Episode 348 - Adam Schlesinger
Marc:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Marc Maron.
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Guest:How are you, what the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck buddies?
Guest:What the fucking ears?
Guest:What the fuck nicks?
Guest:What the fucks the bulls?
Guest:What the fuckadelics?
Guest:What the fuckaholics?
Guest:What the fuck?
Marc:It's New Year's Eve.
Marc:If you're listening to this on the day that it was dropped, a happy New Year's Eve to you.
Marc:Please try to live through tonight so you can enjoy the new year tomorrow, at least for a day, and then you can do whatever you have to do.
Marc:But let's all make it one more day.
Marc:What do you say?
Marc:What do you say, people?
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is New Year's Eve day that you're listening to me, hopefully.
Marc:And before I get off on talking or reflecting,
Marc:about the last year which was a doozy in a good way uh i hope it was okay for you well you know they all come with a little uh little of this a little of that a little good a little bad uh but if you're listening to this you're still alive so you made it another year which generally is a a good thing today on the show i have adam swessinger uh formerly or no currently from the band fountains of wayne but he's also like a
Marc:He's an interesting guy because he's a musician that was in a popular rock band.
Marc:They had a hit and they did the thing, but he also kind of broadened his ability to be a professional musician.
Marc:It's sort of a unique conversation in that that I've never had before with a musician.
Marc:Because that's a hell of a racket, man.
Marc:If you figure out the music thing and you nail it,
Marc:Money just comes rolling in in all sort of different ways.
Marc:But good cat.
Marc:Talk to him.
Marc:But before I get into the tour stuff, a couple of things.
Marc:Look, Thursday, I'm going to tell you right now.
Marc:I got Michael Keaton on the show and that was no easy thing.
Marc:It was all it wasn't that it was a difficult thing, but it was all very surprising the way it came about.
Marc:And I don't want to tell you the story, but he came over here the other night and we hung out right here and we talked for like an hour and a half.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:I mean, Michael Keaton was one of the funniest, biggest stars ever.
Marc:And what's he been up to?
Marc:Where's he been at?
Marc:What's he been thinking?
Marc:Well, that's going to happen on Thursday.
Marc:So just a heads up on that.
Marc:All right.
Marc:The tour dates.
Marc:Let me try to get this right, because I know a lot of you people have been wanting to see me and I have not come to your general area.
Marc:Well, the Out of the Garage Tour 2013 starts in earnest, really.
Marc:February 1st.
Marc:Now, some of you know I'm going to be at the Improv in Fort Lauderdale, January 4th through 6th.
Marc:I'm going to be at Good Nights in Raleigh, North Carolina, January 10th through 12th.
Marc:I'll be at the Ice House here in Pasadena on January 13th.
Marc:And I will be...
Marc:at the Wilbur Theater on February 8th, doing a live WTF and a nice big hunk of stand-up the same night.
Marc:But now the other dates are coming in.
Marc:I just wanted to give you guys a heads-up.
Marc:There is a pre-sale for the Out of the Garage tour, and this includes all the dates I'm about to tell you, except for San Francisco, which I'll get into.
Marc:And that starts on Wednesday the 2nd at 10 a.m., and it goes until Thursday the 3rd, 10 p.m.,
Marc:And you can go to Ticketmaster.com or LiveNation.com and search my name and use the password bazooka for pre-sale.
Marc:All right, that's that.
Marc:The San Francisco show, which is going to be on April 13th, those tickets will go on pre-sale on the 9th.
Marc:It's all getting very complicated.
Marc:There's also a Eugene, Oregon show on March 2nd that is not up on the docket yet, but is happening.
Marc:So let me give you these dates quickly.
Marc:But it's important.
Marc:This is my first big tour, and it's an organized tour.
Marc:I'll be at the Egg in Albany on February 1st.
Marc:I will be at the 6th and 1st Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
Marc:on February 2nd.
Marc:I will be at the Wilbur on February 8th, as I said.
Marc:I will be...
Marc:At the Hooky Lao in Chicopee, Massachusetts on February 9th.
Marc:I'll be at Bogarts in Cincinnati on February 14th.
Marc:I'll be at the Capitol Theater in Columbus, Ohio on February 15th.
Marc:I will be in Vancouver for the Comedy Festival.
Marc:It's not clear what that show is going to be yet.
Marc:I will be at the Aladdin Theater.
Marc:on February 28th in Portland, Oregon.
Marc:I will be at the Neptune Theater in Seattle on March 1st.
Marc:And as I said, I will be in Eugene, Oregon on March 2nd.
Marc:So that's all.
Marc:That's pending somehow.
Marc:It's not up yet.
Marc:But those are the dates.
Marc:So there you go.
Marc:I gave you the info.
Marc:Presale starts Wednesday, the 2nd at 10 a.m.
Marc:And it goes till Thursday, the 3rd till 10 p.m.
Marc:The password is bazooka.
Marc:That said...
Marc:You know what's happening.
Marc:Michael Keaton on fucking Thursday.
Marc:How insane is that?
Marc:Pow!
Marc:I just shit my pants for the last time this year.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Available at WTFPod.com.
Marc:All right, dig it.
Marc:So last year, let's get in it, man.
Marc:I got to be completely honest with you.
Marc:You people have made my life completely better, different,
Marc:I'm humbled.
Marc:I'm grateful.
Marc:Last year was the busiest, most interesting, and exciting year of my life.
Marc:Not only is the podcast continuing evolving and getting better, or at least maintaining its consistency, and I'm still thrilled doing it, and I love doing it, but I made a TV show that I think is coming out pretty fucking good.
Marc:I'm working on, I'm almost done with the second draft of a book.
Marc:This is all stuff, I got to tell you this,
Marc:For my creative friends out there, I had given up on any of this shit, any of this shit happening.
Marc:I'd given up on it.
Marc:You know that.
Marc:And that's when things started to turn around for me.
Marc:The podcast, I had no idea what was going to happen with this thing.
Marc:But I certainly wasn't going to write another book.
Marc:I certainly thought that TV was never going to happen for me.
Marc:I thought at that best, you know, I could continue plugging along doing comedy.
Marc:But because of everything that's happening and because I've sort of found my place in this world,
Marc:My comedy has never been better either.
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:Now, I'm trying not to think the worst or that things are because things are going well or they're all going to turn to shit.
Marc:I'm not going to think that or or cause it.
Marc:I'm not going to rest on my laurels.
Marc:But those of you who know me, there's always a chance I will take the laurels and throw them on the ground, stomp on them and say, ha, so fuck you.
Marc:There's that possibility.
Marc:But obviously last year was, you know, there was some loss and some tension and things are challenging.
Marc:You know, I lost a cat, which was bad.
Marc:It's still bad.
Marc:I still look for him.
Marc:And, you know, so Boomer's gone.
Marc:I could lose some weight.
Marc:My cholesterol is a little high.
Marc:I still haven't decided what to do about the baby dilemma.
Marc:I'm not sitting on the fence with this.
Marc:I'm just trying to weigh these decisions out.
Marc:But my health is okay.
Marc:I'm financially okay.
Marc:My house is okay.
Marc:Things are okay.
Marc:And that's fucking great.
Marc:So that was a good year.
Marc:When I look at the plus and minus column, things are okay.
Marc:And I'm hoping that this year will just continue to be okay.
Marc:I don't hope for great.
Marc:Let's all hope for okay.
Marc:Can we all do that?
Marc:Can we all join hands and just say like, hey, let's be okay.
Marc:That's a big deal, man, to be okay and not to throw my laurels on the ground and step all over them.
Marc:But I don't really have any resolutions aside from try to be a little less sensitive out there in the world and not be so reactive.
Marc:I'm going to re-engage my no troll engagement policy.
Marc:I'm going to buttress myself for some criticisms when it comes to putting myself out there more.
Marc:That means I'm going to catch some more flack, learn how to deal with that, detach a bit.
Marc:I'm going to treat my girl better and, uh, and try to continue to, uh, to, to be grateful and humbled by whatever's happening at this point in my life.
Marc:Cause I'm no youngster folks.
Marc:And I want you all to have a happy new year.
Marc:I want to thank, uh, thank Sam and thank, uh, Sam Varela, my, my, uh, my assistant and, uh,
Marc:I want to thank everybody who's been involved with this show and continues to support the show, my guests, and also my sponsors.
Marc:I really appreciate it.
Marc:And all of you people out there, it doesn't happen without you.
Marc:It would continue happening, but without your listenership and your support of the show, I don't know that I would have the same...
Marc:the same intensity or desire or reason to carry on.
Marc:So thank you and happy new year to you.
Marc:So now let's talk to Adam Swessinger.
Marc:And, uh, I gotta say it one more time.
Marc:You guys, Michael Keaton is on Thursday.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Just between you and me.
Marc:Adam Schlesinger.
Marc:Schlesinger.
Marc:Schlesinger.
Guest:Schlesinger.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:From Fountains of Wayne and many other things.
Marc:You are a professional musician.
Marc:I am indeed.
Marc:My girlfriend loves Fountains of Wayne.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tell her thanks.
