Ep. 573: "The First Pancake"
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
Doing things with paper.
So John knows I'm here.
I got scissors.
I got pills.
I got coins.
I hope John knows I'm here.
Hello?
Hello?
Hello?
Hi, John.
Hello?
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
I felt like I was all alone in a room there for a minute.
Oh, no.
You're getting pure room sound, they call it.
I was getting a lot of room tone.
Yeah.
I do room tone on ours.
I do it real loud, and I like it.
You probably don't know if you're going to listen to podcasts, but I have a heavy use of room tone.
It's right there from the jump.
Yeah, I used to hear a lot about it from people back when I was on Twitter.
But nowadays, nobody can get a hold of me.
Yeah, but you don't hear from the people who like it.
Unless you do.
Hey, you're right.
Nabeel's dad died.
Yeah, he did.
That's a bummer.
Yeah, it is.
I don't know why that suddenly came.
Well, you know what I did was I was thinking to myself, who played drums on Sugar From Sand?
Oh, hmm.
Michael Shore, I think.
Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, briefly death cab, Michael.
That's right.
Briefly death cab, Michael.
I love that opening.
You know, I love that song.
That's why I chose it.
Josh didn't like it.
I could finish that song at any time.
What?
It's already finished.
I know, but I could double finish it.
Yeah.
Are those placeholder lyrics?
Sort of, yeah.
I like them.
Oh, you do.
Even holding the place.
Neck and shoulder.
Robot armies.
Beep, beep.
There's a few things I would change in.
Sure.
Robot armies.
Beep, beep.
I think I'd keep.
That's pretty good.
Yeah.
Well, you know, you, by the way, you did provoke one of our listeners exactly as much as I expected.
Talking about your big hard drive project?
Yeah.
Yeah, I heard about that.
Somebody got upset.
Believe it or not, I heard about that.
But, you know, you're in the market for going through some old hard drives and seeing what kind of dust kicks up.
I like it the way it is, personally.
Is it still 100% fully unreleased?
Other than the fact that it's been Roderick on the lines a theme song for 14 how many years 14 years Other than that completely unreleased It wasn't on that record with the hat
nope nope it never came out not on the record with the hat there are still there's still a lot of songs that are just not i mean not a lot of songs there's some there's a couple yeah there's a few let's say there's a few you know a lot of bands they they go into the studio with 20 songs and they pick the best 10.
I go into the studio with, I know, I go into the studio with negative three.
Yeah.
Song ish is, and then I write four in the studio and, um, and every once in a while there's one, I write five in the studio and there's one that, that I kicked to the curb.
That's not very often right now.
I have 10 songs.
Hmm.
And I have studio time booked.
What do you think about that, Merlin man?
What do you think about that, Merlin man?
Hmm.
I think I'm okay with that.
Studio time booked in?
How do you feel about that, John Roderick?
I mean, you must think something of it because you're, you know, putting down putative future money on this thing.
Yeah, it's very hard because at any other time going into the studio, I had a band.
And I knew what the band could do.
So I would give them the songs and then we would learn them.
And now I don't have exactly a band.
I have like a group.
And I want input.
You have like a Roderick group collective?
I have a group of headhunters.
I've got Seattle's basically, Seattle's wrecking crew.
Oh, nice.
It's nice, but the thing is that, you know, everybody's really good, but they do stuff.
They're professionals.
They do music.
So they play what you tell them.
Well, no.
Kind of the opposite.
It's a little bit of like... You can't just yell at Mike Squires and go more ACDC.
You can.
I like that part.
When you tell them to make the... Which one is that?
It's the one where you said it should be more like a specific... You know, I'm sorry.
I'm taking you on.
I'm a fan.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
No, no, it's okay.
Do you think it's valuable to have a certain kind of person around at this point for you?
Absolutely.
Here's the problem.
I can narrow it down to one thing, which is... At this stage in my life, with the kind of songs that I write...
everybody's natural instinct is that I'm going to make like an alt-country, folky, dude with a guitar kind of record.
A lot of people doing that.
A lot of people doing that.
A lot of people doing it, and it's the natural thing for me to do.
People that surprise you are doing that.
You got that guy with the face tattoos.
He's country now.
Country.
My girl Torres and Adrian Baker, they're doing wonderful country stuff.
But leaning into more of the countrypolitan 60s sound, which...
i love i know it's not the most popular but i love that sound it's cool the thing about it is that it's easier to sing that stuff you know you're not like trying to sing at the top of your lungs anymore you can you know get all and it's you're weathered now and you've got some songs to sing and you're tired and everybody strums their guitars like bill callahan every every year or so his voice gets twice as rough
Somebody comes in and plays the pedal steel.
It's all knowable.
It's familiar.
You don't have to have a bunch of synthesizers anymore.
And so that's everybody's impulse.
and and i and i understand it and i respect it and you know when i sit and play the guitar i'm just playing cowboy chords it's all i've ever done you can use both the only two riffs i ever taught you are both usable in that context play it every day merlin pick up the guitar and i'm like merlin man taught me this what's the first song you play when you pick up a guitar
Do you have a song you always play?
No, I'm a noodler, so I go... I used to do a basic pentatonic, you know, in A at the fifth fret.
And increasingly, I just play the beginning of Tell Me Why by Neil Young, because it's got that riff I like in it.
That's nice.
You know, what's funny is one of the things about working with professional musicians...
i was um i was hanging out with them and uh one of them said well john when's the last time you just put on a record and played along with it like just put on a record and just played along with the whole record and i said i've never done that and not only have i never done it it's never occurred to me and now that i'm thinking about it i didn't know you could do that
So that's totally how I learned to play guitar.
Well, the hardest part of guitar is being in tune.
Once you know how to mostly know how to get and stay in tune, then the key is you tune your guitar.
Like in my case, my turntable was about a quarter to half step too fast.
Yeah.
Like, like, you know, like Harbor coat is an F instead of E, you know, but you know, there's those, there's those kinds of things that,
Wow, I feel like that's so much of how I learned how chords do, was just playing along the songs.
Sitting and talking to this group, it's one of these like, do you have an inside voice?
I look around and everybody's like, what, you've never played along with a record?
It's how you learn to play an instrument.
And I was like, oh, no, nobody explained that to me.
Wait a minute.
You mean this whole time I could have been playing along to records?
So fun.
And it had never, it had just never occurred to me.
I still do it.
I love it.
The way I would learn a song, you know, I only know four cover songs, but the way I would do it is I would play this song for, you know, 30 seconds, and then I would stop it, and I would sit and try and learn it, and then I'd play it for 30 seconds again, and I'd stop and try and learn it.
