Ep. 494: "Corn Cob Night"
It said I had an update, but I didn't update it because I enjoy that song so much.
I don't want them to change it.
Oh, wait.
There might be an update that changes the song?
I don't know.
Don't check.
Don't check.
What is it called?
Schopenhauer's cat box?
Something like that?
What's great about that song is it feels like it's not quite a loop.
It's just like a tiny bit shaved so it doesn't actually groove.
I hadn't thought of that.
Because there's a lot of stuff like that.
Now think about a song we like to talk about sometimes.
You talk about the album Duke by Genesis.
Mm-hmm.
And like, can you always count in to turn it on again successfully?
I don't think I've ever gotten it right once.
When the bomb, when that comes in, when Tony hits the bomb.
You know what I'm talking about?
I know what you're talking about.
Because it starts off, and it might as well be Teenage FBI by Guided by Voices.
It starts out, and you're hearing what sounds like four fours.
You know, eighth notes, right?
Yeah, yeah, eighth notes.
And then at some point, Tony, what's Tony do?
He turns the beat around.
He goes, oh, he loves to feel percussion?
I think you're thinking of Phil Collins.
Jesus Christ.
No, no, no, but you can turn the beat around if you're not the drummer.
You're saying you could turn, just the fact that you love percussion doesn't mean it does not require, must needs be percussion.
You could just be an enthusiast.
No, I'm saying that the beat
The beat doesn't belong to anybody.
The beat.
The beat.
Huh.
The beat.
Really?
Yeah.
Do you remember what the count is?
I can't remember.
It's... The thing is... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
I want to say... You know what?
Somebody's going to write me.
And guys, I know.
I listen to it almost every time.
I'm glad that they write you.
No, listen.
No, I love that.
Let me start over.
Hello.
I...
I listen to that song a lot.
I listen to a lot on Sunday mornings when I take a shower.
It's a Sunday morning shower song for me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That and then Misunderstanding.
I got to go to Misunderstanding then.
Really?
When was the last time you watched the Genesis puppet video?
Land of Confusion.
Land of Confusion.
One I accidentally saw in 1984, probably.
No, I bounced hard by then, dude.
You know, this is one of those Mr. Show Star Wars versus Empire Strikes Back things.
I see.
Right?
Right?
Like, you know, we don't talk about, you know, Billy Joel here.
Right.
Right.
Because I'm a Billy Joel guy.
You're a Phil Collins guy.
You've got to be one.
You can only be one.
Sure.
But it sounds like you are a Phil Collins guy.
I am.
I am.
It's funny you say that.
One of the latest items added to my video library is a better copy than what I had before of Three Sides Live.
So that's up there.
As far as watching that, you know, I don't watch a lot of televisual Genesis.
You know, that was going to be the future, video content.
um there's a sorry go no no i'm just saying like you know we were we were headed to all video world everything we did we would be doing video right now right right right like that time not that long ago when something comes along like right now of course the big one is ai related stuff whenever a new thing comes along uh you always feel this setting aside all the other things one feels you do you feel this like oh man this is going to be everything now
And I guess in the case of music videos and MTV for a while, it kind of was for somebody from Central Florida in 1982.
Absolutely.
You know what I mean?
I think I've sent you this fellow's videos before.
I hate to sound like such a shill, but there's this guy, the account is called...
Trash Theory on YouTube.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, and he does a wonderful series called New British Canon.
And he recently, that's not about the Light Brigade or Iron Maiden for that matter.
I know too much about tiny things.
And anyways, so the guy, he did a video about Eurythmics and Sweet Dreams are made of this.
But as usual, he places this in a broader context.
And in that context, you know this, I know this, the real heads who are aging and can't afford to retire will know when MTV first came on, they did not have a lot of videos.
Oh, no.
No, they didn't.
That's why the first video I ever saw was Captain Sensible's what?
What?
Which I refer to all the time because it's the first video I ever saw.
It might mentally confuse him with Bob Welch a lot.
Captain Sensible?
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
He's got a new rose.
He's got a new rose.
Okay, so here's the thing, though.
And everybody knows this, blah, blah, whatever.
Like that, like, oh, God, I got so sick of a song.
It was a pretty good song, but was considered a majestic video at the time, The Motel's.
Was it only the lonely maybe?
Oh, yeah.
Well, no, no, whatever.
I was like, that's like I told you.
And in my head, she says only the lonely get laid.
But I think that's just because I was 14.
But anyways, they had those you had peace, love and understanding, you know, all the ones.
But, you know, the story goes, I believe this, that to fill the titular 24 hours, they had to pull in.
kinds of music that had videos.
And this is something people, and I'm not saying this to you, I know you know this, but I'd like to talk about this.
People in the UK, specifically, but in Europe in general, have been doing music videos for a long time.
I mean, I remember on, I want to say on like, didn't Casey Kasem have a TV version of American Top 40?
But anyway, I remember seeing the video for, really not a very good video for da-da-da-da-da, where they're running around in the snow.
Not a very good video, but they had that because the police were making videos.
The police did a video for So Lonely in like 1978.
And that's what they had to show, right?
Yeah.
Right.
Well, and that's why we all became such huge fans of the second British invasion.
Hey.
Yeah.
Had you watched it?
No.
Because that's the term that he uses.
God damn it, John.
You don't own our TV, right?
No, I don't know anything.
You know.
Thank you.
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Piece of shit.
I put ice cream in my coffee this morning because I don't have any cream.
That's who I am.
Well, that's longer.
That's for sure.
Yeah, it's not as good, though.
I mean, this is not video content.
This is not like, oh, wow, I'm on to something new, and now it's ice cream from now on.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's not made for that.
Yeah, I don't know, man.
That's what the world is today.
I know.
Everything's really frustrating to me right now.
I mean, I'm really happy.
I'm really happy.
I had a very nice...
time away with my family last week and i'm in a great mood i feel good the reason the reason i pushed this week the listener doesn't need to know this but as you know whatever's in the show is in the show i just want a little bit of extra time because it turns out mondays are like when i get a lot of stuff done really well kind of and that's why i like lasagna and hate normal yeah you do even though he's world's cutest kitten are you sure yeah it's right there in the he's got a tm world's cutest kitten tm that's smart jim davis yeah that's right
um what if he's related to ann b davis probably know it um but never occurred to me oh she's this she's the center square in the brady bunch uh oh yeah i know but i it never occurred to me that they would be related well i assume a lot of people named davis it seems like davis is one of those it's not quite jones but it's but it's a lot something yeah like cooper means barrel maker fletcher means arrow maker is davis mean draws cats huh davis dave well no could mean center square evisive dave
Davis.
The tears of lease.
Yeah, it's got to have something to do with killing the French.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, wait.
Oh, no, it might be about killing the Saxons.
It might be Davies.
It might be French.
Or it could be killing an Arab, and then they leave it off the record after that.
When I first figured out how to play that.
You ever figure out how to play that?
You do the, like, you do on the low E, you do, let's say you do low E starting arbitrarily.
It's a seventh fret.
And then on A, you're doing like the fifth fret.
Think about that.
Boom, boom, boom.
And then you go down chromatically.
