Ep. 287: "American Car"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
I like your new Skype avatar.
Isn't that cute?
It's a funny dog.
It's a funny dog going, huh?
How you doing this morning?
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
You know, all things considered, the someone in the neighborhood...
We all have to figure out in Seattle at this time of year how you're going to get your lawn mowed because if you don't do it when you get a shot, then it could start raining again and rain for 10 days.
And by the time it's done, you know, your lawn is loving that.
Oh, you got a different kind of lawn mowing now.
Yeah.
Now you're doing like emergency stuff.
Now your grass is 11 inches high.
And so, you know, those of us that like to test our limits, we go that extra day.
And I can hear someone in the neighborhood that hasn't mowed his lawn in like seven days because he's just like... It's really... You like to walk right up to that edge, though.
You like to jump on right before the plane takes off.
Oh, boy.
And I go over it so often.
I go over that lawn so many times.
And it's just like, oh...
Too bad, there's not enough chaos in the world to power this lawnmower.
I've got to get the scythe out.
That's an image I like.
You out there with your Grim Reaper stick?
Yeah.
Just making bales of hay.
Yeah.
How's it going down there in San Francisco today?
Oh, it's a beautiful, warm, dry, humid, cool morning, Colonel.
No, it's a nice morning.
It's an optimistic day.
Oh, that's good.
I was listening to Kanye West and singing along with Kanye West, as I sometimes do.
Oh, well, what do you know?
All of the lights, all of the...
Uh-huh.
That's exactly what I think of.
That's a very good album.
I've heard it, yeah.
Have you heard it?
I mean, it's a really, really good album.
Yeah, it's a good album.
It is a good album.
Do you think you're up for a pop quiz?
I'm always up for a pop quiz.
Okay, the nature of this pop quiz, which just occurred to me now, is dumb shit you always say when you do a certain thing.
And I'll kick it off.
This could include things I've just captured.
It could be dumb shit you say when you arrive at the house.
Dumb shit, you say when a check arrives in the mail, when a plane takes off, the first day of a new month, are there certain ritualistic things that you say without even having to think about it?
And I'll give you mine, which is every time I leave the house, I hit a button that turns off all the lights in the house, and I say, all of the lights, all of the lights.
And I'm not proud of that.
I don't think that's a smart thing to do.
But it's a thing that I always do.
When my daughter and I arrive home from school, we've walked up a steep hill,
And I usually say, home again, home again, jiggity jig.
Right, that's a very good thing to say.
Or sometimes I find myself, despite myself, repeating a line from my second most loathed childhood show of all time, which is Dora the Explorer.
And I find myself singing, we did it, we did it.
A show she has not watched.
gratefully in many many years but i still find myself singing the like we solved the puzzle song from dora the explorer because we just made it we just made it uphill and we're all sweating i go we did it we did it what is her reaction to that she hates it she hates everything i do i'm just a constant source of of new forms new and deeper forms of shame for my daughter that's wonderful that's really bad now do you have anything like that you seem like a man who enjoys a ritual do you have dumb shit you say when you do things
uh you know the dumb shit i say i think is like always triggered by something so for instance i will whenever it's raining i will sing the chorus of it's raining again by super tramp oh wow uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh if it's raining while the sun is out is there anything you ever say
It's problematic.
Something my grandfather used to say that still goes through my mind every time that it's really bright out and raw.
My grandfather used to say, the devil's beating his wife.
Oh, yeah.
The devil's beating his wife.
Oh, my God.
I remember people saying that.
Yeah, you don't hear that much anymore.
No, I never understood.
Anytime somebody says... Black just stole a bike.
My grandfather
That was so horrible.
Good man.
Good man.
But he had a lot of problematic ideas.
Sure.
Well, this was, you know, you know, it was the time.
It was the time he was from South America.
Yeah, I was from South America.
You know how they are.
But yeah, I got this guy over here.
We got no diamonds.
Oh, yeah, he was basically, they were slavers.
Anyway, they were from London, but they'd colonized into British Guyana.
How long ago?
When did they do that?
When did that family make that move?
I feel like my grandfather, I'm pretty sure he was born in London, but his family was somehow tangentially involved, I'm guessing at some kind of a labor level, were involved in the mining industry in British Guyana.
And so he lived there from, I think his childhood...
until i want to say 1930 when he moved to cincinnati this is your grandfather my maternal grandfather um uh well how interesting uh do you know what kind of mining i think it was he wrote something for me for i had to like you know the thing where you like interview a relative and he wrote something had my grandmother type it of course and it was it had to do i think with diamond mining is that possible
ah uh guyana so they're they were like those were all sugar cane countries but diamonds that's exciting well and you know the thing is people say diamonds and you think about uh every kiss begins with k but like i think it there's a lot a lot of the diamond stuff is industrial diamonds oh sure it's not like rings and earrings and what i always think of the judas priest cover of uh diamonds and rust
Oh, how about this?
Every time my wife or I put whole bean coffee into a device to turn into ground coffee, can you guess what we say?
Grind.
Oh, really?
To this day, we both still do that.
I thought you were going to say, only half a cup.
Don't you like my coffee?
He never has a second cup of my coffee.
This is all in my brain so deeply.
I mean, it's all I can do.
Now, there's a million of these that aren't even funny because there's like six things that we say every day based on curious George cartoons from when my daughter was very young.
Anytime anybody in my house uses the phrase that something was pretty good, somebody will inevitably go, pretty good!
Which is a really obscure reference to one episode where a restaurant critic comes to Chef Paschetti's place and George makes a mess of it.
Uh-huh.
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
That's what the restaurant critic says.
It also sounds like I got a Chris Walla impression.
Is that right?
I'm sorry.
I took you off it.
John, the problem is it's an affliction.
I have so a line from Bob's Burgers.
Anytime somebody says anything that involves quantification regarding a day, one of us goes, I was in a lot of commercials today.
That's a line from a Bob's Burgers episode that we all like.
Are there other things like this that are really dumb?
You got your best stick of potatoes.
I feel like there's got to be more of these for you.
Oh, I have dozens.
Like anytime somebody prognosticates about the future, like, oh, what's going to, you know, like, and particularly like if they are talking about like something that's inevitable, I always say under my breath, this is not for anybody else.
I say, you are my density.
That's so stupid.
I mean, my destiny.
What is that from that Princess Bride?
No, what is that?
No, it's from Back to the Future.
Oh, God.
When George McFly walks over and he's like, you are my density.
And then immediately afterwards, McFly!
And he misses his chance, you know?
Yes, yes.
He misses his chance.
Yeah.
And I've been saying that since I walked out of the theater.
I've been saying it since 1984.
It's a very good line.
You are my density.
And no one even ever hears it because I say it under my breath.
But when they do, they're like, huh?
You use the right word.
It's a trigger.
There are certain kinds of things.
You will at least think the thought, if not say the thing, every time.
And I don't even know how many I've got.
They're all so stupid.
Well, you know, this is the type of thing.
Remember, when we first met, the fact that your envelope of this kind of cultural retention was so large and it overlapped with mine so much.