So surprising to me, given that you were a guy who, like me and Ray Davies, liked to play a tennis racket before you knew how to play a guitar.
I sure did.
But man, that for me was like the next step was being able to like strum along with a three-chord song.
It felt so exciting to me.
Never, never happened.
And I used to sit and play to ZZ Top and to Lynyrd Skynyrd, both bands that it would not have been hard for me to learn.
I'm talking about tennis racket.
I played great tennis racket to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Wouldn't have been hard to learn those songs never occurred to me.
And so I'm sitting in this room where everybody in it.
Now you're the weirdo.
You're the weirdo in the room.
Just routinely to like relax or whatever.
They just put on their favorite record that they already know all the tunes and they just play along with it.
It's like how they hang.
And I'm like, holy crap, like, nope, never done it.
Never once done it.
And Sean Nelson used to put on his favorite records and go drive and drive around and sing harmonies.
I can see him rocking out to Nielsen Schmielsen.
Oh, yeah.
He would sing.
He'd sing 10-part harmonies.
I can't live.
And I never did that either never saying So when when I sing harmonies on all my records, I just sing I'm doing what he has been doing for years, but I'm doing it for the first time ever Oh, well, what if I sing along with myself except in a different if I come up You do that in one of your two covers I'm aware of one is the top song the other is a They may be giant song.
I like the way you do the harmonies on pet name
Thanks, but it's completely accident.
Yeah, but it's got urgency.
Yes, exactly.
I'm like, um, um, um, because everybody's always looking at me through the glass going, are we seriously sitting here while you learn to do this?
That's a Flansburg song, right?
Yeah.
You know the part that's like kind of the pre-chorus?
Mm-hmm.
Oh, man.
I love the way you do that.
That's on the hat record.
You know, the reason we did that is that because I was friends with them, newly friends with them then...
I was talking to Robin and I was like, what's a, what's a John song?
I'm, I'm doing a cover of they might be giants.
What's a John John song I should do.
And she said this one, he wrote it about me and no one ever plays it.
And like, and it's his secret, it's his secret favorite song.
It's got a really nice feel to it, especially for a Flansburg song.
It's pretty understated and smooth, and I think he really works.
I'd love to hear you do Everyone's Your Friend in New York City.
I bet you could do a good version of that.
Well, so anyway, I would have to sit and figure out how to play it.
But so the challenge for me right now is to say, listen, I know that the impulse here when I put down these chords is to come in and you're all great players and the impulse is to go...
But I don't want that.
What I want is it to be a long winner's record, which has like weird horns on it and, and out of place, you know, like broken pianos.
And it's, you know, there's, it's there, it's orc pop or whatever.
It's orchestral pop.
And whatever a long winners record is, I don't even know.
There's 10 songs that don't sound like each other.
But I am not about to make a country record.
And then everybody nods and they put their hats.
They all take off their cowboy hats they've been wearing.
Or they put their pork pie hat back on and I'm like, I don't even know about the pork pie hat, frankly.
But okay.
Okay.
Um, let's just try this.
So we're working it out.
We're working out.
Everybody knows the long, they're all, they've all played in the band.
They all know the band really well.
Like everybody in Seattle knows all those records, but it's a, it's the head space.
I think of being a really good musician and then working with somebody who every time he sits down at an instrument is like, is this thing on?
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
And they have to kind of get their heads around like, oh, okay, this guy is a professional musician, but he's not a professional musician.
Oh, no, there's a difference.
Yeah, I'm a professional musician, but I'm not professional.
I'm not a professional musician.
I I completely understand the distinction.
Yeah, and so You know I mean like if you want to be cute about it referring to as you were saying the wrecking crew or Muscle Shoals or something like you may not You may not be Steve Cropper, but sometimes you get paid like Steve Cropper, which is not enough You know, I guess what I should say to them is listen, we're making a monkeys record
And you guys are playing on it, and you're going to sound like the Monkees right now.
The Monkees themselves may or may not play on this record.
Oh, man.
One of them really wants to.
I'd love to book that gig.
Right?
Oh, my God.
Can I play Farfisa?
No.
You know, and there are so many guys, so many musicians in my position who, um, if you put any instrument in front of them, they're gifted at it.
Even songwriters are, you know, there are these people, I mean, a lot of them that are just, that are really, Ben Gibbard can make a whole Death Cab record with nobody else there.
And Matthew Cause, all these guys, they're really good.
I'm not bad, but...
But it's all by accident.
You've got to always honor, I don't know if I could say, nobody asked me, but I think it's so valuable to honor your process.
But sometimes you have to discover what the process is now before you can really honor it.
Because part of the process is figuring out the process.
oh you're so right no seriously like don't don't make fun of me you know what i mean right i'm just you're a professional musician you understand when i say you're so right i mean i just was doing that two days ago it's not optional you can't you can't like clap out of that part of the process especially for you where all your songs do have these crazy nooks and crannies and that's kind of what i love about it i can't tell what sound is making that sound sometimes and that's one of my favorite parts so we worked all day on a song a couple of days ago
And at the end of the song we had a song we had it all recorded it had all these parts and I was like This has been really fun you guys and we made a thing we made a beautiful thing, but this is not them
this is not the thing and everybody's like huh and i'm like you know we all waste a day and this was not a wasted day that's not it's absolutely again sorry it's part of the process just because you throw away the first pancake doesn't mean you're always going to skip breakfast that's 100 true merlin you're absolutely right you throw away the first pancake everybody throws away the first pancake but that doesn't mean you're not going to have breakfast
And I think it's, I think because they're all professional musicians, they're used to kind of getting it and getting the first take, but most music is, you listen to it and it's like herpa derp.
Like it, it's, it's, you know, it sounds like it's not a question.
And it's sometimes it's, I mean, like this is a very, a crazy example.
Well, first of all, a, I think if Ben did an album without Chris, Chris would be bummed.
But with that said to, to go to a Chris influence, uh,
Do you know the story about how Robert Fripp played on Heroes?
Do you know the story about how those tracks?
It's kind of interesting.
I don't remember exactly how it happened, but he had come in to play the guitar on Heroes, which is a really terrific and just bewildering part that he plays on there.
I seem to remember that something happened where he wasn't able to hear...
I think the other tracks that he had recorded.
And that's why the guitar comes in at like slightly different points when he does those fuzzy glissandos that like, you know, the main guitar figure, it's almost like a music pad or a bed.
It's like that, you know, that bed of like long held notes, but it was arrived at kind of accidentally, but guys, you don't arrive at that kind of accident unless you got Robert Fripp playing guitar.