Do you have a guitar?
Half the things I know about guitar you have taught me.
Well, that makes an almost three probably.
Yeah.
There's the Hank Williams.
I still do that.
No, I do that.
That came from you.
I learned about that from lots of different places, mainly from Neil Young on Tell Me Why and, of course, from the great Paul Westerberg on If Only You Were Lonely.
Oh, I see.
It had already converted once.
Yeah, I mean, but this is the thing.
This is the thing.
We use words so other people learn words.
We play riffs in G or C because a child could do that.
I see.
Yes, of course.
But a child doesn't know that.
When I was young, I thought as a child.
I don't know that.
You know that.
You know so much more than you think, John.
I barely do.
What were we talking about?
We're talking about, oh, yeah, everything's the worst.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, so you're frustrated.
That's what you were about to say.
You're frustrated.
Tell us about that.
Oh, yeah, yeah, but we're also bouncing off of trash theory and the idea that, like, when something's new and big and potentially, like, ooh, scary, like, it becomes everything.
Oh, no.
Apparently, AI is going to result in Skynet becoming self-aware, and we're all going to die, like all of us, really soon.
I could not possibly have more mixed feelings about it.
But of course, I don't want to be destroyed by Skynet.
But one does not get to choose that.
Skynet does what it does.
That's why it's Skynet.
Sure.
But it's pretty crazy what you can do.
Do you not get to choose it?
What?
Oh, here's my question.
Are you making an Ayn Rand sort of if you choose not to decide type situation?
You have still decided?
Yes.
Chosen you have.
Why don't you talk about old Yoda?
If they were going to send Reese back...
to defend John's mother from the Terminator.
Mm-hmm.
I'm sorry, sent back who?
Rhys, right?
Rhys.
Are you talking about Michael Beane's character?
Michael Landon.
He's dead, man.
He's an angel.
They sent Michael Landon back to the prairie.
Michael Landon is sent back in a TARDIS.
No, it's the old go-back-and-kill-Hitler thing.
If you had time travel, oh, wait...
Oh, I know now.
They didn't have time travel.
It was the Terminator that had time travel, and he just jumped in.
So it wasn't like the rebels were able to set where the time travel machine went.
I forget how it happened, but John Connor had some kind of thing he'd figured out.
Well, yeah, but what it was was that the Skynet was sending the robot back to kill the lady.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm sorry.
Yes.
So they sent Terminator 1...
Yes, to kill the lady, Sarah.
Yeah, and he had to go through the phone book.
And then Reese, the rebel boy, had to go back, too, to save Sarah.
And so my question was, well, why didn't he just go kill the people at the Sinodyne Company who were making the Skynet, the Skynodynes?
Oh, I see what you're saying.
You're saying it's consequences all the way down.
Yeah, if you can go back and kill Hitler, why not go back and kill Hitler's mother?
Why not go back and kill Hitler's art teacher or whatever?
When we were out of town with the family, sometimes I like to watch.
I have this new, oh man, it was such a good trip.
I have this new thing, which is like happy time, sad media.
Happy time, sad media?
If you're having a good time, you listen to sad media.
If you're having a bad time, it's like the Elliot Smith thing.
Okay, go on.
Oh, my God.
We were eating eight out at this Italian place near Mendocino.
And this guy, he was totally inhabiting this Leonard Cohen way of playing guitar and singing at the Italian restaurant, which I thought was hilarious from the time we walked in.
And then he fucking covered between the bars.
Wow.
And Madeline and I locked eyes like, what is happening?
What kind of Italian restaurant has a Leonard Cohen afterworld?
You know, you work in restaurants.
I think eventually you stop noticing the music.
Yeah, but I think there are a lot of restaurants that consciously understand not to have music while people are eating.
The two things aren't really cat compatible.
He did Blackbird.
He did, you know, some of the acoustic.
He was pretty good.
I gave him five bucks.
Old Man?
Did he do Old Man?
Take a look at my life?
No, he could have done Tell Me Why, which I can mostly play kind of in G. You could have jammed with him.
Well, see, this is the thing you do is you torment your child.
I imagine you do this a little bit.
The guy, I look up and I notice the guy's not playing between the bars anymore.
And he's gone.
And I say, Bill, I'm going to go up there and fill in while he's on break.
Do you have anything you'd particularly like to hear?
And of course, even knowing I'm joking, was like...
Do not move.
Do not get out of your seat.
You know, I would have gone for maybe like, I will.
I start playing the spoons under the table is what I do.
You know, luckily I brought along this mini banjo.
It's like, Hey,
Hey, you know what?
You can have a little bit of a backbeat.
You want to jam, man?
I was in a restaurant in Charleston, and there was a piano player and a saxophone player.
No, it wasn't a rattling change.
They kept up a pretty steady hot jazz.
throughout the steak dinner.
And it was like, was it imposing?
Was it like, I mean, like, so like, seriously, I mean, like when you say hot, like, you don't, you don't mean like 20s jazz.
I mean, like, but like two guys going, hang on.
No, it was Edison Sound Recording Company.
Elliot Smith between the bars.
I think music in a restaurant really depends on your proximity to the musicians.
I'll make it really easy for everybody.
I'll make it so easy for everybody.
And it's like a personal scent, a soap, a cologne, a parfum.
I should have to struggle to hear the music in a restaurant.
Exactamundo.
It's not a rock show.
Yeah.
okay um wow this is a good episode already um you know what it is you know what it is people make the mistake they get a gathering of people together and then that's one of the only it's it's one of the only analogs to a concert right where are the other places that we all gather oh it's an audience in the absence of rock yeah and and why not i mean it's the natural thing to add
Other than like a political protest well having having a having a beer But like hey, let's put on some music like now.
We're having a party right kind of yeah, yeah um You know oh gosh I already have so many things I want to talk to you about You know and I don't know why I talked to anyone but but I said to my family because you know
Okay, so whatever.
It's weird.
Like, you remember, maybe, perhaps, I don't know where you were in life then, but you might remember when Elliot Smith, who I should always mention, not just in passing, is one of my all-time favorite artists, and that either or, almost not single-handedly, but helped a lot at a very difficult time in my life.
Listening to that very sad album and then knowing there'd be one minute and 40 seconds of say yes every night as I fell asleep crying in life.
Very important to me.
But do you remember when he was on the Oscars with Celine Dion and Faith Hill?
I do remember.
He had that big white suit and he had to come out and sing a little bit of, it might have been between the bars, that or maybe Miss Misery.
Yeah, or Big Nothing.
I think Miss Misery might have been the actual nomination.
But supposedly, and you're like, oh my God.
Supposedly.
Imagine Elliot Smith just being in the same building with Celine Dion.
And I'm not here to make jokes about this, but she's a big personality with a big everything.
And he just always seems like he cannot get far enough inside of his shell.
And apparently, Faith Hill and, supposedly, according to Mr. Smith, they were both really nice to him.
Because he was obviously way out of his depth.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, you know, we take a lot of proprietary feeling over Elliot Smith up here in Seattle, even though he's a Portland musician.
Yeah.
You know, we definitely felt like he was one of us.
He played so many shows up here when it was— Wait, I'm trying to explain this to my goddamn kid.
