Ep. 269: "Yelling at the Radio"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Melrin.
Hi, John.
How's it going?
Good.
How are you?
Good.
I'm diddling a little bit with some new audio, and you're my first victim.
Beep, boop, beep, beep.
Oh, yeah.
This could get real weird.
I don't know.
What's happening?
What's happening there?
Oh, I'm trying a new interface to my computer.
Tell me about it.
Tell me more about it.
No, I don't want to get too far into it.
Is it an A to D converter?
No, it's DDD all the way down, just like brothers in arms.
God, I'm loud.
Am I loud to you?
No, because I turned you down.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I'm not peeking.
I got the limiter dip switch.
I hit the limiter dip switch.
I'm always peeking here, and I don't understand why.
I've got this little audio interface that has little meters on it.
And every time I look down, it looks right.
And then I look away.
And I look back, and I've had a peek.
I've got red, and I'm just like, I'm talking right now.
This is as loud as I get.
I'm not peeking.
Yeah.
No, I'm like a monkey with a slide rule.
La, la, la.
I got this thing, and I got my 23-band meter dingus that tells me how I'm doing.
23 bands?
Well, not bands.
It's like a Nakamichi stereo.
Hmm.
It's pretty sweet.
Anyways, it's the most wonderful time.
Are you having a good week?
It's Monday at 10 o'clock in the morning.
How bad could it get?
It can't be that bad.
It can't be that bad.
Oh, man.
I did an unusual thing.
What?
Tell me.
Well, you know, it was some kind of podcast conference here in town.
Yes.
Is that the PodCon?
PodCon.
PodCon.
Did you go to PodCon?
PodCon.
And it was put on by, I think, Hank Green and his brother, Frank Green.
He's from the internet.
From the internet.
And the McElroy brothers.
The McElroys.
And no one called me.
I almost spit out my beverage.
I know.
Nobody called you?
Nobody called me.
Now, some fans called me, some people that were coming through town that were like, I'm coming to the podcast con.
Oh, you got it coming at you both ways.
People unempowered to have you up on the stage, they're saying, hey, where's John Roderick?
That's right.
I had a local journalist who said, hey, can you introduce me to the McElroys?
I'm going to get so many letters.
Mm-hmm.
From the McElroys, first and foremost.
And I was like, look, man.
I don't think they communicate anymore.
I think they've had it.
Well, so apparently, like, they mentioned me from the stage at their show.
They always thank you at the end of their—I don't listen to their show—but they always thank you at the end of every episode, and they say we're going to get a copy of your album.
It's wonderful that they do that, but no one invited me to the PodCon that's happening in my own town.
It's like having a podcast about the Wicked Witch, and nobody has the WitchCon.
Yeah, thank you.
You should say you're flying monkeys.
But the thing is, when you ask me how's my week going, all that was last week.
That ended last night.
This is a brand new week.
Today, this is all new.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
But I had a friend in town who was here to see the con, and I just got up early, A, and went out of the house, B, and
To meet her for coffee.
You're kidding me.
Before the show.
Hang on.
You sure you didn't get your clock wrong?
On this very day where you record with me at 10 a.m.
Pacific time, you were already up and you've already been out of the house and talked to somebody with clothes?
I got up.
I started the truck and let it warm up.
I got out with a glove and wiped the frost off the windows.
Drove to Randy's.
Hmm.
Had a chicken fried steak and eggs.
Oh, my God.
And then back in the saddle at 10.03.
Oh, you ate a chicken fried steak this morning and you're still awake?
I already, I'm just, and I'm going to a radio appearance after our show.
And then I'm going to my psychiatrist.
Whoa.
And then after that, I think I'm going to dinner, like fancy dinner somewhere.
You're doing all these things in one day?
In one single day.
I'm making up for all the other days where I never do anything.
Oh, it's a catch-up day.
Well, but they say you can't catch up.
Oh, man.
I've written down chicken fried steak because I need to talk to you about food and sleep.
Oh, my God.
I'm so proud of you.
What a day.
And you know what?
You shook it off.
You shook it off.
Even though the McElroy's and the Green's did not invite you to their con.
You shook it off, and you got right back in the fray.
Got back on the horse.
That's right.
That's right.
Boots on the ground.
And on the way home,
I started singing, as you sometimes do, I started singing In the Air Tonight.
Bill Collins' first solo hit.
It's magnum opus in many ways.
And you know, of course I was having the regular thoughts that you have about it.
Like, what an unusual single.
What an extraordinary choice to have as a first single.
Who would have thought...
But this weird song, and then I did the thing that I very seldom do, which is I said, you know, even though today is not like Phil Collins' day, I'm going to spend just like two minutes while I'm sitting at this traffic light to get a little bit more familiar with In the Air Tonight, a song that I feel like I know
Like, as well as my own shirt.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we've lived in that song for a long time now.
Oh, for years, right?
Yeah.
Up and down with In the Air Tonight.
And I went and I looked at the lyrics because I was assuming, because in all the years that we've been listening to the song, there's so much story in it.
Mm-hmm.
And I was assuming that there were some lyrics that I didn't know.
There was some third verse that I'd never really looked at that when I read those lyrics, I was just going to be like, wow, gobsmacked.
Or I was going to be disappointed.
So I'm sitting at the stoplight.
I look up in the air tonight lyrics.
And I read them, and I realize, oh, I know them all.
Yeah, they're maybe less than you even thought.
Yeah, I know the lyrics.
There's only two verses, and we could all sing it all the way through right now.
And even more of an accomplishment.
That there's there's nothing in the lyrics.
You know, we all think like, oh, he must have witnessed a murder.
Oh, all this.
Yeah.
The story went around for years that I think has since been.
Don't email me.
The story went around for a long time that it was about actually literally watching somebody drown.
Yeah, right, like watching Sting kill his first wife or something.
Oh, my God, in three-quarter time.
Yeah, please do not write me about that.
But it turns out it could, you know, the language is broad enough.
He could just be mad at his next-door neighbor.
This could just be an argument he's having with his sister.
Like, if I saw you drowning, I wouldn't even lend a hand.
That's the meanest thing in it.
The rest of it is just like, you know what you did.
you know you know wipe off that grin yeah there's there's the only the only reason that it is i mean we just we add all that menace to it and i think it's in his voice i think the character of his voice of the uh the production don't you think yeah the atmospheric's right it's the sound of of foreboding but
But anyway, so I just came away from that experience.
It's not like I've heard the song.
It's not like it was on the radio.
Nothing inspired me to do this.
This is really out of nowhere.
Yeah, I just had some chicken fried steak and I was like, I saw you were drowning or whatever.