Yeah.
It all works together.
Like, did he come in there knowing that that's how it was going to be?
I doubt Tony or Brian or David knew that.
But, you know, he came in and what we have now is something utterly unforgettable because of that particular person on that particular day with that particular process.
They probably had some bleak strategies, too.
Who knows?
I bet they did.
I mean, we tried to do that.
Well, we successfully did it two times on long winter's records.
The first time we got the vibes player from American analog set in the room and we, and this is Chris Walla.
And he said, listen, we're, we're going to tell you the key that the song is in and we're going to give you the drum track, but otherwise you're not going to hear any of the music and you're just going to play the vibes sometimes when you feel like it.
and we did a whole track where he's the other just like curiosity did the other tracks where they just faded out and did they exist at this point oh really oh that must have been so weird well and it is on the first long winner's record
And I'm trying to remember.
I bet I can do this.
You can hear the vibes.
The song kind of stops and starts.
And when it stops and starts, there's like bing bong, you know, vibes kind of ring out.
Anyway, we did it that way.
Is it Nora?
Yeah, is it?
Because Nora's got that loping.
Oh, it does.
It is Nora.
It's got that loping beat that's kind of tentative.
It's Nora.
If you listen to the vibes on there, he couldn't hear the rest of the song.
I've never known that, and I will listen to that as soon as we're done here.
And maybe Chris was signaling, oh, no, no, what it is is the drums drop out.
And Chris was like, when the drums drop out, play.
Oh, geez.
Something like that.
Was there a clip?
Yeah.
The drum track was there so that he could hear the whole drum kit.
The second time was Blanket Hog.
If you listen to the beginning of Blanket Hog, the piano that's on there, he couldn't hear the rest of the track.
He just knew the key and he just played the piano and then we fade into the song.
It kind of sounds like somebody, not warming up exactly, but somebody, I said that again in that word, I don't mean that negatively, but tentatively, it sounds like somebody's kind of like working their way into the song a little bit.
That's what it is, except he couldn't hear the song.
He was just like, and it was a serious fade, like, this track goes down while the rest of the tracks come up, like...
So all of that is part of that, that weird inventive thing that we were trying to do at the time.
Like maybe the secret, like, like the first song on the first record where we, where we cut all the tape up on the kick and the snare and we threw it up in the air and then reassembled it.
Stuff you couldn't.
What's the one before car parts?
And it goes, give me a moment.
Give me a moment.
That's all actual analog tape that we just threw up and put in a basket and taped together.
So now digitally, of course, you would just do that.
You got to tear up the whole console, throw it in the air.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Is this how John Lennon did it?
Actually, it was Paul, and no.
It was Paul, yeah.
And Paul was, yeah.
Oh, we got to run it.
It's a fiddly-doo.
Got to run it around these different.
Oh, it's going all around the room.
Number nine.
Number nine.
But so I don't, and that's the thing also in digital, it's very hard to get into that.
Like, well, we've done, we taped all this back together.
We're not untaping it.
We committed to this idea and it is what we're doing, you know?
And there were things in that where it was like, oh, if we could just only, I was like, nope, you only tape it back together once.
Whoa.
That's pretty good.
Wait, you only tape it back together once.
Yeah, you only tape it.
You don't take it apart and tape it back together twice.
That's not sound.
That's not the game.
So it is a little bit of like now trying to do this without my old band who were...
Mostly professional musicians Eric and and and Nabeel were professional musicians and and partly I mean Eric is a professional musician cuz he the long winners were the path to that He was but they was he was so young
When you guys started, wasn't he?
I mean, like the photos, the first photos I saw of you guys as a band were from the booty shots when people were taking the Pirates booty photos.
I saw a picture of Eric and I was like, oh, that's the bass player from The Long Winters.
My God, he looks so young.
He was young.
He was so much younger than me.
Now he's old mm-hmm, and I'm even older and now I'm even older still But so but I can handle criticism over the last 15 years I have promised a new long winters record enough times that nobody and rightfully so nobody believes me anymore and
the Bumbershoot Festival was like, is Roderick going to release a record this year?
And my booking agent said, well, you know, you know what that means.
And they were like, yeah.
And then, then everybody like hung up the phone and went and talked to other people.
And I was like, so what does that mean?
Are we going to do a show or not?
And they were like, well,
I don't know.
Like, they all feel like they've been burned enough time.
And I appreciate that.
And now here I am on Roderick on the Line saying I got studio time booked.
I know.
Do you feel like you're jinxing it a little?
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
No, because unlike in the past,
I actually have ten songs So it's a question and that was always the problem before.
Yeah, yeah Even if it's songs you hate now at least you have songs to hate Even if it even if even if I go into the studio and and no matter what I can what I would no matter what I try the will of the universe is that I make a country record and
If everything, if I'm like, hey, let's turn on this synth and the synth goes on and then it goes.
I'm like, oh, all right.
Well, that even if that happens, I will have a record.
It'll just be a John sort of roots record, which is not the worst thing.
Uh-uh.
You didn't ask me, but if I was managing this aspect of your career, I have a very specific idea in mind.
What would it look like if you decided that your next thing was going to be a four-song EP?
Well, because I put out Commander Thinks Aloud on an EP, and if it had been on the next Long Winter's record,
That record would have sold 90,000 copies.
I'm talking about in terms of keeping the process moving forward.
If you burn one, if you pinched one off, as we used to say, like, not bad necessarily, but, like, what are your four really good songs?
What's a statement of purpose?
Not to overpressure you here, but, like, what's your statement of purpose for John today?
What does that look like in four songs?
Because, you know, some of my all-time favorite things are four or five song EPs, like, for sure.
I know, but we're old.
Yeah.
Yeah, but people don't... I mean, I can't believe how often.
God, I just posted this on the internet over the weekend.
I had such a good release radar for my taste.
Release radar is a daily... Sorry, weekly.
Every Friday, Spotify suggests a bunch of songs to you based on what you like.
And mine are usually at least half.
I like that there's flyers on there.
I like that there's classical.
This past week, there was like eight songs on there that I really, really loved.
And...
And people consume, people create and consume music so differently.
Of those, because I use it as a music discovery mechanism in the truest sense of like, oh, let me pull this up.
Like, here's a song I really like by this band.
I've never heard of them.
They have four figures of listens on all their songs, which is always writing territory for me.
He's like really obscure bedroom recording people.
And, you know, because power pop, which is one of my primary genres, it's still very much alive.
Power pop has been thriving for years, way under the radar.
