Ep. 06: "String Art Owls, Copper Pipe, and Bono's Boss"
John: Are there commercials?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You mean like standard TV commercials?
John: Or like, yeah, maybe even fake commercials.
John: Fake commercials?
John: You mean like Sanka?
John: This episode brought to you by Merlin Sav.
Merlin: No, I haven't sought sponsorship.
John: It's not that I would turn the money away, but I... Well, now, my impression of how you web people made your money was that you made something and then you sold advertising space all around it until the thing itself was the size of a can of tuna.
John: Virtually obscured.
John: And then there was advertising flashing at you and offering you a click here and you'll get a million dollars, click here, and your dick will be twice as big.
John: Yes.
John: So why should this show be any different?
Merlin: That, first of all, to answer your question, that is a very popular model for making money on the web.
Merlin: And it's one that I've employed.
Merlin: Some people go with subscription models.
Merlin: That's where you pay a certain amount of money and you get a certain amount of stuff.
John: But that doesn't really work.
Merlin: Nobody subscribes to stuff on the web, do they?
Merlin: Yeah, some people do.
Merlin: I think one problem is that people get...
Merlin: There's a phenomenon that happens on the web that you can see sometimes in things like reviews for software, where if people charge... That's if you read reviews of software.
Merlin: All right.
John: We'll wrap back around to that.
Merlin: We have a much smaller group of people we're talking about.
Merlin: And the thing is, if you charge for anything, you know, so, you know, like if somebody was to... Hey, can we get some quiet on the set here?
John: Will you guys, if you want to talk, can you go fuck off somewhere?
John: Thanks.
John: Appreciate it.
John: If you're not going to take charge of this filming, I'm going to have to do something.
John: The thing is, I've got... What are all these hippies doing in the yard anyway?
Merlin: I've got... Do you have some pot to smoke?
Merlin: I've got... You should load them a hacky sack.
Merlin: I've got what they call Eye of the Tiger in the business.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So I can just zoom right in, and the distractions for me are just...
John: Oh, I see what you're saying.
John: Yeah.
John: No, I don't.
John: Because I'm a rock musician, of course, the drugs have given me a really short attention span.
John: And I hear not just voices in the yard, but voices all around.
John: Really?
John: Persistently?
John: It's hard for me to concentrate.
John: But anyway, you were saying about how you make money.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm curious about this.
John: Oh, no, no, wait.
John: We were talking about advertising on your show.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, there's no advertising.
Merlin: But you're right, people buying ads.
Merlin: They also will do, I think, a more conventional, less idiotic way to do it is with what you would call a sponsorship.
Merlin: So I might turn to the camera and say, I'm sponsored by Roderick Sav for all of your burning needs.
Merlin: And then they call that a DJ read.
Merlin: It's not filmy.
Merlin: They call it a DJ read.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It goes back to the days of radio.
Merlin: Hey, this is Paul Harvey.
Merlin: I like Maalox.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Or what have you.
Merlin: Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
Merlin: Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
Merlin: Precisely.
Merlin: And I think that's the way that some people are doing it.
Merlin: You know, that's the internet and how people are... But you're not doing that either.
John: No, I'm not.
John: So right now this is just... I'm literally losing money while I'm talking to you.
John: This is just like downloading somebody's music for free.
John: you're putting your record on the internet for free hoping that it generates traffic to some place that makes you money?
Merlin: I just want people to like me and have affection for me and I'm willing to subsidize whatever it takes.
Merlin: Right, well we're in the same business now.
Merlin: Really, you feel like you put it out there and you hope they develop affection for you.
John: And that affection will one day translate into money?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Am I right?
Merlin: Possibly.
Merlin: See, but you do this, I guess we both do something like this for a living.
Merlin: I guess this is kind of my living.
Merlin: You know, you're in a different boat than you were a few years ago.
John: Well, but the thing is, when you're a musician, a lot of people who work jobs in the straight world, actually people of all stripes, are constantly trying to tell you how much your job itself is its own reward.
John: Like, oh, wow, touring is so great.
John: You're so lucky.
John: And money has to just be so far down the list of your motivations because you get to travel, you get to play your music for people.
John: And I'm super grateful that people spend so much time telling me all the reasons why I should be glad that I'm not getting paid for the various things.
John: And the best people at that are, of course, the promoters for the show or the people that run your record label.
John: They understand how valuable the publicity is.
John: Yeah, they understand how valuable it is that you be convinced that the three free beers they put in your dressing room are adequate compensation for you having driven eight hours to play the show.
Merlin: Their logic is often fractal, though, right?
Merlin: Because their logic is, or at least recursive, so it's really, you know,
Merlin: You're using a lot of words I don't understand.
Merlin: For you to be able to come out here and play the Fallen Oak Festival this year, I can't even tell you how many people we couldn't get on the bill this year.
Merlin: Do you understand how much press is going to be here for the Fallen Oak Festival?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And you go, well, you know, I had to fucking pack a van and drive here and pay my band.
Merlin: And they go, but, you know.
Merlin: The publicity alone.
John: This is a huge opportunity for you to play the ass polyp benefit because it's going to be a lot of exposure and to a demographic that a lot of people don't get their music exposed to.
John: People with ass polyps.
Merlin: or people that love them so you've got really the beauty then is it's a very it's a very rarefied vertical market you're moving into with the polyp crowd yeah yeah but see but then that's what's funny though is that it's very seldom I think this is one thing you encounter on the web and in the music business and it is by the way it is the music business
John: Yeah, it's not show friends.
John: It's not show friends.
John: It's show business.
John: I'd like to credit Sean Nelson for that because whenever I quote him without crediting him, he cries for a day.
John: He writes you a letter.
John: He does.
Merlin: He doesn't send it.
Merlin: He writes it, though.
Merlin: To the tune of Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now by the Smiths.
John: Also, I'd just like to point out that my chair is fully six inches lower than Merlin's, so if it seems like we're the same height... Don't play stupid, John.