Marc:Yeah, no, I mean, maybe you'll be able to meet her.
Marc:I think she's going to be cranky and exhausted.
Marc:I bet you're excited about that.
Marc:Wouldn't it be fun to meet a cranky and exhausted fan?
Guest:That's what I was hoping would happen.
Marc:Yeah, I figured that's why you came over here.
Marc:So what are you doing in L.A.?
Marc:You don't live here now, do you?
Guest:i don't live here no um i come out here sometimes for work and related stuff and i've been uh working on a television show that's got a lot of music in it and uh so i'm out here this week so doing that that's like this is the thing that like i talk to musicians you know not a lot of them but i've been talking to musicians lately i've talked to the likes of nick lowe yep jack white up and coming guys sure yeah you know new guys yeah new guys on the block yeah
Marc:But there's this idea about musicians that if people haven't heard from them in a while or that they're not as popular as they used to be.
Marc:I'm not saying that about you necessarily.
Marc:But they're like, what are they doing?
Marc:But you've been doing things all along.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know, the band thing was always kind of at the center of it for me, but I always had this kind of other life just doing music for hire, whatever somebody called me to do.
Guest:And Chris, who's the singer in Fountains of Wayne, just calls me a music whore, which is sort of true, too.
Guest:A music whore!
Guest:Yeah, but, you know, basically I just wanted to make a living making music, and I also like a lot of different kinds of music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Chris and I went to college together and we started playing in bands together even in college.
Guest:Where'd you grow up?
Guest:I grew up in Manhattan as a little kid and then Montclair, New Jersey for most of my upbringing.
Marc:Montclair, New Jersey.
Marc:My family's from Pontoon Lakes, New Jersey and Jersey City.
Marc:Montclair's close to that, right?
Marc:Yeah, very close to that.
Guest:Willowbrook Mall?
Guest:Willowbrook Mall, yep.
Guest:Paramus Park?
Guest:Well, Fountains of Wayne was named after a store in Wayne, New Jersey, which is right next to the Willowbrook Mall.
Guest:It's not there anymore.
Marc:I lived in Wayne, New Jersey.
Marc:You did.
Marc:I don't remember much about it because I was literally six years old, but I lived in Wayne, New Jersey, and that's where the Fountains of Wayne store is?
Guest:It's not there anymore.
Guest:It was there for my entire childhood, but they closed a few years ago, but we took the band name from that place.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:That's your phone.
Guest:There's a lot going on on your phone right now.
Marc:I thought I just turned it off.
Guest:Okay, done.
Guest:Yeah, so anyway, I grew up there and went to college in Massachusetts, Western Mass, met Chris Collingwood there, and we were both aspiring songwriters, and we started playing in bands together there.
Guest:And then when we got out of college,
Guest:We were doing the band thing, but then I was also just trying to get work making music for whatever.
Guest:So I had some friends that got involved in television that called me and hired me.
Guest:One of the earlier things I did was a friend of mine was working with John Leguizamo, and he had a sketch comedy show that was on Fox for like five seconds.
Guest:It was called House of Buggin'.
Guest:I kind of remember that.
Guest:He called me up to work on that.
Guest:And then after that, I got hired to work on...
Guest:the Dana Carvey show, another sketch comedy show.
Guest:And that was a really cool show because it was like, you know, all the people that came from that.
Guest:Louie and Robert hired you?
Guest:Robert, yeah, was like running it and Louie and it's like... Robert Smigel.
Guest:Robert Smigel, yeah.
Marc:So how does that work?
Marc:Let's go back to the Fountains of Wayne thing because...
Marc:Fountains of Wayne is a pop band.
Marc:It is, yes.
Marc:Power pop, I guess you would call it.
Guest:Would you call it that?
Guest:I mean, we don't really call it that, but we get put in that category.
Guest:It's sort of a funny term that I don't really know what it means.
Guest:But where it's a pop band, I mean, it's sort of like...
Marc:melodic and it's yeah not so like risk driven yeah you know it's sweet it's got those minor chords that uh uh that my friend got mine around me got all that shit that jonathan daniel uh loves the the the sweet pop sound daniel is our manager i know old friend of mine i would have him on the show if you could get him to talk yeah he's here he's in town is he yeah just get him over here right now he's your manager he should text him let's text him say quick you'll be like i'm not gonna go over there yeah
Guest:soft-spoken John what going on behind that not talking much yes he's very smart man but okay so this is the era is what mid 90s you put this band together well we actually had kind of a false start in the early 90s we had a free band band Fountains of Wayne and we made a record that never came out and we signed a really crappy record deal that screwed us up for a while and we thought we were kind of done and we thought we just blown it you know we were like 24 and we're just like fuck it's over
Guest:And so we went our separate ways for a while.
Guest:Chris was living in Boston.
Guest:I was living in New York.
Guest:I started playing in a different band called Ivy, which got that going.
Guest:It was a whole different kind of thing.
Guest:And I also started doing more just whatever, television, whatever I could get involved with.
Guest:And then Chris and I got back together a couple years later, and it was that thing where we sort of thought it was too late anyway, so who gives a shit?
Guest:So we started writing these songs.
Guest:I mean, Chris actually started it with this song called Radiation Vibe, which he kind of wrote as a joke, and I loved it.
Guest:And it just had a lot more kind of loose spirit to it than some of the stuff we had done earlier.
Guest:We weren't trying so hard.
Guest:So that song opened up this kind of floodgate of writing for both of us, and we wrote what became that first Fountains of Wayne record.
Marc:um really quickly wrote a lot of it sitting in a bar in the west village and just kind of goofing around but but people were responding to that stuff a lot more than the stuff we had done three years before that anyway it just had much more life to it well was it because that that kind of music was seeing a kind of resurgence because i know there was a period where where power pop kind of went out of favor somehow and and kind of like uh got bullied out by uh by just uh grunge and a lot of other stuff but they're the sweet kind of music like the cars
Marc:And I guess the smithereens were before you, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that was funny because there was this period in the mid-90s, you know, it was after Nirvana and all that stuff.
Guest:And then there was this other wave of bands like Weezer and Presidents of the United States and stuff that was like kind of, you know, like white guys with guitars and had more humor in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that stuff started actually selling records.
Guest:And so for a second there, it was like a band seemed like a commercial prospect to somebody, which was kind of a funny idea.
Guest:But also, we were just making better songs than we had been.
Guest:And so people got interested in it, and we ended up actually getting to make a record.
Guest:And at that point, getting a major label record deal actually meant something.
Guest:There was some money attached to that and a little more exposure.
Marc:Money and shame and potential debt.
Marc:Yeah, all that stuff.
Marc:Did you have one of those situations where you ended up getting fucked by a record company?
Guest:I wouldn't say we ever really got fucked.
Guest:I think we were always kind of left alone just because, except for maybe that first five minutes, nobody had these great expectations for us.
Guest:So for better or worse, we were left alone to make the records we wanted to make.
Guest:The best thing is we didn't ever put out anything we were ashamed of.
Guest:We had a lot of friends on major labels where they just got pressured into writing with people they didn't want to write with.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know how much it happens these days, but back then, yeah, I had a lot of friends that ended up kind of getting bullied into putting out records that they didn't like.
Guest:How does that work, though?
Guest:Who decides that?
Guest:An executive?
Guest:it's it's just you know it's it's not so different from the way a television show can get screwed up or a movie i mean it's like you're making this record and then somebody says you really need the one song that's going to get you on the radio and in order to write that you need to write with this guy that just had five of them and you don't really like his music but you go along with it to be a team player right you know and then and then you don't really like what you end up with but they like it and then you just end up blaming some other guy for why i mean
Guest:sometimes that can work sometimes sometimes you end up with a cool hit song and everybody's happy but but i just i've had a lot of friends that ended up with records they didn't like and it kind of soured the whole experience you know it's awful it's awful to have something out there that you hate yeah and uh and you're you're sort of held responsible for it yeah and it's not really your thing
Marc:Yeah, I mean, everybody has that to some extent.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You try to police it if you can.
Marc:Just the little shame packets we leave along the way.
Guest:And then the internet makes them just last forever now, too.
Guest:So people can go look at them and laugh at you.
Guest:There's no escaping your shame packet.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Time is just compressed now.
Guest:All the embarrassing things you did are just fresh.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Always.
Marc:Ever-present.
Guest:Evergreen.
Marc:There's you in your most embarrassing situation.
Marc:But you grew up... Are you a Jewish guy?
Marc:No.
Marc:I am, yes.
Guest:So you grew up Jewish in New Jersey?
Guest:Yeah, are you familiar with this at all?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:This is my roots, Jewish in New Jersey.
Marc:And what did your folks do?
Marc:Are they happy?
Guest:I think they're very happy now.
Guest:Yeah, they're happy.
Guest:They were always supportive.
Guest:They thought it was...
Guest:a generally unrealistic thing to try to be a musician but they didn't tell me not to yeah yeah and they came from families that were you know my mom's parents were both professional musicians and music professors and stuff and both my parents were musicians not professionally but both played and really yeah what's your dad play he played sax and clarinet still does and you know I mean we used to like jam out and stuff he's good you know he's a good player and
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what did your mom play?
