Ep. 262: "He Never Swore"
SuperTrain.
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Hi, Merlin.
Hi, John.
How's it going?
Hey, it's Merlin.
Everything's great.
Everything's so great.
Everything's fine.
Remain calm.
All is well.
I got my bacon number today.
Ooh.
Your vacant number?
No, this is boring stuff, but I struggle.
I struggle with my computer machine.
Oh, your computer.
Yeah.
You know, I have a computer here.
Yeah, is that right?
Yeah, but I felt like I needed another one.
Oh, now you've got my attention.
And so I was like, I've got the laptop, which already has more computing power than all the computers that sent us to the moon.
And I'll never use it.
I'll never use any of that computing power.
I've always felt with the computers that I look at it and it's, you know, it's this world of potential that I'll never exploit.
I'm just using WordStar.
But I got this laptop and I didn't want, it just felt like it was a special box that I had the special things in, but I needed like a big box that I put other stuff in.
Ooh.
And I wanted it to be, you know, like that one that I used to have that everybody laughed at me from 2005.
It was a big box.
It had stuff in it.
Yeah.
So I was over at my friend Jason Finn, drummer of the Presidents of the United States of America's house.
And he had this this apple sitting there.
And I said, what are you doing with that?
He's like, oh, you know, cleaning up, getting it out of here.
He said, I've got a laptop, so I don't need that anymore.
And I was like, hmm, well, why don't you give it to me?
And he said, oh, okay, for a steak dinner.
Interesting.
It's just sitting there doing nothing for him.
It's just sitting there doing nothing.
And he said, it'll probably take one more upgrade.
Like, it'll probably, it's not brand new.
Mm-mm.
But it's still useful for the big box that I need, that I feel like I need.
A tabletop box.
So he said, it doesn't have a keyboard or anything.
You're going to have to do that yourself.
And you taught me to buy those solar powered keyboards.
So I went on to the online and I got one of those sent to me.
And I went downtown to the fancy – because Jason's like, oh, no, it's got to be a good steak dinner.
Went down to the fancy steakhouse at lunch.
I walk in.
He's sitting there with this computer on the table like some real suave guys doing a slick handoff.
But in the interim, I remembered that I had found –
Little bag that I'd been meaning to give to Jason which was a special bag and I know how you feel about special bags You know how I feel about special Jason feels this way, too This was a bag many many many years ago KEXP our local alternative radio station gave away a messenger bag as a bonus if you donated
Some big amount of money.
Okay.
You got this messenger bag and we all got them.
All the rock musicians at the time got these bags.
They were bright orange.
They said KEXP on them.
Some people really... And you know, it was big enough to put a stack of 12-inch records in it.
Is it like a Timbuktu bag?
Nope.
No, it was just... It's actually, I mean, in my personal opinion, kind of... It has zero features.
It's just a bag made out of... Made out of bag.
Made out of bag.
It says KEXP on it.
It's bright orange.
A lot of people took these bags as their kind of signature at the time.
Nabeel or...
drummer had one i had a couple of them you know it's a bag you throw some stuff in but it never didn't it didn't mean that much emotionally to me so i was going through i was going through bags the other about a month ago and i i opened up a bag big bag it was full of bags i dug in i was like oh look at this look at that i pulled out a pulled out a bag out of there
Opened it up.
It had bags in it.
And inside that bag was one of these orange KEXP bags that I hadn't seen in a long time.
It was in perfect condition.
Jason was one of these people that had that KEXP bag and he took it everywhere.
He wore his into the ground.
He wore out.
He wore out this bag.
Sounds like he really bonded with the bag.
The bag meant so much to him.
And after he'd blown out this bag, he actually, you know, he made a kind of stink about it around town.
Like he went to KEXP.
He said, why don't you guys make this bag again?
And they were like, that's from 10 years ago.
And he said, I know, but it's the best.
Like, could you make this bag just like make just a handful at a special level?
Nobody would accommodate him.
And I knew he was brokenhearted that he couldn't replace this bag.
So I'm down there and I'm like,
Surprise, I brought you the, like, unobtainium bag.
Oh, he gets all teary-eyed.
He hugs it to himself like his childhood teddy bear.
But now we're in this uncomfortable position where I've given him something worth a lot more to him than this dumb computer he's giving me.
And yet I'm still on the hook for buying him a steak.
And this is a topic that has not been broached overtly.
No.
He still thinks there's some steak coming.
Well, because I'm Mr. Surprise person, right?
You are Mr. Surprise person.
You brought me a cello.
I brought you a cello.
I like surprises.
I didn't ask for it.
I like to say, surprise!
I was thinking of you.
I got you this thing.
I found this thing is what often happens.
I found this thing.
I thought of you.
Surprise.
Surprise.
Jason, like I say, a tear in his eye, but he's also a stickler for the deal.
Jason's a stickler for the deal.
You don't become a Jason Finn by just letting it slide.
Like you, he has dealt with the guy in the back room smoking a cigar and peeling off the $100 bills.
He knows whereof he speaks.
He knows this whole, like, oh, we're negotiating the record contract.
Well, we're giving you 100% control over the artwork.
In exchange for 94% of the creative output.
Jason knows.
That's a lot of people's favorite part.
It really is.
Listen, we negotiated hard for this 100% control over the artwork.
And the label's like, fine, kid.
Jason knows.
So Jason sits down with his brand new bag, tear-stained bag, tucks his napkin into his shirt,
Orders a $65 steak.
Ooh, that's a nice steak.
Well, it was a nice steak, I have to say.
You guys have good steak there.
It's a good steak place.
Not to be undone, of course.
I ordered a $72 steak myself.
You're not made of stone?
So, you know, long story short, I end up footing the bill for no small amount of lunch.
I got this computer.
The bag is gone.
The bag was not, that was no undue burden on me, right?
It's not like I tearfully parted with the bag.
I found that bag in a bag in a bag.
Yeah, that's the complexity, is you both were in some way proffering something that was not of current super value to yourself.
He was not using his desktop computer machine, and you were not using the bag in a bag in a bag.
Right.
Okay.
But we can all agree on stake.
We can all agree that stake is a medium of exchange.
But so anyway, now I have this computer, this big computer, and now it is sitting here on the table...
But I haven't plugged it in yet, so I'm doing this show on my laptop.
Oh, good.
Okay.
But it's here.
I'm looking at it.
It looks like an Apple.
Does it have a big apple on the front?
It does, and one on the back.
One on the back.
It's big, it's silver, it's on a kind of stand that looks like a paper clip.