John: I want to make sure the audience at home knows.
Merlin: You know how this works.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: I know.
Merlin: This is my house.
Merlin: Word.
Merlin: Let's switch for a minute.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: I like it here.
Merlin: So the kids can see the difference?
Merlin: If we switch, he'll have to zoom out.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: He's probably having trouble keeping our heads in frame, as it is.
John: Headspace.
Merlin: Ben's had a lot of cough medicine earlier today.
Merlin: But this happens with web stuff, and it happens with music stuff, and God knows it happens with film stuff, because I have some friends who do film stuff.
Merlin: And there's so many people who are clawing to even be just vaguely associated with certain industries that they'll give up a lot.
Merlin: And a lot of times you call it an internship or what have you.
John: And people higher up the food chain really exploit that.
John: In every one of the entertainment businesses, the perceived glamour is a major form of pay for people who are breaking into any industry.
John: Like, oh man, you're going to meet Bono's personal assistant's sister tonight, maybe.
John: She's on the list.
John: She might not come, but...
John: You might get to drive her to the UN.
John: Here's your chance.
John: Nothing wrong with that.
John: And it's great because a whole, I mean, that is how people get into the business initially.
John: But after you've been doing anything for a while, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, great.
John: Bono's personal assistance.
John: What?
John: I don't, you know, like I've got not just bills to pay, but I have like a certain amount of, I mean, you know me.
John: I have a little bit of a dignity problem.
John: in that I might have a little too much dignity, or I might perceive that I'm- It's hard to boil it down to a single dignity problem.
Merlin: It's more of a constellation of dignity issues.
John: I have dignity issues, a constellation of them.
John: But one of the things that I get my backup about is when people are telling me why I should be satisfied with less than they would give someone else.
John: because of the perceived intangible benefits of my job, which is screwing teenagers, blow,
John: not having to work, sleeping all day.
John: Right.
John: I mean, these are real benefits.
John: Yeah.
John: Those are perks.
John: Don't get me wrong.
Merlin: They're perks.
John: The perquisites of your vertical market.
John: Right.
John: But when somebody's sitting in a back room of a club with a cigar in their mouth, counting $100 bills and telling me,
John: that the teenage girl that I'm about to go shag in the van is part of my pay for the night, I object.
John: Yeah.
John: Because I want the cash, too.
John: But here's the thing.
John: Because there are days off.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I didn't mean to know.
Merlin: No, and you can't put her in a to-go bag.
John: I'm talking right into the camera.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: That's generally frowned upon.
John: Because I want people to like me.
Merlin: The one part of that that I think is always so interesting is the unstated status exchanges that go on and the power exchange stuff that goes on, where for a lot of those interns or for that, let's say, bottom of the bill band who's watching the guy peel off the hundreds, they understand that they're not in a position to say, hey, wait a minute, I need to escalate this.
Merlin: We need to talk a little bit about what's actually going on here.
John: No, you have no leverage at all.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And one thing I think is, probably to your credit, I can't even tell you how many times.
Merlin: You seem to really relish the opportunity to go talk to the guy with the $100 bills and fucking set him straight about exactly how it's going to work.
Merlin: And it's fun to watch.
Merlin: But I think a lot of people are happy to just infer that they're part of, not infer, but they're part of this glamour industry.
Merlin: And they're happy to go, you know what, I'm just glad to be playing at the Doodah bar tonight.
Merlin: It's just on a Friday instead of a Tuesday.
Merlin: And at least it's not like LA where we used to have to pay, you know, and stuff like that.
Merlin: Did you have to do that in Seattle?
Merlin: Did you ever have the pay to play in Seattle?
John: No, but there are places you can pay to play.
John: But the version of pay to play is just that you play for free and you watch the bar sell $5,000 worth of Jägermeister shots and you're like, so that money's going somewhere.
John: But I think in computers and also in rock, I don't know whether it's that it attracts not meek people, but people who are afraid of appearing aggressive
John: afraid of offending people.
John: And so you get people who are waiting for somebody to hand them the authority.
John: They're waiting for somebody to say, now you have the authority to stand up for yourself.
John: And until that point,
John: you just have to behave yourself.
Merlin: But that'll come externally.
Merlin: It's not something that they're going to bring to the situation.
Merlin: It's almost like a coronation that they're waiting for or something?
John: Right, right.
John: They're waiting for their blog or their site or their band to be...
John: unquestionably big enough that people just genuflect to them and give them, that they earn respect by virtue of the thing they produce, rather than commanding respect by some other method, by just embodying somebody who isn't going to take it in the shorts.
John: And
John: The challenge is, I mean, obviously, in some circles, I have a reputation of being, I don't know how you would say it, abrasive or... You?
John: Yeah, arrogant, maybe.
John: And I think that's a mis...
John: a missed opportunity for people to learn from you.
John: To learn all that I have to teach.
John: I feel like what often gets called arrogance or abrasiveness on my part is really like in any other business.
Merlin: When a man does it, it's assertive.
John: Right.
John: If I was a contractor,
John: like that behavior would be necessary to get the job done, right?
John: You've got guys coming in late, you've got guys coming in hungover, you gotta get the frame up, you gotta get the concrete poured, and you have to bust some heads, and you also have to say, hey, you're shortchanging me on copper pipe, because everybody's trying to shortchange everybody on copper pipe, it's the way of the world.
John: But in the music business, if you call somebody out for shortchanging you on the load of lumber, whatever that load of lumber is,
John: There's this, the typical reaction is like, oh man, that's so uncool.
John: You're hard to work with.
John: Oh yeah, John Roderick, man, he's really like such, he's such a dick.
John: Because the currency, the lingua franca,
John: of these creative businesses is, is this incredibly passive kind of like, it's cool, man.
John: You know, I know you said that we were going to get $1,500 and you're only giving us like $11, but that's cool.