Guest:My mom played piano and cello.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So there's music in the house and stuff.
Marc:What a sweet situation it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every night there was a jam.
Guest:No, that's not true.
Guest:Every weekend, right?
Guest:No, but I mean, there was a lot of music.
Guest:I mean, they didn't know anything about popular music.
Guest:They definitely came from...
Guest:different worlds of classical classical my dad knew a lot about jazz neither of them really knew much about pop or rock but but so when you're a kid that means you were what learning how to read music very early I took piano lessons required of young Jewish men to take piano I never took them I went right to guitar and I it's not too late you know there's a lot of good teachers I think it might be too late yeah it might be too late
Marc:i mean i don't know if i can do the uh one hand doing the other thing that the you know what i mean that thing like i i still can't finger pick yeah like i can't you know like the whole idea like get the bass going over here and the other thing going here yeah yeah it's why you're doing it in the air right yeah it's scaring me now yeah the idea like what if i'm thinking about this one too much but i guess but you know how to play piano
Guest:I do, yeah.
Guest:That's sort of my main instrument.
Guest:I mean, I became a bass player and then later a guitar player, mainly because I, you know, in like high school bands, I didn't like being stuck behind the keyboard.
Guest:I like to be able to move around a little bit.
Guest:So I learned that later.
Guest:And now I play, I write more on guitar and I play bass in the band.
Marc:So you were in a stage band?
Marc:In high school, like that kind of band?
Guest:No, it was like a rock band.
Guest:I mean, bad rock band.
Guest:Oh, high school band.
Marc:It was an early attempt at like... Not like marching band.
Marc:Or the other thing.
Marc:Like there was a stage band in my high school that I did not excel at.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I was part of it.
Marc:And I told them I learned how to read music and I never did.
Marc:So I just...
Marc:improvised badly right thinking that no one could hear the bass like i was a guitar player and i did i chose to do the bass because i had a bass i didn't know how to play the bass yeah and i really thought that i could just hide just turn it down and nobody would notice you weren't doing anything yeah i thought nobody would miss those low frequencies right how important is the bass right to a band it's not that really no i think it is isn't it it is very i'm kidding it's a spine right well i guess it's all important really uh-huh yeah
Marc:Now, growing up with musicians and families, you never got any of that judgment of like, you're throwing your life away.
Marc:What are you doing?
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:I mean, there was enough going on sort of early on that it didn't seem like a total delusion on my part to try to do it.
Guest:There was enough encouragement.
Guest:But there was definitely some sort of markers along the way.
Guest:I mean, the sort of bigger thing for me, at least on my...
Guest:You know, like my family's radar and the band thing was all good.
Guest:But then in 1996, I wrote this song called That Thing You Do for Tom Hanks movie.
Guest:And that was like a big door opener.
Marc:And how do you do?
Marc:How does that happen?
Marc:OK, like walk me through how you write a song for a movie and what you do with it.
Marc:I mean, how old are you at that point?
Guest:uh when it came out i was like 27 or 28 i actually probably wrote it like a year or so before that i mean you're already in the band founds a wane well it all kind of happened at once it was a weird time for me there's a lot going on i mean i because that was a huge song right it was a huge song for me i mean you know but didn't it was it charted didn't it it charted yeah and then you know the movie did pretty well but but um but uh
Guest:The way that happens is that there's a lot of these things you hear about of like they're looking for stuff.
Guest:And I, at the time, had just signed with a music publishing company.
Guest:And part of what they're supposed to do is like tell you about this stuff that's out there.
Guest:And it's kind of like most of it's like really cattle call, you know.
Guest:I mean, you learn later that you can just waste your whole life taking shots at this stuff.
Guest:And mostly it's a waste of time.
Guest:But for whatever reason...
Guest:you know, I got really lucky with that one.
Guest:I did a demo.
Guest:I heard, you know, they called me up, the people from this music publishing company said, it's a movie that's set in the early 60s.
Guest:It's kind of Beatlesque.
Guest:It's about a band and this is really up your alley.
Guest:You should take a shot at this.
Guest:And so I did this demo.
Marc:I saw the movie, by the way.
Guest:Oh, cool.
Marc:I saw it, yeah.
Guest:yeah so it's not the beetle like band exactly yeah yeah so i did this demo with uh two friends of mine mike viola who is another songwriter lives out here yeah and uh and a guy named andy chase who was in the band ivy with me we did this demo the demo sounded great it just sounded like an old record and we we knew it was pretty good you know yeah but we kind of sent it in and forgot about it and then they actually ended up using it so so you get money on you know the initial payment for the putting the song in the movie and then you get money because it goes on a record
Marc:Did it go on the record?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And you wrote it.
Marc:How does it break down?
Marc:Because I don't know if people know this because I'm not sure I know it.
Marc:I'm not sure I know it either, but if checks suddenly start showing up that didn't show up before is what happens.
Marc:But if you write the song and if you have the publishing on the song, that's the place to be.
Guest:That's one of the good places to be.
Guest:It's not as good as it was back then even.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I mean, being a writer is...
Guest:better than not being a writer if you're in a band you know a lot of bands break up because they don't understand that and then one guy writes the hit song and he gets a million dollars and everyone else is still broke and they're like fuck you yeah i mean that happens all the time yeah you know so um just some dudes who are getting together and then when the deal goes down the thing becomes a hit they don't understand why yeah then you learn after the fact like oh he's driving a better car than us and you know why are we still on the bus it happens all the time it happens all the time
Marc:Now, when you, who was your, like, when, like, did you have a, like, because whenever I think about people that do what you do, which is stupid, I get this whole Tin Pan Alley kind of like, you know, you're very aware of the business of music early on.
Marc:And, you know, you could, you know, sort of focus on creating specific types of music to make money off of.
Marc:And that's like a whole job unto itself.
Marc:That's really not the sort of rock and roll dream.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I guess I never saw myself as being like the front man in a rock band or something.
Guest:I felt like somebody that was a good executor of ideas.
Guest:Like I could work with a lot of different people and figure out what they were going for and try to help get there.
Guest:And it's not that different.
Guest:Like if somebody calls me and says, we need a song about this or that sounds like this or, you know, like that musical theater kind of thing, which I ended up getting a little into too, where it's like, okay, here's what's happening in the story.
Guest:We need a song to help tell this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like kind of solving those puzzles with songs, and it's a different part of your brain than just like, I want to be the front guy in a rock band.
Guest:But you wanted to be in a rock band.
Guest:I wanted to do it.
Guest:I was like a Beatle freak as a kid, and I wanted to be in the Beatles.
Guest:You can definitely hear that in the music that you do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which Beatle?
Guest:um you know i probably was more of like a paul guy yeah you feel like a paul guy yeah so yeah you said that with total disdain yeah come on man no but i mean you know i i like i i like everything about the beatles but i but then i i didn't even know there were really other bands for a long time as a kid i just knew about the beatles and then later i started listening to other stuff and i was like oh i like this too
Marc:yeah isn't that weird beatles songs are almost like christmas carols it's i'm always amazed at how many he actually wrote them is a weird thought like somebody sat down yeah but like even when i go back to it now you know when i listen to certain beatles albums i'm like where the did this come from yeah how did this happen yeah it's never happened again i mean people can you know cop it or or learn from it right but there are certain records where you're like at the time it came out it's like how does this even happen
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like Revolver.
Guest:Where does that come from, that music?
Guest:They also just, to me, seemed like they figured out this way to just be able to do whatever they felt like doing on that day and still was the Beatles.
Guest:Whereas the Rolling Stones, it was just like they kind of had this shtick and that was it.
Guest:And it was a cool shtick, but it was like, you know, I just felt like the Beatles could have probably done the Rolling Stones shtick if they wanted to one day, but they couldn't have necessarily gone the other way around.
Guest:Musically.
Marc:yeah i mean it's a vibe but it's like you know they're not gonna you're not gonna be able to manifest the sexual menace i can't many people can i feel you just turned it on enough right there didn't you yeah but i'm tired yeah that's it just i mean you know i i have a story about that when i was at the um i went to the rock and roll hall of fame uh-huh have you been no really oh yeah we did go we did yeah
Marc:And you go to the area where it's actually the Beatles and Stones are sort of in the same vicinity.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they have, like, you know, the Stones.
Marc:They've got a bunch of costumes, a few contracts, whatever.
Marc:And then there's a video monitor.
Marc:And it's running, like, some performance footage from probably the early 70s.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, Jumpin' Jack Flash and some behind-the-scenes, you know, stage stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's just one video running.
Marc:And then you go, like, literally on the opposite wall is the Beatles wall.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And there they have a screen.
Marc:And around the screen is every Beatles record.
Marc:And it's sort of like one record will light up and it'll be the Beatles and George Martin talking about that.
Marc:It's documentary, but it's sort of moving the images around.
Marc:It's not real documentary footage.
Marc:And it just went through all the Beatles records.
Marc:And sort of about every two Beatles records, you'd hear the Rolling Stones footage start over again.
Right.
Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:A lot more info.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So to me, that sort of explains the difference.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you're never a Stones guy?