Sounds like you might have what's called an iMac.
An iMac?
I think I do.
If I had my druthers, it's what I would be recording on right now.
Is that right?
Yes.
In other circumstances, I would be speaking to you on my iMac.
What are you speaking to me on right now?
A MacBook, which is in the parlance today in my circle sometimes called the MacBook Adorable.
It's very, very small and cute and mostly useless unless your iMac is not working.
And then you plug it in with many, many dongles and you talk to your friend on the Internet for a little while.
Oh.
So you're running dongles right now.
Oh, I'm in dongle country.
This is one of those part of that current spate of Apple products that are really great as long as you don't use them for anything.
They operate flawlessly in conditions where you don't try to do anything useful with them.
The iMac, I don't know how old your iMac is, but do you have a rough idea?
What are we talking about?
Orders of magnitude?
How old is that thing?
Well, old enough that he bought it and then used it long enough that it was sitting on the table at his house.
And he was like, I got to get rid of this thing.
So three to five or more years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's put it at let's split the difference at four, four and a half years.
Okay.
It's not really splitting the difference, but that's my guess.
This is not begging the question.
That one drives me crazy.
Right.
People say begging the question when they really mean raising the question.
Yeah, no, that's not begging the question.
What is your opinion about this that's four years old?
Let's say it's four years old.
Well, I can, in the fullness of time, I will give you an idea what kind of deal you got on it.
But the truth is that that is a computer that unless it has some kind of problem, I mean, it's sort of like, you know, Kramer trading his radar detector to Newman.
for the crash helmet and neither one of them works right it becomes a kind of sad gift of the magi if that thing works you might have something kind of good on your hands that you can put all your mp3s on isn't that kind of part of the deal you want all your stuff on a thing i want stuff on a thing but also yeah like i i have a little bit of i mean i don't have anywhere near the computer attachment anxiety
That probably I'm guessing 99.9% of the people listening to this program suffer from.
They have a lot of feelings.
And so like if my laptop got left somewhere or if it got wiped or if it got stolen or
Or if it was, you know, or if, God forbid.
It sat in a crackhead's trunk for a year.
It sat in a crackhead's trunk for a year.
Or if he were to be shot by a policeman.
Or if he were to, or some other unfortunate.
I understand like a Theodore Roosevelt type situation.
Like you're up there giving a speech and a gunman takes a crack at you.
And stops the bullet.
Computer takes the blow.
You continue speaking because you're all fucking Theodore Roosevelt.
That kind of situation.
That's right.
I'm shot by a bullet, but I apprehend the culprit, first of all, and then continue with my speech.
Never pausing.
Never pausing.
Okay.
All right.
So I don't have that problem.
What I just have is the problem of proliferation of boxes.
Yeah, but also justice.
You want to make sure this is just.
If you turn this thing on and it has a bomb on it or something, you know, like a sad face or something, if it doesn't work, the hard drive is busted or something, you know?
Oh, we'll go.
Jason and I will go back to the start.
Yeah, I'm curious.
I mean, I don't want to get in front of our skis on this one.
But, you know, Jason's an art dealer and he's a drummer.
Right.
So these are things we need to keep in mind.
I don't want to cast aspersions.
We're living in a more woke and learned time.
And I don't want to just say things about drummers, even though we know it's mostly true.
It's a cultural thing.
See, I think it's a difference in culture when you're dealing with a drummer.
You're absolutely right.
It's not that they're...
less intelligent or trustable.
Don't you think a lot of it is how a drummer is raised?
You know, I appreciate that you're trying to show cultural sensitivity here.
I want to be culturally sensitive because I've never walked in drummer's shoes.
That's right.
And I imagine they suffer a lot.
They're the brunt of a lot of jokes that are very funny because they're true.
And they're usually the least useful person in the band, including the bass player.
And taken together.
You ever have to move your drummer's drums because they just weren't into it?
They were talking to somebody?
Guitar players end up doing a lot of the heavy lifting, in my experience.
The drummer's in a restroom stall and can't figure out how to get out.
You've got the bass player over here talking up a bird, and you're the one carrying the floor toms, if you know what I'm saying.
You remember I had a guy that didn't have cases for his drums or cymbals because he didn't believe in them.
He would carry each cymbal.
Is that part of the culture, John?
Is that your raise?
It's symbolic?
No.
No.
Okay.
No, no, no.
I think other drummers also, that was anomalous.
But you're right.
I mean, this is the problem with stereotypes.
There's stereotypes for a reason.
Yeah.
And talk about that anymore.
No, you can't really.
It's impossible to say everything that we used to be able to say about drummers.
Yes, because it was understood in the culture that we were.
that we were not only just kidding, but also... Well, that we were serious.
That we were serious and it was true.
Yeah, I mean, it's a kind of kidding that's very, very serious.
And a lot of people don't have to live with a drummer.
They don't have to, you know, deal with a drummer in a business standpoint or with trying to keep a beat or any of those kinds of things.
And all they want to do, they've got their crash symbol that's made out of a cross-cut saw, and that's like a funny thing to them.
They strap it onto a stand, and pretty soon you're carrying that out to the van.
While they're stuck in the bathroom.
There are drummers, and then there are drummers.
Oh, are you talking about percussionists?
Well, I'm talking about, you know, like, the difference between a drummer, like, I know a drummer.
I know a lot of drummers.
Sure.
I'm friends with drummers.
Yeah, well.
But then there are, you know, then there are drummers that are like, ugh, right?
Everybody knows what we're talking about here.
Drummers.
At some point, well, here's the thing.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
You need to get this thing rolling.
Make sure it just even starts up, right?
That's got to be one of the first tasks.
I'm looking at it here in the sidelight, and there's a schmutz on it.
And I specifically said to him when he handed it over to me, I was like, this thing's not covered with schmutz, is it?
And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Which immediately, like, yes, it was.
But he's also very... He's fastidious enough that I think he sprayed it down with a cleaner.
Oh, okay.
That's nice.
But there's like something on the screen that won't rub off.
It's like a damage.
Like something...
It's not cracked, but it's like it's got some kind of a physical artifact of some kind of damage.
Yeah, it's got like a like looks like, you know, because it's like it's made out of the same stuff as my electric stove, your core and stovetop stuff.
Yeah.
And it looks like somebody put a pot down on it.
I would not... See, I shouldn't say this.
I wouldn't put that past a drummer.
If a drummer made some beans and needed a place to put them, I could see him putting his iMac off-axis and using it as a kind of trivet.
How do we know that he didn't drum on it?