John: You know, it's your club is righteous and you're a cool dude and we'll get you next time, you know?
John: And I just think it's horseshit.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I'm sure, I'm sure it happens in the, in the web business too.
John: Although I can't,
John: I can't picture a way in which you guys would ever actually speak to each other face to face.
John: No, we don't.
John: So it'd be like emails like, hi, emoticon.
Merlin: No, raffle, raffle, raffle.
Merlin: LOL.
Merlin: That's what we do.
Merlin: We speak to each other mostly in this kind of, yeah, this patois of punctuation.
Merlin: A little round smiley face whose eyelashes going like.
Merlin: I've used that set, yeah.
Merlin: On the web, a lot of the power, if you will, comes from quantifiable things like traffic or how high up on Google you appear for certain returns.
Merlin: And so it is kind of weird that whether you want to participate in this or not, there are ways...
Merlin: in which you're not only being evaluated, but in some ways people are very obsessively following this stuff.
John: Ranking, ranking, ranking.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And in ways, in the way that you might, for example, not you, but somebody who's putting out records, might sit and watch SoundScan and go, okay, well, I really need to see what happens on week two of this release.
Merlin: Except on the web, if you have a website that's your franchise or whatever, it's an ongoing thing.
Merlin: And then to reach this certain kind of perceived...
Merlin: level of highness, you know, it brings with it, you know, lots of weirdness.
Merlin: Let's just say it's, it's, it's, it is funny though, but the point from personal experience now that you have to cross a certain threshold, your life changed.
Merlin: Well, no, it's a first world problem.
Merlin: It'd be, I'd be a dick to complain about it, but it definitely is like, like it's so, for example, let's say you won the lottery tomorrow.
Merlin: All of a sudden you're going to hear from a lot of relatives and, and people with cancer and whatnot.
Merlin: And it's just interesting because what it comes down to, though, is some shared DNA with the music industry, which is you want to, in some way, as much as possible, ingratiate yourself in acceptable ways to people who can stand to give you more...
Merlin: of the stuff, whether that's an inbound link or a mention or something like that.
Merlin: In the same way, the people in your industry are constantly sucking up to magazines and trying to get on TV shows or whatever.
John: But the interesting thing about it is that from every level of it looking upward, you always imagine that the next
John: the next level will be the level at which you'll be able to stop sucking up to the level above you.
John: Right.
John: And in my experience, that never arrives.
John: Like, I don't know who Bono sucks up to.
John: You learn this from the Robert Evans biography.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know, there's always somebody.
Merlin: He had Charlie Boothorn.
Merlin: You've always got somebody above you that you've got to be pleasing.
Merlin: And they've got somebody above you.
John: You're auditioning again for the next level.
John: And I think with Bono, I don't think he has to maybe suck up to anybody, but there are those invisible people whose names maybe aren't in the press, who are controlling access to places that Bono wants access to, that he can't come in and piss on the carpet in the entryway just because he's Bono, because these guys aren't impressed.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: And this is the great myth that it would really have been swell if I had learned when I was 14, which is I really be coming from like, you know, the middle.
John: If you masturbate the same way too many times, you lose feeling.
John: It's boring, right?
Merlin: Meet the stranger, you know?
John: I wish I'd known that at 14.
Merlin: You got good at that?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The thing of it is that you always, at least I tended to think, that there's such a thing as, like, whatever arriving and you get to someplace and so on.
Merlin: Now, here's the tricky part about this.
Merlin: And again, I want to credit Mr. Robert Evans, the great producer for this, is that you realize that in some ways, well, A, first of all, the older you get, the more you realize you have to lose at any given time.
Merlin: So for somebody like Bono, in your example...
Merlin: from earlier uh you know bono may not have anybody who he looks at as his boss but bono's bono's got a lot of skin in the game in a lot of different ways and it's it's it's a curiously i suspect that it's a curiously american uh 20th century plus conceit to think that there are people in the world who don't worry about things like where they are and status and improving and keeping it all together just because they got more money than me
Merlin: or because they've got more whatever than me.
Merlin: And I guess the only thing I wanted to say is that no matter who you are, no matter where you are, there's always that sense of, I don't know, I just suspect there's always something that you want to retain, if not gain.
Merlin: There's always something that you want to keep together.
Merlin: And having that skin in the game is what keeps you, that's what keeps us all from becoming Spartan warriors or whatever.
John: I think the Bush presidency has illustrated that
John: better than almost anything in the sense that we always felt like, oh, the president is beholden to this backroom group of faceless men who are the puppet masters.
John: But with George W., it's never been more apparent that he is ostensibly the most powerful man in the United States.
John: And he actually turns to the guy sitting next to him to see if the answer he's giving the camera is correct.
John: You know, he's visibly...
John: he's visibly beholden to something larger than he is.
John: He's still, even as president of the United States, is not able to sit back and say, I've arrived and now I am the decider, as he says.
John: He's being stage managed by powers
John: beyond our comprehension.
John: That's the best part about it.
John: It's not beyond our comprehension.
John: They're sitting right there.
John: It's exactly what we're comprehending.
John: You know who it is.
John: It's like Dick Cheney and about seven other guys who are like, George, George, yeah, you're doing real good.
John: You're doing real good.
John: And understanding that that's true in every business, that even Bono
John: And Bono, if you're watching, I'm not slagging you off.
John: I have tremendous respect for you.
John: But even Bono, there's somebody out there, and I don't know whether it's the chairman of Seagram's or whether it's Nelson Mandela or I don't know who it is.
John: It's the person that has the compromising pictures of him.
John: No one is completely free.
John: I think that should be the motto of your show.
Merlin: No one is completely free.
Merlin: But there's a softer side of this too that I think is worth mentioning, which is that this is not all nefarious inside baseball, industry, backroom, cigar smoking stuff.
Merlin: I'm happy to say that I really, really like a lot of the people that I've met through doing stuff with the web.