Oh, yeah.
And we didn't do that thing, that Comic-Con thing where you just sit and pepper each other with references.
It was actually kind of sadder than that.
Well, at least that has some kind of like a percentium effect and a performance quality.
No, it was just that everything that triggered you to make a reference.
Ancient Chinese secret, huh?
I not only got the reference, but like you, you, it was appropriate.
You were using it appropriately.
Yeah.
He won't eat it.
He hates everything.
He hates everything.
Let's give it to Mikey.
Do you think part of it's being a latchkey child who got overexposure to things?
Could that be part of it?
Well, I mean, partly it's our whole generation just got thrown at the television without...
I mean, I had tons of restrictions on how much television I could watch, but it kind of didn't matter because it was, I don't know, every time you went to a kid's house or every time I went to the babysitter, TV was on all the time.
But also, no, I think it has to do with, like, I know a lot of people my age that, like, I can do this with you, I can do it with Sean Nelson, I can do it with Ken Jennings, but there are a lot of my friends that I, like,
Mike Squires and I will sit and make plenty, hours and hours of conversation, but we're never going to say, ancient Chinese secret, huh?
It's just not how his brain works.
Sean is good at that.
Sean has really good recollection.
And he's, you know, and Sean's really steeped in that whole, that identity that we had as a generation that we were raised by the television.
Also, Sean doesn't mind if you don't get the reference.
I think he feels a little bit rewarded if you don't know what he's talking about.
Yeah, but he also feels lonely if he's living in a world where no one gets the references.
That's true.
We all feel lonely, John.
Because it's such a big part of like...
You know, like if you were living in a world, because in your house, you're making reference all the time, and your daughter's just like, my dad is babbling.
You know how I make it better is I explain it.
Oh, I'm sure she's just like, please, Dad, tell me about that commercial for bologna in 1974.
Should we go to the Borges Mort?
laughter
But it was a, because I have friends in Seattle who are my age who I don't do that with, but
We will sit around and say, what was the band with the guy that like got busted with that dude from the other band who opened for, you know, we'll do that all day.
And somebody will and we'll sit and you can just smell the smoke as we're all trying to recall some random opening band from 1994.
And it's really fun.
You know, it's it's a shared culture that we have.
But, you know, but again, they're not like six guns out all the time.
Reference, reference, reference.
There are also generational things like one I see in people who are just a little younger than me is like Pokemon.
I didn't realize like how big a part of life Pokemon was for a lot of people.
Who are, say, in their, like, 30s.
Oh, in their 30s, right.
20s and 20s and 30s.
But, like, I remember first learning about it in, like, I want to say the late 90s.
My boss's tween son in 1999 was really into Pokemon.
I was like, what's another one of those things that just dropped bits for me?
Kind of like me, and this is a funny one for you and me, is, like...
I always call it the wrong thing and people get mad.
The Star Wars TV show with Professor X. That started as I was beginning college.
So I utterly missed that Star Wars thing.
Whereas for you, that was very influential, right?
You're more an original series guy?
Did I say Star Wars?
You said Star Wars.
You're talking about Star Trek.
Okay, three, two, one.
See, the thing is, Star Trek... No, sorry, Star Trek, you got busted.
You're going to get so many angry letters.
In Klingon.
So when I was first in college, Gonzaga University told me after my freshman year that I was no longer allowed to live in the dorms.
And otherwise, their universal policy was all sophomores live in the dorms.
Yeah, you had to.
They were like, no, you know you in the dorms.
So I moved to an off-campus house with a bunch of like juniors and seniors.
And it was fine.
I mean, I was already like a year older because I had skipped a year before I went in.
It wasn't, you know, and also I had zero responsibility.
It's not like being in the dorms or out of the dorms was going to matter.
I was going to be in trouble anyway.
But we had a TV in the living room.
And so we watched TV.
Did you have cable?
Well, no.
That was on Fox.
Oh, wait.
No, no, no.
We did have cable because we had MTV.
Okay.
Wow.
So we watched all the shows from that point.
little moment that little window which would have been 1989 so we saw star trek and we watched it religiously we watched uh 21 jump street and married with children mm-hmm still got roseanne back in those days cosby probably still cheers we didn't watch cosby i mean you know it was it was stuff that was on
We like we weren't watching primetime at 9 p.m.
Because by then we were out terrorizing.
It was always like kind of like I'm not exactly sure how it is that we ended up.
But it was the thing is we were stoners by this time.
So it was perfect stoner TV.
Yeah, sure.
To watch season one of Star Trek.
You know, it was just like, whoa, yeah.
And that was that that coincided with.
Kind of what I guess I think of as the last great years of MTV.
I know that during the grunge thing that happened a couple of years later, there was still a lot of MTV action.
But I didn't have a TV then, and I couldn't see it, so I was oblivious to 1991 MTV.
In some ways, I do feel like October, I'd always been a 120 Minutes person.
I always taped 120 Minutes.
But I feel like in some ways, October of 91, where certain things got out there on MTV, it really rejuvenated my interest in music videos.
right then right then yeah i mean i can i can pin it to to nirvana and teenage fan club where two things were like for the first time in years i found myself like for the first time since like hip-hop a few years earlier where i'd find myself watching tv hoping this one video would come on yeah yeah i i definitely was at someone's house when the nirvana video came on and was like dude let's watch this
And I didn't even want to be that guy.
I didn't want to.
I was like Nirvana, whatever.
But it would come on, and I was like, this is a really good video.
It's a good video.
But that year, 1989, was the year that Kevin Seale was an MTV VJ.
Yeah, right.
And he was not a VJ for very long, but he made a huge impact on me.
He was like a super role model in terms of just like being baked.
Yeah.
He was, but he also, his presentation, another person contemporaneous from that time that was influential for me was, a little bit later, was Joel from Mystery Science Theater.
There's a certain kind of like, you know, loping, stony doofus.
Yes.
Yeah.
And it turned out Kevin Seale's a Seattle guy, and I ended up, I was in a play with him, I see him around, and he's married to...
uh seattle's famous mumblecore director lynn shelton how about that who's a nice lady and so and so i've had the opportunity to like and he's not that much older than we are and so hang around with him and just be like wow you're kevin seal i'm still like of all the people of all the celebrities i've ever met i think i'm still just the most like gobsmacked about kevin seal
So I don't have the Star Wars next generation under my belt.
So you didn't see it.
And there are a lot of those that I didn't see either that are very influential now.
Like I've never seen Saved by the Bell.
I've never seen Full House.
Any of those things that people slightly younger than me really use as their reference point.
I know.
You miss those things.
Yeah.
Anyone except for 21 Jump Street is the only TV show that I ever watched where any cast member had a mullet.
Was that Johnny Depp?
Yeah.
Jeez.
Introducing Johnny Depp.
I know.
I know.
He must have been so young because this is before Gilbert Grape, right?
Yes.
Wow.
I think it's the first time any of us ever saw Johnny Depp.
87.
Wow.
That is wild.
