Ep. 576: "The Lightest Possible Acquaintment"
Hello?
Hello?
Hello?
Hi, John.
I'm Merlin.
How's it going?
Hey, how's it going?
Oh, you know.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, you know, you know.
Yeah.
See you next week on Roderick on the Line.
I mean, the Pope died.
Oh, geez.
Here come the headlines.
You know, and spring break is over.
There's a lot happening.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, sometimes a lot ending is a lot happening.
Whoa.
Okay.
All right.
Run with that.
Okay.
I just pulled that out of my ass.
How does that make you feel?
Well, do you have a doll that I could show you on?
Yes, but it's a Wilberforce.
Can you show me on the Wilberforce where the Pope hurt you?
Oh, no.
See?
Look, look.
No.
You've got to have somebody running that operation.
And you could do a lot worse than that guy.
That's a billion people.
That's over a billion people, and they're always going to ask the same question, and they're sick of it.
Yes, we know.
No, I didn't.
No, I didn't.
No, I didn't.
No, I didn't transfer him.
No, I didn't do it.
No, I didn't.
I think it's natural to see... Well, obviously, there are the endings of some things.
You can think about things like funerals and graduations and whatnot like that.
I mean, obviously, that's kind of what we're dealing with here.
But sometimes the fresh absence of something can be a little jarring in a way that's kind of hard to put your finger on.
Yeah, but new beginnings, man.
New beginnings.
Am I right?
New beginnings.
I suppose...
We were just there.
We stood in front of the Vatican.
What am I forgetting?
What's the line I'm thinking of?
Oh, you know what I'm thinking of?
I'm thinking of that wonderful song, Closing Time.
Closing Time.
Which is about becoming a parent, which you probably know because it's my second favorite episode of Song Exploder after yours.
Closing Time is?
It's really good.
First of all, they had two songs that utterly banged at the time.
They had that song and then they had that other one.
Yeah.
But I think the line, and I'm sorry, I wasn't not listening to you.
No, no, I understand.
I'm not new here.
It's not your first day.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings and...
Oh, that's nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's about becoming a parent.
Spoiler alert.
Yeah.
You know, I know one of those guys.
Oh, the guy who main writer guy sounded really amiable.
well and it's not even uh dan wilson that i know it's john munson the bass player wilson munson because john munson was a frequent collaborator of john moe who was a seattle a radio guy who uh the history of the press the depression show
Yeah, he was briefly very funny on Twitter.
He was very funny.
I'm very, very, very lightly acquainted with him.
The lightest possible equipment, equipment possible.
Acquaintment.
Yeah, he was a DJ here in Seattle, and he often asked me into his show on the public radio station.
He was a very good, he really boosted me in the early days.
And then he went to Minneapolis-St.
Paul, where the public radio, as you know, is a big operation.
That's like moving to Chicago for the corruption.
Well, sure.
I mean, if you're really playing the bigs.
He was playing the bigs.
And then he had a show in the old Prairie Home Companion room.
and he invited hodgman all the time because hodgman was right up you know just like a pitch right up the center for that audience and he invited me a couple of times as a hodgman sidekick and i knew him for you know john mo for years yeah and i was like hey john mo why not invite me on the show as a you know as a guy as a me
Because you got Paul F. Tompkins on there.
The usual suspects, we say.
Yeah.
I'm not, you know, let's be honest.
I'm no Paul F. Tompkins.
But, you know, I'm not on here as a sidekick.
You and I, we know each other.
And he said, I would, but I'm powerless.
Because the powers that be...
And I was like, the powers that be.
Wait, that's not a complete sentence.
Well, you know, the powers that be, et cetera, et cetera, feel like you are not headliner material.
Oh, I, yeah, yeah.
But if you, you know.
But you have Reggie Watts.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And hey, I'm the first to tell you, I'm no Reggie Watts.
He might get a full panel.
He could call him a lawyer.
Reggie Watts.
John Hodgman.
Paul F. Tompkins.
It's the last one that kills you, and I'm really sorry to even have to say it.
The great Bruce Valanche.
That's the whole couch.
Come on.
Come on.
He's funny as hell.
He's great, but I don't look anything like him.
I wish Chuck Klosterman and Thurston Moore
and flee and i could do this all day i enjoy all of them i wish well i mean chuck kosterman can be very amusing especially when he's doing a parody but they should be in about a third as many documentaries as they're in oh boy whereas bruce valanche he's in the documentary about the because you know he he was one of the writers on the star wars holiday special
I did not know that.
He was one of the writers on your probably, your and my probably.
Did he write the Kiss special too?
You remember Kiss's Night at the Opera.
Are you fucking with me?
No.
He co-wrote the Paul Lynn Halloween special that the Kiss was on.
Oh my God.
God.
Yeah.
He wrote for Witchy Poo and Martin Hamilton.
He was right in the moment.
He can't even imagine how much cocaine he's seen.
He's had more cocaine than you've had.
Well, he's probably had a fair amount of hot meals.
Give me that.
God damn it.
That's not funny.
The Pope died, man.
Yeah, the Pope did die.
That's conclave.
On the Pope's death day, you're going to make a joke that bad, that bad.
Well, we shouldn't have sent the vice president over there.
You know what else John Moe did?
You like the TV show Adventure Time, right?
Adventure Time.
He co-hosted a podcast.
Adventure Time.
Adventure time.
Come on, get your pants.
Get your pants.
Gonna do our special dance.
There's a company now called BMO, and I like the ads.
I heard that BMO is in a new show where she plays basically BMO, except live.
Live BMO.
Live BMO?
No, some other.
Maybe it's a cartoon, but it's a different BMO, but it's a different BMO.
Well, did you ever see the one where they go to the Moe factory?
Well, I saw them all.
Okay.
Well, you should listen to this podcast.
Another person whom I came extremely lightly acquainted with, Open Mike Eagle, who's a very, very amusing guy.
They did a wonderful podcast together called Conversation Parade.
He's very funny.
I did several shows with him.
It's an Adventure Time podcast.
Oh, see.
But it's two grown smart guys talking about Adventure Time, and they have guests, and it's delightful.
I know you love Adventure Time.
Yeah.
I haven't watched it recently, but it has a place in my pantheon for sure.
Yeah, my sister doesn't like it because it's too close to... I do not play such games with Jake.
It's too close to being on acid for her.
For the little one?
Susan she's like why would I watch a show that was like the worst acid I ever took and I'm like look man Okay, well then you've had some pretty good acid friend just fly along, you know like there's a lot of stuff on That's much more trippy than me.
Yeah, I met Pendleton Ward one time at the Chateau Marmont.
He looks a little bit like Bruce Valanche
He does.
He's not very tall and he's very shy and kind of awkward to talk to, but a delightful person.
And the problem was like so many of these things in my show business career.
When I met him, I'd never had an inkling about Adventure Time.
I was like, oh yeah, how's it going?
What's your story?
And you know, again, Hodgman.
Standing next to him was like, this is the guy from Adventure Time.
And I was like, hey, that's amazing.
See, Hodgman does the work, though.
He does.
He learns about the people that he should be sidling up to.
Well, he's like you.
He likes to consume the media.
You know what I am.
I'm a fan is what I am.
That's a thing.
And I think I probably said to Pendleton, oh, yeah, yeah, big fan, you know, like amazing.
And he was like, oh, yeah.
And we had a delightful conversation because he didn't question whether or not I was a fan.
He just rolled with it.
Well, what is in it for him to find out?
I mean, I...
I don't know.
This is a stretch.
I don't know a lot about Penn Ward.
I don't know a ton about him, but I mean, from the text, it seems to me that he kind of grew up a little bit of a nerd and sure likes Dungeons and Dragons and stuff like that.
Yeah, sure.
Sure.
And, um, I mean, he has so many references in that show.
It's kind of an implicit, it's kind of an implicit.
I'm a ceramicist in some ways.
Yeah.
Like, do you want, do you really want to get into like, this thing is, I, I, I made Penn Ward, you know, uh, I, I, and I would do that thing.
I would do that thing that people do with me who are terrible, which is they don't, they never say anything nice.
And then they say something mean.
So I could say something like, who's that guy I don't like?