Merlin: Just as I know you've made great friends by touring
Merlin: the world with your band and meeting people along the way so I mean it's not all it's not all there's something to be said though like you know like I've seen you happier on some I've seen you a lot happier on some tours than others just by virtue of the fact that you got along really well and felt mutual respect with the people that you were touring with yeah there are I mean intangible benefits are the reason that you do something like this they are the main benefits yeah I never meant to suggest that that they weren't
John: But my objection is when other people try and tell you that the intangible benefits are worth the 30% of the money that they're not giving you.
Merlin: I've got to tell you, I think it's a deeper thing for you.
Merlin: I think you are uncannily incapable of handling anything that you perceive as bullshit.
Merlin: I think you are almost sociopathic in the way that you cannot let bullshit stand.
John: And yet I'm often accused of being a bullshit artist.
Merlin: You are.
Merlin: You're a huge bullshit artist.
Merlin: But that doesn't make you somebody who is... I've just seen this.
Merlin: I can't even tell you how many dozen times.
Merlin: I've seen something happens and it catches the corner of your eye and big claws come out and you've got to go in and you're not going to be happy until you've put your front paws on the shoulders and your back claws into the gut and kind of run in place for a while in order to excise every last bit of bullshit from...
John: You know, there's bullshit and there's bullshit.
Merlin: And I think that the kind of bullshit, for instance, that you- But the guy peeling off the $100 bills, would you not call that a piece of bullshit that you've got to call out?
Merlin: Not just for financial reasons, it's almost for moral reasons.
John: Absolutely.
John: There's the bullshit that you've turned into a career, which is harmless bullshit.
John: We'll call it the good bullshit.
John: It doesn't affect anyone, except in a sort of like, you know, what's that sound?
John: It's comforting.
John: Oh, it's Merlin Mann.
John: And then there's bullshit- Which is, please, you find me comforting.
Merlin: bullshit where there's real skin in the game.
Merlin: But like songs about spies.
Merlin: That would be what kind of bullshit.
John: Songs about spies?
John: Yeah.
John: Songs about spies are... They're helping America.
John: They are.
John: They're helping people understand their feelings about spies.
John: Yeah, and comas.
John: And that's what I'm trying to show you about.
Uh-huh.
Merlin: So there's my kind of bullshit.
John: No, there's our kind of bullshit.
John: There's bullshit, which is a form of entertainment.
John: And there's bullshit, which is a form of obfuscation.
John: Yes.
John: Where you are bullshitting in order to distract the person so that you can make off with the booty.
Merlin: This is actually covered in that book on bullshit, which is a very short book.
John: I have on bullshit.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Would you agree that this is along those lines?
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: You have a certain kind of, I'm just paraphrasing what you just said, but there's a certain kind of very inert, just kind of
John: Bullshit as a form of passing the day.
John: I mean, if you walk down the street in Athens and there are four or five old men sitting on every stoop bullshitting, and it's the social lubricant that makes the world a pleasant place.
Merlin: So a toupee that somebody's wearing as they walk around is a kind of benign bullshit, but kind of like putting a gun to somebody's head to make them try and believe that that's a real toupee is a kind of intolerable bullshit.
John: Yeah, or a toupee on the head of a guy who's walking down the street, and you can see in his eyes that he believes that he has a full head of hair, and he believes everyone else believes that he has a full head of hair, is harmless bullshit.
John: That's one of the lies we can live with.
John: But a toupee like the one on Ben Affleck, which is a whole career.
John: I mean, his career is founded on the fact that he's a young and a virile, full-haired... You have Affleck problems?
John: I have a certain... I think it crosses the line into a different kind of bullshit when you are presenting... I mean, like Sean Connery, for instance, when he exposed himself as a toupee'd man, he empowered himself
John: by saying, like, this is a costume.
John: I'm wearing this as a costume.
John: And so I can appear in a film with a full head of hair, and we know I'm playing a role.
John: Whereas somebody like Ben Affleck, who never appears without his fake hair, and he's a movie star.
John: Is this metaphorical hair?
John: It's metaphorical hair.
John: It's the equivalent of... A talent toupee.
John: Of a breast implant which does not advertise itself.
John: For instance, Pamela Anderson's breast implants.
John: They advertise themselves as implants.
John: I have no objection to them because she's a cartoon person.
Merlin: So Ben Affleck's career is like a 32B implant.
John: Oh, no.
John: He's flying under the radar.
John: I have no way of knowing whether Ben Affleck has male pattern baldness like, say, yours or male pattern baldness like, say, a fully bald person like your friend here.
John: But his career is...
John: founded on his hair, kind of, to a certain extent.
John: If Ben Affleck was, if he appeared bald on camera, I don't know whether, I mean, he has the option, I think, of appearing in a film without his hair and being perceived as like.
John: You're not talking about metaphorical hair.
John: You're saying Ben Affleck wears a piece.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Really?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Are you sure about that?
John: Absolutely.
John: Huh.
John: You can't tell?
John: No, I can't.
John: Yeah, it's made out of, it's like woven out of pubic hair of Vietnamese mothers.
John: They, apparently in Vietnam they... It seems very lush.
John: That's what I'm saying.
John: Huh.
John: Why do you think we lost that war?
Merlin: They eat a lot of rice.
John: They do.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it's salty fish.
Merlin: But you find that intolerable.
John: No, I'm saying it crossed a line.
John: I don't think that Ben Affleck's hair is a crime against humanity.
John: Right.
John: But I think there's a difference between his hair and Sean Connery's hair.
Merlin: Yeah, I agree.
Merlin: Well, you know who kind of pioneered all that was the weather guy on the Today Show.
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: The guy that used to be the big guy.
Merlin: Wilford Brimley.
Merlin: Wilford Brimley.
Merlin: Is that his name?
Merlin: Anybody?
John: No, Wilford Brimley.
Merlin: It's not Al Roker.
