbed down i mean to say the least it was very it was not you know we love you long time doo-doo brown i mean okay right doo-doo brown i get it doo-doo brown and you know it was not really i mean some of it was pretty clever the the asian guy in two life crew was pretty amazing
But, okay, there's that.
But then you know what else is huge at the time?
Was suddenly, like, and De La Soul is kind of alongside Biz Marquis, is kind of the poster child for this, is, like, people going, okay, that's enough with the free sampling.
Oh, that's exactly right.
We need to clamp down.
You could not get three feet high and rising for a while because Steely Dan was all fuck you.
Maybe understandably, but they finally had to come up with some way of...
you know, they had to go street legal with this.
And there was no longer the Wild West of just being able to take, you know, any James Brown drum sample you want.
Or, you know, George Clinton, understandably, I think, got pretty up in arms about it to where he was selling if you could basically buy his stuff to sample.
And I think that's still how it works today.
But anyway, all I'm saying is there was a few things.
You had the George H.W.
Bush era.
Fuck that.
You had all, you had more and more concern about the PMRC type stuff, which was still, you know, this cancer.
All the stuff with, you remember all the stuff with Luther Campbell?
Sure.
I mean, he was like public enemy number one until Ice-T came along.
Well, yeah.
I mean, Ice-T very much public enemy number one.
But I mean, you know.
I still consider him to be.
But I don't know.
I think there's a lot of stuff happening.
But then what's the next big jump?
I don't know.
Wait, wait, wait.
Digital Underground, of course.
Digital Underground.
Think about that.
They were amazing.
That was an incredible record.
I get stupid.
I'll shoot an arrow like Cupid.
I use a word that don't mean nothing.
I'm the one that said, just grab them in the biscuits.
Stop it.
Are they equivalent to They Might Be Giants?
Are Digital Underground that They Might Be Giants of hip-hop?
Shock G or Humpty Hump?
Not Humpty Hump.
Think about it.
Think about Chuck G and what he was repping.
Well, that record had lots of party hits, and it was fun.
But also, they had some Jungle Brothers style.
They had style.
Yeah.
I mean, like, there was something... I don't know.
I always feel like Jungle Brothers didn't get the credit they deserved.
I thought they were... I mean, there was a time when they had their one record that got a lot of play...
Well, it was because it was just pre the rise of the DJ as the DJ slash producer as the actual star.
They had songs that were like collages.
They had this one song that I adored called Good News Coming that was just like a collage song of all these great things over a beat with these tribal sounds and gospel singing.
And it wasn't a typical – and then it ends with this kind of like township music, South African kind of like guitar part.
And it's –
You got to listen to it.
I'll find it for you.
It's transcendent.
But like then what?
What do we get?
We got House of Pain.
Like what else you got?
Oh, you got the jump.
The hell else you break the law.
Go straight to the House of Pain.
What was the contemporaneous band with House of Pain that was like insane in the membrane?
Oh, sure.
The marijuana guys.
Marijuana guys.
You got brain...
What were they called?
Cypress Hill.
Cypress Hill.
And that Cypress Hill record, that first Cypress Hill record was pretty killer.
Well, again, it was like, I have to say the House of Pain, like a ding-a-ling band, but great production, great sound.
There was a couple of great songs.
Yeah.
A couple of great songs.
Yeah, the video where it gets punched in the nose.
Remember that?
But it didn't, yeah, that all, I feel like what side of the,
In a way, Cypress Hill was much more – well, then there's Snoop.
Like where do you put Snoop?
Yeah, see, I was not involved in that.
When was the first Wu-Tang?
93.
93.
Oh, my God.
93.
Now, see, now they came along.
That's why people talk about Wu-Tang.
That was –
they were something else because on the one hand what they were doing was so familiar but so weird and the way that they built this entire they don't know this world building around the whole like wu-tang thing uh i gotta go soon but we should we gotta talk about alexander hamilton at some point world building around the wu-tang thing yeah that's yeah i feel like that have you listened to hamilton yet if that isn't your master's thesis then i don't know
i did a colon after that world building colon around the wu-tang thing we're driving around yesterday uh in the whole family's driving around listening to alexander hamilton and i was just like this is one of those things that comes along every few years where you're like on the one hand i can't believe this didn't happen before now but the fact that it did is like it's still so miraculous like have you watched the new beyonce video yeah did you know she's black
I saw that last night.
Wasn't that funny?
And it made me laugh.
Oh, it was so well done.
You know, I have not been around.
As much as I don't want to talk about Hamilton with you right now.
No, I don't either.
It's over-talked.
But I mean, I was ready to just scoff the whole thing.
But now I'm just walking around going, I'm not throwing away my shot.
