Ep. 19: "Finger Camping Trip"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: I'm Merlin.
Merlin: You okay?
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: You know, I keep saying I'll think of a song.
Merlin: I'm on with John Roderick.
John: I keep saying that I'm going to rewrite the lyrics to the Janet Jackson song to reflect my actual feelings for you.
John: Because Janet's lyrics are fairly antagonistic.
Merlin: That's the nature of that record.
Merlin: I think that's a statement of purpose.
John: Yeah, she's asserting herself.
John: She's breaking free.
John: Jimmy Jam.
John: Jimmy Jam.
John: You ever work with Jimmy Jam?
John: Is that his name?
John: It is his name.
John: I have not worked with Jimmy Jam, but if I was raised by an oppressive Jehovah's Witness family, I would turn myself over to Jimmy Jam.
John: He would be my guide.
John: He would be the Pied Piper who gets the rats out of my...
Merlin: Undergarment?
Merlin: My emotional life.
Merlin: That's the Mormons.
Merlin: Now, what about Jellybean Benitez?
Merlin: What's his faith?
Merlin: Jellybean Benitez?
Merlin: Do you know anything about Jellybean Benitez?
John: I think that he probably practices a Creole religion.
John: Is that one of those chicken ones?
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Some combination of... What's it called?
Merlin: Rusty?
Merlin: No, it's not Rusty.
Merlin: It's a Santeria.
John: Santeria.
John: Don't call it Rastafarianism.
John: That would be... People would be mad.
John: Although, I think that probably not a lot of reggae
John: We don't have a lot of reggae listeners.
Merlin: I, and I wonder, you know, sometimes, I mean, setting aside strictly spiritual music, is there any other kind of truly escrow music that has such a close following by, by a religion people don't understand?
Merlin: Uh, let's see.
Merlin: Wait, no, let's be honest.
Merlin: Take something like, you got your armor on Christian soldiers, you know, and stuff like that.
Merlin: But are there other faiths?
John: I mean, is there... There are a lot of people who claim that indie rock right now is being colonized by Christianity.
Merlin: I think you've said that on a number of occasions, haven't you?
John: No, I'm just repeating received wisdom.
Merlin: You know, I cut out the last three hours of all of our talks.
Merlin: I only put up the first hour, just the cream.
Merlin: Because they can't handle the truth.
Merlin: No, I've checked.
John: I've decided that I'm going to go on the internet and just go page by page and just mark all the places where people are wrong.
Merlin: Do you have an app for that or just going to write right on your screen, get a Sharpie?
John: Just manual.
John: I started at www.aaaaaa.com.
Merlin: That's called a dictionary attack.
Merlin: That's not a bad way to go.
Merlin: That might take less time than you would think because you could probably do a lot.
Merlin: I have a reggae story.
Merlin: I have a lot of reggae stories.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I have a few reggae stories.
Merlin: Let's hear yours.
Merlin: Should we even bring these people to light?
Merlin: Just tell me the best reggae story.
Merlin: It's one of those stories where I don't want to take you off track.
Merlin: You've been away.
Merlin: Are you doing well?
Merlin: Are you feeling pretty good?
John: I'm feeling great.
John: You sound good.
John: You've been traveling.
John: I've been traveling and I started taking vitamin D. I went to the doctor and he ran a full battery of tests.
John: I said, doctor, give me the news.
John: And he put his cigarette down for a minute.
John: He stubbed his cigarette out in the little specimen tray.
John: And he took 17 vials of blood with a rusty needle.
John: And he came back and said, you've got plenty of iron.
John: No, he came back and said, you've got everything you need, including a little bit of high cholesterol.
John: You're kidding you.
John: Just a little bit because of my insistence on deep frying my pancakes.
Merlin: Can I be honest?
Merlin: I never thought of that.
Merlin: It's like a Monte Cristo for breakfast.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Hello.
John: Deep fried pancakes with the bacon inside.
Merlin: Funny religion story.
Merlin: When I was a kid, sometimes I'd stay over at my friend John's house, and when we got up, before we went to church, we would make Eggos, like you do.
Merlin: And when we made Eggos, this is such a Cincinnati kind of story.
Merlin: You make the Eggos, they come out.
Merlin: Now you've got to put a little bit of squeezing.
Merlin: Is that the Cincinnati part?
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: They come out.
Merlin: It's amazing.
Merlin: We've got a special Cincinnati toaster.
John: Oh, so the Cincinnati style would be to put spaghetti and chili on them.
Merlin: You know how you describe Cincinnati?
Merlin: A little sentiment.
Merlin: You know how you describe Cincinnati to somebody?
Merlin: If Kentucky and Indiana got really fucked up and had sex one night, like a few months later, Cincinnati would come out.
Merlin: It's like the Klan meets the creek.
Merlin: But a few months later, like not nine months later, but five months later.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: How do you think people have so many babies?
Merlin: I love Cincinnati.
Merlin: It's fine.
John: It's a nice place to grow up.
John: I like Cincinnati of all the towns in America.
John: There are a few towns that adopted the long winters like right away.
John: Cincinnati was one.
John: We would go there and just really be treated like kings.
John: And our shows that were great because of that radio station, Woxy, W-O-X-Y.
John: Oh, my friend did their website.
Merlin: They're the best.
Merlin: Did they go away?
Merlin: Because I used to give money to them.
Merlin: Yeah, I donated to them.
Merlin: My friend Chris Glass did their beautiful website.
Merlin: They're the best.
Merlin: Okay, so we get out Sunday morning.
Merlin: We've got to get to church, right?
Merlin: Take out the Ego, you get some squeezed parquet, right?
Merlin: You squeeze parquet all over it.
Merlin: Because you got to have like a butter, but you don't have butter because, you know, you're Protestants in Ohio.
Merlin: You got parquet, you squeeze it on.
Merlin: You squeeze it until it's just this entire layer of parquet.
Merlin: But then, right, you're going to have two of these.
Merlin: So you get your two Egos, you put a parquet in between, you put parquet on top.
Merlin: Then you do the syrup.
Merlin: You do the squeezed syrup, squeezed syrup on top.
Merlin: And then you take approximately three quarters of a cup of confectioner's sugar and cover the entire thing.
Merlin: And then you try to sit still and think about redemption.
Merlin: It's fucking hard.
Merlin: Is this your reggae story?
John: I don't understand.
Merlin: Do you want to know my reggae story?
Merlin: The reggae story is a story I've never told.
John: Really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Anyway, you had to be there.
Merlin: But long story short, my lady, when she still had the bun in the oven, she's pretty late in the bun.
John: Reggae woman?
Merlin: Was she a reggae woman?
Merlin: I am reggae.
Merlin: Hi.
Merlin: Then we went to river rafting.
Merlin: We went and we, I don't know why we did this.
Merlin: We went up to the Russian river.
Merlin: This is not a Cold War thing, but we went there and we get a little boat and you get on the river.
John: I have river rafted the Russian river.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's not super complicated, but we're in there.
Merlin: I wasn't saying it to indicate that I was— No, but you know me.
Merlin: I don't even go outside.
Merlin: Oh, that's true.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: I'm like a Japanese lady.
Merlin: I need a parasol.
John: Yeah, this is a big deal.
John: You're going on the Russian River.
Merlin: Very small electronics.
Merlin: She's super pregnant, and we're in this boat.
Merlin: We got all our stuff.
Merlin: You know, you got stuff when you go out there.
Merlin: And you know me.
Merlin: I don't love being in the sun.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But anyway, we're rolling along.
Merlin: And suddenly out of nowhere, we're in this crazy little bit of – well, let me say first of all that we missed our exit.
Merlin: There's an exit where you get off.
Merlin: We missed the sign to get off and go take your boat back.
Merlin: And so we didn't know that.
Merlin: We kept going.
Merlin: As great as my wife's sense of direction is, I was probably whining.
Merlin: She was distracted.
Merlin: I do not have the innate sense of direction that you do.
Merlin: You didn't have a guide.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: No Sherpa, no.
Merlin: And so we go into this – suddenly we're in this little, like, not a rapid exactly, but just enough that a crazy pregnant lady and an idiot, like, we can't control the boat.
Merlin: The boat is in bad shape.
Merlin: The boat, despite all my best efforts, the boat completely flips over very violently.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Sends all of our – and you have to understand, we wanted to stop doing this an hour ago.
Merlin: Ah.
Merlin: And you know when you really want to stop doing something and you're like, I just need one more thing at this point.
Merlin: And now you're in the water.
Merlin: Well, we're in the water.
Merlin: Our stuff is floating away.
Merlin: And my lady took a little bit of a hit in the gut going over.
Merlin: So we're freaking out a little.
Merlin: We probably are not going to have a six-pack of these.
Merlin: We really want this one to work out.
Merlin: So now she's worried.
Merlin: I'm worried.
Merlin: I'm running around trying to gather consumer goods and get them back in the boat.
Merlin: And it's still like another hour.
Merlin: We're worried.
Merlin: We're walking around carrying a boat.
Merlin: We go to the wrong place.
Merlin: We go to a beach.
Merlin: No, you got to go back this way.
Merlin: No, we're going up the river.
Merlin: And, you know, you just have those days where you're just like, oh, God, I just I want this never to have happened.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And the closest I'm going to get to this never having happened is having an end.
Merlin: So the place you drop in your boat, the place they pick you up with the boat, two different places.
Merlin: So you go and it's, of course, it's water wall mooks.
John: You start at one end of the river.
John: That's right.
John: And it isn't a loop.
John: No, no, it's not.
John: The river doesn't loop around back to the top.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And so we finally got back to the boat place.
Merlin: It's all fucking mooks and hippies sitting around with their fucking macrame and bush lights.
Merlin: And I'm just like, fucking kill me.
Merlin: That's their culture.
Merlin: And you know I hate reggae, right?
Merlin: I really hate reggae.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so we're like, oh, Jesus, God, I just want to go somewhere that's not in the sun.
Merlin: I want to make sure that she's comfortable.