He was on Kill Rockstars at first, right?
So he was more adjacent to what we then thought of as Riot Grrrl stuff—
Than to say, I don't know, I was about to say smog, but not even smog.
I mean, he wasn't like a mainstream folky by any stretch at the time.
He was pretty obscure at the time.
There were several years where he was a secret Northwest.
You know, he was in the same category as Built to Spill.
And, you know, we had all these bands up here that nobody ever heard of.
Was Heatmiser considered a Portland band?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And so the ones that broke out and got big weren't always the ones that you would expect.
And after years and years... Why isn't Calvin Johnson bigger?
I mean, yeah, I can tell you why.
I wonder how many people have had weddings where a Calvin Johnson beat happening song was their first dance.
Zero times.
Right.
But, you know, when Modest Mouse got huge or when Portugal the Man got huge, it's always a big surprise because those bands have been around for a thousand years.
And you might have known them.
I mean, the way I say Heatmiser, I'm not trying to be hip.
But, like, you might go, oh, yeah.
Or, like, what was Doug Marchant?
Tree People, right, before that?
Tree People, yeah.
But, like, Tree People's really, really good.
And you can hear the beginnings of what would become, like, Built to Spill.
But it's so fun.
And they do Big Mouse Strikes again.
And it's so anarchic.
Isn't it possible that you go, oh, yeah, I used to like that band.
That guy was in, you know, two bands ago.
Like, I've seen them a bunch of times.
And now he's in this other band, and you're hearing it on the radio.
Yeah, that's just that.
For whatever reason, the era that we lived in in Seattle, that was what happened.
Every once in a while, somebody, you know, Father John Misty came out of kind of nowhere.
I mean, not out of nowhere.
Look out, Hollywood.
He was the second drummer of the Fleet Foxes.
And then it's like, oh, now he took his shirt off, and now everybody loves him.
Yeah.
But yeah, when Elliot Smith was on the TV, it was like when the first time Nirvana played Saturday Night Live, we kind of all up here, we all gathered around the TV.
Of course.
Because it was one of us who was in that weird other world.
It's enough of people you would just see around.
Yeah.
Well, or just like, I mean, for a couple of years, the conceit of an Elliott Smith show in Seattle and in the Northwest, in Portland, too, was that everybody sat on the floor and you could hear a pin drop.
That's why I got yelled at at a low concert once.
Yeah.
There were rules to going to see Elliott Smith, and you went to the Crocodile, which the night before— I would not sit on that floor.
had featured monster magnet.
And now everybody's sitting on the floor, you know, just like you can't, yeah, you can't get off of it at the end of the night.
Like it's fucking romper room.
So, so watching him do it.
But then of course at that time, I don't know.
Well, there were a lot of strong feelings around here.
Like even then,
quiet is the new loud there were people here that were like grow the fuck up and that was a hard that was a hard universe to be in especially because either or hit everybody the same way like a fucking like a laser beam through everybody and
It's amazing.
Like I thought this the first time I heard it and I still think it whatever, how many, 20 some years later.
It's like, I mean, there's a reason Gus Van Sant lost his shit about that record.
It's got like five unimpeachable, this could be the greatest song this person's written.
And it was the sound that nobody had thought of, which is, this is a record that sounds like someone making a record in their apartment in the middle of the night.
It sounds like they're trying, well, you go back to one record, you go back to the self-title, I think the self-title one, you hear the first track, which I think is Needle in the Hay.
You hear Needle in the Hay, which many of you will know from a very uncomfortable scene in Royal Tenenbaums, very sad scene.
But like when you hear, you're like, what?
It sounds like he's trying not to wake up a roommate while he's recording.
So all those records did.
And that's when XO came out and it was more.
It was like, whoa, there's more now.
What are you doing?
Stop doing more.
Keep doing that.
Go back to the other one.
Keep doing less.
But of course, that was that line.
Yeah.
But no, him at the Oscars.
There was that side of the scene, the cat power side, which was like, hi, I'm a beautiful person.
I'm very talented.
I'm making records, but I'm also too shy to live.
And I will... She would duet with Bob Pollard before she would duet with, you know, whatever, Enrique Iglesias or something.
But she also did this thing when she was on tour, which is like she would climb under the table and peek out from under the...
You're kidding.
I remember Joel R.L.
Phelps, the one time I saw Silkworm, back when they played in suits, matching suits, Joel Phelps would just sit on a chair.
I know you're thinking, I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, you're thinking King Crimson.
No, he just was so hostile, he wouldn't even face the audience.
He sat in a chair and his back to the audience.
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Bonnie Prince Billy used to do this to like act like he was a confused mountain boy that had come down and didn't know how electric lights worked.
But at the same time, off stage, it really did, except for painting his his fingernails with whiteout.
Apart from that, he really did seem like he had just come out of the hills.
The problem was anytime you opened up a magazine, there was a six-page photo shoot with Cat Power and Bonnie Prince-Belly.
Which means they both have press people.
Well, but also as someone who has done a photo shoot, it means they were capable of standing in front of lights and a camera for half a day under makeup while someone else changed their clothes over and over.
right so not somebody like so shy that they can't live in the world those like a photo shoot is maybe one of the most sun so bright in this it's like so hard it's like it's like a ton of work to to be at a photo and you have to be very conscious of how you feel like you do feel like meat a little bit and so to then have your your
And it wouldn't bother me because I love the whole, like, I just came down from the mountains and don't know how, you know, like, where, what are all these four wheeled carts?
They're moving so fast.
I think that's hilarious.
It's just that there was the generation slightly younger than me completely bought it.
And they were like, hey, you know.
Oh, this is adjacent.
You have to sit on the floor.
Yeah, this is adjacent to a bigger point of yours, I think.
Maybe unintentionally, but like that whole like authenticity issue.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And authenticity before that, the –
The one where it was like, we don't take money for our shows because money is bad.
And so everybody just bring one corn cob and that's all that we're charging.
It's like, okay, that's a kind of, you know, that's an authenticity.
I think I saw them on corn cob night.
Yeah, you remember?
And then they take all the corn cobs in a bin and they give it to the pigs.
Yeah.
Please, sir, can I have more corn comp?
Yeah, and those guys are working at Best Buy now.
But the thing where everybody became both beautiful and also Appalachian –
was a thing, was like a bridge too far for me where it's like, pick a side.
You're either in a photo shoot and spin or you are making records in your basement and you can't stand it.
Either the camera steals your soul or it doesn't.
Yeah, exactly.
And with Elliot, it seemed like it could be both.
Okay, well, you know, being on tour is really hard and you have to meet a lot of people.
I think you could tell it was real with him because he was trying to be a good sport.
But you could tell, I mean, just watching him perform, I've seen him three times.
And, like, you could tell it's just life was painful for that guy.
You could feel it.
But the reason I say you could tell it was real because he was trying to be game about it.
He wasn't trying to be more difficult.
He wasn't trying to be more opaque.
Yeah.
He was just like, oh, God, how soon can I not be here?
Yeah, but the problem is heroin, right?
It started with drinking and drugs, but the heroin was pretty early.
