Ep. 529: "Not Everything is Everything"
I think my scooter's beeping.
Oh, it's definitely beeping.
Wait, this isn't the show.
Let me make sure I'm recording.
Wait a minute.
I hear you.
I do hear you sound fine.
It's recording.
Stop recording.
Yes, please keep recording.
I hope this works.
It's definitely beeping.
I know.
Scooter's beeping.
Scooter's definitely beeping.
Okay, this is the show.
If I had a way to turn...
The scooter's beeping.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Can't record a podcast.
Scooter beeping.
Scooter beeping.
Oh, scooter beeps seven times.
I'm not ready.
Oh, my God.
What a... Oh, my God.
Hi.
You still have the blue man staring at me.
He's bad.
He's a bad man.
Well, can I tell you something ironical about the blue man?
He's a scary, scary blue man.
I've been watching... I was watching... Well, I came... I woke up late.
My kid woke up this morning, and as normal kids... As kids do, my kid woke up and decided, I'm going to make bagels.
Now, you're saying...
Kids don't say that.
Yeah, I know.
Well, no, no.
All kids, that's a very normal thing to do is to wake up and decide you want to make bagels.
Now, I want to make a point here.
No one in our house has ever, quote, made bagels.
I don't know how to make bagels.
I'm led to believe that because of some anti-Semitic laws about, you know how bagels started?
You know, that started because Jewish people weren't allowed to touch white people's food, so they had to make their own bread.
Really?
Make your own bread, they said.
Yeah, they were so afraid of blood libel and making Christian babies into crackers.
Oh, that's right.
They're going to make the matzah out of the Christian babies.
They always get you with that.
There's two dozen everything bagels that have been made at my house.
You're kidding.
I woke up at 10, 14 a.m.
An hour and 12 minutes ago.
And my wife says, yeah, Billy decided to make Montreal bagels.
He went and he got a recipe.
What the what?
I know.
This is the kind of thing that happens now.
You made it sound like, oh, Billy wanted bagels.
So he like heated it up.
He asked permission to turn on the oven.
All that.
Right.
Yeah.
But in fact, figured out my whole life.
I've never known a person that made a bagel.
Well, Billy's just making bagels.
I don't want to be unintentionally anti-Semitic because, as you know, I only ever want to be intentionally Semitic or anti-Semitic.
But what had happened was – here, I'll send you photos.
This is you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
Here come the photos.
Got to see that.
Nobody knows how to do this, and I just assumed – I don't want to be anti-Semitic.
I just assumed it was some kind of a generational secret how a bagel gets made.
You mean like an ancient Chinese secret?
It's Calgon.
You boil it in Calgon.
Take me away!
Calgon, take me away!
So you've got like a test kitchen kind of going on here.
No, it's a very modest rental.
But there's my 16-year-old kid.
I woke up.
My kid's wearing an apron and making bagels.
Why is Billy in a modest rental?
Oh, because that's where we live.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Unfortunately.
What?
There's a lot of things.
You got no place?
No, there's a lot of things in life I change, John.
But as you know, we're at a point where there's not that many things that can change except getting way worse.
Yeah.
Now, if I found an immodest rental, should we take it?
I don't know.
You know, that kitchen could use an update.
Yeah.
That's what they say.
The real estate agents will tell you.
You know, Congress just dealt them a blow today, Merrill's.
The real estate agents.
Is it because of Trump's bond or because of gas ovens?
What is it?
No, it's something else.
I woke up an hour and 14 minutes ago.
No, it's, uh, they can't, they, American real estate agents take too large commission.
Oh, cause, yeah, Gnar, Gnar got nailed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gnar, Gnar got nailed.
Because of their rent-seeking usurious behavior?
Mm-hmm, and so.
What are you telling me?
Is it law?
Is it law?
Is it law or custom?
What is it?
Uh, well, uh, well, you mean the new law?
Yeah, yeah, why was everybody mad?
What happened?
Well, it's just, it's one of these things.
It's a, you know, it's a Biden's America.
They're cracking down.
Yes.
Cracking down on all the people that are, that are.
Trying to earn an honest living.
Well, no, it's, well, that's right.
It's that.
Yes.
Modest living.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I understand.
Like just, just because I'm a racist who cleans pools in Gainesville, Florida, doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to make bagels if it pleases me, you know?
I didn't even understand the last part of that.
And I totally agree.
100%.
Yeah.
I mean, you're not going to do it in a Christian home, right?
Yeah.
Not in a small town.
In this economy?
I mean, you should just try it.
Try it in a small town.
Now, I have a little bit of a problem here, which is that I have well-documented problems with my neighbors, but I also have neighbors that I like a lot.
And one of the neighbors that I like the best, just like them the best, little couple, little kids.
He has gotten on the leaf blower train.
No.
And love him.
Love him to death.
Has he not been reading the same papers that we are?
Does he not know that that is synonymous with bad neighbor?
They went out to the suburbs.
They got themselves a house.
They lived here for a while.
They're like, how do we bump up our suburban experience?
How do we manage all these leaves?
15%, 20%.
And he's like, I'm going to get the biggest leaf blower.
But, you know, they're young enough people that they're like, it's got to be electric.
It can't be a gas one.
Thank you.
But, you know, it's the most obnoxious electric one you've ever heard.
It's probably high-pitched.
It's very high-pitched.
It probably sounds like somebody who has a clipboard and works for Greenpeace, right?
Eee!
Eee!
And so I was talking to my mom, and I was like, oh, man, I don't want to start anything.
But this thing, you know, and his leaf blower vibe is, first, he's wearing earphones.
He's probably listening to a podcast.
He's probably listening to The Daily with Michael Barbaro from The New York Times.
But he does the thing where he does it for a while, and then he stops.
and you think he's done and then he starts it up again it's like a it's like a like a four or five hours that he's it's like an asian american water torture so it may it may come on again and it's going to be kind of like the road work outside of your uh workspace except crucially i don't have a mute button in fact i eschew them i eschew mute buttons yeah i know that about you like you always feel like whatever whatever is in the microphone is in the microphone
Whatever's in the microphone is in the microphone.
What we have not yet addressed is that your Zoom caricature avatar here is a scary blue man with a scare.
I didn't even notice the scary blue baby until.
That's called a bamf.
Can't you change it to like a nice picture of Pamela Anderson without her makeup on?
Oh, good.
Thank you.
I promised you last week I would change it, and then I didn't.
And then this morning I woke up.
And Billy was making bagels.
I woke up this morning.
No, no, no, no.
Those bagels look so good.
Okay, and here's the thing.
You know you can buy everything bagel stuff in a can.
You can get a jar of everything.
I didn't know that.
Can you just eat it out of the can without having any bread?
I put it on everything.
So think about that.
People won't understand.
And also because language is a virus, it's difficult to explain.
But you can buy something in America called an everything bagel, which is a huge misnomer.
See also the movie Everything Everywhere all at once.
You get a bagel and you won't quote everything on it.
And that's what?
You got salt, garlic, poppy seed, different kinds.
It's all different kinds of stuff.
But you could also buy a jar of everything in the title bagel.
You can also buy a jar of everything in the sense of the things that go on an everything bagel can be purchased on the black market in a can, and then you can sprinkle them on what you want.
This is the thing where everything, the definition of everything now is recursive.
What is everything?
It's what's on an everything bagel.
What is on an everything bagel?
Everything.
It's probably like, in logic, I don't know, I don't understand anything about the sciences, like a squiggly equals sign, maybe with arrows on it.
I'll design that.
But something that would be like, it would be, but you know what I mean?
Let's see where you got like, you got the epistemological argument, you got the ontological argument.
This is the everything argument.
Which is that a priori, everything squiggly equals everything.
Right.
Everything is everything.
Everything is everything.
Now, you know what I like to say, John Roderick?
I have two phrases I coined last year that I like to say a lot in talking about the discourse.
Is this part of Merlin's compendium?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, it's implicit.
One of the implicit things is try not to be an asshole.
It's actually easier.
And the other thing that's implicit in my compendium is that, depending on how you look at it, everything is not everything.
Oh.
And also, not everything is everything.
Okay.
And everything is not everything.
Is one a corollary to the other?
You want an example?
Can I give you an example of this?
Yeah, please.
Say something about...
like an album you liked and still like.
Like if there's an album that you like, like Eliminator or something.
Like say something about- Yeah, let's say Eliminator is ZZ Top's best album.
Do you know how many Donald Trump supporters have beards?
Uh.
Because here's the thing.
Uh-huh.
That's the internet.
You say something.
Oh, the internet.
Oh, yeah.
You're not allowed to like this guy because he left his wife for somebody, I heard.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Because on the internet, everything is everything.
There's only one place where everything is everything, and that's in the can of everything in my child's kitchen.
Okay.
Not everything.
Do you follow me?
Yes, I do now.
Okay.
Oh, hey, you know what?
There's this band I like called Rock Pile.
A lot of you who genuinely like rock music,
probably are not aware that at least one song that I can promise you like, if you like pop music, and like a hundred others I'm pretty sure you'd like, it might surprise you to know that there was these four guys that recorded a bunch of records in the mid to late 70s, and because of label restrictions, they were only ever able to record one album under their real name,
but they recorded like five classic albums under different names.
