Ep. 567: "A High Teen"
Hello?
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
Hi, how are you?
I'm good.
You seem a little bit fine.
Oh, I'm fine.
You know, mornings can be tough with me.
You know, you got all the medicine.
Oh, yeah.
And all the side effects and whatnot.
Sure.
Sure, they come on so fast.
You can't talk to these people, these doctors, you know.
You start talking to, you don't want to talk about one thing.
They got other things they want to talk about first.
Oh, these doctors.
They always, there's always so much, so much shame and like admission of wrong that has to happen before you can get medical treatment.
Oh, you know, they, they, they think they're the main character.
That is really good.
Oh my God.
That's a really good way to put it.
You know what I mean?
Like, Oh, I do.
They don't realize that they're not the main character.
You're the main character.
I mean, you have main character energy.
MCE.
You're going too fast for daddy.
Got to write these down.
You said something funny.
What did you say?
I don't know.
I never remember.
Well, I got to find the title.
635.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's... Anyway, I don't want to get into that.
What are you up to?
You doing good?
I don't want to talk about myself.
Nobody wants to hear about me.
You know, it's...
It's a big holiday today, and we celebrate the whole entire holiday.
So we've got our tree up, and...
I don't know, we've just got a lot planned today, but I wanted to do like a special edition of our show.
I think it's such a nice idea, and I don't think of you as somebody who traditionally, I don't know, I don't really know that much about your relationship with the important holiday, secular and otherwise, but historically, what does this day mean to you and your family, now that your tree is up and whatnot?
You know, it's about America, it's about freedom.
Yes.
Yes.
It's about quality.
It's about justice.
Today, you know, is about family.
It's about family.
It is about family.
And it's about togetherness.
It's about it's about food.
Oh, part of our rich, rich ethnic traditions, you know.
Oh, yeah.
Probably a lot of mending fences.
A lot of, you know, it's a day when really all the different, you know, generations, right?
That's right.
You get all the generations together.
You reach across the fence.
You reach across the aisle.
Yes, reach around everywhere.
And so it's just a big day planned.
Look, holidays are complicated, John.
You know, I know there's other holidays that people may consider bigger...
But, you know, it brings up a lot of emotions.
You've got, you know, tradition.
Tradition.
Mm-hmm.
Tradition.
You know, that kind of thing.
Tradition.
Tradition.
Yeah, well, and we, you know, we...
My daughter now is – I mean, you've just recently been through this with your kid.
Like, they're getting older.
Yeah.
And pretty soon they're going to be, you know, driving locomotives and living in Chile and doing things that teens do.
They say to them, listen, like, you know, I know you're getting older.
What do you – do you have stuff on your list that you'd like to get for January 20th?
And, you know, it's hard because they're just going to go –
Like his gift card or give me a TikTok or something.
Yeah, give me a TikTok.
Give me a couple more phones.
A couple more phones, have TikTok on them.
Yeah.
And it's real confusing around here because do we have TikTok or not?
I mean, I woke up this morning just really like not knowing what I should do.
Should I make some talks?
Right.
Or should I not?
And I still don't know.
I still don't know.
I've only been up for a minute, a minute and a half.
Well, I mean, it is a holiday, so maybe people will cut you a break on that.
But I don't know.
This is the kind of thing your team probably should have been working on.
I shouldn't say anything, but maybe your team should have been working on.
Did you guys go through the TikTok thing?
Because I can't get any good intel out of my kid about how that...
I know that he has used TikTok a lot.
I was like, so are you doing okay with all that?
He's like, yeah, it's fine, whatever.
He's like, well, how are your friends doing?
Aren't there people who would really miss it?
Could you get any good intel on it?
I went to Saturday go I went to breakfast yesterday with with two teens Not just the three of us, but there were two teens in attendance and you know, and I said so so this big tick-tock news and I expected them to roll their eyes and
But they just looked at me like with zero care.
Yeah.
No, didn't give a good goddamn.
And I was like, so you guys don't care about TikTok?
And they were like, meh.
So I don't know who's on TikTok.
It sounds like I always thought it was a bunch of Gen Zers, but it sounds like it's just a bunch of moms.
Okay.
Because the teens I know didn't care at all.
That's super interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and like this is something that I feel like I've suspected for a long time is that one of the reasons, honestly, that I've felt I've had a lot of pushback against the whole like screen time thing.
I mean, I understand grownups have different rules.
I understand all of that.
But, you know, we're modeling a lot of screen time.
as we're telling our kids in the house yeah a lot maybe not you maybe not me but i mean a lot of people on the fucking thing all the time yeah yeah goddamn thing it's hard to enjoy really visual uh movies when people are looking at their phone but that's not my problem uh it's their loss not mine but um but
Then, of course, there's the teen thing.
Of course, I'm always reminded of the Homer Palooza episode of The Simpsons.
Remember when the kid in the audience goes, oh, that cannonball guy, he's cool.
And the other kid says to him, are you being sarcastic?
And he says, I can't even tell anymore.
That was the 90s encapsulated.
Absolutely.
Well, and that was the Smashing Pumpkins were in that one.
Sonic Youth were in that one.
But I don't know.
But I think it is the slightly older people who really get more authentically addicted to things.
Okay, okay, okay.
I can't prove it.
I can't prove it.
But I don't know.
We're all junkies is what you're saying.
We're born junkies.
I think the tuning – see, now I'm way out of my depth on this, and I don't want to ruin the holiday.
Okay, okay.
Well, you get a special dispensation because, you know, you said your prayers.
Well, I'm just curious, though, because, you know, it seemed like it was going to be a pretty big deal, and a lot of people look at it.
And, you know, this is a thing I only talk about too often because it makes me sound like I'm trying to be a big shot.
And I imagine I've been trying to seem like a big shot for I'm pretty picky about where I put stuff and where I get how big your shot is.
My what?
Huh?
My shot?
Say what?
Yeah.
Would you call me?
I'm so sorry.
This is... I didn't even fill your stocking.
I haven't even sent out my cards yet.
But... But no, you're saying that you don't want to sound like a big shot, but...
Well, I've, there's a number, let's just say that there are a number of very popular social media type platforms over the years that have been very popular with a lot of people, including people my age, including my dear friends and family that I have found to be at best a low nutrition source of information in my life, which, you know, again, forgive me if that makes me sound like I'm being some kind of big shot, but like...
I've found that to be the case for a while.
So by proximity to people more my age, a little younger than me, but not as young as my kid, how many years has it been now that everybody's been saying, oh, that's it, I'm done.
I'm all done with, you know, Jay Random's social media site.
Things particularly of one that's based down in Palo Alto that has a lot of properties It's like how many more times does this company have to like actively fuck you and point and laugh for you to like not understand how much they fucking hate you and Is that Led Zeppelin John that was a little bit of a Led Zeppelin impression Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that guy had his moments.
He always held his microphone his left hand
I did not know that.
Yeah, we'll notice it now.
Well, sometimes when they flop the photo, that's what they call it.
You know, they'll flip it.
You'll flop it.
But flippity floppity.
Did you learn that from Lonely Sandwich?
No.
Wait.
Flop the photo.
My friend Todd Vaziri, actually.