Merlin: And we get in this old busted ass bus.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And you ever get on a bus with like the jokey driver?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, never go to a second location with a hippie.
Merlin: That's totally true.
John: What is that?
John: That's from 30 Rock.
John: That's not me.
Merlin: Oh, that's a good one.
Merlin: That's true, though.
John: I have made it my mantra.
Merlin: that joke came from but it was so funny so we get into this big like like hippie bus and everybody's all drunk and a little sunburned and happy and we're just sitting there like you know like the way the way they're the grouchy urbanites well like the guy looks when sam i am won't go away you know that expression he has it's just like can i just be left alone and we're sitting there and it's like uh
Merlin: And he puts on fucking Legend.
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Legend, I never... He wants you to feel iry.
Merlin: Oh, I was feeling super fucking iry.
Merlin: If you've been through college, you never need to hear Legend again.
Merlin: and it's fucking desperately loud now the mooks have to yell louder everybody on their super date rapey they got their they got their glasses on the back of their t-shirt collar and they got like those those those real rapey adidas shower sandals yeah those are rapey and we're just sitting there just going and and over you weren't transformed by the message of positivity
Merlin: you know i thought i might be i thought i might want to make a god's eye or something but like that's reggae for me now is anytime my wife and i are anywhere and we hear like one note especially a bob gnarly we just look at each other and like did you say bob gnarly bob gnarly i wanted to leave out the peter crosh but well why why have i not heard bob gnarly before that is i hereby i hereby claim bob gnarly as my dj name
Merlin: The thing is, you're going to Google that, and there's going to be so many Bob Gnarlys.
Merlin: But I want to be Bob Gnarly.
Merlin: I don't care about the other Bob Gnarly.
Merlin: Why doesn't Bob Gnarly update as MySpace anymore?
Merlin: Anyway, it's a stupid story, but you know that situation.
Merlin: You're tough, so you don't feel this way a lot, I know.
Merlin: But we were weirded out by the whole, like, is our baby okay and stuff?
Merlin: She's all big and stuff.
Merlin: And now she's hearing reggae through her mother's belly.
Merlin: It's so goddamn loud.
Merlin: And now every time I hear a reggae song, it's called Trigger Word.
Merlin: For me, it's a trigger two and four beat.
Merlin: Post-traumatic stress disorder.
Merlin: Two and four.
Merlin: Ugh.
Merlin: Anyway, I hate reggae.
Merlin: I hate it everywhere.
Merlin: I'm sorry to keep saying date rape, but every time I hear Jimmy Buffett or reggae, it just sounds like something that guys who are thinking about date rape would listen to.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's awful.
Merlin: You're not going to sit around and listen to the Rens and do that kind of stuff.
Merlin: This is for bad people.
John: Right.
John: The Rens are not date rape music.
Merlin: It's not.
Merlin: Absolutely not.
Merlin: The thing is, anywhere you get, you know, it's like whatever Paul says, you know, wherever two or more of you are gathered in his name, you get two or more mooks in a room and there's going to be some fucking reggae.
John: Right.
Merlin: It's like they don't know what else to do.
John: You would never find two Rens fans in a room together.
John: Well, they used to be Rens fans.
John: There's one in an elevator somewhere weeping softly.
John: Most of them are retired now.
John: There's one in his closet trying to pick which one of his two pairs of pants to wear today.
Merlin: They waited too long.
Merlin: But anyway, I just don't like reggae.
Merlin: It's one of those things I never need to hear again.
John: I understand.
John: I mean, my reggae stories are legion, because, of course, I grew up in the same era that you did, except with an open mind to reggays.
Merlin: I used to have an open mind to reggae.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: When I was young.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I thought hippies might be cool, too, and that didn't turn out great.
John: The door never slammed.
John: I'm not saying that I have listened to reggae in a very long time, but as a musician, I have to admire the...
John: The reggae music?
Merlin: But it's like the CNN of music.
Merlin: It's just like what people put on.
John: Well, this is the problem.
John: This is the thing.
John: Here's the thing.
John: Here's the thing with reggae.
John: Here's the thing.
John: This is true of every musician.
John: You cannot pick your fans.
John: I've told you this story, right?
John: The first time, when Built to Spill first started playing in Seattle, all of their initial fans in the very small clubs were all other musicians and cool kids and go to Built to Spill shows and it felt like, oh man, this is a real thing.
John: It's a real family, you know.
John: And then I remember the day I went to a Built to Spill show, so they're still playing at the Crocodile.
John: It's still 300 capacity.
John: But I walk in, the place is A, packed, and B, everyone in the place has a white baseball cap on backwards.
John: No, really?
John: And I went, what the fuck?
Merlin: How did these people get in?
Merlin: I don't see him liking that.
Merlin: Doug Marsh?
Merlin: Doug Marsh.
Merlin: I don't see him liking that at all.
John: That's the thing.
John: You looked up on stage and you could see that the band, their body language had changed.
John: They were not facing the crowd.
John: They looked like they were nervous and uncomfortable.
John: And at the end of every song, all around, there were these people like, Woo!
John: Yeah!
John: Woo!
Woo!
John: And, you know, of course, that had never happened before either.
John: And that was my introduction to this concept of, you know, Build This Build It would never have chosen these people.
John: If they could, they would have electrocuted these people.
John: But the frat boys were their fans now.
John: And they became a frat boy band.
John: And there was nothing they could do about it.
John: And then, of course, I was in Harvey Danger.
John: The ultimate band that wanted their fans, Harvey Danger wanted their fans to be pavement fans.
John: Or Smiths.
John: Or Smiths fans.
John: And Harvey Danger's actual fans were hot topic teenagers and people that felt Green Day was great but just not sophisticated quite enough.
Merlin: I see people who go to wherever the MTV Spring Break thing is happening and hope that they get on camera.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And so Harvey Danger was in a constant state of misery as a band, not because their music had changed or they had done anything wrong, but just because people chose to like them who the band didn't admire, right?
John: So I learned through that that you cannot choose your fans, and if you try or if you have any emotional hold...
John: on who you want your fans to be, you're just going to be in misery.
John: You have to walk out on stage and do your thing.
John: So, I mean, Bob Marley... He seems like a good guy.
John: He did not choose to be the music of date rape or whatever, or whatever it is that you're claiming.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's actively date rape.
John: No, no, I know exactly what you mean.
Merlin: I'm saying, like, you know what?
John: But there it is.
John: But there it is.
John: Bob didn't choose it.
Merlin: I felt that way when I saw Nirvana in, whatever, 1994.
Merlin: I think I told you the story, but they were playing in a stadium, not a stadium, but, you know, like the Civic Center in Tallahassee with the breeders opening.
Merlin: And the breeders actually, like, did a pretty good job.
Merlin: I mean, you know, they did a pretty good job of, like, filling the room.
Merlin: And then Nirvana came out and it was, it was, it was one of the like defining moments of my music and especially the kind of indie rock arc was I sat there and went, Oh my gosh, I really liked this band, but they seem so little.
Merlin: They were so little on that stage, you know, but they had all this bombastic set stuff going on.
Merlin: And when they did the whole, like, she's the one who likes all our pretty songs and everybody's singing along, like you don't have to be a huge ironist.
Merlin: to sit there and go, this is awkward.
Merlin: Like there's a big spinning mirror ball and people are literally singing along with
John: Well, but you know, he tried, if you read the liner notes on incesticide, there's this whole, he writes this whole essay on like, if you are a raper, then stop listening to our music.
John: He actually addressed rapers directly and said, if you don't like gays or if you're a raper, then you can fuck off and stop listening to Nirvana because we don't want you.
John: And I remember even at the time,
John: 1993.
John: Big Lantern note readers, those guys.
Merlin: Rapers, yeah.
John: Sure.
Merlin: The first thing they do, they go through, is there anything in here that I should know about in terms of whether I should listen to this band?
John: No, they're looking through and they're like, who is the second assistant engineer on this project?
John: But, oh, listen to this.
John: It's an article about rapers.
John: Oh, that's me.
John: Tony Levin played on that.
John: That's cool.
John: I guess I should stop listening to them, but I don't want to.
John: What are my other options?
John: Oh, I could stop raping.
Mm-hmm.
John: But even at the time, I thought, come on.
John: What if Korn ever did that?
John: Come on.
John: I'm sure that Korn did not.
John: Slipknot.
John: I think that after Kurt, or before Kurt, no one had ever addressed rapers directly in Atlanta Notes.
John: And I think after Kurt,
John: the subsequent artists felt that it had been done and that they needed to advance the trade somewhat.
Merlin: Well, I think, you know, you can say way too much about Kurt Cobain, but, I mean, to me, he is a serious cautionary tale of the whole be careful what you asked for or didn't realize you were asking for genre.
Merlin: I mean, is that super obvious to say?
John: No, no, no.
John: He knew what he... Do you think he really knew what he was in for?
John: Oh, sure.
John: I've said this before, although probably not to you, but there was a big article in the local...
John: rock magazine here you know the paper the weekly paper called the rocket a big interview with him right before nevermind came out and i read it at the time and because i have a memory like a steel trap i remember the gist of the record of this uh of this interview primarily because i was a you're envious probably i was an aspiring musician and here was somebody who was where i wanted to be and i was trying to like glean whatever wisdom i could get
John: And in this interview, he was... I mean, maybe he was having a manic day that day, but he really was unabashed about, like, this record's going to be the biggest record in the world, and we're going to be the biggest band in the world, and this is going to be... We are on the way to, like, achieving all our dreams.
John: And, of course, at the time, it was so implausible...
John: I mean, their first record had sold 50,000 copies, and I think they didn't dare to dream.
Merlin: Yeah, you would go like, wait a minute, more than Mudhoney, these guys are going to succeed?
Merlin: Like, they're not even on the radar screen of these other bands.
John: But he was in this article just crowing about, and this is right before the thing came out, you know, this record's the best record anybody's ever made, and we're going to be the biggest band in the world.
John: And another reason that this stuck in my head is it wasn't but six months later that I'm reading things from him like, we're just a hardcore punk band and we just want to tour in our van and I don't know why everybody's looking at me all the time and I want this to go away.