And I would love to tell you guys about this rock band.
It's called Rock Pile.
Let me tell you about Rock Pile.
Do you go door to door in your neighborhood with Bruce Hurts?
Yeah, the witness just wants to talk to you, right?
I'm just going door to door.
And I say to people, hey,
Hey, brother, have you heard the good word about cruel to be kind?
You mean cruel to be kind in the right measure?
It's a very good sign.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You ever heard that?
It's a very, very, very good sign.
It's a really good sign.
I don't know.
Maybe you've ever heard the guitar solos of Albert Lee on the song Sweet Little Lisa by Dave Edmonds.
Or maybe you've on and on and on.
Did I ever send you the video of Dave Edmonds' face as he watches Albert Lee play the solo for Sweet Little Lisa?
I've seen it, yeah.
It's absolutely amazing.
You can see him loving it.
It's almost like the Donovan face during Love Plus One.
No, Love Plus One's a higher cut 100 song.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh my God.
Hang on.
Hang on.
This is actually, this show will never come out.
First of all, I meant Love Minus Zero.
No Limit?
What's the song?
Love Plus One is the song.
Remember, I used to think that shapes sounded a little bit like Haircut 100 and you get mad.
Yes.
You remember that?
I'm not talking about Love Plus One.
I'm talking about- Style icons.
Yes.
Yes.
But not the Style Council, because that was the jam.
I'm talking about... You were the jam, too.
And by the way, that new Rarities record's great.
Oh, thank you.
So here's the thing.
They're backstage.
This might have been in the Penny Baker.
This might have been in the Scorsese.
They're backstage at a Dylan thing.
He's like, yeah, this song I'm going to be working on.
And he goes, my love is like... One of his great songs.
And you can see Donovan, six feet away, smoking a cigarette, watching him, going...
You'll never catch him, Donovan.
Exactly.
No, I know they're dear friends, but he's like, I keep thinking I've caught up.
I keep thinking I've got it.
I got this one about smoking bananas.
It's going to kill, you know.
There's one about a girl who's a juniper, and her name is Jennifer.
It's going to be huge.
One day, my daughter will tie up John Roderick in a music video.
Yes.
A lot of people don't know that.
a lot of people don't there's you know what i'm saying is when you get up and speak at my funeral yeah well did you already arrange that let's come back to that but anything what i'm trying to say is that anything can everything can't be everything and that love minus everything is undefined
Is that right?
Or is it love times everything?
See, this is rock and roll math, and I've never known anybody that was good at it.
Except you.
Except you.
It's one of those things, you know, I hate to say it.
I would like to say that I'm, gosh, witch trouble genius.
I would like to say that I'm an Oppenheimer, but I'm really more of an act one danger.
Dangerous Mind is Chuck Ferris.
I'm more of an act one beautiful mind, which also has Paul Bedney in it.
And Paul Bedney plays Vision in the Marvel movies.
And this morning, my kid woke up and made Montreal bagels.
By the way, Wolverine is from Canada.
He made bagels this morning.
And then we watched part of our favorite X-Men movie together.
Does it have this blue man in it?
And that's where the blue demon is from.
Is that... Because you did bring it around.
Are you asking me?
Actually, the blue man is not in this particular one, but his retcon father is in it.
His name is Azrael.
And he's a red man.
Well, not that kind of red man.
Not like red man and their wives.
No, not daughter.
No, no, no.
Don't call me daughter.
Asriel is on a boat.
What was on that everything bagel?
It sounds like there was more than everything.
I just woke up one hour and 15 minutes ago.
Asriel is on a boat with Kevin Bacon, who used to run Auschwitz.
Oh, jeez.
Kevin Bacon ran Auschwitz.
I'm only one kiss away from him, you know.
It's just a kiss away.
I'm just a kiss away.
Kiss away.
Kiss away.
Kiss away.
Kiss away.
You ever seen that scene of him watching the footage?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You ever seen him watching the footage at Altamont?
I keep thinking, well, he seems like he should be a lot more upset when that guy gets stabbed.
Asriel is on a boat.
They were doing something else that day.
I think I might be making a mnemonic for this.
Yeah, right.
They were busy.
I have a mnemonic for this.
Asriel was on a boat with Kevin Bacon and January Jones from Mad Men.
Asriel is Nightcrawler's father.
Understand now in the movie Alan coming plays Nightcrawler and he's very very good.
Yeah, um, Alan coming was also in cabaret, which takes place in Germany Sure, sorry.
Nightcrawler's from Germany.
He was in the Munich circus.
Should we start?
I see I'm with you so far So what do you think about that everyone could talk about everything for a minute?
Don't you think it's kind of important?
Because here's the thing.
I feel like we're in a slide.
I feel like there's an inflation of lots of things.
There's a lot of MILF inflation.
There's a lot of people today that we're calling MILFs who are, for reasons I can't get into, that are neither M's or F's.
Wait, do you stand on a narrow definition of MILF?
Oh, I've had it.
I've had it.
I'm somebody with a much broader definition of MILF.
You show me a lady, and I'll tell you whether or not she's a MILF.
I don't care about the F. I care about the M. You understand.
Bob's mom?
Yes, absolutely.
She lives in a bookcase and listens to NPR.
She's a MILF.
Exactly so.
Okay, here's the thing.
But her MILFness was relative to my 15-year-oldness.
As it should be.
See, I've made this diagram here of a squiggly equal sign with greater than... I think I've either invented a new emoji or something that will appear in some kind of a courtroom about... But it's a squiggly equal sign that has arrows in it, is the one you described to me.
Everything goes both ways, doesn't it?
Uh-huh.
Approximately.
Okay.
So, and Jennifer Lawrence.
She's a beautiful woman.
Is that the plus in LGBTQ plus?
Everything goes both directions.
Well, the thing is, no, no, no.
You ever been on a website and you click the hamburger icon or the plus and then a lot more menu shows up?
If you hit anywhere you see LGBTQ, A, I, O, U, and you hit plus, it will actually do a drop down menu that never ends because what does it contain?
All of the things and what are everything is everything it has everything be careful what you click Okay, wait a minute.
I didn't know that you could click on individual Well, I mean L's B's G's T's and Q's well, you can only click on the click on the whole thing No one can just click on the plus people rarely think to click on the plus because you know why they don't want to know and Then when they find out that everything is under there, but do you understand what I'm saying?
That's how you get a virus though
Oh, you mean like a McAfee?
Yes, absolutely.
By the way, your warranty's expired.
I just checked.
Oh, no.
Everything is not everything, right?
And not everything is everything.
ZZ Top that John listened to in 1983.
That's not one of them.
ZZ Top, when you hear my Eliminator in first session, ready?
We got legs!
We got legs!
And that's when John first picked up a tennis racket and played it like a sequencer.
No, I'm not doing that part.
You know, he plays a guitar with a peso.
Yes, he does.
A stepped on peso.
Don't you agree?
Please say you agree.
He's up here all the time.
Not everything.
I want to hear about that.
Not everything is everything and everything is not everything.
So did I make a silly example?
Yes, I did.
I'm having a very big Alan Watts phase and it's helping a lot.
One thing I'm trying to say to people who have the ears to hear it is that not everything is everything and everything is not everything, regardless of the fact that there's a can of everything in my kitchen that my kid used this morning.
What I'm trying to say is...
When I make a list of Rockpile songs, like my Rockpile list on one of the streaming services.
When you make a list, I'm assuming you have made all the lists.
Well.
You make it sound like you're currently making lists of Rockpile songs.
I was going to stick with Rockpile because I started with Rockpile, but let me go to a different kind of example.
Why don't you pivot?
This is about me.
You're pissed.
I love music, John, more than people should love music.
It's true.
Tooting about your record Like I was out because I'm as you know, I'm a fan and I was talking about like I've never heard this fucking Huey Lewis cover.
Holy shit I had no idea that this existed because it's my favorite Huey Lewis song.
Yeah Featuring featuring Rachel Flotard who is currently the manager of Nico Case
The vocal on that is beautiful.
Yeah, she's terrific.
She's amazing.
Just real quick.
It's a pain in the ass.
Yeah, sure.
Well, you know, it's music.
I like sharing with people, but I like sharing in a functional way.
Of course, I wish I could just sit with somebody and go, I wish there's somebody I could just sit with and go, can we just, this is going to sound so outside my remit, but can we just sit and listen to all of...
The song Wish You Were Here.
Because I don't think people fully understand.
First of all, it's got the two.
It's got the two solos.
Well, it's got the two solos.
Comfortably Numb's got those two great solos here.
Also, it's got the two best chords.
And importantly, they're both... I have a playlist that's nothing but great songs that have a C with a low G. Oh, yeah.
We were discussing this just the other day.
Two greatest guitar chords.
The greatest guitar chord is D with an added F sharp.
And the most underrated guitar chord is C with an added low G, a C slash G. I agree.
And not only does Wish You Were Here have both...