Guest:No, I was.
Marc:I like the Stones.
Marc:You have a huge Stones poster.
Marc:I just realized.
Marc:Yeah, I'm not.
Marc:Right behind your head.
Marc:I'm not going to get too defensive.
Guest:Right.
Marc:No, I mean, I love the Beatles.
Marc:There's no way around it.
Marc:And I don't know, you know, the Stones thing.
Marc:I was a big Keith Richards guy.
Marc:I mean, I aspired to.
Marc:The rock and roll ideal for me was just drugs.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Let's fucking play the blues.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You do not come from that.
Marc:That wasn't an accusation.
Marc:It was more of a statement posed as a question.
Guest:The funny thing is that some of the pop bands are actually, like, the most depraved.
Guest:I'm not talking about myself, but I'm saying, like, when you actually get to know.
Guest:Well, drop some names, man.
Guest:You know, but it's true.
Guest:Like, especially these guys, like, you meet these kids that are in, like, heavy metal bands or whatever, and they're just totally professional, and, like, you know, they're, like, keep business cards on file, and they're really careerist.
Marc:Well, heavy metal's a little bit labor-intensive, man, you know?
Guest:I don't know, but it's just like, I know a lot of guys that are in these power pop bands that are just really fuck-ups.
Guest:And maybe it's because of the fact that it's not really commercial music, so it's like this feudal thing to begin with on some level.
Marc:Well, it is more commercial now.
Marc:It seems like, because I used to talk to John Daniel, your manager now.
Marc:We were friends.
Marc:you know years ago and he's the one who actually you know taught me the difference between you know what is defined as pop and what is rock and this whole you know this whole world of music that could just not find a market uh you know i guess you know who are the seminal power pop bands like big star and uh it depends how you define it i don't really know like they were big though yeah
Marc:um i guess cheap trick is sort of considered a power pop band but they were big cheap tricks you know one of my favorite bands right but there was they had this small window i guess they're they but they were kind of unique in the way they they uh they structured songs and it seemed a little sweeter and then a little more melodic yeah and and like for most of uh the 60s and 70s
Marc:And most of the 80s, it was just, everything was steamrolled by rock and roll and synth music, and there was just never really a place for it.
Marc:And now it seems like most of the bands, certainly the young bands, are from a pop tradition.
Marc:I mean, Green Day's sort of a power pop family.
Guest:Yeah, totally are, especially what they're doing right now.
Guest:They just put out this record that's just really power pop.
Marc:And now you're putting out country records.
Guest:I am?
Marc:No.
Marc:Wasn't The Last Founds of Wayne a little twangy?
Guest:It had its twangy moments.
Guest:It's definitely not a country record.
Guest:I mean, did Jonathan produce that one?
Guest:Did he produce?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, he might be a record producer, but he's a manager.
Guest:He doesn't get in the studio with us.
Marc:Oh, that's too bad.
Marc:He's got an ear for it.
Marc:He does.
Guest:He does.
Guest:He has a really good ear for songs.
Guest:I mean, I think that's his thing.
Guest:He's got an ear for songs.
Guest:Well, getting back to defining power pop.
Guest:Let's do that.
Guest:Help me out.
Guest:I don't really know.
Guest:I think that if people use that with us, we sometimes see it as a little bit of an insult because it's almost like you're just trying to recreate something that already happened and you're just trying to ape it.
Guest:I think we do more of like picking bits and pieces of music history that we like and then trying to put our own spin on it.
Guest:And I think with our band, it's like we might do a song that sounds like 70s FM radio or it might sound like 60s Beach Boys stuff or it might sound like 80s New Wave.
Guest:But for us, it's like putting some kind of lyric on top of that that you might not expect.
Guest:And that's that juxtaposition that...
Guest:Makes it seem a little fresh, we hope.
Marc:Right, but it's not quite a... It's not a satire.
Marc:It's a homage kind of... Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Guest:You're good at copping sounds.
Guest:We're definitely good at copping sounds, but...
Guest:Yeah, I mean, there's a fine line.
Guest:Sometimes it can get close to the point of being just silly or just too funny.
Guest:And then there's other times where we try to go completely the other way and be really sincere.
Guest:And we sometimes felt like people don't give us credit for actually having songs that actually are just straight ahead and sort of heartfelt and not jokey at all.
Marc:And you feel you don't get the credit for it because they're used to you being sort of, I don't know if the word is glib, but at least kind of tongue-in-cheeky.
Guest:Well, yeah, and I think the biggest song we had was probably also the most novelty-esque song we had.
Guest:Stacy's Mom?
Guest:Yeah, so that's what most people, if they know us at all, they probably know that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They don't know that there's other stuff that has nothing to do with that.
Marc:There's a lot of sweet, heartfelt songs.
Marc:But yeah, but I mean, that song... I think that kind of music, when it locks in, it locks into all ages.
Marc:Like, you know, there's that sound of pop or even that car sound of that song...
Marc:I mean, little girls can like it, and middle-aged ladies can like it.
Marc:Sweet.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'll take sweet.
Guest:That's okay.
Guest:Sweet is good.
Guest:But the guitar sound on Stacy's mom is like, it's exactly the cars.
Guest:It is.
Guest:In fact, Rick Ocase apparently thought that we actually sampled it, and I heard him say that in an interview somewhere, which we didn't.
Guest:Did you get any flack?
Guest:from okay sick no no flack no just i i don't think he said it in like a you know like i'm gonna sue you kind of way no accusations yeah but i mean it was it was an obvious homage yeah well we're trying to deny it and the video was an obvious homage
Marc:I did a bunch of stuff, yeah.
Marc:That's kind of a dirty video.
Marc:I went and watched it today for some reason.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a little sexy, a little charged up.
Guest:Yeah, our friend Chris Applebaum directed that, and we kind of left it to him.
Guest:And we were a little bit concerned when we showed up the day of that shoot, and there was like...
Guest:I guess in my mind, when I wrote the song, I was picturing more like, you know, older teenagers.
Guest:But when he cast the video, it was like really little kids.
Guest:And we were like, is this okay?
Guest:Being kind of racy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Kind of sexual.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Somehow we got away with that.
Guest:But it definitely was.
Guest:And then like, you know, not that long after that, there was this whole thing with MTV where Janet Jackson sort of exposed herself at the Super Bowl.
Guest:And then they got much more conservative like right after that.
Guest:So that video would have never been on the air.
Guest:It's just amazing.
Guest:Yeah, like six months later, they got really conservative.
Guest:Your borderline pedophilia video.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:We had to totally change our strategy.
Guest:God, no more pedophilia for at least two quarters.
Guest:Good for you, man.
Marc:But that song came out after you guys...
Guest:split up for a while what does it mean when when a band like i mean because you guys seem to get along did was there like because i don't really you know i don't talk to many band people yeah we never really split up it's just between every record we kind of stopped being a band for a while and i think chris in particular has always even from just the beginning has had really like mixed feelings about whether he wants to be doing it at all and and between every record he's like i don't know if i want to make another record and it always ends up taking us three four years what is what else does he do
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:Eventually he realizes maybe nothing and he wants to do it again, but it just, you know, he's just not, he doesn't love the whole process.
Guest:He doesn't always love touring.
Guest:He doesn't, you know.
Guest:What about the other two guys?
Guest:they would get pretty impatient and be like what what the fuck are we doing why aren't we playing why aren't we recording you know those guys were you know they're usually itching to do more and how long have you known those two guys um well jody who's the guitar player i actually he's good man he yeah he's amazing i saw you when you were here at the troubadour
Guest:I met him when he was looking for a bass player for his own band in like about 1991.
Guest:And I played bass for that band.
Guest:It was called The Bell Tower.
Guest:I met him through an ad in The Village Voice.
Guest:And he had just moved back from England.
Guest:He's American, but he had just moved back from where he'd been living in England.
Guest:I played with him for a minute.
Guest:And then that band sort of ended.
Guest:And then when we started up Fountains of Wayne, I said, maybe you should come do this with us.
Guest:um and then brian um we got introduced by a mutual friend he he was the drummer in another kind of power pop band called the posies from from seattle yeah i know them yeah and he was living in seattle and we met him and you know we got together with him and um we played a bunch of steve miller songs and and you know in like 10 minutes we're like all right this is the guy what did you do fly like an eagle jet airliner i just did all of them and yeah and and uh our manager why steve miller
Guest:Because we like Steve Miller.
Guest:And it wasn't like a plan.
Guest:We just got in a room and said, all right, well, how do we audition a drummer?
Guest:And we just by accident started playing Steve Miller songs, and he knew them all.
Guest:Because I'm a joker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So our manager was really mad at us because we picked the drummer that lives in Seattle.
Guest:We all lived in New York then.
Guest:He's like, can't you find a guy in New York?
Guest:You're going to have to fly him in every time you do anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that's what we did.
Marc:And you stuck with him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I saw, when I went to see The Troubadour,
Marc:Because I knew Stacey's mom, I knew a couple other songs, but my girlfriend, who is 29, she's like, I'm cranky, usually.
Marc:No, she just works hard.