Yeah.
Wow.
Richard Grieco.
What about other other other?
I'm sorry, I took you off your topic.
Go ahead.
Well, what I was just about to say is having having been a member of the nerd nerd culture for the last eight to 10 years, like there is a there nerd culture has a very reference based culture.
Yeah, I'd agree.
And, oh, you know who's really great at this is Paul Saboran.
Oh, yes.
He's encyclopedic.
You can also trigger that guy pretty easy.
You can.
He's got a lot of little things that he says.
He mumbles under his breath little references.
But he's also really good at this thing I'm describing, which is he makes the reference, but it's not just...
It's not just appropriate, but it's emotionally appropriate, right?
And this is, I think, what I'm getting at with you.
You don't just make the reference because somebody said a trigger word.
Yeah, you're not going to just start yelling nights who say knee or something like that.
Yeah, you're not just like, boing!
It's that you use it, you use the reference, and it's a metaphorical way into a problem.
And then it develops its own valence, a la what I want.
What I want.
Right.
And then it's like... It becomes a different thing.
Not only are we both triggered all the time by our own... Well, because one of us will say something that sounds even vaguely like that, and I start laughing, and I hate it.
It's so stupid.
And we did that to ourselves.
That wasn't necessary.
Yeah, we did it with that.
We did it with...
What's his name?
Professor X from Mr. Show.
I mean, we've painted ourselves into a corner with these.
There are a lot of Mr. Show things that somehow over the years I put into I put into my my data bank and things pop out all the time where it's just like.
And nobody around me anymore has ever even heard of this true show.
I'm trying to think off the top of my head, but I would have to guess that it's well over a dozen.
I mean, there's one I used yesterday, which I guess is maybe somewhat, I don't know if it's obscure, but if you're a fan, you know it.
But every time somebody gets mad,
on Twitter um oh you know what it was we were watching this this terrible sci-fi series called Face Off that I really love and it's basically it's a reality show for people doing Hollywood makeup and these really silly sponsored challenges but like somebody got got really somebody got miffed about what the judge or the person critiquing them said I just said kind of under my breath he he takes it personal and makes it personal with the velveteen touch of a dandy fop
Oh, this is insufferable.
Well, and it is.
And, you know, one of the first... I think the first time we stayed with you as a band, The Long Winters...
You said something.
You did your bit about like, served on a garbage can lid.
White sauce, not a problem.
White sauce, not a problem.
Extra meat for a dollar.
I still say extra meat for a dollar.
My daughter has no idea what I'm talking about.
And like I told you, every night, every night about seven o'clock, I say shower down to get an A and she just stares at me.
She doesn't know her show.
Well, you know, extra meat for a dollar.
I mean, come on.
That ought to be a freaking T-shirt.
Extra meat for a dollar.
But Eric Corson, I still think, will say white sauce not a problem.
And I don't even know if he knows what he's referring to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have really fun.
Now we're getting old.
But I have such fond memories of just sitting around in our underwear watching The Office.
It was really fun.
Yeah, those were... The salad days.
Those were good.
The salad days, that's right, when all you had to do was sit around and reference memes.
Yeah, we had a TiVo.
We had a TiVo in some time.
Yeah, we did.
Yeah, that's right.
We didn't have anything else to do, nowhere to go.
Oh, and also, nobody had a phone.
Nobody was looking at their phone.
Oh, you had to watch David Brent.
There's nothing else to do.
We were still engaging in a, you guys have got to watch this, and nobody had to look up from their phone.
That's very interesting.
That is super interesting.
That's before you had a laptop, I think.
You went with me to get a laptop.
That is the source of our show art.
Our show art is us at the University of San Francisco Mac store.
Yeah, right, right.
Do you say anything upon waking on the first day of a new month, which as we record this will be tomorrow, I believe, will be the first of May.
Do you say anything when you wake up first day of the month?
No, I am unaware of calendar days in that way.
OK, so it's not available to you.
I did not know that tomorrow is the first day of the month.
I would not have known it.
I think usually it's like the fifth or sixth of a month before I'm like, oh, oh, look at that.
We're in April.
I'm just not tuned in to that kind of.
The demarcation.
I'm very tightly wound about trying very hard for the first words out of my mouth to be rabbit, rabbit on the first day of a month.
Yeah, it's good luck.
Some people say bunny rabbit and other people say rabbit, rabbit.
It's good luck if you say a certain thing.
And sometimes if I wake up in the middle of the night and it's after midnight, I'll just say it very quietly to myself.
You got that one.
Got in one.
Nailed it.
No, the first thing that comes into my mind every morning immediately upon waking is how much stuff in my life I have failed to accomplish.
There's not a catchphrase for that.
No.
Maybe if I said rabbit, rabbit, it would all go away.
That's fun.
That's fun, isn't it?
That's a good feeling.
But I do, let's see, so when Marlo was a little girl, I had a, and I'm going to reference her name.
Yeah, guys, you don't need to keep writing it.
It's good.
We're good.
Did you know that John accidentally mentioned her name six months ago?
Uh-oh, uh-oh.
I'll just get my time turner and go back and make sure nobody hears it.
bleep it out uh we were she was a little baby and i was driving and we were getting close to the house and i think it was the thing where she was getting fussy and i was like look we're almost home you know keep your keep your thing together she was a little baby and i started to sing her this little song which was just um hey marlo we're almost home yeah we're almost home hey marlo we're almost home yeah we're almost home
And I would just sing it on a loop and it's not in four, four time.
So it would just kind of tumble along with itself.
And now and then for a long time, I just sang it every time we were within, you know, 10 blocks of the house.
One doesn't choose to do this.
It just happens.
And now we don't do it as much because usually when we're 10 blocks from the house, she's in the middle of some soliloquy.
But she will sometimes say, like, sing the song, sing the song.
uh so we have like a little bit of uh almost home song that's a good song yeah it's a good little song i mean it's don't tell me you're not writing it doesn't have you know it doesn't i think that is the chorus it doesn't really just record record all your little jingles tonight is stew the meat started to go bad so i froze it now it's stew stew stew for you and you
I'm so glad to hear that you do that, too.
Oh, shit.
I'm either going to have to throw this away or freeze it.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, no, I've done it.
It's right up to the edge.
I think I'm sure, knowing me, I've referenced this when you mentioned this before, but when I was a kid, there was this conventional wisdom in our house that, first of all, if you have unused batteries...
And, you know, you used fewer batteries back in the day.
You put them in the radio or something like that.
But, you know, if you had batteries, if you had D-cell batteries or 9-volt batteries, you store them in your refrigerator.
But there was also conventional wisdom, because I come from a family that believes in magical thinking, that if you had a depleted battery, you could put it in the refrigerator and it would rejuvenate it.
And I think that's kind of what you're doing for Steer.
You're rejuvenating the meat's freshness.
I still have a refrigerator full of batteries.
Now, Cato, was that a thing in your house?
Oh, absolutely.
Was it your mom, your dad, or where'd it come from?