I had no idea this would sink in this fast.
Anyway, go ahead.
Hip hop.
No, no, no, not hip hop.
I feel somewhat under the obligation to actually fill you in with some news.
Oh, my goodness.
But I don't know.
You know, it's a rough transition.
We don't normally do this in the sense that I don't normally have anything in mind.
And I just talked to you on the phone about Echo and Bunny for two hours.
I'll speak to you on the record.
In about an hour, I have to record a podcast about Top Chef where I'll talk about my new cat.
Top Chef?
I do a show about Top Chef.
And how are you going to slip your new cat into a show about Top Chef?
Every week, I try to find a way to make the show less about the television program and more about almost anything else.
Wait a minute.
Do you have a podcast about Top Chef?
Yeah, it's called Top Scallops.
Is this a thing that has been going on for a long time?
It's only a 10th episode, yeah.
Oh, I see.
Well, so it's new.
I got something.
If you could do it in half an hour, I'm ready.
I wouldn't have heard about it.
Well...
So so as I say, right, I don't I wouldn't have heard about it.
You post every time you flush a John, you put the picture on Instagram.
You wouldn't know that I've got a new podcast.
Really?
Well, I don't know.
Do you have an Instagram?
That's kind of where I'm putting a lot of my energy now.
news from John you're still on Flickr you're still committed to the Flickr I'm not throwing away my shot hey yo I'm like my country I'm young scrappy and hungry and I'm not throwing away my shot throwing to you John John what's up news from John final answer I recently had some major developments in the GMCRV front
I don't know if you noticed, but I hadn't been asking.
I wanted to make sure it gelled.
Is that right?
You left it alone.
I left it alone.
I said, leave it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, but a lot of stuff has gone down.
I feel like I could spend a half an hour or more describing it, but I won't.
I just I know that there are a lot of people who have been who followed along on that story.
And then everything went radio silent when the GMCRV broke down and was in Redding, California.
And I was trying to navigate the complicated financial and social arrangements.
January came and went.
America was wondering.
Yeah.
And then, you know, it was there was there was all this trouble with the people there at the at the Reading place where they were like, look, we're good.
We got to fix this thing.
If we don't fix it, we're going to roll it out of here and roll it into a ravine.
We're actually going to put on the cures disintegration and roll it into a ravine.
And so I was very anxious about it.
I talked about it on this program.
Then there was a lot of rigmarole on the internet where people were like, let's just put up a Kickstarter and we're all going to give you money.
And then you and I talked about how that didn't feel right.
And then I just left it, right?
We weren't talking about it because I didn't want to talk about it.
But when we last spoke about it, where were we?
Had I described the rescue mission?
I don't think so.
I think the way we left it was you'd reach something like a detente with the RV fixing guy to where he was really wanting a go-no-go from you that was hopefully a go, but it was sounding to you from my end like it was maybe going to be a no-go from you, but that you had through January.
If it was a go, then you had through January, but if it was a no-go, it could get ugly.
I think that's where we left it.
Right, but it was a thing where if it was a go, I had until the end of January, but I had to make the go-no-go decision in the beginning of January.
Exactly, exactly.
I mean, like, yeah, it's not a parking lot kind of situation.
Right, right.
Well, shortly after that point, the blacklist truly activated itself in a way that we could not, I could not imagine, I don't think is duplicatable,
duplicatable or duke little blue duke little bubble duke little um where a cast of blacklisters spearheaded by the great greg birch whose grandfather worked at gmc during the development of the rv
whose grandfather actually has a namesake version of the GMCRV, the Birch Haven, named after him.
Greg Birch, who is the dentist in Squim.
We refer to him as Squim Dentist.
He's a younger guy.
He's sort of our age, successful dental practice, and he owns a Birch Haven, his namesake.
Greg Birch said, this is an intolerable situation.
We need to solve this stranded RV.
And at the moment, I was like, I don't want to do a Kickstarter.
People want to help me.
I don't know how to accept help from people.
I certainly don't know how to accept money from people.
Greg Birch says, listen, I'm in touch with the blacklist.
And here's what we've got.
There's a man named Gary...
who owns a barn in Red Bluff, California, 30 miles south of Redding, who has said that he's going to, there is space in his barn for your RV.
Wow.
So all we have to do is tell the people in Redding at the RV shop that we're not gonna put the, it's gonna be an uncomfortable conversation, but we're not gonna fix the transmission.
We're gonna patch it back together, fill it with fluid,
and then nurse it down to Red Bluff, where we're going to put it in the barn.
Driving or towing?
Driving.
Whoa.
Whoa.
And at that point, we're going to solve this problem in the barn.
And I'm like, this is some fucking heavy ass blacklist shit that I didn't know was, I didn't know this was on the table, right?