Merlin: It's the other guy.
John: Oh, the big guy.
John: Yeah, the big, loud guy.
John: What was his name?
Merlin: Thank you.
John: Willard Scott.
Merlin: Willard Scott would charge you differently depending on whether he wore his little hair hat.
Merlin: He'd charge you more.
Merlin: It was part of his deal.
Merlin: His deal was, I'm Willard Scott, and I'm going to show up, and it's going to be Willard Scott.
Merlin: But if you want me to wear a little hair hat, I'm going to charge you a little more.
John: Really?
John: Well, good man.
Merlin: See, I think that takes a huge amount of self-consciousness that I find almost intoxicating.
John: I should come up with a version of that.
Merlin: For yourself?
John: Yeah, like different glasses frames or maybe whether I have the comedy biker mustache or not.
John: You want me there?
John: I'm there.
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Comedy biker mustache is a little more work.
Merlin: Which version of Colorful John will you bring to the show?
Merlin: Is that the idea?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: That's John on bullshit.
Merlin: And scene.
Merlin: And scene.
John: I'm saying that crossword puzzles and sudoku and solitaire are for retarded people.
Merlin: You don't see any analogy with making things like bottle cap, like making pop top art or decoupage or string art owls.
Merlin: You think it's all for retarded people?
John: Just for the joy of making the string art owl?
John: I think that people that make string art owls are not just making them motivated purely by the joy of making it.
John: You think it's a status move?
John: I think they're making it in order to have it made.
John: And then they have the string art owl, and they intend to do something.
John: Either give it as a gift.
Merlin: Or put it on the wall, or... You've never made a string art owl in your entire life.
John: I have made a lot of string art owls.
John: Have you made a ship?
John: I have made a ship.
John: I made a ship.
John: I made a ship out of string art.
John: Yeah.
John: Where you hammer the nails into a piece of... Oh, absolutely.
John: And then you string the string.
John: The ship is the classic.
John: But I wasn't making it out of the joy of making it.
John: You were conniving while you made a ship?
Merlin: There's no conniving about it.
Merlin: You couldn't just make a ship because you wanted to make a ship?
Merlin: You thought it was going to get you laid?
John: If you're motivated to make something, I think joy is a lot easier to come by than getting some tacks and some felt and making a ship.
John: Not for some people.
John: I think it is.
Merlin: Joy is pretty simple.
Merlin: Like paint by number.
Merlin: People just like the mechanics of doing it.
Merlin: This is why I say Sudoku or crossword.
Merlin: People like the simple, like this is something that I can do.
Merlin: I'm going to just move my hands and think a little bit and watch my stories.
Merlin: False.
John: People paint by numbers and then they put it on the wall.
John: And if you put it on the wall.
John: Now that's retarded.
John: If you put it on the wall, if you put a frame around it and put it on the wall, you don't think of it as just an exercise of the hand.
John: Okay, if there are people out there, particularly anyone who's watching, who paints by numbers and then immediately throws the thing away, and it's just an exercise like, this is something I do to keep my hands occupied while I'm waiting for the clothes to dry.
John: You're almost French.
Merlin: These kinds of things that you come up with.
Merlin: No way am I French.
Merlin: You're very close to French.
John: In fact, you are French, sir.
Merlin: I am so not French in any way.
John: You look French.
John: You look a lot more French than me.
Merlin: I don't look French at all.
Merlin: You look totally French.
John: When was the last time you were in France?
Merlin: Like, never.
John: I was in France two weeks ago.
John: All the more reason you are totally French.
John: And I saw everywhere I looked, I saw people that looked just like you.
Merlin: Oh, they look like me?
John: Yeah, they look like you.
Merlin: You know, I think that's just because of your stupid fat eyes and the way that you see people.
Merlin: Because I'm.
Merlin: You're like the Jerry Lewis of France.
Merlin: In my dreams.
Merlin: In my dreams.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: You know what's funny?
Merlin: I'll tell you this.
John: This is the classic argument.
Merlin: What?
John: That people have about art.
Merlin: Well, I don't know if it's classic.
Merlin: It's definitely stupid.
John: People want art to be pure.
John: Yeah.
John: And so they believe that people make art directly from their heart to the brush.
Merlin: unmotivated by- That's like saying strippers like to dance because they like wearing high heels.
Merlin: It's just that's so far off how stuff gets made.
John: My mind is still trying to grok the stripper high heeling.
John: Grok?
John: Why did you read that in Wired a few years back?
John: Arthur C. Clarke.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: God, that's awesome.
John: Now I'm really playing to your crowd.
Merlin: Arthur C. Clarke.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You could throw in a couple things like UHF and 8-track.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I had no idea you were so up to date.
John: I know.
John: Yeah.
John: That's incredible.
John: Well, I was actually having an RSS feed the other day, and I had some.
John: You sat down to an RSS feed one night?
John: Yeah, it was beta.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But you were able to grok it for the most part.
John: I grokked it.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, grok is a lot older than you web people.
John: are always looking for words because you don't use words yourselves.
John: We web people.
John: Yeah, you don't look, you don't know words.
Merlin: Me and my army of web people.
John: So you repurpose words because you don't make words yourselves.
John: And that's, I mean, I hate to get critical.
Merlin: I've been working on what called butthole.
Merlin: It's a web word we've been working on.
Merlin: Butthole.
Merlin: Yeah, well, you know, we kind of adapted it.
Merlin: Do you spell it differently, like B-E-T?
Merlin: Yeah, it's got a zero in it.
Merlin: But, yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Butthole, colon, parenthesis.
Merlin: Here's the funny thing.
Merlin: And I'm curious.
Merlin: I don't think I've ever asked you this in the seemingly endless conversations I've had with you.
Merlin: So I had always heard.
John: Up here, mostly.
Right.
Merlin: I said to John, I said, no, you don't talk to me like that.
Merlin: And then he said, I want more dim sum.