But the point is that when I say music discovery, I don't mean just in terms of like, oh, you know, like you get the song, you click through on the song and it's like, oh, it's a single.
Let me check out this one.
Oh, that's a single too.
This is a single.
So many are singles.
There are bands like New Order and Pixies that are just always putting out something, you know, just pushing out stuff all the time.
But do you still, I guess I'm asking, I'm realizing the question I want to ask is, do you feel like the next thing you put out needs to be a full length album?
Do you feel?
Do you feel like you need to put out an album?
Well, so here is my thinking on that.
I have no idea.
You know, like I think if I had 10 songs, I think what I would do is ask around and ask you and ask Nabil and ask Josh and ask all the people.
And here's the church and there's the steeple.
Yeah.
And I think... Look inside.
There used to be people.
I think what I would come up with is all this stuff just gets released one at a time.
Like, every single song is just a single.
You put one out, and then you put another one out, and then you put it out.
You put the whole thing out on vinyl.
Sure worked in the 60s, man.
Yeah, right.
And...
And that's just how people listen to music now.
And I'm not against that.
That sounds reasonable.
I'm just saying, if you've got 10 songs and you think that some of them are pretty promising, not that you'd throw out, but if you pick the four that fit best together on an EP in one way or another, that would be...
That would be what does EP mean in that context?
I mean, how is EP different than how is what is who buys the EP?
Nobody they just well, I don't know much about who buys anything anymore But I'm saying in terms of like a re-entry into what the ecosystem is today not in 1978 Like that that's what you're stepping into but I mean two off the dome chronic town.
I this is a high bar chronic town and um watery domestic by pavement like
watery domestic by pavement is one of those rare records where so like i do this thing called um pretty maids which is a playlist of songs where i think two or more songs on an album go really well together you know it could be you know it could be that there's a continuation between the songs something like a we will rock you we are the champions thing but i think watery domestic is the only one where every track from the ep you i think you have to listen to that like all the way through and i kind of feel that way about chronic town but talk about a statement of
Every citizen.
Every citizen should have to listen to it all the way through.
Like every American.
Out of obligation.
Out of patriotism, really.
Out of patriotism.
Gary Young's best work was on lottery domestic.
Well, so anyway, I feel like there's a lot of schools.
There's a lot of schools.
And all I can do... This was part of the thing that inhibits me is that as soon as I start thinking about how I'm going to release stuff...
Then I start getting, I don't know if you know about ADHD because you have a different kind than I do.
We have, we have, we received the same treatment for the same disease.
And also we experienced all the same things for 30 years.
So I feel comfortable saying we.
40, 50 years?
Whatever it takes.
Whatever it takes.
But, you know, as soon as somebody's like, how are we going to release this?
I'm right into it.
My head just goes spiraling off.
And I'm like, how do I release it?
But, you know, we benefit from, in some ways, we benefit from constraints.
That's all I can do now to talk about this.
So I'm going to talk about this briefly.
And I'm sure...
I feel positive that I've pitched you on this and probably made you watch this at least twice.
But, of course, yet again yesterday, I watched the one-hour documentary called Born Fighters, and it's basically rock pile, in the studio in 1978, recording a Dave Edmonds album and a Nick Lowe album at the same time.
Oh, I know this.
I know this video.
Well, it's got the famous Albert Lee scene in it, but there's so much to love about it.
Like, if you need a reason to watch it, people, it's got cool and somewhat surprising cameos.
Like, who's in the studio today?
Oh, it's Graham Parker.
That's cool.
He's a guy in Stiff as well.
And who's that?
Oh, that's Phil Lennon, the singer and bass player from Thin Lizzy.
That's kind of cool.
Who's that?
Who's that guy?
Wait a minute.
I know.
Who is that?
Oh, that's Huey Lewis.
Yeah.
Whose band Clover had just been Elvis Costello's backup band on his first album.
So before the attractions, when it was just Elvis Costello, the one with My Name is True, that's his band from Northern California.
And I think, in fact, Huey Lewis, in those sessions probably, there's a Dave Edmonds song.
Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.
The Dave Edmonds song goes like this.
There's only one or two like that.
But he plays... I think it might be Bad is Bad.
He plays... He plays Cool is the Rule, but sometimes Bad is Bad.
I think he plays Harmonica on that.
And then later covered it, I think.
But anyways, I'm watching that movie, man.
It's just... There's so much I get every time I watch that.
Stuff like...
just the weird relationship between Dave Edmonds and who I think is on the spectrum probably, and Nick Lowe, who is, you know, his nickname's Basher, because he always, bash it out, just bash it out, just get it down, da-da-da-da-da-da, keep moving, moving, moving.
He's incredibly overworked.
You know, this is back when he was producing Everybody, like back when he was producing The Damned, and, you know, and all these other bands, and like he's just exhausted, pouring huge glasses of some kind of like a German wine that he's drinking the whole time, and
But like just seeing them in the studio and going like, okay, two guys with a guitar, two guys with two guitars.
And so like, let me show you how to play sweet little Lisa, or let me show you how to play born fighter or whatever.
And then you get to see, and it's only like a one hour documentary, but it always makes me, it makes me happy.
It makes, it's not just that it makes me happy.
It just makes me appreciate how human it is to be in the studio with other people.
maybe you could get billy bremner i assume he's still alive billy bremner man he's a secret weapon in that band actually they're all secret weapons terry williams is a secret weapon too but i don't know there's something um on the one hand i guess i am kind of just gently saying well you got to think about like what what the world wants or needs or like what the you know what i mean like yeah you can't think you can't act like casablanca records is just going to put out four solo albums and it'll go great and
Surprise, it didn't go great.
I did get the Ace Frehley one, you know, the one that had New York Groove on it.
I like that one.
Well, I remember those.
That's because they were in cutout for 41 years.
I had already transitioned to being a Queen fan, and I wasn't going to buy these records after that.
Yeah, you did.
She keeps her more in Shondon and a pretty cabinet.
I was at a music store the other day talking to a very, very, very Gen Z musician that I know and really like.
Just the sweetest guy.
And he was like, you know, I'm really into Nick Lowe.
And I was like, wait a minute, you are?
He's 25.
And he was like, oh, yeah, and Elvis Costello and Dave Edmonds.
I was like, how are you even aware of those bands?
Yeah, where do you discover a band like that now?
And he's a music person, and he loves music.
And so we sat and had this talk about...
those guys and he was talking to me like as somebody who had just discovered that music i love that we meet somebody yeah that's that's the world now that's his new world yeah yeah and none of his friends had ever heard of those bands and as far as he could tell like they were completely forgotten nobody left on earth knew about them and he was so pleased that i had heard of them
And I was like, yeah, yeah.
