Ep. 225: "James Jacket"
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Hi, John.
I'm Merlin.
How's it going?
It's going pretty good.
I'm not in my customary podcast scenario.
Sure you are.
Sure you are.
No.
Does it sound the same?
These sound fantastic.
I have dead rock and roll ears.
Well.
It all sounds good to me.
Right.
It just sounds like a compressed little one of those grilled cheese sandwiches that is made in a waffle iron.
It's what Robin Williams called a Buddhist gift.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Something that you don't want that you have to learn to accept.
I heard in an interview, in a documentary one time, where I think it was Terry Gilliam was saying that Robin Williams says that a mistake is a Buddhist gift.
Wow.
You know what we say in rock and roll is one time it's a clam, two times it's a theme, three times it's a riff.
Is that how you make jazz, John?
That's exactly how you make jazz.
How many clams does it take to make a jazz?
Well, it depends.
Is it a white sauce or a red sauce?
What do you think, Mr. Al?
One, two, three.
Three.
Three licks to the center of it.
Oh, no, Mr. Merlin.
I've been trying to listen to more music.
Have you?
Have you been trying to watch old Saturday Night Live episodes for Mr. Bill?
Oh, Mr. Bill.
Mr. Bill.
I used to really look forward to Mr. Bill.
So did I. I don't think I really fully understood the implications of Mr. Bill.
You know, that's that national lampoon sense of humor.
Which I think you needed to be very, very preppy and very, very stoned.
Oh, preppy and stoned.
Preppy and stoned.
I'm in New York City right now.
What are you doing?
Are you in the actual titular city?
It sounds like you might be in one of the boroughs.
I'm in a borough right now.
I'm on the great island of Long.
But I'm staying in New York City.
And New York is really, really full of young, preppy, drunk people.
They also smoke a lot.
And so much cigarette smoke.
Is it me?
Don't you see more smoking in the city?
Enormously more smoking.
I mean, everywhere else, people don't smoke anymore.
They don't smoke anymore.
But in New York, they smoke.
They smoke like it's just a normal thing.
They do.
They smoke like it's a normal thing.
And also, they don't...
have any like prohibition against talking on the phone.
You see people on the phone all the time.
In San Francisco, you never see a soul on the phone.
Well, you see them.
Do you see them staring at the phone and typing?
But people rarely you see you see a lot of people.
If you see people talking on the phone, it's usually because they got one of those robot Bluetooth things.
And it's that's that's a whole different kind of thing.
Yeah, that's right.
People in Seattle, the same way, they're staring at their phone.
They're engaged with their phone, but they are not talking into it in any way.
And in New York, they're talking into their phones.
And I think it's because you can't stare at your phone in New York or you'll be murdered.
Yeah, you know what?
I think that's part of the ethos.
I was in line at the snack bar at the cinema yesterday, and I was thinking, isn't this funny?
All five of the people in front of me are staring at their phone.
And I thought to myself, you know, why don't people... I thought to myself, self, I said to myself, I says, well, why don't people just talk to each other anymore?
And then it was really nice.
One guy says to another guy in line, what do you got there?
And the guy says, it's yeast.
I like to put it on my popcorn.
He brought his own yeast.
And then they went into a long conversation about which theaters have yeast and don't.
And I thought, why don't you just look at your fucking phone and shut up?
You know, like if somebody if I said, hey, how's it going?
And somebody used the word yeast in the first sentence.
Oh, yeah.
That's a real like that's a real like pull back, pull back.
Get out.
Get out.
Yeast feels like the topic of a one issue person.
What I call the file card person where that's one thing they want.
It could be Bernie Sanders.
It could be bikes.
It could be yeast.
Right.
How do you know that you have a fireman at your party?
I give up.
How do you know?
He'll tell you.
Huh.
That's one of those kind of non-jokes.
It's a great joke.
I mean, I guess you have to know the culture of firemen.
I guess you have to have ever had a fireman.
It's like that dark Russian sense of humor.
You have to be a 90s kid to understand this fireman joke.
Yeah, the joke being that a fireman is not going to miss an opportunity to tell you he's a fireman.
Because they're here.
Because they're here.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of folks like that.
God bless them.
You know what?
Thank you for your service.
God bless them.
Did I ever tell you about the time – I was thinking about this the other day.
I regret not having joined the military.
You regret – when did that regret first start evidencing itself?
Well, when I was young, I always assumed I would be in the military at some point.
And then right about the time that you are the age of someone who's going to join the military, right, I was a peacenik and an anarchist.
Yeah.
And so not joining the military felt like a real rebellion against my earlier self.
No one was pressuring me to go into the military.
My mom actually, anytime a recruiter would call the house, my mom would like swear at them and slam the phone down.
Not my son.
That's right.
And she said, if you join the military, I'm going to move you to Canada or something.
She had some idea that she could prohibit me from joining the military.
She was going to disown me because she is a real peace activist.
But I thought I would join the military.
And then during the, during the heyday years where it was like, go join the military and learn discipline and be a young person.
I, uh,
It wasn't in my – that wasn't part of my scene.
But then later, like when I was 30, I said, boy, I wish when I was 18, instead of the scene that I did occupy, I'd gone and joined the military.
And it's one of those things where you're like, how can you say that?
Well, how different would you be?
Right.
It's like a completely different life.
But then after 9-11, when I was in my mid-30s and still –
young enough to join the military i went and looked and they had they'd raised the top age and i could have just gone at 35 years old and said sign me up i'm going to the you know i'm going to fight on behalf of justice going to the big game whatever we thought then yeah right um got a little mixed up about the countries but you know um and i really thought about it
But, you know, I had a lot going on.
Sure.
And now I'm too old to join the military.
And it's very easy for me to say, boy, I wish I had joined the military.
But I do feel like having a kid, like some other things in life, you know, some – not bucket list because that's vulgar.
But, you know, like the idea that in the course of living a full life –
You do the following things.
You got to tick your boxes as a grown up.
Yeah.
What was the starship troopers, right?
They won't even give you a full citizenship.
It's like Israel.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
Like Israel.
Everybody goes.
Except in Israel, it seems like everybody's super, super sexy, right?
That's a sexy army.
Oh, yeah.
And don't you learn like Jewish Kung Fu?
Don't they have their own special kung fu they teach you?
Probably.
Probably.
I think of them as like the tank top army.
Because they're carrying their guns on the subway.
They're all wearing tank tops.
It just seems like what a good way to be 19, carrying a gun and wearing a tank top.
I'll tell you what it occurred to me.
I mentioned last week my primary high school girlfriend.
She joined the Air Force when she was about, I want to say 22, maybe 23.
Did you have a secondary high school girlfriend?
I had a secondary and a tertiary high school girlfriend.
It occurred to me about five years ago that she's probably retired now.
From the Air Force, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Think about it.
As a lieutenant colonel, and she's making a normal wage for the rest of her life.
Yeah.
Don't they pay you pretty good?
They do.
Yeah.
See, that's when you really think about it.
I'm really going to serve my country and retire.
They pay you not very well through the whole time that you're working.
Comparable to what you could probably be making in the real world.
But then they continue to pay you.
Not your full salary, but pretty darn good.
But you get free glasses and stuff.
Yes.
Get to go to those nice VA hospitals.
They're so great, the VA.
And you get that haircut, that one haircut.
I definitely –
You were a cadet, right?
And I was a cadet.
We were both military cadets.
For a year, I was, as a consequence of going to military school, I was automatically in NJROTC.