But if you go back and listen, they both have a critical role in the song.
They're both... Now, how did you discover that this chord was in this song in a critical role?
Do you hear it in your ears?
I've accidentally... Even though I don't play guitar, I pick up a guitar twice a year now.
Yeah.
But a funny thing has happened over the years.
Let me ask you this.
If you hear a C with a low G...
just out in the wild, not always, but if it's, especially if it's something you like and have heard, can you kind of, aren't there chords you can kind of recognize?
And ordinarily you go like, oh, I understand the relationship.
Like, obviously I understand that's a five to a one, right?
I understand that that's a, that's a, that's a, you know, that's like a, an E7 in A, right?
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like, you're listening and you go, like, I understand the relationship between these two chords, but I couldn't tell you the key.
Well, there's certain chords played open that I can instantly recognize.
And I feel like, don't you kind of feel like C with the adage?
How did you describe, when I texted you, if you don't mind saying, how would you describe, when I said, hey...
I made a list of songs with that chord.
I don't think I learned it from you, but I learned about its power from you.
And what did you say when I said, hey, here's a bunch of songs that have the C with a G?
What did you say?
I don't remember.
I must have thought a lot of things.
I think you said something like the entire career of the Long Winters is based on that chord.
It is.
I never play a C without the G.
There's times when, in all the songs I put on that list that include improbable things like Don't Stop Believin', like all the songs on that list, when you play a regular C, it can often be pretty but a little anemic, because you're relying so heavily on three to get the C-ness of an open C chord.
Hey, listen, if this is boring for y'all, it's okay, but some of you will get this.
If you play an open C, like say you've been playing an open C for five years or more.
Open C for five years.
Hold it as long as you can.
Hang on, hang on, just a second.
I happen to have right here a probably out of tune guitar.
Okay, but don't overdo it, but... I don't know.
This is the guitar that I wrote all the songs.
I think I've got my little guitar here.
Oh, the little guitars.
Okay, but here's what I'm asking of you.
What you're saying is here's the C. Here's the trick for our listeners.
In order to show the power of the C with a G, don't play.
I want you to fake out our listeners.
Play like a regular C like you would when you were 20, where you're kind of playing mostly the A through the B strings.
You're not going hard on either of the E strings, right?
Because it sounds fucked up.
It sounds weird and flabby with a regular open C, just a regular strum.
If you let the low and high E ring, it competes too much with what you're trying to get out of the sound of a C chord, correct?
Yeah, I'll put that high E in there.
It's not coming across great.
It is or is not?
Oh, you can't hear it.
Well, it sounds like it's being played through somebody's phaser with a battery that's dying.
Oh, what about now?
Get close.
Still can't hear it, fuck.
Okay, here's the thing.
One plays that kind of C, and any of you guitar players, I think you'll know what I mean.
I like playing C. Yeah, really pretty.
I don't think it's going to do the effect, but try it with the low G. Okay.
It's not coming through.
Oh, no, this is terrible.
It's really hurting my case.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I wonder why this mic... Oh, you know what it is, this microphone.
That's not what you would put on a guitar.
It's the wrong microphone.
SM7B.
SM7B, that's not a guitar recording microphone.
No.
No, it's a voice recording.
When you play a regular C, what you're trying to get out of that C chord in terms of the work that it's doing in the song is going to necessarily mean you're focusing on getting the most, whether you're
picking or strumming do you don't you agree like because you're fretting that third fret uh c on the a right so but it's really those little middle those wimpy little strings which i would also note are the strings that usually go out of tune on a guitar if your guitar is out of tune it's probably because of the b and if it's not because of the b it's probably because of the g anyway it sounds great it's a c chord it's the basic chord
But when you add that low G on the E, you can hit it as hard as you fucking want, let it all ring out.
And suddenly that C chord just went from, it just became like a smart bomb.
It just became like a little running around guy in Defender that just turned into an actual mutant.
You've just made something incredibly powerful with that G.
And because of the relationship to the C root with the G, it ends up creating a slight tension, but also, the way I described it to you, I think, it's like dropping a boat anchor when you hit that low G, don't you think?
A boat anchor.
Boom!
Absolutely.
Pow!
Kaboom!
There's this band, Hopalong, I've been listening to a lot lately, and they have this...
I think it's called Throwing Horseshoe Crabs at the Sun.
And they use C with low G in exactly that way.
How about this, John?
You ever heard the song Take the Skinheads Bowling by Camper Van Beethoven?
What is that song, that dumb sound, song so cool?
It's because they're doing the C to F riff.
Right?
It's a basic 1-5.
But they're doing it, the C has the special G. The G. And that's why I feel like, so that becomes very important in Wish You Were Here.
Which part?
It's when he first hits the chord and starts actually playing.
But ready for this?
He's psyching you out, because now guess what chord he's going to go to after C?
It seems like he would go to F or G, but he doesn't.
So, so you think you could tell.
He's going to what?
D. And when he hits that D, he hits the D with a low F sharp.
All right, hang on.
Let me get mine.
Can you really not hear that?
Oh, boy.
Or I am.
I have not played this.
Give me your low E. Low E. Okay, here we go.
Did you play that?
Oh shit, this is gonna be a problem.
This has a tuner on it and everything.
Anyway, my E is just tuned to to nature as God intended it hasn't seen a tuner.
Yeah, but see the problem is the problem is because of things like the seasons and rotation by the time it gets Yeah Yep, but so he goes so so you think you can tell and then he hits the D But listen guys go and listen to it and why does that give you shivers when Dave Gilmour does that because he's hitting a D and
with a low f sharp and it creates this astonishing tension now i use that most in the walk down right from g g f sharp you know that one the walk down
And I want to say to somebody, hey, check this out, right?
Yes.
And so I point them to something.
In that case, now that and the rock pilots don't count because these are outside.
Now, there's a series that I do called A Gentle Introduction.
And I say, this is a gentle introduction to this band.
Yes.
This is a gentle introduction to Ted Leo.
This is a gentle introduction to Richard Thompson.
Or this is a gentle introduction to the police.
Now, in the case of the police, I'm not going to play you every song you've ever heard by the police.
That would be a lot of songs.
You know what one of the rules of the gentle introduction series is, John?
The gentle introduction is a series?
Seven and only seven songs.
I need to pitch you.
It's how to gently introduce somebody to something.
Let me go pull it up.
If I want to introduce somebody to something that I like a lot from a certain angle, and the angle part does become important, I'm not just going to make the five songs of theirs I like.
If I want to introduce you to Richard Thompson, how do I...
How do I beguile you?
How do I... A gentle introduction to Richard Thompson.
Which means, like, you don't need to listen, it means several things.
It means you don't need to listen to an entire album by that person.
Which I consider their best album.
No, you don't have to listen to a thousand songs.
My case is that I think I can make a case to somebody that in seven songs, I'm going to pitch you on what I think is special about this band.
And I want to do, because if I say to you, I promise you on the general introductions, it's going to be seven and only seven songs.
Okay?
So, like, here's one.
Okay, you know the band XTC?
I do.
How do you gently introduce somebody to XTC?
That's rough.
And mine goes, believe it or not, you know what it starts with?
That's really Super Supergirl.
That's really super, super.
That's really super, super girl.
Into Love on a Farm Boy's Wages.
What?
Vanishing Girl from Dukes of Stratosphere, When You're Near Me, I Have Difficulty, Towers of London, The Loving, hugely underrated song, and then maybe the greatest XTC song, Then She Appeared from Nonsuch.
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
Where's Dear God?
Where's Generals and Majors?
Where's Mayor of Simpleton?
It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That's not the point of this.
This needs to be seven songs that, like, by the time you get to that seventh song and you go, I think you should be able to at least say, wow, this is really not for me.
But what I'm hoping is by the second song, you go, holy shit.
This is... Okay, how about this?
Even if it's not for you, you at least know.
Well, the point of recommendation in some ways is for people to be able to know whether it is for them.
I don't want you to have to watch a season of a TV show.
And that's why Syracuse and I put it in terms of BFF.
What's the best episode of this show?
What's your favorite episode of this show?
And what's a good first episode?
Now, Cheap Trick.
How do I introduce you to Cheap Trick?
That's tough.
I start with Hello There and Come On, Come On from Budokan.
then go into She's Tight, Dream Police, I Can't Take It, If You Want My Love, and then finally, Live Surrender.
Right?
See, I would start with Dream Police just because I feel like... I know.
You also have to be careful, though.
It's like, remember, you're making mixtapes, and you've got to be careful not to blow it all on the first one.
But let me give you, I'm going to give you one.
Oh, my God, I have so many playlists for Roderick on the line in here.
Oh, my God, this is crazy.
Here's one that I think you might find interesting.
Playlists for Roderick on the line or playlists of Roderick on the line?
Because I know there are people with the seven... Oh, right, right, right.
Playlists of I don't do.
But there's a lot where I've done every song we mentioned in an episode.
And then there's some... One of my favorite lists, John, and just so you all listeners know, I'm always pimping my playlist to you guys.
John doesn't know any of this.
John's not involved.
John doesn't even, I think, have Spotify.