I'd like to hear you cover that that'd be alright but see that's also what it's in line with a lot of songs that are hard to do at karaoke I think we've talked about this before but there's famous karaoke songs where you think you really think you know the song you probably shouldn't do that song because you don't actually you remember the feel of it but you don't really remember where the stops and starts are
and this one you know i'm saying with this one there's a lot of air in in this tonight you know what i'm saying the song the song has a lot of space to it and atmospherics and you know it's from the time around the time that peter gabriel was doing similar production to great success you think about the first three peter gabriel albums like they had a real feel to them they were very symbols no symbols
Is that true?
You know that story?
He took the cymbals away.
He took the cymbals away.
He said, you've got to play the drums.
Drummers hate that.
Drummers love their cymbals.
Well, and I think he was the first one to ever do it.
I think drummers hate it.
I think what drummers hate is Peter Gabriel.
Well, they're a lot like dogs.
In 90 minutes, they'll forget everything anyway.
Was it Hugh Padham?
Is that the guy who did In the Air tonight?
Who did Face Value?
Face value.
Face dances tonight.
Face dances tonight.
Take chances.
Sit skirt, sit skirt.
I was just 24 years old.
Who produced this?
Hugh Padham.
Now is he also the guy?
Was he also Peter Gabriel, man?
I think he was.
This is stuff that if I were reading a copy of Tape Op magazine, I would be right in there, right in the thick of it, throwing elbows.
He's got him!
But sitting here just on my hard stool.
A little toadstool.
I'm just like... Dude, Peter Gabriel's first album was produced by Bob Ezrin.
Bob Ezrin.
Get over that shit right now.
Come on, get out of Dodge.
So I kind of want, I'm pretty happy with that Salisbury Hill business.
Let's get the guy from Kiss.
Wasn't it Bob Ezrin?
See, again, like... If you were reading tape op, you'd be throwing elbows right now.
This feels like a tape op article that we should write.
Sorry.
It's all right.
I took you out of your experience.
You've had an amazing morning, capping off a really turbulent week.
And I'm sitting here talking to you about English producers.
Shame on me.
Well, it's not shame on you.
It's not a situation like that.
If you had pivoted to the fix, if you wanted to talk about the fix... Yeah.
um that's too hard of a turn you feel no no i feel like i would have made the turn to the fix i couldn't make the turn to kiss oh no no no i just meant the bob no no i meant the bob ezren part is all is all and now you got steve lilywhite he says he wouldn't work with the band more than twice but in the case of you two he made an exception for war i feel like i wanted and want to be a record producer oh yeah
I really do.
And I don't, and when I listen to other people's production on albums, even ones that I love, even where I love the production as, as,
In my evolution as a musician, when you're young and you're just listening to music as a listener, you don't really hear production.
It's not a thing you're conscious of.
You only notice the stuff you're not supposed to notice.
You might say, oh, there's a lot of reverb on there, but you don't notice the subtleties of what's covering the musical spectrum.
Yeah, you can't hear the work of a producer.
And then we all have, I think, the same experience, which is most of us that didn't come up during a hip-hop era, who came up during a guitar-pop era...
Our first awareness of production comes when we learn about George Martin.
And you go, why the hell are the Beatles so good?
And it's like, oh, well, the production.
And then you get schooled on it.
And then you start hearing the production on a lot of things, like on Bohemian Rhapsody.
And you start hearing the production on... And then if you're a rock person...
You start hearing these stories.
Oh, John Bonham wouldn't let him put the microphones close to the drums.
Oh, you know.
During the making of...
Of those Pink Floyd albums, you know, they... Roger Waters was an asshole.
Well, and it's all like tape loops that Alan Parsons came up with.
Oh, like you get the... And the camera pans slowly.
And gorgeous Dave Gilmore.
God, that guy was handsome.
He's so wonderful.
I did a deep dive on Gilmore the other day.
Sorry, sorry, pivot too hard.
Sorry.
And then you hear the story about when they were making rumors and they lifted up the tape and they could see through it because they had done so many takes.
So much cocaine off of it.
But then you get into making records like I did, and now you're confronted with production as a very real...
Thing that you're like you're learning and deeply engaged in where you're like, well, wait a minute.
Do we like I had some profound production moments in the early Long Winters records because I was collaborating with Chris Walla.
And Chris had a very strong idea.
And?
Come on.
And Ken Strinkfellow.
No, what did you mean?
Oh, my God.
Jesus.
And Sean Nelson.
Oh, my God.
That was so close.
Did you hear about that?
No, no.
It's not like he listens to the podcast.
Wow.
But...
But I can think back to a couple of key moments in the production of that first record where a production choice determined not only the sound of the album, but the sound of the band thenceforth.
Wow.
When I think back on those moments, I think back on them as turning points and in at least one moment,
case, I wish I'd gone the other direction.
Oh, I'm so curious.
Okay, so it's a song.
Is it a particular song from the first album?
It was a sound.
Okay.
It was a sound that we got.
And it was in getting this sound, and I'll tell you what the sound was.
The sound was the sound of my
Juno 106 Roland synthesizer which is a Synthesizer that's has a lot of you can manipulate a lot of parameters.
You can make it sound like a lot of things But primarily you make it sound like a like variations on a synthesizer.
They're good at that.
They're really good It sounds very like a synthesizer no matter to it and then we ran the synthesizer into a big muff
distortion, a big muff fuzz pedal.
And it created this wall, this extremely pleasing fat wall of thick fuzziness, like a giant
A giant love caterpillar came into the room and wrapped me in its 5,000 little stubby green arms.
And it was a turning point, an in-studio turning point, where here was this sound, which was... Is this maybe like a Copernicus?
It was happening in the process of that, exactly that.
that we were experimenting with a song that did not have a band arrangement.
Copernicus was this tune that... Because some of this stuff, just for background, I think it's worth mentioning that some of these had been Western state hurricane songs that you had really changed up quite a lot.
I mean, it's really amazing to think about how many times you played car parts that one way and then made it into this pop song.
You had reinvented some hurricane songs, and then there was new stuff starting from scratch.
Yeah.
Yeah, trying to reinvent stuff and going from a band that was like pretty post-grunge hard rock.
You know, the Western State Hurricanes had big amplifiers and we were a loud band.
And we were in the studio and we were making this music that was indie, proto-indie rock.
Maybe not proto, but we were certainly in this in the new quiet is the new loud school.
And I failed to be quiet in the new lap.
But that was certainly that was the that was the new aesthetic.
And I hit.
And so Copernicus used to be a big rock song.
And we.
And it wasn't, we, the only reason we were even doing it is that we didn't have enough songs to make a whole album.
And I was like, well, what about Copernicus?
And I sat down at the, at a piano and I had never played it on the piano before and just sort of tinkering.
Right.
And in the process of trying stuff out hit upon this sound and it's not, it's not like a, uh, it's not like we were the first person people to ever run a synthesizer into a big buff.