Some of the best songs.
And he was like, I know, but like, so psyched and like, and he's somebody that obviously plays along with his favorite records.
So he knew every note from the factory.
And I said, no, I've never played along with those.
That would be cool.
Maybe step zero, play along with the record just so you can say you have.
Any record.
Just running with the devil.
It doesn't matter.
I can do it.
Did you ever see us play running with the devil?
Nope.
Longwinters did it for a while.
Did you find the simple life not so simple?
I have always felt that.
But you know what's funny is there's a internet video of a dude now sitting there with his guitar and he's like, here's the secret to running with the devil.
And I was like, there's a secret?
And he said, Eddie Van Halen tuned his B string
Like three bleeps flat.
Okay.
And he, then he goes, he plays it.
Probably drops it to at least an, at least an A. No, no, he doesn't tune it all the way down.
He tunes it just bleeps down.
It's between a B and an A. The rest of the guitar is perfectly in tune.
He tunes it just four little bleeps.
And so the guy says, here's running with the devil with the guitar in tune.
And he plays it and you're like, yeah, that's running with the devil.
And then he takes the, he takes the B string and he goes, just like, just flat, just slightly flat.
And then he plays it again.
And you're like, Oh my God, it's running with the devil.
It's like completely a different.
And you know, when I did it, I tuned it.
I tuned the guitar to as tuned as I ever get a guitar and
And maybe because it was me tuning the guitar.
Maybe I played it, you know properly flat but I'd heard that before that Eddie figured out That's so weird.
He had so many weird because remember the early days in the early early early days It was that he like when he so there's that fun.
There's a really good interview shooting hoops with that guy who's had the first ever
like big interview with Eddie Van Halen he's like nobody ever wants to interview me and he interviewed him but then the buzz for a while around the first record was how he would play like with his back turned and he didn't want people to know what his tricks were like stuff he'd done with his obviously with his effects chain but also with the amp itself he had all these like little tricks and I guess that's just another one
Well, it's like tempering a piano.
You know, if a piano player or a piano tuner tunes the piano so that every note is in tune, the piano sounds like shit.
Do you notice the difference?
What's it called?
What's the word for that?
Um...
Not concert tuning, but you know what I mean?
There's all this stuff of if you're going to play Bach, do you play Bach on a guitar or do you play it on a lute?
And if you play it on a lute, what kind of lute is it?
Well-tempered clavier was his... But that was a new way of tuning, right?
That much I'm not 100% sure.
But I don't know that much.
Because there's so much overtone on a piano.
Yeah.
And, and stuff, I mean, something that's way up in a high octave and something that's way down in a low octave for them to occupy the same space.
They need to be, they need to be collaborating with each other in a way that's different from being perfectly in tune.
I, frankly, I don't understand.
But when I honestly don't I I mean I'm sure if I did a pepsi challenge I could eventually notice the difference but when I listen to stuff that is on period instruments You know in the old-timey tuning I don't I don't I can't really tell what the difference is but I'm the same way I'm a guitar player man.
I don't know shit about shit.
I don't shit about dick
If I get confused, I just step on the distortion pedal, and then I let God figure it out.
And you do a big dive bomb.
And then I forget what the next chord is, and everybody goes, aw.
He's sweet.
He's a professional musician, but he's not a professional musician.
No, no, no, no.
He's not that professional.
Yeah, right.
And that's the hardest part.
It's the hardest part, is to say to people, listen, whatever it is that I'm doing,
Whether or not you think it's wrong, I'm still here 35 years later.
And a lot of guys, most of the people that aren't still here were better than me.
And they're working somewhere.
They're working for a real estate agency now.
And they're still better than me.
but I'm still here and I don't know why either, but you know, we're all still here.
And so I'm one of the ones that is a professional musician.
And you gotta, you gotta allow for that.
You can't be like, John, that's not how we do it.
Or you can't say like, well, that's not music because I'm still here.
And, uh, and there's a reason I don't know.
I don't, you know, beats me because I remember my whole music career.
I stood on the side of the stage and said, wow, I couldn't do that.
And I want to, like, I really admire that.
That's amazing.
And I would go and I would try and do it, and I'd be like, mm, that's gonna take too long to figure out.
That's like close-up magic.
You know, I would love to do close-up magic, but what I can't do, yeah, I can't sit at a table and shuffle a deck of cards.
I'd like to be a person who does magic.
I'd like to be a person who's able to do magic, but I have no interest in becoming a person who can do magic.
And it's absolutely exactly the same with being a musician.
It's like, oh, I would love so much to be able to do that.
But all the, all the doing it, I would have to do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In order to, in order to do that, you have to do a lot.
And you know, you and I have been doing something this whole time.
We've been doing something, you know, we've put in our 10,000 hours cause we were here the whole time.
Right.
And we were doing something.
You were, you were making Wilbur forces and I was, I don't know what I was doing.
Actually, I wasn't doing anything.
I was looking out the window, but that's a thing.
I'm an expert at that.
So I don't know.
But anyway, the record's going to get made and it's going to sound like a guy that's been looking out the window for 10,000 hours.
Okay.
And so buy the EP where records are sold.
Yes.
Can they pre-order it now, John?
What I want you to do is dial 1-800-LONG WINTERS-RECORD.
Okay.
Boy, wouldn't it be amazing if that worked?
I wonder what happens if you dial 1-800-Longwinner's record.
I think it's longer than a phone number.
You'd still be dialing after the thing.
It might go to a modem.
You're not a fax.
Oh, is that fax sound?
Oh, I mean, they're, you know, modem schmodem, you know.
Oh, I see.
On the other end, it's saying you're not a fax.
No, I'm lost at this point.
I don't know.
I'm looking at this picture myself.
Yeah, I learned a, when did I learn this?
I learned, I finally learned an open tuning for a Joni Mitchell song.
That was March 8th.
Yeah, but I'm still out there playing along.
Yeah, you learned it in order to play a benefit show?
Sure.
I'm always getting invited to benefit shows.
I'm playing two benefit shows this spring.
One of them is like a benefit for the children.
And one of them is a big, big ceremony that we're having for a guy who died, but who was instrumental in the scene.
And for one of the songs I think I'm playing...
it's one of them i'm doing three fleetwood mac songs and one of them i'm doing like uh i don't know born to run something like that and i'm gonna do what i have always done which is wait until the night before and then go oh god i don't know these just stand near the bass bass player and watch what their fingers are doing yeah stand near the bass player but the bass player's always playing you know so i tune i turn the guitar off and then i look like i'm playing
Oh, absolutely.