How do we know that this isn't some kind of thing where he did a paradiddle on it while he was... He paradiddleed on his computer machine.
He was websiteing and he was like... He probably thinks that adds value.
Because they do that on the dashboard of their car.
You'll see that a lot.
Yeah.
You'll see that in traffic.
Oh, my.
I think that this actually has a – well, wait a minute.
Now I'm rubbing it here.
It won't rub off.
Well, we'll find out.
Be careful.
You don't want to get too many oils on there.
You should get a product I like a lot called Whoosh.
You can order this from your retailer there in town.
And Whoosh, you get this nice bottle.
This is not an endorsement, but you get a – retweets are not endorsements.
But you get this bottle of stuff called Whoosh.
And it comes with what they call a microfiber cloth.
And you put a little bit of whoosh on the microfiber cloth, and then you gently rub it off.
And that will sometimes restore it to its showroom shine.
You can do that with your phone.
I did that with all the devices the other day.
Is this a thing that I can just use the spritz and the microfiber cloth that I get with a new pair of glasses?
Possibly.
There are products that are made for electronic devices.
Uh-huh.
And I've learned from friends of mine who have been geni at the Apple store that you want to not spritz directly onto the surface of the screen.
You want to spritz onto the microfiber cloth, not too much, not too little.
And then when you rub it off, you want to be real gentle.
So are these friends of yours or friends of ours?
Oh, mostly friends of mine.
I don't think you know that many Gene-Eye, do you?
Have you ever met a Gene-Eye?
Do you know people who were geniuses in the Grove?
Well, I have a friend who is a... Oh, you got the Eric Corson.
He was a genius, right?
Eric was a genius.
Not ever at the Apple store, but at the Mac store.
Do you remember before there were Apple stores?
Oh, yeah.
Of course you do.
They were authorized Mac stores.
They would have a big neon Apple in the window with colors and whatnot.
Yeah, but they also sold other things like Radio Shack.
Yes.
They were independently owned and operated.
They might have been, I think you could get certified by Apple, but they were doing their own thing.
They still exist, and they're real weird.
They were always weird.
It always felt like there was a guy with a gray ponytail who had an Apple IIe.
There were people like Eric Corson back in the back doing MacBooks.
Mac attacks.
Back in the back of Mac attack.
He's working for Bobby.
He could be a Gulf War vet, but Bobby's the guy with the ponytail and he's running stuff.
It was a great job for Eric because he would say, okay guys, I'm going on tour.
And they would take his milk carton
that he sat on that also contained all of his stuff and they'd tuck it under the workbench and the rest of the guys would, you know, they were all like back
They were backpacking Mac attack.
Backpack Mac attackers, yeah.
And then he'd come back to work a month later, two months later, and they'd turn his milk carton upside down, and all his tools would be in there, and he'd sit down and get back to work making Santa's toys.
I would not leave anything super valuable in the milk carton.
Yeah, well.
I would not leave.
I don't feel like any of them had anything valuable.
Well.
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I would not leave quarters or weed.
in the milk carton no i do that all the time i'm like let's see i've got all these little bits i i'm and i throw them in a milk carton i've taken people's quarters i've done that yeah uh but so but yeah so the mac store
God, I remember the first Mac store I went to, it felt like a hobby place.
Exactly.
There was a big one in town here on 6th Street, I believe, called Mac Atom.
And that was like, it was the Valhalla of nerdy hobbyist Apple stores.
So they would have software.
They would have hardware.
They had many, many kinds of devices.
If you want to get a SCSI 25 or SCSI 50, you go there.
You want to get an Ethernet adapter, that's where you go.
But they felt kind of shambling, especially now compared to what we think of as an Apple store.
The lighting was very dark in them, wasn't it?
And there was unfinished shingling on the inside.
Carpeting.
Often had carpeting.
Carpet, yeah.
Carpeting in those shells with holes in them, like at a hardware store, an old hardware store.
Yep.
I have a friend here that is the assistant manager.
He's either the assistant to the regional manager or the assistant regional manager of an Apple store at one of the big malls here in the region.
Oh, wow.
And so I will go visit him sometimes.
And it used to be that it felt like I got a friend in the diamond business and I'd go and he doesn't have to wear the T-shirt.
Oh, so he's like an enlisted man.
He's a like an officer.
He's an officer.
He gets to wear a shirt with the button down collar that does not.
Indicates that he's a Borg member.
Okay.
And, you know, sometimes I'll go and he won't be there and then I'll see him walking the mall with an employee, giving the employee an employee review.
So he's not like...
He's not a low-level operative, but he's definitely at the level where if he speaks to Lord Vader, he may get choked at a distance.
Yeah, pray he doesn't alter it further.
You're talking about second lieutenant.
Second Louis, Colin.
Well, but, you know, a lieutenant.
Oh, I see.
He's got, like, a riding crop and a button-down shirt.
Yeah.
Maybe, like, a jaunty beret.
And it used to be that you could kind of waltz in there and say, like, know what I mean?
Nudge, nudge.
Is your wife a goer?
Yeah, does she go?
And he would...
It's not like he ever, like, slid you anything.
Oh.
But he'd say... He might crack your case without an appointment.
Yeah, he'd say, let me facilitate that for you.
Okay.
I like that.
I like a friend in the diamond business.
Well, me too.
Ooh, that's nice to have.
You know, I'll get into a whole line of business that I don't even care about if I have a friend in it.
Oh, it certainly opens the door.
I mean, I'm like, I collect diamonds.
When did you start doing that?
Oh, I had a friend in the diamond business.
Tell me more.
I don't care about diamonds.
I just...
I got into it because it's nice to have a pal.
But the last couple of times he's like, yeah, there's been a big crackdown from HQ and we don't do anything nice for anybody anymore.
It's not a very fun place to work right now.
But you're welcome to come down.
Watch me evaluate my employees.
Yeah.
You're welcome to come down and be in the store and get treated like a regular person.
I mean, he can still get me a genius.
He can get me a genius to look at my problem.
uh, like without waiting for a year.
That's it.
I think that part of it, like what's happening in the store, I don't want to go off on a rant here, but it is very ad hoc.
We're like, I fortunately have not had that many occasions where I had to take my computer in to get looked at, but I had a pretty good reckon on what it was, but you know, it might be the logic board, whatever, but you take it in and it is a death march.
You got to make an appointment.
It might be a week before you get an appointment.
And then you go in, you still got to wait.
It might be an hour.
You're sitting there.
Oh,
Oh no.