Oh, God, who's the one?
Paul F. Tompkins?
No, everybody likes Paul F. Tompkins.
Too much.
Who am I kidding?
Everybody likes him.
He's been on the George Lucas Talk Show.
I'd love to see you on the George Lucas Talk Show.
He's a big star.
He's a big star.
I went backstage at Stephen Page's show the other day, not to brag.
Who's that?
He's the guy from the Barenaked Ladies who got kicked out because they found drugs in his apartment or his house in...
I don't know where, Syracuse, New York, and the Barenaked Ladies had just come out with a children's record, or were about to, and the children's record was going to make them huge stars.
They were going to win all these awards.
Maybe he could play drums for the new pornographers.
Oh, but so I go and the Steven page show was great.
He's like, he, he, honestly, he reminds me of Sean Nelson in every way, except he's positive.
It was like watching a positive Sean Nelson who had, we're making so many friends this week, who had a clean soul and not one that was scalded and, and, and, and mad.
And so I went backstage and the first thing I said was, listen, I am the first guy to blow smoke up the ass of a band that wasn't that good.
I will walk back into the backstage of a show and I will tell a band that was just that sucked ass and everybody knew it.
You have to, that's the Broadway tradition.
You've got to say that was the greatest show I've ever seen.
But I'm here to tell you that this was an amazing show, a fantastic show.
And they all, you know, they're in show business, right?
So they had their own feelings.
About how they performed and I was like I want you to know although I am a bullshitter I am NOT bullshitting you right now and it's hard to tell because this might be Fucking next-level bullshitting.
He might not have the context for knowing that's a little unusual for you You're not like one of those producer types.
I don't want to I don't want to slag producers But you're not like, you know one of those Hollywood types it just goes out and says all the great shows all the time and
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I mean, don't put John in a corner.
Nobody puts John in a corner.
That's the problem.
Although I feel like I need to be put in a corner lately.
Okay.
I want to hear a lot more of your celebrity anecdotes.
I just want to close a couple.
I think I feel like I've got parentheses here.
Close some loops.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I've got my hands around the day and I figure I should probably try and utilize that, you know harness that particular Equine you sound good.
You sound healthy.
I don't know those the loops hard time BMO That's from that game card wars John no, oh, yeah That right Brooklyn 9-11 never forget
Brooklyn 9-11 is one of my daughter's favorite shows.
That's a great show.
All the kids at her junior high love it.
Where are you?
How far in are you?
Well, she's watched them all.
Oh, so you've gone through like the Witness Protection.
You've gone through Rose's Revelation.
You've been through a lot with it.
Well, I haven't.
Oh, shit.
Okay, see, again.
Because this was one of those events where I felt like, oh, you know, I'll let you have this.
You don't need me to watch everything you want.
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, my God, that's so difficult for me, but I've done it.
I'm so good at it now.
So I go downstairs, and I watch a little bit of it, and I'm like, that's Joe Truglio.
Oh, he's so awfully good.
Yeah, and she goes, oh, hubba-bubba.
And I was like, I did a bunch of shows with him back in the old days because he was one of the regulars on Thrilling Adventure Hour.
Yeah, he's, you know, the younger folks may not remember a movie called Wet Hot American Summer.
It's one of the most important films by the great David Wayne.
Well, David Wayne and Michael Showalter.
But, yes, he's terrific.
Showalter, Showalter, Showalter.
Oh, no, now he's going to appear.
Okay.
I met him.
I've met people.
Yeah, I know you have.
But this Joe Trulio thing, he was doing Bricklin 9-11 at the time that we were also doing this other show.
And once again, I'd never seen it, never heard of it.
And so here it is now, my daughter's favorite show.
And I'm like, I used to know that guy, but I didn't know enough to tell him that one day my two-year-old daughter was going to think he was amazing.
Yeah.
I love stories like that.
Oh, God, can I repeat someone else's story because it's so fucking good?
Of course.
Okay, so this is a little bit of a twice-told tale, and I'm repeating it from a recent episode of Blank Check where it was repeated again.
Where, you know, there was that Mario Brothers movie in the 90s?
No, but I'll believe you.
It was with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo.
Okay.
Okay.
And it is, show it to Susan, because it's really trepindicular and not very good.
Bob Hoskins, he's good in everything.
Yeah, but I want to get the quote right.
But it's something along the lines of, you know, his kid said that he should do this movie.
And shit, now I'm going to butcher it.
God damn it.
Basically, he did not realize that it was a video game.
It was based on a video game.
And he's like, and so the kid's like, no, look.
And the kid plays Mario Kart a little or whatever.
And boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
And he goes, I've played King Lear.
LAUGHTER
Yeah.
Well, you know.
It's a tough time, but you know, every new beginning comes from some other beginnings.
That is good.
That's nice.
That's nice.
I wish I had show notes for this, and I wish someone else would do all the work.
He's somebody.
This Dan Peters, that was his name, right?
Dan Peters?
The Closing Time guy?
yeah he's uh he's somebody i i would have liked to have met somewhere down the road and maybe life is long enough that i will meet him oh yeah i mean people used to say oh this is all the way back they they would say oh you would get along well with e from the eel oh man hell yeah every everywhere i went people would say have you ever met i'd like to meet him and not say a single thing about music just talk about life
Just talk about life, right?
And I didn't know the eels very well.
But I would look at him and say, well, I like his choices.
He's got cool glasses on.
Super interesting guy.
Yeah, he seems interesting.
Ditto the sparkle horse guy.
The sparkle horse guy.
That's fascinating.
My old girlfriend loves sparkle horse.
But here's the thing.
Of all the people, I met Yves Barzillet 50 times.
Yves Barzillet?
I would have rather never met him.
That's a made-up name.
I'm calling it.
But I didn't ever meet E. We were never in the same room.
We never on an elevator together.
And it just feels like, well, what the hell then?
If anything, you know, if I'm supposed to meet anybody, apparently it was supposed to be him.
But no, no, no.
So that's still out there.
He's still in an airport somewhere in the future.
And I'm going to see him.
I'm going to walk over and go, people used to say that we should meet.
And he's going to go, I don't care, man.
And I'm going to be like, oh, right.
Because nobody said to him, probably, you should meet this guy.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
No, I'm being real.
It's difficult because it's so complicated because there are people in this world who...
What I have to admit are kind of selfish reasons.
Talk about closing a loop.
There are people I would really love to have the opportunity to say how much what they do means to me and has meant to me.
But a thing I believe, this is in my document about wisdom.
I believe.
I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.
And I think you have to be careful not to give people a burden.
A gift should never be a burden.
And that's true even for a celebrity, or especially for a celebrity compliment.
I think one way, if one cannot stop oneself from saying something to a pen or whomever...
Like Penn Jillette?
Like Penn Jillette, the guy who does Adventure Time.
What would you say to Penn Jillette?
I'd say, is this your card?
I'd say, is this your card?
And he'd say, there's no card.
And I said, isn't there?
Would you walk up to Penn Jillette just in an airport with a deck of cards and go, is this your card?
I'd just shoot it at his face.
Actually, it's 51 card pickup.
Look in your pants.
Is this your card?
Is this your card?
Is this your card?
I would... No, I wouldn't bug him.
He doesn't need me.
But again, if it was Penn, and it was just like a passing quickly thing, you know...
I might say something like, you're ruining that pop with weird taste or something.
Like, just like a low-key, like, just like a little bit of a line, you know?
We wouldn't have to talk about Magic Man, I think is the name of the character I don't like.
But I know that when people come up to you and say, I got a ticket on Super Train or whatever.
I mean, don't you say, don't bother me, kid?
Oh, gosh, no.
That's the best.
No, that's...
Gosh, that would be really awkward to talk about, but that's the greatest thing in the world.
It makes me so happy when somebody notices something.
I spend all day connecting things that shouldn't be connected, and sometimes one out of every 700 times, somebody goes, oh, I got that.
Or like, you know, and it's like, well, that's because my entire adulthood in some ways represents an attempt to reach out to other people and find common cause in a positive way.
Not about the world, but about, man, Arches of Loaf was so good or whatever.
It's one of the premises.
I got a celebrity encounter for you.