Naval Junior ROTC.
If you'd just stayed in the NJROTC.
I could have retired at 19.
Yeah.
Well, they would have commissioned you in the Navy.
You'd be an officer.
Oh, easily.
Yeah.
And, of course, I would have been an officer just by virtue of having been recognized as standing in the door of the recruiter.
They would have said, oh, my God.
John, I think they would have fast-tracked you.
I think if everybody had had their head together that day, you probably could have been retired in a couple of years.
You know, right into officer candidate school.
And it's sort of like if I had ever gone to Yale and stood in the doorway, which I never did.
Right.
But as a young person.
If I'd gone and stood in the doorway, somebody would have seen the light kind of from behind, right?
Yeah.
There would have been like an angel choir.
Well, they could have just seen the cut of your jib just from the silhouette.
That's right.
From the silhouette, and they would have said, Jesus Christ, what are you doing out there?
Come in.
And maybe I would have been pushing a broom, but then I would have been solving math problems on the chalkboard in the night.
Oh, see.
And that's the thing is once you're fast tracked, you can really get super fast tracked.
And let's be honest.
Woody Allen says, what does he say?
Showing up is 80 percent of life.
You show up at the Mossad or you show up, you show up in the doorway of Yale.
They're going to walk you in.
And then once you've got a literal foot in the literal door, then the fast tracking really starts.
And that's when they can you become like Ender.
they're going to move you up a lot of places very, very quickly.
They'll name a game after you.
They'll name a game after you.
They might try and gaslight you a little bit.
No spoilers.
But the point being, I think at that point, they're going to see, they're going to be able to actually maybe even measure the cut of your jib.
Let's be honest.
So this is what I...
Well, go ahead.
No, no.
It disappoints me, John.
There's so many things you should be retired from at this point.
It breaks my heart to know how little your jib cut was appreciated.
It breaks my heart.
What I don't know, right, when you're making a list of the things that you ought to do in the course of a life, I don't know how many of those I've done already.
but i do know the ones that i've aged out of i do feel if you're going to live a full life you should have been in the mossad at one point yeah you should have gone to yale and and gone through as a member of the the njr otc and uh let's see you should have fought in an overseas war um retired before the age of 40 yeah right all these things what about apps
Should have designed an app.
Should have made an app?
You should have made an app after winning an Emmy, right?
If you got out of the Navy or the Air Force, let's say, and then went to write for a hit comedy show.
You become an EGOT-er.
An igata.
They just add an A to it.
For the army.
So if Mel Brooks puts out an app, boom, he's an igata.
An igata.
What do you got?
You got Rita Moreno.
You got Mel Brooks.
Who else?
Did you know that I wrote a tweet to Rita Moreno and then I put it in my drafts folder and I haven't sent it?
I do those.
Do you remember what it was?
I'm not sure if she listens to the show, but do you have a sense of what you were going to say to her?
I do.
So I don't know if I've ever
described it on this program.
But when my dad was, um, after he was, after he had already left the Washington state legislature, and I think maybe, yes, in fact, after he, uh, after he worked for John F Kennedy, he was sort of bouncing around, let's say in Washington state.
It seemed like he had, it's hard to put the stories all together as you know, but it seemed like he had somewhat missed an opportunity.
that in the early 50s he was, again, fast-tracked to being a prominent Democrat in Washington.
And then somehow he had not played his cards right, and here he was, 40 years old, not sure which way to turn.
I don't really understand that feeling.
Yeah, right.
And he was doing some acting at the Cirque Theater in Seattle.
And the Cirque was a kind of –
You know, it was a little bit avant-garde.
It was theater in the round.
And it was, the theater space was in a neighborhood that was in the early 60s considered transitional, which remained transitional until very recently.
And now it's very expensive.
In the great song, the great operetta of America.
But at the time, he was in this theater company.
And it was a theater company that did a very...
excellent job of bringing national and international theater people to perform in Seattle.
This is pre world's fair.
And so my dad was in a play with Rita Moreno in the late fifties, early sixties.
So it would have been right around the, I'm going to, I'm just going to throw out a guess that it was
Maybe before he went to work for Kennedy.
Okay.
59, let's call it.
And he's in a play with Rita Moreno and he characterizes himself.
Now this is the same man who I don't, I want to make clear that he never said he shot down a Japanese zero with a 45 pistol.
He only claimed to have shot at a Japanese zero.
He left the conclusion of that engagement to our imagination.
Okay.
But he implied pretty strongly that he was going out on some dates with Rita Morina.
Some dates.
Some number of dates.
Romantic dates.
Theater dates?
No.
Was your dad otherwise engaged at this point?
No, or maybe unclear.
This was also a transitional period.
At one point, he got divorced, and then at another point, he met my mom.
I got it.
Okay.
Right in this same area, 59.
Going through changes, as Zumpano says.
Right, and this is, well, going through changes, right?
He's a victim of changes, as Judas Priest says.
That's a good point.
But 59, right?
This is our Mad Men era.
Yep.
Everybody's really well-dressed.
My dad, I think at one point was wearing a pencil mustache.
Wow.
Anyway, went on unclear some dates with Rita Moreno.
And then one night he was waiting outside the theater.
No, no, no.
I'm sorry.
He was escorting Rita Moreno out of the front door of the theater on their way to a date.
And a man steps out of the shadows.
And I know where the Cirque Theater is and I know where the shadows are.
I can picture the shadows.
They're right there.
Man steps out of the shadows.
It's Marlon Brando.
Oh, Jiminy.
And Marlon Brando says, Rita.
Or however, I don't do a good Marlon Brando.
Rita.
Rita.
Make you an offer I can't refuse.
That's pretty good.
Thanks.
I just stuffed a bunch of cotton in there.
And then Rita Moreno leaves with Martin Brando.
Dashing my father's hopes.
Now, this story is not verifiable by searching the archives that are currently on the internet.
I'm looking at the Cirque Playhouse and I can't see anything here about it.
Right.
So the Cirque Playhouse will confirm that Rita Moreno was in a production there.
It says here that I see her name here.
The impressive list of Hollywood stars who trod the boards at the Cirque includes many, many names.
You got hits like you got Bob Cummings, you got King Donovan, Marsha Hunt, Tab Hunter, Howard Keel.
You got Roddy McDowell, Rita Moreno.
So I actually met Roddy McDowell.
Zazu Pitts.
I met Roddy McDowell as a child.
Shut up.
And my father introduced me to it.
After Cornelius?
Yes.
Had he already been the ape?
Yes.
Oh, my God.
What a thrill.
I was a big fan.
Oh, I love that guy.
I did, too.
I did, too.
He's like the English Tony Randall.
That's exactly who he is.
And he he was at the time my favorite actor.
And I'm not sure whether or not that's because I met him.
I think it is largely because I met him just as Count Basie was my favorite big band orchestral leader.
You met Count Basie?
Well, I stood there as my dad met Count Basie.
Oh, my God.
Was he wearing a hat?
Count Basie was not wearing a hat.
Okay.
Okay.
My dad, massive Count Basie fan, he acted as though he was meeting, you know, Richard Hell.
That guy's a genius.
What an arranger.
What a touch that guy had.
He could do so much with four notes.
So hot.
Small chords, small chords.
He's got those little Nat King Cole chords.
Mm-hmm.
So but my dad didn't make a big point to introduce me to Count Basie at the time because he was pretty starstruck.
I was just standing at his knee.
I saw it all go down.