Both my mom and my dad kept batteries in the refrigerator because that's where you get batteries.
That's right.
And the thing is, I think a long time ago that was debunked.
But I'm not sure.
I haven't really... I'm not up to the... Yeah, you don't read the trades.
Yeah, I'm not up to the... You know what?
I say that all the freaking time, and I don't read the trades.
I got it from you.
I got it from you.
Yeah, there you go.
But I don't know whether batteries... I'm just a meat bag full of ticks.
Yeah.
I don't know whether batteries are better in the fridge or not.
I'm sure someone's going to write us and tell us.
That's okay.
You don't need to do that.
Thank you.
But I still keep them in the fridge.
Were you a butter in or butter out family?
We were a butter in family, but then I, on my own, radically went completely out and became a butter out person.
Ditto and ditto.
I was well in in Ohio I don't know it's Ohio you keep in the fridge in Florida I had a friend whose family kept the butter out and it was it was horrifying I would never do that living in Florida yeah yeah yeah but I mean you know the thing is the worst thing that happens here is it gets warm enough that our coconut oil turns to liquid but like you're good like you can keep the the butter out is so much better I don't know I can't believe how long I live with with hard butter
Yeah.
Hard butter is so, it's just such a bummer.
You know what it is?
It's like, it's like you constantly have options now.
You've got options.
Sure.
Sure.
If you want to, if you want to go freeze the butter, it's even an option, but just, you know, like there's butter on the table when the, uh, but you're in a ready stance.
You got your knees are loose.
You're ready to move in any direction.
Boom.
It's buttered.
Yeah.
Uh, ketchup in or out.
Ketchup in.
Ketchup in the fridge.
Ketchup in the fridge.
That's two.
We still do that.
Yeah, I still do it here.
I'm kind of...
Pioneering a new route, actually, mustard always, I think for most of my childhood, mustard wasn't even in the house.
But now I have one of those crocks of stone ground mustard from France.
And I was using it.
That's very rustic, John.
Oh, it's so good.
It's exactly the kind of rustic that I believe in.
And the thing is, there are a lot of things in my pantry which purport to be from France.
Mm-hmm.
where it's like, oh, look at this, French.
And I get it.
And I don't know whether it's from Bayonne, New Jersey, or whether it was made here in Seattle.
It's gotten so hard to tell.
But if you put some label on a thing that says, made in France on the traditional recipe from 1815, Napoleon originally gave the...
Gave the first mustard seed from his Egyptian conquering.
Just like, I'm there.
I will fucking put that on my table.
Keep it out now.
So I'm keeping this big stone crock of mustard out on the table.
And it just seems like, even though probably...
the the kind of french farmhouse thing i'm i'm hoping to be they probably put things in cupboards when they're done using them like they don't just have a table like mine that has unopened mail mustard like a knights of columbus sword and that's very welcoming that's a very that says come in enjoy my home
shortwave radio and like unfolded laundry like that's not very French but the mustard right in the middle of it as I walk by I'm like very happy with myself content like look at me Mr. Mustard
Now, Mr. Mustard, that was a very early... That was probably the single fanciest thing in our house.
Mustard.
Mr. Mustard in particular.
Oh, Mr. Mustard.
Because it was like it wasn't yellow.
It wasn't the classic like yellow mustard.
I mean, you know what I mean?
It wasn't the classic like Heinz or whatever.
Hot dog mustard.
Hot dog mustard.
No, Mr. Mustard was very fancy.
And I think we always used a little wooden spoon when we did it.
It was very continental.
That's right.
You need a mustard spoon.
You got a mustard spoon.
Yeah.
Uh, in, in high school, there were some guys that were a year or two older than me and they were like the kind of fun.
They weren't the, they weren't like the, they, none of them were ever going to get elected most humorous in their class because in order to be most humorous, you had to be, at least at my high school of 2,800 kids, you had to be a real, uh,
daredevil you had to be one of those kids that was funny and also mean and dangerous you know to be most humorous right i was elected most humorous of my class and it was it was fucking obvious i was oh sure sure but also beyond snark i mean penetrating penetrating remarks but then there was a there were there were i think two guys in my class that were hoping for an upset and
that they would get elected most humorous.
And I remember when they announced it, and this is back in high school when they would come over the announcements and say, all right, well, we have the senior superlatives, the ballots have been counted.
And they read it aloud, like over the intercom for the entire school.
And when I was announced as most humorous of the senior class,
I heard reports that a kid in some other class cried out.
Oh, no.
Cried out like millions of souls all crying out at once.
Uh, because he, he thought maybe he had a chance.
Maybe it was the thing.
It was the thing.
It was the one flag he was going to plant in this, in this life.
Oh, poor kid.
Yeah.
And I think now he's probably just, I don't know.
He's living in his car, but, but these guys were not, uh, ever going to be most humorous of their class, but they were a gang of little like funny dudes.
And they kind of remind me of that.
Like, um,
they kind of remind me of like Chris Hardwick types, you know, like Chris Hardwick is hilarious and, but also creative and fun.
And he's got a little gang of people around him all the time.
And he's not mean spirited.
No.
And he's not like most humorous of the class, right?
He's, he's something else.
And these guys were that, and they had lots of little inner inside, you know, gags.
And, and actually at one point, one of them, uh, I think one of them was born again, Christian, uh,
And then sometime in the middle of high school, like, they all became Christians.
Whoa, that's radical.
It was radical.
It was just like, are you guys, what happened?
And then after that, they became a really insular little gang.
They were still, you know, funny, but they were also on their own trip.
But they're the ones that gave me the nickname Rip Roar and Rad Dog Radical Rock and Righteously Rascal and Reefer and Roderick.
Rip Roar and Rad Dog, Radically Rock and Righteously Rascal.
Rip Roar and Rad Dog, Radical Rock and Righteously Rascal and Reefer and Roderick.
And they came up with that themselves and then would say it to me in its entirety every time they would pass me in the hall until other kids picked it up.
And I got an email the other day addressed to Rad Dog from somebody in Alaska.
You made an impact.
Well, it was these guys that had come up with this nickname for whatever reason.
I don't know why.
It's in that school of a bunch of funny guys who...
decided that they're going to call this kid by a name that's like that's yeah you know and and the choice of like we're gonna his nickname is going to be 17 words long like that's uh that that's like a a little bit of an art choice on their part yes but they were the they were the gang and i think at one point they were watching a movie in a class and the sound cut off
And so the teacher was fiddling with the wires and the whole class was watching it without sound.
And then suddenly it came back on really loud because she turned up the volume.
And the first words that came out of the character's mouth was no mustard.
And so that became like there that was written on their banner.
they would just say no mustard it was it was how they announced their entrance you know no mustard and that's how it started yeah it was kind of how they replied to things as a group you know if you asked a question they'd be like no mustard so they had that a little bit with no soap radio no soap radio what does that mean oh it's a it's one of those uh uh what do you call that kind of joke that's not really a joke
A podcast?
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So no mustard.
Do you hear the guy with the lawnmower in the background?
I don't.