Did you ever see a show of his where he actually nodded off on stage?
Because I have.
Well, I told this I didn't have to.
I chose to tell this anecdote to my kid when we went to see the Beths.
And we were looking on the walls for the posters that we've... There's a place in town called... God, what's it called?
It doesn't matter.
But there's a place in town that specializes in framing the size posters that the film work gives away.
So on our wall for years, we've had an Elliot Smith poster.
We've had, I think, maybe a Stereo Lab, but these three posters.
And I was trying to find it, right?
Right.
And anyway, long story short, I've ended up telling my kid, I once saw Elliot Smith two days in a row.
I saw him solo at Amoeba in The Hate, right?
Cool, cool.
And he was, it was, you know, those kinds of shows, you can find these online usually from LA, like you'll see people doing this, but like pretty intimate.
And like, I don't think people sat on the floor, but it was incredible.
And the next night, woof, it was rough.
This culminates circa 2000, probably...
I forget when he passed, but Oranger opened for them, which is probably not a great choice, but Oranger opened for them.
And at one point at Great American, Mike had to come, Mike Drake had to come out and tune Elliot Smith's guitar for him on stage.
I mean, it wasn't funny.
It wasn't fun.
He could barely finish any of the songs.
So yes, I have seen that.
But then you never know, because then a couple of nights later, it might be really good.
The apogee of all of that for me were two films, two films that you can still watch.
One of them, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart by Wilco.
And the other one is that tour movie by Radiohead.
Meeting People is Easy.
Meeting People is Easy.
Both of which are featured link.
I bought DVDs.
The day I got a computer that could play DVDs, I bought Rushmore and I bought that.
Those are the first two DVDs I ever bought.
feature length films where the whole premise of the film is that these very successful bands who are like in the business of show are so awkward and uncomfortable that they can barely survive just the normal amount of
like doing stuff that any and every band has to do.
And also that they have zero control over their own lives and are being forced to do this by mysterious other, other powers.
So like, if you're a band, you don't want to injustice in, I mean, I'm honestly asking.
So there's almost like there's an injustice in terms of like, we're here to do music and make the, make the nice people happy, but we're set upon by all these forces that we don't control that are trying to industrialize what we do and make us into something.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a furtherance of the, like, somebody is making Jimi Hendrix make four albums a year, and Jimi just wants to have a vacation, but there's someone, some manager, or some force behind the scenes.
Some Colonel Tom, basically.
Yeah, that won't let him rest.
Right.
Yeah.
And, and then, and so he dies and we all look back and go, well, why didn't Jimmy just take a weekend off?
Why didn't Jimmy take a year off?
Like, why did we used to think that, that Creedence Clearwater revival needed to put out four albums in 1969?
Yeah.
Right.
And I mean, they're all great.
They're all the greatest albums.
It's unbelievable what they did so quickly.
Yeah.
But, but the idea that, and it does happen when you're an artist and you're like, well, I gotta, you know, I gotta keep going.
Otherwise I'm going to die.
Yeah.
But the idea by that point in life that somebody coming up and saying, hey, I really like your band, and your reaction would be that you wince, and the problem was that we as the people watching the movie –
have been trained by that point to go, oh, my God, just leave them alone.
Yeah, but we're watching the movie, aren't we?
Yeah, but we paid, at the time, what, $8?
You can go back to it.
What was that one different state of mind?
The one about the punk rock band where everybody quits the band on tour?
Yeah.
Remember that?
I forget the name.
Every punk band?
Yeah, yeah.
I forget the name.
No, I don't remember that.
Oh.
But, yeah, but it's – I get what you're saying.
But then the ironic part or the – I hate to say hypocritical.
The interesting part of that is then that becomes part of the refusenic culture of the truly greats.
Like, well, one reason people like Bob Dylan is like he is – hasn't historically anyway used to –
kind of reinvent himself seems like just to vex people.
Yeah, every time slightly worse.
Right, right.
Until you get to like self-portrait or whatever.
But the thing is, he was on Columbia Records.
Well, Neil Young being the classic example that from 1979 to 1991.
I've heard it referred to as genre hell.
He, with millions of dollars at stake, up against the entire record industry, decided he was going to make a doo-wop record.
Wondering.
It is.
And that's a great song.
That's a great song.
The video is so weird.
But what he's trying to do is do rock pile.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's just like, guess what?
And so it was always possible.
You just needed to be a big enough dick or a smug enough dick or have a child that is severely disabled and nobody knows about that you're just like, actually, I'm just making music.
Because the story there is the Transformer was, he wanted to use a vocoder to better communicate with his son on the spectrum.
Yeah, exactly.
Or like hard on the spectrum.
Yeah, like real, real, yeah.
And so he's just in Neil Youngtown where he's like, no, I'm making music to talk to my kid.
I didn't mention that to David Geffen as part of the reason why I took him.
He sure got a lot of second, third, fourth chances, didn't he?
Well, he did.
And then he comes out with- He'll finally like this, what is it called?
This, whatever.
This note's for you.
This note's for you.
Yeah, it's like, oh my gosh, Neil Young is back and he's really putting it to the man.
And it's like, yeah, yeah.
I bought it.
But that song is really dumb.
And, but that was a, you know, he was like, oh, you want a record that sells 5 million copies?
I can do that too.
Yeah.
But you like rocking in the free world, right?
I mean, I mean, it's got the, it's got the E, it's got the EDC.
I like it, but you know, that's,
If I had 50 songs to play, like Rockin' in the Free World would not be in the top 25.
Can I unintentionally pull a little bit of this together and then just throw it right back to you?
Oh, sure.
Bacon Ray opened for Pointy Prince Billy and the Anomenon.
I was a bigger... I mean, I like Palace, but I really liked Ned's band, Anomenon.
And we opened for them, and we decided to be dicks.
Not dicks.
Not dicks.
We wanted to.
We were the local band.
So we thought in 1998 or 2009, it's just the whole...
You know, the whole Will thing had gotten a little silly.
I mean, we all liked those records a lot.
Sure, they're great.
I especially loved, like, I am a cinematographer and stuff like that.
But we decided we wore capes.
We made capes out of bed sheets and came out.
of course you did yeah and then we did I have mp3s of these we have two covers that I really like one was slow ride we did a really long version of slow ride but the famous we did keep on rocking in the free world oh my god that's genius it was so dumb what the fuck were we doing
You were doing Rockin' in the Free World at a Bonnie Prince Billy show.
I would like to say that Ned Oldham is a very, very good and nice person, and the Anomenon is an underrated man.
That's all I have to say about that.
I totally agree.
Yeah, yeah.
The thing is that I had as an example, like over here, and then over here.
Over there, yeah.
There was the Pernice Brothers.
Oh.
Who were making the greatest rock music in history and approaching it as like, well, we're basically just carpenters working on this old house.
But they know how to put a B minor in a bridge.
They put everything, and then they travel the country making incredible music completely pretentiously.
There's zero pretense.
And...
like that if you want authenticity yeah that's to me was authenticity like and part of the reason nobody wanted joe bernice in their clothes in spin nobody was like oh man because you know because he did look like a carpenter joe bernice what are you wearing balenciaga what am i wearing my people are simple
So there were plenty of examples if you were looking for amazing music made by real people who did not seek the spotlight.