I learned a lot of terms from him.
He's my friend who's worked on a lot of good movies.
Yeah, flopping.
He also taught me about what's called the Kansas Switch, Texas Switch.
There's the ones where you can change.
Oh, the old Kansas Switch.
You know what I'm talking about?
It's one of those.
There's different kinds of switches.
I don't know what it is.
The Kansas Switcheroo?
I feel like that's a... You should have him on the show.
I can never get him to do anything.
But I don't know.
My point is this.
I know how I am.
I know that given the right set of circumstances and interests, I can spend more time with something in life than I realize I probably should.
Not because of some, like, you know,
church and state voice in my head, but just because I don't, I'm not persuaded, because this is how dumb I am.
This is how I think.
Well, does constant exposure to this get me closer to the person that I'd like to be?
And it's very rare that I find myself like, you know, watching two people argue about how you spell Wookiee is like, is not going to bring me to a much greater place.
There's an argument about how to spell Wookiee?
I've been corrected, um...
It's W-O-O-K-I-E.
It's just right there in the name.
Wookiee.
There's actually another E at the end.
Oh, two Wookiees.
But does it have an I?
Is it W-O-O-K-E?
There's no I on Wookiee.
There's no I on Wookiee.
Yeah.
But there's an Oook.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Too many ooks.
I guess it's early.
But what I'm trying to say, and I'm going to get yelled at about this, I'm not nearly as worried about the young people as I am about the slightly older young people.
And I'm not even that worried about them.
But let's put it this way.
My kid does not get physically fucking worked up about shit the way a lot of people looking at social media do.
Word and that might maybe he's just dead or would say yeah, maybe he's just dead inside.
I don't know No, I don't think so but the people who like see shit and then get really mad about it And then like it changes their day like I don't think that's people who are 17 No, I think you're right.
I think you are absolutely right.
I talked so the other day.
Yeah a friend called up and said Hey You used to give a good Seattle rock tour
Do you still do that?
And what the person was referring to is, you know, back in the day when rock musicians would come to town and they'd have a day off or whatever and we'd be friends.
I'd put them all in the van and I'd drive them around and I'd show them Pearl Jam's first practice space and Jimmy Hendrix's childhood home and Kurt Cobain's old garage and where Lane Staley died and
You know, all the places.
And this is where Soundgarden played their first show.
Can I just add something to this, if I may?
I've been on your tours of your area, and they are uniformly great.
But the important thing about hanging out with John is you're going to get these very useful tidbits, even if you're not on a purely rock and roll show.
um focus you might be on one where you're gonna go look at uh how ships work and you still work in that's how you worked in the like i practiced here at the richard hugo house when we drove by that time you're working in all of that you're you're working it into the grain of the tour yeah that's kind of the that's the fun of it like oh and this was where columbia pictures first debuted uh gone with the wind and or whatever don't yell at me about that but you know there's a lot of things about seattle that you can tell
And I was like, well, you know, usually I do that for like pals and this pal who used to work at Barsook said, well, these are friends from out of town and they have a young, they have a, like a young person in the family that really wants to get into the music business and they're all really into rock and roll.
And, and, um,
And I like the guy that was asking so much that I was like, I mean, it's a big ask to get me out of the house on a Saturday and drive strangers around telling them all about when shipping containers were built.
But yes, I will do this.
You don't have that much personal insight into the things that interest them.
You don't even know if that teen wanted to be on that tour.
exactly and i and i said to my friend can you give me a sense of what their what level of interest they have in grunge slash whatever else and i didn't hear back so i show up at the to meet them and there's only two of them one of them is a dad almost exactly our age okay
And one of them is a teen, a non-binary teen with some facial piercings.
So high teen?
We're talking like 16, 17?
Senior in high school.
Okay.
And I said, high teen, high teen.
No, if you're in middle school, you're a low teen.
Yeah, this is a high teen.
And I said to them both, what's your, what's your interest slash, you know, knowledge about the grunge years, Seattle in general, rock and roll.
They're from Denver.
And the dad says, well, I saw Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and goes down the list.
Don't tell the pilots and all this stuff.
And I had, I have a guitar pick from Alice in Chains first tour and all that he's been to a lot of things.
I was like, okay, got it.
I think you may have the answer to your question right there.
Got it.
And then I turned to the high teen and I said, how about you?
And they said, I'm into post hardcore and I don't, I mean, you know, like dad will play grunge and it's fine.
And I said, right, right.
I get it.
I get it.
So you want to be in the music business?
And they said, yes, I want to go to Evergreen State College.
And I said, what do you want to do in the music business?
This is like an expensive tour for dad.
They said, well, I want to be in production and management.
I want to be a tour manager.
I want to go around.
I want to help bands.
I want to build.
And I was like, oh, my God, you're my favorite person in the whole universe right now.
um because you are the people that bands need you are actually how music scenes start and survive nobody ever says that they want to go to college to be a tour manager and i instantly like this kid right yeah
And so we get also like it's not to say not to say that it's strictly practical, but it's more practical than like I want to have a very successful post-hardcore band that right and also it's way better than I want to be an A&R rep at a label or whatever, you know, like yeah, and so we get in there in the truck and we're driving around and I'm basically I'm showing dad I'm like, oh and by the way over here is Pearl Jam's first practice base and he jumps out and takes pictures, but the kid and I are having this really
in-depth conversation about like, well, tell me about the post hardcore scene in Denver.
And they're like, well, there's these all ages shows and there's this, that, and it's, you know, it's an active scene, but there's metal people.
And I'm like, well, so how much,
is the, how much is this of the scene is like your parents trying to make safe spaces for you to have safe times and how much of it is you guys actually activating empty places and doing dangerous things.
And they're like, well, there's a lot of that safe bullshit.
But there's also we do have some places we've carved out.
And, you know, and dad is like listening, like doesn't know any of this.
Right.
Like you did.
You what?
You asked for it, Dad.
You know what?
Like Hunter Thompson says, you know, buy the ticket, take the ride.
And I know Denver a little bit, you know, over the years.
You know where the Lumineers are from?
Wow, the Lumineers.
They're one of those... No, no, no, I know them.
They're managed by Seattle Luminary and now deeply canceled former influencer here, Dave Minert, whose daughter...
Was one of the teens that I was referring to at the beginning of this story.
Hmm the lumineers manager Who's who has been exiled but his daughter and my daughter went to school together.
Oh wow and are still you know still friends So and that's one of those complicated things.
What do you do when somebody is when somebody reveals themselves?
to be or is, or is outed as a baddie, but their, their child is a friend of, you know, the world.
Yeah.
Anyway, so I'm, so I'm really, I'm really like asking a lot of questions.
I'm like, so what part of Denver?
So where is that?
So how is that related to, you know, to, to this and that and those in this and the, the kid is just sharp as attack knows everything I'm saying, but also knows what I'm really getting at.
Because what I'm getting at is... What are the circumstances you could leverage there?
Well, and just generally, like, how much of your life have people given you... Have adults tried to craft your experience?
And how much of who you are now...
is a result of you trying to get out from under their watchful eye.
Because post-hardcore is not a genre or a scene that lends itself very well to being babysat by middle-aged dads.