Right.
It's a,
It's a fairly common thing to try.
But it was a sound that I heard in my soul.
Because what it sounded like was a really big fat guitar, but that had no strumming.
You could play chords, you could make all the transitions, but there wasn't any rhythmic aspect to the chords.
It's not like down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down.
It was just... And you could put that in...
And have guitars on it and bass on it and have rhythmic things.
And underneath it, there would be this, like, not just a low tone, but this, like, kind of just wall, this wall of what communicated to me, like, the biggest, raucous sound.
And I'm sitting in the studio and we're putting this down and my eyes are just...
as wide as saucers and i'm like reinventing everything in my mind and we you know we're not this isn't like during mixing but but we're kind of far along in the recording and and i'm basically saying
I want this on everything.
Okay.
It's like you made pesto for the first time, and now everything gets pesto.
Yeah, but it is the sound, right?
I mean, when they were making My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, he...
Took his jazz master and he ran it in probably to a big muff anyway And he was like that's the sound and he put it on everything that that whammy bar thing kind of helps to find that sound I think of it that way for sure.
Yeah, for sure I mean if you if you read interviews with him at the time he's like we didn't use any synthesizers on this it's very simple actually it sounds amazing to you, but you're not thinking straight because it's just like basically two or three tracks of guitar and
It's not this crazy thing.
The more you listen to it, the less you feel like you understand what's going on.
It's such a good album.
It's so good, but it's an example and there are hundreds of examples of bands who just like the strokes hit upon that vocal sound and made that record.
And so anyway, I came into the studio the next day
And the track that this went down on was not Copernicus, although Copernicus was where it belonged next.
What are we thinking of?
What's the one with Dr. Dre on it?
What song am I thinking of?
That's Unsalted Butter.
Right.
Right.
No, it was Mimi.
Really?
That this happened on the first time.
And Mimi is a very thick production.
There's a lot going on in that production.
And the thing is, I didn't hear this keyboard part being the loudest thing in the mix.
Just that it existed.
That it was this like... That the chords had this additional fatness that would have been a sound.
Like a unifying sound on an album.
And it would have been a unifying sound of a band.
Whether or not...
Whether or not that sound would have appealed to people more than the sound that we went with, I have no idea.
It's not a thing that we're speculating about.
But at the time, I was like, production.
Because there wasn't a band.
The Long Winters weren't a band.
It wasn't like we were coming in and trying to capture our sound.
It was like I was in the rare position of being able to say, this is the sound of a new band.
And I came in the next day and was like, let's call that up.
And Chris said...
Yeah, I tried to like make that work and I couldn't really make it work.
So I recorded over it.
oh oh that's aggressive for a bellinghamer well i mean that was his and and that was you know it it was within a 10 minute period that i had this like production and then on the flip side of it like production because he perceived himself to be the producer and that wasn't where that wasn't the direction he heard it going
And we had an argument about it, but he had erased it.
It wasn't like... Were the other tracks down at this point?
No, everything was... I mean, we were far enough along in the making of the record that this would have been a change of direction.
And when you are in a situation like that, where you feel like,
Oh, well, you know, we've got to get this done.
We don't have the time to do this now.
And you look at it from my perspective 15 years later and you go, you know, you had all the time in the world to make those decisions.
Like you have the famous adage, right?
You don't have your whole life to make your first record.
Right.
You only have a year to make your second record.
Right.
And he didn't, you know, that wasn't the sound of production that he had in mind.
And at that point in his career, he didn't see his job as being facilitate the artist as much as his job was be a guide to the artist or be a guide.
A collaborator, a co-author.
So everything that followed from there, like the second record, I took a much greater hand in making production decisions for better and for worse.
Because I was learning production and not always, you know, I at that point kind of needed a mentor.
Anyway, like a lot of things in music, as I learned more and more about production and as I heard it more and more, then I couldn't listen to a record without hearing the production.
Hearing it in some cases a long time before I was listening to the song.
Until production was my primary path into music.
And I think I arrived at a place where if the production doesn't grab me right away, I don't want to hear the production now.
I keep going back to this band always from Canada who I think have great production.
And the new Portugal the Man song I think has great production.
And I want to listen and, you know, Beck records have great production.
I want to listen to the production on those things.
But like like bad production.
I it's like listening to a bad podcast.
I just get, you know, my shoulders hunch up.
I get that like lemon just sucked on a lemon face.
And I just have to get out of it.
I don't want to hear it.
Without naming names, what do you think of what you're calling bad production?
What is a hallmark of what you consider bad production?
Apart from how it makes you feel.
Anything with vocoder on it.
Oh, or like autotune?
Anything with... Vocoder in particular, even more than autotune, is an effect that is now...
I mean, it's considered almost like de rigueur.
Still?
If you're making a kind of record, absolutely.
Really?
I mean, that Kanye record that came out.
Yeah, yeah.
I think he works it sometimes.
Well, yeah, but it was superfluous to need, as he used it on this most recent record.
And the thing is, it's no longer... I understand that to...
Listeners within the auto-tune slash vocoder genre, it is as necessary to the sound of the music as distorted guitars are to metal.
It's just the sound.
It is the sound of it.
But I just find it like so dull-witted, just dull-witted as a sound.
And when I hear it, I just go, I just, I'm just, I'm out, you know?
Um, and you know, the same is true of like super, super gloss, um,
on stuff that I mean and this isn't just coming from a lo-fi perspective but where the where everything has been glossed to the point where there's no it's not even conceivable that there would be imperfection in it and I think you probably have that same feeling like super gloss just puts me out on the sidewalk it's it's
It's weird because I'm somewhat out of the vernacular on a lot of stuff.
I mean, I'll know, like, I'll recognize something as part of this, like, two to three year long trend, you know.
But it's sometimes something comes along that is very new and you really notice it.
I mean, for Vocoder, you go back to, let's say, you know, Zap and Roger.
Or something.
Or I guess Peter Frampton before that.
But Zap and Roger turned it into a little bit of an art form.
Maybe beat it to death.
But they did something more bounce to the ounce.
That is the sound of a vocoder to me.
It's something like that.
And then eventually there will be people who reintroduce it.
Like Cher?
Yeah, which supposedly started as an accident.
I think it did, and it sounds like an accident, but I think Do You Believe in Life After Love was the thing that turned Vocoder from a memory of the distant past to...
a thing now that you can't you know you can't turn on the radio without hearing it right it felt it felt very modern but i'm thinking about um i don't want to go too deep down a rabbit hole but there's lots of stuff like that where you like you'll just but sometimes somebody is able to take something that seems like it's been pretty tired and mix it up but but it's it is that there is this sense to me of like even in a genre that i'm not super familiar with
and this is probably just because I'm an old man, I will tend to tune out rather quickly if it sounds like pretty much all the other stuff I've heard.