And those bands did not become huge bands because they weren't doing six hour photo shoots and they weren't selling records because they were beautiful.
And I mean, to say that Bonnie Prince Billy is beautiful.
He is beautiful.
He's weird, but he's beautiful.
Right.
Very strange hat.
He has a strange head, he's bald, he's got weird wispy hair, but he is... He was a big old bear once.
In a weird way, totally gorgeous, right?
Yes.
In a way that there are a lot of bands that are just made up of regular people that are... But in a way like a cluster of mushrooms that hasn't been kicked yet, he's beautiful.
But most bands that aren't beautiful are like most bands, also not good.
But Pernice Brothers and Scud Mountain Boys and that whole universe, those records are unimpeachable.
That record with Working Girls, that has 730 on it, I think.
Holy God.
It's so gentle.
It's so hard.
It's heartbreaking without being morose.
You know what I mean?
It's so difficult to do, to make, I don't know what you call it, power pop, chamber pop.
Like, it's a kind of pop.
It's just that it's so well-crafted that you don't go, oh, you know, this sounds like the Archies or something.
But, like, there's something so... He really gets it.
He tugs at my heartstrings, John, without being morose.
I don't know how he does it.
Well, because he's not... He's not...
He's not playing.
The song Grudge Fuck, I'm sorry to say, it has the word fuck in the title.
And it also has the word grudge in it.
There's nothing pretty about... Fuck grudge sounds like a Melvin song.
Fuck grudge, exactly.
And if they had called it something else, maybe.
If they had given it a title that was like something inscrutable, but like...
It's, uh, it's a, uh, an AC Newman level heartbreaker.
And, uh, and it also at the same time just feels like the most working class thing that you could make.
Um, and I don't, you know, like when I say working class, I just mean like that Boston thing where, where they've got tools in their car, not in their truck.
They have tools in their car.
uh it might be like a i don't know it feels like a universe apart from my world yeah i toured with those guys you know i i remember when that was oh it was like what it wrote record for you or approximately yeah when we when we look back that was kind of the moment there was a moment it's we i think of it as our decembersts moment
Where the pretend to fall had just come out.
Yeah.
And we had signed on to do what was called a co-headline with Pernice Brothers.
And halfway through the tour, it was clear that we should be the headliner.
In terms of draw.
In terms of draw.
Like the record was doing well.
It was on college radio.
People were excited about it.
And, you know, Pernice was kind of this late.
And so this would have been 2003.
And I talked to a friend of the show, Colin Malloy, one time.
And he said, I think the secret to our success is we never opened for anybody.
Right.
We went out as the headliners on our first ever tour and we played to five people a night.
On one hand, that's really smart.
On the other hand, I really want to hit him.
Well, but that's – but then later – I do see what he's saying.
I do.
And what he said was when you open the newspaper looking for the show to go to, you don't look at who's second on the bill unless you're already interested in the headliner.
Yeah.
And you discovered it away other than browsing the newspaper.
You would discover it from a listserv or your friend.
Yeah.
If you're, if you are like listening to the radio and you're like, Oh, that band is cool.
That when you're, when you open the newspaper and see that the shows, maybe the second band isn't even on the listing, you know, in the, in the old newspaper days.
And so he said, every time we went out, we never opened for anybody.
We were offered all these tours opening.
And yeah,
Our tours just got bigger and bigger every time.
Well, the Long Winters, our booking agent, the beloved Matt Hickey, he did what seemed more sensible, which was, let's put the Long Winters out with bigger bands.
It's like what Tom says to Cousin Greg, you're going to climb the dating ladder.
Your proximity to this band and your exposure to these audiences must raise your boat, right?
Yeah.
That's the theory, right?
That's the theory.
You're going to play in front of death cab audience.
The audience is already 1200 people where you guys would be playing to 100 people.
And so if you convert even 5% of the death cab audience, your audience is growing, but there's a moment when you're the headliner, you have to be, you have to take your lumps, but you, but it's your career.
Now you're not out there supporting, right?
And we never really learned that lesson, but that Pernice brothers tour was the, was kind of a turning point where halfway through people were coming to see us and then leaving.
And we weren't,
we weren't quite big enough to go to those guys and say, hey, actually, we're changing the bill here.
That's the thing I've been wanting to ask you for two minutes.
I don't know quite how to ask this.
Obviously, the question becomes, whose job is it to say or do something about that?
I'm guessing a tour manager.
But ultimately, whose job is it to notice that that's a thing that might need to be addressed?
Because I bet that's a really awkward conversation.
Imagine if Matt Hickey or similar had said to Colin Malloy, hey, look,
you guys need to be the opening act for long winners.
Who's the one who has to bring that up?
Well, so we didn't have a tour manager, so we had one person missing from that equation.
Oh, that's a booking manager.
Booking agent.
Sorry, okay, right.
And so much of the entertainment business is happening between booking agents
One of them is in San Francisco and one of them is in Los Angeles and they're on the phone with each other and the one of them says Hey, my band's bringing a lot more people in than your band and the other one says suck shit And then the first one says well if you don't you know flip this bill
Then the next time you send Lucinda Williams out and I have, you know, seven Bob Dylan shows, I'm going to tell you what you just said to me.
And then the second guy has to evaluate that threat and decide whether it's worth it.
Because the Decembris and the Long Winters level or the Pernice Brothers and Long Winters is such chicken feed to those people.
But everything's a deal.
Everything is some kind of way to get leverage over the other guy for next time.
Every show that you go to that's not sold out, somebody lost money, but they're not worried about it because they lost money as a favor to somebody else and they're going to get that money back.
The phrase we used to use at my.com and in real estate in general was real estate's a contact sport, right?
Which is just a silly way of saying it really is about like, you know, developing your portfolio of people who like trust you and who you can contact for things.
Is it a similar thing here?
Like this is a, we're people of honor and like, don't screw me on this.
You'll get away with it, but you'll be sorry later.
Not that you would phrase it that way, but like you got to keep a collegial and practical, right?
Or-
You have to strike fear into people's hearts because you have access to artists that they don't.
Right.
It's about, you know, it's about scarcity.
And oftentimes, like Matt Hickey is famously...
hated by a lot of people.
But artists, big artists will sign with him because they think he will fight and make other people miserable on their behalf.
Lawyers and booking agents are not people you hire because you want a friend.
Right.
And it's the classic, you know, it's called show business, not show friends.
But you meet people all the time who are like, I hate him so much that I would do anything to hurt him
Except I can't because if I do, then I'm going to get really screwed sometime when a really big band comes through and he remembers, right?
But like I know a guy that makes a living as a card counter.
Oh, like in casinos?
In casinos.
He goes to all the casinos for Blackjack.
And he says, the only way you can be a professional card counter is if you have $40,000 to start.
Because you have to be prepared to lose $30,000 in the process of at the end of the year having made it back.
Right, right.
And if you start as a card counter and you have $15,000, you might just lose it.
That's a really interesting way.
It's similar to probably with stocks or anything else.