Marc:She's not usually cranky.
Marc:But she was so excited that I was able to get us into your show.
Marc:And you have fanatic, you know, you have real fans.
Marc:But it was very cute.
Marc:I'd never seen a tamer bunch.
Marc:And also, you know, families.
Marc:No mosh pit.
Marc:There was no mosh pit.
Marc:There was literally a family.
Marc:There was a father, a mother, and two kids who looked like they were 12 or 13 who were right up front at that show.
Marc:And they were all singing and dancing along to your songs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a wholesome experience, our shows.
Marc:But that's sweet.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, does that make you feel good?
Guest:it is actually really nice when you see two generations that both actually like the music and it's not just like the parents dragging the kids or vice versa you know yeah it's fascinating it's great and you and you don't have it seems like all your fans are pretty thoughtful sensitive people um you've cultivated a not all of them but but many of them are really what's the biggest problem we had we had a guy come on stage in uh glasgow early on well fucking glasgow
Guest:Yeah, he came on... Chris and I were doing an acoustic duo kind of song, and he came on behind us completely naked and took a piss in a glass and drank his own piss during the song.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, I'm going to think that that was probably... So that guy was not at the Troubadour show that you saw?
Marc:No, but I'm going to also think that he probably wasn't... Whatever that had to do with... It had nothing to do with being a fan.
Marc:Yeah, it was not about Fountains of Wayne.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or maybe he misunderstood the name of your band.
Marc:Yeah, he got confused.
Yeah.
Marc:But Glasgow is the most drunken, fucked up place I've ever been in my life.
Guest:Yeah, it's not a good example.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:I like the city, but I've never seen more public drunkenness in my life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where else have you been?
Marc:Have you been all over the world?
Guest:We've done a lot of traveling.
Guest:Not all over.
Guest:I mean, we've done a fair amount in Japan, which has always been like a good place for us.
Guest:We're medium in Japan.
Guest:Medium?
Guest:We usually go to Japan at least once or twice a year.
Guest:And we've been going there since like the late 90s.
Guest:So that's good.
Guest:And we do some Europe stuff.
Guest:But in general, we don't tour as much as we used to either.
Marc:You seem very well adjusted and healthy and not too worn out.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Marc:I look well rested.
Marc:For a guy in a band.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, we're not touring right now.
Marc:What was the last tour that you went on, the one I saw you on?
Guest:Yeah, when was that?
Guest:That was like in the spring or something.
Marc:Maybe a year ago or so, right?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It was the last time you were... Yeah, I mean, lately we've been kind of doing these things of just doing a couple weeks here and there through two, three weeks, and it's not really like this grueling experience.
Guest:Why do you do it?
Guest:Why do we keep doing it?
Marc:Well, you seem like, you know, it seems like you're diversifying a bit.
Marc:You're doing some producing, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've done a bunch of producing, yeah.
Guest:Who have you produced?
Guest:Oh, I mean, I've made some records with, let's see, They Might Be Giants I did some stuff with.
Guest:That makes sense.
Guest:Yeah, they're friends in New York, and I worked with them.
Guest:I mean, there's a band called Motion City Soundtrack that I did a record with, Dashboard Confessional.
Marc:Yeah, I've heard of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was into record producing more.
Guest:It's not my favorite gig, but I like it.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Now, what is it like?
Marc:Okay, so now I can learn some more things.
Marc:When somebody producing, I mean, when somebody like they might be giants who have a very defined sound, and certainly it's up the alley of pop, but it's unique, and you talk to them about producing, what are they looking for from you?
Guest:I think with them, it's just they like working with their friends, and we just were friends already, and we have kind of similar.
Guest:I mean, I was a huge fan of theirs.
Guest:But what do you bring to it?
Guest:Like, what are the conversations?
Guest:It's just the different guys.
Guest:In a context like that, it's just like we might as well be in a band together for a week.
Guest:I don't think there's any hierarchy of, like, somebody's the boss or anything.
Guest:It's more just like, let's bring in somebody else's ideas and kick them around.
Marc:But, like, what ideas?
Marc:Like, you know, bring up the keyboard a little more.
Marc:Maybe you should sing this that way.
Guest:um what if we did this what if we added a layer of yeah yeah i mean i kind of feel like my my skills that i might bring to a situation is like an arranger like figuring out you know if somebody just plays a raw song on an acoustic guitar or keyboard what can we do with this right and also just sort of structuring it so that it's like stickier than it might be you know how do you how do you make it stickier you mean like uh stickier in the brain
Guest:Is that a word people use?
Guest:Well, you know, I mean, a lot of making a song memorable is just repeating the right parts and getting rid of the other parts.
Guest:So it's sort of moving the pieces around and saying, like, let's take this part and do this 25 times in a row, and then everyone will remember it.
Guest:So stuff like that.
Guest:And then just...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Production is just like a lot of little micro decisions that add up to something that hopefully just pits you as one thing.
Marc:And when you write songs, because you've got a good sense of the hook and you've got a good sense of emotion.
Marc:I mean, how much of how connected are you to it?
Marc:Does it come from your life or do you?
Marc:You know, I've asked this other songwriters and they're like, no, it's songwriting.
Guest:I feel like, for me, my own life gets in there indirectly, but a lot of the stuff, at least for the band, for Fountains of Wayne, a lot of the stuff is sort of making up characters and telling stories, and it's more like fiction, but then your own life kind of creeps in there, whether you wanted to or not.
Guest:You married?
Guest:I am, yeah.
Guest:You got kids?
Guest:I got two daughters.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:How old are they?
Guest:Nine and five.
Guest:You're like a full-blown adult.
Guest:It's all happening.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:I'm 44.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I'm 48.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're getting up there, man.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Are you friends with the Ween guys?
Guest:I think we've crossed paths.
Guest:I'm not friends with them.
Guest:I'm a huge fan.
Guest:We were just talking about Ween today because did you ever hear this Pizza Hut jingle that they did?
Guest:I heard about it.
Guest:You got to check this out.
Guest:I guess Pizza Hut asked them to do a commercial at some point for this pizza that had the cheese.
Guest:inside the pizza.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I remember those.
Guest:Inside the crust.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they delivered these demos or whatever, like these jingles to Pizza Hut and they did a clean version and a dirty version as if Pizza Hut would want a dirty version.
Marc:Yeah, we'll go with the filthy one.
Guest:Anyway, it's on YouTube and it's not worth me singing it for you, but you should...
Marc:Well, the only reason I ask is that I talked to Aaron Friedman and Gene Wein, and he's sort of moving away from it.
Marc:He just moved out here, or he's moving out here, and he wants to get involved in animation and soundtrack.
Guest:Yeah, well, that's the thing.
Guest:I mean, I think our whole attitude toward being in a band at this point is like...
Guest:we wouldn't we wouldn't necessarily start a band right now but we have this band and it's fun and it's a good band and we have people that still want to come see us so we keep doing it but we do it and then we don't do it for a while and at least for me i i have gotten you know really interested in doing other stuff that has nothing to do with it and and and like television stuff or what about the other guys are they like what the fuck
Guest:No, I mean, everybody's different.
Guest:We have four different personalities.
Guest:I mean, Brian, the drummer, is always busy.
Guest:He's touring right now with a band called Jesus and Mary Chain.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's a big band.
Guest:Yeah, it's bigger than us.
Guest:So he's a guy.
Guest:Yeah, he's working.
Guest:He's doing stuff.
Guest:Jody has his own solo stuff that he does and plays.
Guest:Chris, he's the front man of our band.
Guest:And so I think for him...
Guest:He's never been a guy that wants to be a chameleon and like, hey, let me put on a different hat and be this other thing.
Guest:He just likes to sing his songs and play.
Guest:And when he's not doing that, he likes to just chill out.
Guest:And he lives up in Western Mass, you know, kind of out in the woods.
Guest:And he's just like, he moved out of New York City as soon as this kind of got up and running.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's like his style, you know?
Guest:Don't you envy that?
Guest:Sometimes I totally do.
Guest:But, you know, we're very different in that way.
Guest:But do you guys talk a lot or...?
Guest:I mean, honestly, now, no, because we, when we're, you know, we've, we've been talking since we were 18.
Guest:So, you know, we, we talk, I mean, we email all the time and we do business together, but like, do we hang out the way we used to?
Guest:No, we totally don't.
Marc:So there's no, there's no urgency anymore.
Marc:It must be kind of relaxing to not have that kind of, to put, not put that importance of, you know, the need to, to go out there and tour and risk, you know, being tragic.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I hope it doesn't get tragic.
Marc:You're beloved.
Marc:I guess that doesn't really protect you from that.
Marc:But I'm saying that you all seem okay.
Marc:There's not one of you that's sort of like, oh, we're going to have to go out.
Guest:I don't think anybody of the four of us would do it if they just dreaded it and hated it.
Guest:I think everybody still really likes, especially the performing part.
Guest:I think they do it because it's fun to do and hopefully make a little money.
Guest:But it's not that much money.
Guest:It's mostly because I still like playing.
Guest:But none of you guys ever really had the dream of being superstars or rock stars?