Oh, he's trying to, he's getting in while he can.
He's like, I can just picture the kind of soggy clumps of grass that he's producing.
How recently has it rained there?
Uh, well, the rain, you know, the, this, in this season, the rain comes and goes and it rains kind of every day, but not all day.
Okay.
It's just like always, it could be raining right now.
I'm looking out the window and I can't tell you whether or not it's raining because the sky is that, is that Northwest color.
So the light is every, all the light is just kind of blue.
There's no gold in the light right now.
And that could mean that there's water in the air or not.
And San Francisco is no stranger to this.
It's just that you guys have more fog and also like it's not quite as well.
It's not so green.
So when you look out here, like if it is raining, there's no way you'd be able to tell.
Certainly not with my glasses prescription.
You don't hear it.
No, it's because it's a it's like it's just a permeation of water rather than a the drops never really formulate into drops.
It's just kind of like right.
It's like water that comes in off the ocean and gets filtered through a bunch of pine trees.
It hasn't made you sing Super Tramp yet.
No, no, because it is not that kind of rain.
I don't think about Super Tramp enough.
They have some good songs.
Oh, absolutely.
They really do.
They get lumped in, I think, with...
They get lumped in with a type of music.
I mean, who do you lump them in with?
The closest I can think of is just bands I liked at the same time.
So, I mean, I think of them as being kind of like sticks, but they're nothing like sticks.
Yeah, I mean, I think of them as like, I think if you tarnish them, they get put into an air supply box.
Ooh, yikes.
Right?
That's tarnish.
And the thing is, Air Supply's got some jams, but Supertramp belongs in a separate category.
But it's not like you're going to put Supertramp in a foreigner box either.
No.
No, I mean, I would almost put him closer to Genesis.
Okay.
I mean, just because they're a little bit more, they want to be smart.
They're a little bit proggy.
Yeah.
A little bit.
Yeah.
Okay.
I get that.
Like you're talking about Trevor Horn era Genesis.
Like 80s Genesis.
No, I mean, I guess I'm thinking of like when the ascension of Phil Collins, a very underrated period in Genesis is not when they get shitty.
Yeah.
in the in the mid 80s but like i'm thinking like you know the stuff that i assume i think stuff you like like the turn it on again era or um you know duke like the duke era right and i and when i said trevor horn i was not talking about genesis you're talking about yes i was talking about yes yeah i know and and i know i assume our listeners now yeah and i also i would put i would put trevor horn yes in that category too so like there i feel like their big hit was probably logical song
Yeah.
And that was probably 77, 78.
See, I followed through to where I had the cassette of the Roger Hodgson solo album.
The singer guy.
Well, but that was kind of a good record, right?
Yeah, it was good.
I had a very silly video.
I think I remember him running in the video a lot.
But let's look at the hits of Super Tramp.
I mean, Logical Song is probably the one a lot of people know.
What else did they do?
Take a look at my girlfriend.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not much of a girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
Give a little bit.
Give a little bit.
You got a little bit of a little sus4 on there.
That's a little sus4, don't you think?
I would put that in the sus4.
You know, the...
It's easy to get them confused, except that their vocals are so distinctive.
Absolutely.
Wow, first Supertramp record, 1970?
Shut up.
I never would have said that.
No, really?
1970.
Let's go to the full Supertramp discography.
Now, see, the Internet Science page has them labeled as a progressive rock band.
That would follow along the lines of what I'm thinking of in terms of being a little like Genesis.
Yeah.
Well, and also, you know, like it says here that they have.
Oh, bloody well, right.
That's a great tune.
They had guitar solos from Pink Floyd's David Gilmour.
Oh, he's so classy.
I love that guy.
Handsome and classy.
Very handsome.
Very, very proper.
I think we've talked about how proper David Gilmour is.
Even when he was a long-haired hippie, he was very proper.
Take the long way home.
Oh, take the long way home.
I can tell you when that came out.
That came out when I was in military school.
That's for damn sure.
That was a military school song.
Give a little bit.
Give a little bit.
Did we talk about that one already?
Yeah, that's us for.
Dreamer.
Nothing but a dreamer.
They got lots of hits here, Super Tramp.
Boy, look at this logical song.
Oh, goodbye, stranger.
Take the long way home.
Holy shit.
It's time for a reassessment of Supertramp.
I feel like Supertramp was sneaking it in there the whole time.
We love all the tunes, but we just never... I mean, who's going to say, I'm a Supertramp fan?
You don't hear it.
You don't hear it.
You will still run into a lot of Genesis people.
A lot of yes people up here.
I got so many yes people around me.
Is that a little bit hip to like?
well yeah i mean hip in the sense of like it's turned it's turned around and come back and we're like it's not just roundabout but like uh what's the one song that that one song i like a lot with the bass what's that guy's name chris chris bass chris squire what's that what's that called it's one of those uh terrible prog rock names a heart of heart yes heart of
Yes.
Heart of stone.
Heart of.
Heart of the sun.
Heart of the morning.
Heart of the.
Heart of the.
Yes.
Like avocado.
Heart of the sunrise.
Heart of the sunrise.
I'm not going to release this.
This is terrible.
There was a bass player in Seattle that everyone should know about.
His name was Joe Skyward.
But he was known pretty widely as Joe Bass.
Ooh, Joe Bass.
Something in a rose bass.
Joe Bass.
Joe Bass.
Joe Bass was the bass player in the Posies for the Frosting and the Beater era.
That's a good era.
He played the bass on the first Long Winters record.
Yes.
Uh, Joe was, but he was ubiquitous in the Seattle scene.
He played in a lot of bands.
He was in sky craze, Mary, but he played in a lot of, uh, Seattle rock acts.
Everybody knows him.
He's like legendary famous.
And he died, uh, uh, just a couple of years ago after valiantly fighting cancer, uh, for a long time.
But Joe was, he was a little bit older than us.
Um, uh,
By a fair margin.
And in fact, he came up in conversation the other day because Sarah Vowell and I were having a drink together.
Oh, you're friends with her.
And she reminded me that Joe was from Bozeman, Montana, where she grew up.
And she had this wonderful story about how Joe worked at the record store.
And she was this little kind of teenage...
you know, like rock and roll goth girl.
And she would go down to the record store and here was Joe who was extremely cool dude.
I mean, he was very, very cool.
Um, and he would, he would kind of walk her through like buying cool records.
And I met him out here in Seattle when I first got to town and everybody was so cool.
My God, you could not go in.
You couldn't go into a coffee shop and order a coffee here without, uh,
Like somebody giving you 50 different kinds of signaling about how maybe you should turn around and go back outside and try again.
It was just like so hard.
Coffee shops had a doorman, you know, and the doorman was like a guy that was nodding off in the door.