And yes, I did watch two Ricky Jay movies again last night.
I was watching Ricky J two nights ago.
Well, I've been watching Deadwood.
I've been doing a big rewatch of Deadwood, which, of course, reminds me.
Oh, my God.
And so, of course, last night I watched Deceptive.
We've talked about this very much.
And he can't get rid of the cards.
But yeah, I mean, it's like if you had a business strategy that involved nothing but success.
Right.
That probably isn't very realistic.
So you would say like, well, as you know, look how many contractors, God bless them, are out there today, like always robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Right.
Similar thing where like you need, God, what's the word they would use for this?
A stake.
Like you need like this much set aside.
You're going to go up and down.
We're not looking at how you did today.
We're not looking at how you did this month.
But like by the end of the year, you need to be on the plus side, not the minus side.
Yeah.
They're all going to be wins.
Right.
Booking agents that can't do that fail.
And you never know about them.
The only way you know about it is that your favorite band suddenly doesn't have a booking agent anymore.
Survivorship bias, yeah.
And so the geniuses at it are either total assholes or super nice, but however it is, because I saw it all the time on tour where it was like, oh man, you really lost a bunch of money at this.
And the booking agent would just shrug.
And it's like, how do you shrug?
You just lost $60,000.
And they're like, well, shrug.
And the thing is, to have that kind of confidence that the next time someone else is going to lose $60,000 and you're going to benefit from it, that is just some cold-blooded shit that as a band, you're not playing anything.
any of that, right?
As a band, you're just like, hey, we got a $1,500 guarantee tonight, and we really hope our fans show up and we sell some t-shirts.
Do you end up being, and this is not to say anything about Mr. Hickey, but have you ever had concerns that you might get caught up in some slipstream of unnecessary negativity?
Oh, it happens.
It happens constantly.
People go, oh, that guy.
Yeah, he works with that guy, and they tried to make me look like an idiot or lose money.
The problem was that, or it wasn't a problem,
What was great was that Matt Hickey worked for Frank Riley.
And Frank Riley.
I have no idea who that is, but he sounds scary.
Frank Riley is extremely scary.
You don't want to cross Frank Riley.
Frank Riley lives in Sausalito.
He is, you know, five and a half feet tall and very thin.
He has a long ponytail.
And every day he starts his morning.
He's got a recumbent bike.
I mean, he weighs 115 pounds.
Every day he starts his morning eating steel cut oats and yogurt.
And the soul of his enemies.
And he comes, you know, he comes out and he's just like the sweetest sweetheart.
But everywhere you go in show business, people go crazy.
Please don't make Frank Reilly mad at me.
And I've never seen Frank Reilly mad.
I've only heard from everyone in show business that don't make Frank Reilly mad.
So you don't need to see it because you've heard.
You know that's power.
It happened to us a lot.
But the thing I remember, the one instance I remember...
I was backstage at the First Avenue Theater in Minneapolis where they filmed Purple Rain.
And the First Avenue is where every single living musician plays.
There are a handful of theaters around the country that every single musician has played, and the First Avenue is one of them.
And I'm backstage, and this guy comes in, and he's paying the headliner, and he's paying the headliner a briefcase full of money.
And then he comes into my dressing room and he hands me, and the fact that this guy is handing me anything is already remarkable.
This guy would normally not, he wouldn't even walk past my dressing room.
but here he is and he is like a big guy.
He's a guy that has a Derringer in his boot.
He's a guy that has that.
He's a guy that is like a, like a John Milius kind of character.
He, he has buried people in the light from his car headlights.
Yeah.
You got to cut off the hoof.
And he comes into my dressing room and he hands me this $2,000 or whatever.
And he goes, hey, great show tonight.
You know, great to see you.
I just want you to be sure that you tell Frank Riley that you had a good time tonight.
Wow.
And I was like, yes, sir.
And he was like, just remember to tell Frank what a good time you had tonight.
And I was like, we had a wonderful time.
Now, I don't want to, anybody listening that knows the people at the First Avenue, I don't want to, I don't want to, maybe the entire staff of the First Avenue are all teenage girls and they have no idea who I'm talking about.
Maybe he's not, maybe that person isn't even involved in, maybe that $2,000 came from a butcher shop somewhere, but the message was clear.
Maybe it was Frank Riley sending someone to conduct a test.
What it was, was this guy saying,
Frank needs to remember that I, that you're his little band that, but somehow they got $2,000 for you.
And that means that the next time that Jack White comes through here, even if Frank Riley doesn't,
doesn't book Jack White, a deal will go down that involves Frank.
Right.
That he will one day, you know, like, oh, we're going to pay Jack White this much because Frank Riley owes that guy.
But also, it's good for that guy if it gets back to – presumably, it's good for that guy, obviously.
If it gets back to Frank Riley, you know –
Hey, you know, your friend in – a friend in Minneapolis says hi because that also shows – I mean it shows it's the ultimate kind of – one doesn't say – a Costa Nostra kind of thing where you're like and let him know that I was loyal and you had a good time and like that entire transaction –
It's kind of drawing you into this thing.
You know what I mean?
Frank Riley's biography.
Yes, I can.
You know what they should call that book?
Yes, I can.
And Frank Riley says I can.
Some of it, I think, was that there was a moment, you know, a moment of a couple of years where it wasn't clear to everybody whether or not the Long Winters were going to be a much bigger band.
There was that moment where it was like, hey, this record's getting a lot of airplay on college.
And I've never said that before.
On college radio, not on college, oncology.
Yeah, that's where you study the cancer of universities.
But, you know, it's getting that.
If you go to see our show, it's a real show.
And we might just be one record away, one hit away.
Right.
And the numbers you were selling, you always – well, you didn't necessarily – I don't think I'm talking about out of school.
You would always say you got to look at the numbers from the first week, the second week, the third week.
Does it go up or down?
How much?
The big number is like you want to see this amount the first week, right?
Isn't that kind of a fairly big one?
Yeah.
Not to be like mercantile about it, but that is something other people will be looking at to determine how this went and what's next.
Yeah.
Everybody's mercantile about it, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's not that you don't, you know, oh, you're so lucky you get to play your music.
But that whole idea, though, of like, well, what that number is will also be a little bit of a compass for the next year of our career, right?
Well, yeah, because it sets you up for who knows what the hit is going to be.
Because you don't know.
Does it mean, oh, shit, you're going back to kill rock stars?
Or does it mean that Warner Brothers might be wanting to talk to you?
Right.
And who knows who, from that guy's perspective, he's seen so many bands come through where he's like, look, I knew Prince was a star.
Look at him.
But, but this fucking fat fuck, he's the rock star now.
And then it turns out, yeah.
Trust me.
He's no more a stay.
And that's all I'm saying about it.
Yeah.
He's no Prince.
But all of a sudden he's the guy.
I mean, I'm sure that guy, the first time he saw Elliot Smith was like, huh?
What?
Yeah.
Can I please get this guy a sandwich and a large coffee?
So he looks at me and he's like, this guy's wearing two American apparel shirts.
Not one, two.
Is that a thing?
These people are all turning into Jackie Mason.
What am I to do with this?
You got this tall fellow over here.