And of course it's like a lot of it historically has been somebody with an ancient Mac that might even be out of, it's a lot like the coupon situation at Walgreens where people in there and they're like, I can't get, I don't know what happened to the photos on my iPad mini.
And like there's all, you know, and you got to walk through all of that.
But nowadays they're having actual problems with their products and it's not a very fun place to work.
their new keyboards are like bad and they're on the on the laptops yeah yeah this is a little bit inside baseball but just to give you a feel for this I've had friends that get like a crumb or a hair or something in this tiny little keyboard that has no key travel how would you get a crumb or a hair sometimes a person word
A person has to eat.
What would you do?
You'd be eating or something or have hair?
You're reporting from the show floor or something like that.
Maybe you're having a dumpling.
But then they have to go through these court mandated tests that they've got to go through.
They've got to run the diagnostics, John.
You've got to run the diagnostics.
Come on.
You know how I feel about diagnostics.
The diagnostics tell you nothing.
The diagnostics tell you the diagnostics found nothing.
I've been running diagnostics on my Skype for a week now.
The diagnostics say, have you turned off your computer?
Oh, for the love of Pete.
How many times can a person do that?
But then apparently, it turns out, one of the things that they need to do, once they've run the software diagnostics and hardware diagnostics, then the genius goes through and has to hit every key on the keyboard and see what it does.
No wonder it takes a week to get an appointment with those guys.
Yeah, exactly.
Hasn't somebody, I bet you there is a Roderick on the Line listener who has already invented a machine that hits every key on a keyboard.
Oh, you know.
Just for their own amusement, they've done it.
Yeah, eventually they'll put it on Etsy.
But for now, it's just an articulated finger that hits all the keys.
Like I knew a kid up here whose band was him.
And a bunch of machines he built to play instruments.
So it was regular instruments.
It's nice to have a friend.
It's nice to have little robot friends.
And I think he had like, I think he took chopsticks and put little, little like, uh,
tissue paper on the end of them and taught it how to play the piano oh and it had machines and the one of them played the bass i think and i i don't i i saw it a couple of times and it was it was phenomenal i don't know i don't know how hard it would be to tour because i think you had to i think you basically have to rebuild it every time i mean isn't it fair to say that ever since the 808 drummers have mostly been optional it's mostly for optics
I have a little box that makes... So I'm a... Yeah, I know.
You're a hobbyist.
It's why I'm so popular.
You got a tight little box.
You got a tight little music box.
I do.
Daddy never sleeps at night.
Come and flick my drummer.
Four on the floor, baby.
But I have this little thing made by Boss, made by the Boss Company, and...
And it just makes drum sounds.
And I'm a terrible... There are so many cool drum machines, including the 808.
I went into a music store every month.
You can get an 808 simulator on your freaking phone now.
Yeah, but that doesn't make me happy.
You want to hit those buttons.
You want to make the patterns.
Well, I don't even want to do that.
What I want to do is sit on the couch, as I've done for 25 years, and say to someone sitting at a computer or box, can you make it go...
Just keep playing until I tell you I'm not angry anymore.
Just keep trying different things.
That's right.
I did a recording day one time where the drummer came up finally and said, I've played this song 40 times.
I'm not going to play it again.
And I said, that's what drummers do.
They play it over and over and over again.
And he said, I've played it perfectly 40 times.
You need to get your shit together.
And I said, here's what drummers do.
They play it 41 times.
They play it 42.
Again, again.
That's how I get my shit together.
If you'd wanted to play an instrument that people cared what you thought, you would have picked a better one.
Yeah, you would have gotten a violin or an oboe or something that people have a lot of respect for.
But no, you're in there to keep playing.
You're like a mouse in a maze.
I'll tell you when you found the end of the maze.
Don't you worry.
You just keep walking.
I'll tell you when you're done.
I picked up a chair and I had, of course, I already had my whip and I put him back in his cage and I said, keep fucking playing this.
You got to know how to kennel a drummer.
But so I have this box and basically it has two knobs.
One is tempo.
And the other is you can change what the pattern is.
And you move the knob one thing and it goes... And then you move it again and it's like... And you move it again and it's like... So it's really just tempo and complexity.
Tempo and complexity.
And then there is a menu if you want to go...
scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and you can change time signature.
That's better than most drummers.
You know what I'm saying?
You said it.
They'll be able to rip out a little bit of Tom Sawyer until it falls apart, but mostly you're going to go back to 4-4, let's be honest.
Yeah, well, no.
See, because I like tricky tricks.
You're talking about drummer drummers.
Oh, yeah.
There are some.
I mean, Barrett Martin loves to play
in in 7 7 16 you got your boy matt chamberlain like he's a drummer drummer loves to play that stuff that guy's playing on a different level he's got galaxy mind matt chamberlain matt cameron like cameron all the great mats tricky dicks uh anyway so i've got this thing and i just like the way it sounds i run it into an amplifier
which is like the that's so the thing itself has and then you mic the amp or do you di the amp i don't even do that i just sit and i just sit and entertain myself all right that sounds like a nice way to pass the afternoon it is and it really disturbs me that i cannot just i don't even have the technical
uh ability to just make that my sound it is my sound it's the only thing i care about i go into the studio and i'm like well here's my thing that i made and and like a live drummer's like oh i can do that and he starts to play and i'm like i kind of just like the sound of my box i know it's almost like you want a sober reliable grant heart you and somebody who can come in and like keep a beat and you say okay we'll do more flibbity gibbity and then they can do more flibbity gibbity but they don't lose the beat
But still, there's a purity to what the Kraut rock call a four on the floor.
That kind of noy, you know, four on the floor beat.
That's a fantastic beat.
Well, and this is the thing of making music with other people, because there are a lot of times when the bass line that I record myself goes... For an hour.
Every song you write is an ACDC song.
Yeah.
no chord change that let you know like i i what as i'm writing it i'm talking to the bass player who is me and i say do you talk to yourself like you're a bass player yeah okay you adjust your expectations i'm like okay listen okay here's a cracker okay listen you're not going to do anything in this song except this you're not going to change it all what if i go doobie
No, no, no.
The other instruments are going to make changes.
They're going to change chords and stuff.
The bass is only going to go until the song is over.
You're basically a bass drum with an open E. Yeah, right.
But it needs to happen.
It's very crucial to the song.
If it doesn't happen, it's not bass.
Well, and it's not that, right?
The song doesn't have the thing.
The song doesn't have the... You're the key thing.
Yes.
And the amazing skill that some bass players have is to realize that really to play only one note...