I got a celebrity encounter.
Oh, it's very sad though.
You know, you've probably played at the FSU student union.
Do you remember ever playing at a place called club down under?
You probably played at like late night, not late night library, but I don't know if you ever played at the student union, but it was a great gig.
It was one of the problems with us playing in Florida, our booking agent who used to book in Mississippi or whatever.
He was like, man, you don't need to go to Florida.
They'll all come to Atlanta.
Pretty big state to skip.
And I said, come to Atlanta?
Has he a map?
Oh, dear.
He was under the impression that the 40, 50 million people, the population of Germany or whatever that lives in Florida, were all going to drive nine hours.
Oh, that.
The European...
Yes.
Yes.
And I was like, why don't we go down?
I mean, Tampa, St.
Petersburg.
I know those places.
This is where back to the SST get in the van thing, because it's the existence of and I have some anecdotes that I suddenly feel like sharing for some reason.
No, no, not yet.
I'm getting there.
But like one does not simply walk to Miami.
Miami is really Florida is a much longer state than most people realize until they attempt to drive it.
It's long.
And it's a fun rite of passage when people from out of state say, hey, we're going to go to Key West for spring break.
And I say, are you?
Do you know that's past the end of Florida?
Do you know how far away that is?
It's not like just jaunting up to New Orleans for a muffaletta.
I mean, that's some serious miles.
You drive and drive.
But it's that ability, and I don't know if this is true.
I mean, I should reread that.
Our Band Could Be Your Life book, which I love.
But you've got places like, yes, I could see how... Matt?
No, what's his name?
Matt Hickey.
Yeah.
But I could see how somebody going like, oh, gosh, that's so crazy.
Like, why would you go all the way?
Well, that's the point, is that you can go...
You can go to Tallahassee.
If you want, you could go to Jacksonville and then go down the East Coast.
Like, there's this great band.
Oh, the guy owns a record store and used to be in Jacksonville.
Had a band called John Todd.
It was really good.
Really cool guy.
You could go.
He'd set you up with a gig, right?
I mean, just like in Green Room.
Except it wouldn't be white supremacists.
Or you could go the other way and you could go pop down to Gainesville, which punches above its weight in my time anyway, punched way above its weight in the music scene.
And then you could cut over to Tampa, St.
Petersburg.
You could go to the Masquerade in Orlando.
You could, you know what I mean?
There's all these way spots where if you could change that from thinking about how do I get from Atlanta?
How do I get from the Fox Theater to whatever they do in Miami?
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Well, but what if you could get four okay-sized gigs in between?
That's the path that was beaten for us.
Well, and you know what?
You know, the only time I ever toured in Florida, God, I don't know why this is the episode that we're talking about all these ding-a-lings, but I opened for Jonathan Colton.
And he did, because he's an East Coast person, he did have five dates in Florida.
And I went down there.
He's well organized, though.
That helps.
Yeah.
And we went to Tampa and St.
Pete.
We went to Gainesville.
We went to all these places.
Do you remember if it was called The Covered Dish, the place you played?
Oh, boy.
No, I don't.
But then later, I was driving around.
I rented a Mustang convertible.
And I said, I did exactly what you're saying.
Does it come with a free penis?
It was like two things of red Gatorade.
And I was in Fort Lauderdale, and I said, I'm going to drive the four corners of Florida.
I'm going to go all the way up.
I'm going to go all the way out.
To the panhandle, you think?
Yeah.
I'm going to go all the way down, and then I'm going to go all the way out Key West.
And I'm going to do it all in a Mustang convertible.
Hippie-doop-a-doo.
And so I'm going, and I'm going, and I'm going.
And it's bigger.
It's a lot bigger than I thought.
But I had a Mustang convertible.
Nobody could stop me.
Yeah.
And I, and I got to St.
Petersburg and this was, this was early days, not super early, but early.
And I said, I'm going to have a tweet up.
And I tweeted, I'm in St.
Pete.
And I got, and somebody was like, Hey, you know, meet at the whatchamacallit bar.
And so I went to the whatchamacallit bar, whatever it was.
And there were like 25 people there, uh,
that were roderick on the line fans that knew every word of everything and it was the it was one of the first times that you remember when i was like let's have a tweet up and yes absolutely guys were like uh tweet up but it was the first time that i was like i don't think i sounded like that but i was like no maybe it was scott simpson that didn't want but uh but but i was like you can just have a tweet up anywhere i've never been to saint petersburg and there are all these people
And then I had that incredible experience of walking up to a guy who was sitting at the bar and I was like, Hey, you know, nice to meet you.
You know, like, so what, where, how did you start listening to Roderick on the line?
And he was just a guy at the bar.
It was just his regular bar.
Oh no.
And he was like, what?
That's like one of those wonderful anecdotes where a celebrity, somebody says, can we get a photo?
And they just want them to take the photo of them.
The Matt Dillon story.
But so, yeah, I was like, oh, sorry.
You know, sorry to interrupt your drinking.
And I went back.
I was like, oh, so it's not everybody in the bar.
It's just the people in the front of the bar.
You know, that's just a friend you haven't made yet.
He was mad.
He didn't like me at all.
You could just see it in his eyes.
He then sat at the bar.
One does not go to a bar in Florida for no reason.
All right.
So let me give you a few here because this is on my mind because something had happened recently at FSU.
I think this is all completely different now since I've left.
I see you and grant have been talking online about the new College of Florida having some kind of newsworthiness Oh sure, I'm gonna write that down here You're not gonna you're not gonna stop me from telling my rock and roll stories though It's not not about celebrity stuff so much.
It's just like good memories of that Those times.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean because the Tallahassee music theme scene was like really was really I when I showed up there and
in the spring of 1991, like, I was blown away.
Like, just because of what I described 15 minutes ago, that there were bands just coming through town.
And like I say, it was in the student union, which I think is totally different now.
I mean, I think they, I guess what I'm saying is I didn't recognize that much stuff from the stuff that was being shown, which is already kind of hard to look at.
You've already graduated from college at this point.
Yeah, I graduated from college in April or May of 1990.
So I got this job.
So you moved to Calahassee because why?
Got a job there.
I got a job working doing computer stuff on a Mac.
But, I mean, and I don't have dates on every single one of these, but, like, I have so many great memories of that place.
It was a really good gig, first of all, for, like, bands coming through town.
Because, I mean, it was, you know, pretty reliably professional as those things go.
I don't mean to damn with faint praise, but it wasn't, like, some places I loved very dearly.
That were run by dear friends.
It was just like, it was like they'd never, never run a PA two nights in a row their entire life.
But it was, it was, it sounded good.
It was nice.
And there was a dressing room.
They gave you food.
Like it was, and it paid.
Like they paid the locals too.
This was the benefit of being in a...
I'm not going to say crappy.
I liked our band.
Being in a band in Tallahassee at that time, this would be like three years after that, but like, you know, we opened for, we didn't open for Ween there, but we opened, I think it was on the chocolate and cheese tour.
We opened for Ween.
One time we opened for the poster children and Mike, the other guitar player tripped over the power book chord of Rose Bass and sent her power book spinning across the floor and they were not into that.
That was a club down under.
Wait, she was already playing... They were in the green room, like checking email and stuff.
Oh, I see.
It wasn't on stage where all of a sudden... No, they weren't Deadmau5 or anything.
Oh, okay, okay, okay.
I can tell you that the first show I ever saw a club down under, I went by myself, and the first show I ever saw there was the Young Fresh Fellows.
oh in 1991 young fresh fellows you know i i there's a guy up here who's father of a girl that is kind of friends with my daughter although and he is somebody that knew you in tallahassee oh really from from music stuff well yeah and to hear him tell it
You were a big person in Tallahassee.
Everybody knew you.
You had a lot going on.
You were putting on shows.
You wore a rabbit suit.
I dressed as a gorilla every Sunday night.
He had 30 anecdotes about how you were making the times.
first show that would be i think fall of 91 i can't carbon date it uh one that comes to mind because i was thinking of archers of loaf is that local promoter uh um alex uh was coming through and uh and i was doing a show i think i was just playing it might have been like uh what's called rush or whatever like when they do all the uh the events i played a frat one time like i played at a frat one time playing acoustic guitar and singing
Anyways.