And it's not about drugs, generally.
It's not generally like a let's get fucked up and dance scene.
It's a scene that's very much about ethics and politics.
I feel like I know, and forgive me if this is...
True and if it's hurtful, but I'm pretty sure there's a pretty guy know that I know there was a lot of hardcore in because my pal Chris grew up want to What's called?
CU and Boulder right and so like I think Boulder and Denver both had big hardcore scenes I think I think they had a pretty big skinhead scene.
Well, so I say this to the kid I'm like, what's what's the story with the Nazis you got Nazis?
Like are there Nazi punks?
And they got really thoughtful, and they were like, the thing is, no, there aren't, because Nazi punks get policed out so early that there's no fertile ground for them.
They're somewhere, but we never encounter them.
Right, right.
They're the ones who are probably digging up, you know, oh, they're gonna play at a skate park or, you know, behind a dumpster or whatever.
They're the ones who are probably having to find obscure places to play.
And what was interesting about this high teen was,
was at some crucial level.
They were aware that at one point in, in the past, there were Nazis in punk and, and, and it was something that they, that they, they, they had a fifth hand memory of.
And I was like, you know, in my day, keeping Nazi punks out of hardcore shows was, was,
So full on, like that was 20% of the scene.
You know, there were Nazi punks everywhere.
Tampa was like that.
Tampa was pretty serious.
Well, Northern Idaho here was like a hotbed of it.
And then I had to tell my anecdote about the time the guy stopped me in the middle of the road in the middle of the night and showed me that he, because I had shaved my head because a girl gave me a terrible haircut.
And I was like, this sucks.
I'm just going to shave my head.
And I'm walking down the street, middle of the night, and the street's empty.
Nobody's there.
And here comes a guy coming the other way.
He also has a shaved head.
Oh, boy.
And he greets me like, hello.
And I'm like, hi there, pal.
You know, how's it going?
He's like, great.
Like the way we used to beep when we saw somebody else with a Jetta.
Exactly.
Like, hey, Volkswagen owner.
And I'm not thinking of myself as like having a shaved head.
I mean, I didn't shave it to clean.
I just used my dog clippers on it.
And he, he rolls up on me.
And then as soon as he's up on me, I see that he is really on speed and I'm like, oh yeah.
Okay.
So we're on speed now, like you and me.
And he's like, what are you doing?
You know, how long you been here?
And I'm like, oh, I've been here a long time.
And what he meant was, when did you arrive?
But I thought he meant, you know, how long you been in Seattle.
And then he's like, are you going to the gathering?
No, he didn't even say.
He's trying to talk to you as a fellow traveler.
Oh, yeah.
And he's like, when are you going to the gathering?
And I was like, oh, you know, every day is a gathering.
And he was like, yeah.
I have no idea what we were talking about, you know.
And then he has a paper grocery bag.
And he opens it up, and it's full of pistols.
What?
and i was like oh shit and he was like you know what this is gonna go off he said or something like that and i was like it's totally going off but he started his eyes which were tweaky yeah started to register that i was not exactly responding to the shibboleth that he was laying out yes with the right amount of
you know, I was not coming back with the right amount of like... A phrase you'll know from Stuart Lee, you know, just for a quiet life.
You're just trying to get through it.
I'm just trying to get on the other side of this conversation with this guy who's exactly my age.
But it's a similar topic, you know, these days, you know, you get arrested and thrown in jail just for saying your English these days.
And so I felt at that point that, oh, no, if I don't get out of this the right way, this is the wrong guy to have shown me.
Because he assumes you're jumped into the culture.
Right.
And if he realizes that I'm not, he's going to immediately think that I'm a narc or that I'm a fucking cop or whatever.
And so I was like, dude, I got to get going.
I got to meet this chick, but I'll catch you later.
She's white, so it's cool.
Yeah, that's right.
And she's got cool hair, too.
It looks like a moth.
She's got that weird thing with the little dreidels on the side, like the girl in green room.
So he's like, okay, man.
Well, I'll see you later and I'm like, okay, okay, bro You know, I gotta go because I got to get some stuff too.
I got to get my bag of stuff and I got out of there so that Up here at that time 1991 or two.
I mean there were probably there were fucking Nazis everywhere.
Yeah, that's that anecdote But but anyway, did you get a sense from him of that's something he's like dealt with or thought about?
I
Well, I'm, and I'm not sure it's a, I'm not sure.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
No, no, it's okay.
But it was very interesting because it, because it, it sparked this conversation.
And again, dad's in the back, like craning an ear, right?
And the kid's like, well, you know, here's the thing about my generation.
Like we just feel like,
It's all happened already.
It's all fucked up.
And all we're trying to do is just live our lives in, in peace.
And we got no, we're not invested in any of the institutions that the, that the generation right before us thinks it's tearing down and we're super not invested in their institutions of, uh, justice and anger and all that stuff.
And we don't, we're not really invested in this is the end of the world, but we're not invested in, uh, these are the best of times.
And I said, you guys sound a lot like my generation in 1991.
And, and this kid said, sometimes I don't know in talking to other kids, my age, whether we're being ironic or
Double ironic double ironic sarcastic like I don't know half the time I don't know when somebody says something you almost need like a sincerity alignment chart But but they were seeing it in the exact same way that we did which was kind of like
That's really funny.
It's like that's part of the fun of life is just Is just living in the wreckage of a society that doesn't care about you and I I was it gave me great pause because in talking to my own kid and her friends who are low teens
I get this same sense of like, yeah, you know, whatever, man.
And I'm like, I know that whatever man so strongly.
And I know how much in us, it was a reaction to how proud and angry the boomers were about, uh, all the things that they had done to change the world and stop the war and give us all Jimi Hendrix.
And we should be, we should be glad.
And listening to them, I'm just like, oh my God, is it happening?
People who in some ways look at the early seventies as a kind of success story.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, and they, and that was the, that was the, the sour bread they fed us.
So I was so I came away from this I mean and I showed them all the places and I took him to Kurt Cobain's house and and and Dad really wanted to get out and sit on the bench and carve his name and and the kid just wanted to like Keep talking about Denver post hardcore and it was it was like a real
it was like a real crazy you're not supposed to park in front of kurt cobain's house because the rich people in that neighborhood get really mad because kurt and courtney never should have bought that house it was absolutely the wrong place for them now they're stuck with the legacy forever yeah and actual tour buses full of japanese people come through and it's just a narrow lane um and they stop and people are like and you know and some poor lawyer bought that house and is living behind the gate
while probably, you know, a thousand people a day come by.
It would be like selling you John Wayne Gacy's house without talking about the basement.
You should have to disclose that as a real estate agent.
Well, I'm sure they knew, but I don't think that they knew what was going to happen, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
Two years after it happened, there were just some mopey mopes.
This is a lot for you to digest at one time.
These are two very different people processing the information and the discussion in such different ways.
You're such an interesting triad, the three of you.
Well, yeah.
And, and, and I don't know that much about, I mean, wait a minute, I should amend that.
I don't know anything about 2025, uh, mountain state post hardcore scenes, except that every band I can think of is actually from like 15 or 20 years ago.
Right.
I don't know anybody.