John: And, you know, I still had this prior article in my memory, in my short-term memory, my RAM, if you will.
John: And, oh, wait, no, my ROM.
John: Which one was it in?
John: My RAM or my ROM?
John: I think it was in your floppy.
John: It was in my floppy.
John: I had it still in my floppy.
John: So I was able to compare and contrast the two...
John: uh, attitudes in my own head.
John: And I went, uh, I don't know about that.
John: And of course this was right at the same time that, that Eddie Vedder who had been wearing like Dr. Zogg's sex wax t-shirts six months before.
John: and high-top tennis shoes, and he was like a high-fiving white guy.
John: Like, he all of a sudden was carrying around a bottle of red wine and like, oh, fuck, I'm so hurt inside.
John: Wearing the Kaiser helmet.
John: I was like, wait a minute, you were a high-fiving white guy six months ago, and now you're hurt inside?
John: Either that means that every high-fiving white guy is really hurt inside, and all he needs is several million dollars to get in touch with his feelings, several million dollars in the adulation of millions,
John: Or some of this is a little bit of a put-on.
John: And I'm not saying that Ed Ved is a... Don't you call him?
John: Is that a short name?
John: That's what people up here call him.
John: When I see him, I call him Mr. Vedder.
John: Just EV.
John: But people in Seattle call him Ed Ved.
John: And so I go along with that because I'm a follower.
John: Seems awfully familiar.
John: I'm a follower.
John: Well, you know, Seattle has to continue to feel proprietary about people that have become...
John: internationally super starred.
John: And so they do it by using inappropriate nicknames or by... Well, it's a little bit like San Francisco.
Merlin: I mean, you know, San Francisco has, I don't know, kind of a reputation for like, you know, if you see...
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: 100%.
Merlin: Down the middle.
Merlin: Nice tight pants.
Merlin: But, you know, where you're supposedly notorious or famous for like, oh, like we don't make a big deal when you see a celebrity.
John: Notorious.
John: Hmm.
John: Sorry.
Merlin: What did you think of that cover record they did?
Merlin: Duran Duran?
Merlin: They did that weird cover record.
John: Here's the thing about cover records.
Merlin: Don't do it.
John: Yeah.
John: Don't do a cover record.
John: Name one cover record.
Merlin: Seal just did a cover record.
John: Well...
Merlin: Of, I must say, incredibly obvious covers.
John: Even the Johnny Cash cover record, which I credit with reintroducing me to Solitary Man by Neil Diamond, a great song, and Johnny Cash's cover of it is great.
John: But don't do a cover record.
Merlin: It always seems like a good idea going in, but it's not... You're saying there's no... You're not just saying just ironic cover records, like a Pat Boone thing.
Merlin: You're saying cover records in general are a bad idea.
Merlin: All by one artist.
Merlin: One artist covering another artist.
Merlin: That's a bad idea.
John: Well, no, I think playing a cover at a show is a great idea.
Merlin: No, but I mean like a tribute to the fastbacks.
John: Like, is that a bad idea?
John: Oh, no, no, no, no.
John: I'm saying one band does a record of their 10 favorite covers.
Merlin: It feels like, not to use an old Mr. Show joke, but I mean, it's kind of like, here's the video for Sugar Cube by Yellow Tango where they go to rock school.
Merlin: And David Cross is like, and then your third record should be the live album.
Merlin: It's weird how there still is this cycle where at a certain point, you got to put out the best of, the greatest hits, the whatever.
Merlin: And ELO has like 170 of those.
Merlin: But at a certain point, it seems like when you really start to dry things up,
Merlin: not so different than Paul and Get Back or what would become Let It Be, where Paul was like, hey, look, guys, to keep this together, we've really got to get back to our roots.
Merlin: And so a lot of that was going in and going back to covering a lot of stuff that didn't make it on the album, I think, was like covers of old rock and roll songs that they loved.
John: But they also managed to write
Merlin: Long and wide.
John: Let it be.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I totally agree.
John: I totally agree.
Merlin: But I mean, I guess I'm agreeing with you in that it's maybe not desperate, but it's like if you were still full of ideas.
Merlin: I mean, you look at Van Halen.
Merlin: Van Halen had two albums in the can after like a few weeks.
Merlin: Supposedly.
Merlin: You read that article.
Merlin: I didn't know that.
Merlin: I didn't know that like... First album was great.
Merlin: Second album?
Merlin: I think the second album's really good too.
Merlin: But the point is they recorded them at the same time.
John: Right.
John: And they still had tracks left over.
Merlin: You don't like Spanish Fly?
Yeah.
John: I'm saying that Van Halen 2 is not in the top five Van Halen records.
John: Really?
John: Yeah.
John: Women and Children First.
Merlin: What's the one with Unchained?
Merlin: That's Fair Warning.
John: Yeah.
John: Fair Warning and Women and Children First are my two favorite Van Halen records.
John: Stop.
John: Really?
John: Yeah.
John: Because they... Oh, they're so dark.
John: They're so... Oh, they're so smart.
John: I had a cassette tape with those...
John: AB side.
Merlin: That is a good one.
Merlin: I think I still got to say, I mean, to me, Van Halen won like side one of Master of Puppets.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, like, side one of Master of Puppets, I don't know what you're feeling on that is, but to me, that's like, that's almost perfect.
John: It's an amazing record.
Merlin: The whole record's great, but the first side of that is...
John: Dan Halen won.
John: I would never say a bad word about it.
John: It is one of the great albums.
John: It is bulletproof.
John: And in fact, it sounds so different.
Merlin: It sounds so different from everything else.
John: It's kind of maybe up above the level where I feel like I could even make a critical appraisal.
Merlin: It's kind of like going like Magical Mystery Tour isn't as good as Revolver.
Merlin: It's still a pretty good record.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: It's not a great record.
John: It's not really a great record.
Merlin: Did I tell you?
Merlin: I don't know if you know this.
Merlin: I was able to peg both Van Halen's apotheosis, their zenith, as well as the beginning of the end in four words.
John: One break coming up.
Merlin: That was it.
Merlin: Give us a break.
Merlin: Give me a break, Dave.
Merlin: When he does those four words, you go on the one hand, this is the David Lee Rothiest, David Lee Roth.
Merlin: This is back when he was still awesome, but you could go.
Merlin: That's the beginning.
Merlin: A couple years later, you get Justin Gigolo.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and that's the thing.
John: You can almost hear Eddie Van Halen's eyeballs rolling in his head.
John: Yes.
John: At that moment of like, oh, Jesus, what have we become?
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: And I mean, you know, they probably did.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Knowing them, they probably didn't do tons of takes, but it was presumably Ted Templeman that's saying that, you think, right?
Merlin: Come on, Dave.
Merlin: Give me a break.
Merlin: That's probably supposed to be Ted Templeman, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I mean, don't you think that's kind of a manicured outtake moment?
Yeah.
John: You're speculating that it wasn't completely spontaneous.
Merlin: We talked about this before, like the count in on a song or the studio noise.
Merlin: Like you hear that with the Beach Boys.
Merlin: You hear that with the Beatles.
Merlin: You listen to enough Beatles.
Merlin: Well, you probably don't do this, but if you listen to enough Beatles bootlegs, you know that there's a lot of crazy stuff that went on in the studio that's really funny and silly.
Merlin: And, you know, John did count into the songs.
Merlin: He actually counted into the songs.
Merlin: The Beatles did 40 takes.
Merlin: Have you ever heard the alternate take of And Your Bird Can Sing?
John: I'm sure I have.
Merlin: Oh, dude.
John: But I can't bring it to the front of my mind.
John: You like a Rick 12-string, right?
John: Of course.
John: Well, now, wait a minute.
John: Here, I've got something for you.
John: I'm going to out-Beatles you, buddy.
John: That's easy enough.
John: I'm not a super fan.
John: I'm going to send this right back at you.
John: Ira from Not A Surf and I were talking last night.
John: He's the tall one who's nice.
John: He's the tall, nice one, although they're all nice.
John: Well, two of them.
John: Go ahead.
Merlin: He said... In case you didn't see, just now I was sweeping the dreadlocks out of my face while I smoked.
John: He said... It's going to be in magazines.
John: Here's what I want you to do.
John: I want you to Google... Are you ready for this?
John: Do you have your Google on?
John: I'm going to get my Google on.
John: Okay, I'm ready.
John: Google Randy Bachman...
John: First chord of Hard Day's Night.
John: Randy Bachman, Hard Day's Night.
John: And what you will find... It's actually two chords, you know that, right?
John: It's three chords.
John: What?
Merlin: I used to think it was an open six strings of the guitar.
John: No.
Merlin: Oh, it's three guitars?
John: Randy Bachman explains... Well, because of the bass.
John: There's the bass in there, too.
John: Randy Bachman explains... Of BTO?
John: Of BTO.
John: Randy Bachman explains that he went to Abbey Road
John: And they called up, and they said, we have all the Beatles masters here.
John: What do you want to hear?
John: And he said, I want to hear the first chord of Hard Day's Night.
John: And so they called it up, and it turns out it's George on the 12 string playing an F. I'm not going to sit here and tell you what it is.
John: You listen to it.
John: Well, is there somebody playing... George's playing an F, but he's got the top G and the bottom G added onto the F. And then John is playing a D sus four...
John: on his guitar, and then Paul is playing D on the bass.
Merlin: I swear to God, I thought it was, okay, so he's playing like an open F with G, like... G on the top and bottom.
John: And then, and then, so, but then these guys are standing, they're sitting there with their guitars as, yeah, see?
John: You put a D. Wow.
John: And that sounds so discordant.
John: And then these guys in this Randy Bachman thing, he actually goes, ready guys?
John: One, two, three, four, bang.
John: And they hit the cord and tears come to your eyes because it's exactly the cord.
Merlin: Damn.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: I never would have guessed that.
Merlin: Nerds.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: I love the beginning of that Taxman.