Like blacklist isn't just your water pump goes out and somebody in the neighborhood helps you change it, which is already amazing.
That's the great Kelvin of Eugene.
But this is the great Greg Birch.
And he's saying, he went to the blacklist and said, yo, blacklist.
And I think his premise was that I was potentially an ambassador of GMC RVs.
And to leave me on the side of the road was going to be bad for the whole community.
This may have been the pitch that he made.
I wasn't there.
So now here's where it gets interesting.
Greg Birch says, I'm going with my wife on a road trip to Reno or Tucson or somewhere to meet up with our family and take a boat down the Nile.
He said, I'm going to be going through there.
If you can get this thing filled with fluid and pushed into the parking lot of all wheel cars,
repair shop in Reading, I will drive it to Red Bluff with my wife in the chase car.
And I was like, this is seriously heavy.
This is heavy paying it forward support action.
So Greg Birch goes down with his wife.
He gets in the RV.
He says drives great or whatever.
He's driving at 70 miles an hour down the road.
He takes it to Red Bluff, puts it in Gary's barn.
So this all happens.
This all goes down.
I can't.
I was going to go down there to do this mission with him.
But I had I had a gig.
I had places to be.
I couldn't.
I absolutely would have, but I couldn't.
Wow.
So he goes and does this himself.
And now here is where it gets bananas.
Because Gary is this cool cat.
He's got this big farm, this big walnut farm, walnut tree farm out in Red Bluff.
Greg calls Manny.
Manny, as you recall, is the Beethoven of GMCRV transmissions who lives way up on the hill in San Jose on 10 acres.
Greg says, Manny, listen, we got to get a transmission into this rig.
Manny rebuilds a transmission, which he can do in eight hours, apparently.
throws it in the back of his truck, and drives from San Jose to Red Bluff.
So now we got Gary, we've got Greg, and we've got Manny all converging on this barn.
And then a fourth guy from the blacklist whose name I don't know, but it's got to be somewhere between Greg, Gary, and Manny.
Probably Danny.
No, it could be Danny, yeah.
Maybe Chuck.
I'm embarrassed to not have his name.
This is extraordinary.
This is like a superhero story.
This is going beyond, beyond, beyond.
And the four guys changed the transmission.
in gary's barn and put a bunch of uh other things in there you know they one of the guys the fourth guy whose name i can't remember invented some little part that keeps your dashboard from catching on fire wow that he was like listen if you don't put this part in there eventually your dashboard's going to catch on fire so here i'm adding this little part
Gary also invented some part for the GMC, although I think it might be a robot airbag system.
They didn't put it in.
But so they do this work, and it's a situation where it's like four guys, and what do they want to do on a Saturday?
Well, they want to go out and, you know, they're like old hot rodders.
They want to go out and work on their car.
They're like that picture of the five kids in the unwashed Levi's all crowded into the engine compartment of a 54 Ford or whatever that iconic photograph is.
where all you see is their butts.
So these four guys are like, yeah, let's go fix this truck.
That'll be fun.
And Greg Birch and Gary, part of their motivation is they've always wanted to see Manny replace a transmission because he's the Beethoven of GMC RV transmissions.
Wow.
So, so this Saturday comes and Greg Birch is sending me pictures from his phone of like, here's your, here's your RV.
We've got the transmission out.
Oh, here was the problem.
It was your main bearing failed.
Now here's the new transmission.
We're putting it in.
Okay, it's in.
And then he sends me a picture of the four guys standing in front of my RV with their arms around each other.
And he's like, ta-da.
And then Greg Birch and his wife, I think, spend the night in my RV.
And then they get on their road trip, head down to Reno or Tucson or whatever to go down the Nile.
Manny goes back to San Jose.
And Gary says, I'll leave it in my barn as long as you want.
So I went to Maui, as you do, came back, bought a ticket.
Well, I bought a ticket to LA because Tom Chaplin from Keene is making a solo record and I went down to sing on it.
And then instead of flying back to Seattle, I flew to Sacramento, got a car to Red Bluff, met Gary, there was the RV, started it up, drove it home.
Just got back the day before yesterday.
I spent the night in the RV a couple of times.
Spent the night in the RV in Redding.
I went and saw those guys again.
They did a little bit of extra work on it.
In the process of changing the transmission, the four master mechanics, one of them, whoever's responsibility it was to hook up the spark plugs.
I forgot to connect one of the spark plugs.
So the engine was running a little rough.
Transmission was running great.
So I went to Redding and they did a little bit of extra work on it.
You know, because it's nice to throw three or four hundred bucks at this thing every chance you get.
And then I drove it north.
I spent the night in Cottage Grove, Oregon, and then drove it home.