Merlin: 1982.
Merlin: I was there.
Merlin: I got a $20, not even a no-name, it's a sub-no-name guitar.
Merlin: That was your freshman year in college, right?
82?
Merlin: No, that's not accurate.
Merlin: I was in 10th grade.
Merlin: And I learned to play guitar.
Merlin: And I cannot tell you, there's so many mythologies of high school that I just find unacceptable, including that those are the best years of your life.
Merlin: But if you learn to play guitar, you'll get girls, which I found to be completely untrue.
Merlin: And my experience is the bass players.
John: You're still upset that you didn't lose your virginity until you were 22, aren't you?
Merlin: Well, ask me again when I'm... So I think it's interesting that you take something like guitar, which is basically, it's a musical instrument for retarded people.
Merlin: It's very easy to learn.
Merlin: You probably got good at it in, what, three or four weeks, probably.
John: No, I labored over the guitar for years.
John: I didn't become good at the guitar.
John: Ask me again.
John: Until I was in my late 20s, I think.
John: And even then, not really good.
John: I would argue I'm still not good at it.
Merlin: People pick up stuff like that, though.
Merlin: The thread here, though, is that people pick up stuff like that because why?
Merlin: I mean, for me, I really liked being able to play along with Black Sabbath records.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And so when I learned Pinball Wizard and can play along with Tommy, that was like what I imagined sex was like.
John: I think that the guys who actually pick up the guitar motivated by a desire to get girls, you can see them a mile away.
John: And they are fuckstains, every one of them.
John: Most people who pick up the guitar do not do it because they imagine it's going to get them girls.
John: They do it for a purer adolescent boy reason.
Merlin: Dorkier.
John: Yeah, which is just like,
John: Yeah!
John: You know, like, ah!
John: You know, like, the girl is not even in it.
John: You want to be Pete Townsend.
John: Yes.
John: And being Pete Townsend seems like the end...
John: of itself.
Merlin: I understand he didn't get girls with it either.
Merlin: I don't know if that's accurate.
John: I've never seen a picture of Pete Townsend with a girl.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Have you?
John: Have you ever seen a picture of him with a girl?
John: He was in that movie with Tina Turner.
John: I challenge you people watching this on the web to immediately click onto Google and search for Pete Townsend with a girl.
Merlin: John, don't address my viewers.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: It sickens me.
John: Is somebody playing the basketball?
John: When I first started playing the guitar, it was not a guitar.
John: First of all, it was a tennis racket.
John: And it was,
John: It was actually purely for the joy of it.
John: I was learning nothing by playing the tennis racket to The Who or Judas Priest.
Merlin: I learned nothing.
Merlin: You were a big, we've talked about this, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, ZZ Top.
John: First two Def Leppard records, early ZZ Top, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, ACDC.
John: What do you get out of sitting in an empty house and going like,
John: On a tennis racket?
John: On a tennis racket.
Merlin: You're not learning anything.
Merlin: No, it's like meta masturbation.
John: It's the equivalent of playing solitaire.
John: With your penis.
John: I would play the tennis racket until sweat was pouring down my face.
John: Huh.
John: I would do it.
John: And I don't know what I was doing.
John: Obviously, I was daydreaming.
John: I was having these verdant fields of imagination of me.
Merlin: What you thought it felt like to play guitar in ACDC.
John: That's right.
John: Playing guitar on a stage.
Merlin: I know exactly what you mean.
Merlin: With the crowd.
Merlin: You're very familiar with the visual.
Merlin: I mean, this is probably a little more French philosophy than we want to get, but you're so familiar with the sound that you've heard over and over and over and over.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: You just leave the little tone arm thing up and the side plays over and over.
Merlin: And then you've seen probably the videos.
Merlin: You've seen in Cream, in whatever, Guitar for the Practicing Musician.
Merlin: You've seen, seen, seen all this stuff.
Merlin: So you feel like you've got everything except the ability to play guitar.
John: It's the only missing piece.
John: You've imagined it, imagined it, and then at a certain point, I think as an adolescent boy, you have to transform it into something physical.
John: The physical action of participating in your imaginative fantasy.
John: And it's why it's not enough to sit and imagine playing war.
John: You have to go out and play war with your friends.
John: And you're not actually shooting each other.
John: You're pretend shooting each other.
Yeah.
John: And imagining myself playing guitar on a stage was, I think, the thing that got me to actually first figure out, oh, what's that first chord?
Merlin: It's so frustrating.
John: I've got to learn that chord.
Merlin: It's just like if I could have taken a pill and gone from
Merlin: pictures of matchstick men into being able to actually go spoodily, spoodily, spoodily.
Merlin: I would have taken that pill in a second.
Merlin: It was crazy.
Merlin: And the quote that I've heard a million times that I think applies to all kinds of stuff, it's not how many years you play, it's how many hours you play.
Merlin: Because you can get really good at guitar if you really work at it, seriously, for like two or three months.
Merlin: You can get pretty OK at guitar.
John: If you have any dexterity at all, which I don't.
Merlin: Really?
John: No, my hand is like a foreign agent.
Merlin: So you're playing along with Dirty Deeds.
Merlin: You're just going E, D, E. You're playing open chords at this point?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: OK.
Merlin: Were you trying to follow along on solos and stuff?
John: Oh, you know, but I just don't have, I can't, there's no speed.
John: You can see my hand doesn't respond to commands from my brain.
Merlin: I just, I don't like to address the audience, but we're not altering this at all.
Merlin: This is actual real time.
Merlin: That's as quick as John can move his hand.
Merlin: It's just, it's hard to even sit here and watch it.
John: But it's true, and I see people our age, people into their 30s, still being frustrated by the fact, huh?
Merlin: Thank you.
John: People into our early 30s, people who just have crossed into their 30s, or a little older, right?
John: I see them time and time again being frustrated by the fact that in their imagination they are much better at the thing they want to do than they are when they actually put their hands on the thing and try and do it.