Guest:No, I mean, we all did at some point, but you just evolved with that.
Marc:Yeah, tell me about that, because that's sort of interesting to me, because actually John Daniel was...
Marc:you know when we were buddies like you know he brought something up uh to me that that you know sort of changed my life around like a grown-up is someone who who realizes their limitations yeah well he you know he himself i mean he was like a aspiring rock star and had a band and like record deals and all that stuff i knew him when he was you know uh you know just started you know he's working for the manager of the cure
Marc:you know and he was you know he'd sort of hit a you know rough patch and he was right he was producing you know he had that band in new york with the dude shane that kind of i don't remember the name of that band do you uh it wasn't candy i mean he's obviously in candy but he's a very impressive cat yeah he's got a real love of the music business yeah yeah and you know he but he also remembers to actually enjoy what he's doing which a lot of people don't like he's just he seems like a guy that just still has fun on a day-to-day basis and like doesn't get too worked up about stupid shit and now no because he you know he
Marc:came out on top right you know but uh you know the the the path of the the artist or the musician you know it's just littered that road is just littered with broken dreams and people that are bitter and fucking well one thing i've found is that um
Guest:You know, I mean, this probably goes for all entertainment, but definitely as a musician, if you're out there trying to like make things happen, whether it's your band or trying to get songs in some other filmed entertainment or something, it's like most stuff doesn't happen.
Guest:Most stuff doesn't pan out.
Guest:And you can just sit around being like pissed off and depressed all the time.
Guest:Or you can just sort of accept that that's just the nature of it.
Guest:That's your job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's also just like...
Guest:at this point i've had enough like positive reinforcement to know like well i'm pretty good at this you know it's like there might be people that hate what i give them and don't want to use it right but i'm not going to suddenly think like i'm a failure because of that you know i just like well this wasn't right for whatever this context was but you you guys put out what five or six records five records um yeah i guess six what did we do what did we do well we put out i think we put out five albums and there was one that was like this
Marc:kind of b-sides compilation with a lot of stuff on it so fountains of wayne the very first album yeah didn't really that was it was not a major release or what that was uh a major label release it was a big record it was your introductory record did did it provide the record company hope and excitement um i think they thought it was going to do better than it did it did okay but it wasn't like this smash and who were you touring with when you guys toured on the record
Guest:The first tour we did, we did a couple weeks with the Lemonheads.
Guest:That was like our first actual tour.
Guest:Opening?
Guest:Yeah, of course, opening.
Guest:And they were really big then.
Guest:And then the second tour we did was opening for the Smashing Pumpkins, which was in arenas.
Guest:And we were friends with those guys, and they were doing these like- Was that the second record?
Guest:No, this was still our first record.
Guest:We had barely played at all at that point, and they asked us to come and do these arena shows with them.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:I mean, I can see... Well, it made us get our act together really fast, because we really were pretty green as a band, and we right away had to go play it in front of these audiences that were huge and also totally indifferent.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, it's pretty sweet rock, but it's still pretty hard rock.
Marc:Our band?
Marc:No, Smashing Pumpkins.
Guest:Oh, Smashing Rock.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they were also, at that point, the biggest band in the world.
Guest:I mean, they were huge.
Guest:And so we were just something they had to sit through.
Guest:And did you feel that?
Guest:Yeah, but that's okay.
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:For us, it was fun to be on a big stage for the first time like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then the sort of half-filled arena.
Marc:People are sort of like, no, the opening band's on.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So it's a rite of passage.
Guest:And you guys were, you were friends with the Smashing Pumpkins?
Guest:We were, yeah.
Guest:Are you still friends with him?
Guest:Well, James Eha and I are really good friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he hasn't actually been in the Smashing Pumpkins at this point.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For like 12 or 13 years.
Guest:But.
Guest:Oh, I can't believe we're getting so fucking old.
Guest:It's that long ago already.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I feel like we're talking about, you know.
Guest:Isn't that wild?
Guest:And we put out our first wax cylinder.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:We put out our sheet music.
Marc:Yeah, when the machines came out.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:We were all very excited.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Thank God for Edison.
Marc:But, okay, so you open for the Smashing Pumpkins, and then what happened?
Marc:At that point, were you like, we're going to make it.
Marc:We're going to be huge.
Marc:Was that a discussion you guys had?
Guest:We didn't really sit around and talk like that, to be honest.
Guest:Of course not.
Guest:And it was also just part of the thing at the time.
Guest:Even if that's what you wanted, in the mid-'90s, you couldn't really sit around and talk about it like that.
Guest:But we were disappointed when songs didn't get as much airplay as we hoped they would.
Marc:Which is one of the sleepers of your catalog, do you think, that you had a lot of hopes for?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They all are.
Guest:I mean, what do you want me to say?
Guest:I thought they could all be hits, you know?
Guest:I thought they were all like the biggest hits ever.
Guest:I can't pick one.
Guest:I think a lot of people thought that early on.
Guest:You know, the first record, there was a lot of catchy songs on it, but whatever.
Marc:There's a few, not to compare, but I'm surprised, because in my mind, when I listen to specifically the type of music you do or the Fig's first record, where everything is just popping and catching and it's tight, it's sort of like, why isn't this just all over the place?
Marc:And it's just the time wasn't ready for it.
Marc:Because I see Green Day and a couple of those other bands, they're doing maybe not even as good a version of that type of music now.
Marc:And they're huge.
Marc:It was just like the times weren't synced up.
Marc:The little girls weren't ready.
Guest:Yeah, who knows?
Guest:I mean, it's a lot of things.
Guest:And I think...
Guest:I guess at a certain point we stopped thinking of it in terms like that and started thinking of it more in terms of like, the coolest thing is if you have this really defined personality that's your own thing that you came up with.
Guest:And I feel like our band, the reason that we've lasted a long time is that it kind of has that.
Guest:It's like a thing that if you like it, and not everybody does, but if you like it,
Guest:that's where you go to get it.
Guest:It's not really exactly like something else.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you just find your own little niche and then you sort of appreciate that you have that and that can keep you going.
Guest:And especially now because of what's happened and how the music business has completely imploded and there's no, you know, there's a lot of people with that old school mentality still like you got to get a hit and you got to be on the radio.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But really, like the new mentality is much more about you just do your thing and nurture it and like have your fans that feel connected to you.
Guest:And if you have that, that's like the most valuable thing you can have because it'll last, hopefully.
Guest:Yeah, I'm living that.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:In what I do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you scale back your expectations maybe at the same time, but it's like.
Marc:I have, but it took a long time.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I mean, it really took a long time.
Marc:I mean, I kind of always knew that I wasn't for everybody, but there was a good chunk of time there where I thought I was definitely for more people than were showing up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But maybe it grows then, but you're not working so hard to change yourself.
Marc:You get humbled, and either you're going to accept it or you're going to fight it.
Marc:And if you fight humility, it's never pretty.
Right.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I think that's a bumper sticker.
Marc:You can tell that.
Marc:Why don't you use it for a song?
Marc:Yeah, I like that.
Marc:But you guys realize that at some point.
Marc:Because I realized that recently, too, after talking to... The way I think about music, even what we're talking about with the Stones and with the Beatles, and when I interviewed Jack White, is that with music, especially popular music, especially with rock music,
Marc:It's not necessarily about musicianship as much as it is just having a thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think that, I don't know if a lot of people really think of it that way.
Marc:It's like, you would know your record immediately.
Marc:If a fan of yours, they know your sound.
Marc:Your sound is defined.
Marc:Your jack sound is defined.
Marc:There's plenty of people that are sort of like, who the fuck is this?
Marc:I don't know, it sounds like that other guy.
Marc:But if you have a defined thing that no one really does, then you've done something amazing in music, so.
Guest:and also you can be much more commercially successful that way i mean like you know classic example from sort of my generation of bands is wilco where they had this big fight with their label trying to write hit singles and stuff and they kind of stuck to their guns and i mean most bands would kill for wilco's career now i mean wilco is a huge successful band that plays to tons of people everywhere and but again they just completely got out of that game of like trying to have a commercial radio hit do you know him
Guest:uh i've met them all you know we we played a show or two with them and we have the same lawyer we sort of but isn't that funny yeah you kind of everyone's connected by a few jewish guys yeah the music business especially yeah the music it's not it's not six degrees of kevin bacon it's six degrees of some guy named sol yeah actually our jew our jewish lawyer is not jewish oh good yeah well that's good i guess i mean i don't know why i just said it's good it seemed like the right thing to say in that moment that's good leave our misfit
Guest:No, I wasn't.
Guest:I got a tennis racket instead of a bar mitzvah when I was 13.
Marc:Wait, were you given a choice?
Guest:I was a choice, yeah.
Guest:I took the tennis racket.
Guest:Do you have siblings?
Guest:I have a sister, yeah.
Guest:Is she a musician?
Guest:Not a professional musician, but she does play, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And your parents were like, yeah, that's my son, the musician.