But like he had to decide whether or not you were sufficiently like.
like ground down by the by the weight of the world so hard to be 21 years old here at the time because it was just like come on i'm the same as you guys we're all this we're all wearing the same fucking denim jacket you're different size fish but you're all in the same pond yeah wrong you are not your denim jacket is wrong anyway there he there was this tiny little music store
on pine that was only open for five months and it was joe he decided like and this is just the you know kind of person he was he was like i'm gonna open a music store and it was open for five or six months and then it closed but wow he would he would sit behind the counter there and i went in one time and needed some strings and here was this guy who's just like really cool dude you could just tell how cool a music instrument shop
It was a music instrument shop.
And it was one of those that you used to be able to do because you could go find a landlord who had a shop front in the center of town and say, hey, man, I want to open a guitar shop.
And the guy would say, great, you know, 400 bucks a month.
And so he had like seven guitars up on the wall that were all like weird, you know, grunge style, like stuff.
Tedesco's or whatever up there.
And he had strings and picks.
Hagstrom's.
Yeah, Hagstrom's.
He had some capos.
And you could go for it.
You could just start a business.
You could start a business.
Get some Ernie Balls.
You're good to go.
Nowadays, if you wanted to open a guitar store on Pine, you would have to have like a first round of funding.
Oh, Jesus.
Anyway, so I went in there and I was like, you know, I need some strings.
And I was just prepared for this person to be like, strings?
You don't need strings.
you know you need go back to whatever shit town you came from and joe bass was like yeah man sure like what kind of strings like tell me about your guitar like what's your story wow and i was so bathed in the openness of this guy it's very kind it was great and he was just like uh and i decided i'm gonna come to this store every day so then i became a regular at this guitar store where i would sit and talk to him about the hagstroms just because i wanted to hang out with this guy who was really friendly and he was friendly to everybody that came in
And I think I even he was like, I'm closing up shop for a minute.
I got to go home and like see a man about a horse.
You want to like like come along?
And I like walked with him over to his basement apartment or something.
You know, this guy at the time was 30.
So it just seemed like I'm on a different plan.
Anyway, he was a tremendous booster of yes during that whole period where nobody was going to come for yes.
That was pretty definitely a yes public latent period.
Yeah, you were not going to put the flag up for yes, but he had a yes button on his phone.
on his jacket and during sound check or whatever he would play yes bass lines and so what joe did was he made it safe for people to like yes okay and then all the all the people that loved rush could also love rush under the umbrella of the fact that joe bass was out there you know rocking yes and rush on everybody and he was like one of the cool dudes
So that's very specific to this region.
But I can't think of liking Yes or Rush in a hipster context without thinking that Joe Bass is responsible.
Those people are so important.
It's so important to have those...
I mean, it sounds silly as a grown-ass man to say something like this, but somebody who is open and kind and introduces you to stuff or reintroduces you to stuff or, I don't know, a better phrase than contextualizes stuff.
We used to have a neighbor that lived right behind me.
This is so improbable.
Lived right behind me in Florida.
This is like in a retirement community.
And this guy was probably the coolest adult I had met in the town.
He was a professional guitar player who lived in this person's garage.
He had a Marshall half stack and a Strat.
And he introduced me to the Sex Pistols.
as well as many other things and he let me borrow his never mind the bollocks album like it was amazing and i would just go there and watch him smoke pot and like shred and it was like the best thing ever but like you're right i mean there are people who are able to like even like kind of like um you know he's a slightly marginal character but but like you know those people are just they're so freaking important in life
Yeah, right, because he wasn't just... Because I didn't care about yes and rush.
I mean, I liked him fine, but that wasn't a thing that I was going to live or die about.
But what he was saying was, yes, everything in this town seems really locked down.
Yeah, it's a bigger thing, yeah.
And if you like this, you're cool.
And if you don't like it, you're not cool.
And he was just saying, like, nah, man.
And that little tiny bit of, like, nah, man...
just was like it carved out a huge amount of space for me to be like well you know you on the other hand you can be a weirdo uh even in a town where everyone's professing to be a weirdo you can you know and i i think that's not that's not as big a deal now maybe because everybody now is is pushing that angle but
But back then it was, you know, the cultures were homogenous, more or less.
They were, but it's also like sometimes... Whoa, I found a picture of him on MySpace.
The dude?
Yeah.
The guitar dude?
Yeah, he was out still shredding.
He's in the Encyclopedia Metallum.
Oh, what is the thing?
Oh, 1993, his demo, Accuser of Brethren.
How old is this guy?
He was probably about 30 then.
I was 17.
Wow.
Wow, he's still out there.
I'll protect his privacy.
Oh, well, I probably already screwed it up.
But anyway, there's something... I don't know.
I don't have anything very deep to say here.
But everybody, especially after the 90s, you develop a certain kind of reflexive shield of sneering and irony and kind of self-consciousness.
And then there's a certain flavor of, okay, it's okay to like this thing, ironically.
Right.
But it's something...
I don't know.
I don't even know how to describe it.
But sometimes you get exposed to people who are able to recontextualize something for you to go, like, it's just a thing in the world.
And you can like it or not like it, or you can be into it or not into it.
Or in your case, opens you up to this bigger world where you feel like it's a little bit of an emperor has no clothes situation where you're like, well, I know I'm still going to have to live in this system, but at least now I know that that system is a system.
That, like, the way that people behave and what's considered okay, and the phrase I like, the Overton window for this may be where it is right now.
But that doesn't exclude my learning about these other things.
And I'm not just going to learn about Paganini because Yngwie's into it.
That could be a good thing that you learn on your own.
You learn a little bit of Bach.
You pick up some of this stuff, and it doesn't have to be because it's just one pivot away from this other thing.
There's things you can just appreciate on their own.
I think the window is there for people to just like Rush because they're Rush.
I don't think you have to be cute about it.
You're not a Rush fan, though.
I am.
No, no, no.
I love Rush.
I think Rush is amazing.
I think they're legit really good.
Now, Super Tramp, if you and I start fronting out as Super Tramp fans, people are going to think we're being cute.
No, because we just threw down six hits they had over the course of a decade.
This episode, I feel like, may require a Spotify playlist.
What I don't know is, is Supertramp Deep Catalog as good as Supertramp?
Yeah, I don't know.
My friend Eric, who's now the guitar player, or he's, I guess, the lead guitar player of Portugal, the man, is an Alaskan kid.
And he said, at one point, we were sitting around admiring the hits of...
uh not gordon lightfoot um no because those are those are jonathan colton i always think of jonathan colton now yeah those are no jerry rafferty we were sitting around admiring the you know what you think of as the you know the three or four hits old band
uh stealer's wheel yeah okay right so jerry rafferty's got you know he's got some good street he's got baker street but he's also got uh what was um he had he had another hit from that from that same record yes yes yes yes he did let me get it
Oh, my gosh.
His other hit was, come on.
Right Down the Line.
Right Down the Line.
Right.
A great hit.
That's a good song.
It's a really good song.
But is he the singer on Stuck in the Middle with You?
Yeah, Stuck in the Middle with You.
That's him.
We were talking about it.
Many of these tracks are already on the playlist I made called Made of Cocaine.
I don't know if you're aware of this.
I sometimes make playlists for the show.
There's one called Made of Cocaine that I believe has a lot of these artists on it.