Because there are going to be nine great musicians.
You ever listen to Paul's isolated track for something?
It is, if I may say, really something.
As a song that we've all heard a lot, especially those of us with ADHD, a song that we've heard a lot, listening to just the isolated track, there are, I have to admit, a few times where I'm like, now wait, which part of the song?
Boo-dee-boo, boo-dee-doo.
there's there's a thing he does at the end well first was that jaunty little like bridge you know you're asking me will my love grow i don't know i don't know and he plays this and then at the end it just gets completely anarchic i just wanted to recommend to the listeners out there not to john who doesn't need the help but for other people out there um it'd be a nice hour away from from the way the world is for you to see how they recorded an album in 1978 makes me happy
And you get to hear, you get to see poor, sweet.
I used to think it was envy.
I used to think, okay, you know, we've watched Love Minus Zero with Donovan watching Dylan play.
Yeah, right.
There's a famous one where he just looks like he's about to bite his lip off.
Yeah, he's going to die.
There's kind of a, at first I thought it was a similar thing with Dave Edmonds.
Ione Skye's dad, you know.
Ione Skye's dad.
She just had a book.
Yeah, she did.
And she tied you up in a music video.
yes she did and she was on nabeel's podcast where they were talking about not really knowing their very famous dads uh does anybody really know their father no other man died of cancer and he wasn't a rocket scientist when he was alive it's for you sean you know this has gone all the way back to some of the earliest roderick on the lines where we would call each other and you would yell at me about the beatles
yeah i did used to do that yeah i did used to do that didn't i just like have you heard and i would say yes i have and you're like no no no but have you heard part of it is i think i'm full finally finally fully out i like them all but paul's my favorite and i think i'm finally getting more okay with saying that wow that's bold i mean you know in our culture i know say that it's easy you're supposed to say john but like something you know i say i say george and sidestep the whole thing
Boy, I just revisited a video performance.
Well, revisited.
I've watched it so many times.
It's from something that purports to be the, quote, 30th anniversary, some Bob Dylan thing.
It looks like it's from the late 90s, maybe.
And the thing that it will... When they were all 45.
Well, yeah.
And it's basically, it's My Back Pages, an early Dylan song with...
Roger McGuinn, it's in the arrangement the Byrds did, starts out with Roger McGuinn, goes to Tom Petty, goes to Neil Young, goes to George Harrison, goes to Eric Clapton.
Eric Clapton, who at this point was still really good and had learned a lot about how to be a good guitar player.
And it's stunning.
It's such a beautiful song.
And like...
I don't know.
I just, I like music, John.
It's not like cool.
You've got all these professional musicians up there.
They're being professional.
And you've got Donald Duck Dunn, and you've got Steve Cropper up there.
That's it.
That's it.
It's the Blues Brothers Band.
Pretty much.
And then you've got some, as always, you've got kind of some... It's Murph and the Magic Tones.
Murph.
Without your Ford Fried Chickens.
Without your dry white toast.
How much for the little girl?
The women!
The women!
The women!
How much for the women?
And who's their waiter?
Oh, it's, uh, oh, what?
Oh, it's Pee Wee Herman.
Pee Wee Herman is their waiter.
Their snooty waiter.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh, but he's not the wrong glass, sir.
That's a different guy.
No, that's him.
Is that, is that?
And then, and then, and then Belushi, wonderful cuts.
Then Belushi holds up the glass and just kind of shakes it at him.
Just like, fill this up.
Fill it.
The days.
You better think, you better think about what you're trying to do to me.
That was actually my introduction to so much of that music.
I had no... Oh, me too.
It actually accomplished what they were trying to do, which was get a bunch of people to listen to Cab Cowell.
Or listen to Stax Volt or whatever.
Listen to some Tamela Motown stuff you'd never heard.
Really good.
Yeah, music is really good, you guys.
Don't sleep on music.
I've heard of it.
I've heard of it.
Yeah.
I sent you a picture of me covering Johnny Mitchell.
What else did we have here?
Okay, so you've got music.
Was there anything else to cover this week?
I got music!
I got the music in me!
I do have the music in me.
Yeah, you do.
Finally.
I mean, I think a lot of this is end of pandemic stuff, where I looked around, as we all did at the end of the pandemic, and I said...
What am I here for?
I'm an old gold tooth and that's the truth.
I live in the mouth of my homie.
Bob Odenkirk really spoke for all of us in 1997 when he said, I'm an old gold tooth, and that's the truth.
Yep.
Yep.
He did terrible British accents, and over time, I learned to appreciate that that was the bit.
That was the bit.
And the singing.
The bad singing is also part of the point.
It's all the bit.
The laser beam of love.
But you need to explain to me... Yes.
You need to explain to me...
Better Call Saul, because I tried to watch the first season of it, and I was just like, ho-hum.
I was ho-hum.
I couldn't get past the first season.
You want me to pitch you on it?
Yeah, yeah.
Give me the pitch.
Why the heck would I watch this show?
Did you watch Slash Enjoy Breaking Bad?
I loved Breaking Bad.
I thought it was really good.
But that made me feel like Better Call Saul was, like, boring.
Yeah, I mean, like, Phyllis was good.
Rhoda was good.
But they weren't as good as the Mary Tyler Moore show.
Right, right, right, right, right.
Is that it?
Is Breaking Bad?
Because everybody talks about it like one of the legendary television shows.
I'm like, is it just not as good as Breaking Bad?
Given that this is a recommendation, the last thing I would want to do is oversell it.
But it's in my pantheon.
It's different from Breaking Bad.
Because you might remember, one might remember hearing, oh, you know that show Breaking Bad everybody likes.
They're going to do a spinoff.
Who's that wonderful guy?
Is it?
No, that's the guy from Mad Men.
Who's the guy?
Vince Gilligan.
They're going to do a spinoff of Breaking Bad.
And it's about a character that you probably wouldn't expect.
Oh, is it about Mike Garmentrout?
Kind of.
Kind of.
I mean, he's definitely a big deal in that show.
Oh, is it about, you know, you know, Nacho?
He's not your friend, is that what I like to say?
But you're like, no, it's Bob Odenkirk's comic relief character, Saul Goodman.
Oh, because that's how we find out how he got the name.
Saul Goodman.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
I didn't know that.
That's hilarious, Saul Goodman.
Oh.
You know, what I can do is I can say, if I remember how it starts, because I think every season starts the same way, in the same place, roughly the same event.
It's like that movie 1917 or whatever?