I don't know who the third most popular post-hardcore band is at all.
But we do know, because that was our universe.
And the difference being that in our day, there was... So I said at one point, well, in the 90s, there were all these...
Like light manufacturing warehouses, but all of the industries had closed nobody was making typewriters anymore and so there were just kind of empty spaces that That nobody knew what to do and this little high teens face lit up
not because i had because i had uh like uh what was talking about what what what i saw in their face was that they knew exactly that that's what they were looking for and they knew it was out there they they knew that seattle was not the place that san francisco was not the place that what they were looking for was a place that used to make typewriters and doesn't anymore
And I was like, Olympia is where you belong.
Absolutely.
And there are 15 towns in the Northwest that you could still find an old typewriter repair place and rent it for $150.
Is that where K or Kill Rock Stores was?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's where all, that's where Slater Kenny came from.
That's like, yeah.
I think of that as being like right girl and like, yeah.
And nobody, it's one of those towns where like Tacoma, Everett, all these towns, Bremerton around Seattle that are really pretty close in that have, that are nice little towns.
And for 30 years, people have been saying, oh man, it's about to blow up.
You know, Everett's about to, it's about to blow up.
People are going to want to live there.
And then another 10 years go by and it's like, oh man, it's about to blow up.
I'm sure there are people who went up there and bought a $200,000 house 15 years ago thinking it was gonna double in price and it's worth 220 now.
Maybe not that I'm not I'm not so down on the economics of Everett anymore, but but so I got because the kid so the kid lights up a little bit with this idea like that this is this this is some kind of like Resonates because this sounds like the kind of thing they would like to be pursuing because somehow in the post hardcore culture that they're coming out of
The recognition that being a tour manager and a band manager and a DIY crank it out, like we've basically record labels are gone.
And we keep thinking like, oh, I guess you gotta be on TikTok.
But I think the 17-year-olds now are like TikTok's bullshit.
What you have to do is get in the van.
Yeah.
Wow.
And I was like, fucking get in the van.
Are we here again?
I'm so down with get in the van.
I'm the one you should be talking to.
Get in the van.
Look at you.
So it was so, it was really interesting.
And I was lucky that this was a really sharp kid who was on top of what they wanted to do and where they were coming from.
And they saw more than anything, what they never a single time did was complain.
They never said, yeah, everything's, you know, even when they said everything's fucked up, it wasn't a complaint.
It was just like, it was just an acknowledgement.
And, and in a way, like a kind of lighthearted one, like, well, you know, you got to do what you got to do.
Yeah.
I mean, they were looking for empty.
They were looking for empty space, like physical space.
And I was like, oh my God, you're going to find it.
It's there.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it was, it was really, I'm glad I gave the little tour to the little family.
Um, this is just a spec, this is speculation and it's not based on anything, but like really some observations, but mostly reckons, I'm going to use, I'm going to put it in my own terms.
I wonder if there are generations and sub generations of people that realize that the boomers and Gen X commitment to high levels of drama about fucking everything, um,
are maybe not as fruitful as they seem, that there's a lot more heat than light to a lot of what we and the people a little younger than us do.
And, like, I don't know, I mean, I can't, this is just speculation, but I wonder if that's part of it where it's like, well, you know, and I don't mean to just put it in terms of, like, online drama, but just in general, like, I feel like there's, I feel like I see less...
uh of being like pot committed to a specific flag and which is not to say they don't care about causes it's just that they actually do shit about the causes instead of having a flag about it uh compared to my my times really but i i
I don't know.
I always wonder if that's part of it.
You see it in the way that the people, and this goes back to the same speculation as 20 minutes ago, I guess, is that it is the people our age and just a little bit younger who get so incensed and so cleft to certain, not even ideas, but cleft to certain totems.
Yeah.
I see it as people quite a bit.
I mean, I think that most of the people our age that do that are doing it in imitation of the people younger than them because they're afraid of people younger than them.
I think the worst decade in American history is 2015 to 2025.
And I don't think that people our age, this was the problem with Gen X. I don't think we had any real convictions in the sense that we knew what was wrong and we knew what we thought we would do, but we never thought it was possible.
But also our convictions or my convictions anyway, we're largely in some ways framed in the way that you started this very interesting conversation by saying, hey, you know,
Sort of like how much is the stuff that's been provided to you as like a fun teen disco where you can have a safe place to play your video games versus a thing that you've done on your own where you get to like go explore that landscape for opportunities that match the culture you'd like to see.
Because that really is a different way of looking at it.
And I could see their dad being kind of like, whoa, that's right.
Yeah.
But like, and we had the conversation about get, I mean, they raised it.
They were like public transit in Denver and where I live is terrible, but none of us have driver's licenses like people your age.
Did when they were 16 and so getting to the shows and getting to the spaces that's so interesting is harder for us because and I was like, dude, I was in Denver when I was 17 and it was It was a fucking Wild West like any kid above 15 years old a had a driver's license B had a had a truck that they
They found on a farm and they used to have 3-2 beer, Chris told me.
They had 3-2 beer for sure.
And it was, you know, and it was a dangerous, all cities were dangerous then because they were all empty.
But their recognition, and I said, why don't you have a driver's license?
You're old enough.
And they were like, well, I had anxiety about driving.
Every time I got behind the car, I freaked out.
Behind the wheel, I freaked out.
Yeah.
And, you know, dad's, again, like leaning forward.
This is not a person that grew up on the music of the Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen.
Right.
I mean, I'm not trying to be that particular guy here.
I wrote something down a long time ago when you first started talking about this.
One question I would want to ask anybody like that person or really almost any to understand a young person's culture.
Here's a really dumb Merlin man, guy from Florida question.
How do you get places?
Yeah.
I mean, like, really, honestly, I wrote that down.
Because that becomes so important.
So important.
Right.
Because like us, like, I had to have a friend who drove.
If we wanted to go to hardcore shows in Ybor City, in the Cuban club, like, my friend Alan would drive us there.
And luckily, we liked a lot of the same stuff.
But, you know, we weren't, to get albums, we had to drive to Tampa.
Had to drive to Vinyl Fever.
And, like, I'm not trying to make this, like, a walking in the snow thing.
But that really, I realized, probably a couple years ago, one of my big, you know, my big thing last year, I realized, was the don't make everything into a tech headline.
A couple years ago, the thing that really hit me, one reason I'm so bitter and feel so poor all the time, was, like, the fact, just how much...
The where I came from demanded a car for everything and a car therefore became Not just the status symbol but became a key to transitioning into the adult world and if you didn't have that You better find a friend with a car.
It was all the wealth all the wealth was did you have a car?
Did you not and I was thinking this the other day the only reason I
knew anything about punk rock.
The only reason that I knew anything about live music, about kids putting on shows about, I mean, which became my life was because Susan was 14 and I was 16.
And it's not like my parents said, you've got to take your sister places.
Susan came to me and said, I'm going to go to this punk show and
And I need you to drive me.
And it was fucking snowing.
And so it wasn't just like, take the bus.
and i as much as my sister was a pain in the ass i liked her and i was intrigued she didn't want to have to identify her body well that for sure yeah but also i was intrigued like why does this kid because my friends had no interest in that no understanding of it i was a snob about the music i thought it was bad
But Susan needed to go and I would drive her.