I feel like we come back to these guys periodically.
Cocaine's like oil.
I don't love that we have to use it, but it's around.
It's what the music is made of.
This music definitely was made of cocaine.
You don't put sax like that on a record without some cocaine.
He was saying that that album, the album that has Baker Street on it, he was like, listen, that is one of, like, everybody slept on that record because that song is such a hit.
But he's like, this is one of those albums that
is pure gold start to finish really and i was like i've never listened to it no because you think of it as like a 70s am radio city city to city 1978 city to city and he's saying like every it's that record is gold from top to bottom adding it so that's kind of in that super tramp family too of like oh yeah that's i mean i know those tunes but
But I don't understand why that would be.
Those Supertramp songs are so good, and yet the Aerosmith records from that same era I've listened to all the way through.
I know every Pink Floyd record from that era.
Why was nobody listening to Supertramp?
What was on them?
But they were huge.
Breakfast in America was like, that was the record that year, I think.
But there had to be some schmutz on them or something that they didn't...
uh that nobody was like oh these guys right i mean i think i remember a girl who had a super tramp like painting on her denim jacket oh my god and i and i think at the time i was like weird like weird like what cult are you in like what what kind of like wife swapping world do you have to live in where you have super tramp on your jacket
You know what I mean?
I do.
That's what it felt like.
You know they kept their ketchup out.
Yeah, it's like, not only that.
We don't refrigerate salad dressing.
Put your keys in the bowl.
Put your keys in the bowl.
I can see the house so clearly.
They have a conversation pit.
They got a pit group.
They got a projection TV and just a shit ton of cocaine.
They took all the doors off and they just have beads, bead curtains between all the doors.
Yes.
And they're listening to Super Tramp.
Oh, man.
So why is that?
Why would that be?
I don't get it.
There are those bands.
One you mentioned earlier that it's funny you just don't hear or think about so much except for a couple songs is Foreigner.
Well, yeah, but Foreigner 4 was such a... That's the thing, though.
Foreigner 4, and you had what?
That was the one Thomas Dolby played on, I think.
Really?
Yeah, he did the keyboards on that.
I did not know that.
I'm pretty sure.
That's the one with Jukebox Hero, right?
Circa 82 or so.
So Foreigner 4, I think, yeah, Jukebox Hero, it's also got... 81!
Shit dog, 81!
So this was junior high for me, but this was the record, this was the first record, I think, you know, this and Back in Black...
came out and sort of bookended what felt like a big right turn that everything was taking.
Because this was post-Blondie.
Foreigner had always been pretty smooth.
I mean, you go back and listen to something fucking great, like Rev on the Red Line.
Those songs are so good, but this one was really... Oh, it's fucking Mud Lang!
it's Mutt Lang well but so the record that came out before this Head Games instead of making love you play Head Games that was a good tune and I feel like that album cover is so bad but oh no it was the one right before that Double Vision which had Hot Blooded and Double Vision Double Vision and so I feel like that record in 78 Blue Morning Blue Day that's such a good song
That was like right in the middle of punk and new wave.
And these guys were just like rock and roll.
And in my high school, I feel like when I was a freshman, the seniors that were graduating, I think I've told you this before, right?
That the, that when, um,
What was that movie that came out in the 90s where it was about American high school in the 70s?
Single?
No.
Oh, in the 70s.
Yeah.
That was where the line, like, high school girls stay the same age.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The guy from Austin.
Matthew McConaughey.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right, all right, all right.
It's called...
Yeah, I know the one you mean.
It's after Slacker.
Yeah, it's American High School Summer.
I think it's called American Car.
American Car.
Why has there never been a movie called American Car?
We should start writing it immediately.
What's it called?
No, come on.
We've got to get this.
It's called Floppers.
It's called Floppers.
No, it's called Everybody Liked Aerosmith.
It's called FM Boys.
FM Boys.
No, because there's football playing and stuff.
It's called That 70s Show, the movie.
Yes, American Car.
American Car.
Oh, shit.
It's called.
It's called.
What's the guy's name?
The guy from Slacker.
What's his name?
Dude, where's my high school?
Dude looks like a hot rod.
Oh, shit.
It's called Swingers.
Wet Hot American Swingers.
It's called... What's the guy's name?
Who directed Slacker?
What's the guy's name?
Linkletter.
Kenneth Jones.
Okay, Richard Linkletter.
I can remember Supertrade.
It's got Matthew McCarthy in it.
Matthew McCarthy's Dazed and Confused, 1993.
There it is.
Dazed and Confused, 1993.
Also, original title, American Car.
American car.
And when that movie came out, it really was a it's like it did a number on us.
Right.
Because and this was this would be absolutely true of you, too.
This the freshman in that movie.
Oh, we're doing the equidistant thing.
Oh, gosh.
I was in high school in 1982 and in Anchorage, 1982 made 1978 look like 1945.
So it was all still real.
I mean, when I watched that movie, it was really real because the music was the same.
The styles were the same.
I mean, it looked like what my high school looked like, except there's a huge difference between 1978 and 1982.
Enormous difference.
Wait, say those words again.
My high school felt like the high school in Dazed and Confused.
Yes, yes, yes.
I have to say, up until 1982, it felt like the mid-70s, for sure.
Yes, right.
And I was thinking about this the other day.
My parking lot at our high school was wall-to-wall muscle cars.
Every one of those muscle cars would be worth $80,000.
Just, you know, Camaros or whatever else.
And that was just the, that was still the culture, right?
The like seventies muscle car car culture was still true in like suburban high schools and rural high schools until the mid eighties at least.
Right.
And maybe, I don't know.
I don't know much later than that, but you were still, you still like had a bitch in Camaro or your pot dealer drove a Mustang Mach two or whatever, or Mach one.
And then somewhere along the line, that all changed.
And I think it was, I think it was when all the cool fast cars were only being made in Japan and American cars were garbage.
Something happened.
But Foreigner was a bridge between those two worlds because Foreigner felt like they were very much in that, in that still dazed and confused culture.
But somehow they also made, they made the transition to MTV and
where all those other bands kind of did not, right?
That's actually a really good example where they were legitimately very much a mid to late 70s sounding band and then legitimately just on the verge of New Wave, really.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And somehow produced these big, big hits.
in the 80s that were... They wanted to know what love is.
They wanted to know what love is.
And further to that, they wanted someone to show him.
Yeah.
Would you count Van Halen in that?
Not really.
They were so their own thing.
They really were.
And they were 80s even in the 70s, it felt like.
Wow.
They kind of invented the 80s.
I want to put a fork in that.
How about this?
First Van Halen album comes out in 1978.
DLR leaves the band in 1985.
Like, that felt like a lifetime, right?
Well, in that amount of time, the Long Winters have still not released another record.
Well, just if you're keeping track of the math, from Van Halen 1 to DLR leaving, Diamond Dave leaving is seven years.
That was 33 years ago.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
That's something to think about.
Well, you know, doing this Friendly Fire podcast with these two ding-a-lings, Adam is not young.