Through the entire length of a song and to still like be in the pocket and make a groove is even harder than moving stuff around.
Because you have to be like, and not start thinking about something else.
If you start thinking about something else, then you're going to wander.
You're going to wander away from the tune.
But if you can really be in that bass position,
Really be in that base moment.
And just every single one of those dunes matters just as much to you as the one before and the one after.
Wow.
And now you're saying basically not get distracted.
Like when the words start, you start thinking about what kind of sandwich you're going to have.
Right.
And the thing is, this is a thing that
This is why bass players are often perfectly suited to this, because there's not a lot of other things they're going to think about.
Right, right, right.
They don't really have that much to think about.
Like, where's my milk carton, basically?
It's kind of a rhythmic fidget spinner.
And it's key.
It's key.
Oh, it's so key.
But pretty soon, then, you're sitting up there with a bunch of instruments that you made yourself, or you're playing everything through a boss pedal into a single amplifier, and you're like LCD sound system guy, except you can't afford 25 people on stage with you.
Yeah.
I don't know.
People really like that LCD sound system guy.
I like some of their stuff quite a lot.
I like drummers.
I like music.
You just did that Merlin thing where your voice went up an octave, which doesn't necessarily mean that you really do like it.
I like Taylor Hawkins.
I think Taylor Hawkins is really good.
It's kind of like when a British person says, oh, I quite like it.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
yeah no i mean like i've played my problem is that like like so many people i came at the bass this is no disrespect to the wonderful people who play the bass but i came at the bass as a guitar player i'm a very lou barlow-esque bass player where it's like i'm playing a one and a five and i'm going up and i'm playing a little melody and i'm mostly i'm going boop boop boop boop or i'm trying to be mike watt like
i don't i mean to me bass playing was a hack for me like guitar playing i never like like like you i never bothered to get very good at guitar but i knew my way around i knew what my capabilities were mostly you like and i knew that like if i wanted to make a silly sounding fake eddie van halen solo i knew how to make that funny but with bass i came at it totally as a hack where it's like okay i understand all these strings are pretty much the same as the lower four strings i can figure that out
And then I figured out how to roughly emulate something that wasn't doing a Ramones.
I wasn't trying to do just what the guitar part was.
Right.
And then, you know, again, as a fan of Husker Du, I started loving that idea of, like, counterposing what the bass is doing melodically with the guitar.
But I still came at it with the way of thinking.
I think there's a guitar way of thinking and a bass way of thinking, and I think they're very different.
You approach the instrument, your role and the capabilities and the place in the song are very different from...
comparing between a natural bass player and a natural guitar player.
Yes.
That may sound ridiculously obvious until you listen to some guy who picked up bass over the weekend.
Like you had to do one time, right?
So no musician would ever disagree with what you just said, but I think most lay people are not aware of how massively different the two instruments are.
Their role is complementary, but really a bass is closer to drums than it is to a guitar.
And it's amazing to me that there are lead singers who are bass players because the two things, like playing guitar and singing is very natural.
You're throwing the chords down in piles and you're building the Lego structure of the song and you're singing in the...
in between your strums kind of you know you're like and here I go strumming and strumming and singing and I'm strumming and I'm singing but the bass isn't doing that at all you know the bass is like I am holding it down here with the kick drum and
To sing over that is super duper different.
And, you know, you see lead singer bass guys, Sting and Geddy Lee and Paul McCartney.
Jack Blades.
Jack Blades.
Is that his name?
Who's the guy in Night Ranger?
Yeah, Jack Blades.
Was he the bassist?
I think Kelly Keegan.
Kelly Keegan, Kelly Kelly Kelly.
I think Keegan Michael Kelly.
Keegan Michael Kelly, I think, was the drummer.
He got Brad Pitt playing guitar.
Wasn't he in Home Alone?
Which one?
Home Alone 1.
Joe Pesci?
Joe Pesci?
Joe Pesci was in a band.
He was in a band with somebody else.
He was in a band with like a Joe Mantegna at one point, I think.
Are you telling me Joe Pesci was in Home Alone?
Are you gaslighting me?
No, I've never seen Home Alone.
What?
It had Jodie Foster Wallace.
I thought Jodie Foster's Army was a funny name.
Jodie Foster Wallace is a terrific name.
Joe Pesci was in Joey D and the Starlighters.
Recently or before he became an actor?
No, no, no.
This is back in the day.
And who was he in with this?
He was in this with somebody else who's famous.
And it's like it's like a Joe Mantegna.
I'm taking you off your topic of bass.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, when I started playing the bass, as we've recorded this story before of my like jumping into the bass.
That's an epic story.
But I didn't have to sing lead.
I only had to sing harmony, and that's easier.
It's easier to just be like, ah!
It's very hard for me to play the bass properly.
and uh and sing because i just because certainly my own songs i did not write them around the ability to do that and at one point we always were we always had a hard time figuring out how to play blue diamonds on tour you guys would switch around you'd switch parts we'd switch around because the piano part on that song is not difficult but it's
sort of singly a thing that I would write and do.
It's not a thing that you'd say like, hey, piano player, here you go.
It's just not like a normal.
It's a piano part written by somebody that doesn't really play the piano.
And so we could never figure out how to recreate it on stage.
And so what we ended up doing at one point was I played the bass and
Eric Corson played the guitar and we just eliminated the piano.
And I was so terrible at the bass.
We did this for an entire tour.
I never figured out how to do it.
And in fact, a critic from the Village Voice came to our show in New York and said in the review...
Ballwinner's a great band.
Lead singer can't play the bass.
Oh, boy.
Put that in your pads and jop and smoke it.
Fortunately, he only tries to do it once.
I was like, yeah.
All right.
Well, I deserved it.
I deserved it.
Can I blow your mind?
Can I blow your mind?
So Joe Pesci was in a band.
He was friends with Frankie Valli.
How?
And so he was in a band.
I'm not seeing the name of the band.
He was in a band with Frank Vincent.
So do you remember the movie Goodfellas?
Yes.
When he says, get your shine box.
Yes.
That actor.
Was in a band?
With Joseph Pescivinski.
Joe Pesci?
Yep.
There's photos.
Oh.
There's photos.
Go search for Joe Pesci band.
Whoa.
I think Pesci probably means fish.
That's what I'm going to guess.
Joe Fish.
Joe.
I called him Joey Fish.
Joey Fish.
It's a Sicilian message.
It means Joey sleeps with the fishes.
It means Joey sings with his co-star.
That's pretty great.