But I actually was introduced to Roddy McDowell.
Oh, man.
So anyway, I'm I wrote this tweet to Rita Morena.
Hey, so wait a minute.
Was he nice?
Roddy McDowell?
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
He was incredible.
Oh, man.
That's so good to hear.
He turned to me.
He gave me all this attention.
It was in a big crowded room.
The lights were up.
He was there.
You just made my entire month.
That makes me so happy to hear.
Yeah.
Well, by that point, the Cirque Theater had moved.
It was no longer in its prior location.
It was now down in the center of the city.
And we would go there sometimes because, you know, even in his late 50s, my dad was still very bohemian.
He was one of the theater people.
He was one of that crowd.
Not really, but he was a member of a lot of guilds.
Anyway, so I wrote this tweet to Rita Moreno, who's still very active on Twitter.
Um...
Kind of like Tony Tennille.
You don't know that she's out there via one kiss.
You wouldn't think she's one kiss away from Roderick on the line, but it turns out Tony Tennille is.
One kiss away.
One kiss away from Roderick on the line.
You remind me of Tony Tennille sometimes.
Are you following her on the Twitter?
Yes.
Does she use a lot of emoji?
No, she's, you know, she has this autobiography and she's, and you know, it's a good autobiography.
She's out, she's trodding the board of a book author.
But I don't know.
That's right.
They trod boards.
Trodding the boards.
Okay.
All right.
Different boards.
Wider planks.
Okay.
But so I don't know how many kisses away from Roderick on the line Rita Moreno is.
And I wrote this tweet and it's a little bit, you know, it's a little bit like, dear Rita Moreno.
My dad says that he may be, like, he never said that you guys, like, necked in a parked car.
Mm-hmm.
You're already almost out of characters.
You went on some dates.
Here's a link.
Here's a link to the rest of this tweet.
Did you say, like, create C-R-E-8?
No.
You run together your Mr. and President with no space?
Yeah, I spelled it like toon yards.
Every other one happens.
I would die for you.
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But I didn't send it because it a little bit throws my dad under the bus, right?
Because Rita Moreno, there is a chance that she'll read that and she'll go, oh, Dave Roderick, I haven't thought of him in years.
And she'll write me back and go, of course I remember your father.
He played the role of Tony Randall in our hit show at the Cirque Theater in Seattle in 1959.
Or Rita Moreno may not reply.
Or she may say, sorry, don't remember anybody by that name.
And I don't want to throw my dad under the bus.
You don't want every one of your stories fact-checked.
After you're dead?
You don't want your, I mean, certainly I hope.
That's not fair.
I hope that my archivist goes about trying to fact check all of my stories because they will be, that will be the subject of a documentary film when that fact checker, when that dubious.
Documentary film series.
That dubious person after I'm dead who says, huh, this can't all be real.
Jonathan dubious.
And then finds themselves little by little.
Yep.
It checks out.
It checks out.
It checks out.
They're more and more astonished until their jaw is on the table.
All kinds of stuff you left out because it didn't seem plausible.
Yeah, that's right.
And then when they when they find out that the story was under told.
Yes.
Journalists who like to check facts are going to be a lot of openings in the next few years.
I think I think somebody may be getting started right now.
You know what?
Not to take you off your story, but maybe somebody comes in and gets a lay of the land.
This could be somebody who comes in and you get some, you know, get some briefings with you.
You could walk them through the cigar boxes and the cowboy boots.
I'm old at this point, you're saying.
Well, I mean, you're younger than I am, but I'm saying right now you bring somebody, maybe you start interviewing people for this.
Do you get to pick your own?
I've been watching The Crown on Netflix.
Now, Winston Churchill did not like the guy who painted his portrait.
He didn't like the way the portrait turned out.
No spoilers.
He did not want a modernist doing that.
Do you think you need to have somebody who's not on board with you?
Do you need a skeptic to come in?
Should they know where the cowboy boots are?
Or should they just discover it on your own after your death?
I'm afraid that anybody that I hire right now is going to be engaged in the project or is going to want to be engaged in the project for reasons that will diminish their capacity to say, wait a minute.
They're too credulous right now.
A little bit.
Yeah.
It has to happen later.
It has to happen when somebody – like I think that fact-checking in journalism, like digging down, is going to be very fashionable –
In 25 or 30 years in the same way that vinyl is fashionable now.
Right?
Like it's going to be like a sort of an anachronism.
Some young kid is going to say, you know what?
Back in the old days, journalists like took a critical eye.
Journalists tried to get to the bottom.
They could totally figure out if things were probably true.
Right.
And then they're going to – then this young hipster is going to be like, that's what I'm going to get into.
Yeah.
This is going to make me really cool.
I'm going to get into this whole like journalism thing.
And maybe, I mean, there's probably going to be a lot of things that they can investigate more interesting than me.
But let's say one of them's like, I want to just be so obscure.
This is going to be the, I'm going to be the most obscure.
I'm hesitant to bring this up, trigger warning, but Marlon Brando and Rita Moreno did have a torrid affair, according to the internet.
But he cheated on her so much, she tried to take her own life.
Oh, my goodness.
I'm not saying anything one way or another.
I don't know if this will be comforting to her.
I don't know if it's going to be, you know, sand in her gears.
But maybe just keep that in mind while it's in your drafts folder.
So circa when?
I don't know.
I don't visit the Daily Mail or New York Post, but I'm looking at it just in the search results.
There's also a very – if you go and search on their two names, you'll see a very cool picture of them in bed together.
Oh.
Well, I bet from my dad's story, I always kind of put together a picture of the fact that Marlon Brando and she already had a long history.
Yeah.
And that this was one of those things where he showed up – You think probably at least from treading the boards.
Yeah.
Yeah, and also probably from Sexy Todd.
Yeah.
That's the kind of board treading.
If you're treading on boards –
That's a different – that's very sexy.
He probably had a yacht.
That means that you're not confined to soft places, right?
You're willing to just do any old wear.
Oh, you mix it up a little bit.
A little bit of the strange.
But what I'm guessing is that Marlon Brando steps out of the – this is what I've always guessed.
He steps out of the dark.
Rita Moreno is not expecting him there and also probably, you know, would have said if you'd asked her, well, if Marlon Brando steps out of the dark shadows, what are you going to do?
Let's be clear for our young listeners.
This is Marlon Brando in the 50s.
That's right.
And Marlon Brando in the 50s is not the Marlon Brando you have in your head right now.
No, he's a very handsome man in the 50s.
Marlon Brando in the 50s.
Not single handedly, but he helped upset an idea of sexy male masculinity in a very interesting way.
Because he was he was he was really good looking.
He was really masculine.
But like maybe say what James?
Who's the guy with the jacket?
James Jacket.
Yeah.
Like James Jacket, the guy who died in the automobile accident.
Yeah, that's right.
James Jacket.
Like James Jacket.
Vulnerable.
He's forever young.
Vulnerable forever.
You got vulnerability.
You got maybe a little bit not sensitivity is a fraught word.
I think I think that's correct.
But like you wouldn't rule out that he's maybe bisexual.
Oh, I wouldn't rule it out at all.
I don't think people had a name for that.
I don't think people, I mean, they had some pejorative names, but I think people saw something.
You take a Sal Mineo, right?
And I think you see, he was in that James Jackett movie.
Take him, take him.
Take him.
I think he had drug problems later on, which is a shame.