Just you?
Just you?
Oh, yeah.
That was my gig before Bacon Ray.
I was like the poppy acoustic guy.
Anyways, I'm not trying to make this about me.
Were you playing covers?
Some.
I would do one of my famous medleys, like photograph and working for the weekend.
How did you go over at the frat?
Oh, they were nice.
Well, there's always a couple kids who don't have friends.
And they would come over and listen to me do my Sonic Youth parody called He Detuned His Guitar.
Yeah.
And anyways, I was playing out in the union one day and Alex walked up with Eric Bachman.
And I was like, holy shit.
Because I think he was doing a solo show or Archers were playing or something.
He was extremely nice.
And I made no attempt to cross over, to show him my fandom, to show him that I have an original 7-inch of web in front.
That's okay.
Not important.
You didn't have it with you, though.
My final memory of the last time I was ever in...
The student union at FSU, at the club Down Under, was when Bacon Ray opened for the Rens in 2005.
Wow.
And you know, when I first started goofing around with the Wrens.
That's 20 years ago already.
You were already, you were like the Wrens and you drilled it into my head.
In fact, you saved me a lot of pain because, you know, we, as you recall, interacting with the Wrens was one of the best things about the early internet.
Oh, man.
And you made me already know about them so I didn't have to look like a dummy.
So you didn't look like a ding-a-ling.
Yeah.
No, I was like, Oh yes.
Hello.
Because you had been schooling me behind the scenes.
Renz, Renz, Renz.
Kind of like you tried to do with Sloan, but I resisted it with Sloan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, if, if anybody out there, just anybody in general is in that community and most especially, obviously if any, I'm so sorry for what y'all are going through right now.
Um, cause I, I lived there for a long time and I love that place.
And, uh,
What's going on?
I don't understand.
Is there something going on at FSU?
Oh, yeah.
Two people were killed.
Oh, shit!
That was the place with the guns?
Yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Oh, that's okay.
I mean, it doesn't affect me directly, but that's why I tried to present this as admittedly a little bit selfish, because it brought back this flood of memories.
There's a pal of mine who was kind of a big wheel at...
I think he's still at SCAD, but he used to be a big gun at the radio station, and I was talking to him a little bit last week about it.
But anyways, I'm not destroyed or anything, but every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end, and this represents a big box of punctuation marks on a lot of my time there.
Hmm.
It's a bummer.
It's a bummer.
But, you know, it was good.
But that was the crazy part, though.
Now we can get back to talking about whatever.
Is that, like, you know, you could just go and, like, it wasn't exactly like New York City.
New York City?
It wasn't exactly like, say, picking up the village voice and going, oh, you know, which jazz legend will I go see tonight?
But, I mean, a couple, three, four times a week, there would be national acts coming through town, but that's fine and that's good, but why do I know Archers of Loaf?
Like, before they were, I mean, I guess they were already kind of happening on local radio, but they're like a research triangle band.
Bands like them and Superchunk and bands you guys don't remember, like Small, like these amazing research triangle bands, Donkey from Atlanta, all these bands that would just be coming through town all the time.
And it was such a gift.
They got to sometimes play with big shots.
I mean, the ones that got bigger include like, you know, Man or Astro Man and stuff like that.
But they would just fucking just show up and be playing at the cowhouse.
We would have band practice, hang out, have some beers and then watch three bands.
It was the best.
Yeah.
I wish that still existed in a way that I could recommend to young people.
Because people are always asking, you know, how do I get blah, blah, blah?
And my answer is always... People are always asking, how do I get blah, blah, blah?
How do I get blah, blah, blah?
Sometimes you get mature.
Yeah.
they're like i want to i want to be a a musician i want to be part of a scene like i want to live in a cool town and be part of a cool thing and i always say well what are you doing are you going out to shows like go out to shows that's changed a lot well and that's what i worry i worry that that's no longer reasonable advice because just on the money just the money part alone my goodness it's so expensive to go to concerts now
But, you know, you'd go to shows, and that's where you would look around, and you'd see the people that you ended up being friends with, because then when you saw them somewhere else, you could say, oh, I saw you at the show, and you knew that you liked each other because you were both at the same show.
Yeah, A Thousand Flowers Bloom by all these little parts that seem very unrelated that I'm talking about here.
But the fact that there were, like, you know, Sabadeau, Sabadeau would just, like, roll through town, and you'd go see Sabadeau.
Or for that matter, Dinosaur.
I mean, how many places in Florida could you go and see Dinosaur with My Bloody Valentine opening for them?
Yeah, there have to be those bands now.
Which was the loudest thing I've ever heard in my life.
Even more so than the Sonic Youth concert at the Empty Keg in St.
Pete a few years before that.
My Bloody Valentine was hostile.
It was a hostile band.
Yeah.
But then the reason I say all the flowers blooming is like, yeah, but then like, or like some people who became some of my closest pals, you know, that would end up with us having this 80s cover band that could fill in, you know, when they didn't have an opening act and didn't have a lot of money.
So like there was that, but each one of those people, I liked all of their bands.
Like we were on the same little label.
Like it was really neat.
It was like a mutual aid society in some ways for sad rock boys.
Well, it was true in Seattle, which is ostensibly a big town that was full of bands.
But, you know, it was ten little scenes.
Yeah, sure, sure.
I get that.
I get that.
I was watching the – you know, I love that –
YouTube channel, Trash Theory, and I re-watched his excellent episode on what came before grunge, you know, kind of the build-up to grunge, but then also, like, I guess I... I mean, I wasn't a big grunge guy.
I liked Nevermind.
I didn't like Pearl Jam.
You know, I just didn't... I didn't all the stuff that you're familiar with, all those bands you know, like... Yeah.
I mean, I like to keep it out of my face, guys, that... Whatchamacallit, Mudhoney?
Mudhoney.
But, like...
Oh, my God.
It sounds like some of those bands that became those bands were really good.
What was the one?
Mookie Blaylock is Pearl Jam, right?
Yeah, that's Pearl Jam.
Green River is the one that became the I'm Going Hungry song, right?
No, Green River was half Mudhoney and half of Pearl Jam in a band together.
But then Hunger Strike is about that guy dying, right?
Yeah.
No, that's a different... That's Mother Love Bone.
Mother Love Bone.
And that's Jeff... That's Pearl Jam, but with a different singer.
So they left Green River...
And became Mother Love Bone.
And then Mud Honey became Mud Honey.
And then the singer of Mother Love Bone died.
He was Chris Cornell's roommate.
And then Mother Love Bone became Mookie Blaylock.
The name of a baseball player, right?
Yeah, or no, basketball player.
They got Ed Ved up from San Diego because he sent him a demo tape.
Or no, they sent a demo tape out.
Cassette tape with their like music.
And he got it down in his, he was riding his skateboard to this job at the hamburger joint.
And he was like, he put the cassette tape in and I'm sure put a boom box next to another boom box and went here.
And he sent it back to them and they were like, and they said, oh man, this is the guy.
Get him up here.
Yeah.
And that's how that started.
All right.
But, you know, it's good music.
Good music.
Most of the bands that were here in Seattle before the grunge thing and during the grunge thing and after the grunge thing were terrible.
They were terrible.
Even the great ones.
Yeah.
I mean, that part I got.
I mean, I was there for Bush.
Yeah.
Well, no, it's not.
I'm not even talking about that because they at least were clean and poppy.
Nabil and I, at the 20th anniversary of Sub Pop,
Nabeel who owned a record store went out to all the bros and he was like, give us all your rare seven inches of steel pole bathtub and fucking hippie big buckle and trail trout and all this stuff.
And so we got, and all the, all the people with all the records can't, they were like, yeah.
And Nabeel and I DJed a set at Linda's Tavern for, uh, for sub pops 20th anniversary.
Everybody was there and we kept pulling out these records and thinking like, oh man, this one's going to blow them away.
Like this track, I remember this song.
This band used to just kill and we're going to drop the needle on this and the room's going to go bananas.
And we would put the single on and we would drop the needle on it and it would go...
And it just was like terrible.