Merlin: Did we say one time we're going to do a podcast just about Taxman?
Merlin: Forget about Taxman.
John: God, when those remastered things came out and I was listening to it in my car, Taxman came on.
John: I was like, give me a fucking break.
John: You can hear the mosquitoes in the room.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: That recording is so tight.
Merlin: I think that might be the only Beatles song, according to Paul, that he never played on.
Merlin: George plays bass on that.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: No, wait.
Merlin: No, wait.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
John: She said, she said.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: Take it all back.
Merlin: Take it all back.
Merlin: Paul plays second guitar on Anya Birkinson because he's the best guitar player in the band.
Merlin: And he did not play on I Want to Say, She Said, She Said.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure.
John: You're including all the songs, all the John songs later?
Merlin: Paul was on everything?
Merlin: According to Paul.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I don't have this in front of me.
John: We're going to get letters.
Merlin: We're going to get letters.
Merlin: But, you know, there's a bunch of ones where, you know, as you know, he ended up playing drums on some of the White Album stuff.
Merlin: And as we discussed, he plays many of the most interesting guitar parts on some of our favorite Beatles songs.
John: I just sat in a dressing room in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not a week ago.
Merlin: I heard somebody said something nice about us there.
Merlin: That's what I heard.
John: Oh, a lot of people listening to Roderick on the line.
Merlin: I saw you on the YouTube talking about our program.
Merlin: Oh, was I on the YouTube?
Merlin: You're tuning your guitar.
Merlin: I was pointing out to my wife.
Merlin: It was certainly cool that you mentioned the show, but it was super cool.
Merlin: I said, do you get why this is great?
Merlin: I said, because he's tuning his guitar.
Merlin: This is why banter works.
John: Yeah, you got to talk about stuff.
John: It took you a while.
Merlin: It took you a while.
Merlin: Were you in drop D?
Merlin: What were you doing?
Merlin: You doing some Slayer?
John: I'm doing an open D at that point, so I had to tune all six strings of the guitar.
John: Yuck.
John: But anyway, I'm sitting in this dressing room, and this guy, a local Philadelphia musician, is back there to talk to the headliner.
John: Is this a guy from the Hooters?
John: No, he wasn't from the Hooters, although he looked like he could have been in the Hooters.
John: And he starts talking about Paul McCartney and he's like, there's three things I won't take in this world.
John: I won't take people talking shit about Philadelphia because I'm from Philadelphia.
John: And I won't take some other thing that didn't register with me and I don't care about.
John: And he said, then the third thing I won't take is anybody talking shit about Paul McCartney.
John: And I was like, oh boy, you're in the wrong dressing room.
John: Wait a minute, I thought you were on my side with Paul.
John: You're on the John side?
John: No, no, no, I love Paul.
John: I love Paul, but I'm not somebody that's not going to talk shit about Paul.
Merlin: Here we go.
John: Because if you love something, you must talk shit about it.
John: You must shit it free.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: We used to say that in college, that you won't really finish your thesis until you hate the topic.
John: Yeah, Paul McCartney is absolutely unimpeachable as a musician, as a composer.
John: But he kept the band together.
John: God, what a penis head.
Merlin: You're saying Paul up through 1970, you're calling him a fucking penis head?
Merlin: Well... Have you watched Let It Be?
Merlin: You see how hard he tries?
John: No, no, no.
John: He's amazing.
John: But he just, he seems like the guy that's walking around their shared apartment picking up cigarette butts and going, guys, guys, can I... Oh, I get it.
Merlin: This is a veil thing about me.
Merlin: It's really about me, isn't it?
John: You're saying I'm Paul, right?
Merlin: You're the Paul McCartney of Roderick on the line.
Merlin: I'll play whatever you want me to play.
Merlin: If you don't want me to play, I won't play at all.
Merlin: That's not what Paul would say.
Merlin: Yoko fucking Yoko walks in and sits in George's empty seat.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Tell me that's not symbolic.
John: There was a, there was, there were a lot of, you know, I don't think I'm going to be the first to say there were a lot of problems with the Beatles.
John: They had a lot of problems.
Merlin: And what I didn't realize was how, how early, relatively early on John was already like, I hate this.
Merlin: Like he, you know, even before Yoko, when he was like sitting around being depressed in the suburbs and smoking weed and
Merlin: Anyway, let's save that for the other show.
John: But due diligence, Lennon was a prick.
John: You think?
John: Paul was an asshole, but Lennon was a total prick.
John: He said awful things.
John: He was a total prick.
Merlin: Somebody ask him if Ringo was the best drummer in rock and roll, what'd he say?
John: He's the best drummer in the Beatles.
John: No.
John: No, he didn't even say that.
Merlin: No, he said he's not even the best drummer in the Beatles.
Merlin: What an asshole.
Merlin: Granny shit.
Merlin: I wish I knew my Beatles quote.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: It makes me mad.
Merlin: Well, you know, there's always a greater Beatles fan.
Merlin: You got to just stay out of the way because those guys get serious.
John: They live in Japan.
John: We don't even understand what they're saying.
Merlin: You make fun of Matthew Sweet?
John: I would not make fun of Matthew Sweet because he's working with Susanna Hoffs and I am not.
John: If somebody is standing within 25 feet of Susanna Hoffs, I think that you can't say a bad thing about them.
John: She's got a pretty voice.
John: Yeah, and here's the thing.
John: I was not a Susanna Hoffs fan back in the day.
John: In the Walk Like an Egyptian era, I thought that she was... You didn't like Manic Monday?
Merlin: It's a cover.
John: Is that Prince?
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: But I didn't like her.
John: I thought she was too small.
John: She was too.
John: She keeps looking sideways.
John: I keep going.
John: What's she looking at?
John: What is she looking at?
Merlin: It's like she thinks somebody's going to like a sniper on this side or that side.
Merlin: She keeps looking at the right or left.
Merlin: I don't know why.
John: But then somebody sent me, again, a YouTube clip.
John: I hate to advertise YouTube.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But it's a place where you can watch videos that are not copyright protected.
John: But in any case, somebody sent me this Susanna Hoff video from like early 90s where she's playing an outdoor rock festival.
John: And her band is doing a cover of like When the Levee Breaks or something like that.
John: I don't know what it was.
John: I forget.
John: It was some, like, classic rock tune.
John: And she's wearing these little black stretch pants or whatever.
John: Okay, now you got me.
John: And she's not in the Bangles or the Bananaramas or whatever the hell band she was in.
John: She's got a band full of dudes, and they're, like, guitar face-making, like, strat with the strap too high dudes, like L.A.
John: dudes.
John: Everything about it's wrong, but they launch into this tune...
John: And she just kills it.
John: And it's like daytime rock festival thing.
John: It's not even night.
John: She's probably fifth on a bill of 15.
John: But she just kills it.
John: And I walked away like Susanna Hoffs.
John: Whatever else I used to think Susanna Hoffs can really bring.
Merlin: I just searched her.
Merlin: I don't want to advertise Google Images.
Merlin: But she's got some kind of fucking Dorian Gray going on.
Merlin: She is a handsome, handsome woman today.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: She's got to be 50 years old.
Merlin: See, this is why I'm glad I didn't peak in high school.
Merlin: Boy, she looks so much better now.
John: P-E-A-K peak?
John: Oh, I guess both peaks are P-E-A-K.
John: Both of them, the twin peaks?
John: The top of a peak or peak as in peak around a corner.
John: I got to catch up on that.
John: Did you peak in high school?
Merlin: I peaked every night in high school.
Merlin: Sometimes I peak three or four times a day.
Merlin: I bet.
Merlin: It's the only way I can concentrate on anything.
Merlin: Caustic resin.
Merlin: Caustic resin?
Merlin: Yeah, from the ultimate alternative waiver.
Merlin: It was a guy named Brent.
Merlin: Brett.
Merlin: Yeah, I button-holed him at a show, Acoustic Resin show one time, just so I could be all spoogy about ultimate alternative waivers.
Merlin: It was really interesting, because when you talk about, which is a built-to-spill record, the first one that I heard that I fell in love with.
John: It's their first one.
Merlin: It's their first album.
Merlin: Did they have the car?
Merlin: The car single was before that?
Merlin: It was on K. It was like a K record.
Merlin: wow anyway it's early this is very early and he wasn't even in the band anymore because then i think he had you know challenges but um like a lot of people he had he had challenges like a lot of you seattle people yeah um but it's just so weird i mean like it's when you talk about built to spill and i you know i won't even go to see built to spill because they always play slims like sloan is the only band i will go to see at slims oh i'm sorry i'm sorry x i've seen x other than that you know why no matter where you stand there's no sight line anywhere at slims it makes me crazy
John: This is an interesting thing about American clubs.
John: And I just realized this opening for Amy Mann on the East Coast.
John: I played all these cities that I've played many, many, many, many, many times.
John: But opening for Amy Mann, I was suddenly in... I was playing these clubs that not only had I never been to, but I had never heard of.
John: And they are big clubs in each one of these cities.
John: that, I mean, Philadelphia, obviously, I played the World Cafe where I play, and New York, the big cities, sure, you play the big clubs.
John: But like out in Alexandria, Virginia, or Annapolis, Maryland, playing these places where people sit down at tables to watch a show, you got 1,000 people in there, and everybody's talking about this club like, oh, it's a legend.
John: This club's been here forever.
John: It's legendary.
John: I'm like, I have never heard of this club.
John: And I go and I look on the wall and there's like all the people that have played in this club.
John: And I'm going down the list and I'm like, it's a whole separate music scene.
John: The Lucinda Williams's and the...
John: Sean Colvin and there's a whole network of clubs that that honestly there could be there could be a whole music scene of people that are like I go to clubs every night.
John: I've been to clubs all around the world and and they have never crossed paths with me except at a truck stop somewhere where they were headed.
John: They were headed to Alexandria.
Merlin: It's like a parallel universe.
John: It's a parallel universe of clubs and rock fans that are just doing this other thing.
John: I bet Susanna Hoffs is playing at those places, in fact, right now with Matthew Sweet.