But for example... But wait, when you make a list of all the songs that we mentioned in an episode, do you also make all the lists... Do you put the songs on that we allude to or make like...
Glancing reference the same way that like some of my favorite podcasts or youtubers do this like a youtuber that does like a 25-minute history of power pop Will then like make a Spotify list of every song mentioned whether he played it like a lot or not Okay, so like for example, do you remember when we first coined the phrase you first coined the phrase that song is made of cocaine?
I don't remember but okay.
Do you remember having done that?
I think so and I can tell you off the dome I think my immediate response was well that would have to be almost anything by Bob Welch
Who, who, who was amazing in Fleetwood Mac, but who, for whatever reason, and again, Billy Joel and Big Shot.
Like, Big Shot, I'm not saying he was on cocaine when he wrote it.
I'm not saying he's on cocaine in the video.
But if you've never seen the video for Big Shot, it's fucking made of cocaine.
Now, even more so, a different kind of cocaine, like cleaner cocaine, Pressure by Billy Joel.
That song is also made of cocaine.
Oh, that's a tense song.
Yeah, yeah.
You used to call me paranoid.
I can give him pressure.
Yeah.
I'm almost, well, I may be almost done.
I don't really care.
I'm going to give you one here.
Now, was there ever a time?
Here's one.
Okay, so I'm just going to burn through a fuse.
It was torn in half.
That's definitely not gentle.
Oh, Fit Them Where They Belong.
seven songs to introduce you to Ted Leo, a million heartstrings.
These are all, you have to find the lyrics.
See if you can always find the lyric that I picked for the title.
These are the ones you have made.
Oh yeah.
These are all me sticking your spokes, which of course, you know, seven songs to introduce you to super chunk.
This is one you might like in a nutshell, seven songs to introduce you to Michael Penn.
This is one of my, this one's essential.
Um, old 97s, uh, a list called no more than a thought, which is seven songs to introduce, you know, why seven songs Merlin?
I'm getting to that.
and here's the thing, I just woke up.
This is Leonardo da Vinci now.
We're getting there.
So we kid, but wasn't there a time, say, because I think you like the album Synchronicity, right?
Oh, yeah.
I'm going to speak for myself.
There were ways in which over a three or four year period, there was kind of nothing cooler than the police and not just because of how they looked.
The more I listened to the police, especially pre-
synchronicity but this is a fine album but like you go back what i'm trying to say to people is here's here's here's the thing hey hey you remember how we all were into the police and like maybe you were a little too young for the police or maybe you were a little too old for the police probably a little too young but like you know wrapped around your finger you know roxanne you know those songs this is a playlist called and and if i if i mentioned police songs i'm not you're gonna know what you're
Yes.
Generally.
Okay.
This is called Always Talking to Myself, A Gentle Introduction to the Police.
And then the deck is, were you aware that the police were once one of our most vital and exhilarating rock bands?
No, really.
I get it.
But if you never got that into them before from those songs, maybe try these seven songs.
You start with Fallout.
Right?
The punk rock song.
You start out with Fallout.
Number two, Omega Man.
I'm so tired of the Omega Man.
Number three, truth hits everybody.
Number four, man in his suitcase.
Number five, we're coming a little bit from left field.
Who's that?
Oh my God, is that Stewart?
Yeah, because he's doing On Any Other Day from Regatta de Blanc.
You want something corny?
You got it.
I used to think he was saying he went Sunday morning.
Number six, Canary in a Coal Mine.
And number seven, the song to which I lost my virginity.
What day is today?
Oh, John.
You remember the date.
Yeah, go, go, go.
Is it the anniversary?
Are you saying?
Eight days from today, it'll be exactly 40 years.
Are we going to have a party?
Wait a minute.
Next week's Roderick on the Line will be the day before.
Can't stand losing you.
Called you so many times today.
Did you lose your virginity to Can't Stand Losing You?
Yeah, that was the actual song.
It was on when we achieved penetration.
Can't stand losing.
Yeah, well, you know the thing where you could move the tone arm, not the tone arm, where you could do the record changer thing.
You could pull it up and out, and then we'd just play that side over and over.
Yeah, so we would do that.
trying to achieve penetration.
Seven songs.
Now listen, Fallout, Omega Man, Truth It's Everybody, Man in a Suitcase, On Any Other Day, Canary in a Coal Mine, Can't Stand Losing You.
Seven songs.
And if you still think the police are, whatever, the guys in the candle video,
On any other day.
Yeah, and it might be.
And I didn't even put some of their super best songs in there.
Yeah, I know.
What's the book by the man Nabokov?
Don't Stand So Close to Me isn't even on there.
Awesome.
Invisible Sun, not on there.
Because I want seven songs to get you in.
Why am I saying all of this, John?
You made the playlist that was playing on the back of my school bus in ninth grade.
Nobody appreciates this except a handful of people.
But if one person gets into Ted Leo or Michael Penn, really, I think vastly, especially Michael Penn, I mean, what I'm about to say, vastly, like, not just underrated, just unknown.
Yeah.
In a nutshell, I don't try.
Every Michael Penn song is a complete symphony.
It's a complete work.
Have you seen the video for Try?
Of course.
I mean, do you understand that it's while they were shooting, I think, Boogie Nights.
Magnolia, right?
It wasn't Magnolia or Boogie Nights.
But while they were shooting one of those movies, Paul Thomas Anderson shot a Michael Penn video as a oner in a hallway that was, at the time, the longest hallway in North America.
And he shot a one-er, and it's got Philip Seymour Hoffman in it.
He looks like Scotty, and he's wearing a Planet of the Apes shirt.
Oh, right.
Okay.
So it does feel Boogie Nights-y.
Well, you told me the story about the music stuff.
So Boogie Nights came first.
That's when he learned about Amy, right?
And then Amy did Magnolia two years later.
Seven songs.
And Michael Penn was scheduled to do it.
That's wild.
Let's go back, though.
Please.
Why'd you do this?
Why'd you do this?
Sorry.
Not you, not you, not you, not you.
But here's the case.
John, I'm pointing at this symbol.
Not everything is everything.
I've just explained to you.
Did you send me the symbol?
Well, it's just written right now.
I'll send a photo.
Also, boy, this is really embarrassing.
I also have written part of the word everything here.
This is really not good.
This is like the time I still have a notebook in my office that has the words Jeff Goldblum written on it and circled.
And to this day, I still don't know what it's for.
What it's worth or what it's for?
I don't know why I wrote down Jeff Goldblum and then circled it.
I still don't know why I did that.
What is it in relation to this show or is it just no, I think it was probably while I was doing the show with Dan But I don't know I'm texting this to you I've told this the story The first time that I saw your office Back when you were still transitioning from PCs to Macs you had both systems running I had a PC that was running on a big piece of plywood literally between two saw horses That's exactly right, but you were that desk was stolen, too
Wait a minute.
Your plywood desk was stolen?
Well, the desk I'm on right here I stole from New College in 1988.
I work on a cafeteria desk from New College still.
That one was, I think, probably a stolen piece of plywood and two stolen sawhorses.
And if I recall correctly, you were not 100% untethered from the PC.
You were like, well, you know, you got to keep one of these up.
You met me at a time when I was an unusual time.
I've actually been only on a Mac my entire life and career, except for a year or two where I had to use a PC half the time because I was programming.
You were programming, right?
Oh, this was before Web 2.0.
Technically, yeah, yeah.
This is still like, I mean, maybe Web 1.2.
But what I tell people is that at that time, and maybe this is still true, but at that time, your walls of your office, and I'm not just talking about the wall behind the desk.
I don't know what this is, and I hate it.
I already hate it.
I don't know what this is, and I hate it.
It's so many Post-it notes on them.
Okay.
And they were, and other kinds of cards.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, the index cards.
You're probably at the point when I had that.
I had acquired this stuff that looks like felt.
You put it on your wall, but actually it's just barely lightly adhesive.
I discovered I could put big strips of gray tape on the wall and then tape all of my index cards to it.
Like a Synecdoche New York type situation.
And some of them said things like Jeff Goldblum and then circled.
That's true.
No, that is true.
That is true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I would stand, I mean, this is one of the things that, you know, maybe one of the reasons that we liked each other immediately, but I definitely more than once went in and stood and looked at the things on the wall.
No yarn.
No yarn.
And I put them together.
We're not at the time of yarn yet.
We're still figuring out what the connections are.
It's one thing to have Jeff Goldblum on a three by five card sticky taped to the wall.
But it's another thing to have circled it.
The circling is actually kind of the interesting part.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And but there were many things.
Some of them appeared to be complete equations.
Some of them were just were isolated thoughts.
Some of them were placed next to other ones where there seemed to be significance.
I don't know if I have a beautiful mind, but I think I have a mind that's like an Idaho 7.
I have like an okay mind.
I think what happened was I started to reflect on that when people were like, oh, Merlin is organizing my life.
Oh, I mean, I'm 100%.
Now that Merlin has explained how to organize my life, 100% it's changed my life.
And I'm like, well, you know, Marie Curie.
Was it Marie Curie?