He was a child actor, Joe Pesci.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
He was in a show called Star Time Kids.
Oh, it was that kids cartoon show about James Brown.
Star Time Babies.
Doubtful.
Guy comes out with a cape.
Oh my god, look at them.
They're so amazing.
Their mustaches are so mustachey.
I know.
That looks like Tony Orlando.
Is that Tony Orlando?
Oh, I... It's the two guys.
It's Joe Pesci and... And Don.
And then Tony Orlando and then Don.
But Don, it's like the Don.
Tony Orlando and Don.
Oh, that's funny.
I like that.
You know what?
That's a my brother and my brother and me joke.
That's fun.
That's fun.
Yeah, they're fun.
So it's not a disrespectful thing.
It's self-preservation.
You've got to know what you're in for with these people.
And this is not to say that every guitar player... I mean, guitar players... If you're just a guitar player, even if you're a really good guitar player...
see i i feel like this is already problematic a lot of what we're saying you know how so well like well no i'm travis when when you uh watch the uh metallica documentary if you were me and you thought you knew how things worked in metallica zoom yeah you know how did you think things worked in metallica
Well, I bought into the guitar for the practicing musician idea.
The Kirk Hammett was a wonderful gift that was brought to Metallica, who had no idea really what they were doing before then.
No, I mean, that's not entirely true, but when you think of who in the 80s and 90s, unimpeachably, who is the guitar wizard and probably controlling cool guy in Metallica, if you had to say, who in the mythology would that be?
James Hetfield.
Really?
See, I came up thinking that it was always Kirk Hammett.
Kirk Hammett was always the one.
Before the YouTube age, we could go in and see who actually plays what parts and does what.
You know, we had clues.
What?
Well, we had clues.
You are talking pure crazy right now.
I know.
I know that because I've seen the documentary and I've watched the YouTube.
I know that now.
But the craziness that you are, you are talking pure crazy, and I would have said that in 1984.
Kurt Hammett.
Yeah.
I don't think he knows.
I think a lot of times he doesn't know what key it's in.
No, he was always a ding-a-ling.
Everything was played by James Hetfield.
My understanding is that James is the guy who really brings the personality and sound that makes Metallica Metallica.
And his rhythm guitar playing is monstrously good.
Which is all of the song.
Yes, and then you get this guy over here, and he's got a block of cheese, and he's grating it in some kind of Phrygian mode, but he might be a couple frets off, and he just gets a little squeedily.
You take the end of... You get to the end of that boy, and he's doing his shredding, and it gets a little raga.
My experience of Metallica, and this, I think, was every...
Every true... Because you weren't metal, is the thing.
I would not... No, I mean, I wasn't like a denim jacket guy, but I deeply loved mini metal bands.
Yes, but... I wouldn't call myself a metalhead.
I would call myself a college rock guy.
You were a college rock guy.
That's right.
But you were not a denim jacket guy.
No, but I mean, going back to Iron Maiden and Metallica and some Judas Priest and whatever, and then into the 80s, whatever was on Headbanger's Ball, that's a little later.
But no, I mean, I genuinely... I've told you before about my friend Phil who made me this metal mixtape in 1985 that changed my life.
It had so much great metal stuff on it.
And Steve Vine opened all these doors to go beyond what I knew of as classic rock.
And that's where I first heard Whiplash.
And it's where I first heard Fade to Black and, like, you know, the Trapped Under Ice and all that stuff.
When you went through that huge accept phase where you were just like, all I want to hear is accept.
Udo Dirkschneider, I believe his name is.
I forget to pay the electric bill, but I know the singer of Except.
Yeah, Udo Dirkschneider.
Udo Dirkschneider.
There were two good musicians in Metallica and two bad musicians in Metallica.
Well, I think we're probably going to, you know what, we're going to get a lot of letters on this one.
We're going to get a lot of letters confirming that there are two good musicians in Metallica and two bad.
I think you have to accept that the man was not really playing drums.
He was beating on a phone book.
When you accept the tonality of Injustice for All and realize that he was playing on a Yellow Pages, you know, you really appreciate that boy could really play some Yellow Pages.
It feels like a thing where... Who ships an album that sounds like that?
Who says this is okay?
James Hetfield was a person, and this happens in music a lot of the time, where he's very loyal to his friend.
his friend was there from the beginning his friend was there his friend started it with him and when the and when you're first starting a band you start a band with whoever's standing around how's it el cerrito where are they from oh yeah something like that i should know this east bay la i guess they technically everybody says they're from la they're from san francisco i thought they're from the east bay i thought they're from like el cerrito am i thinking of ccr
No, CCR is from L.A.
What?
No.
Metallica is from San Francisco.
They live in fancy Robin Williams houses now, but I think they're from the East Bay.
Well, no, I think they are from the East Bay.
I stand corrected.
Formed in Los Angeles in late 1981 when Danish-born drummer Lars Ulrich placed an advertisement in The Recycler.
You're saying that Metallica started in L.A.
and then moved to San Francisco?
I think of them as being from the Oakland area.
See, now I'm really confused.
Then where's CCR from?
They're from L.A.
Oh, come on, really?
Really?
Yeah.
How'd they get on the Zantz label?
That's like an East Bay... This is really upsetting to me.
I'm taking off your point.
You're going to tell me about friendship.
El Cerrito.
CCR is from El Cerrito.
They're from the Oakland area.
Oh, isn't that interesting?
Okay.
All right.
Oh, well, what do you know?
We had that flipped around.
We had that flipped around.
That's an easy mistake to make.
CCR is from East Bay.
Metallica is from L.A.
Now what about Green Day?
The Green Day band, aren't they from like Berkeley?
CCR is from East Bay.
Metallica is from L.A.
Green Day is from... No way.
And this is the SAT test.
What we're doing is we're providing mnemonics for future SAT tests.
CCR is to East Bay as Metallica is to L.A.
L.A.
Okay.
And Journey City by the Bay started out as a song about L.A.
Huh.
Did you know that?
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
When the lights go down the city and the sun shines on L.A.?
And then they flipped it around.
Yeah.
They took it and they turned it is what they did.
And now everybody here is singing along at these terrible 49ers games that aren't even in the city of San Francisco, and they're singing along on these songs.
They're singing a song about L.A.
It might as well be Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It's a much better song about San Francisco than it would have been about L.A.
L.A.
's got enough songs about it already.
I know.
The thing is, James Hetfield...
He started this band with this guy because the guy started the band.
Apparently, Lars was the one that put the ad.
He put in the recycler.
That was him.
And James was like a teenager.