Mm-hmm.
But, like, for example, like, I'm not the biggest Bon Iver fan in the world.
Like, I like his stuff okay, but he was on the recently renamed Chris Thiele show last night.
Oh!
Oh.
And, boy, the thing he did was weird.
Mm-hmm.
I don't know what he was doing.
He did the song...
I don't know.
He's doing this lead speak for all the titles of his songs, but it's Something Something 45 is the name of this song.
I don't know what in the hell instrument or instruments he's playing, but unless he had brought with him some exquisitely talented string and winds group, I think it must have been...
i need to find out what instrument he's playing on this because i don't think it's live instruments it could have been it was so tight it was unbelievable but it was weird it was ghostly and it made me really perk up and i i sat and i put down what i was doing and i listened to the song like a gentleman and in something like that you realize that that however he accomplished that it worked like so he did something really differently and it really caught me and it didn't hurt that the song was also you know
It had a really great feel to it.
So I don't know.
I mean, I still think there's so much room for something to really catch your ear and spark your feeling, that oogly feeling in your gut of like, oh, this is exciting and new, and I'm really glad that somebody went there with this.
That most recent Bon Iver record, which is called 22, A Million.
Yeah, that's the one.
Kind of like Portugal, period, The Man.
I have.
And it's an example of a record that I sat with
utterly fascinated by the production and to the point that I was yelling at the speakers about it because because listening to it there are astonishing choices being made and you could feel the choices or at least I could feel the choices being made as they went down and
And I had that experience of being like, yes, yes.
And then, you know, just like doing that incredible thing that you want from an artist, which is making a choice that both is incredibly gratifying in a way where it feels like
obvious slash almost pandering to my basest needs, but also completely surprising and not at all what I, and it doesn't feel trite, you know, just like, wow, awesome.
Like that was it.
You, yes.
Can I toss one thing in?
In this age where so much of our media, especially movies, but in many cases, music is so... I hate to be a karma suck, but if you really, really keep scratching at the surface, you realize how much stuff is based on nostalgia.
Or how much stuff is based on not just a reboot, but on repackaging something really familiar.
And I felt kind of unmoored listening to that song.
I'm not sure what this thing is, but it's like listening to Eno back in the day or something.
We were like, what planet is this from?
Well, and...
So there's a keyboard.
The first time I saw it, Jonathan Colton had it.
And then I started to see it in the hands of a lot of musicians that I respected.
And it was a thing that people were just pulling out of their bag, right?
We'd be sitting around and out would come this little keyboard.
And it's smaller than an SK-7.
Um, it's, um, this tiny little thing.
It's like, it's longer than a paperback book, but thinner than a paperback book.
And it's, and it's, and it's beautiful.
It's made out of like brushed aluminum and it's, um, it's, uh, it's like a, it's just machined so beautifully.
And it's called a, it's called the OP1.
Okay.
Um, Oh, wow.
And, um,
It's a little, just a little synth that's made in Stockholm.
God, this thing is gorgeous.
It's gorgeous.
And it is a synth, and it's a sequencer, and it, like, it does all these fun things that are... Hang on, I'm...
I'm looking up... I said SK-7, but what I meant was SK-1.
Like a Casio.
The little Casio.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
But this is teenage... If you want to Google this, it's teenage engineering OP-1.
And so this is a thing... It looks like it would be difficult to tell.
If this were a prop in a movie, it would be hard to know what decade it's from.
You know what I mean?
It's got a timeless...
kind of wackadoo digital quality to it it does and it's you know it's very gratifying to have in your hands like when you press down the keys they feel um really satisfyingly kind of solid it's it's a small enough thing i would not have guessed that from looking at this it looks like just little like like little like the pads on like a cheap laptop no it's not cheap at all it's just like
It's clicky and it's chunky.
And considering how small it is, it fits in your messenger bag, it is surprisingly heavy.
It's milled.
There's no plastic on it.
Like dense.
It's dense.
And it's not big.
So it's not like you could sit and play the grand piano on it.
But within it, it has its own...
it has all this processing power.
I can, you can loop you, there's drums in it.
You can, uh, you can kind of make all kinds of music out of it.
And Colton pulled it out of his bag and I was like, Whoa, what's that?
And he was like, check it out.
And he's, you know, Mr. Gizmo.
And so he has, he'll get these things and he'll play them for a while.
And then they'll kind of, you know, they end up on his, on his gizmo wall and he uses them for sure.
But like,
You know, if you've ever seen him on tour, right, he pulls out something that fancy pants, whatever that crazy thing is that he plays.
And that thing that thing was that thing was a piece of joke comedy equipment that he turned into.
Well, like ultimate ultra ultra joke comedy thing.
Anyway, so he looks like he really knows what he's doing with it.
He does.
I mean, I have to say like I am not much of a musician, but watching him play that it looks like there's a million ways that thing could go horribly wrong.
Yeah.
I mean, he's a fucking he's a genius.
There's no argument.
Yeah, it's true.
Anyway, so I started seeing this OP one get pulled out of bags backstage all the time.
You know, it's the type of thing that Matthew cause suddenly had one.
And and and the the the problem is it's a thousand bucks.
And so it was the type of thing that when I first saw it, I felt like I got to get one of those.
But then it was a thousand bucks, which is not cheap.
And the thing about an SK one was that it was, it was cheap.
It was cheap when it was new.
And I mean, I used to find them at thrift stores for, for five to $10.
This is a thousand bucks and it's absolutely worth it.
It feels worth it.
But it turned out that almost everything on that record, 22 comma a million, were either made with or run through an OP1.
Wow, that is super interesting.
That little fucking gizmo, and this is Bon Iver's whole trip, right?
He made that first record out in his dad's cabin on a tape machine made out of a beer bottle and a raccoon tail.
And you go like, well done, dude.
Well done, creative guy.
And when this record came out, part of my experience of listening to it the first couple times was like, oh, well, now you're Mr. Got All the Money in the World.
And so you're just like... You got a fair light.
Yeah, right.
You're making like a billion dollar record in a studio.
You're probably like...
Every day somebody brings in a giant tray of chopped crapola that nobody eats.
He's probably on the Dark Twisted Fantasy Island.
He's out there and people are just hanging out on the couch for like just months making the album, right?
Right.
But in fact, it's him with this fucking little thing.
And what I was yelling at about the production is that it was the best kind of yelling at the radio for me now.
Which is that I could feel myself in that chair.
I could feel myself as the producer of that record.
And I heard choices that I disagreed with.
And, you know, and the thing is, they're tiny.
It's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
You put the effect on it the first time, then leave it off the second time.