Who is it that ate all the radium?
Who ate the radium?
Was that Marie Curie?
It was Marie Curie's, yeah.
Yeah, because you know what they used to do?
You know, when they would paint the radium onto watch dials, women would do that thing we do when we're painting.
You put the paintbrush in your mouth.
Eat the watch?
No, to make a point on your paintbrush.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
So women were basically eating a little bit of radium all day, every day.
What I'm saying is- That explains women.
You're not- Am I right?
God, I wish we could high five.
Actually, I literally just put my hand up in the air.
This guy gets it.
This guy gets it.
But, you know, you're not going to cure radium without eating a little bit of watch.
No, that's true.
That's me.
You can't even cure radium.
Until I figure out, it's like Ron Swanson, the man who kills me will know.
When I figure out why I circle Jeff Goldblum, you might learn things about your productivity.
And until then, just be great.
Just be grateful.
That's what I'm saying.
That's what I'm saying.
What I would tell people is- It sounds crazy when you say it.
It's like matrix code falling from the sky.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It allows you to avoid bullets.
It's Tetris with letters.
I've seen the code.
Like, I've seen the code running.
Oh, the code runs.
Don't worry about that.
It's Jeff Goldblum on a three-by-five card taped to the wall.
My name's Alan.
Welcome to the Knott Store.
You got inbox zero, but there's a reason why.
Okay, okay, let's keep it friendly.
Okay, I woke up a little while ago, and my kid made bagels, and here's the only thing that I want to say is this.
Okay, for example, you enjoy the Band of the Police.
You heard me just make the case...
For Merlin Mann, what I'm trying to say, and I even said it in my mission or my thesis statement, this is about trying to encourage people.
Maybe you rediscovered The Police.
Maybe you loved Synchronicity.
I mean, were you aware that they also had these other songs that are super good and very police-y?
When you listen to, for example, something like Can't Stand Losing You, right?
It's like, oh my God, that is such a police-y song.
Or especially Omega Man.
Like, go back, you guys, and listen to Omega Man.
It's got a little bit, maybe a little more chorus and phaser than I'd like, but... It's just, it's such a good police song.
Seven police songs.
Wasn't there at least one point in that list where you kept saying to yourself, I bet he's going to say this song.
Or, hmm, that's a good song.
I bet he'll say that song.
Wasn't there at least one song, as a police enthusiast at one time, wasn't there at least one song in your head that you kind of can't believe I didn't put on that list?
Legitimately?
Because I'm flying with you.
I'm like, Merlin's got a plan, and I'm on board 100%.
But when I told you there was this playlist of the police...
Just in general, there must have been at least some part of you that goes, for example, oh man, knowing the premise of this, I would put Synchronicity 2 on there, for example.
I think Synchronicity 2 is such a cool, it's kind of the coolest song on the album to me.
Very cool, yeah.
Synchronicity 1 is the, how does that one go?
There's a lot of sounds.
Synchronicity 2 is the fast one, right?
Yeah.
There's only three guys in that band, but there are a lot of sounds.
But it's the one that's faster, and it's much more like Stuart Copeland-y.
I thought Synchronous City 2 was the one where the... The pretty one?
There was a... I don't have it in my collection, so it's going to take a second.
With the guy in the lock, with the monster.
I might have them backwards.
Stand by.
No, Synchronous City 2.
Forget it.
Fuck that.
I got them backwards.
Not Synchronous City 2.
Synchronous City 1 is...
Oh, yeah, well you will know synchronicity that song that's the one I meant that's the one not the one with the No, not the one with the video.
That one's fine.
Is that the one where they're dressed in rags?
Justin rags and tatters probably probably that's that's thing pre Road Warrior 3.
Well, I'm not making this point Well, you're not you're not playing well
Because there's every single person who loves the police.
The second I say, I made a list, here's the thing.
Okay, let's put it this way.
The problem is I haven't made a mixtape since 1985.
And I don't have Spotify or anything.
But I don't know.
You're telling me you did not make any mixtapes in 1988?
No, I didn't even have a tape player in 1988.
1985, I was making crazy mixtapes.
I put on Animotion.
I put Animotion as the lead-off track.
You are an obsession.
My obsession.
What do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?
There's going to be Deep Purple on this.
Don't you worry, but we're starting with Animotion.
Old Deep Purple or new Deep Purple?
I made a mixtape with Perfect Strangers on it.
We will remain perfect strangers.
But that was 85.
You can really hear John Lord on this one.
I haven't done it since.
I never had a tape player.
If I say to anybody in the world, I was hoping I could do this with specificity.
Instead, I'm going to do this with the abstract.
If I say to you, here is, I made a playlist of seven.
Here's a police.
I would have put synchronicity too on it.
Right.
Exactly right.
And then you get to the seventh song, which is a fantastic Bergman movie.
You get to the end.
Seventh song of a seventh song.
Right.
Songs from the seventh song.
And then you find out that that's not on the list.
You might go, because you're my pal, you might go, huh, that's a cool list.
I definitely would have put synchronicity on there.
Or maybe something like... What's the Regatta de Blanc song?
It's alright for you.
Something like It's alright for you is such a fucking good song.
I'll bet you at one point, given that that just came straight to mind for me, I start out with a list...
Of somewhere from 10 to 40 songs.
And then I pare it down.
And I'm just adding all the songs I love.
But then I pare it down.
I kill all of my darlings.
And I get down to the seven songs.
And you get this, John, more than any person I've ever met.
They have to be in the right order.
Of course.
That's what makes.
It's the whole game.
It's the whole game.
That's one third of what makes Pretend to Fall one of the great albums.
As I said.
Take him on a journey.
but certainly it's very normal at the end to go like, well, why didn't you include It's All Right For You or Roxanne or whatever?
And I said, well, yeah, those are like really great songs.
They just, and I really, I could have, I could have put those on.
You put this on the internet and there are people who are not your pal and maybe they're just wanting to play along and every, you know what they say?
They say, you forgot.
Oh, no, what they say is, oh, that guy left his wife, is what they say.
Sure, but they absolutely do.
But you also get, you forgot, oh, you forgot Blade Runner.
Or you forgot 2001.
Or you forgot Alien 2.
Like, you forgot, you forgot.
And you're like, no, I didn't forget, I had 35 of these.
I understand why you put it that way, but I don't know you.
And when you say it that way, it sounds like you're saying I'm an idiot and don't know that.
But your only response can be, I intentionally left it off.
No, my response is, that's a good one, too.
But to quote The Simpsons, don't make me tap the sign.
Go read the premise of this.
The premise of this is, I want to get you into the police by taking five songs from my greatest hits.
I mean, I could.
I could.
I could pick five, but the thing is, here's the thing.
Okay, let me put it a different way.
You give me any greatest hits collection by somebody that we both love, and I'll bet you there's a pretty good chance, let's say five instead of seven, I bet you we might pick five different songs.
If we give you the raw materials of...
Okay, let's really make this hard.
I don't know if you remember this one of my all-time favorite It's out of print, but you can make your own Harvest by Neil Young, which is how I imprinted on Neil Young It's a three-album set of stuff from Buffalo Springfield up through like Lotta Love Wait a minute, Harvest is out of print?
Not Harvest, I'm sorry, I apologize
Wrong word.
You're talking about the next one.
Decade.
The companion piece to Harvest.
I meant Decade.
I meant Decade.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, Decade.
Decade is the, sorry, sorry.
That's the three-album greatest thing.
He's flying through the desert with a guitar.
He's got a guitar on the cover.
Yeah, and it starts out with a really great selection of Buffalo Springfield songs.
And you're like, this is weird.
Is this a rock opera?
What's that Mr. Soul theme that keeps going through this?
But then you get up through the fucking cowgirl in the sand stuff, and you get all the way up to a lot of love.
which most of us know as a Nicolette Larson cover.
If we each took that amazing three-album set, here's the challenge.
We're on some kind of South Korean game show, and they say, you have to make a five-song list
Based on these, what?
How many songs would that be?
50 songs?
40 songs?
From these songs, I want you to pick five.
Harvest has got 30 plus songs.
Decade, yeah.
Or Decade has 30 plus songs.
How are you going to get somebody interested in Neil Young?
Let's take one angle.
Neil Young as progenitor to 90s indie rock.
Cortez the killer.
Yeah.
Well, you're getting Cortez the killer.
Well, there's those three E minor songs, right?
You got cowgirl on the sand, Cortez the killer, and down by the river.
Those like, which are also kind of the same chords as Keep on Rockin' in the Free World.
It's one of those classic E minor CD songs.
I feel like Neil Young invented indie rock with A Man Needs a Maid.
oh man oh he invented because he kind of invented built the spill too that's it well that's what i'm saying no it's not just it's not just it's not just everybody's gonna go yeah yeah dinosaur right you're like yeah of course dinosaur of course sonic youth but also like a lot of fucking weird stuff you bought on vinyl in the 2010s it would blow your mind how much this songs ohio stuff is like influenced by neil young in a way you don't
Did I ever tell you the story?
No.