And then I'd get to these squats and these fucking basements and Susan would be like, bye, fuck you.
And she'd leave the car and I would embarrass her by going in.
Hey, it's Mr. Guy.
That's right.
But I'm only 16.
But, you know, everybody in there looks like Robert Smith, and they all are drawing paisleys on each other with fucking glow-in-the-dark markers or whatever the hell they were doing.
And there's some band just making a cacophony.
and i'm standing there in my boat shoes and my pink oxford cloth shirt like hey fellow kids what's going on and and part of my motivation was actually to embarrass my sister and to just but also i had that thing which is like i'm friends with everybody and nobody can hurt me right so here i am what are you going to do if it's not
Apparent from implication, you are, to me, very much a omnivorous consumer of culture.
You're not overly picky about saying, well, that's nothing I would ever be interested in.
I knew for a fact that my friends were listening to an emotion at some party where everybody was getting drunk on California coolers.
And I'm over here looking at this shit, which seems worse.
Not a Bartles and James.
It was before Bartles and James.
Before it got commercialized.
Yeah.
It used to be about the music.
Yeah.
And so, and you know, sweet flavored wine.
I was happy to be over at the party too, but you know, the, the, the worst parties were the ones where, um, you know, where the girls had their bangs sprayed up like a story and a half above their face.
And the dudes all had mullets and, and acid wash jeans.
That big, that big center hair muffin.
Yeah, and those were but I went to those parties to sure those guys would legit they were the John he's more dangerous Yeah, super more dangerous.
Oh, yes for sure punk rockers Predators they were all pussies over here and but the music was like overwhelming the scenes were overwhelming
i would i'd be there and i'd look around i'd be like how did you guys get this house like seriously you're living in a house and the walls are all spray painted black like who owns this house and they're just like shut up nerd yeah but by the time i was
By the time I was 21, I'd been to 50 hardcore shows.
It wasn't hardcore then.
50 punk shows and I'd seen the Suicidal Tendencies and I'd seen Agent Orange and all these bands just because they were playing at a rec center and I had to take Susan.
So knowing and so I never claimed that I first of all I definitely wasn't punk but I also never claimed that those were my scenes like punk rock didn't save my life I was standing I had a puka shell necklace on for Christ's sake like I was I was John Hughes of it all you're closer to Blaine than ducky people always complained that I they were like What's up Blaine and I was like I am NOT fucking blame you're not gonna know whether to shit or go sailing
Because I'm not rich and I'm still a virgin.
Don't let the knit pattern confuse you.
I sewed this alligator on myself.
That's right.
This is real.
You know what?
This is 60s prep.
You wouldn't even understand it.
But yeah, by the time I was 21 and I was here and people were like, we're going on tour.
I knew every, I knew what that looked.
I didn't know what being the band looked like, but I knew every venue they were going to play because I'd been to them all.
The Anchorage version of it, which let me tell you my friend.
So talking to this kid and you know, and when we were on tour doing the indie rock tour, uh,
You would see hardcore bands also on tour.
You'd meet at truck stops.
And a white van would pull in, pull in a trailer.
And five people would get out.
And they'd all have weird bangs.
And they'd all be wearing Stan Smiths.
And you'd be like, hey, what's up band?
And they'd be like, yo band.
And we'd stand there and talk.
And we'd both be playing the same town that night.
And neither one of us would have ever heard of the venue that the other one was playing.
you guys are playing where oh we're playing at the paint bucket where are you guys playing oh we're playing at the lion's lair where the are those things and realizing that there was a complete ecosystem of hardcore that did not that just didn't touch even indie rock its closest its closest relative the two things didn't touch each other at all
you didn't even drink the same beer.
It was really, it was a fascinating time, but thinking about my daughter's age and thinking that in some small way they're gonna recapitulate that,
and what they're rebelling against is not a world that doesn't even know they exist they're rebelling against a world that maybe knows that maybe is looking at them too closely that that they're just they're surrounded by people that are like what do you like what are you going to do how do you feel about this tick tock thing and they're just like oh man whatever and they're just looking for
They're looking for a typewriter factory to activate.
And I'm excited for them.
When I asked those teens at lunch yesterday, how do you feel about this TikTok thing?
And they didn't even roll their eyes.
It wasn't even worth the energy to roll their eyes.
I was like, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
You guys go, whatever it is.
But it doesn't feel... I agree with you.
There's more similarities than I would have thought with, you know, when I was a teenager.
But also, yeah, I...
I don't know.
It does feel a little bit different because this is difficult to talk about because then you get into this weird, like, you know, cultural hegemony kind of angle.
But again, the thing you said earlier on, it's like, well, are you being poured into this mold that's been sort of provided for you?
I mean, that's the ultimate kind of hegemony is like, yeah, go have your punk rock at the Y, like where we know it's well lit and stuff like that.
And understand, I mean, I'd be the same way.
I mean, but it's... It is...
You know what I think?
You know what I think?
The hardest thing for us to describe to millennials, I think, or one of the hardest things, was the idea of conformity.
And when we were coming up, we were at the tail end of a world that conformity and conformism was really...
dominant culture by far including times where it appeared it was not Including times when there were a lot of times through those hallowed days of the 60s and early 70s were like I mean Just like that wonderful character Don Cheadle plays in Boogie Nights where he's like always first, you know first he's like a like a Rick James
kind of like space cowboy and then he goes full like urban cowboy and he's like he's just trying to like figure out who he is in the same way as people who are like oh David Bowie changed his look should I change my look you know I'll be unique in that way too I'm not trying to disparage at all but like there is kind of a
it's almost like you would say to your kid, well, you know, I had a garage band in the early 80s, and it's about time for, you know, you to get a Hagstrom and a Peavey and, you know, go out there and play some songs.
Yeah, the idea that somehow after us, like, cultural...
conformity seems to have gone away because, uh, because the boomers and Gen X were like, yeah, every single one of us was a nonconformist.
And so what was conformity and realizing now that I think they see that as conformity, whatever it is, your politics have to be right.
Your, uh, the, the bands you like have to be right.
Like the, the, what you like on TV has to be right.
Um,
Kind of a purity test.
And you could really legit say – and I think this gets overstated a little bit when people talk about straight edge and a lot of the hardcore scene.
You can overstate it.
You're too far away from the idea of like, well, no, this is just I want to be able to see bands.
That's why I have this X on my hand.
It doesn't mean I'll never eat meat again necessarily.
Right.
There's always been these certain chutes that you could kind of go down.
There are trenches that have been dug in many of Verdun in this world.
And I'm struggling to get my hands around this because I think I feel like you are kind of onto something.
There's so many things that are so very different, not just from us, but from all previous sorts of things.
A lot of things where we're like Wile E. Coyote running in the air, not realizing the cliff already.
Because, you know, a lot of that.
They haven't even seen that, Merlin.
They haven't even seen that.
How do we get all this important culture across to them?
You know, we don't have the great man theory anymore.
We don't have Wile E. Coyote.
I'm just standing here with my dick in my hand trying to get you a practice space that's safe and well-lit.