Yeah, like it's a one-er.
No, but like if you were to find out that for whatever reason, wait a minute, why is Bob Odenkirk like the assistant manager of a Cinnabon?
And why is this in black and white?
Well, you'll find out.
I can definitely recommend at least watch the first one and see what you think.
Has Ari not seen it?
That seems like something she'd have seen.
It does.
It does.
And I don't know.
I started to, she was like, oh, let's watch this thing with the girl.
And I was like, oh, but a different thing.
And I tried to watch it last night and I was like, this is annoying me.
What was it?
Do you remember?
Something with a girl?
It had Sacha Baron Cohen in it as a really annoying husband.
And it had... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, yes, yes.
I saw this.
Not Eowyn.
It had... What is it?
I've seen it, too.
It's a pretty small role, right?
Small role, but he's really... But the whole show, every single person was driving me crazy.
And it was one of those shows where it was like, well, I just watched an hour of a thing where I didn't like anybody, and why would I watch a second hour?
I would love to recommend TV to you if you're ever interested.
Because I feel like I can, you know, I feel like I could get...
I have some ideas for things that will please both of you, if you're doing TV together.
At the end of the pandemic, one of the end of the pandemic realities or truths was I could no longer, for the foreseeable future, I could no longer say that I didn't watch TV or make any kind of fuss about TV because I was just gonna watch it.
I never noticed the exact day you dropped that bit, but I did notice you dropped that bit.
Yeah.
What can I say?
For like eight or ten years on this show, part of the John Roderick character was that he doesn't even own a TV.
He doesn't look at newspapers.
He just doesn't know things.
Yeah.
Well, and I still don't own a TV.
A man out of time, if you like.
I guess there's one in the basement, and I guess I own it because it's there, but it's not plugged in.
You roll it out for like when a Kennedy's killed or something.
I go to, that's right, I roll it out on a portable.
Father would let us watch political assassination coverage and then it went right back into the basement.
We keep our television in the root cellar where it belongs.
They're launching a space shuttle.
Oh no.
Oh no.
Everybody back to class.
Yeah.
Um, so yeah, so now I watch TV and, uh, and so it matters, I guess it matters whether the TV is good.
I certainly, it matters to me.
I don't have that many ways to help people, you know, but I, at least if I can say, well, if you, if you don't categorically hate my weird taste in, uh, in culture, you know,
No, all I want from you is take TV recommendations now.
I mean, not all I want from you.
I want you to keep showing up on Monday.
I would be more than happy.
I can do some right off the dome, but yeah.
Also music, you know.
Yeah, music.
Well, that's another thing I don't listen to, and nobody makes me.
See, that's smart.
That's smart.
Yeah.
You know who you are.
I don't have to get upset by it.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, music is very upsetting if I don't... You're surrounded by people who listen to music.
Who needs another one of those?
They're all around me, and if every once in a while somebody will say, like, no, you actually have to listen to this, and then I go, okay, fine, I'll listen to it.
Let me ask a question.
It's almost always good.
These are somewhat personal questions by necessity, but...
If you and your daughter's mother are going to tuck into a show, are you potentially open to the idea of what I call a no phones show?
Well, all, all shows are no phone shows for you.
Yes.
Could, could your daughter's mother pull off 50 minutes or 60 minutes with no, no phone.
I mean, she will just fall asleep.
That's what happens with her.
She falls asleep in the first 10 minutes.
And then at the end, she wakes up right at the end of every show.
And she goes, what happened?
That's what happened with the show that I'm about to recommend to you.
What happened?
And the most avowedly no phones show of the last few years.
Well, happily, I got Madeline excited about it.
We watched it, but she did fall asleep watching it twice.
And at one point she said, yeah, I woke up in episode three because I heard his outburst.
And I'm like, oh, honey, this is no way to live.
You've got to give this show.
The show I'm recommending is Adolescence, and it's very painful, but you should watch it because it's special.
Adolescence.
Adolescence.
It's on, I think, Netflix or HBO.
I don't know where anything is anymore.
Don't learn anything about it, but it's on Netflix.
It's not a show where children are harmed.
Yep.
Oh, it is.
Well, you know, I get very upset when children are harmed now.
Yeah, I'm like that with animals.
I would have, you know, back in the day, I would have watched a show where they were just throwing children off a cliff all day and I would have been... It's called Law and Order SVU.
I would have been like, that's fine, that's fine.
Who keeps throwing the cliff children?
Every time you have a children, and then a children comes on the show, and they're like, oh, what we're going to do to make this show interesting is kill this child.
So the idea of something happening with your 13-year-old child that upends everyone's life might be a bit much for you?
It definitely is.
Okay, all right.
I'm going to put that on the maybe pile.
Okay, all right.
But you got stuff to do.
You got music to do.
I don't want to be here just stuffing ideas down your throat.
Right, where you're like, oh, no, here's what you need.
I think Better Call Saul.
The other thing about Better Call Saul is they're both really good shows.
They're different shows.
Better Call Saul has some moments...
especially in some of their cold opens, that are really great art.
The team that makes those shows is a really thoughtful group.
And I think you'd like it.
And there's also just a lot of good characters.
And yes, Mike Ehrman Trout is back.
yes good because you know like no spoilers but you know he didn't make it to the end of the other one oh right he dies he dies oh they all die yeah yeah you know you know that that character uh the character of the of the chemist that becomes like a crazy oh the guy who's like an asshole is like a jealous asshole he that character was written for hodgman
Wait, the guy in the lab?
In the lab.
Oh, yeah.
Who plays him?
The one dude.
Yeah, the one guy.
Better.
Wait, no.
This is Breaking Bad.
Breaking Bad.
Laundromat Chemist.
Laundromat Chemist.
How much do you love Gus Fring?
Isn't that guy great?
Oh, he's one of the great characters.
Oh, this guy.
Dale Boat.
He always plays a dad.
Yeah, Dale Bowman.
Think of it.
Boat.
Boat.
Boat.
Boat.
Sure.
Think of anybody who plays a dad.
It's this guy.
Dale Bodichur.
So that role was offered to Hodgman, but it was before Breaking Bad had come out.
And he was like, I don't want to be in LA.
He was trying to do that thing where he was like, I'm kind of a big deal.
I bet at a certain point he had to really keep an eye on typecasting.
you know, or, you know, sort of the stereotypical casting of him as the, like, as the one episode dork.
Yeah.
But the problem with that is that, yeah, he did keep an eye on it.
And now he's got, now he has to keep an eye on no casting.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's the thing about typecasting.
It's like, well, do you want to be typecast or do you want to be no cast, cast in nothing?