I think that bisexuality was understood to be a thing, and I think that it was something in New York City that was...
maybe even chic but sometimes people they throw a shape they got they got a certain kind of vibe and all i'm saying is as great a man is uh let's be honest david roderick was a great man i would not want to be seeing marlon brando come out of the shadows while i'm trying to make time with rita moreno well so no i don't know so reading here just a little bit right rita a 22 year old rita moreno met the 30 year old marlon brando in 1954 so a long time before this
And I cannot say, this doesn't seem like Rita Moreno's voice, but the New York Post, a paragon of journalistic integrity.
It's never wrong.
Quotes are here.
To say that he was a great lover, sensual, generous, delightfully inventive, would be gravely understating what he did, not only to my body, but for my soul.
Every aspect of being with Marlon was thrilling because he was more engaged in the world than anyone else I've ever known.
She writes.
I totally believe that.
I think he feels I think he felt things very, very deeply.
Well, but she goes on.
Possibly as an outgrowth of this.
Now, this isn't quoting.
I'm not sure.
We're back to the Post now.
I'm not sure how the New York Post does its – Fact-checking.
Yeah, but she says – or someone says, the New York Post writer says, possibly as an outgrowth of this, he had insatiable sexual needs.
which he unabashedly pursued with droves of other women.
So here we are insatiable, unabashed and droves.
No, that's.
He broke my heart and came close to crushing my very spirit with his physical infidelities and worse with his emotional betrayal.
So this all happened before my dad, um, before my dad met Rita Moreno and maybe, um,
date date went on went on date this is not getting simpler as a story no no and so when he steps out of the shadows right he's the guy that's almost that's broken her heart he's the guy that's caused her to you know to crush almost crush her very spirit and yet she can't resist him and leaves my dad standing just adjacent to the shadows
And, uh, adjacent to the shadows would be a great autobiography title.
If you were going to trod the author board and, uh, and then off they go into the night.
And then that's where the story ends.
My dad does not, he does not follow up with like, well, and then the next day we had to keep doing this play.
He didn't say that was the last I ever saw her.
You know, there's always that, there's always the rest of the story, which a lot of times you don't get because the dramatic moment isn't,
And then we kept doing the play for two weeks.
The dramatic moment is like Marlon Brando.
That's just good storytelling.
Yeah, that's right.
But I have no idea.
And the internet is silent.
Or the internet is intentionally mute on the subject.
Maybe in the fullness of time, your own incredulous biographer...
will be able to work on this.
I'm thinking here of reading the Alexander Hamilton biography.
Like all biographies, it begins way before that person was born.
If you're going to do a biography, you know, well, you take, for example, the great Albert Goldman biography of Elvis, one of the great biographies.
That begins with Elvis being fitted into a corset and getting his diarrhea medicine before he goes on stage, along with his speed.
That sets the stage for the Elvis you're going to get here.
But most biographies start a long time before.
We're going to learn about Alexander Hamilton's grandparents before we learn about Alexander.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So with you, I mean, obviously there's going to have to be some solid David Roderick material.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
We've talked about this before.
Well, maybe they could go through his old checks.
It's not going to make, well, but I don't think there's a check.
I don't think it goes back as far as a check that would have like on the bottom of it, you know, a dinner with Rita.
Yeah.
But Rita Moreno in this same article references being looked up and down by a predatory animal who spotted his prey and paralyzes it with that look.
And later on, she sees that same predatory animal in Life magazine.
Turns out, John F. Kennedy.
Oh, dear.
And then after Marlon Brando, she dated a very, as she describes him, a very disappointing Dennis Hopper.
Oh, boy.
Elvis.
Oh, come on.
Rita, Rita, Rita.
In addition to EGOT, also relationships with Elvis Marlon Brando and potentially my dad.
Although, you know, he never my dad was not lascivious, right?
He wouldn't like you have to you have to remove these cataracts of history and go, well, that's the Dennis Hopper of the 50s.
That's the Elvis Presley of the 50s.
I mean, if you get your idea of Elvis from the fat Elvis stamp, man, go watch Elvis in like 56.
It's a whole different scene, man.
Look, but yeah, man.
But even look at him in the 68 comebacks, 68 comeback.
Now that's amphetamines again.
Well, but it doesn't read as amphetamines.
No, but he brings the motherfucking ruckus in that, for sure.
He does.
He's got a lot of charisma.
Well, you know what?
Can you imagine how much better your life would be if you had Scotty Moore?
If you had Scotty Moore and Count Basie.
I'm just saying, you get some tasteful people in your band.
Can you imagine the super band that you could have?
If you had Scotty Moore on guitar, you had Count Basie on the keys.
Who else are you going to bring in that band to have the world's most tasteful backup band for John Roderick?
Hal Blaine.
Hal Blaine.
Right.
Hal Blaine.
Can you imagine the patience of that man?
How patient he must have been?
I don't think of him as very patient.
Well, he's had a lot of problems.
He had to sell his awards and stuff, but just having to go through all of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson making a beat with their mouth and saying, do that, now change it.
No.
yeah or just yeah right like sitting in the room while brian wilson does 400 takes those stories are so great just you see that wrecking crew documentary right but they would just show up and it would just be like dozens of people in the room for like four hours just over and over and then sometimes nothing because brian wanted to figure out how to make it sound like a fire engine or whatever yeah brian brian would uh he'd sit and learn to play the theremin
Um, so yeah, if I had Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye just sitting in chairs, smoking cigarettes at my, at my leisure.
Was she wearing those little cat eye sunglasses?
Uh, yes.
That's a great book.
In my story?
Yes.
And then Scotty Moore playing the guitar.
Well, and Steve Cropper playing the guitar.
I mean, you know, if you had the wrecking crew at your disposal.
Okay.
All right.
That's pretty good.
That's a pretty good band.
Right?
Yeah.
Right.
And, uh, and then.
Donald Duck Dunn playing second bass, you think?
Yeah.
Why stop?
Or Tom Petty.
Yeah.
Why not have the whole thing being recorded by George Martin?
George Martin.
Or Nigel Goodrich.
Nigel Goodrich.
You've been watching Soundbreaking, haven't you?
Admit it.
I just discovered it last night.
How fucking great is Soundbreaking?
It's so great.
It's better than you expect.
You're thinking this is going to be another Talking Heads music documentary, but holy shit.
It's so good.
I watched three episodes right in a row.
Yeah, me too.
And I said, this is really good.
Why?
Why is this not?
Why are there not billboards in Times Square for this?
Why do we have to keep watching like Kevin James make more material?
And I'm not opposed to Kevin James, but he produces a lot of culture.
A lot.
I think disproportionate with his with his like his performance.
objective value right like here's kevin james he's fine he's good i like him fine he's not sir kevin james but i don't think he even has an obe at all he's no he got but he's got he's got he's got a new tv show where he sits on the roof of his house in a in a lawn chair and plays a blue collar guy with a with a suspiciously beautiful wife
And now he's in the subways here.
I see he's got a movie where he's like he's a implausibly overweight like assassin.
You've got a premise that's that strong and you bring in a Kevin James.
That is a license to print money, my friend.
Listen, I'm going to sell this in the room.
CIA assassin.
OK, get stuck in a door.
Who now is a mall cop.
Boom.
Boom.
God damn it.
You have this documentary.
Yes.
Simultaneous.
Contemporaneous with all this Kevin James culture.
This documentary where they interview literally all of the giants of popular music.
And they're all – and the script for it is just this sort of seamless, beautiful – Well, let me steal two quick things.