My indie rock girlfriend that was such a snob that wore sleeping bags with the arm hulk cut out, and she was the one that was all like, oh, Bonnie Prince Billy invented the world.
And I'm like, no, Bonnie Prince Billy did not.
It's big or open for him.
I'm sure.
I'm sure.
Right.
We wore capes covered with moss down there.
But but but she I gave her.
I am a cinematographer.
I am a cinematographer.
She was the one that was always telling me I didn't know anything.
And I was like, I'm in a band.
I'm literally in a band.
I have to know something.
And she was like, not really.
And then I gave her harvest.
and then all of a sudden she became within within sorry harvest okay within within three hours i think but certainly within three months she was a full-on like scarf wearing for me that's after the gold rush i had somebody a copy of after the gold rush your life's going to change yeah there it is
A man needs a man.
So if we had that challenge and you had to get it down to five songs, it would be really hard.
But you understand what the goal of this mission is, right?
You understand like what, you know, like for me, if I was trying to get somebody, I'll tell you another one.
Here's one I could do today is Dead Kennedys.
which is one of my favorite bands in the mid-80s, and it would be very difficult to do, but I have a pretty good idea what I would put on that to make the case that I want to make.
And just to be clear, here's where we differ.
Here, let me tell you all the things that a 5 or 7 or whatever song playlist aren't or not.
One thing it's not is...
every good song that person has ever done because what are the good songs?
Okay, fine.
Like, we can all agree.
Like, if you did one for Led Zeppelin, like, we might argue about that.
There's a couple I'm pretty sure most people would put on.
Most people, I think, would put the Immigrant Song on there.
Um, like, you know, a lot of stuff.
Zeppelin 3.
Zeppelin, I was just about to say.
I was just about to say.
The one that's actually the good one, which is Led Zeppelin 3, the really good weird one, 4 is great, but like 3 is.
Like, don't sleep on 3.
Um, what's that?
Dancing days?
Probably put dancing days.
But anyway, you get my point here.
It's like, well, what's the point that you want to make?
Would it include all of my love?
Would it include something from Led Zeppelin 1 when it was still like a little bit rough and almost totally stolen?
It's the case that you want to make.
And so number one, it's not every good song that band has ever done.
Number two, just let's be super clear.
It's not every song that person has ever done.
If you want me to use all of the words...
Let's say I'm in a list of my five favorite words and somebody says, well, you forgot moist, sandwich and robot.
I'd say what you want is a dictionary, not a list.
Moist is not on your list of even 10 things.
That's actually on my bad words list.
But the point is, cellar door.
The point is, if I made a list of five words, there would still five whatever words.
I could say five words that rhyme with plaintiff or five words that I always mispronounce or five words I always misspell.
Because you know what?
Then a person would say, you forgot misspell.
I'd say, no, I didn't forget misspell, although I should have put misspell, because I do misspell misspell, and it is funny, and I guess it would have saved me some trouble, but I'm Merlin.
Carissa's weird.
I'm Merlin.
Carissa is weird.
That's spelled weird.
I am Merlin Mann, and that was two.
Yes, you are.
You know five words that I'm a plaintiff?
You're feeling so fucked up.
You need it.
It's all gone.
You need it.
Can you send it?
Are you brave or are you scared straight?
Do you like it when people sing your songs to you?
It hardly ever happens.
I'm not a fan.
Here's the point.
The point is this no matter what you do and this is understandable because this is why it works.
I'm the weird one here
I'm the one who I see now.
If it were me, if somebody else were doing that, I would say, oh, my God, that's so perfect.
The only thing I would have changed is I would have swapped position two and three.
And somebody could go, you know, I thought about that, but I did.
Because now you're having a conversation about what you're having a conversation about.
What you're having a conversation about is like, I fucking get what you're trying to do here.
Like, if I'm trying to get you into Ted Leo, I mean, yeah, it's going to have bottled and cork on it.
Like, how is it not?
What am I going to start with?
Can I give you my Ted Leo?
You've heard him.
You're pretty familiar with his music, right?
I have stood on the side of the stage and watched Ted Leo perform many times.
Now, this is admittedly a little bit narrow, but I go parallel or together.
Right, I go parallel or together, me and Mia, six months in a leaky boat, dial up, bottled in cork, Goldfinch and the Sparrow, or Goldfinch and the, what's the name of the song?
Goldfinch and the, whatever that's called, and it's cut off here, and then end with The Mighty Sparrow.
Now, I mean, that's quite, it's the song placement that makes that.
It does be, and this is one of the ones I'm least, I'm least, you forgot.
Right, but don't, okay, but do you feel it?
Don't you already feel the impulse?
Because this is actually one of the ones I'm least proud of.
Because I'm not as familiar, I know three Ted Leo or four Ted Leo albums.
I know several Ted Leo albums very well.
I don't know Ted Leo's albums as well as I know, for example, The Police.
Or like, for example, with Super Chunk.
Like, I know three Super Chunk albums, backwards and forwards.
I'm not as familiar with the recent stuff.
Like, to me, Precision Auto feels kind of a late Super Chunk.
I was into like very, very, very, very, very early Super Chunk.
But so I understand if somebody goes, how could you not put driveway to driveway on there or whatever?
It's just that the point I'm trying to make with this symbol, John, is that read the thesis statement for life.
Like figure out what it is somebody's trying to get at.
And before you decide that somebody doesn't know things,
or before you try to stipulate that everything is actually everything, understand what it is we're trying to do here.
And can I tell you the reason I care about this and I've been talking about it for so long?
Because I think it gets to something you care about.
We can't really talk.
Can you tell that I'm using the voice when I'm talking about a very big, broad thing that applies to a lot of things?
I do, I do.
You've dropped it down.
It's very difficult to talk with any clarity, specificity, context, honesty about a very small set of things if we constantly let everything become factored into it.
Is there a way that we can just talk about how we feel about the one scene in this movie without it also being about Putin?
Because because because the thing is and that's the problem with the internet and it's not that anybody's doing this to be mean or weird It's just that whatever first take best take like if I just I spent a really long time making a really good I mean, you know, I made met the greatest pond of my life this weekend You know, I hate puns and I was making Beatles count and my friend was making a Beatles calendar joke about how it's a leap year and I said remember that John Lennon named his son Julian not Gregorian and
Now, that's a very, very, very smart joke that requires a lot of context.
Sure, you have to be there.
I mean, in that world, yes.
But somebody, yeah, right.
And it took me four minutes to explain it to Madeline, and it still wasn't funny.
Because I have to explain who Cynthia is.
And not Cynthia Plastercaster.
No, no, that's a whole different thing.
Pamela DeBar, not involved yet.
But if I want to make such a specific point, you know this, right?
You do this.
You want to make such a specific point, or in some cases, such a specific joke.
And it's like, I have all of the same hats that you could put on this hat.
I'm not going to make the most obvious joke.
I'm not going to say the most obvious thing.
And I'm not just going to demand that people listen to 35 songs that I think are the best
New Radicals songs or whatever.
I'm trying to make a very specific point.
Now, what I might do, I don't know New Radicals, but if you gave it to me as a challenge, I would love a challenge, and I'm not going to do it because I don't have time.
Pick seven songs to introduce somebody to New Radicals that don't include You Give What You Get.
Now, that's a challenge I think would be interesting, but I don't want to talk about Donald Trump for any reason.
I don't want to talk about, in some cases, ableism.
I want to talk about all of those things at some point, but I don't want to talk about that.
Well, no, honestly, like, all that shit matters, but can't we just talk about Ted Leo for a minute?
And, like, can we constrain... No, the New Radicals only have one record.
You would be hard-pressed to pull seven songs and not... I think I would probably...
Just because this is the way my brain works, I would punk the person by also including Steal My Sunshine by Len, because I think of those as being out at the same time.
But do you see why?
Doesn't this get to your itch as well, which is like, it's not that I don't ever want to talk about everything.
It's just that I don't want to...
Always talk about everything.
And almost every conversation, and I'm using the word every here, but almost everything we talk about, you know, haha, the discourse.
When we talk publicly about anything, I cannot believe the way people dive bomb in to be like either the professor or Debbie Downer in the way that they think is important.
Like, I go, oh, my gosh, two different couples met.
Two different really cute couples met doing the show Fargo.
Like, did you know that Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst met while doing that wonderful season of Fargo?
How cool is that?
I did not know that.
And the girl who plays Ramona Flowers, the Canadian girl in Scott Pilgrim.
So Ewan McGregor and her met and got married.
And I was like, oh my God, you guys, I just realized there's a second cute couple that met doing Fargo.
Somebody comes in and goes, oh yeah.
You know, he left his wife and his children to go be with her.
Oh, he left his wife and children, Merlin.
So, you know what?
Do not make your comment.
Here's what I'll do.
I'll keep the tweet up, but I'll fix that.
I'll go back and fix that.
And where will you fix it?
Oh, however I can.
Will you fix their marriage?
Can you do that?
Oh, my God.
You just linked to a podcast episode that has an audio glitch.
And you know what I say?
I say, oh, sorry, I'll fix that.
But you don't?