He's like 40.
What?
No, he's a kid.
What are you talking about?
No, I've always said that when I first met him.
He's the kid with the camera.
No way is he that old.
I was like, hey, kid, come over here.
And he was like, I'm not a kid.
I'm 30.
Oh, this is very, very exciting.
You're not 30.
You're not 30.
So I think he's 38.
Let's call him 38.
Yeah.
Adam?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then Van Harrison is like 31 or something, 32.
I'm older than a Supreme Court justice.
Which one?
The new guy.
Really?
He's younger than I. You know, he's got a job for life.
Yeah, well.
That's a fun job.
So anyway, you do the show with the two ding-a-lings.
Oh, right.
Him and Benjamin?
Ben Harrison, yeah.
And we were having a conversation, and this is the type of thing that just comes out where it's like, neither one of them has ever seen MASH, the TV show.
yeah and i was like how do you uh what and they're just like yeah it just wasn't on tv i was talking with some texting with some friends last night about built to spill and like oh you know one of one of these friends is i think 31 the other one is i think 27 and like you know he has a favorite built to spill album that's a little later than my favorite built to spill album and she and she was like whoa you guys are old
Because for her, it's her equivalent of me being into Revolver, if you do the equidistant thing.
Right.
You know what I'm saying?
Oh, yeah.
That's a bad example.
Maybe more like, I don't know, but something from the mid to late 60s.
It really was somebody else's music that you eventually caught into, but it wasn't your music.
Right.
You know what I mean?
In the same way that Built to Spill was my music.
I mean, I was there.
GBV was my music.
Super Chunk.
All those bands, I was there every step of the way and hearing when it came out, making an assessment about how I felt about it.
Built to Spill and GBV would be two that I was riding real hard.
I knew what was happening in those bands super well.
Me too.
Well, Built to Spill's first record came out in 93.
Ultimate Alternative Waivers.
Three years ago today.
And then you got, but no, I'm a Nothing Wrong With Love guy, which I think is 94.
I think a little later than that, but maybe.
Nothing Wrong With Love...
93, 94?
Something like that.
Were they putting out two records a year then?
I don't know, but I mean... So we're talking about if you are 25 years old right now and listening to this show, you were born when Built to Spill's Ultimate Alternative Waivers came out.
Oh, I'm not okay with that.
No, no, no, I'm not okay with that.
25 years old, you are a fully-fledged person with big ideas.
That's like me being into pet sounds.
You could have graduated from law school
And have been born at the time of Ultimate Alternative Waivers.
Max is a perfect from now on guy, which is an album that I like.
It's a really good album.
But for me, nothing wrong with love.
That's...
and that was so that's september 94 jesus christ you're right so so nothing wrong with love right that was the phillac which you have a file card on yeah he did your uh western state hurricanes demo right he did i met phillac when he was 20 years old uh he was working as the sound man he was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when he met you uh that's the that's the one thing i got right
He was working as the sound man at the off ramp where I worked.
And he was underage because he was from Bremerton or something.
And they let him in and they put an X on his hand and he'd stand behind the he was the assistant sound man.
There was a there was a sound man, a proper sound man who had like who had who was the singer of Foreigner Lou Ferrigno.
Yeah.
No, I think you're thinking of Phil Graham, Senator Phil Graham.
Yeah.
You remember Lou Graham's big curls?
He had those big curls.
He had a receding hairline and big curls.
Big curls.
And that was what the sound guy at the off-ramp had.
And then Philip was this tall, gangly kid with short hair who worked the soundboard.
So I knew him all the way back then.
Okay.
And then he became... This was Phil Luck with some tracks from the new Built to Spill record.
I know.
Kick you in the head, kick you in the head.
Oh, God.
That Twin Falls, Idaho song, though, man.
Well, you know, we've talked about Built to Spill before.
I cannot... I cannot... It still feels...
It's unfinished.
I have not put a label on that box and put that box in the attic yet.
You're still mulling it over.
Yeah, and I don't know what goes in that box and what comes out of it.
I don't know.
It's very complicated.
I became good friends with Scott Plouffe, the drummer.
Yeah.
And then he you know, it's not like we fell out.
We just like stopped hanging out with each other.
But a long enough time ago that that also feels like a memory.
He's working as a baker now.
He's like he's a very good cook.
Nothing wrong with love was his the second album he produced.
uh uh eck you're talking about yeah but you know eck goes on to make well you can you can kind of guess what city this fella's from band of horses fleet foxes modest mouse the shins built to spill uh 764 hero yeah big business and mud honey to make uh you know to make some big big big album he did shoots too narrow yeah oh he did lace iv5 oh look at this and like all that band of horses stuff i mean he's got a really great sound oh that's a great sound yeah he's got a good sound
And now he's on to the Father John Misty.
You got the Paper Kites, Fleet Foxes, Black Angels.
Bilt to Spill was so important to me.
And, you know, I remember when Jim Roth got the call because Bilt to Spill is a three piece.
He got the call to be number four, the guitar player that was going to play all the like type of guitar parts.
Yeah.
So Doug could shred.
Yeah.
We shared a practice space, Jim Roth and I. So Jim was like in built a spill now.
And it was like, you might as well be in fucking Van Halen.
You might as well be the other guitar player.
Oh, 100%.
100%.
But I still don't.
Emotionally, I don't know what to do with it.
And it's because Doug Marsh has remained impenetrable to me.
I have not ever been able to sidle up next to him at a thing and charm him.
I have spoken to him.
Is he kind of introverted?
Yeah.
Yes.
And if you walk up and are like, hey, man, sorry, I don't want to interrupt.
I just want to say I'm a big fan.
He just is sort of like, mm-hmm, thanks, or whatever.
And you're like, oh, fuck.
See, that's me and that guy from New Pornographers.
Oh, yeah, right.
I've tried to penetrate him.
Well, he's shy, too, for sure.
Yeah.
But he's, you know, like, I don't know.
And the thing is, it's not like Doug Marsh doesn't know who I am.
You should know who you are.
You know, you got a lot of connections, but he just doesn't care or whatever.
He doesn't want to talk to me about it or to me or to me about him or to me about anything.
And it's like, all right, well, I'll just give it another try sometime.
So I don't.
So I still don't like there's still time.
There's still time.
Like Mark Arm and Steve Turner.
Like I would say, yeah, I would say that I'm like a friendly with them both.
Yeah.
And that seemed like the least likely thing that whatever would have happened in 1991.
I don't think, oh yeah, I'm going to like see you.
You're probably experiencing this a little bit with your kid where your kid has some friends that are three years older and some friends that are three years younger.
And over time, those, those three years mean less and less.
And I think fame is the same thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
Even in Seattle.
Is it still like that in Seattle, John?
Do you still feel like that's, that's, is it, it's, it's still the crucible of fame?
Oh, no.
No.
No, no.
Who knows what the kids are doing now?
They're all making bleep blop music on their bleep blops.
We got to get behind the super tramp thing.
I think we can make it happen.
I'm into it.
I'm into it.