My friend does this podcast with TV critic Tim Goodman called TV Talk Machine.
Two things I want to crib from him.
Number one, hmm, I guess when George Martin's involved, you can find some pretty fucking amazing video footage.
That's right.
Nobody knew existed.
It's a production company.
Where did that come from?
But also the canny way that it's not the usual, okay, now let's talk about glam rock.
Now let's talk about new wave.
Now let's talk about blues.
Just the stuff about Bessie Jones, right?
Just like getting like, Q-Tips got a thought on that.
Like every person has a thought on this thing and you start to see, I think pretty fairly, how the pieces fit together.
Yeah, right.
You listen, I mean, Roger Waters is a very difficult person.
Oh, he was so gracious in this.
I'm not even sure that was him.
He's beautiful in this thing and he's like – so Roger Waters says – and it just – it comes – it's cut out of nowhere.
They're talking about something completely else and then all of a sudden Roger Waters says when they first played Sgt.
Pepper all the way through on the radio, we – Pink Floyd.
We pulled off the road.
We're on tour in a van.
Right.
Pink Floyd on tour in a van.
We pulled off to the side of the road to listen to the entire album on the car stereo and were like blown away and said like how – what do we do next?
Right.
And you just go, huh?
Right.
Boom.
Like, uh, that people you hear all the time, Sergeant Pepper, very influential album.
Yeah.
But here's Roger Waters.
And, you know, like in 1968, Pink Floyd.
And when you think about, think about what, what was going on then with those homies.
Yeah.
Here it is.
Sergeant Pepper.
And they're like, it's theatrical music.
It's theater music.
and yet it's also pop music.
And go.
But also that theme that keeps coming up, probably because it's very George Martin-y, that concept that certainly reached its apex was Steely Dan.
The concept of making music that you can't play live.
The idea is we're going to make something here.
Sgt.
Pepper is not meant to be something where we go to Shea Stadium with no monitors and yell really loud.
This is meant to be, there are things happening here that can't actually happen, even with a real band.
yeah that's that's it's and you're right steely dan sorry i had to get a dig in you hired the hit maker yes there's gas in the car what i what what i came away from the three episodes with though i mean aside from like 700 wonderful moments and wonderful feelings was um like watching nigel godrich
who was no older than the radiohead bros he's so young yeah and um he's just in the studio with them and they're just doing their thing and the collaborate the collaborative feeling of making a record with
uh, making a record with somebody where it, where it also feels like they have all the time in the world.
And they're like, the theme keeps coming up of like making it like a safe and secure place.
You can be vulnerable.
You can try things.
Yeah.
And they're just a, they're a member of the band.
Yeah.
And it's not a thing where you say, you know, Oh, well we've only got three more hours and then it all has to, you know, we have to wrap it up because there's another session in here.
And dude bro's got to make a living.
It's like we're in here until this gets done.
Did you see the voice episode?
Yeah, where Adele is doing her Adele thing.
First time I've ever really – well, see, I watched that one twice.
And the second time I watched it –
I don't know.
The Christina Aguilera thing felt a little bit contrived, but the first time I watched it, I was really moved.
And it reminded me of you a little bit.
And your philosophy of, like, we're not going to... This is not Hound Dog.
We're not going to do this 42 times.
And I don't know if that story about her was exactly true, but it worked for me.
I thought that was such a great bit.
Even if it was massaged a little bit, who knows?
Linda Perry's a hitmaker.
But that story of her wanting to redo her first take the entire time that they were recording...
And then settling on the last one saying, okay, you can do it one more time.
But nope, stop.
After one minute, stop.
Not as good as the first one.
Stop.
We're done.
What did you think when you saw that?
So I wasn't able to see the voice all the way through.
Oh, geez.
Sorry.
Spoilers.
It's okay.
Because my roommate in my hotel room here in New York City...
Let's call her my roommate.
Yeah.
Said at 430 in the morning.
Can you turn that down?
After watching three straight episodes of it.
What were you watching it on?
Were you watching it on an iPad?
I know I was watching it on the hotel television because it's a public television show on PBS.
But you had like on demand.
No, it's on PBS.
It was just – I just lucked into it.
It was just – I was flipping through the channels watching procedural crime dramas and like autopsy photographs.
That's so cool.
I saw that there – I've been watching them in the PBS app.
They're all up.
PBS is like, ah, fuck it.
Just put them all up.
But that's so cool.
So you were watching them like, wow, that's exciting.
That's even more fun.
So I'm flipping through the channels, right?
Yeah.
And I come upon episode one in the first minute.
And I was like, what's this, I wonder?
Magic.
And then it was like –
So three episodes later, I hear this voice.
Can you turn that down?
And my first reaction is, you have no idea what I'm watching here.
Like, no, I can't turn it down.
I should turn it up.
Yeah.
We should turn all the lights on.
Well, now that I spoke about it for you, it's basically Linda Perry talking about recording.
But wait, I get what you're saying.
I understand what it is because of this.
Hmm.
For many years within the music business, it has been fairly common, fairly understood knowledge that Christina Aguilera
is the hardest working singer in the game.
I've heard this.
Everybody agrees.
Everybody talks about it.
And because it sounds amazing at first, you think like, ah, she's just super talented.
She shows up.
She has a young diva checks out.
Yeah.
She's got some kind of cup of tea over here.
She works for an hour and then says, you know, fix it in the mix or whatever.
But everybody says she's a perfectionist and she just she works harder than anybody else in the room.
And as soon as Linda Perry showed up on the screen, you know, I have, I, she's very out.
She's very outspoken.
She's done a lot of amazing work in the music industry, but she's also someone who's wearing a hat.
She's got a lot of neck tattoos in a story.
Yeah.
She's got a lot of neck tattoos.
She's got an unusual hat.
And I feel like unusual hat.
I mean, that's what divorces me from Pharrell a little bit.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Harper in that episode also wearing a hat.
He's got a story, too.
Hat and a story.
He's got a story.
You know what I'm saying, though?
You know what I mean, though?
This is not the first time you've told this anecdote.
That's right.
Do you remember the first Ben Harper record?
I know Ben Harper's name.
That's it.
So Ben Harper now is a member of the sort of Horde tour culture, right?
You think of him now as...
somebody within the john mayer school of like a little bit what i what i think of as like greasy dentist office music you know like it's not just dentist office music it's a little bit greasy too like the band train or it's just like it's on the it's in the dentist's office so it's not offending anybody it doesn't offend middle-aged people that are getting their teeth cleaned but it's also trying to rep that it's
Either rock or blues in some kind of real – in like, oh, this is the blues.
And it's not.
It's not the blues.
It's something else.
It's something a little greasy.
But the first Ben Harper record was – because Ben Harper and I are almost exactly the same age, I think.
And it came out in the 90s, not even the late 90s.
And it was really good.
He was this young guy that was playing lap steel at a time when kind of nobody was playing lap steel.
And it had these good tunes on it.
1992.
Yeah.
And it was being played –
In all the cool Seattle cafes, it did feel like here's a guy that is doing something nobody else is doing.
He's very authentic and these are good tunes.
It felt like the first Lenny Kravitz record where you're like, what is this guy?
He's even better than Terrence Trent Darby.
But then as time goes on, somehow they pick their culture.
It's not what you think their culture is going to be.
Or maybe their culture picks them.
I've told you, haven't I, about the time, like Modest Mouse in Seattle in the 90s was very cool, young, punky, weird band doing some weird stuff.