John: But, for instance, you can't even stand to go to Slim's.
John: I hate it.
Merlin: No matter where you stand at Slim's, you're in somebody's way.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, bottom of the hill is like that, but there are places at bottom of the hill where you can camp out.
Merlin: Yeah, you can get into a corner at bottom of the hill.
Merlin: Yeah, and you can still hear what's going on.
Merlin: Now, you told me this.
Merlin: In San Francisco, there's like a rule of two, right?
Merlin: Isn't there like a—I think you might have told me this, or I heard it somewhere, but you start out like where you play Café du Nord.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And like, I'm going to get this wrong, and people will tell me, but like two Café du Nords is a bottom of the hill.
Merlin: Two bottom of the hills is a Great American.
Merlin: Two Great Americans is a Fillmore.
Merlin: Is that kind of right?
Merlin: Isn't there like a step thing?
John: I feel like that is true.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Although the production costs... The Warfield's big and annoying, too.
Merlin: Because it's owned by the fucking film war people.
John: Go up exponentially, too.
John: I mean, it's more expensive to put on a show at the film war than it is...
John: you know to put on three at the bottom of the hill or whatever do you have any idea how hard it is to find 45 angry hippies to act like they like music staff there no no you go to the great american you like you get your dude there the backstage dude they treat you right at the great american right yeah yeah yeah absolutely well seattle has a similar thing except it's kind of a rule of threes like it's three crocodiles used to be a show box three show boxes are a paramount
John: But there are a lot of bands like Death Cab and Built to Spill, for instance, and Modest Mouse.
John: These bands could have played a Paramount, but they would rather play three showboxes because in the end you walk with more money from three showboxes.
John: I think that's super smart.
Merlin: For example, didn't you and Sean open for They Might Be Giants one time?
John: We opened for them many times.
Merlin: That night at Great American, it was a sit-down thing.
Merlin: It's a weird show because they're trying to make a little extra dough on chicken fingers and shit.
Merlin: So you pay more.
Merlin: If you want a seat up in the mezzanine where you can see or you want a seat on the floor, if you want a seat, you've got to pay and you've got to order fucking food.
Merlin: It's real stupid.
John: Let me tell you a little thing about the music business.
Merlin: Tell me.
John: Here's the thing.
John: People are trying to make money.
Merlin: You mean like almost everybody?
John: Yeah, and they'll sell you chicken fingers if that's what it takes.
John: Listen, Merlin, right now I would sell you chicken fingers if I thought I could get them to you hot and fresh.
John: This is what separates you.
John: You're a pro.
John: I don't want to sell you cold chicken fingers or have you open a box and it's like, these chickens, they're not crispy anymore.
John: If I could get them to you right now, I would.
Merlin: This is what makes you artisanal, and it's what makes our show artisanal.
Merlin: I sometimes bemoan the fact that we're not ridiculously popular as a program, but you know what?
Merlin: I don't want to have the Doug March problem.
Merlin: I don't want to be entertaining dumbasses.
Merlin: I like the fact that we're getting people who can tolerate a huge amount of ping pong and a little bit of vagina talk to get to someplace important.
John: Something happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
John: I went on to your Twitter account and read your at replies.
John: Sorry.
John: I have never done this before.
John: I've never gone on to a friend's Twitter account and read what people are saying to them.
John: And I was appalled at the way people talk to you.
John: How's that?
John: I was appalled.
John: Well, there are all these ding-dongs out there correcting you on stuff where you're not wrong.
John: They're like, oh, no, Merlin, man, you're the bubba-ba-ba-da.
John: And everybody's got it.
John: I mean, no, you get tons and tons of people congratulating you and telling you they're your hero.
John: But there are also all these people who presume...
John: that it's their place to correct you on some this or that.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: That's their place.
Merlin: I'm not criticizing that.
Merlin: Well, that's what it's for.
Merlin: I mean, they got a keyboard just like me, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, the thing is, I've said this before, but, like, I've been corrected for spelling Wookiee incorrectly.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I've been criticized for spelling it correctly.
Merlin: I've had to have arguments with people about whether I spelled it incorrectly or correctly.
Merlin: It's not really super hard to find out how the correct spelling of something is.
Merlin: And yet, no matter what you do, somebody's going to think it's wrong.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a kind of argument.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: Now, I don't understand because now you're always arguing with people on your Twitter because you say provocative things and then you respond.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're saying mine is more caustic.
Merlin: I get more caustic responses, you say.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: No, people respond to my Twitter account with only the most, like, fearful deference.
Merlin: I got to start reading those.
John: Like, Mr. Roderick, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
John: I'm sorry.
John: I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir.
John: But I just wanted to say thank you for everything you do for us.
John: Signed, loyal fan.
Merlin: It must be a lot of people who are finally at a point where they're willing to share how much you've helped them.
Merlin: Like for a long time, it's probably hard to even, you know, get the wherewithal to obviously approach a man of your stature.
Merlin: But then to be able to be so...
John: open to be so exposed to someone like you right people people want they want to i get the feeling that a lot of people before they reply to me on twitter they put on they change their clothes they put on some better clothes they like put on i'm not saying sunday best but they dress to impress something something not clean but less dirty
John: Less dirty, yeah.
John: Maybe they put on a hat.
Merlin: Cleanest dirty shirt.
John: And then they reply to me on Twitter, and sometimes I reply, sometimes I don't.
Merlin: What do they do after that?
Merlin: Do they go pick up a prescription?
Merlin: Do they take off the clothes?
John: I think they probably sit in a chair and stare at the floor and think about the wording of the tweet they sent to me and wonder if they maybe could have done it better, and then they get kind of paranoid, like, oh, fuck, did...
John: He could totally misinterpret what I said.
John: And then they think, should I send him a second tweet, clarifying tweet?
John: Most of them don't.
John: Some of them do.
Merlin: This is what makes the end of the evening dangerous.
Merlin: Especially anywhere you are where there's drinks, whether it's the end of the event at something like Macworld, in my case, or whether it's the end of the evening for you.
Merlin: And I know you usually hide in your dressing room behind your phalanx of guards, but it's when people... 5 a.m.
John: is the end of the evening.
Merlin: When the people who would have milled around and just come up and said hi earlier, they get 11 or 16 drinks in them, and then there's a lot of candor.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you ever get a lot of candor?
John: I do get a lot of candor, particularly on this last tour because I started selling hugs.
John: Did you really sell hugs?
John: Yeah, I forgot to bring any merchandise.
John: I thought that was a meme.
John: And I was sitting backstage and I was like, I didn't bring any merchandise on this tour.
John: And Amy Mann says, well, you got to have merchandise because how else are people going to show that they love you?
Merlin: You should have brought chicken fingers.
John: Buy something.
John: I should have.
John: What I should have done is ordered chicken fingers on my backstage rider and then sold them from the stage.
John: I got a chicken finger here.
John: Who wants a chicken finger?
John: So I said, I'll sell you hugs for five bucks.
John: high fives for two, fist bumps for one.
John: And I went up there and let me tell you, you hug somebody after a show.
Merlin: You're very moist after a show, John.
John: I am, but I'm a great hugger, dry or wet, wet or dry.
John: I can give you both kinds.
John: And you hug somebody and then they're really going to tell you a story.
John: It's not like they're walking by like, hey, great show.
John: I mean, they stop and they got a story to tell.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I love people's stories.
John: You know me.
Merlin: I love a story too.
Merlin: You know, you said something a long time ago that I wasn't so sure about.
Merlin: And like all things with you, it takes a minute to sink in.
Merlin: Like, I'm not sure I'm as extroverted as I thought.
Merlin: I mean, I'm definitely a loud mouth, but I think I'm, I don't want to say I'm introverted, but I definitely had a certain point I could feel it coming, like a cold coming on.
Merlin: I could feel that I'm going to need to not be on soon.
Yeah.
John: And what did I tell you that you took a while to think about?
John: I told you you were less extroverted than you thought.
John: Yes.
John: Yeah.
John: That's right.
John: You were right.
Merlin: You were right.
Merlin: You were right.
Merlin: But, you know, there's a phrase like you got to recharge your battery.
Merlin: I think that's important.
Merlin: Now, do you get time to recharge your battery?
Merlin: By the way, Amy Mann, I'm pretty sure I heard a song of hers in the Tim and Eric movie.
John: Yes, she's friends with Tim.
John: What?
John: Yeah.
John: In fact, they co-wrote a song together.
Oh, man.
I know.
Merlin: I gotta get mobbed up with these famous people.
Merlin: Small world.
Merlin: It's a small world.
Merlin: Maybe I don't.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I like my life.
Merlin: My life is modest.
Merlin: It is manageable.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: I don't know if I need a lot of celebrities in my life.
Merlin: That must be hard for you, John.
Merlin: You know a lot of very famous people, including yourself.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Is that hard to manage?
John: No, because I...
John: Yeah, because I have cultivated this air of impenetrability, right?
John: Even had that in the early 90s, huh?
John: Yeah, well, then I cultivated an air of intoxicated ability.
Merlin: You can't remember how penetrable you were?
John: Now there was an air.
John: In between, there was an air where I was penetrable.
John: And it's an air of impenetrability.
John: It isn't that I'm actually impenetrable.
Oh, okay.
John: But so I'm in a room full of famous people or whatever people are going nuts all around me.
John: And I just let it bounce off me.
Merlin: But it seems like people must constantly be calling you, please come and, you know, what, perform in Dubai with Catherine Zeta-Jones.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Please visit, you know, go to Las Vegas and visit somebody's Tiger or something.
Merlin: You must get a lot of things you have to manage, you know, on the calendar.
John: In fact, you're going to love this.
John: The mayor's office called me and said, we want you to be on a panel talking about, because they're really trying to promote Seattle as a music town.
John: Um, after years and years and years of trying to squash every music or cultural related activity here, there's a new mayor and, uh, he likes music.
John: And so, uh, I'm, I'm on this panel like this panel with Sir Mix-a-Lot.
John: It's not even a panel.