Because that's, that's your job, right?
I watched an interview.
You can't get Eddie Deason for everything.
I watched an interview with Jason Alexander and,
where he was like, you know, in college I was completely devoted to theater and I was going to be an actor.
He was in a catastrophically failed Sondheim play.
And he said he had an acting teacher who was like, listen, I know that Hamlet is in you.
I know that you are the Dane and that is your future.
But here's the problem.
Jason Alexander.
You will never be cast as Hamlet.
And he and Jason Alexander was like, and you know, he had a Hamlet beard at the time.
And he was like, what do you mean?
And the acting teacher was like, look at yourself.
You're never going to play him.
But they never would have done those awesome McDLT ads.
Yeah.
So the guy said, learn who you are.
Know who you are.
Sing it, sister.
I totally agree.
And this was what was happening with Hodgman, too.
It was like, know who you are.
You're not ever going to play the Dane.
And that is hard for people.
It's still, it's hard for me.
Like, like I, uh, understanding like, oh, I see if there's any word, if there's any way you could describe me as handsome, it would be roughly handsome.
As in approximately?
Yeah, approximately or like handsome if you put him in the dryer and then read the tag and went, oh, it wasn't supposed to go in the dryer.
Oh, no, I treated him like a precious sweater.
I treated him like a dirty sheet instead of a precious jumper.
Instead of a precious jumper.
Yes.
You know, I'd like to see Hodgman play Othello.
Is that something you think he'd do?
Would he black up?
I don't know.
Coward!
You know, actually, in Trump's America, I like it.
Maybe he'd get those Apple ads back.
Don't do the voice, John.
Just Hodgman.
Please don't do the voice.
Wouldn't that be marvelous if that was so retro that it was like, oh, you know what we're going to do?
I'm kind of surprised that it's never.
I mean, it probably get those two guys together for something.
Because I think Justin Long went over to the other side at some point and was doing like.
He did.
But the two of them together, there's all kinds of ways it could be really funny to have those two together.
Yeah.
66 ads.
That's a lot of ads.
Except, you know, more and more, I'm reading these things where somebody's like, oh my God, can you imagine?
Nobody remembers this, but do you remember that thing that happened in 2011?
And it's like, everybody remembers that, but the person that's saying it is 25.
Are you talking about like saying something controversial?
No, no.
I'm just saying about some pop culture thing where it's like, do you remember the strokes, man?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, one of the bands in my release radar is clearly very indebted to The Strokes.
Yeah.
Oh, you know what it was?
I'll send you one of mine.
Go ahead.
It was one of those, like, where you hate it, where you go, oh, yeah, Traveling Wilburys were all 45.
But somebody said, remember the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour in 1989?
Yeah.
It was going to be one of their very last ones.
Very last ones.
And everybody was calling it the Steel Wheelchairs Tour because they were so old.
Yeah.
And they were all 46.
I've seen excerpts from over the years of various interviews with Mick.
Above all, let's remember Mick went to business school.
He did not go to art school.
He is above all a businessman.
And I respect that.
But there's times where he was like, look, you know, hey, I don't want to be out there singing Jumpin' Jack Flash when I'm 30 years old.
Right.
Right.
Well, yeah.
Well, yeah.
Well, what if it was a lot longer than that?
Would that be okay?
And looking at that Steel Wills post, I then went and discovered that Connor Oberst is 46 years old.
Whoa.
Wait, what's his?
He's Oklahoma.
What's his name?
He's...
uh bright eyes bright eyes there you go yeah right is he one of those oklahoma guys isn't he like uh yeah it's omaha omaha yeah yeah yeah which is not in oklahoma but it might as well be am i right all our oklahoma or all our uh all well first of all all our omaha listeners are right now uh they're getting hey i was a big fan of wild kingdom as a kid so mutual of omaha the mutual of omaha it was they sold insurance
You know, yeah, they did.
Yeah, they did and they put on a wonderful television show as you Marlon Perkins the guy's name was people thought that was my name because of the Snap to get grid problem of my name not sounding like a normal name.
They thought my name was Marlon Marlon Have I you know my game fish my phone?
It what is it spell checks you to Melren
Yeah melt.
Oh, oh I had to add that as an oopsie-doopsie in my keyboard settings I had to make Melren turn into Merlin because I typed it so much and you've probably done that too.
What the hell is a Melren?
Oh, you're saying I just mistype it.
Well, I don't know Maybe you've the thing is learn it from watching you dad you type enough Melren and pretty soon.
That's who I am.
That's me now.
I'm Melren, right?
It's a It's a I actually spelled a L R I N
L-R-I-N, yeah.
Nolan.
We're kind of at the end of our rope, aren't we?
Are you going to go do this?
Are you going to get in there with these, you get your Carol K's, Carol's K, you get your, there's a drummer guy who was always mad about not making enough money.
Hal Blaine.
Hal Blaine.
Yeah, I'm gonna get all the help and I'm gonna get them and I'm gonna keep playing God only knows fire hat.
You should start doing that I said listen, there's no band on this John John was a kitty litter on the floor There's 40 people on this recording and there's not a band.
It doesn't sound like a band There's no band you put them on those rosers with rollers and you can just say the horn section goes here now
The horn section goes here.
Yeah, you could do that.
It's your studio time.
Ten songs.
The drummer doesn't play the cymbals.
We're taking all the cymbals away, and we're going to go, ha, ha, ha, ha.
And then people are going to go, this is amazing.
Or they're going to say, goddammit, what the hell is this?
Click, and they're going to fast forward to the next thing.
Or Dennis will say, where's my cocaine?
He loved his cocaine.
Well, yeah, but I don't allow cocaine in the studio anymore.
I mean, it's not like I allow or don't allow.
Did you have to actually draw a line, so to speak?
Sorry.
Draw a line.
There's a joke there somewhere.
God, where's my bell?
Oh, no.
I don't know where my bell is either, but give yourself a little bump.
Is that what you're thinking?
Yeah, a little bump.
Did you ever read that biography that he co-authored with Dr. Eugene Landy?
Wouldn't it be nice to ever read that?
You're talking about Brian?
No, no, no.
I'm talking about Brian.
Brian's got some good, because he's with that creepy Dr. Eugene Landy.
Yeah, no, I don't want to know anymore.
No, he lost a lot of weight, but he does have some anecdotes about him and Dennis, you know, crawling around on the floor trying to find cocaine.
I've known a lot.
Well, I've done that.
Have you?
Yeah, back in the crack times.
You and Bart?
No, not Bart, but the crack.
The thing about crack.