Weird and angular.
Yeah.
Initially, they were a little bit like almost para-ubu-y.
Yeah, right.
Isaac Brock would buy the cheapest guitar he could find with a whammy bar.
He would take the whammy bar off.
And he would put his hand under the floating bridge at the back of the guitar and would manually whammy the bridge.
Like he was doing that not with a whammy bar, but just with the palm of his hand, the butt of his hand.
And it was like, that kid's doing something that nobody else is doing.
And then I was at the show.
which i think was the turning point for modest mouse which was one day they were playing the crocodile cafe for their usual they expected their usual audience of 240 people and it was not their usual audience there was a sold out show of 350 people and the additional um hundred people were all wearing white baseball caps backwards
And Modest Mouse took the stage and were like, whoa, who are you?
And the 100 people went, whoo!
Modest Mouse looked on stage horrified.
They looked as horrified as we were in the audience.
Like, who are these guys?
And it was the bros.
The bros who discovered them.
The bros discovered Modest Mouse.
And the bros came where formerly there had been no bros.
There were now bros.
And the next time Modest Mouse played, the 240 people who had followed their careers up until that point were gone.
And in their place were 900 bros.
And off they went.
I mean, and that was their career.
And you could tell they didn't want that.
You could see on their faces like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We want the...
We want our friends, but you don't get to pick your audience.
And I wonder if that didn't happen to Ben Harper, where Ben Harper was like, and one day there were all these like Joe Michaels or Dave Michaels or what's his name?
Dave Michaels.
Oh, yeah, yeah, John Jacket.
John Jacket, right?
Jack Jacket.
And then they were all there.
And then it's like, well, you know, you don't get to pick your audience.
You got to play for the people that are buying the tickets.
Lonson Crowder West came out in 1997.
That's the first one I owned, I think.
Wow, the one before that was at Dub Narcotic.
Whew.
They were on K?
They did everything right.
In those early, early days, it's not that they did everything right, it's that everybody liked them.
They were quirky.
They were really good.
They made an album that never, they made some recordings that never came out that are kind of owned by a friend of mine that still sit on his shelf on tape.
He said that
When they were 19 years old, they were literally sniffing glue.
And that feels very authentic.
Yeah.
Like glue sniffing.
Right?
Sure.
That's like, wow.
You got to kind of stop and put your finger on your chin and stare up at the ceiling.
Yeah, for a certain age, when you're doing inhalants, you're not doing it to be cool.
You're just sniffing glue.
You think that would ever catch on in New York?
I mean, as it is right now, last time I was in New York, I just felt like everybody was smoking.
And now, I mean, here in San Francisco, if you're smoking, you might as well be masturbating into a bag.
It really looks like you're just like, look, I'm so sorry.
I got 10 minutes.
I'm really stressed out.
You know?
Inhalants could get hot.
You never know.
I feel like New York really, really doesn't
Um, just is, just doesn't care.
It's just not ever going to care.
I remember when smoking was first outlawed in Los Angeles and there were all these bars where they, so Los Angeles used to have a thing.
I don't think it does it anymore, but it used to be very fashionable in LA to turn the lights down in the bar so low that
That you felt like you were in a catacomb.
Like you'd walk into a normal bar that had normal couches and people sitting around and the lights were so freaking low.
They couldn't.
It was like you can't really navigate this social space because everyone is just in shadow.
That's not very safe.
It was not.
It didn't feel I was not.
And that, you know, I was rock and roll, but I was not that comfortable being in a room with 300 people that I couldn't see.
Because of dark, not because if it was 300 people I couldn't see because of smoke.
Yeah.
Sure.
300 people I couldn't see because organic.
That's more like a grassroots kind of darkness.
Yeah.
Smoke it up.
Right.
Smoke it up.
But when smoking was first outlawed in Los Angeles, there were all these bars where it was clear that that somebody said, well, we're just not going to enforce that.
And so there was suddenly not just not just the normal amount of.
Smoking is cool.
But now this additional like smoking is illegal.
I don't think that I don't think that goes on in L.A.
anymore.
I think that that was very that was very brief.
And then people realized, wait a minute, we're L.A.
like we eat per capita 40 avocados a week.
We're not per capita.
That's a lot of avocados.
You know, you know, that's why that's why global warming.
Is that right?
Yeah, because of the avocados.
Avocados, you can get them in California, but if people are eating 40 a day, what do you got?
You got probably about 90 million people in LA?
90 million people.
Something like that.
Times 40 avocados a day.
That's like 3,600 avocados.
Easy.
So that's why global warming.
Ah, yes.
Because there's not the kind of journalism that we used to have.
No, and the smoke is probably not helping.
See, I think the smoking's out.
Oh, is this a turns out, John?
Maybe people started smoking again.
I'm looking at sniffing glue here on the internet.
Locker room.
You just don't see locker room in Rush like you used to.
What's locker room?
Oh, I've heard them called amyl nitrates.
Poppers, but we used to just get a bottle of it and snort it right out of the bottle.
You're telling me that you used to snort amyl nitrate?
I didn't know that's what it was called then.
See, for years, I heard amyl nitrate as the drug that you would use in a gay bar.
Yes!
Well, see, to me, you would go to a... I never knew why you went to a sex shop to get it.
But you would go to a sex shop, and you'd pay something on the order of $5 to $8 for a bottle of... In Florida, it was called Rush.
In most other places, it was called Locker Room.
Oh, my God.
Locker Room.
Locker Room.
Holy shit.
It never occurred to me until now.
Locker Room.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
It's right there on the label.
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
And you could snort that.
And I used to do a fair amount of that.
You could keep it in your glove box.
My sense of ML Nitrate was that it was a thing that you did right as you were orgasming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it turned your – talk about jacking off in a bag.
It turned the whole thing into like a woo.
It's like being on Coney Island.
There was a lot to recommend it.
Yes, certainly you're going to have a brain damage situation.
But the beauty of it was you could take it – you could pretty easily get that into a concert.
And you could keep it in your car.
And it was the kind of thing where like if you smoked a doobie, you're going to have lots of smoke and stuff.
But like with locker room, you get really super high for like 90 seconds and you get a little headache and then it goes away and you do it again.
Locker room.
Locker room.
You know, the inhalant of choice in Alaska at the time was nitrous oxide.
And we would go to the party supply store.
I think that's made a comeback.
We find a lot of those on the street here.
Nitrous?
Yeah, whippets we call them.
Yeah.
But we would go – we did whippets, but we also went to the party supply store and would buy like a canister.
They're pretty costly.
If you buy them in whippet format, even if you've got a cracker and a balloon, that gets pretty costly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's why we would buy them in these like fire extinguisher sized.
You're saying you cut out the middleman.
Cut out the middleman.
And we'd say we're putting on a we're doing a party for our high school.
Oh, my goodness.
We'd like to buy a thing of this for our balloons.
And they would be like, here you go, son.
Have a good time.
Having a whipped cream party.
And then there was an adapter that you would screw on it that would allow you to fill up balloons.
And, of course, how do you use nitrous oxide?
You fill up a balloon.
We used to use punch balloons.
You could go to a head shop and buy this thing.
We called it a cracker.
But it was this thing that was a bespoke item, kind of like brass knuckles.
You'd open it up.
You'd stick the little whippet in there.
And then you had a kid's punch balloon attached to that.