And when it came back, you could feel it coming back around, and I was like, you're going to have that effect on it, and that's the wrong choice.
And it came back around, and it did have the effect on it, and I was like, no!
And I felt it every time it went by, and I mean, this is like interacting with a brilliantly produced thing, and interacting with it not as a
Like a passive listener, not as somebody that's like, how is this?
Wow, what's going?
But somebody that where I was sitting there, like, I know, I know you agonized over whether or not to do that.
And in the end, you chose to do it.
And if I were there, I would have argued against it.
And that kind of like that kind of relationship to production.
is like when you become a musician and you first hear the bass line in God Only Knows, and you're like, well, now I can't ever hear it without hearing the bass.
I can never hear it without hearing that whatever, that triangle, because having become conscious of it, you can't ever put it back in the box.
I want to be a producer.
Hmm.
because i because it's an art that i really identify with like i really i want i don't want to be a producer that is like oh i don't i didn't hear that sound so i just erased it i want to be a producer that's like what you know like what do you want and let's find it but then but then
advocating for that kind of thing.
Like, what if on the second one we didn't do it?
What if we didn't go back?
Right.
So way beyond an engineer, but not at the point where you're just like a name that gets slapped on it, but you're somebody who could say, like, here's a palette of things that might complement what you've told me you're trying to do.
Like, I don't want to be an engineer at all.
That aspect of it, I know enough about to say, like, here's what I'm hearing.
I want to sidechain things.
so that it only triggers the reverb when it goes above this.
and the engineer knows what i'm talking about or i mean you know i i want to be able to know the technology enough to be able to say here's what i want and here's what i mean well almost as a director is to a dp or cinematographer like you're able to say like you go do your thing to go make it make look like this it's the same you know how to do it and then you can describe it in the terms that right i mean that's yeah but yeah you get people for that right and but not at all like the slap your name on a thing like i want to be in the trenches with
With artists making music.
Because it's really hard to do for yourself.
It's really hard to be the writer, director, star, and producer of your own film.
Even if you're the writer, director, star, there's a producer, generally.
But breaking into that, because there have been quite a few...
artists who have considered me as the producer i don't mean that they that they call me their producer right but like yeah you're in the running for the role right i was in the running to make the record and in and i've only ever recorded i've only ever produced three albums that weren't connected to me one of them was the most popular one was shelby earl's debut record
And I'm super proud of Shelby Earle's debut record, Burn the Boats.
And I produced a record for a guy named Eric Hawk, who is currently the guitar player in Portugal, the man.
And he's a very mercurial guy, and he never released it.
Oh, man.
It's a brilliant record.
By which I mean he is a great player, and his songs are great.
But he had...
He had some, he had whatever, insecurity about it.
And then he kind of feels like, oh, well, we made that 10 years ago and it's not really relevant anymore.
It's like, it's a great record.
It's always relevant.
And then I produced a record for my niece, Elizabeth Roderick, that I'm also super proud of.
Wow, I didn't know that.
That's cool.
I imagine it's probably hard to find.
But, you know, I was in the running to produce Kathleen Edwards' record, and then Kathleen Edwards started dating Bon Iver.
And the record label was like, well, we could pay to have this record made by John Roderick, or we could have it made by Bon Iver, who was at that moment, like, number one on the charts with a bullet.
And so I missed out on on producing that record.
And I had a lot of angry things to yell at the speakers listening to it because he made a lot of choices for her music that I wouldn't have.
I mean, that felt to me like obvious at the time.
Like, yeah, she's a female singer songwriter with an acoustic guitar.
Sure.
So you made Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Um, but that's not what, I don't think it's what the album wanted.
No, I don't think that's what the songs wanted.
I don't think that's what she wanted in her life at the time.
And, um, but you know, that was very hard for her to say.
Sure.
Because shit, Bon Iver is producing your record.
And, oh, also, you know, like you're in a relationship with him.
It's very hard to be like, you know, I kind of, we were half, because, you know, she and I had been talking production.
We were not halfway along, but it was like,
I wanted to make that record sound like the first Pretenders record.
I'd only just hang out with her.
She's amazing.
I like her.
I only spent that little bit of time at your house with her, but boy, I like that person.
She has a lot of deep calm.
Yeah, but she's fast and funny.
My God, she's fast and funny.
She is.
She's dynamite.
And she posted a thing on Instagram yesterday, which was she was out walking in the forest behind her house in Ontario.
And she found like a giant jackrabbit, dead jackrabbit hanging from a tree.
Not hanging like by its neck, but just like draped over a branch.
Oh, dear.
That's not good for property values.
And then she found like a dismembered coyote.
Oh, come on.
She was like, what's going on out here?
Yeah, exactly.
Is there like a Cthulhu?
A Canadian Cthulhu.
Sorry.
So her life continues to be very interesting.
It sounds like you've been thinking about this.
This has been on your mind.
You're thinking, is this something you think you'd like to do?
Well, the problem is the life of a producer is not the life that I want.
I have a lot of friends that are producers.
That's the career they chose for themselves.
And I think it's very gratifying work for them, but they never see the sun.
And they go from one completely encompassing project to the next.
So they work on something for three weeks where they're just in the studio with these musicians who are like frantically scrambling to try and get their vision down.
And they shepherd this thing all the way from
zero to a fully fledged thing you have to be comfortable with with the idea that like we don't have all the time in the world that that's the take moving on you know all this stuff that's in some ways like anti-perfectionism you make choices and you go and you come to the end and you have a finished product and
And, you know, at the beginning of a record, it could be any one of a thousand things.
But at the end of a record, it is what it is.
And you can scrap it and go back and make that record again differently.
But you probably aren't going to.
You made it.
Right.
That's the thing about the first Long Winners record.
At the end, it was what it was.
And because it was a first record, it established the tone of the band going forward.
Yeah.
And I wouldn't want to do that all year long.
I wouldn't want to make 12 records in a year.
It would be overwhelming.
But I would love to make a record every year.
With somebody.
With somebody.
Or two records a year.
Where it was like, yeah, I'm going to go... I mean, every time Death Cab goes in to make a new record, I'm always like, you should have me produce this one.
And they are... Are they still making records?
Oh, yeah, they're making one right now.
No kidding.
They are always making records, and...
you know, their records continually evolve.
I don't think they understand how fantastic a job I would do as the producer of their album.
More than pity on that.
My goodness, they should at least have you in.
I mean, just, that's ridiculous.
Well, it's not, it's not a thing that could ever happen.
And when I say it, they, there's like that, there's that laugh of like, ha ha ha ha, and then a little bit of fear in the eyes that I'm serious.
Yeah, like me asking you if I can drive.
Yeah, right.
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That's adorable, Merlin.
Oh, great.
Sure, buddy.
And you're there like, no, seriously.