John: It's me and Sir Mix-a-Lot.
John: You call him Mix.
John: Mix.
John: And, um,
John: And we're talking about social networking.
John: And I'm like, what are you talking about?
John: I don't want to be on this.
John: And they're like, no, no, no.
John: Paste Magazine says you're the number one musician to follow.
John: And you live here in Seattle.
John: So you can be on our panel and talk about social networking.
John: And I'm like, to whom?
John: well, you know to whom, a room full of ding-dongs.
John: Absolutely.
John: Oh, my God, how tedious.
John: I'm going to sit up on this panel with Mix, and Mix, of course, is going to go, I don't know.
John: I don't do that.
John: I just... Woo!
John: I mean, Mix doesn't tweet, or if he does, I don't know about it.
John: And then they're going to look at me, and I'm going to say, yeah, here's the secret.
John: Be funny, I guess, and...
John: Be nice.
John: And keep moving and get out of the way.
John: Thank you.
John: Good night.
Merlin: And then somebody comes up and gives you their little half-sized mood card and says, follow me.
John: I'm going to get 700 business cards at this thing.
Merlin: Every time somebody hands me a card, I say the same thing.
Merlin: I try to say like, this is nothing against anybody, but like, I'm really not taking any paper tonight.
Merlin: And they laugh and they hand it to me and I say, can I be super honest with you?
Merlin: What should I do with this?
John: Right.
Merlin: Like, are we supposed to set an appointment for something?
Merlin: I'm supposed to write your name down in a book.
Merlin: It's nothing against you.
Merlin: It's just that like, what do you do with all of those cards?
John: Do they look hurt while you're saying this to them?
Merlin: Well, of course they do, because I'm being honest.
Merlin: And honesty harms people.
Merlin: When you say to somebody, they say, hey, Ziba Zabo, let's have a Ziba Zabba meeting.
Merlin: And you go like, you know, I barely have time to love my daughter.
Merlin: I mean, this is nothing against you, but how do you accept, not you, but this person I'm speaking to, how do you accept all those things?
Merlin: Is that paying out a lot of benefits?
Merlin: And here's the other problem with the social media thing.
John: Well, there are people that follow up.
John: This is the thing about people.
John: They follow up.
John: They follow up about what?
John: Well, they send you a thing, and they're like, hey, following up on that handshake that we had at that meeting, just following up to say, really enjoyed your show.
Merlin: Index cards.
Merlin: Index cards.
Merlin: You hand them an index card.
Merlin: You say, start here.
Merlin: When I pretend to fall.
Merlin: Nice meeting you.
Merlin: Have a good night.
Merlin: That's what I do.
Merlin: I do that 10 times a week.
Merlin: I say, when I pretend to fall, go buy this record.
Merlin: It's really good.
Merlin: Here's the other thing.
Merlin: Hey, let me just tell you what.
Merlin: Drop me an email, and I'll tell you about that thing.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: And the thing is, I'm the cock, right?
Merlin: We just talked for five minutes, and now we've got to do another thing?
Merlin: How does that scale?
Merlin: Now, here's the problem with these social media people.
Merlin: This is the problem with the social media thing.
Merlin: Tell me.
Merlin: I'm doing a panel, you see.
Merlin: Okay, so why does that thing exist?
Merlin: Because it's now a racket.
Merlin: Yes, it is a racket.
Merlin: You used to talk, we used to talk about things like, you know, SEO, social, rather a search engine optimization or search engine, you know, marketing.
Merlin: And that's still a thing.
Merlin: But now the thing is there's people don't even have fucking websites anymore.
Merlin: They're like, just come, our site is come to Facebook.
Merlin: I can't even get on Facebook because I turned my account off.
Merlin: So you don't exist for me anymore.
John: I got in a huge argument with Hodgman the other day because I was like, hey, stop tweeting about your Tumblr.
John: Like, tumble about your Tumblr.
John: Tweet about your tweet.
John: Don't tweet about your Tumblr.
Merlin: Stick to Scrabble and the best show on WFMU.
Merlin: Hashtag.
John: He said, first thing, don't tell me I'm doing it wrong.
John: And second thing, I want people to go over to my Tumblr because I like it better.
John: And I'm like...
John: Screw you.
John: I mean, here's the thing.
John: He has 7,000 Tumblr followers and 700,000 Twitter followers.
John: Yeah.
John: And he likes doing his Tumblr better, but he's afraid to leave his 700,000 followers behind.
Merlin: It's a difficult thing to do.
Merlin: It's very natural to want to leverage one thing, do another thing.
Merlin: Everybody does it.
Merlin: But you have to be somewhat circumspect, and everybody makes their own decisions about that.
John: So I was bitching about this on Twitter, as you do.
John: Oh, jeez.
John: And then somebody on my Facebook page said, why am I reading about this on Facebook?
John: Yeah.
John: because my Twitter was ported over to my Facebook, and I got called.
Merlin: Not how everybody does it.
Merlin: I mean, like, here's the thing, though.
John: I'm going to get a Tumblr is what I'm going to do.
John: I'm going to get a Tumblr.
John: Here's what I'm going to do.
John: I'm going to get a Tumblr.
John: I'm going to fucking tweet about it on my Facebook.
Merlin: If you get a Tumblr, you should also get a Twitter that auto-announces to your Twitter, and then you can re-tweet that.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You can get something that auto-tutes to all your tweeters.
John: I can take this to my seminar.
Merlin: Here's my problem.
Merlin: Every time you meet somebody who calls himself, his or him or herself, a social media expert or a social media consultant... This is why I carry...
John: fire extinguisher everywhere I go.
John: Because when somebody says that to me, I just hit him right in the face with a fire.
John: Not the stream.
John: You hit him with a literal fire extinguisher.
John: It's an empty fire extinguisher that I filled with sand and then I just hit him with it.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: If there is a fire, if there's an electrical fire, you got sand to throw on it.
Merlin: Nothing wrong with that.
John: If you're a social media expert, I want to see you have 1 million followers because otherwise.
Merlin: Can I put a little bit of sauce on that spaghetti?
Merlin: Somebody comes to you and says, hi, I'm a social media expert.
Merlin: I help people build their social media presence.
Merlin: Whether that's an SEO person, whether that is a social media person, whether that any kind of service that somebody does where they say, I will make you this thing.
Merlin: Hey, look at me.
Merlin: Ask them this.
Merlin: What is your second?
Merlin: Tell me what the second or third most successful site you've ever done is besides your own.
Merlin: Put more pointedly, show me one thing that you've ever done that's not about social media or SEO or whatever.
Merlin: Show me one thing that's more famous than your own site about SEO.
Merlin: Show me one thing that is more famous than your own fucking Twitter account about social media marketing.
Merlin: Because you know what?
Merlin: I think you're somebody who's really good at marketing yourself, and you've got somebody else paying the freight.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: You're never going to turn Bob's Wiener Barn into a Facebook sensation.
Merlin: They're never going to be as popular as you because all you do all day is fucking have social media bullshit about social media bullshit.
Merlin: It's turtles all the way down, John.
Merlin: This is the problem.
Merlin: This is what's wrong with Seattle.
Merlin: This is why no musician will move back to Seattle.
John: Yeah, I say this very thing.
John: Anytime somebody offers me relationship advice, I'm like, have you been married for 40 years and raised five kids to adulthood?
John: then shut up.
John: Go back to minding your own business because you don't know anything.
John: What if you're really good at breaking up with people?
John: That's the kind of relationship advice.
John: That's a thing I could write a book about.
John: Selling short.
John: How to break up with somebody.
John: And they don't even realize it until you're a thousand miles away.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Did I just get broken up with?
John: Wait a minute.
John: Too late.
John: The ninja.
John: The ninja is gone.
John: You know what, kid?
Merlin: That happened to me once.
Merlin: Out the window.
Merlin: Write me a check.
Merlin: That's a goddamn shame.
Merlin: You know, because, you know what?
Merlin: This is boring.
Merlin: We shouldn't talk about the internet.
Merlin: That makes me mad, though.
Merlin: You know, it's one thing to go like, I'm going to go.
Merlin: You know where you see this?
Merlin: You see this with the fucking comics.
Merlin: The quote-unquote funny people on the Twitter.
Merlin: Oh, I thought you were talking about the funny pages.
Merlin: Oh, you mean like in a newspaper?
John: Yeah, I have a whole grievance about the newspaper funnies.
John: But you go ahead and talk about comics.
John: No.
John: The other comics.
Merlin: Well, no, I just think it's a little bit, you know, what, ironic, paradoxical, that some of the most, first of all, some of those joyless people in the universe make a living theoretically making people laugh.
John: Oh, they're so mad.
Merlin: But then you go on Twitter, and they're not even funny.
Merlin: It's just like, come catch me at the Laugh Shack in Pasadena.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like, that's not funny.
Merlin: That's not...
Merlin: That's not even like Tim and Eric meta-anti-funny.
John: Frankly, I like Tim and Eric.
John: Oh, I love Tim and Eric.
John: Have you met him?
John: I have not met him, but I hear nice things about him.
John: When are you going to introduce me to that Lee Unkrich guy?
John: Well, you know, Lee is a busy guy making famous movies.
Merlin: I at-responded to Brad Bird today, which I very seldom do with famous people.
John: Yeah, and has he replied?
Merlin: No, no, I don't need that.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I'm very popular on Twitter.
Merlin: I don't need people to respond.
John: Did you see the Adam Savage thing?
John: Mm-mm.
John: Maybe he built somebody's house up?
John: Adam Savage covered the Commander Thinks Aloud.
John: Oh!
Merlin: Oh, on piano, right?
John: Piano, yeah.
Merlin: You know, I told you the time, one of the times I was in his man cave, he was playing the Ultimatum record.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, he's... That guy likes you.
John: I think he likes you.
John: He covered it on stage and now it's a YouTube.
John: That's another YouTube plug.
John: God!
Merlin: Let me ask you this about YouTube.
Merlin: What is the deal with all the ukulele covers?
Merlin: When did that become a thing?