Guest:i just saw in a window and um on robertson like yesterday there's this nice jewish guy's calendar you ever seen that like there's like a guy sitting at the piano oh really yeah i don't know what that is a nice jewish guy's calendar yeah it's just a calendar it's just photos that's it they're anonymous nice jewish guys it's really hilarious so when like now you license a lot of songs to television still
Guest:license um i don't know how that works yeah that well i mean there's two things i mean there's there's people sometimes call up and want to license a song on your record for something just put it in the background of a show or whatever they want to do with it that's good coin huh it can be not as good as it used to be again it's the same thing like you know everything's gotten sort of less good coin but um but that still exists and depending on what it is it can be good and where's the good coin in music how does one make it
Guest:I mean, for me, it's more just like adding a whole bunch of stuff up together.
Guest:It's not so much like jackpots all the time, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:But yeah, with TV, sometimes people license your songs.
Guest:And other times, for me, somebody will ask you to write something for them.
Guest:That's more fun for me, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But also, if you get that, did you ever write any jingles or ads?
Guest:No.
Guest:A little bit, yeah.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:I actually just did one recently, and it came from a guy who, he's a Fountains of Wayne fan, and that's why he called me.
Guest:Sweet.
Guest:And it was a commercial for New York State Lottery, and it was like zombies in it and stuff.
Guest:So they were trying to find a song to work in this zombies thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's one of these things that almost never happens where he's like, he's like, can you come up with something for this?
Guest:And I had an idea basically as soon as he said it.
Guest:And I went to the studio that night and recorded it in like an hour and sent it to him and they all approved it and it was done.
Guest:And I was like, whoa, that's the greatest.
Guest:I wish I wish that's how life works.
Guest:You know, like that never happens.
Guest:I mean, usually it's like 18 levels of approval, and in the end they don't end up using it.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know, you waste all this time, and then they don't want to pay you.
Guest:Is there singing on it?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's me singing.
Guest:For the New York State lottery?
Guest:Yeah, so if anyone wants to go see that.
Guest:But this guy, Jim, that hired me, he does only great commercials, and I checked out his reel, and he's like, they're all awesome and funny.
Guest:And now that puts you in that sort of world.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know if it does.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:That was one.
Guest:And have you ever done an original score for TV?
Guest:A little bit, yeah.
Guest:I mean, people think of me more for songs than scores, so every once in a while I'll get called for a score thing, but it's not really... Have you done an original song for TV?
Guest:Original song?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, tons.
Guest:I mean, tons.
Guest:We did like...
Guest:I'm just trying to think of some stuff like I did a Christmas special with Stephen Colbert with I work a lot with a guy named David Jabberbaum who's a comedy writer who used to be at the Daily Show for many years so he and I wrote a Broadway show together called Cry Baby and then we wrote this thing for Stephen Colbert which was a
Guest:Cry Baby, the John Waters?
Guest:It was a John Waters film, and then they turned it into a Broadway.
Guest:You did that?
Guest:I did do that.
Guest:I didn't do the movie.
Guest:No, I know that.
Guest:Yeah, I did the Broadway version, which... And you had to write original music for that?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But Cry Baby was a musical, wasn't it, the movie?
Guest:Yeah, and on Broadway, it was different songs.
Guest:It was like they started over.
Guest:I mean, basically, they had this huge hit with Hairspray, and so it was the same producer.
Guest:It was like, well, we can do it again.
Guest:We can take another John Waters movie and have another big hit, and it didn't quite work out.
Guest:But the show was okay, and I really like a lot of the songs in it.
Guest:Did you work with John Waters?
Guest:Well, he was kind of like around.
Guest:He didn't work on it on a day-to-day basis.
Guest:He made sure that it was okay by him.
Guest:He was kind of like approving or not approving things.
Marc:It's fascinating to me because you're living the life of like...
Marc:It is Tim Pan Alley.
Marc:It is sort of applying the skill of songwriting to a very conscious commercial success that isn't what most people think of as singer-songwriter.
Marc:Singer-songwriters are sort of point-of-view guys.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't write from my diary.
Marc:I feel sad today.
Guest:Right.
Marc:It's not an image kind of thing.
Marc:It's sort of like a practical skill that is challenging.
Marc:And, you know, and I imagine when you're looking at, you know, how Broadway works and how to structure songs that have the build that would arc through an entire show.
Guest:Well, I'm really I mean, it's true.
Guest:I mean, that kind of like craft side of it.
Guest:is still really appealing to me.
Guest:And I think sometimes when you are a person who writes like that, you know, the downside is people think like, oh, well, it's like some kind of trick and there's no real emotion or something.
Guest:But that's not really true at all.
Guest:I think like those kind of songs can actually end up being more emotional if you do it right.
Guest:And depending on the context that you're writing for.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, the power, I mean, you know, like the generation before us or maybe even the one before them, I mean, the power of musicals
Marc:was astounding yeah i mean you know musicals were were like at the forefront of popular music for years yeah and and they still have a a real effect on people that i mean that's why you see um kind of uh what do you call them when they remake south pacific or or whatever uh whatever musical like a revival a revival it's because those songs are so fucking good
Marc:Yeah, they still stand up.
Marc:Stand the test of time.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:And it's a very rare thing to have a song that can transcend for that long.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how long did Cryberry Baby run?
Marc:A couple months.
Guest:Didn't it pan out?
Guest:It was sort of...
Guest:You know, nobody was really steering the ship in a way.
Guest:It was like this idea to like, let's do another one of these John Waters things.
Guest:And I think there was nobody really decided, or I should say like there were some differing opinions about should it be this family fun thing or should it be really John Waters and kind of edgy and dark and adult.
Guest:And I think in the end it was neither.
Guest:It wasn't quite John Waters enough to be like scandalous or anything, but it also wasn't really something you'd bring your kids to.
Guest:Is that something you're interested in, writing an original musical?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, definitely.
Guest:Do you study musicals?
Guest:No.
Guest:Do you like them?
Guest:Generally, no.
Guest:I don't like them.
Guest:But I think it's a form that you can do really great stuff with.
Guest:And I think, you know, like, I mean...
Guest:I don't know, like Book of Mormon, for example, is a good example.
Guest:Two guys that said, we can make a musical that is great and fun.
Guest:People love it.
Guest:And people love it.
Guest:And it's like this big episode of South Park, basically.
Guest:But it's awesome.
Guest:And you can feel the fun they had making it.
Guest:I haven't seen it.
Guest:It's here now.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's in LA.
Guest:It's really good.
Guest:I mean, I feel like...
Guest:The best thing about it is just the fact that those guys can pretty much do whatever they want.
Guest:And so they can go and put something on stage and it doesn't get wrecked on the way.
Guest:Nobody has the authority to tell them not to do something.
Guest:I didn't have that at all.
Guest:I was up against all these people that were these theater lifers.
Guest:And I was just this guy from this band that for some reason they chose to do this.
Guest:And it was seriously every day like, listen, kid, this is the way it's done.
Guest:And I would just say, well...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, you just cut the punchline out of this joke.
Guest:I mean, I know I'm just the music guy, but there's no joke here anymore.
Guest:You left the setup and you just cut the punchline.
Guest:Well, not everything needs to be funny all the time.
Guest:It's a musical comedy.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It kind of does, doesn't it?
Marc:No one's looking at this as like, well, that's not realistic.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I know.
Guest:There was a lot of talk like that where I was just like, well, I'm just a guy that consumes entertainment.
Guest:I know I'm not the expert here on Broadway, but this seems like it's just not really entertaining, this little part.
Marc:And who were these guys?
Marc:I mean, did you meet or work with anybody you respected?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, the reason I even agreed to do it was because of the chance to immediately kind of work with these really top guys.
Guest:I mean, in particular...
Guest:um tom mehan and mark o'donnell who wrote the book and tom mehan these guys i mean tom mehan wrote annie right he wrote the producers and young frankenstein and like you know he's just a legendary guy and mark o'donnell who actually just passed away like a month ago sadly but he's also like an incredibly brilliant guy the two of them wrote hairspray right and um so just getting getting to work with them was unbelievable what did you take away from that i mean was there things that you learned were there tricks were there moments yeah i mean everything i knew
Guest:nothing going into it.
Guest:They pretty much taught me everything.
Marc:And then I also met... What are some of the tricks of writing a musical?
Marc:Like, you know, when you had those discussions of, you know, looking at the book and deciding on the music, I mean, what were some of the things that were kind of important?
Guest:I guess...
Guest:One of the things they tell you as a songwriter is that a song in a musical has to keep the story moving.
Guest:It's not like writing a pop song where you're just repeating the chorus three times.
Guest:You can't stop the show.
Guest:It has to feel like the plot's still moving forward and the story's still being told.
Marc:And if there is a solo moment where the song is like one of those kind of powerful, not a ballad, but where one character is singing a lament of some kind, it still has to reveal the emotion that is part of the arc.
Guest:Yeah, and it just has to feel like the story's still just happening.
Guest:You don't just stop and do a song and then get back into the show.
Guest:So that's a little bit of a different mindset for me as a writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think the musical sounds fun.
Guest:I have yet to find the killer project.
Guest:I would love to do that more.
Guest:The one thing that it did lead to, I mean, apart from this Colbert thing, which is amazing, is David Jabberbaum and I...