No, I'm a really good driver.
Seriously.
Yeah.
I mean, you have obviously strong feelings about it.
Is that ever a thing that if somebody came to you and said like, hey, we want Merlin Mann to produce our album?
Well, no, but I'm thinking a lot about what you're saying.
And it's, I mean, I guess...
To me, it's difficult not to separate it from what I think of as being a film director.
And both of those jobs... I mean, we can stick to just music, but in either case, it really is an impossible task.
You go into making an album or making a movie.
I mean, you've got to be so crazy to go into that because it's impossible.
There's no way to get everything the way everybody wants.
There's always time limits.
There's always money limits.
And if there aren't time and money limits, you still might make total shit.
It's like...
But also the personality traits required to be a good and talented producer are...
I don't know.
I marvel at people who can tick all the boxes.
So you think of somebody who, on the one hand, really knows who they are.
I know that sounds silly.
But somebody who knows who they are, they know the edges of their humanity.
And like, okay, here's where I stop and the other people begin.
Like, really understand.
So, I mean, like, honestly, to be a truly mature person,
Shading into parental character, like a super dad or a super mom.
Somebody who's really, really able to separate themselves from the process, from the people, from the product.
And then just the million skills you need inside of that or would benefit from inside of that.
Obviously having a great ear, knowing what something wants to be rather than what it is right now, being able to help people articulate something they don't know they're even thinking right now.
Being able to, as I say, bring in a palette that isn't just a bunch of gimmicks and gizmos, but to be able to say, like, well, you know, this is one thing we could try to do this.
The ability to, as you say, keep things moving, right?
Like you would say with guitar solos back in the day, like, we're not going to do this 42, this is not Hound Dog, we're not going to do this 42 times.
Mm-hmm.
So what's the right amount of time?
How do you know when you're pushing it too far?
Do you want to do like a Fincher and a Kubrick where you just keep doing this until the person wants to kill you?
Or do you say you got three shots, give me your best?
Or something else because you know how that works.
I just feel like it's so difficult for me to even concentrate on one and a half things at a time.
It's amazing to me that that person could be somebody who could, for example, feel comfortable talking to a...
whoever owns warner brothers this week like to be able to talk to the people above you and sort of below you and beside you keep everybody confident that this is on track it's like a skill set that makes my mind swim and i know you don't have to have all those things you could just be affordable and patient but like to be really good at that requires a set of skills that represents almost everything i marvel at in a person yeah it's a
It is a set of skills that is – I think a lot of people in the music world think it's a set of skills that can be learned because there's so much effort put into software, recording software, and recording gear of all kinds.
There are so many boxes.
There are so many instruction manuals.
And the era of the home recordist produced –
Thousands and thousands of people who could legitimately describe themselves as producers because they have produced albums on their Mac.
And as they read the data, they tested things out, they tried, they listened to other records, they got really good drum sounds, they got really good sounds.
Ultimately, they were engineering great records.
Or at least not maybe great records, but they were able to engineer competently.
Even competent.
Yeah, even competent records.
But there is, like all art, a thing that cannot be learned that is feel and is emotion.
And when you're talking to musicians about making a record or when you're shepherding that process...
you're dealing with this incredible world of like these are, this is in some ways like a peak ego moment for people, but also the place where they're most vulnerable.
The music is generally like coming from somewhere inside them that they are maybe not in contact with directly.
That's why it's coming out as music.
They're using their voices, they're using their bodies.
You're dealing with multiple people.
Multiple people.
And everybody's, whether they know it or not, maybe doesn't have, I was going to say agenda, that's not the right way to put it, but you're expected to rise above, you're paid, you're compensated to rise above all of that on some level.
You're empowered by somebody to be the project manager for this piece of art.
Which is a lot of responsibility.
At a crucial level, yes.
And at a crucial level, you need to be right down in the blood and guts of it with people.
Because, you know, there are a million producers out there who have learned to do it on their Mac.
And they're sitting in the room and they're recording you and the singer does a take and goes, how was that?
And the person on the other side goes, it was good.
How did it sound to you?
And that is not.
That's about as useful as when I say, what do you want for dinner?
And they say, whatever you want.
I was like, well, no, I'm asking you because I don't want to have to decide this on my own.
But you also have to be a great editor, right?
So it's one thing, and I'm not in any way trying to diminish what I'm calling engineering.
The skills and the mechanics of spending years learning how to make sounds.
in a studio is amazing.
And certainly, through the compressors, through the board, all through the entire stack, that is an entire skill set.
But then to have mostly mastered that, plus be able to say, let's leave out that second chorus, or let's have the bass do this here, or could we try it this way, or why don't you go record this in the bathroom, or really just being able to say that song's not up to snuff, or let's try that vocal one more time, that's a very different skill from being able to make something that doesn't overdrive the speakers.
You know what I mean?
To be able to go from competent to, like, you're getting into this very hazy, cloudy world of, like, it's very much value judgments.
Well, let alone being able to go into the room, sit down with the singer and go, you know, you're singing this from a place that isn't, like, reading as completely believable because it feels like you're singing it
from a space where you're examining the protagonist.
And the song is written in the language
Though the protagonist truly believed his situation and not that he was being examined by someone smarter than him So, huh, you're the singer you've written this song it is in this person's voice and now you're afraid to be that person in the studio and you're thinking you're smarter than that person and now you're you're singing it with your tongue in your cheek and it's not reading and to be able to say that kind of thing to a singer is
In a language, because different singers will be able to hear that differently.
And you need to know the language of the person you're talking to to be able to say something like that to them where they go, right.
And then to be able to say, one way that you can accomplish that is to stop having your voice coming from behind your eyeballs and start trying to make your voice come from between your nipples.
Mm-hmm.
And then walk away, you know, and and be able to connect the intellectual experience of like you're not singing this truthfully and then be able to give them a physiological cue that sounds crazy to someone that isn't a singer.
and be like, you're putting the music behind your eyes, and you need to put it from behind your ears.
And you say that to a singer, you say that to a group of people, and they're like, what?
I mean, that sounds woo-woo, or it just sounds idiotic.
But if you say it to a singer, and they're in front of the microphone, and they are like, oh shit, I was putting it behind my eyes, and then they put it behind their ears, which isn't a thing that they'd ever thought of before, and it works.
You know, that stuff.
So it's not like...
Comparing that job to an engineer is like saying, well, this guy is a genius at making this race car motor run really great.
So that means that he will probably also be a great team owner.
Um, who's like, and also a great driving instructor and recruiter of drivers who he has to persuade to be on his team.
Yeah.
They're just, it's like, it's utterly different.
But the problem is that, that guys who have taught themselves engineering on their max feel insulted by the, the suggestion that, that what they're doing isn't production.