Yeah, exactly.
Trying to get you a safe practice space.
And at some level... This is a safe... John, this is a safe practice space.
And they... I don't even know if... I don't even know if they know what it feels, but they know that that's what they want, is a practice space that their dad doesn't have a key to...
And and I'm looking at him like that actually is what you want like be above all other things and Now that you're 18 and you're looking at colleges you're gonna get to Olympia and
And nobody there is interested in what their dad thinks anymore.
And certainly they don't care where Pearl Jam's first practice space was, as you don't.
But let me tell you, it's about physical space.
It's about getting a house.
And painting the walls black if you can, even though you're going to lose your damage deposit and finding room to be in the room with each other and not be on a chat room and not be, you know, and it isn't safe.
It's fucking not safe.
And you're going to have anxiety when you get behind the wheel of a car.
But my God, you don't understand what a car can do for you.
So but you know, but I couldn't say that to them beyond especially not in front of the dad Right, like get away from your dad.
He's a fucking loser And I'm saying it as a dad I know right but I'm just like it cuz I couldn't say all that but but we had a I understood that this kid understood subtext and this kid this kid Was thinking about all of this and I said at one point are you?
mad
or sad about the fact that it feels like all scenes have already happened, that there's no new scene.
Even post hardcore, there's a 40 year history of it that you don't get to feel like you're inventing something.
This kid looked at me and said, you know what?
I'm really into hyper pop lately And I said that it was that a test Well, I was asking you with fake I failed it and I was like what hyper pop and they said well
It's really ironic and intentionally bad.
It's like death metal chip tunes.
They sometimes will just say the same one lyric over and over for five minutes.
And it's hard to tell whether they're serious or not.
And I don't mean to bounce this right into another conversation.
I'm now talking this is you speaking now.
This is me speaking.
Okay the night before I got a call from Kurt block of the fastbacks and And Mike Musburger of the posies and the flashbacks flat fastbacks and they said we got invited by Matt Vaughn the super old-school punk rock owner of easy street records and
We got invited to go over to Bellevue to a super expensive hi-fi store that sells, that sells like $125,000 turntables.
Okay.
Matt Vaughn has been DJing over at this place for the last week because they're rolling out their new 1129 Atmos system.
11 what?
11 speakers at eye level, two subwoofers, and nine speakers in the ceiling.
Okay.
Surround.
Mm-hmm.
And Apple is really... Have a listening party for Zen Arcade?
So they were like, we're going to... Of which Robert Criscow says, it seems a pity to hear Bob Mool's guitar gathering dust as it moves from the guitar to the speaker.
No, it's worse.
We're going to listen to Ziggy Stardust.
Both sides on vinyl.
Squangle, dangle, dangle, gwang.
That has been remixed.
Does that got Suffragette City on it?
Yes, it does.
Yeah, that's the good song on that one.
Every song is good on that one.
I'm Hunky Dory Man, but continue.
We're gonna we're going to listen to this remix of I'm the only person I know who likes that most shit.
I love it I turn it on for everything.
I love it.
I would be so into hearing that.
Oh my god And I was like, why are we doing this?
And they said well Apple is has decided that everything has to be out most And so all the big big studios and stereo people are getting into this new technology and
And they're retrofitting all the studios because if you're doing a project,
You have to, you do a stereo mix.
Yeah, if you can get the original tracks, you can do this.
I think that's what they do a lot, but doing it from scratch, it's kind of like when you first, well, you wouldn't, but like when, was it the Nightfly?
The Donald Fagan record was one of the first things I ever saw that was Triple D, you know, where it was recorded, it was recorded, mastered, all three, you know, digital.
So this, oh my God, if you could suck all that out of those tracks,
Yes, please.
Well, so we all show up.
It's a small party.
There's only... So I'm not envious at all that you got to hang out with Kurt Block and listen to, hear what Mick Ronson's guitars sound like over like 90 speakers.
So he's sitting next to me.
Everybody in the room, right?
Everybody in the... And there's probably 15 people and it's...
Everybody.
It's all the Greybeards.
It's everybody in there is 55 to 60.
Was Scott McCoy there?
Scott was not because he lives in Portland now, but that's exactly who would have been there.
He should have been there.
And we sit down in these big leather chairs because, again, this is like a stereo store.
Please send photos.
Please send photos.
Okay, I will.
Because it kind of sounds a little bit like the scene in Trading Places when they go to the club.
It's so nuts what's happening.
Remember the one where they go to the club and put your hand in the other guy's pocket?
And this was, I mean, we picked up Kurt at his house.
And, like, Kurt Block has... Is it made of bubblegum?
Kurt Block has... Just imagine him living in a tree house made of bubblegum.
Hey, guys!
Did I tell you about this?
He has a Univox guitar.
They loaned their practice space to Nirvana one time because Nirvana was practicing for some big show and they didn't have a place in Seattle.
The Fastbacks.
Yeah.
And when they showed up the next day, there was one of those Univox guitars that Kurt was famous for smashing and he had smashed it during practice and left the smashed guitar lying around the Fastbacks practice space, which I think gives you a sense of like Kurt.
Yeah.
But Kurt Block does his thing, which is this is just exactly him.
Because he has like a million guitars, right?
He has one million guitars.
He picked up every little piece.
Oh my God.
Took it home and glued the whole guitar back together.
Got it running again and playing.
And he did it not because it was a Nirvana guitar, but because he wanted one more guitar.
And he was like, oh, I can fix that.
And so he has a Curt broken Univox that's basically in a pile with 32 Epiphones.
But now a Curt broken Univox is worth a million dollars in Japan.
Kurt would never in a million years and and you know and there are the people the people on that bus tour He could just take it just right he could just show up there There are people in the Nirvana camp who know about the guitar who can authenticate it and Kurt's like no, that's okay Anyway, this is the guy that now is sitting in the leather chair surrounded by Atmos and they start playing the record and
And everybody in the room knows that Kurt is the one who's going to speak truth to power.
Cause Kurt has no, he, he is above, he's like a layer above.
Like he's a, he's nothing, no, no Atmos system is going to change his life.
Right.
And we're listening to the record.
And what's weird is that more and more, as you listen to it on Atmos, it becomes clear that they mixed this record for two speakers.
Basically for two speakers that they probably built at Trident recording studios out of some stuff that was lying around and The speakers I think Tony Scott is that a same Tony Scott the speakers did not have super high-defined tweeters They did not have 11 to nines and so listening to the record.
Yeah, there's stuff flying around their keyboards are over here and and so I asked the guy and
Said it's really interesting because what this mix really was was a stereo mix all the band was right in front of me You just had all this twinkly shit going around behind us that doesn't seem to be using the technology to its full extent and the guy said what we discovered was if you mix instruments so they sound like they're coming from behind and
It activates a fright-flight combat response in people because nobody wants to hear shit coming from behind them.
And so if you put some instrument... It can be very startling.
I have a sound bar to which I've added two side speakers.
So I have whatever that is, 2.1 or whatever.
But I mean, they're Sonos and they sound fantastic.
They're great.
But I am still... I have to go in sometimes and periodically adjust...