And you know what a lot of the Buddhists would say is, you know, when I point at the moon, please quit staring at my finger.
And don't make it all about everything.
All I want to do is talk about the moon.
I don't want you to talk about whether the nails on my finger are clean.
And I don't want to talk about Donald Trump fans with beards.
Can't we just, and I keep coming back to that because those are common reasons.
Like, oh, somebody's a sex man or whatever.
I'm like, oh, yeah, that's a bummer.
But no matter what you do, it feels like there's somebody who comes in who's utterly uninterested, incurious about the premise of what you're saying, the context of what you're trying to communicate, to painfully communicate about the splendor of life.
And all people want to do is turn it back into some kind of an internet thing.
Or like the classic, I studied for the wrong test thing, where you're like, well, I don't know anything about that, but I do know about this, and I want to yell at you about that.
Like, I don't know anything about when Jesse Plemons played Landry on Friday Night Lights, and you first imprinted on him as a great actor, but I do want to talk about how half of the couples who met on Fargo were homewreckers.
You're like, tell me how this turns out great.
What conversation do you want to have here?
What conversation like this have you had in the last month that the other person enjoyed also?
Are you giving what you get is what I'm saying?
Are you an old radical?
John, that's why I say not everything is everything and everything is not everything.
I'm not saying we can't talk about difficult things.
What I'm saying is- What do we talk about when we talk about love?
I mean, you know, it's where I'm calling from.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Where's my fucking bell?
God damn it!
That would have been perfect!
Shit!
Oh, shit!
Oh, shit!
Oh, shit!
Oh, shit!
Your bell's on fire!
No, I got some new paints.
I got some new... Oh, no.
John, where is it?
Do you have one?
Knock over your paints?
Oh, I found it.
I found it.
Are you ready?
Let's go.
You want to do another take?
Okay.
Wait, wait, wait.
Is this in the show?
I think we were at...
Oh, so what do we talk about?
What do we talk about when we talk about love?
Raymond Carver!
Okay.
So anyway, you see what I'm saying, right?
No, I do.
Well, the thing about you is that you're the one, you're not just making a list of seven songs to introduce somebody to Ted Leo.
I'm giving you seven pieces of my fucking heart.
Well, but that's the thing that's important is that you think that it will benefit them to know about Ted Leo.
You're not just doing this as an exercise.
You know the older brothers.
You know the older, I think it's usually people who are older than you.
Somebody in college, my friend Michael.
Somebody who was like, oh, check out this Buzzcocks record, Singles Going Steady.
It might be a little bit weird for you, but you like Green Day, so check it out.
right somebody hands you singles going steady which is just an improbably good record and you go like well how is it that every song on here is the greatest song of this type that i've ever heard but that person just had an effect on you like the first time that somebody like again my friend michael like he knew i loved rem so he made me like a bunch of weird athens bands i would never in a million years hear that's the first time i heard the original version of crazy by pylon which he almost didn't put on because it was too on the nose
But I'm glad that he did.
Do you know what I mean?
The people who say, hey, check this out.
And again, I don't want to get into this part because it's not everything.
At the time when we didn't have access to everything.
It was like you had that.
I had that.
Actually, at the time, I did have a Rolling Stone subscription when I read the review for Reckoning that made me want to listen to R.E.M.
And I went out and researched it for months before buying.
But you know what I mean?
Somebody who hands you something, a guy who handed me his vinyl copy of Nevermind the Bollocks.
Like somebody, and you get that.
And like, now I can make what I want out of this mentally.
Like somebody who gave me, what's it called?
Like Masters Volume 4, like the Black Sabbath albums.
Like I didn't know what to make of this stuff.
So I had to like figure it out.
And like it became special.
And it's not that I want to be revered and remembered.
But in the same way that I want to be kind because I know what it means when people have been kind to me, I also, I don't care if I reach everybody.
I don't want to reach everybody.
I want to reach the two people for whom this song could be as big a deal as it was for me.
It will never be, just songs in general will never be as big a deal to other people as they were to me.
You will never understand what my relationship with the Adam and the Ant song Stand and Deliver was like.
I could have said a cooler song, but I didn't.
You have no idea what my relationship... Every single note of that song thrilled me for, like, two years.
I know what that feels like.
And so when I make you a list... Like, yeah, I did not put every Super Chunk song in the world.
But, like... No!
When you hear New Low or Cast Iron...
You might go, whoa, holy, holy shit.
Or, you know what, you might hear Brand New Love and go, that's really good.
And then I could go, you know what, actually, Superchunk did this crazy thing where they put out a single, and both sides of the single were a cover by the same band.
Both sides of the single were covers of the same band.
band's album.
They covered two different Sebado songs and put it out as a 7-inch because that was the 90s.
And both are incredible.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, Brand New Love and... And what's the other one they do?
They do two in a row.
And it's... They do the other one.
But like...
And then now you're into Sebodeau.
And you start listening to Sebodeau, and you hear Vampire.
And you're like, this is really cool.
It's like, well, you like this?
You like this guy?
You should check out this man from Boston called Dinosaur Jr.
You might want to check out this album called You're Living All Over Me.
Oh my God, who sings that first song?
Yeah, believe it or not, that's Lee Rinaldo, and he's from a band called Sonic Youth.
Oh, okay, hang on.
We should check out this album called Evolve.
Oh, wait, isn't Daydream Nation their famous one?
Yes, it is, and it's very good, but I would start with Evil.
This is my life.
This is my dream.
Oh, I know.
You need six people like me who are very, very, very different, because I'm how I am, impossibly like how I am.
You need somebody else who, like a Lester Bangs kind of person, who's impossibly like— Who didn't like Sabadeau.
Who probably didn't like Sabadeau, and even though he claimed to like Lou, he liked Lou Reed's music.
But yeah, I think he was probably hard to get along with.
Last Great American Whale.
Wait, is that a Richard Brodigan book?
But if we, I don't know, say something, John.
What's crazy is that I absolutely cannot tell when a band is using a C chord with a G on top.
I have never listened to an album or a song.
Did I send you that list?
You sent me the list.
Some of those are surprising because you go, let me pull it up.
Obviously, Don't Stop Believin', you wouldn't think of, but you forget how much work the bass is doing.
It's such a great song.
Other ones.
Let me do.
Can I do this real quick?
Number one, of course, there's a song by the Long Winter.
It's called It'll Be a Breeze.
Take the Skinhead's Bowling.
Horseshoe Crabs by Hopalong.
Oh, fucking A. The original.
But I think it's very important to note that you hear it, identify it, and know it.
And I, who uses the chord all the time professionally, cannot hear it.
My ears do not hear it.
I do not know it.
Does it sometimes read as a G, open G chord, do you think?
I don't.
But you know what I mean about that thing.
Like, you know what an open E minor sounds like versus one played at the seventh fret.
In spirit, I do.
Okay, when you listen to Cowgirl on the Sand or similar, do you imagine he's doing an opening?
I don't know if it's E minor or A minor.
It's definitely an open minor chord.
But you hear that as an open, low-down-the-neck chord.
minor chord right but i wouldn't notate it i mean i wouldn't by notated i mean i wouldn't note it i don't mean notate it but i also i know what you mean but i i when i hear it i go i'm thinking about i'm thinking about the song
Even though I think all the time about guitar, guitar, guitar, guitar, guitar, but your ear, you have trained your ear, and your native... I think my ear has trained me.
I couldn't have done this 20 years ago when I was playing guitar, and now I can.
My ear has trained you.
You know what I mean when I talk about the heartbreaking walkdown, for example?
I do.
Think about the opening of Gardening, or... Think about... Is that Gardening at Night?
Think about the jangle of... Ding, ding, ding.
Gigi.
depending on how you play it.
But the line is G, F sharp, E, D, C. You know what I'm talking about?
The walk down.
I mean, I know the song.
But you know the jangle walk down of like the way you do a G and then you do a D with the F sharp.
You play an E minor open or with the B string.
Then you play a C and then a D and then maybe you jangle on and do a D7 or a D7 sus.
Play G...
I can play the bass line at least.
So like... Play the bass line?
Let's see.
Like that.
So it's like... It's totally out of tune.
I can't do it.
I think it's also because we think about this stuff so differently, probably.
You and me.
Or us.
Just to be clear here.
Yeah, yeah, it would be fun.
If we're doing this on the internet right now, some fucking idiot who thinks everything is everything would dive bomb in and say, well, Merlin has more of a music theory approach and John has more.
And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
John and I are equally shit.
at all of this.
John and I, no, listen, you're the first one to say, what was the one thing you said in our backyard pilot?
You didn't bother to get good at guitar till you were 30, I think you said.
Yeah.
You didn't bother getting good at guitar till you were 30.
Absolutely, absolutely true.
And you do the funny thing where my fingers can't do things.
I don't know how to play fucking anything.
You know I learned my D chords backwards.
You probably won't remember this about me.
Because I learned from my book, I play my D chords backwards.
I've only seen two other people, I think, ever do it.
I think it's physically impossible to do, but you somehow pull it off.
Here's why.
Because this is actually such a Merlin story, which is I had a book of Beatles songs and I had a book of chords.