Because it is, and within the hip-hop world, if you just make beats, you're called a producer.
That's actually the name of that job.
It's like, oh, I'm the producer.
And basically, it's because the track is just somebody rhyming over what you built.
You're the 808ist.
Yeah, but it's just a track you made.
And you're probably not in that job sitting there
working with the vocalist like about whether he's singing it from behind his eyes or not and there are you know like i'm sure that if you're working with rick rubin or you're working with dr dre they are involved at that level but there's a lot of music that you can just tell it's one of the things when you listen to stuff on the radio as a as a casual listener you're not often conscious of the fact that the problem you're having with the song the reason you don't like it is that the singer isn't
isn't believable within the music that they themselves wrote.
And it's because they got divorced from, they got divorced from what they wrote at some point, which isn't hard to do.
It's easy to get divorced.
It's why I can't listen to modern country because I don't believe it.
I don't believe any of it.
Because that vocal style is so affected.
I don't even recognize it as country.
I'm not trying to be one of those.
I like Hank Williams, guys.
But when I hear things that are called country music, I'm like, wow.
I realize things evolve, but this sounds so much more like hip-hop than country to me.
oh really well just in the sense that it's so it is so affect not affected in the way you would think but it's just every single little edge has been shaved off of it and it's auto-tuned and super shiny and it sounds like one of those swedish producers like made a country album but not really like when people keep talking about when this is this is the album where taylor swift is finally all off of country and gone totally pop and i'm like i don't know man she's been pretty pop for a while
Right.
Well, and I think the difference is that there's not that like
That weird drawl.
A weird drawl that feels like San Francisco punk bands that sing in an English accent.
But it's wrong in the music, not just in the affectation of the voice.
Yeah, right.
Which is just like... And it's like, no, it's all so corny.
Just adding a pedal steel at the last minute does not make this a country song.
I heard that on the radio the other day.
No, I guess I was in a store and some song came on and...
from the way that this drum sounded i was like how long till the pedal steel i was just counting it down and then there it was like and i'm like you know the pedal steel is an incredible instrument i mean it's incredible it's got so much to say and so many different emotions it's awesome if you put if you run it into a distortion box if you run it into a chorus pedal if you run it into a delay pedal
It can do, it's like a synthesizer.
I mean, it can make so many tones.
Instead, it's like the country music salt shaker.
Yeah, it's so criminally underused.
It's just like, oh, here it is.
This is a High Lonesome song.
One more High Lonesome.
Turn up the High Lonesome.
Think about the way just a lap steel is used within Hawaiian music.
It creates all that spooky way.
It's the sound of Hawaiian music.
and it's the same it's the same instrument that's being used over here you know it's like oh fuck somebody should steal like the great pedal steel players should all march out of nashville and just go start you know they should just start working with with the t-pain
And just fucking do something else, man.
Both sides.
Everybody do something else.
We're going to flip it.
Here, we're going to flip the switch.
Mix it up a little bit.
Yeah, all the beat producers go over to Nashville and all the pedal steel players head out to LA and down to Atlanta.
So...
Usually when you mention something on the show, it's something you've been thinking about for a while.
I guess sometimes it could be something that's just coming out because it's occurring to you.
Is this something you've been thinking about for a while?
Did you just recently realize you've been thinking about this for a while?
I don't think that I... I mean, I've been thinking about this ever since the fourth Long Winners record went off the trail.
Because in the making of the fourth Longwinders record, I had evolved to the point where I felt like I was doing pretty great production work.
And that production work was such a separate job from my actual job of being the songwriter and the singer.
And it was in some ways more interesting to me.
And what ended up happening was I produced, well, effectively an instrumental record.
I never went in and did my vocals.
And partly it was that the job of the vocals I had fulfilled with melodic instruments.
But the record sounded great, you know?
And...
And I couldn't wait to mix it.
And it was just this frustrating thing that I needed to figure out.
God, I got to put vocals on this thing.
And in the end, I never did.
I never put vocals on it.
That record just sits there unfinished.
And the experience of working on that production every day, and in conjunction with Eric Corson,
who has become now a great producer in his own right and was a great engineer even then, it felt like, oh, this is something I could do.
This is another thing I could do.
Now, right now,
The idea that in addition to having three unfinished records, four podcasts, a book deal that I haven't pursued yet.
What I also need to do is throw my hat in the ring as a record producer.
It just feels like what I need to do is figure out a method of finishing things rather than chase down another... Well, good for you.
That's a hell of an insight.
Well, I mean...
It is.
It's very much of an insight.
I mean, that's very practical.
You know, I have this list that's 10 years old or 15 years old of all the things that I... I mean, I've been trying to finish that record for 10 years.
I've been trying to finish that book for 20 years.
And there was... Graduate from College was also on that list for 20 years.
I got to graduate from college.
I got to finish that book.
I got to finish that album.
And every morning I would wake up and there was no, I never had a small list, like get your pants on, get some, make some toast, get out of the house.
You know, at the end of every day, I never had a list that I could, that I could look at and say, I checked everything off that list.
Good job.
At the end of every day, the only list I had was graduate from college, finish that book, finish that album.
And so at the end of every day, all I ever looked at was a list that seemed real simple, right?
It only had three items on it.
And they were all items that, you know, it wasn't like start writing that book.
It was, you have 450 pages written, just finish it.
As a retired productivity guru, I'll tell you, those are not easy items.
No, I know because I spent 15 years looking at that three item list and it was,
was a drag to never be able to check a single thing off of a list.
And I didn't, I didn't understand the thought technology of like, make a stupid list of things and check them off and you'll feel good about yourself at the end of the day.
Um, and also I've never been able to
Complete a project by making small, manageable choices.
Like all you need to do today is go in and cross all the T's and dot all the I's.
Or all you need to do today is write 500 words.
I've never been good at that.
Well, so last year, 2016, I think, December of 2015, I got that letter in the mail.
An envelope from the University of Washington that's shaped like a diploma.
Have I told you this?
No.
I got a diploma-shaped manila envelope from the University of Washington.
So far, so good.
And I looked at it, and I was like, there's not that many things this could be.
And I think it is my diploma.
Yeah.
I think I have graduated from the university.
Did it take you this long to open it?
My God, I would have torn that open.
Well, I've never opened it.
Oh.
I put it on the bookshelf, and it's still there.
Wow.
And I look at it.
Maybe not every day, but it's right there.
It's like Schrodinger's diploma.
It is.
That's exactly right.
Inside that envelope, I think, is a diploma.
I think if I went online, I could probably find out whether or not I had graduated, but I'm not interested in doing that either.
And as far as I know, until I open that envelope, it's not official.
Is that how it works?
I don't know.
Seems reasonable.
I've never seen a diploma.
I don't even know what it would say.
What I don't even know what it like.