Classic ugly drug paraphernalia.
yeah but we never no one was hip to amyl nitrate in alaska we were too busy doing nitrous let alone and i think nitrous oh it's it's with very superior it's a wonderful wonderful high if you've never tried it i highly recommend it and i'm not a doctor i'm not a medical doctor my friend introduced me to nitrous oxide and dancing to susie and the banshees and i never looked back
I was listening to Susie and the Banshees the other day.
No, no.
Imagine that.
Imagine you got the 12 inch of that, the really long version.
Yeah.
You're doing some nitrous?
Think about that for a minute, buddy.
I am thinking about it.
It makes you want to masturbate in a bag.
I lived it.
I lived it.
And it's also, you know, nitrous oxide is very good with the classic era of British heavy metal.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it can also, well, I'm not suggesting this.
I don't think this is a good idea.
But it can also be nice when you're super high.
Okay, so this is the thing.
And this is what I've never fully understood.
Did you get Dr. Pepper with that?
Is that what you used to drink, Dr. Pepper?
Is that right?
Well, Mountain Dew.
Mountain Dew, sorry.
Mountain Dew.
And then Dr. Pepper.
As time went on, I said, look, Mountain Dew is for kids.
Yeah.
But Dr. Pepper is a sophisticated drink.
Sophisticated because...
Because it's old and you feel like it's an old world drink.
It's an old world drink.
You think of, you know, like an old man is going to order a Dr. Pepper in a soda fountain.
Yeah, it's got like a pruney taste.
Nobody's going to order a Mountain Dew.
I mean, Mountain Dew is like if you're down in the Appalachians fucking mooks and jeeps.
Fuck that.
If you're if you're in the Appalachians and you say Mountain Dew, you might get some moonshot.
Oh, or you might get a bottle of crystal meth.
I bet it's one of those things where there's some what they call namespace pollution.
I bet there's a lot of things called Mountain Dew and you want to be real careful what you order and from whom.
I bet if you're in the panhandle in San Francisco and you ask a guy for Mountain Dew, you're going to get a sheet of blotter acid.
Oh, or he might urinate on you.
Or urinate in a bag and then hand you the bag.
Can you rush?
Can I snort this while you're urinating on me?
Can I get a Mountain Dew?
No ice?
I feel like the thing about nitrous oxide, when you're watching a movie in the speed...
or rushed genre right where some uh young people are driving some fast cars okay some uh like uh gone in gone in 30 seconds yeah or whatever the fast and the angry yeah gone in 15 seconds 15 seconds and then the then the follow-up movie was gone in 11 seconds 15 5 so all of those uh all of those movies those racer movies yeah you'll notice that
they often have a bottle of nitrous oxide as a performance enhancer.
Oh, yeah, right.
Where they shoot nitrous into their car, and it somehow, I think the way it works is that it somehow, what, it just... No, Evel Knievel has given talks about this.
Evel Knievel used to say, you don't want to be doing drugs, that's like doing pure nitrous.
Now, Nux, when Nux hits the pedal to get the extra speed in Fury Road, is that nitrous?
Yes, NOX, NOX, nitrous oxide, right?
N-O-X.
Um, and, uh, yeah, it like densifies the fuel or something.
And then it burns.
And then you're all of a sudden you're slammed back into the back of your chair.
Yep.
Yep.
And, and I'm good.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the, if in one of those movies, when the nitrous button gets pushed, the person that goes into the lead at that moment is not going to win the race.
Oh my.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Spoiler.
Hmm.
But so I have found that nitrous acts similarly as a power enhancer for other drugs like marijuana.
If you do some marijuana and then you push the button on some nitrous, you're going to get more stoned, more high.
It's got an additive quality.
Now, I'm sure there are people listening to this program who are like, why are these two advocating drugs?
Well, we're not, but I can tell you why, because our marijuana is not your marijuana.
That's right.
You buy that fucking crazy-ass marijuana you people who love your marijuana get.
Forget it.
I had stuff like that maybe once in my life.
Maybe.
You're talking about the chronic.
I'm talking about the chronic.
You're talking about the medical grade, as they say.
Yeah, I'm talking about the Matanushka Thunderfuck type operations.
I went into a drugstore the other day.
First time I'd been in one.
A drugstore?
No, the store of drugs.
Oh, the store, okay.
Tienda de los Drugs.
De los Drugs.
I said to the guy leaned on the counter, you know kind of casual because I don't belong there right because I haven't done any drugs in 20 years No, but I'm there with some friends.
They wanted to go to the drugstore Hey, we're in Seattle.
Can we go to the drugstore?
Mm-hmm.
I was like sure let's go to the drugstore.
I know where one is I know a gal that owns one hmm We go in we're leaning there and they've got some they've got some pot people working behind the counter and
And my friends are looking at all the stuff that you can buy, bubble gum and bubble yum.
And there are bath salts that are infused with pot.
Talk about namespace pollution.
You know what I mean?
Like face cream and condoms.
You go into the store of drugs and order bath salts and they give you marijuana things to put in the bath.
It looks like a bath salt.
It acts like a bath salt.
It smells like a bath salt.
Okay.
But it's full of pot.
Okay, but it's not the face eating kind.
I think the jury's still out on that face-eating stuff.
Yeah.
No, that was in Tallahassee.
The first one or the second one?
I don't know.
Did you hear about the second one?
Was there another one?
Yeah, the first one was the first one where the guy got shot.
Bath salts face-eating.
But there was another one recently.
A boy, a young man who was a Trump supporter...
Freaked out in, again, in Florida.
Yeah.
Unclear whether he was.
Sorry about that.
And he also ate someone's face.
Flocka?
Is that what they call it?
What's Flocka?
Flocka.
Is that the name of Flocko?
Flocka or bath salts?
Flocko.
Flocka.
F-L-A-K-K-A.
I really liked his, like, 80s dance records, Flocko.
Was that the guy that played the pan flute, John?
The pan flute guy was... Zamfir.
Enrique.
Enrique Suave.
Enrique Zamfir.
No, you're right.
Zamfir, he was the master of the pan flute.
Zamfir Jacket.
He's not the only one to play the pan flute.
He's the self-proclaimed master of the pan flute.
I don't think it's like a river dance, lord of the dance, where clearly Michael Flatley is the lord of the dance.
Really?
Have you ever seen him dance?
Did the queen call him that?
You think he got an OBE?
I feel like if you're lord of the dance, that's a type.
You should have property and maybe be a member of parliament.
that's right that's exactly right you should be in the house of lords if you're the lord of the dance I haven't seen the end of the crown I still got one episode left so maybe Michael I heard he's a boxer I heard you don't want to fuck with that guy that's what I heard does he stand in a clearing oh yeah
You know what you can watch on YouTube?
My daughter and I watch this twice a month.
You can go in and see the final performance of Riverdance from circa 1996.
And it's breathtaking.
I feel like the final performance of the Riverdance is what we were all waiting for.
Did you find it breathtaking, the cloppity-clop-clop-clop of that dance?
It's stunning.
The line could be a little bit straighter, but give them credit.
They've been at it for years.
The thing is, we got burned out on that because it was always in TV commercials for years, but then I finally watched it on YouTube, and I was like, this is pretty good.
Also, the lady dancing with him.
You should check out the lady dancing with him.
She looks like she smells good.
Did she warrant a...
Yep.
I watched Rita Moreno.
I bet Rita Moreno smells good.
I bet she doesn't clop dance, though.
You've seen her dance.
Oh, yeah.
Everything's free in America.
West Side Story, which I highly recommend you pick up.