He takes my briefcase.
So another thing he might have been saying is, when we see you in a year and you're headlining this,
remember this moment right remember that on your way up we took care of you uh so all of that you know all of that's in play and it's all way it was way over my head at the time and it's i mean was there at least i mean you've always been well but like i think to your credit you've always been engaged in the business part of this in a way that a lot of people are squeamish about to say the least and
Because I didn't have a tour manager.
I had to be the one that took me on.
And you had a wallet with the money in it, and you wanted to know what was there.
Because it is a business.
You have to pay those people whether or not the crowd is into it.
It is a business in that sense, very much.
But like...
I don't know.
I think that is really something a lot of people, including me, shy away from.
You'll remember an anecdote of something that happened with you and someone else, and then me and Sean Nelson sitting there and taking turns pissing each other's pants while we got uncomfortable about you dealing.
Because you both understood that that's what that was, and that's how you two dogs would...
would settle a situation like that but like you don't you sort of you need that or you need somebody you really super trust or how do you know if the compass is pointing in the right direction even when there's good news there's always somebody who's ready to fuck up your deal for almost no money the small version of it is that a band that does have a tour manager the tour managers that succeed are the ones that at the end of the night when the band is underpaid and there's nothing that can be done about it
The tour manager doesn't tell the band.
They don't come back to the band and complain.
They go, all right.
They make it up out of their part.
No, they are also playing the long game of all I have to do is by the end of this tour, make it pay off.
Yes, of course.
Of course.
Yes.
The band is paying me to never know how much they got.
You know, Babe Ruth used to strike out a lot.
But, you know, we still remember that fat guy for his hitting.
Yeah, he struck out a lot, but at the end of the day, right?
Yep, yep.
And so, I mean, I've told you stories about being on tour with bands where the guys in the band didn't know what state they were in.
They had to be told what town they were in.
And these aren't huge rock stars.
Is that Chris's weird?
Yeah.
they didn't even know remember what van they were in but okay keep going you better have a good one after that but you know that that's the uh that's where you get that whole hello cleveland and it's like that's that we're in you know cincinnati diddly says to him well well you're musicians ain't you
Or when, when, uh, when Ira said, uh, I'm a professional and laid down in the hallway at a motel six and went to sleep.
Went to sleep.
No, no, no.
Ira from not a surf.
Oh, I reflated.
Uh, we, we were, we were, uh, we were partying and we got separated and he didn't know where his hotel was.
Oh no.
He's so tall.
He's very tall.
And so he was like, well, can I come back to your hotel?
And we were like, absolutely.
And so he shows up at our hotel and we're like, there's two beds in the room.
It's me and Eric Corson.
And we're standing there like, well, okay, Ira, you can sleep here with Eric.
I'm going to sleep over here by the door.
And we, in the middle of figuring it out, we look over and Ira's rolling up his coat, lays down in that little entryway of a shit motel room next to the bathroom.
Oh, no, do you know how many people have walked there?
Yeah.
I do exactly.
It's a high traffic area, John.
Well, how many people came out of the bathroom and hadn't put their dick away and were still dribbling pee?
A thousand percent.
They're sitting there waiting for a low concert to start.
Jesus Christ.
He's already laying down.
He's so tall and handsome.
Eric and I were planning to spend another hour watching TV.
He's laying down putting his head on his jacket.
Don't wake up.
And I said, Ira, what are you doing?
We'll figure out a bed for you.
And he was like, oh, no, I'm a professional.
And he was asleep in minutes.
Oh, I'm so envious.
Whoa, no blanket, head on his jacket.
I was like that when I was 20, but John, I am not like that now.
Well, and Ira was six years older than the rest of us, right?
Ira just had his 60th birthday.
Shut your fucking whore mouth.
No, no, no, it's true.
That beautiful boy is 60?
Yeah.
And so we were just like, well, good goddamn.
I guess what that means is we are not professionals.
Because I was like, this is my bed.
You know, I need these feather pillows switched out.
Hello?
I need these covers.
Hello?
It's so bright in here.
This room smells like bleach.
Can we have another room?
I don't want the alarm clock.
You know, I don't even need to sleep in the room.
I'll sleep in the hall.
Because I'm a professional.
So all of that, you know, but the tour, there are so many tour managers that do a big tour and then they never do a tour again because they come back to the van and they're like, God damn it.
That guy shorted us $500.
And the band is like, we are paying you to never tell us that.
We are paying you to never get a flat tire, to never – here's what we want.
We get off stage, you hand us our room keys.
We get off stage and you hand us a dry towel.
And that's worth whatever the money is.
And, you know, for me to not know what state of the United States I was in, to not look out the window and put together what state you were in by the signs.
People laugh, but I mean, it's not that hard for that to happen.
I mean, you're moving a lot.
Something you learn about, at least I learned about jet lag over time that explained a lot is that the jet lag in particular, I know this is not strictly germane, but like you're –
The organs, the systems of your body experience time in different ways.
It just feels like they experience it in the same way when you're in the same environment.
But like your liver thinks it's a different time than parts of your brain do.
It's all really confusing.
And like you think you could eyeball from just – without looking at the area code, you would know at this particular like Motel 6, you would be able to know like which –
eastern seaboard city you're in?
I mean, the first thing is that all of the state highways across the country have a silhouette of the state behind the number.
Oh, that geography is handy.
If this is Highway 20 and you're in Pennsylvania, there will be a little picture of Pennsylvania.
And so if you know the difference between Pennsylvania and Florida, that's a clue.
It's just a silhouette.
Yeah.
But also like when you get into the motel room, there will be a little thing next to the phone that tells you the phone numbers of local places.
It will probably have the state on it.
But the problem is keeping all of that stuff going in my head is why I smoked 40 cigarettes a day.
Because you're right.
My liver was somewhere else and I was never relaxing.
Right.
I was never just sitting in the van and looking at my phone or my book or whatever.
I was always like, what state are we in?
What time is it?
What, you know, last night we got shorted $250 and tonight I'm going to make that guy really pay, even though he had nothing to do with it.
tonight I'm going to this and that.
Frank Riley sends his regards.
Exactly.
Somebody in the van pulls off their earphones and they go, hey, I've got to take a piss.
And I'm like, piss in your mouth.
That was part of my problem.
I was bad at this job.
Or if not bad at it, then
I mean, I think I would have been a good tour manager.
Have you thought about that for the sunset of your career?
Well, no, because now I don't think I would.
Now, the last thing I want to do is be in a van, even if I'm the star of the show.
To be in a van and just be the guy that's dealing with petulant children, no.
Oh, my God.
It would be worse than being a middle school teacher.
Yeah.
Can you imagine having to wrangle people in their 20s right now?
Yeah.
Well, and people in their 20s are different than people in their 20s when I was in my 20s.
You know, today's people in their 20s are going to make people in their 20s in the 60s look like people in their 20s in the 20s.
They absolutely do.
The people that are in their 20s now are going to make people in the future look like people in their 20s in the 70s.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It's really hard to get if you two plus two is five.
And I don't know if you've seen some of the infographics.
I think I saw you explain that.
Yeah.
But but I definitely I used to fight with other people's tour managers.