And he said, yeah, sure.
And then and I'm sure Lars's Danishness was kind of exotic at the time.
You know, it's very metal to be from Denmark.
Denmark is one of the more metal countries.
I think we stipulated that the Donsk is a very metal land.
They're not as metal as Czechoslovakia.
Well, they're not planting a creek.
They're not hiding in piles of leaves.
But at a certain point, James had to know that Lars was an albatross.
He was a lodestone.
But he's a man to whom loyalty matters.
But when they got Kurt Hammett, the only thing that he can do...
is play a million notes those notes are non-melodic those notes are in my estimation as a musician nonsensical yeah he's there he's their jimmy page a little bit and as far what yeah what do you mean jimmy page is a genius so much blues so many blueses oh my god he has so many blueses
He's a sloppy cheapskate is what he is.
He's sloppy, yes, because he's feeling the blues so intensely.
Oh, it's the blues.
Yes, he's so blues.
What's John Paul Jones feeling?
Because I think I'm feeling what he feels.
John Paul Jones is thinking about higher math.
Oh, he's on different maths.
Yeah, he's like Tom Schultz.
He's like inventing... It's Schultz!
Stop saying that!
It's Schultz!
I think you're thinking of Charles Schultz, whose home was destroyed in the recent fires RIP.
Oh, no, really?
Oh, no, that's terrible, John.
It's terrible.
We can't get into that.
That's just too sad.
No bummers.
Charles Schultz's home where all great laughs were created?
He grew all the peanuts there.
Oh.
So, anyway, friendship is important, and I think we can agree that Jimmy Page really dragged the band down at a lot of points.
Yeah.
This whole business about Paige being sloppy, which is true, it's a bonus.
It's a blessing.
It is a blessing because he was competing with Emerson Lake and Project.
We forget about the Emerson Lake and Project era because that's when a lot of people encoded.
Is that the word for it?
Right, I've been reading this book about prog rock, and it's easy to forget.
There's a really good book by Dave Weigel about prog rock that's very, very good, and about the culture of prog rock that continues today, mostly on cruise ships.
But just we forget about this era, how influential all that stuff was at the time.
That's what people aspire to.
They wanted to be freaking King Crimson.
Well, and that's why punk rock had to come along.
That's what they say.
That's what they say on the VH1 shows.
That's what they say.
That's what Flea says when they cut to him in every documentary about every position ever.
What about Chuck Klosterman, John?
What does Chuck Klosterman have to say?
Would he be able to come in and give an opinion, do you think?
What about Martin Scorsese?
Would there be an opportunity for him to be sitting in a chair in his little theater and be able to opine on this?
Because, you know, music is very important to Martin Scorchesi.
I know it is, and I think that he would have another opportunity for... For opining.
Yeah, for opining and for...
for Dave Grohl to also be there.
Oh, Dave Grohl.
With a big smile, and he'd say something very charming, and everybody would agree.
I watched his documentary on Netflix.
Now, here's another thing.
I was watching a program on Netflix, and they played a song that I must have heard before, because I used to make out to physical graffiti in high school, and I owned an LP copy of it in college, and I listened to it fairly often, and
I don't remember the song In the Light.
The song In the Light is a very, very good song.
In the Light!
I had to hear it on a Netflix television streaming program to really re-appreciate it.
It was really, really good.
And I hear a song like that.
I hear a Kashmir.
I hear a song like that.
And I think that's all John Paul Jones.
Oh, my God.
I think Jimmy's just sitting there counting his shekels.
He shows up.
He puts on a cape.
He borrows a cape from Rick Wakeman.
He shows up, and then he plays some sloppy pentatonix for 10 minutes.
Sloppy pentatonix.
This is bananas.
You think so, really?
You are literally bananas.
You're talking about live or on album, or both, or neither.
I feel like John Paul Jones, clearly a genius, clearly a great, great, great player.
He's a gamer.
Does he game?
No, in the sense that I think he genuinely loves music as a thing.
I don't think he's there to pull birds or necessarily to make shekels.
I think he's partly there just out of a genuine love of how notes on a page turn into something beautiful.
But this is the problem.
He's crazy.
chronically tragically underused in led zeppelin because i do not think he was given the mandate i don't think he had at least very under recognized i think his tastefulness and like in some ways maybe i don't say he was the paul of the band but i think in some ways he brought things to that band that made them so much more than what they'd previously been capable of and we just read that as oh like he's the piano player or like he played the airbow here or whatever
He's very good, but he was not empowered because it wasn't his band.
That's true.
If there's anybody in that band that's a hired gun, it's him.
And I do not think that the magic of Led Zeppelin that you are hearing and attributing to John Paul Jones is actually coming from the fountain of John Paul Jones.
I mean, he does a great job at the things that he does.
He kills those things that were handed to him.
And I wish that he had had more authority in the band because I think... Oh, you're doing that thing.
You're saying, okay, what did they actually put on the screen?
Like, let's set aside all the Chuck Klostermanization of this.
Like, what actually happened in terms of what made it onto the vinyl?
Yeah, I'm saying that in the room...
Those moments where the other dudes, where probably Paige, said, okay, and then all this needs to get done.
And he pushed the big platter of hot turkey dinner over and said, like, I don't want to think about this or do this.
It came back to him, like, absolutely perfectly done.
Like, all that keyboard stuff, it's all him.
Like, he's super gifted.
I think he's the flautist.
He's the flautist.
But every other thing... Jimmy Page stole the chord progression for Stairway to Heaven, but I think it's John Paul Jones that made it work.
I'm sorry, this is fraught.
We can't put this out now.
We can't put this out.
There's no way.
Page is the one that is coming up with all the riffs, all the tunes.
You think he's like the Pete Townsend of the band?
Yeah.
Well, I mean...
because you know about his you know page was like hot session guy he was hot session guy he was a yard bird he played on i played on donovan's uh magic carpet ride steppenwolf cover i think he played on uh i think he played on a kink song possibly even you really got me it's it's disputed whether his track made it on to the final but he was on some early kink singles i think
And he was in the Beatles, right?
He's considered the seventh Beatle.
The seventh son of the seventh son.
That's where the Iron Maiden album comes from.
There are two good musicians...
in led zeppelin and there are two people who owned led zeppelin and made it and made everything now you're into a gene and paul type situation there are two right people in led zeppelin who died yes there are two but none of these twos overlap wait who else in led zeppelin died
Frank.
Frank Zeppelin.
Frank Zeppelin, right.
He died early.
He's the Nell Aspinall of the band.