And the next thing you heard is the sound of many women leaving the room.
Well, yeah, and just everybody like, huh.
And it's like, no, don't you remember this band?
Don't you remember the Pleasure Elite?
Like, everybody was at their shows.
No.
I would merely put on the Melvins covering the Kiss song Going Blind, which is probably the high watermark of the entire Grunge era.
Obviously we played that we played It was a reminder however that the Yeah, and we we all had rose-colored glasses on it because you know 20 years in it was like oh man that was those were the times and
But the music was not that good.
And then after grunge here in Seattle, everybody was against grunge.
So then the music was like bleep, blorp, bleep, blorp, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep.
What is that?
Is that electronica?
No, it was like indie, indie math.
Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep
you know my family players you're listening to them they're pretty good well i never listened to them but i saw them oh hmm with your ears covered in that sense i listened to them okay yeah i listened to them while i was there i was i always went to see babe the blue ox whenever they played they came through town all the time and they were fantastic they were they stayed in my apartment
Many bands stayed in my apartment.
I don't think I ever had a Babe the Blue Ox.
I did something for them.
Because there's a lot of pitching in.
Another reason I love the movie Green Room, apart from the white supremacy part, is just the idea of trying to get a gig and Common Cause, again, all those kinds of things.
But the only thing for me that...
I didn't, like I say, I'm not saying I didn't like grunge music, but as with poetry and folk singing, I eventually had to arrive at the fact that I didn't like all of it.
And in fact, I have the strongest conceivable feelings about some of it.
but definitely not all of it.
I don't like all poems, and I don't like all singers who think they can sing like Joni Mitchell.
Like, that's just... It became a problem.
But I'm just... I was going to say, real quick, the only thing that bummed me out in retrospect about the grunge stuff is I feel like it's sort of... I know it's an allied thing, but the bands like...
flop or the posies or for that matter, you know, any of the Scott McCoy kind of things that I feel like they got a little bit lost in the lights with all the Seattle equals equals grunge stuff.
And that kind of pumps me up because still there's hope by young fresh fellows is one of the great songs.
Yeah, but the young fresh fellows were part of that time when it was like, we're going to be goofy.
And then grunge came along and grunge wasn't goofy.
No, no, it's very, it was very serious.
I mean, even the Melvins who were initially goofy were like, we're not goofy.
It's hard to be, it's hard to be goofy in a time when everybody's like suicide.
You gotta, you always be up there pulling a face, you know?
I mean, the posies I once said to those guys,
kind of innocently, I was like, was it hard on you guys to be like...
part of the seattle scene and you know they were the biggest band in town right before grunge was it hard on you guys to be like really big and then see all these bands you know see this whole scene that just didn't like you weren't a part of they couldn't draft off of that too much probably but there was a long pause and they were like what do you mean we were huge they were in that austin powers movie
like they had they had stuff out there their self-image was of what they saw themselves as a big band from the grunge era and it was really hard to um
It was really hard to like... That third album was a little heavier.
Like the one that had Daily Mutilation and all that on it.
But you know what I'm saying.
I think I do.
But they didn't see themselves as apart from it.
They saw themselves as like a piece of it.
yeah in the sense that the screaming trees who weren't really grunge but kind of got over and were up there as like the the sixth band you would mention and the posies saw themselves there oh but but in instead they were kind of yeah a little you know but they were on the reality bites soundtrack yep yep yep yep yep and sound garden guy was in was in was in um singles right
Oh, they all were.
I mean, the... I never saw it.
Pearl Jam was... You never saw it.
No, I enjoy Bridget Fonda.
Wait a minute.
Wait, wait, wait.
Moonwalk back to the beginning of that sentence.
You never saw Singles?
It's a movie about grunge, and it's got Matt Dillon, and it's got Bridget Fonda.
Pre-don't-like Matt Dillon.
What?
Oh, I guess you probably liked him from Rumblefish.
Well, yeah, he's also good in that where the guy ejaculates in his hair movie.
He was good in that.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
Yeah, with the kid, the kid from Severance.
Yeah, and the girl from Lost in Translation.
Huh.
Oh, should I watch singles, you think?
I bet that's weird.
That and Reality Bites must be so weird to go back to.
What was crazy is because I watched it a couple of years ago.
And is it about trying to rise in the local music scene?
That's what it's about?
That's just one subplot.
All the musicians in the movie are like losers.
It kind of seems like a Robert Altman movie for 17-year-olds.
Yeah.
Does it have lots of plots and stuff?
Yeah, lots of little plots.
There's a cast of thousands, you know, and it's like you go from one thing to the next.
And what was interesting was...
Watching it recently and it's it's It's in color and high definition and when I think about the 90s, I think of it as like VHS level of yeah granularity Like my own memory looks like desaturated local access in your head, right?
Yeah.
In my, in my head, it looks like a local access show.
Exactly.
And here is 35 millimeter color print, but it's the Seattle of 1991, not the Seattle of today.
And it was just, it was spooky and it was spooky to see all these, all these people and, and things where it was like, oh my God, it's like being there.
um and i think you would like it just because it's like being in 1991 which was a time that you were i was i was in that time i'm writing down the movie singles all right it was a legit it was a legitimate time we were already adults even though it's scary to think that that was so long ago but we were numerically adult people yeah we could have been we could have voted we could have i mean i was voting you got stepped over
We could have been in the army already for three years by that point.
You and I could have been in the army for three years.
We could have been sergeants by then.
And here it was, just like... And nobody had ever heard it.
Nobody had ever heard it.
You know, that's not what funkadelic sounds like.
That's not what... I love fruity chord changes, I think.
They don't have enough fruity chord changes in Crunch.
I saw Pearl Jam play on Saturday Night Live as part of this Saturday Night Live thing.
And, yeah, it was still... They were like, this is back when they were... And I was still like, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Singles I've written down.
What else did I write down here?
Oh, yeah.
Ween, Sad Rock Boys.
But you liked the music.
I remember being in a lot of dorm rooms.
Yep.
And people playing...
ween and dinosaur junior and and uh and even the pixies before they became kind of bigger and what would you have called that music because that could have been if grunge hadn't come along that music was gonna be what was it alternative yeah i mean when i was when i was in high school well especially you know like when i should have been in college but was just out of high school it was absolutely called college rock
um that was that was rem the replacements i mean maybe even to some extent you know like for ad bands to some extent but like especially you know you know rem was my band like yeah rem up to like the early 90s was absolutely 100 my band um and um like him in the mandolin era
Yeah.
In fact, I can tell you, I had just moved to Tallahassee when Out of Time was out.
And there's a place we used to go to play billiards with the people from work up in Killarn in the fancy part of Tallahassee.
And they had a CD jukebox, which is pretty novel.
And I would have them play Losing My Religion or Near Wild Heaven.
i like i like the record a lot i don't dislike rem after that it's just that reckoning is the greatest album ever made and that's all you need to know about me you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah it's like i'm so i'm so imprinted on the first three rem releases but uh but um uh yeah so college rock and then i mean depending on when you look at it then you it became people would call it alternative rock at a certain point um and then i
I think Indy had a much better purchase in the UK, like, even as early as, like, maybe 77 Buzzcocks.
People were talking, because, you know, they put out the first independent 7-inch.
Full stop.
Spiral Scratch.
Yeah, they made the covers themselves, everything.
They were absolutely unaffiliated with any label.
And then by the mid-80s, and I was reading NME and Melody Maker at that time, and
The Smiths were kind of the darlings for quite a while there.
And then there were so many bands like House Martins.
And I think that is what came to be called indie pop, especially around the time of C86, the C86 cassette.
XTC...
XTC, yes.
Yes.
Whom I always loved, but didn't super learn to appreciate every syllable of until that time.
Like I hadn't heard drums and wires or anything like that at that time.
But big fan.
My girlfriend, who I was often kind of horrible to, whenever we broke up, she'd destroy something of mine that she knows I loved.
And then you would get back together and let her do it again?
We shouldn't have.
But, you know, the soul was self-satisfying.
Not self-satisfying enough, if you ask.
But I, yes, she completely ripped all of the tape out of my copy of English Settlement, which cost a little more than $8.69 because it was technically, I think, a double album.