The Book of Beatles songs were impossibly, you know, as they would say, easy Beatles.
Like there weren't a lot of like, you know, augmented chords.
All of the chords, all the banjo chords that Paul is putting on top of everything.
Well, just, yeah, like the, especially, you know, augmented and that stuff.
And like, I could learn how to fake it later.
And you could do a lot of faking with what the bass line plays.
But point is, I was learning those basic chords.
But what else was important at that point?
I really wanted to learn them fast.
Yeah.
And so I saw the little book, and I saw that precious little triangle that you make with those three strings.
Well, four.
Four, including the open.
The golden triangle, they call it.
It's not Bermuda.
It's not... Bermuda!
How you going to Bermuda?
Excuse me.
You know, to make it... We're never releasing...
Now that I'm making the D chord upside down backwards, it works.
Well, describe to get both your fingers in there.
So the thing is, normal D chord, you put your middle finger on the third string and your forefinger on the high E string, right?
Third string?
What are you even talking about?
You're talking about a D chord?
Yeah, yeah, playing like an open D. I just want to illustrate to our listeners that, like, my D chord is backwards.
So my middle finger is on the G.
My middle finger is not on the high E. I play it backwards.
But I would also like to point that going from D to D minor in that terrible show.
That's beautiful.
All you do is go down.
Just change one little note.
Oh, it's so smart.
You know, Jonathan Colton, when he plays the G, he plays the G, and Amy Mann does this too.
I already know.
They add a D on the B string.
Well, they do, but they play the G upside down.
Instead of playing the G with your middle finger on G on the low E string.
Oh, no way.
They play G with their ring finger on the low E or the low G. What?
That looks like a jazz chord.
And I was like, that's dumb.
It looks like a fakakta D.
It does, but then they both were sitting there laughing at me, and they were like, watch now what the index finger can do.
What that enables?
And that index finger is free.
Oh, that index finger could go to the G string if it needed to.
That index finger, and then he does it, and he's like, watch, and he plays every other chord in the, he's like...
Okay.
Can I just point out that's not entirely fair for a number of reasons?
No, it was total bullshit.
And I was like, oh.
I don't want to make a classist argument here.
Why did I do this wrong?
Okay.
First of all, he's talented.
He went to Yale.
Okay.
I wasn't going to say it.
He went to Yale.
He's very naturally talented and he works hard.
That's not fair.
That's not fair.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
Here's the thing about him.
His dad was a lawyer who liked Gordon Lightfoot.
And so he grew up listening to.
I was thinking like Dan Fogelberg, like the stuff he covered on that album.
Yeah, the smooth sounds of the 70s.
He didn't grow up listening to rock.
He doesn't believe in rock, frankly.
Honestly, doesn't believe in it.
It sounds to him like guys that believe in it.
Was his dad his primary sort of influence in the family?
I guess.
I mean, there was a record player and his dad had a bunch of like, you know, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Sundown, you think you're the same.
He was like, now this is music.
Yeah.
He's very Canadian.
You know, somebody, and then Cheap Trick came on and he was like, oh.
Oh my God.
Oh, this is hurting my feelings.
She's giving me the high sign.
He was like, no, no.
No.
It references a girl.
It references a girl that's not also the name of a chef.
People at church camp said not to listen to this.
No.
Oh, if you're going to talk about girls, you know, make them abstract girls.
Abstract girls.
That sounds like a Ren's song.
It is a Ren's record.
Abstract girls.
I want it now.
I'm stealing that abstract girl.
That's a Kevin song for sure.
Put that right down here in my... John, John, do you know what I'm saying?
I do know what you're saying.
And I'm not trying to make anybody be different.
I'm not trying to start an argument.
This is something you've been...
struggling with fighting about just tearing yourself apart about for five years and like i i just agree i agree but kind of in a different way which is i'm like everybody try harder do better like i have stopped here here's one thing i have and it's not just about the discourse it's just about the general hardening of our ability to be curious about what it is someone's actually fucking saying i have stopped taking pleasure in reading
other people's internet arguments like a long time ago i stayed out of them long time ago i was like this is not my this is not my you learn pretty fast that that's even when i'm even when i have something in it even when i'm angry about what they're saying but lately but i used to but i still took pleasure in watching two people go at each other or watch somebody in there snarking at somebody else
Or watching somebody sarcastically say, well, why didn't you go?
Why are you filming instead of going in and rescuing the dolphin?
Oh, my God.
John, can I just do a couple off the dome?
If this is new to you, you haven't been paying attention.
Why didn't you say this about X?
Are these some of the ones that we can expect to hear?
Yeah, these are all wonderful, wonderful.
And then all the things are only worth things.
Listen, everybody, just so you all know, things are only worth knowing if you knew them before I did.
If you learn anything after I did, you're a fucking piece of shit and you should die in a fire.
But all the world knowledge is in me right now.
And if you don't know that, you're dumb.
I go to all the specialty websites, right?
If some guy's talking about a Corvette, I'm like, I'm going to go to the specialty website where there's only Corvette people talking about Corvettes.
And where they have a specialty forum, perhaps?
They have a specialty forum always.
And I go and I read down the things and it's like, oh, nice Corvette.
Did you do this?
And oh, it's a fuelie, you know?
And then as soon as I get to the guy that's like,
Well, you know, if you knew anything about it, that's a 54 manifold.
And I'm like, out.
I'm gone.
Like, I've been to your specialty place long enough to find the dick.
Because of what they said, but also what it sort of implies, right?
What you say is like, and I see this like, and I'm like, I'm going to say something slightly less cool than Corvettes.
Whether that's about 3D printing or like whatever, you go in somewhere and like, of course.
Also very cool.
Yeah, very cool.
There's always that same kind of guy there.
There's one guy who's like, actually, all these questions are answered in the FAQ.
I understand.
I understand why you say that to people.
It's really frustrating.
Like, I'm not sure who you want to come to your forum.
There's already a thread about this.
There's actually, you know, that kind of thread.
I've moved this.
Hey, welcome to the forum.
I moved your thread.
Love, Bob.
But...
But I do find myself sometimes asking the question, like, well, maybe the second question is, what did you come here expecting when you're yelling at everybody like that?
But maybe the bigger question is, what did anybody expect by coming here?
And that's not a question we find ourselves asking a lot.
And we saw this even on your forums, where there would be, like, four people who were fucking mad about everything, four people who were doing all the work, one person who says they've been shadow banned.
Like, there's always so much that you're contending with in a community like that, and...
You know, it's always been like that.
But I feel like there's been relatively few lessons learned at scale about interrogating our own point of view about these things and saying, well, why did I say that?
Because I'm not trying to say like to like feel guilty, but why did I go and like bomb into that person's conversation and say something stupid like that?
Like, I think you fundamentally don't understand Heidegger or whatever.
The question I find myself asking a lot is like... You don't understand postmodernism, Merlin.
You don't understand what it is.
I know the difference.
Also, you don't know what brutalism is.
You don't know what either of those things are.
You're right.
Are you talking about man against man?
Are you talking about gnawing on shin bones?
You don't know what these things are, so don't comment on them.
Don't talk about them.
Oh, God, I wish I had a pun here.
You know, whenever Ken and Jennings and I talk about alcohol on our show, Ken has never had alcohol because of his Mormonism, and I have had all the alcohol and don't drink it anymore.
But we talk about alcohol all the time.
So you're both non-drinkers.
You must be exactly alike.
When we talk about alcohol, and this is why we talk about alcohol when we talk about alcohol,
See, now that's funny, and four people will get it.
Thank you.
What we talk about when we talk about alcohol.
That's right.
And there are always people, and they're good-natured people.
They're people that love the show.
But when we talk about alcohol, they either get triggered or threatened or that's their realm or that's their problem or whatever it is.
And they say, generally, there's always one that says, you shouldn't talk about things you don't know about.
And I always say, that is 100% the premise of this show.
So, you don't mind when we... I assume you're not doing this to make a particular, like, you're not doing a straw man here.
There are people who do say things like, you shouldn't talk about things you don't know about.
Implying that you don't know about what?
With alcohol, for example.
Well, I don't well I and I'm the first like Like you yell I can because Ken's never had alcohol therefore It's like when people say to me well How can you say you hate Facebook if you don't like use it and I'm like well?
Like I don't think I've eaten cigarette butts more than once in my life and I'm good for that like yeah Even if they updated the flavor profile of cigarettes cigarette butts, I still don't want to eat them
That's the thing about eating cigarette butts is very specific.
Alcohol, there's 700 ways you can talk about it, right?
You can talk about it where you're like, these are the 14 different kinds of heat.
You can pick a make-believe straw man argument for any aspect of that that makes the other side look, that you just made up, look foolish.
Yeah, and I only know 680 ways to talk about alcohol.
There are 20 ways I don't know anything about.
I have no idea about single malt whiskey.
I don't know anything about it.
I do have an associate's degree, John.
Anyway.
Hey, listen, I went to college for 30 years.
It's called life.
Read a book.
I can't take it anymore.
I can't take it anymore.
The internet is really gone.