We've watched it.
The daughter has seen it.
We have watched this movie.
We like this movie.
It's a good movie.
From your first cigarette to your last dying day.
I was on YouTube for whatever reason, for whatever reason that anybody goes on YouTube.
I spent a lot of time on YouTube.
And I saw a thing where there were – it was some kind of show and I'm going to say Broadway-esque show or off-Broadway show where a group of hip-hop dancers –
And a group of river dancers had a sort of dance off West Side Story style where they were beefing some kind of beef.
And then one guy went, oh, yeah, well, cloppity cloppity clop.
And then the other guy went, oh, yeah, well, oh, no, it was tap.
It wasn't hip hop dance.
It was tap.
but done in a contemporary style.
It's like river tap versus urban tap.
Like, yeah, like tap, but, but with a lot of, uh, with a lot of hip hop shading and then river dance, but in a sort of like, this is just how we do in Ireland.
This is just, we're sitting around.
This is our urban dance style.
When things get a little rough in Belfast.
Yeah.
I think it's a, I think it's a regular iron.
Is it an, is it a Northern Ireland thing?
I thought it was a regular Ireland thing.
I'm going to say – I'm going to go with you and say regular Ireland.
Regular Ireland.
But, you know, there are regular Irish up in Belfast too.
They're not all orangemen.
But so it was a very entertaining show where there was like, you know, some Savion Glover style zappity-dappity-dap.
Yeah.
I love that stuff.
Love it.
And then cloppity-cloppity-clop over here.
And for a brief moment in the middle of the show, you think, oh, these are –
these are similar.
There's, there is similar talent required to do these styles, right?
Like cloppity cloppers are really moving fast and doing lots of stuff.
And then the tap, uh, dances, you know, like also we all love tap dance, but then as the show progresses, the tap dancers cannot help themselves because
And they just school the Irish dancers.
Oh, really?
Just lay waste to them.
And it's not meant to happen.
It's not part of the show is meant to be like, see, these two traditions of clop dancing, they're the same.
But in fact, the tap dancers were a thousand times better dancers.
And they just, you know, they just couldn't stop.
I'm intrigued.
They're like, and then there's, because they are capable of so much more polyrhythm, there's so much more like off accent and like smooth, like, like style.
And you're allowed to use your arms.
You can use your arms.
You can do, and you can slide.
There's all this sort of sliding and like dancing on the, on the sand.
And then that caused me, once I realized that tap dancing was just empirically superior to all other dance, then I went down a tap dancing YouTube rabbit hole, where you're watching some of the greats, the tap greats.
Yeah, what's his name?
Anthony Jacket?
What's his name?
Gregory... Bob Jacket.
You're talking about Gregory Hines?
Gregory Hines Jacket, yeah.
But the guys that...
The guys that Gregory Hines was paying respect to, like the originators, or maybe not the originators, but that generation.
Like a Bojangles Robinson type situation.
They were all like 75 when –
Gregory Hines was third.
And he's like, I'd like to introduce to you the man that taught me everything.
He's the Ricky Jay of tap dancing.
That's right.
He brought tap dancing forward.
Gregory Hunt.
But had great reverence for the people that came before.
That's right.
The reverence.
I like that.
And so there is a lot of footage on YouTube of like the masters, the old school masters of tap.
And they all had different styles.
And there's some show where a bunch of these guys at 80 years old were all doing a little bit of tap battle against each other.
And talk about charming.
I bet that's classy as hell.
I watched it and I got pregnant.
Briefly.
These are complicated times.
I feel like Susie and the Banshees are becoming more important to me as time goes on.
And I don't know how that can be true because I didn't
I liked them, but I didn't feel like
They were, you know, they were like a sub-Cure.
Well, they were, as an American, I wasn't a huge fan.
Actually, Cities and Dust was the first Cities and the Vanshees thing I got into.
I then went back and heard the other stuff.
But they were in a weird place from an American standpoint because, like, you might know she's kind of famous for being, like, an original punk.
You might know they're kind of famous because Robert Cure was in the band.
No, good old Robert Cure.
Robert Jacket was in the band for, like, a year.
right yep uh early no i think i think maybe kind of around that time like around the i think he took some time off from uh from the cure band but but but they're in a weird place because are they kind of kind of they goth are they well are they dance it's kind of weird where they're such a perfect fit for england in some ways but in america they're kind of like you know neither fish nor fowl unless you're a super fan and i think that she had a huge influence on like goth goth kids
Goth kids.
That's right.
Only 90s kids would get this.
I feel like Gary Newman and Human League and Eurythmics were all on my side of the line that I drew somewhere without knowing, somewhere in the sand.
I drew a line.
And Gary Newman and Human League and Eurythmics were on the side of the line that I drew.
doug but like depeche mode and and many of those like bands that most people might know from one hit song that have not just many more songs that you may not have heard but were in other bands before you got two boy army you got the tourists you got all this great music that like never surfaced over here yeah right but there was but there was also a line of seriousness and
And somehow, even though Flock of Seagulls were really derided at the time for their silly hair, I always included Flock of Seagulls on the side.
Human League, Eurythmics, Gary Newman.
Flock of Seagulls.
I accepted those bands and enjoyed them, even if I was quiet about it.
Whereas Depeche Mode, Thompson Twins, that stuff over here, I was not on its team.
I was against it for whatever reason.
I didn't like ABC.
I like ABC.
Well, I know, but I just was against it.
And like Depeche Mode, like Susie and the Banshees, I had it over there.
I had it kind of over in the Depeche Mode category where I couldn't quite bring it over into the
Like, I really was into Duran Duran.
Didn't like Spandau Bentley.
Yeah, they... Let me ask you this.
I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for something.
Did you ever see a movie called Erg, A Music War?
Oh, Erg, A Music War.
See, now to me, that movie was very, very important to me.
Really?
Oh, God, yes.
And I saw it.
My friend taped it off probably Night Flight or HBO, probably 1983.
And it was funny, because on the one hand, you could see what the Go-Go's looked like before they were the Go-Go's.
But listen to this lineup.
OMD, Magazine, Go-Go's.
I'm just going to jump through some of these.
Flesh Tones, Joan Jett, X, XTC, Devo, The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Dead Kennedys, Gary Neumann.
Gary Neumann, I think, doing a Two-Boy Army song.
Klaus Nomi, first exposure to Klaus Nomi, Wall of Voodoo, Pair, Ubu, Steel, Pulse, UB-40, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Police.
So you see The Police, Devo, Go-Go's, Wall of Voodoo, bands that were already kind of known for something in America.
But it was my first exposure to the cramps.
Lux Interior sticks the microphone into his fucking pants.
You're like, what is this?
First time I ever saw Dead Kennedys.
Do you know what I mean?
None of these bands have that much to do with each other other than nobody else in my school knows these bands.
I mean, that sounds silly, but remember when Steel Pulse comes out, they do KKK, and they came out in the robes?
It was such a stunning movie.
It's just a concert movie of shows in London and L.A., but that had such... Do you remember Gary Neumann coming out in the little car?
Remember how fucking weird that was?
You're like, what is Klaus Nomi?
Totally clips.
It's like, what is this?
What is happening?
I would like to recommend to people who are listening to this program that right when Merlin hits the bell and then we start talking about Susie and the Banshees, you push play on Erg a Music War.
Yeah.
And then this will perfectly line up with it.
Okay.
Should we do it right now?
You ready?
Ready?
Erg a Music War.