John: So they can see where they would be a great architect or they picture themselves being a great
John: you know, a game designer or somebody's watching this show and like, I could do a show like that.
John: You just point a camera at a couple of guys and make a show.
John: You get some Chinese people playing basketball.
John: It'll be a hit.
Merlin: They have no idea what went into getting them.
John: But then you actually put your hands on the thing and you realize, I'm not as good at this as I know I am.
Merlin: And I felt that on guitar big time.
Merlin: So I'm not going to do it.
John: I'm frustrated at it.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm going to go, eh.
John: And then when you're 15 or 16, eh, that's youthful angst or whatever.
John: But when you get to be 35, and that is still the thing that's inhibiting you from doing anything beyond just going to work at your job.
John: Yeah.
John: you know, then you need to overcome, you need to get past the fact that your imagination is better at the thing than your hands and actually get in and start learning how to do something.
John: Because I see, I mean, as a musician, I meet a lot of people who are like, oh man, it's so cool that you like get to do what you love and, you know, and I just, I work at this job, it's cool or whatever, but you know, I really wish I was na-na-na-na-na.
John: And
John: I hate to always be the life coach in those situations.
John: It's hard for you.
Merlin: It's hard for you to offer somebody an opinion on their life.
Merlin: I hate it so much.
Merlin: Sometimes people have to ask.
John: I hate not getting paid for it.
John: But every one of those people has a dream that's achievable.
John: I've never met a person that had a dream that was unachievable.
John: Sometimes disturbingly achievable.
John: So achievable, just right there.
John: But they feel like the little bit of practice that they have to do, the little bit of like, oh, that requires a graduate degree.
John: Well, yeah, it does.
John: But you know how easy a fucking graduate degree is to get?
John: You know how many morons I know that have graduate degrees?
John: Most of them.
John: They're all morons.
John: It's a prerequisite.
Merlin: They like being called doctor.
Merlin: They really do.
Merlin: They do like it.
John: They pretend they don't like it.
Merlin: I want to be called.
Merlin: Did you get your master's degree?
Merlin: I have a master's degree in a couple of things, yeah.
Merlin: I really want people to call me bachelor man.
Merlin: Bachelor?
Merlin: Every time somebody insists on being called Dr. Dr. Rosen, penis, I want to insist that they call me bachelor.
Merlin: Bachelor man?
Merlin: Well, you know, I did work for that.
Merlin: I went to school for four years, so, yeah.
Merlin: Except now they hand out bachelor's degrees to... You test well, sure.
John: It's not hard.
Merlin: I really wanted to be good fast.
Merlin: more than anything in the world.
Merlin: But the chords are so, unless you had a really easy Beatles, the chords are so squirrely.
Merlin: Learning to play a sixth chord, it's weird.
Merlin: And of course, I was barely mastering G, which is still my favorite key.
John: And it's not a Beatles song without the sixth.
Merlin: No, you gotta end on it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I think there's something analogous today to what you're describing, which is even if you do get good at guitar, and you do get good at songwriting, it strikes me that still one of the most crazy making of enterprises is recording.
Merlin: And when our band would record back in Tallahassee, and this could not have been more welcoming, informal, you know, it's an ADAT and a 12-pack, and it could not have been a more comfortable environment, but it's still... But Wren's made a whole career out of an ADAT and a 12-pack.
Merlin: God bless them.
Merlin: But do you know what I mean?
Merlin: It's like, and everybody's like, oh, you're recording, you're recording.
Merlin: And it's like, it's, God, it's almost like cost accounting or dentistry to be recording and overdubbing and redoing.
Merlin: And then you realize something early on, there's something on the drums that you can't fix now.
Merlin: And it's too late, especially when you're using a four track or an eight track.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying though?
Merlin: And it's, I think the thing you're describing about not being able to get your hand on it quite right, it's so frustrating.
Merlin: It seems like it would be, because you're paying for it.
Merlin: You're paying your cash to go be in the studio.
Merlin: to make that record.
John: People forget that recording is its own art form, completely separate from being good at guitar or playing.
Merlin: Analogous, but very different skills.
Merlin: Very different skills.
Merlin: Being a great onstage, live presence who can sing on key is so different from being somebody who can go play the solo twice the same way.
John: And I think everybody that's a fan of music knows
John: knows the experience both of getting a record, like the My Bloody Valentine record, which is an incredible record.
John: And you listen to it, and you're like, oh, man, awesome.
John: And then you go see them live, and it's like watching paint dry.
John: They're a terrible live band.
John: And then your favorite band that they love to go see, and they're just this incredible, charismatic, kick-ass band.
John: And you buy their records, and it's always a cold shower, because the record just doesn't capture the music.
Merlin: But that process, that process can be, I mean, I've watched you up close and from afar putting the last record together.
Merlin: I mean, it took you a long time.
Merlin: It was a lot of, you had false starts, and you're somebody who takes that shit really seriously, and you weren't phoning it in, and it was still very trying.
Merlin: It must have been very frustrating.
John: It was, and it's frustrating mainly because...
John: Again, in your mind, you know how you want your record to sound and you know that you can do it and you know it's just waiting on the other side of some amount of time that has to pass where stuff happens.
John: You know, like how many times when you're starting out making a record do you just sit there on the couch and go, I wish this record was just done and we could look back on how fun it was to make.
John: But looking forward at all the work that you have to do and all the times when you're at a crossroads and you don't know which way to go,
John: You know, it's excruciating.
Merlin: And this is also the first time that you have done this pretty much almost all on your own, right?
Merlin: I mean, you were kind of the project manager as well as the songwriter, the singer, and the guitar player in this case.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, we had a great engineer.
John: Floyd Reitzma was the engineer.
John: And without him, I couldn't have made him.
Merlin: But you're the production credit on this one, right?
Merlin: I produced it.