And I stopped in Portland.
And my good friend Ben King, the architect that I met at XOXO Festival,
I'm very close to the end of this story.
He came out and helped me adjust the timing on it.
Wow.
Where he had a timing light and we're looking at it and we can't find the flywheel because the engine compartment is so crammed.
And so he was like, you know what?
It needs the timing adjusted.
And he just grabbed the distributor cap and just turned it two degrees with reference to nothing.
He was just like, let's see what happens.
So he must be an engineer.
He's very mechanical.
He's an architect, but he had one of those fathers that was like,
Hey, let's go out and rebuild a Bronco 2 this weekend.
I found a Bronco 2 at a junkyard for $100.
You want to help me rebuild the motor?
And so he and his son, Ben King, would go out into the driveway and rebuild the motor on a Bronco 2.
That was their idea of fun.
It's the same kids with the Levi's and their head inside the hood of the car.
Just like, let's turn a wrench for fun.
Something that seems to me like let's build a Saturn V rocket for fun.
But so he adjusts the timing.
The thing all of a sudden runs better.
And then we're sitting in Ben King's backyard having done this work.
And we hear like, hello?
And we go around the corner and here's this old guy, 82 years old, leaning on the fence.
And he says, I heard there was GMCRV over here with the hood up.
And I was like, are you from the blacklist?
And he said, got all deep voiced.
He was like, yep.
And I said, how did you know?
And he said, somebody came over to the house and said they drove by and there was a GMC down here.
And so he comes back and he's some 85 year old guy that had worked in television back in the day and had all these stories about driving his GMC RV across the country.
And I realized that I have joined this insane network that's kind of like Spectre, right?
Where their logo should be an octopus.
And instead of being a bunch of 35-year-old assassins, they are a national network of very quiet 85-year-old assassins.
I think you've found the answer to a lot of questions, John.
I have no idea what's going on.
You have found your secret society.
I mean, this is your SEAL Team 6, except everybody's 80.
Yeah, you drive into a town, you park your thing on the side of the road, put your flashers on, and it's like a beacon call.
It's like the bat signal.
And suddenly you're surrounded by former NASA engineers who are like, I've got a story.
Did you ever hear about the USS Lexington?
And they're like, I invented a part for the GMC and it keeps your wheels from catching on fire.
Here, let me install it.
Because that's what I think is fun to do.
And so Greg Birch back in Squim.
Gary's back in Red Bluff.
Manny's back in San Jose.
I'm back in Seattle.
The circle is complete.
The GMC is like in the game again.
And I have a debt of gratitude to like 40 guys, and I feel a renewed debt of gratitude to like a generation, right?
So my head is still spinning.
I don't blame you.
I mean, but it's also an interesting inflection point because has there ever been a greater, you know, I mean, in terms of like, this seems like a virtually impossible situation not too long ago.
It's not impossible, at least very, very costly and time consuming.
And now not only are you better than when you started, but now the question is like, how deep do you go in this?
Word he uses as a chance to sell the thing and get your money back.
No, no, no.
I think I... What had to be asked?
Yeah, I can't get out of this now.
I have to go deeper and deeper.
Like, I'm in...
I'm in the front door of a thing that potentially is bottomless.
Do you have it in you to pay it forward back to blacklist people?
This could be the dark web, right?
Which you can best visualize as an iceberg.
where Google is at the top and something else is at the bottom.
But the thing, what this is teaching me is I can never repay this debt simply by paying it forward within the blacklist community because I am not a NASA engineer.
I can continue to enjoy my GMCRV and if other people find that that is enjoyable to watch and participate in vicariously and that inspires them to themselves buy GMCRVs and join me in my great trip across America and through the crazy tour of olds, then please by all means join me and buy your own GMCRV and find as I have
this miracle community of weirdos.
But I now have a responsibility to pay it forward even outside the GMC community, right?
I have now learned the power of paying it forward.
And so I don't, you know, whatever my particular skill is, and maybe it is guesting on people's dumb podcasts, or maybe it is getting gigs for small bands, and that is not it, so do not send me any tweets about this.
I will not get your stupid band a gig in Seattle.
You're still going to need some time to process this, though.
But I need to find a way to pay it forward.
Yes, Merlin, I need to pay it forward within my own sphere of influence whilst also paying it back to the GMC RV community, which has taught me so much.
I feel like I've been to the mountain.
This is going to be super interesting.
Well, I don't know.
Maybe what I should do is buy, so I have this insight that I should buy all the remaining GMC RVs and convert them to, and put Tesla motors in them and convert them to electric future vans.
That'd be quite a project.
I mean, it would be, I'd have to retool my factory, but I've been meaning to retool my factory for now.
Holy shit!