So, so, so no more, uh, no more census working overtime for daddy.
Since it's working overtime.
There's a very, if you do like XTC, there's a very good documentary about XTC that I can highly recommend.
XTC was one, uh, that I didn't really know beyond the singles until Chris Walla, uh, when he first discovered the Western state hurricane, he said kind of like, Oh, you should meet E. He was like, Oh, you, you were really influenced by XTC.
I can tell.
And I said, I don't know.
Was it the puka shells or the polo shirt?
He was so bummed.
He was like... I know.
You should know how much you... And I don't want to say sound like XTC, but your bands that preceded The Long Winters seem very influenced by things as... I don't know if you put it this way, but I would say things like sensibilities of bands like XTC and Captain Beefheart, if not necessarily the note-for-note sounding like them in any way.
And I think I've told you the story about the time that I was on the train platform in Reading, England.
Yeah.
And because I'd just been at the Reading Festival.
And I'm standing there on the platform, and I look down, and it's a British platform, so everybody's in bowler hats with brellies and briefcases.
They're not really, but that's what my eye sees.
Like in that Lawyers in Love video by Jackson Brown.
Exactly, or any Pretenders video from that era.
And I look down and there's Andy Partridge.
What?
And he's standing on the train platform.
You bet he loves trains.
And everybody's dressed in black, all wearing bowler hats.
And then he looks down the train platform for the train and he sees me and I'm looking at him because I don't think at that point I had ever seen a rock star up close.
And I was like...
That's one that would make me do a double take because he is, you know what I mean?
It wouldn't be like seeing Paul Stanley or something, but it would be like, oh man, that guy, that guy from, you know.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
He's from MTV and I'm looking at him and he looks down and he sees me looking at him and he immediately turns like bright red and basically runs away.
Perfect, perfect interaction.
It was like, no, no, no, I'm not going to hurt you.
You know, like I, you know, waving my hand like, no, no, no, I'm a friend, friend shaped.
And he was just like, oh my God, somebody sees me gone.
And we're back to that original problem now, right?
We were talking about so long ago.
Like, what do you know?
He doesn't want to have to tell you he's a ceramicist probably.
well sure exactly i mean the other there just two days ago i was at the supermarket and i came around the corner and there was a guy who looked at me and and knew me and i knew him but it was a fan relationship right i was a he he had been to a lot of shows
But he was part of the larger Max Fun universe.
Oh, I see.
Yes.
And so he looked away and was suddenly like really studying this box of pancake mix.
Hmm.
And I had I'd kind of like acknowledged him like oh hey And now he's really looking at the pancake mix and it was weird because I didn't know whether it was That he was on the canceled that John is canceled side of the divide or whether the pancake mix was that he was like, oh my god Oh, I don't want to be weird
Now I'm going to look at this pancake mix so I don't fan on him.
Maybe the pancake mix is now owner-operated.
But you did reach out, right?
You sort of broke the X. And I was like, well, now I don't want to go over and be like, hey, friend.
Hello, friend that I have known.
Because I didn't want him to have to be like...
I'm not allowed to talk to you anymore.
Yeah.
Like, um, um, um, Jesse Thorne will not let me download things if I am seen with you.
But I also was like, but it's okay to talk to me in supermarkets.
Like for sure.
Don't ever be like, Oh no.
But you know, when you have, it's like you and me, when you see somebody and you're like, Oh shit, do I say something?
Do I look away?
Like, what do I do?
What would I say if I saw Paul Simon and not to compare myself, but what would I say if I saw,
If I saw, um, who?
Who do I like?
If you saw Paul Simon, you'd say, hey, little guy.
I'd be like to pat him on the head and say, looking for some pancakes?
You want me to get it down for you?
Well, a man walks down the street, he's going through an airport, John Roderick says hello.
What if I saw J-Law in a supermarket?
J-Law!
Jennifer Lawrence?
Yeah, and she doesn't have a bunch of entourage.
She's just looking for some frosting for her.
What changes when it's a girl a little bit?
Yeah, I guess you're right.
I guess you're right.
Well, what if I saw the gauze?
Well, I think I'd say something to the gauze.
He's so lovely.
Yeah, he seems nice.
He really does seem awfully nice.
He does.
It seems like you could just walk up to Ryan Gosling and say, hey, loved you in...
you suck you're so bad at this lovedy and bambi i mean barbie maybe you should just this is so so fucking stupid but you know it'd be kind of fun if maybe just so you're prepared in the future because you seem to encounter enough sub celebrities that it would be worth having something prepared and maybe you should just do a borat joke every time you see them
You roll up to the guys and you go, my wife, I get a clock radio, he get a clock radio.
I get step, he get step.
And Ryan Gosling would be, look, I'm Canadian and I'm super nice, but you really need to go now.
Can can you still do Borat stuff?
Isn't that I think we've turned the corner I think we've come back around and it is legitimately very funny again.
Oh, okay The movie's funny, but really especially like the first 15 minutes I just want my kid to watch like the first ten or five.
I didn't want him to see him in in in the village Yeah, yeah
Because it's really funny.
It's bad, but it's funny, you know?
It is funny.
There's a song about throwing the Jew down the well.
I know.
Well, you know, the other day, I saw, like, some reel popped up, and it was Dave Chappelle, and then he did a Jewish joke, which I'd never seen him do, and then the thing just cut off.
It was like... Oh, no, like they cut his mic?
Well, something, I mean... Maybe he ran out of cigarettes.
I mean...
They put the reel in front of me.
I didn't ask for it.
And I'm like, whoa!
Of all the terrible things he said, I was just like, what the?
That was like a... I wouldn't mind the terrible things he said if they were funnier.
You can't say that because it sounds like you're being a sourpuss, but I laugh at a lot, a lot of stuff.
And he's capable of... I think his last monologue on SNL was really good.
But generally, because I think he's trying to sort of...
come back around but you know he's he's smoking weed he smokes a lot of weed yeah he's he's he's too talented to just make the kind of dumb jokes that he makes that you know i mean he's like sometimes like if he's not careful like he's kind of in rob schneider territory sometimes oh
Uh-oh.
You know, and it's like, well.
Repro.
Wait, there was another thing.
There was a lot of things.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
No, I don't really have anything.
But I was going to say that XTC documentary, I walked away.
Because here's the thing.
Walked away, walked away.
I've said this.
I will follow.
I...
It doesn't matter.
I would love to meet Andy Partridge.
And I would love to meet Todd Rundgren.
But you couldn't get close to him.
He'd see you.
I know.
Those are two people I'd really super like to meet.
But what I walked away from, and I'd heard this from other places, but it really, because I've thought in the past, based on what I've heard about Todd Rundgren, I wouldn't necessarily want to have to spend time with him in the studio.
And boy, I learned the same thing about Andy Partridge.
So can you imagine how it went?
on Skylarking.
Like the two of the most difficult in the studio people you can, like everybody's like, Andy Partridge is really funny, he's really fast, he's a great guy, and he's totally like very difficult to deal with in the studio.
Yeah.
And like apparently for, it was different, but you know, complimentary reasons, Rundgren's the same way.
He's the one that made it into like one big record, and Andy Partridge did not like that.
Well, this is very apropos of the moment for me because I've actually booked studio time.
Oh, that's good.
Well, it's good, except I've realized that I need a producer because I don't have strong opinions.
An engineer?
Yeah.
or well not an engineer okay everybody i've everybody i've taken the songs to and been like hey let's learn learn these songs and go in the studio and record a long winter's record i got more songs right now than i ever had before and these are the times people like the long winters again but everybody i think looks at me my age strumming on acoustic guitar
And their instinct is to make an alt country record.
Oh, yeah.
The first thing everybody does.
You mentioned this a few weeks ago that you were feeling.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm helping.
I think it sounded like you felt there was not necessarily like a group effort, but that anytime you talk to somebody about what you were interested in doing next, I got the impression anyway that you felt slightly herded somewhat actively toward, well, now you need to do something country.
Yeah, or just like, I don't know.
Like it wasn't even a question.
And I want to make a new wave record, like always.
Oh, I thought you were going to make an MBV.
I thought you were going to make like a shoegaze record.