Merlin: OK.
John: And in music, you know, who is the producer, right?
Merlin: But it's like directing yourself in a movie.
John: It is.
John: It's like writing, directing, and producing a movie.
John: And sometimes you make great movies that way, and sometimes, a lot of times they're abysmal.
John: Because there's no one standing there saying like, no, the shot of you getting out of the shower is inessential to the film, and it actually is a turn off.
Merlin: Or knowing when to move on.
Merlin: Knowing when to go, you know what, that's going to be fine, and I just cannot spend another day on getting your amp to sound the way you want.
John: The way that my perfectionism manifests itself is not
John: Let's do that take 80 times.
John: That is not the kind of perfectionism I have.
John: Generally, if the take sounds... Would Mike Squires agree with that?
John: Well, you know... I'd have to ask Mike.
John: Yeah, you would.
John: Get Mike on here.
John: But no, I don't want to do a take 80 times.
John: I do it until it's... Yeah, that's good.
John: And a lot of times it's the first or second take.
John: A lot of the vocal performances are...
John: You know, run it down once, then again, and then keep the third one.
Merlin: But when you've got the cash register, you know, clicking every few minutes in your head, you've got to be thinking to yourself, does that affect your decision making?
John: Yeah, it does, but it's also an attention span thing.
John: Like, the cash register is what keeps me from making 90-minute long records where every song has 80 tracks.
John: ARP.
John: Of, like...
John: There's always something where you think, right before the chorus, wouldn't it be cool if 10 of us went into a parking garage and just threw bottles at a wall and recorded it?
John: Wouldn't that be great?
John: And it's the cash register that keeps you from doing that.
John: But it isn't a cash register that keeps me from doing 80 vocal takes.
John: a short attention span for that kind of thing, for that kind of perfectionism, and also a feeling that it's illegitimate.
John: In the first vocal that I recorded with Ken Stringfellow in the producer's chair, I sang the first three lines, or the first three words, like, hey, baby, I, and Ken put stop on the machine.
John: And I looked through the glass, I was like,
John: And he said, sounded good.
John: All right, let's get the next three words.
John: Oh, no, he's a puncher.
John: And I was like, get the next three words.
John: So he pushes record, and I listen to myself go, hey, baby, I. And then I'm supposed to go, love you.
John: And he's like, stop.
John: That was good.
John: Let's hit you again.
John: And I said, Ken, I can't.
John: I can't work this way.
John: And he looked at me through the glass and he was like, what do you mean?
John: This is how you make records.
John: He's never made a record where he didn't do that.
John: And I think that was the... He's got the motor skills to be punching in and out that fast.
Merlin: And through the 80s and 90s, that's how they made records.
Merlin: So just out of curiosity, are you talking about Pretend to Fall here?
Merlin: Pretend to Fall.
Merlin: But this wasn't all computery.
Merlin: This is on tape.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: This is tape.
John: He's doing this with tape?
John: Tape!
John: And this lasted for five minutes, where I sat in the mic and said, I'm not going to record a vocal this way.
John: You need to push record.
John: I'll sing the song all the way through.
John: Then I'll do it again.
John: and maybe I'll do it a third time, and then we'll pick the one that's the best.
John: And if there's an out of tune note,
John: We can punch it in, but I'm not going to go every three words.
Merlin: I didn't know they would ever do that on a first take, on trying to get the... That was the method.
Merlin: Oh, man.
John: And that was how they recorded all those records.
John: I think you listen to your favorite records from the 80s, and they're all recorded that way, punched in.
Merlin: Well, so last question about this, though.
Merlin: So when people first started quitting your band a few years ago, and you realized that you were going to have to... People started quitting my band before...
John: before the initial lineup even solidified.
Merlin: People got to remember, it wasn't always fashionable to quit your band.
Merlin: There was a time when people were doing some really landmark work and getting out of your way as quick as they could.
Merlin: The first few people that quit my band were brave.
Merlin: They were.
John: And they paved the way for people who came later.
Merlin: Those were some good, funny, clever people.
Merlin: Yeah, that's true.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: So I wonder, though, we talked about this a little bit before, but you have a very electric and fun live show.
Merlin: I wonder how much the songwriting and the studio stuff, especially with the last record, are you always trying to prepare for the fact that it might be just two or three of you up there?
Merlin: Are you...
Merlin: No, seriously.
Merlin: When you're putting the record together, are you thinking about making it somewhat reproducible?
Merlin: Is that part of your constraint?
Merlin: Can we do this in Amsterdam on a PA we don't trust?
John: Well, every record that the Long Winters have made has been different from the last.
John: And so, obviously, the first record, we made no attempt to be able to duplicate those songs live.
John: And in a lot of cases, those songs are hard for us to play now.
John: The second record...
John: Again, we made no attempt to duplicate it, to be able to duplicate it live.
John: And we've struggled to play them live sometimes.
John: But it's never constrained us.
John: If the live band is a three-piece band, we go out and play the three-piece version of the song.
John: And it's not like we have reels of tape running behind the stage with all the backing tracks.
John: We just get out there and we're, all right, on this tour, we're the jam.
John: We're two Rickenbackers and a drum kit.
John: And the fact that the record has the Vienna Boys Choir on it is not going to be a problem for us.
John: And hopefully it isn't a problem for our audience.
John: Because our audience isn't typically made up of those people who are like, well, that doesn't sound like the record, man.
John: They're very forgiving.
John: It's not that they're forgiving.
John: It's that they're adventurous people with a spirit of discovery.
John: And they come to our shows and they're like, what are the lone winners going to give us this time?
John: I think on the... We're running out of time.
John: On the new record, on the most recent record, we did try a little bit more to rein in some of the experiments that were further afield and make a rock and roll record.
John: But I don't think the next record we make will... We met that challenge head on and we've made that record, so now the next record we're going to probably...
John: really explore the outer limits.
John: The sky's the limit.