There's the music volume and the TV volume in your sides, because the family is vocally, like, freaked out sometimes, especially during commercials where out of nowhere, it suddenly sounds like you're in Avatar.
And, like, there's just all, whether it's wrestling papers or pouring coffee or whatever, that isolated sound.
You think about something like, you know, Wish You Were Here or something, you know, where you hear, like, a really strong, you feel, you can hear the room and also the echo, and it sounds like something just happened right next to you.
I've gotten the flight response from that.
Yeah, you have to dial it down, right?
Yes.
It gets distracting sometimes, too.
So I said to the guy, because Kurt, everybody looked at Kurt, without seeming to, but everybody was like, when E.F.
Hutton says... Because he's also a rock and roll historian, right?
Rock and roll historian.
He's listened to every record a thousand times.
He knows every note of everything.
And Kurt was like, yeah, I'm not really that into it.
And the room just goes like this, this system, who knows how much it cost $1 billion.
And Kurt's like, man, not really.
And so, so I asked the guy, what is the, what is the point of this?
But as this teen was talking about hyper pop,
realized that this Atmos which is gonna become the the Everybody's gonna get it because it's the new thing.
It's it's the new stereo and everybody and Apple's really doubling down on it They're gonna put Atmos and everything and everybody's gonna have 42 speakers in their house eventually, right?
But the electric guitar was invented in the 30s But it wasn't until the 50s that rock and roll was invented
And rock and roll was invented in the 50s.
And distortion was discovered in the 50s.
But it wasn't until the 70s that metal really utilized it.
And metal used distortion in the 70s.
But it wasn't really until the mid to late 80s that digital delay became... And I realized Atmos is the technology.
And this kid and Hyperpop...
are going to be the first people that actually make music to the technology.
Oh, right.
Okay.
So right now, if you mix Hunky Dory into Atmos, it just sounds like not as good.
But they are going to be in those Atmos spaces and they're going to go, well, here's what we're going to do.
And they're going to put music.
Well, if you craft it from scratch in the same way that like some people got really into quadraphonic sound at one point.
I think Flaming Lips did that four CD project where it was supposed to be like this, you know.
Flaming Lips.
Yeah, right.
It's different.
And the thing I didn't say, because I realized I was just going to sound like I was trying to sound smart, is there are a lot of people, including me on some days, that like the mono mixes of the Beatles records a lot more, because those are the ones they spent the most time on.
You and Kirk Block would have such a good car ride together.
Don't tease me like this.
I don't know enough to know.
One thing that's weird about the Atmos stuff, though, is I should have said this from the beginning, is most of what I'm very into with Atmos stuff is classical, and I listen to it on headphones.
And that's very different from listening to rock and roll on 11 speakers.
I'm just going to postulate.
I mean, it could be if you're you could be talking about like what are what's a band where that could really I bet ELO.
You could do some really interesting stuff.
Queen.
But Queen would also be really easy to overdo because it's already so lush.
And, I mean, I know they've pulled down all those tracks.
The tape's not, you know, it used to be you could read a paper through that, as you know, from that DVD we both watched.
But, you know, I could see that being great.
But honestly, sometimes in the room, it can be a little bit distracting and feel a little bit too separated in some ways.
And this is why I have a lot of friends who actively don't like Atmos and turn it off everywhere.
Oh, wow.
I like it, and I have it on.
And when it comes to classical, I do seek it out.
One of the reasons I seek it out with classical is because what you're going to get when they do whatever they start with to make an Atmos record for Apple is they do, I think, have to go back to something like the... I don't think you can just get L and R and come up with Atmos.
They need the tracks.
But also, it's just that sometimes it is the super high-quality lossless.
And it's just... Even with my busted-ass ears, listening to this...
This Elgar thing that I've been listening to a lot lately.
You can hear the sound of the bow on the cello.
These high mids that used to be very ill-defined in my life can really come out.
But I don't know if I'd want to have like 11 speakers of that.
What did you think?
Can I ask what you thought of it?
Well, it feels like a novelty.
Like, oh, I never heard... Like seeing a movie in 3D or something.
Yeah, we also listened to Baba O'Reilly, and we listened to... I bet Bargain sounds good.
We listened to Rocketman.
And one of the things about Rocketman that really stood out to me is, you know, there's a synth in there that I've never heard before.
And it's a cool synth.
And I never heard how important the hi-hat and the snare were and the tones of them.
You know, all that music has so much more treble
In the mix, then we were ever aware of because we didn't have that many fucking tweeters.
You're listening.
In my case, I'm listening on a I was thinking about this.
Sorry, this is somewhat fast.
Have we not discussed the amazing thing that happened when Genesis recorded Duke?
And they did a Phil Collins song called Behind the Lines.
That's a really good song.
But do you remember this story?
Do you remember there was FF and Q on a tape deck when you're cassette deck?
Oh, yeah.
So FF would be full on, the head is off, and it's just going fast forward as fast as it can.
But imagine when you would Q and you go...
And what they realized was that there was a song kind of inside the song.
I know you know this, but Behind the Lines, which is, again, a very good song, good Genesis song.
But what they realized, they laughed because they were like, this sounds like the Jackson 5.
So then on face value, he redid it with the Earthwind and Firehorns and basically arranged it like a Jackson 5 song.
And it's absolutely incredible.
But here's the thing.
You didn't want to hit Q too much because it would wear down the tape.
Your tape already sucked.
Like, even if you got, like, good-ass Maxell 2XRs or whatever.
Like, you didn't... That...
Those were not very generous with a lot of ranges.
And that's how a lot of us mostly listen to music for 30 years.
Right.
Right.
And it was you could hear it scraping the magnetic stuff right off of the tape as it went like.
Yeah.
My feeling about it was listening to it in Atmos was a novelty.
It was just like, oh, that's cool.
But it's not the song.
It's not the... So anyway, then after we listened to it in Atmos, they had bought... Because this is a fancy thing.
They bought a bunch of... They went to some taco truck and spent $1,000 on tacos.
And we're all standing around.
And it's the brain trust of Seattle music.
And we're drinking champagne out of a paper cup.
Yeah.
Were you definitely shaking?
We were.
Kurt says, can you play the record now on this $250,000 HiDefy system that's basically got two amplifiers that are so big you couldn't carry them in a car and a speaker array, but it's stereo.
There's no frubbity-dubbity.
And so, of course, the speaker dudes, the stereo guys, they're like, oh, my God, I would love to listen to that record that way.
And so they put it on the big stereo and where everybody in the room is just wrapped like, yes, that is the.
And even that had too many had too much detail.
And it made us all just want to hear it through a Marantz receiver and two fucking JBL, you know, cabinets made out of wood.
Your dad's Fisher system.
Yeah, exactly.
And it just was like, oh, this is a great record.
And that's the mix that they made.
And that's how it was meant to be heard.
And...
But I swear to you, the teens are going to build, the teens are going to make the 2025s look like the 1945s because they're going to make a new style of music to the technology.
And it's going to be something that maybe does incite a flight response in olds like you and me.
Sure.
We're like, why the fuck is the bass coming from inside the house?
And they're going to be like, shut up, old man.
Do you see yourself keeping in touch with this young person?
See how they're doing?
Maybe you could check in, be a mentor.