I can't do that.
You should do that as an EP.
If you take my fucking advice and just put out one good EP, you'd be done with all this nonsense.
See, that's the thing.
I probably should.
Just burn one.
You know what I'm saying?
Like the first pancake.
First pancake mix.
That's right.
We did talk about this.
Yeah.
Well, it's just on my mind because I'm stressed about it.
I wake up in the middle of the night like, oh, no, what am I going to do?
Talking to people who you get and who get you, you don't say any names, but people that you've worked with before or have wanted to work with, are you feeling, in my understanding, you feel pressure from them to be herded toward the horse?
Yeah.
You know, honestly what the pressure I feel is is that I'm not good at taking a project to completion and I it's very easy to book studio time and get basic tracks, but I'm not a project manager and as you and I both know
Like they're half empty coffee cups all over my house.
And I don't know, this is something I've been meaning to ask you.
Yeah.
Like embracing ADHD as a, as a thing that has made me feel better about myself, just in the sense that when I do something, when I take apart a lamp,
And then leave it strewn around my living room floor for six weeks.
And everybody comes in and they're like, that lamp is still there.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm working on it.
So John, are you giving any thought to what you might want to do with this lamp?
You know?
And like, it's always the same.
Like I needed to shine a pair of shoes.
And so I said, oh, you know what?
I should just shine all my shoes at once.
And then I start shining shoes and I realize shining shoes is hard.
And I just have spread out 15 pairs of shoes.
Some of them I haven't worn in two years.
And I'm, and I'm like, I'm Mr. Shining shoes.
But your brain is committed to the shoe shining project at that, at that stage.
At that time.
But then of course, anything that comes along, the phone rings, the tea kettle or whatever.
And I'm like, whoa.
And then I'm off to the, and then there's half shined shoes all over.
And so what I, it's great to have ADHD as a thing to like, take the pressure off myself and not hate myself anymore.
But it also doesn't make the problem go away.
You still got to deal.
It doesn't make it go away.
Yeah.
And, and, and like, I'm, I'm trying to interview somebody to help me.
I want to hire an assistant.
and i feel like i i list the things i want them to do i put five things down like i need you to do this this is a concrete thing i need you to do and then every time it turns into an essay about how hard it will be to work with me
and how they shouldn't take it personally if I don't write them back right away.
It's like, I'm just writing down the things I need them to do, but I'm all of a sudden really apologizing.
To use a phrase I don't love, you're unintentionally telling on yourself a little bit.
You're revealing things about your interior world that are relevant on a different level, but it's not the same thing as saying, like, here's where to get my shoes shined.
But it also, but it also feels like it's pointless for me to, to put a job description up and have a bunch of people apply who are like, well, great, I'll give you five choices every morning.
And you just need to write back right away and tell me what they are.
And it's just like, well, that's never going to happen.
It's like part of the job description that daddy is not.
fully functioning and that seems weird to to go out and say like i need a professional person to help me and i am like and you're gonna have to really really work around the fact that i don't
Even Bono has a boss, but, like, I'm not sure.
Sometimes you need to really tell me what to do, and sometimes don't dare tell me what to do.
Right.
You tried this.
You had a friend of yours that you'd said, I want you to, I don't know your words, but you'd said to a friend of yours that you empowered them to, like...
I don't remember the phrase you used, but you said to Hodgman, it's okay to make me put out a record, right?
Haven't you said to people around you, like, it's okay, I give you permission to boss me about this.
And then eventually you sort of say, you know what, I don't want to be bossed about this.
But then at the same time, it is that because I don't want to be bossed or because of the way you're bossing me?
I don't know.
I mean, I definitely, there are times when I'm like, please lie to me.
Please tell me a thing is due when it's not.
Please tell me I have to be somewhere at the wrong time.
Like just, just, just lie to me and I won't be mad because I'll end up doing it.
I'll do it right.
And I'll do it well.
But it's based on you telling me an untruth, because if you told me the truth, I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't do it well.
And that's really hard to say to somebody who you're also like, but you work for me.
Don't get it.
Don't get into the impression that I work for you.
Like, it's just very confusing.
I, for as late as we are in this recording, I wouldn't want to get too far into it, but I can see at least two or three angles about ways you could choose to look at that or approach that, you know, personally.
I mean...
Maybe I can hire somebody to help me approach it.
I don't think you need to hire anybody yet.
I mean, I think one thing that might be useful, I wouldn't say this, but it sounds like it's something you're trying to work on, is what is it that you want to improve, that you want to change, perhaps that you want to be different?
And I think if you listen to...
Stuff you've said in the last few minutes, there's some slightly contradictory things about it that make it sort of difficult to operationalize.
And I understand because I'm I think I understand because I think I'm a similar way about probably different things.
But I get that.
It's I mean, one question to ask yourself is, well, I mean, there's you can go all the way down to what is it really an assistant that you need?
But if you are committed to getting help with it, then I think it's helpful for you to start with an idea of what success with that person looks like.
And this is where it gets a little contradictory.
Because does success look like you become different and get better at stuff?
Or does success look like you have to worry and fuss less with stuff that might be a little below your pay grade?
Or are you open to the idea of a collaboration where you could see somebody not as your employee, but as somebody who's there
to almost like a mentor mentee kind of thing where you're both mentor and mentee for each other about different things.
It's just that, you know, it's, I hear you on the ADHD part because there are things about that that can be a little bit of a superpower, but it also means committing to even like a very basic structure and a timeline that's reasonable.
And I'm not trying to make it not fun by saying that, but the project manager in me thinks, well, when you're done, what should this look like?
And if we're not worried about the product, then let's think about the process.
If it were me, I would be thinking about the process.
And what is it that's buoyant and creative about the process that you could get help with?
So one ADHD problem, see if this sounds familiar, is maybe you start out thinking I'm going to shine my shoes or I'm going to organize my boarding passes or like whatever it is or something super important like, you know, fix the electricity or whatever.
And I think it's helpful to put some kind of a stake in the ground for yourself, not a goal, not a deadline, not any of that kind of stuff.
But if it were me, I would get fully committed to whatever this process is.
Because the process is, to me, what it's really about.
If one...
by which I mean you, if you were to say, I'm gonna have an EP out of this, or I'm gonna have a triple album, or I'm gonna have a video game soundtrack, or anything too specific about that, I don't think, the record does not indicate that that inspires you.
Or more importantly than inspiring you, it doesn't make you get the shit done.
Right.
It's like the hard part is the difficult part there is like, well, what if you have the wrong sort of goal for how you are and for how you thrive and for how you not thrive 20 years ago?
But what's your go forward strategy for how you are now?
The old man with the acoustic guitar that doesn't want to play just country songs.
Right.
And in that case, if you were to commit yourself fully to a process for this, I would be open to letting your mind.
be open to what that process looks like.
And so book and studio time is really, really great, but now what are you gonna talk yourself into being really anxious about going in there and I won't be able to do it and am I prepared enough and all that kind of stuff.
But whatever process you want, if you wanna make it about the product, you can.
I just don't think that so far there's much of a track record for that, but you do seem to enjoy the process.
And what if you gave yourself your ADHD self permission to be fully committed to some process?
And to me, that changes the temperature and the barometric pressure of everything you're doing.
And I'm being deliberately very general about it because I don't know what your process should be.
But, you know, once you've committed to some kind of a process, then you could say, well, you know, this weekend all I really need to do is write a verse and a chorus of something.
I don't need to write, you know, Zen Arcade over the weekend.
Like, I need to just, right?
This is the thing I like.
But, you know, at the heart of it, finally, and I'll shut up, but there's this other thing that is really useful to ask yourself in life.
It's like, and again, this is from the document, occasionally remind yourself, this is what I said I wanted.
I think it's useful sometimes to say to yourself, remember, this is what you said you wanted.
And like, if it's not what you wanted, then you do something else.
Right.
But like, what is the thing that you want out of this?
And I think you would enjoy getting back in the mix, so to speak, of writing and recording and maybe at some point putting out music, not in the way you did any six month period in the last 30 years, but in whatever comes next.
And part of that process might be figuring out what that looks like.
And you know what I mean?
You can't really... It's difficult.