Merlin: Every time I look for a song now, there's like a bunch of people with their computer taking a picture of themselves playing a ukulele song.
John: Here's the thing about the ukulele.
Okay.
John: It is actually pretty easy to play.
Merlin: Compared to, say, like a French horn or a bassoon?
John: Not well.
John: It is easy to play not well, but you can pick up a ukulele and very quickly you can be playing music, which is something that you can't say about the bassoon.
John: You can't really even do that with the guitar and certainly not the piano.
John: It's impossible to do with an oboe.
John: You cannot play good music on an oboe full stop.
John: Never done.
John: Yeah, it hasn't been done.
John: But ukulele.
John: So ukulele is like the... It's the gateway drug to making twee pop music.
John: And there's really nothing that doesn't sound good on a ukulele.
John: And here's the thing.
John: If you are a great ukuleleist...
John: it still sounds like you're playing a child's toy.
John: Like, even the best ukuleleist, it's still like, plinkity, plink, plinkity, plinkity, plink.
Merlin: But it is, no, don't get me wrong, no.
Merlin: I'm not gonna go anti-ukulele.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, it's a wonderful instrument.
Merlin: It sounds really cool.
Merlin: I love that it's so, what, democratic?
Merlin: It's easy enough to pick up.
Merlin: I think that's great.
Merlin: We've talked before about how, basically, you could be a retarded person and get okay at guitar.
Merlin: It's not a hard instrument.
Merlin: I had a friend who played French horn.
Merlin: She had to practice a lot.
John: To not suck a French horn.
John: Well, because they have to build up their lips.
John: When you got to get your fist in there.
John: You have to have amazing lips.
John: Nice embouchure.
John: You ever make out with a French horn player?
John: Yeah.
John: They could squeeze the top off of a mason jar.
Merlin: She had probably a four octave range with her mouth.
John: She had an extraordinary amount of control.
Merlin: No, I'm serious.
Merlin: I didn't know what was going on.
Merlin: I thought I was making out with four people.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It was great.
Merlin: She bought me breakfast too.
Merlin: It was nice.
John: my god you let her go but you you got a pretty i let them all go john that's part of my relationship advice but so anyway a ukulele now like so like six years ago there were no ukuleles now they're all ukuleles i don't know what i don't know what to tell you it's like it's um
Merlin: But I guess that's the thing.
Merlin: It seems like there's a lot of ukulele covers.
Merlin: I don't want to belabor the point, but you don't see a lot of French horn covers on YouTube.
John: No, you don't.
John: And I predict two years from now it's going to be the zither.
John: Everybody has a zither.
Merlin: Now, what about that lady, the screamy lady with the harp?
Merlin: Have harps caught on because of the screamy lady?
John: Harps are A, expensive, B, huge, and C, really hard to play.
John: No, people prefer to look at Joanna Newsom from a respectful distance.
Merlin: That's a perfect way to listen, too.
John: Although I did judge a local teen music competition.
Merlin: Is this the School of Rock thing?
John: No, no, no.
John: It's a different thing.
John: The EMP puts this thing on, a teen student music competition called Sound Off.
John: And I judged it one year and there was a girl playing the solo harp and yodeling.
John: And I was like, well, I didn't think that this was a thing, but now it's going to be a thing.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'll say this.
Merlin: I don't want to make this an ad for YouTube.
Merlin: You go and you watch anything with any of the Marx Brothers playing an instrument, and it's delightful.
John: Those guys are massively talented.
Merlin: Oh, just watching Chico play the piano with the little gun thing.
Merlin: But I'm telling you, man, Harpo knew what he was doing on that harp.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I mean, they don't call you Harpo for nothing.
Merlin: What is it?
Merlin: Duck Soup?
Merlin: The one where they sing everyone says I love you?
Merlin: You know that one?
Merlin: You know, between the two of us.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: You're not going to say it.
Merlin: You're not going to say it, are you?
John: I may be the John and you may be the Paul of Roderick on the line, but you are definitely going to be the Marx Brothers authority.
John: I just want to be loved.
John: I know you do.
John: And you are.
John: You are loved.
John: You're deeply loved.
John: You're deeply respected out there in the world.
John: Please don't.
Merlin: Everywhere I go.
Merlin: Bob Gnarly.
Merlin: Bob Gnarly, that's pretty good.
Merlin: Caustic Resin.
Merlin: I wasn't a giant Caustic Resin fan.
Merlin: I think they did a flip single, a flip 12 inch or something with Built to Spill.
Merlin: I wasn't super into it.
John: It was a split.
John: It was a split with Built to Spill.
John: Caustic Resin is more caustic.
Merlin: It's much more caustic and somewhat more resinous.
Merlin: It is more resinous.
Merlin: Now, here's the funny thing.
Merlin: God, this is so fucking boring.
John: But you know what... Your cassette... What?
Merlin: Does that have to do with a bong?
John: Yeah, it's a marijuana.
John: Okay.
Merlin: The kids love their marijuana.
John: There's a lot of smoke, pot smoke.
Merlin: Now, the guy who did the Hurricanes cassette is the same guy who did Nothing Wrong With Love.
Merlin: Phil Eck, right?
Merlin: Phil Eck, correct.
Merlin: He actually produced it?
Merlin: Was he, like, behind the faders?
Merlin: Phil Eck... So, Phil Eck...
John: When I first moved to Seattle, I worked at a club called The Off-Ramp, and Phil Eck was the... That's the Grunge Museum.
John: That was the Grunge Museum, and Phil Eck was the assistant sound man.
John: So I was 21, and Phil Eck was 19 or something.
John: He was like... There were two sound guys, and Phil was the kind of younger apprentice who shouldn't have even been in the bar.
John: He was too young to be in the bar.
John: And we knew each other during that era.
John: And then, but I never, you know, I knew him as Phil.
John: I didn't know his last name.
John: We worked together every day at this bar, but I never knew his last name.
John: And then that first Built to Spill record came out, which he didn't produce, but then he did produce the second one.
John: And this name, Phil Eck, starts ringing out.
John: Everybody's talking about Phil Eck, and I'm like, wow, Phil Eck, yeah, I gotta figure out who this guy is.
Merlin: He does the jokey outro.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: He announces the next record.
John: It's a great album.
John: Kick you in the head and I kick you in the head.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway, during this whole time, during the whole 90s, I'm bumping into this guy, Phil, that I used to know from the Rock Club.
John: I'm seeing him on the sidewalk.
John: Hey, Phil, how's it going?
John: And we'd sit and talk for a minute and then be like, all right, see you later.
John: And simultaneously, I'm thinking, God, this guy, Phil Eck, is making these amazing records.
John: And how do you even get to know a guy like that?
John: How do you even meet a guy like Phil Eck?
Merlin: He's got to be living in a... You didn't put it together?
John: No, I didn't know that it was the same guy.
John: I'm like, he's got to be living in a castle somewhere.
John: He's got to be driving everywhere in a white stretch limo like Phil Eck's making these incredible built-to-spill records.
John: He's handsome.
John: And it wasn't until... He's a very tall man.
John: It wasn't until the very late 90s
John: I've got the Western State Hurricanes together, and we're talking about making a record.
John: And one of the people in my band is like, well, you know what?
John: I know Phil Eck.
John: And I'm like, really?
John: Do you know Phil Eck?
John: That's amazing.
John: Do you think he would work on this with us?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I think I can get him to do this.
John: You know, I think I can get him to do a demo for us.
John: I'm like, oh, that would be incredible.
John: I'm a huge fan of his album.
John: And I swear to you, I'm still running into the guy on the sidewalk on a semi-weekly basis.
John: Like, hey, there's that Phil guy.
John: How's it going, man?
John: You know, what's up?
John: Woo-hoo.
John: And for whatever reason, I just assumed he was working sound in a club somewhere.
John: And who knows?
John: I wasn't paying attention.
John: So I swear to you, we show up for a meeting with Philok agrees to do our demo.
John: And we show up for a meeting and walk into the studio.
John: So he's going to listen to our practice space tape.
John: And I'm like...
John: what, you're Phil Eck?
John: Like, and he's like, yeah, you didn't know that?
John: And I'm like, no, I thought you were Phil from the...
John: off-ramp he's like yeah great good work like oh my god i was astonished he goes you're john roderick no no he i mean he you know he had not first of all he was not thinking he's probably had to fill out some forms with your name on it he was not thinking uh oh my god i can't wait to work with john roderick certainly not at the time
John: He was just thinking, oh, that guy.
Merlin: He's done some heavy hitters, it looks like.
John: If you look at all the records that Philek has made.
Merlin: You've got the Band of Horses, you've got the Fleet Foxes, whatever that is.
Merlin: He did the Shins.
John: How about that?
John: Philek is basically one quarter of what is good about indie rock in the world.
John: 764 Hero, nothing wrong with that.
John: He's been behind a lot of the classic records.
John: Hmm.
John: It must be weird to live there.
John: I don't know how you live there.
Merlin: Don't you feel like you need a break sometimes?
Merlin: Don't you feel like you need to go have a bye year and try another place for a while?
Merlin: Or are your roots so deep in there?
John: No, I mean, I travel for a living.
Merlin: You've got a foot in Alaska.
Merlin: You certainly have at least two feet in Seattle.
Merlin: But you're saying you get away long enough, you come back, it feels fresh again.
John: I'm in New York five times a year for a week.
John: I'm in L.A., you know, a few times a year for a week.
John: I get a week here, a week there, a week here, a week there.
John: Certainly when I'm on tour, I'm gone for three months a year, although I haven't been doing that for the last few years.
John: No, I think about living other places.
John: But, you know, when I get back from a tour...
John: And I've been to all kinds of places all over.
John: Cities in Europe where when I'm there, I'm thinking, oh man, I should move here.
John: San Francisco, all the great cities.
John: All the great cities.
John: I get back to Seattle and I'm like, well, the air really smells nice here.
John: And the living is easy.
John: And I could be like...
John: huffing rat entrails in New York City, or I could be down in L.A.