I don't know.
I feel like if they reach out to me, but by the end of the tour, I felt like I had gotten a tour.
And all I had to do was say, you know, Quincy Jones once, you know, like rolled a keg down the stairs over here at this place.
And then in the meantime, you know, you didn't get into them.
Aren't the monks from there?
We didn't get into the monks.
Oh, another thing this kid said was one of the problems of my generation is when we hear Michael Jackson and when we hear the Beatles, that those sounds have been used so much that we don't hear them as anything other than kind of corny derivative.
That just sounds to us like those are the sounds and that's the vibe of everything.
So why is this good?
And I was like, oh, fuck.
Of course.
Right?
To us, it's linear.
And there was everything before Michael Jackson and everything after.
But to them, it's just like everybody uses that.
That's so true.
That's...
Yeah, it's absolutely true.
And the other thing, I always think of this in particular, like, say, Led Zeppelin, and how nobody knew how Led Zeppelin was going to sort of turn out, right?
I mean, the way that they got their name was everybody was like, yes, this is not going to go well.
But they'd done that first record, very bluesy, they sold a lot of songs.
But then by the time you get to Led Zeppelin III, you're only, like, what, two years into their career, and they're already doing Led Zeppelin III?
Yeah.
And you don't know, you don't, you never know where that's going to go.
And so like for you and me, even as somebody like me, who as a, mostly as a result of, uh, not having a lot of dough, a lot of my deep dives on bands were through like a best of or a greatest hits, like, like squeeze 45s and under, like I imprinted on that record.
So, so hard on a cassette, by the way, but like, um,
It's just, it doesn't, it's, we see things as happening in a certain order.
And you think of Star Wars, and then Empire Strikes Back, and then Return of the Jedi kind of stuff.
And it becomes so silly, though, with other people.
When you, you know what I mean?
It's...
It's the kind of thing where, like, I have a lot of sympathy for my kid and have always.
He goes, like, when did that happen?
Was that the 60s or the 20s or the 40s?
And I'm like, just stop saying numbers.
Like, that's really offensive to me.
Like, I know you can figure out that Greg Gatsby was the 20s and I'm 40 years later.
Like, can you figure that?
But mainly it doesn't matter because it's all just stuff out there.
For us, it's a story.
For us, it's a story.
And boy is it ever story that we're always happy to tell people all so many stories We have to tell you to understand the world but like you know to me how you how do you?
Understand side two of leds up on four or sorry side of one of leds up before without you know first like fully kind of Grocking two and three it sounds really doesn't like this might have been true for you It certainly was true for me that Zeppelin three
That's the best came into my life after one, two and four.
Yeah.
Right, right, right.
Because you're first exposed to Zeppelin at parties where people are rocking out and getting and dipping their mullets in their beer.
And, you know, like, uh,
They you you don't hear three until you become a sophisticated consumer of Zeppelin Scott Hobbit songs and shit Yeah, and then you realize that three is its own experience and you and then you become as a Zeppelin fan You go through a three phase where you're like you guys don't understand man three.
Yes And also three I think three is to led Zeppelin as hunky-dory is to David Bowie
and i always think in my own cosmology of three as coming after four because that's when i right that's your chronology yeah yeah and and so i don't know i mean that's that's the thing to to be somebody who's like yeah the beatles they kind of sound like elo
Right, right, right.
I mean, and maybe that's what it's like to be like, oh, yeah, which is a very, a very true statement.
But, you know, boy, you're going to get two or three stories from me if you say something like that, unfortunately.
And I know I for sure said, oh, yeah, Beethoven, you know, and Mozart.
And it's like, well.
No, I mean, not exactly.
If you're really deep in it.
I'm only just starting to get that, and I've been paying a lot of attention to it.
Maybe a better example for me, let's take REM, which I learned slightly out of order, but that was my band when I was a young person.
And it's like, so for me, even though I had heard...
I'd heard Chronic Town after Murmur.
I don't remember the exact order.
But for me, those first five or so records are just indelibly in a certain order to me.
And it's not to say, like, oh, you couldn't put this in a mix because it's in the wrong chronology or something like that.
But it's more like the thing I'm not going to say to another person, because who fucking cares, is those records, not just those records, those songs, reading about those, like having a very specific...
you know, memory of listening.
As soon as I said to you, singles 45 and under, for the rest of my life, the immediate thought that'll come to my brain is listening to Is That Love by Squeeze over and over while I mop the floor as a closer at McDonald's.
Now, why would I tell you that?
Another person.
But I would just listen to that cassette.
Like, I mean, not all my music taste was great around the same time I was listening to Alcatraz.
I was listening to Marillion, like Alcatraz with Yngwie Malmsteen and Graham Bonnet.
Yeah, for sure.
God blessed video.
Ten-finger camera.
I had a long conversation with Kurt about UFO.
That was an XDR tape.
He was like, we were talking about UFO and Michael Schenker.
And we all had some Michael Schenker story.
Everybody in the place was like, oh, yeah.
Everybody pulls out their Schenker stories.
But now, why would that be even vaguely interesting to other people?
That is so deeply personal to me.
Now, I can have that conversation with somebody like you because you maybe didn't have that exact same experience with those exact same records, but you've had those kinds of experiences with those kinds of records where, like, you know how it is to, like, have... Well, those exact records, I mean, you and I...
yeah we have some crossover there for sure but like putting like uh uh just the way that you can like so associate a certain time with a certain song like for example my big mouth um which i recorded off the radio at my job in 1991 and like set were you poised by the radio waiting for it to play
Like, there are certain shows that, like, you'd be more likely to hear.
But sometimes I just let it run and then, like, go back and just erase.
But this is how I got music, even when I had a job making $20,000 a year.
But I hear that click at the beginning, which, ironically enough, sounds like it might be a punch-in.
But there's that chuk-chuk-chuk in here.
And I think Stringfellow goes, ooh.
And then you hear, the lines across your face are drawn with hate.
It's like...
That song, Not Too Soon by Throwing Muses, there's these certain songs that I so associate with a certain time.
But why would that be interesting to somebody?
It's not interesting to somebody.
I have these endless Spotify playlists of songs from the 70s that intrigue me or freak me out.
You've seen the one I did for the show that has expanded Made of Cocaine.
But these songs that beguiled me as a child, I have such a specific recollection of using my parents'
Clock radio with the little sleep pillow thing the thing you can put under the pillow to listen to music and hearing light my fire over that tiny little speaker through a pillow But like you can't it's very difficult to pass that on to somebody that's even your same age even at that time let alone now
every there's don't you haven't you considered writing an autobiography that is music based i mean half of it seems like we could do a podcast where you just told those stories and it would be fascinating because you see the world through the music that you loved
I mean, that would be, that's a great book, a Merlin Mann book.
I should write a book.
That's a good idea.
I think I speak in your shoe.
You know what?
I'll give you $200,000, Merlin, if you just write a book about productivity.
Okay.
You already have the notes.
I got it all right here.
Let me just, yeah.
Would I also get to drive around with Kurt Block a little bit?
I mean, if you come to Seattle and you say, give me the rock tour.
Go to the bubblegum house.
Ha ha ha ha.