You can only walk so far on a map.
At some point, you do have to go to the terrain.
But if you were really committed to some process that invigorated you, you might be able to get a sort of help that supports that rather than just finding a different way for you to beat yourself up about what you're bad at.
I mean, every record I've ever made, the process was...
they turned me loose in the studio and I stayed there all night and I would plug in instruments and I would sit there and teach myself how to play it.
And then I would write a little part and then they would record it.
And that's how every long winter's record was made.
Chris Walla hated working that way.
Uh, Krenstein fellow loved it.
Um, but whatever it was like, we got the bass and drums down and then I,
would just go in and wander around and be like, what if I went ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.
And they'd be like, okay, put a mic on it.
But what I had was Chris Walla, Sean Nelson, Josh Rosenfeld, all these people on the other side of the glass who were like,
OK, well, let's make the snare sound like this.
And the record's got to be out by March 2nd.
And here's how much money we're wasting.
And so then I would come out of the studio and go, did that sound good?
And I'd light a cigarette and they'd go, yeah, fine.
It's like an eye exam, better or worse.
And I would go, OK, OK, well, what if I doubled the bass?
And they'd go, I don't know.
It's already two thirty in the morning.
I go, come on, come on, come on.
Let me do it.
And I'd go out and I'd do it.
but there was there was this team of people that wanted the record to come out didn't want you know it wasn't just like yes yes yes yes they were like let's get it out well now there are none of those people nobody cares if it comes out the people that are working on the record are just charging me their you know their bro rate but josh doesn't put out records anymore chris wall lives in norway
Sean Nelson, who knows is, you know, is working in a, in a cafe in, in, uh, Argentina and everybody around me is excited for a record to come out, but no, but nobody, nobody has any leash on me.
And for me, I'll just go in.
That's the, that's the thing about the long winners record that never got made.
It's got 75 tambourine parts on every song.
Cause what I know how to do is go in and go, put a mic on it.
I want to play this tin can.
And by the last long winter's record, I had the power to say, well, nobody can tell me what to do.
But what I learned was.
I have 80 tambourine parts on a record that never came out because there wasn't anybody looking through the glass.
Right, right, right.
Who cared or who, you know, who personally cared.
Or for that matter, who maybe, you know, saliently, like knew how to motivate you that particular day to do the thing you said you wanted to do.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
I mean, I wrote scared straight sitting looking in the glass with, with Chris Walla tapping his watch and saying, you have one hour before I'm turning the lights off.
middle of the night and i was like um okay okay okay washington's on you know like writing it down yes at the in the moment and the only reason i did it was because it was like it we're done this is the last day it's the last hour and then that that that undiagnosed adhd kicks in
it kicked in and all of a sudden it was great.
But without it, the song would never, you know, the song would still not be great.
When I was a kid, I always heard that Vince Lombardi set his watch forward, depending on the story, like one minute, five minutes, one hour, whatever it was.
And there was this part of me that was like, so then I started doing that because I read this biography of Vince Lombardi and I thought that sounded smart.
But the thing that I kept, the rather obvious thing that one realizes is that you're not an idiot.
You know that your watch is wrong.
And like you can't, the watch is not capable of pushing you or pulling you for that matter.
The watch is just there to tell you what time it is.
It's not there to make your life better.
That's how you know it's a good watch is it doesn't care about your life.
And but but the truth is, like, there are still ways there's still something to learn from that idea of setting your watch forward.
It's just that what if we looked at that as more of a metaphor and less as a solution to being chronically late for things, which absolutely will not work for.
I mean, you can spend your whole life just hitting the snooze button 50 times a day or you can change the time you go to bed.
You know, there's those there's those kinds of push and pull sort of situations.
But, you know, you said you wrote what, like around 10 years.
What, eight or ten songs?
Yeah, ten or twelve songs.
Are there a couple, three songs that you think have particularly good bones?
Oh, yeah.
So, like, if you play them on guitar, you're happy with how it is.
Have you got bridges you like for them?
Yeah, yeah.
Why don't you work on those songs?
I know.
But, like, what if, but you can, you could, you could, um, I don't know.
It seems like it has to start with a song that you're enthusiastic about people hearing.
And if you really like the songs that you've made, and maybe don't worry about ten, maybe worry about two, doesn't that start to change the, I mean, I guess a really practical project manager would say, well, you can't record ten songs until you've finished one.
You know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to send you the demos.
Oh, that's a lot of pressure, John.
I know it is.
That'd be great.
I know you like to listen to my songs three to four seconds at a time.
I listen to the beginning before I go to the next one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Listeners, listeners, I don't like to address the listeners, but you've never seen anybody.
And this is one I think you and Syracuse could probably really get with.
You've never seen anybody more frustrated, annoyed and disappointed than me sitting in probably your mom's dining room.
And you had, I guess, a CD player and headphones.
And you sat in a chair right next to me and played me some of the best songs I'd ever heard in my life.
And I'd hear the beginning.
Go to the next one.
Yep, that's good, too.
That's good, too.
And just kind of get the lay of the land.
The same way I would listen to a record when I was 16.
It's like, you know, you seemed crestfallen.
I was consuming it that way.
I was so devastated.
But now I look back and I realize you were bouncing up and down in your chair, but you kept going to the next song.
And I was like, the singing didn't even come in.
And you're like, no, no, no.
I got this.
I got my process.
Don't worry about my process.
I was so confused.
I was just like...
Yeah, but, you know, just a real plain way to put this that may not be useful at all, but it can be useful for me sometimes, is like, what are the load-bearing walls, if you like, of this?
What are the things that really actually can't change?
And what are the things that can change?
And what you discover once you sit with it long enough is there's a lot of stuff that can change.
And if they can't change, they can at least be discarded.
That that's always an option.
It's always an option to just discard impossibilities title You could always discard your impossibilities on focus on your possibles because there's you can always make more songs But first you need to make a song and if you have I should have the courage to know to change the things I can and the and the wisdom to know the difference I think it would make you I want to say more serene
You could do kiss covers.
You could just do kiss covers.
I'll do a medley.
My famous medley.
You know what?
Do it like that.
Remember that Stars on 45 Beatles song?
Yeah.
We can work it out.
Remember, twist and shout.
And it had those New Order claps, you know, with that...
Yeah, yeah.
And it was like, this happened once before.
I came through your door.
No reply.
You could do that, and you know what?
You could make it a super maxi.
Yeah, super maxi single.
That sounds like a napkin, a lady napkin.
But you can make a super maxi mix, put that in front of John Richards, and make it happen.
Hakuna Matata.
Like a record baby ride round, round, round.
Stock Aitken and Waterman.
It's like the first loan justice record and the second loan justice record.
Am I right?
Oh, Maria McKee.
I used to stare at that cover a lot.
I know.
Boy, you could tell that dress was a really good blowing in the wind.
We almost opened for her and then she canceled the show.
In Detroit.
I'll never know why.
Get up.
Everybody's going to leave their seat.
Get down.
Everybody's going to move their feet.
That's a good kiss cover.
You could do that.
But country.
Do it acoustic.
Well, Beth, I hear you calling, but I can't come home right now.
That's actually really good.
Do a full-on bluegrass with claw bandro on it.
Me and the boys are playing.
And we just can't find a sound.
Just a few more hours.
Oh, let me sing on it.
You and me like the Leuven brothers.
That would be so nice.
Just a few more hours and I'll be back home to you.
How has nobody done that?
You can use both the licks I showed you.
We just made ourselves a million dollars if either of us had the fall.
And the beauty of the ADHD is we'll never have to actually do it.
Remember, you come out on stage and you sit on the stool.
Listen, you project manage it and I will play every instrument except for the client.
This is definitely ended up in a way I don't prefer.
Oh, my goodness.
I'm not sure how I feel about managing your project, but I will be happy to do jokey things about what it would sound like.
Maybe I'll get into GarageBand and lay down some tracks for you.
Just a few more hours, I'll be back home to you.
I can't wait to hear the seven-part harmonies.
Beth, what can I do?
Beth, what can I do?
He's so drunk, he falls off the stool.
Not all cats land on their feet.
That's funny if you know Kiss.
It is.
All righty.