He's like the eighth or ninth member of Led Zeppelin.
He's like the piano player of the Rolling Stones, who was in the Rolling Stones from the very beginning, but at a certain point... Right, Jimmy Stone.
Yeah, at a certain point he got put behind the curtain.
Yeah, he drowned himself in an electric bathtub.
is that what happened i think that's what happened he's the one that played that pretty ovation teardrop guitar piano uh rolling stone uh it gathers no moss but also rolling stone um electric bathtub was actually a great band that's a terrific band yeah no i'm saying that there is um there was a guy not brian jones
Oh, you're talking about... It's not Ian McLaughlin, but one of those... There's a piano boy in the Rolling Stones.
Yeah.
Yeah, the piano... Is it Mickey Hopkins?
I'm just saying names at this point.
No, it's Ian Stewart.
Ian Stewart.
And he's not the guy from that English band, the other English band.
That's the guy I'm thinking of.
Wait, Ian Stewart?
Ian... Who's the guy that hits you with your rhythm stick?
That's Ian Dury?
Who am I thinking of?
Ian... Ian...
Ian McKellen.
Ian McDermid.
Dermid Mulroney.
Ian Lug Oldham.
Ian Lug Oldham.
He's the one that got sampled by that band who knocks people down walking down the street.
That's right.
And then they lost all their money.
They lost all their money.
Right, because they got Peter Allen to be their manager.
That's the guy.
That's the guy that was married to Eliza Minnelli and he stole all their rights.
Wasn't that him?
Was he married to Liza Minnelli?
Peter Allen?
Peter Allen.
And my baby smiles at me.
I'll go to Rio.
Who's the guy who stole all the money?
He said, look, look, look, look, you guys.
You're not getting paid right.
I'm going to set this straight.
No, that was Dude Man.
It was Alan Funt.
I know his name.
It was Alan Funt.
No, it was Rick and Morty.
It was...
yeah no i think you're right i think you're friendship friendship is very important but you have to know where to draw the line like say for example you let's just say hypothetically you knew a drummer who really wanted a mistake no please no right right it was alan klein that's who i meant that's like that's like alan funt yeah no i'm talking about ian stewart who do you know this story no
He was a founding member of the Rolling Stones from the very beginning when they all met on a railroad platform.
And Mick Jagger was like... The railroad platform at economics school that Mick went to.
Yeah, at economics school.
And he was like, hey, is that a Muddy Waters record?
And Keith Richards was like... Because he's a prospector.
And then they became...
best pals and they formed this rock band this is news to me i thought i thought that they met that a quarryman show where mick had been doing some kind of an undergraduate thesis and keith of course was a pirate at the time and they met splitting splitting a fag as they used to call it they were splitting a fact okay so this guy ian stewart was a really really good musician
And he was one of the bros in the band.
And then Andrew Lug Oldham, their original manager, said in 1963, right before they became big, he was like, hey, mate, because that's how they talk to each other.
You don't look right.
Oh, because he looks kind of like Huey Lewis or he looks like a bloke.
not like he's a scottish keyboardist and he really does not look like he's in the rolling stones he doesn't and so he has a he has a non-rolling stone shaped face like no matter what he did with his hair couldn't have done it he always was going to look wrong and so he said and this is the one of the most amazing things i've ever uh heard he said okay
Oh, no.
and then pretty soon he was like he's like mal evans meets a girl with a bag on her head that's not very nice he was the road manager okay oh my goodness in whatever reason for in in whatever how he continued to be in the rolling stones and in their operation and continued to play the piano but he's doing like straight up cyrano in the wings
He's not on stage.
He's not acknowledged.
He's certainly not going to be in band photos.
He plays on Bigger's Banquet.
He plays on Some Girls.
What?
He plays on Honky Tonk Woman.
He plays the piano.
Oh, my goodness.
On all the Rolling Stones songs until they started getting, like, you know, Nikki Hopkins and Billy Preston and stuff to come do.
But he was...
Those guys were all coming and doing flashy bits over the top of his key piano that is on every Rolling Stones record.
So he's in the band.
What a heartbreaker.
None of us have ever heard of him because his face was wrong.
And Andrew Lug Oldham was like, uh...
Sorry.
I mean, we still need a piano player, but and you're great.
And so and it's another one of these, you know, if you put Keith Richards on a camera and you say, like, what do you think of Sheryl Crow?
Keith Richards would be like, oh, so gross.
She's amazing.
She's the greatest.
And so he's in that category.
But he's not offering up plaudits for Ian Stewart.
Well, no, he would.
He'd be like, oh, we couldn't have done it without Ian.
He was on Honky Tonk Women.
Look at that.
Stewart loaded gear into his van, drove the group to gigs, replaced guitar strings, and set up Watts' drums the way he himself would play them.
I never, ever swore at him, Watts says with rueful amazement.
Yeah.
Never swore at him.
I never swore at him once.
I swore at everybody else is the implication.
Well, he had reasons, I'm sure.
Everyone else that ever set up my drums, I swore at him.
Oh, let's do heroin in France.
It'll be fun.
You guys can live on the other side of the island.
It'll be great.
I just, I feel like he played on the Rolling Stones' best track, which is Undercover of the Night.
Wow, wow.
This may need to be a bonus episode.
Yeah.
You don't think it's their cover of Harlem Shuffle?
The empirically greatest Rolling Stones song is Rocks Off.
Harlem Shuffle.
And it's got that riff that I like.
It's got that riff.
That's where I learned that.
That's where I learned that.
Yeah, I disagree.
The sunshine boars the daylights out of me.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
It's so mesmerizing.
That's the thing about the internet now.
No opinion is different from any other.
All animals are alike except some animals are mortal.
Some of them are on... Huh, we're all on equal footing at this point.
Is that what it feels like?
At this point, every opinion is the same.
And you're feeling that Rocks Off is the best Rolling Stones song.
Yeah.
Which in the past would have been demonstrably false.
Now that science doesn't matter anymore.
Now that could be just as it could be taken as just as true as my opinion that Sway is the greatest Rolling Stones song.
Sway is a very good song.
Which is totally true.
Unimpeachably true.
That's got a groove to it.
oh oh breaks my heart still every time yeah and it feels like they're playing like a little bit behind the beat a little bit it's got a oh what a great song they had some good songs they had some good songs for sure the rolling stones did yeah they did they well i yeah you know there are no beatles well now now what about no beatles they're no hitler they're somewhere in between what about roger daltrey's inferiority complex do you ever dwell on that i think it is justified okay
That may be it right there.