Guest:ended up getting hired to um work on the the a bunch of award shows like the tony awards and the and the emmys where you're basically writing these musical theater songs like we did this one for uh neil patrick harris um which was dj's idea but it was called uh broadway it's not just for gays anymore and it was the opening song to the yeah a couple years ago and it was just like it killed you know it was a great idea and um neil killed it and you know
Guest:so that in a way opened more doors for me i think in the theater world than crybaby had even though that was a show that i'd worked on for like five years i mean and this was a song that we worked on for two weeks but a lot more people saw it and they loved it it i mean yeah it was it was great just like good idea well executed do you live in the city now i live in riverdale in the bronx yeah yeah got a house up there yeah and you got a room with a piano in it i do yes yeah like a real piano
Marc:Yeah, a real piano, yeah.
Marc:That's nice.
Marc:Now, okay, so are you going to do another Fountains of Wayne record?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Ask me again shortly.
Guest:I mean, like I said, between every record, Chris is sort of deciding whether he wants to do another record.
Guest:So I imagine we probably will at some point.
Guest:So it's up to the singer?
Guest:Kind of is, yeah.
Guest:If he doesn't sing, there's no record.
Guest:But do you guys write together or do you just write all the songs?
Guest:um no we both write we don't really write together we we we used to when we started out and now now we just kind of bring them in and we arrange them together so he do do uh is it go back and forth with music and lyrics like sometimes he'll do music and lyrics and then you'll know we both write music and lyrics our own totally in like just the song's done that's it like i'll bring in a song and that's it's finished and
Guest:And he'll do the same.
Marc:So on a record, it's going to be mixed up between you and him with some writing credit.
Guest:We share the credits.
Guest:There was one record where we didn't do that, but basically we just split the credits down the middle.
Guest:So we were talking about at the beginning of not wanting to have the fights about who wrote.
Guest:So we agreed to that early on.
Guest:But partly just as a function of geography, we don't write together, and partly because I think we just got to a point where it was easier to just...
Guest:Rather than trying to explain to somebody this weird idea that you had.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And hey, you want to help me try to figure out this song about this football player?
Guest:What the hell are you talking about?
Guest:It's easier to just do it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, there have been cases where I'll write a song and the idea is kind of spelled out, but then I just get lazy and don't write the last verse.
Guest:And so he'll come in and say, I got the last three lines for you, maybe.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:But even that, we don't really do so much anymore.
Marc:Well, as a 44-year-old guy, I mean, what do you find yourself listening to?
Marc:You know, regularly, like, you know, when you're doing the iPod thing.
Marc:Yeah, I'm like, who do you go back to?
Guest:God, that's always a weird stumping question to me because a lot of times it's like I'll be listening to something that has something to do with something I'm trying to work on, so it's almost like reference slash enjoying it at the same time.
Marc:Well, I find that if I exercise, weirdly, if you look at your iPod history or your iTunes, you can see what you actually listen to.
Marc:Yeah, and it's sort of bizarre.
Marc:It's a lot of stuff that I used to listen to in high school.
Guest:I don't want to be one of those guys, but, you know, I listen to... But music hits you in a different way at that age.
Guest:Like, music meant so much to me when I was 13.
Guest:Like, these records were just, you know, my entire life.
Guest:The Beatles?
Guest:I mean, yeah, the Beatles before that.
Guest:But then, like, you know, for high school for me, it was, like, the police and the pretenders and, like, sort of later kinks.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there was sort of, like, that period...
Guest:i mean i just wore those records out and later later kinks like misfits and uh well that was like um give the people what they want like you remember that record and like i i was not like i've still yet to wrap my mind around the whole kinks thing yeah well i i mean that's the thing i when i first discovered the kinks they were i didn't know that they had put out records in the 60s because i heard these 80s kinks and i just thought they were like another new band like the police or the clash and the kinks which was which was your kinks album
Guest:um give the people what they want to have like paranoia oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a good one that's and we did a cover of this song later later on there was this ray davies um like tribute record and we did a cover of um this song called better things did you ever hear that that's an old one though isn't it no it was on i think it was on that record oh really but we did we just just kind of like a bashed out version of it and uh that's a good song
Guest:So have you gone back?
Guest:Ray Davies, by the way, he wrote the liner notes to this tribute record.
Guest:And you could tell from, like, looking at the liner notes that he didn't actually listen to the record before he wrote the liner notes, you know?
Guest:It's hilarious to read them.
Guest:Did you ever get to work with him?
Guest:No, I never got to work with him.
Guest:Okay, so the pretenders?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, especially... Yeah, I was very into the police when I was, like, in, you know... They were pretty amazing, huh, for a few records?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Wow.
Guest:But also, I think back then, like, there just wasn't as much entertainment out there.
Guest:So having a record with, you know, when a record came out, that was a big deal, just a release.
Guest:And you'd go into the record store and buy it.
Guest:And being so excited.
Guest:The only, like, audio-visual component was, like, you just look at the record cover.
Guest:Yeah, that's it.
Guest:And if you were lucky, it opened up.
Guest:Yeah, and then they started making videos, and it was like, whoa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was just a bigger deal.
Guest:It just feels like now, I mean, it's part of the thing, you know, just putting out a record just doesn't seem like as big a deal anymore.
Marc:Yeah, where's the cherishing of the actual artifact and whatnot?
Guest:Yeah, and I mean, that's maybe a function of my age too, but also there's just so much entertainment.
Guest:There's just so much coming out every second.
Guest:You don't really need that much, and it just makes everything less special.
Guest:And then also the fact that music is something that you can just email to people now.
Guest:It's weird, right?
Guest:Yeah, it just makes it really kind of all feel like a little worthless.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I'm surprised.
Marc:A lot of those records I had in high school.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that's all of them, really.
Marc:And some people are putting out vinyl again.
Marc:I've got a turntable, and I'll listen to it, just to have that feeling of taking it out and putting it on.
Marc:And I think it does sound a little different.
Marc:and better yeah i but i heard that vinyl's coming back is it um not for me fuck that but i know i was gonna say like when i finally moved all my cds onto you know i i went through that period where i loaded them all up yeah into itunes yeah because i had them yeah yeah it takes like weeks to
Guest:I know.
Guest:I moved like four years ago and I had like thousands of CDs and I put them in these boxes and I knew when I was doing it, I'm never going to open these boxes.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:I will never see.
Guest:And now if you actually just want to hear any of those songs that are in those boxes, you just go to YouTube and listen to the song and get it out of your system.
Guest:It's just all free and you just go listen to it and you don't want to hear it anymore.
Marc:I let go of the jewel boxes, but I still have all my CDs and binders.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And they're just over in a storage unit.
Marc:And you'll never pull them out.
Marc:But aren't you finding that about a lot of shit?
Marc:I mean, at some point, I lose some of these books.
Marc:But they become like furniture.
Marc:They become cozy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I'm starting to have that period.
Marc:The quarters a little bit.
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I'm starting to have that period in my life where I'm like, wow, that thing's not important at all to me.
Marc:Why do I still have it?
Marc:I know.
Marc:It's like a time capsule.
Marc:Yeah, but some of them just lose their meaning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't represent anything.
Guest:I have like, you know, with CDs, I probably have like every sort of alternative rock album that was released from like 1988 to 1994.
Guest:I have all of them.
Guest:I used to go to like Tower Records and just spend like, you know, a hundred bucks and just buy anything I had read like one sentence.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'll buy this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I heard it was good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, and then I'd never, I listened to it once.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:yeah i mean that happens all the time i was that guy too or what i would do is i'd hear like one song by one band and i'm like i have to have everything that they ever did so i'd get like six cds right you get really into them right all the year well i'd want to but you know then you'd sort of like why no i know why this album's the best right you know what i mean yeah yeah it took them a while to get here right i appreciate the early stuff but it's not the same yeah totally well man it was good talking to you adam yeah thank you for having me you feel good
Guest:I feel pretty good.
Guest:How about you?
Guest:I'm good.
Guest:Do we cover everything we need to do?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:What do we need to cover anything?
Marc:It was all very important.
Guest:Was there a checklist?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I forgot to tell you that this was a really important process that I outlined specifically.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, let's go.
Marc:I'll introduce you to my girlfriend.
Guest:Okay, cool.
Marc:And we'll see how she is.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's the show.
Marc:That was an interesting talk about music that I'd never had before.
Marc:Good cat, that Adam.
Marc:And if you bailed on the first 10 minutes, go back and listen for the tour dates and for the deals on the pre-sales.
Marc:And have a happy new year.
Marc:Be careful tonight.
Marc:And, you know, yeah, just don't wrap your car around a thing.
Marc:Could you not do that?
Marc:Go to WTF Pod for all your WTF Pod needs.
Marc:You know what they are.
Marc:I'm not going to go on and on today.
Marc:Did you just hear my stomach make noise?
Marc:Can you hear it?
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:Is there something living inside of me?
Marc:I know there are little things that are supposed to be there, but is it... Alright, look.
Marc:Let's just... You know, let's just... Not do this.
Marc:Let's not discuss... My gas... On New Year's Eve.
you