John: living in a place where no one ever comes and I never see anybody, or I could be in San Francisco having hobos vomit on me, or living in Berlin with all the other 20-year-olds.
John: But Seattle is a pretty nice place.
Merlin: You know what makes you love your town is Applebee's.
Merlin: not applebee's or my dad likes an applebee's oh god bless him i love that guy but you know it's it's funny when i i i'm so hard on san francisco because somebody needs to be yeah it's a really stupid town but yeah i'll go somewhere and i'll miss my family i'll be sitting there this is why i have a thing on my phone to help me find steak it's very hard to find like normal food places because everywhere you go it's just it's just two to six lane highways and applebee's yeah maybe an outback if you're lucky but
Merlin: You know what's good is a Chili's.
John: Oh, come on.
John: They give you this big platter of ribs.
John: Oh, you're talking about the Jack Daniel's bourbon rib plate?
John: Yeah, the Jack Daniel's bourbon rib plate.
John: My God, it's like a trough of food.
Merlin: I don't know if it's tragic or inspiring that the greatest creativity happening in America today is the shit that they come up with at places like Chili's.
John: It's staggering.
Merlin: It's staggering.
John: They have 25 ingredients and they make 7,000 meals.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: It's like one of those.
Merlin: It's like with the Apollo.
Merlin: Like we got all the box full of stuff here to like keep these guys.
Merlin: Same thing they've got up in the capsule.
John: We were driving around Mississippi one time and it was Sunday night and everything was closed.
John: Like they turned off the stoplights because you weren't supposed to be out.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like nothing was on.
John: We're driving around this town and we're starving to death.
John: And it's like, oh my God, I didn't realize that they still closed.
John: They rolled up the sidewalks at 7 p.m.
John: on Sunday night in Mississippi.
John: Driving around, oh, what are we going to do?
John: The grocery stores aren't even open.
John: And then like a beacon in the distance, this red glow just sort of throbbing.
John: We head there and it's a Chili's.
John: And I had never been to a Chili's.
John: Because I thought it was some kind of... I thought it was mass market Mexican food.
John: And I like Mexican food.
John: I don't want to have the experience destroyed for me.
John: We go into this Chili's and I'm the guy who's standing there like, I'm starving to death, but I don't want to be in here.
John: The rest of the guys in my band are like, this is fine.
John: Let's just be here.
John: I'm like, I hate this, but okay.
John: I'm too hungry to argue.
John: We sit down and the cute little waitress comes over and she gives me 7,000 kinds of...
John: Mexi fries and ribs and corn and garlic shrimp and chicken fingers and like a little side ramekin of vitamin D. And I've got a drink in a pineapple with a carrot sticking out of it.
John: And they put little pointy shoes on my feet that curl over.
John: They have little bells on the end.
John: And somebody gives me a hand job and I'm like, this is the greatest restaurant in the world.
John: And the whole thing, the whole meal was like $20 for four.
John: And they're so grateful we're there, too.
John: That's the other thing.
John: They're like, thank you so much for coming to Chili's.
John: Come on back.
John: And I'm like, I will come back.
Merlin: Can I keep these shoes?
Merlin: I love these shoes.
Merlin: You know, every Chili's is identical.
Yeah.
John: Is that right?
John: Do they all talk like that?
Merlin: Thank you so much for coming to Chili's.
Merlin: I'm trying to remember, you know, there's a lot of those restaurants like that.
Merlin: But I mean, pretty much I think the pattern through all of them is they raise whatever was there before.
Merlin: You know, sometimes you go to your dentist and it used to be a Shakey's.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Or like, you know, there's a lot of like urology clinics that used to be a Pizza Hut.
John: Oh, all the Thai restaurants in Seattle are international houses of pancakes.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Do they change the sign just a little bit?
John: They take the sign down, and it's just a blue-roofed A-frame, as you have in traditional Thai communities, a blue-roofed chalet.
John: It's the international house of Pancock.
Merlin: Of pan food.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I'm talking about, like, there was a chain, a terrible chain, in Florida called the Clock Restaurant.
Merlin: And, of course, their thing was there was a big clock on the sign.
Merlin: And when these carpetbaggers came in after that place closed, they spent, like, an hour changing the sign to say, The Oluk Restaurant with an apostrophe.
Merlin: The Oluk.
Yeah.
Merlin: I could see that being like, instead of Shakey's, it might be like Bakey's Urology Clinic.
Merlin: Bakey's Dentist's Office.
John: Is your name Dr. Bakey?
John: No, we just had the sign.
Merlin: There's a buffet in Tallahassee that you go to because that's all the restaurants.
Merlin: They're all buffets.
Merlin: And there was one.
Merlin: It was a really, really inscrutable Korean buffet.
Merlin: You went in there, and it was super bizarre.
Merlin: And you know the kind of buffets where they're really cheap?
John: Did you just say it was an inscrutable Korean buffet?
John: I'm not done.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Was that ping pong?
Merlin: That wasn't ping pong, was it?
John: That's so ping pong.
Merlin: No.
John: They make great radios.
John: And you go in there.
John: You can't use the word inscrutable when talking about Asian people.
Yeah.
Merlin: We've had a lot of requests to help understand what ping pong is, but I'm not going to explain that.
Merlin: You go in there, and you know the kind of cheap – not cheap buffets.
Merlin: Let's say they're just penurious.
Merlin: You go in, and they don't fill the tray with ribs.
Merlin: There's like six ribs on some iceberg lettuce, and they'll put out more when people eat that.
Merlin: So this is a really, really weird place.
Merlin: And so already I think the bar for Korean barbecue in Tallahassee is relatively low.
Merlin: You're not going to get a lot of internationals coming in there and going, what the fuck is this?
Merlin: You call this kimchi?
Merlin: You're going to get a lot of people in there who are like, oh, should we go to Sunny's for barbecue?
Merlin: Should we go for buffet barbecue?
Merlin: Should we go here for buffet sushi, buffet Chinese?
Merlin: Or should we just go to this creepy little Korean place?
Merlin: Which is the point of my story, in an old pizza hut.
Merlin: But you go in there and I'm a hand to God that's happened.
Merlin: We went in there, we sat down and the owner was one of those like really outgoing, like constantly asking you about things and saying things you can't understand.
Merlin: And just talking, talking, talking the whole time.
John: Because all the guys that own Korean barbecues are Korean mafia.
Merlin: And they all own the same tie.
Merlin: It's a Christmas tie, right?
Merlin: It's got a picture of Santa Claus on it.
Merlin: I couldn't look at it.
Merlin: It was so wide.
Merlin: And at one point he came up and he said, bring your wife here.
Merlin: Uh-oh.
Merlin: You can't get fat on our food.
Merlin: And I was like, what the fuck does that even mean?
Merlin: But at one point he came up, he says, everything is good.
Merlin: And we're like, it's delicious.
Merlin: And he goes, finger camping trip.
John: Finger camping trip.
Merlin: Finger camping trip.
Merlin: My hand to God.
Merlin: Six people at the table.
Merlin: Every single person heard him say finger camping trip.
Merlin: And to this day, that was probably almost 20 years ago, and I still have no fucking idea what that means.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I'm still reeling, just emotionally reeling from your incredibly insensitive portrayal of Asian Americans.
Merlin: How many Korean barbecue buffets have you been to that were scrutable?
Merlin: Be honest.
John: In a Pizza Hut.
John: In a Pizza Hut.
John: I went to one in New York, a Korean barbecue, and on the menu were both ostrich and kangaroo.
Merlin: That's like getting lobster in a Mississippi steakhouse.
John: I think twice.
John: But it's New York, right?
John: So it is entirely plausible that they recommissioned an SST and flew this stuff from Australia.
John: You know, that flew a live ostrich and a live...
Merlin: They're very industrious people that are not afraid to put a little bit of money behind bringing a bird to the country.
John: Right.
John: And I had this.
John: I had both things, kangaroo and ostrich at this Korean barbecue.
John: And I have to say that you are correct.
John: It was inscrutable.
Merlin: Ping pong.
Merlin: Typical.
Merlin: I'm taking vitamin D. One time I took too much vitamin E and my hair fell out.
John: Well, I'm not taking vitamin D. I thought it gave you boners.
Merlin: Tell me about vitamin D. That's what they have in milk.
Merlin: For a long time, they said you can't take too much vitamin D. It's bad for you.
Merlin: Then you get the whole like, no, that's not... It turns out that's not actually true.
Merlin: And now you're taking vitamin D. What's it doing for you?
John: Well, see, I went to the doctor, like I said at the beginning of this thing.
John: And he said, you got all your vitamins.
John: You're fine.
John: Except one thing.
John: You don't have any vitamin D in your body.
John: You need all this vitamin D and you've got like trace amounts of vitamin D. And I said...
John: is there no vitamin D in Haagen-Dazs?
John: Because I eat a gallon of Haagen-Dazs every six hours.
John: And he was like, well, not enough for you.
John: You need to get into the sun.
John: It is a thing that happens when you go in the sun, you get vitamin D. And I said, isn't there another way?
John: Because I don't want to go in the sun.
John: And he said, yes, there is another way.
John: You can take it from a pharmacy.
John: You take one with every meal.
John: I went and got some vitamin D and it's too early to say that I'm feeling better.
John: Yeah.
John: But it's nice to think that there is something chemically wrong with me rather than that there is something spiritually wrong with me.
Merlin: God, that has been such a consolation for me.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: When I figured that out.
Merlin: The spirituality thing, you could spend a lot of time running down that path.
John: Oh, boy.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: But chemicals, they got solutions for that.
John: Listen, I don't want to have to delete the next three hours of this conversation.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So what do you notice?
Merlin: What's the D doing for you?
John: Well, I used to have a... Seriously, I've been walking around with a cloud over me and a figurative cloud in addition to a literal one.
John: And now the... Which one of them lifted?
John: I think both.
John: I can see the sun.
John: I'm taking vitamin D and I don't feel like I'm looking at the world through pantyhose anymore.
John: Also, I stopped robbing banks.
John: So...