What do they look like even?
Yeah.
Is it going to say like graduated with honors?
Is it going to say like barely eat by?
Is it going to say spent 24 years in college?
White ribbon.
White ribbon.
Well, I'll speak for the audience.
Why do you suppose you haven't opened it?
Because you want it to stay a cat that could be alive or dead.
I don't know.
I mean, it might be that if I open it, then I will check one of those three things off the list.
I'll scratch one of those three things off the list, and it will both make the other two things seem even worse.
even starker.
Now there's only two things on the list.
But also, you know, to carry around, because it's not like I just, it's not like I waited 15 years to graduate from college.
I've waited 30 years to graduate from college.
Like I went into Gonzaga University as a freshman in September of 1987.
And that's 30 years ago.
But I was thinking about going to college when I was 10.
Yeah.
In 1977.
And so to have graduated and to have a diploma that's like, there it is, University of Washington.
It's not like you're ever going.
It's not like you have needed it.
Right.
I'm 49 years old and I have never needed it.
And I feel like opening it and looking at it and having accomplished it, like all those times in my life when having it would have, like when my dad was alive, if I had been able to show it to him and say like, I graduated from the University of Washington, it would have meant something to him.
It would have meant something to my uncles.
But now I'm afraid of feeling underwhelmed.
I'm afraid of it being like, yeah, there it was.
You always knew you could.
Is that all there is?
Yeah.
Is there any chance it could be the opposite of a diploma?
Is there any part of your mind that worries that it's a big piece of paper that says your window is closed?
Or something tells you that it's a diploma apart from the shape?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, because that fall, the director of the Comparative History of Ideas Department, John Taves, who took over in that role after Jim Klaus died,
Although John Taves was always Jim Klaus's advisor.
Jim Klaus, is that the guy you were going to go start a civilization with?
That's right.
And Jim Klaus died suddenly.
And John Taves, who had been his mentor, decided that rather than let the Chid Department either dissolve or fall into the hands of a young, unexperienced or inexperienced professor, John Taves was like, okay, all right, I'll be the shepherd and guide.
Wow.
He was a prominent Hegelian professor.
john taves and um and that fit in with you know what chid did and john was a friend and a mentor to me and he called me and said i'm retiring from the university and when i go i'm the last living link to anyone who ever taught you or like
like actually saw you as a living person rather than as a ghostly chimera that hovers over the chid department like you know like i'm a i'm a griffin right like just some winged lion and he said if i retire all these little weird addenda that are attached to all the
Pieces of paper in your file, all the post-it notes that say, well, this looks like that, but in actuality, it's this because he did that.
And then this somebody promised him this and and.
You know, and there's like dog tags in there and there's like a lock of somebody's hair.
You know, like my file.
Do you feel like he was spinning it as like, this is the time.
This is the thing you need to do now.
Oh, he wasn't spinning it.
He said it directly.
Like, if you don't graduate now, it's going to be hard later to find anybody who's going to believe it.
And you just need to like you've had enough credits to graduate since 2001.
You've been putting it off for whatever thousand reasons.
You know, Jim Klaus, like I went to see him in the hospital and he said, don't.
Don't not graduate because it's not perfect.
Like, don't fail to graduate because you think that you need it all to be perfect.
Just do it.
Just hand in your shit and get out.
And I said, you know, and he's like, you know, he's in the hospital on his way.
And I said, Jim, I can't, you know, I can't do that.
And he said, I'm telling you, I'm telling you.
You understand how parts of college work, but there are some parts you understand and there are other parts you don't seem to have fully grasped yet that the idea is to be done with college.
Yeah.
You need to get out.
You need to not like perfect.
That must drive these poor people crazy.
It must seem so strange to them.
It did.
It did.
It did.
It drove them crazy.
They were like, for all the effort that you've put into this, you can have four graduate degrees.
Why are you still here?
And I was like, you know, I just have this one other thing I want to do.
Gotta refill your water.
And Klaus was like... You want me to pump your bed up a little bit?
He's like... I mean, this guy's... He's saying he's in the hospital.
He's like, this is my deathbed command to you.
Oh, Jesus.
And I said... I haven't read a lot of Tolkien, but I think you're not supposed to refuse that.
I think if you get a deathbed command from somebody to instruct you, I think you're expected to follow it.
Well, the thing is, I think you're... If you say, yes, sir, and then...
If you defy the promise, then you, yes, you're cursed.
You know what?
You're probably right.
But I sat there in the chair and argued.
I never agreed to this.
Yeah, what are you talking about?
I never agreed to graduate from your college.
I'm going to stay here until it's perfect.
So Taves had me come down to the college.
And, you know, there's like on the Chid Department wall, there's a Long Winter's poster.
You know, it's like I am a chimera or I am like a... A wraith?
A wraith, yeah.
You might maybe haunt a grandfather clock or something.
Bong.
But I went down and I...
Sat there and we all laughed and we had some fun.
We had some laughs.
And my memory is hazy, but I feel very certain...
Because there was all this stuff that needed to happen, right?
I mean, I was like, well, I wanted to hand in that.
I had that thing about Marx that I was working on, and I just wanted to, like, make some modifications to it.
All this stuff, you know, that I had, that I needed to do before I would.
And I think as I was sitting there describing it, like, he kept putting papers in front of me.
And he had me sign...
Something that I think eventually produced this envelope arriving in the mail.
Oh, you got a little bit gaslighted.
I got a little bit.
You didn't even realize you were graduating.
That's not fair.
Well, and so, and then, so I got a Facebook message from someone at the university one time that said, congratulations.
Congratulations.
Someone in the chid department, Facebook message.
And it wasn't even a message.
It was like posted on my page.
On your wall.
Yeah.
And I wrote and I commented and I was like, for what?
And they commented back, oh, never mind.
You'll see.
And so that's all the evidence I have.
But when that envelope arrived, I...
Like it had a kind of, you know, it had little, it had icicles on it.
Like it felt like, wow, what is, so I knew, I, I knew a not to open it.
I knew B not to throw it away.
So I, so it's, it's on the, it's on the bookshelf.
Can you frame it in the envelope?
Well, maybe that's a good idea.
I like that.
I like that.
And, you know, in your papers, right, you leave behind some instructions about what's to be done in the unlikely event of your death.
I mean, obviously you'll never die, but if you do, here's what you're allowed to do with the framed envelope.
Right.
Do not open it.
I got to tell you, buddy, I like this idea a lot.
Frame the envelope.
I'm worried that framing the envelope is a weird affectation.
Like, I worry already that not opening it is weird.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I feel like framing it, that feels right to do.
But it also feels like now you're hanging stuff on the walls in your house that you're hoping people ask about.
That would be weird to hang the envelope.
You should just leave your diploma unopened.