Over how many dry towels there were.
Well, no, just because I was like, well, I need towels.
And they're like, well, fuck you.
And I'm like, well, I don't have a tour manager to say fuck you back.
So it's got to be me.
It's like there's an aspect of like, okay, I'm the chaperone for this elementary school trip.
But that doesn't mean I brought a juice box for everybody.
I brought a juice box for my kid.
It's not my job to give juice boxes to everybody.
Yeah, it's the old Colin Malloy has the Oranginas.
They're only his Oranginas.
Were you not told about that, John, not to touch his craft services?
Were you never told that, John?
I feel like it was marked and explained very clearly that the stuff in this room is for Mr. Malloy.
Their tour manager might have told my tour manager that.
I see, but they're banking it up for Frank Riley.
Well, but in this situation, it was just us in the room, and so Colin had to tell me, which probably was like, what am I paying people for?
Why did you put him in that position, John?
Colin doesn't want to do that.
The worst was Interpol.
Interpol.
Wait, you play with Interpol?
Yeah, Interpol was coming to Seattle.
I loved them.
We got on the bill.
I used to listen to them on the Stairmaster at the Y. You know, they sent their record to Josh Rosenfeld, wanted to be on Barsouk, and he said, eh, it sounds like New Order.
Yeah.
It sounds a lot like Joy Division in parts.
Then the next, like this was, you know, six months later.
Yeah.
They booked the show in Seattle at a club when they were still just a New York regional whatever McCall it.
Yeah.
And halfway across the country, their record started to blow up.
And by the time they got to Seattle, they could have sold out.
a venue three times the size of the venue they were playing that night lying around the block life comes at you fast huh yeah and this was a venue uh that i that i knew pretty well and i knew for sure that their capacity was 350 and that they had sold 900 tickets uh because like that's that seems crazy fast
Well, it happened because a song shoots up the charts.
It's on college radio.
A song shoots up the charts.
You never know how that many kids all find out about it at once, but that's how things happen.
And so we're on this bill and it's now a huge show.
And somewhere between New York and Seattle, Interpol,
got into a mindset that they were the biggest band in America.
Mm-hmm.
And I've seen it happen a lot.
Oh, I bet it's difficult not to.
I bet it's super difficult not to.
Right?
You leave New York, and you're like, America, here we come.
And halfway across the country, you open up Spin, and it's like, best new band.
And you go, what?
Everyone but John.
Yeah, and then, you know, and by the time you're playing in Portland,
It's like there's a riot in the street and you're like, it's us.
We're the Rolling Stones.
And so they came into this venue that I knew really well that had a dressing room.
Oh, Jesus.
And my mistake was that I had brought my girlfriend, Megan,
to the show backstage because this was a big moment.
This was early in the Longwinner's career.
This was a sold-out show.
This is Megan that did the denim?
This is denim Megan.
This is Megan that decided she was going to make purses.
I feel like I remember really liking her.
Yeah, she's amazing.
She bought a ton of leather scraps in weird colors and weird shapes.
She sat in her living room, sewed purses, and
And then would walk out through the town with this purse on her shoulder.
And women would come up to her and say, I'll give you $500 for that purse.
That's the dream.
That's the dream right there.
And she would say, oh, I don't charge for them.
And she'd give the purse to the woman.
And every purse she made, she walked out.
And by the end of the day, she had no purse.
She needs a Frank Riley for purse.
And that's because she believed in cat power.
Yeah.
She was like, oh, I don't do this for money.
It's like, what the fuck do you mean you don't do it for money?
You're on your way.
If you're making purses and women are buying them off your shoulder, you're on your way, babe.
We're halfway to living in Switzerland.
How did Interpol respond to Leather Megan?
So Megan comes backstage and we're sitting on the couch.
The couch.
And Interpol walks in
And they've got skinny jeans on, and they've got pointy shoes, and they've got spiky hair.
And the one dude is wearing a black suit and looks like Bela Lugosi.
And they walk in, and they see I'm sitting on the couch with my admittedly beautiful and ferocious girlfriend.
And they come in, and they kind of stand there, and they make some weird chit-chat.
And I'm like, hi, nice to meet you.
We're the Long Winters.
And they're like, oh, hey, man, what's up?
Hi.
And then they kind of wander out.
And it's like, oh, okay, well, they're probably going down to tune their guitar.
Oh, no, did you get a talking to?
And then the tour manager comes.
Oh, shit, dog.
And he's like, hey, this dressing room is for the headliner only.
Yeah.
They've got 200 couches where you can sleep tight, but not this one.
And I stood up.
Oh.
to leave the room, apologize.
Hey, sorry.
You know, sorry.
Mix up.
We can fix this.
Mix up.
I'm going to go down and sit on top of my amp and smoke cigarettes until the show.
No problem.
And Megan goes, not moving.
She goes, oh, did we break your dressing room?
And I go, Megan, you know, come on.
This is the, this, you know.
Yeah.
And she's like, what?
What?
They can't like share a coffee table?
I'll scoot over.
Talk to a minute like Mo Green.
And the tour manager is just like, he's basically doing what Axl Rose did to Kurt Cobain at the Grammy Awards about Courtney Love.
He's like, will you shut your bitch up?
And Courtney Love's like, I'm going to fucking, you know, like right in his face, right?
He looks at me like, what the fuck is your problem?
You not even addressing her.
Oh, you had to answer for your tart.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she, she stands up and is just like, you know, well, what if I sit over here?
Well, what if I sit over here next to this plant?
Is that fine?
Is there enough room for them?
I have a feeling she's dealt with people like him before.
She's like my sister.
She's absolutely operating at a higher frequency.
Like, oh, so you want to do that.
Okay.
And if I was the boyfriend that I should have been, which is Sid Vicious, if I had been like, I'm a little dumb, but I know I'm beautiful.
If I had just been dumb,
And had gone, you know, I'm kind of, I'm kind of emotionally abused by my girlfriend, even though I'm the rock star.
So I'm just going to sit here or I'm going to get up and stand over by the door and let her talk for me.
Uh, she probably would have won that fight, but I was like, Megan, come on.
Like, don't, you know, get out of here.
Like, this is him.
This is Joe business.
You don't even know what you're dealing, you know?
You're ruining it.
And so I did get her out of there.
And she wasn't even mad.
She was just being a Susan Roderick.
She was just like, oh, well, I'm sorry.
And as she walks out, she's like, you know, I'm flickering the lights.
It's a bummer we won't get to hang out with the band.
They seem so cool.
Ooh, flicker, flicker, flicker.
And then we pass them standing on the stairs waiting for their tour manager to ask us to leave.
And we were like, oh, you know, and she's just like, hey, guys, your room is ready.
And at the time, I thought that show business was serious and that these were the Frank Riley moments where it's like now Interpol is going to have they're going to think of the long winners.
And it's and then when we're all at Madison Square Garden, they're going to blah, blah, blah.
And this is now I owe somebody $200 and I don't even know who it is.
And she's just like.
You know, Cat Power doesn't even use money.
People just pay for her shows with corn cobs.
You have change for a corn cob.
We got to get out of here.
Oh, shit.