Ep. 167: "Peak Phil Collins"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Ba-ding-dong.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Ba-ding-dong.
Merlin: Ba-ding-dong.
Merlin: What makes you want to sing that?
John: What I really want to sing is... That's from the Star Trek.
Merlin: Yep.
John: That's what I really want to sing, but I felt like that was a weird way to start the show.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I've been thinking about you for the last 40 minutes.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: I've been listening to – not to keep this too contemporaneous, but I'm listening to my friend's podcast talking about Genesis.
Merlin: It makes me remember how much I love Genesis.
John: Genesis the band or Genesis the Gaia bomb?
John: Oh, the first book of the Bible.
John: Oh, right.
John: Yep.
John: Oh, I see.
John: You were a really big fan of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
John: That's like –
Merlin: Well, yeah, I got to say, you know, Genesis and Exodus, super strong books.
Merlin: Then you got Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, a little bit samey.
Merlin: You feel?
Merlin: Oh, brother.
Merlin: I think they did not have one cohesive editor for that.
Merlin: I think Moses probably farmed it out.
Merlin: I think Moses did some good work on the first two.
Merlin: Because you know what?
Merlin: He had a stake in it.
Merlin: But the rest of the three, it was all like filling out contracts.
John: You know, what's interesting about numbers is that that's the moment that Peter realized, or I'm sorry, it was revealed to Peter by God that he wasn't just out there trying to convert Jews.
John: Moses?
John: Yeah, Moses.
Yeah.
Merlin: think peter came along till later chapters holy moses holy holy moses peter one we call him one peter one in leviticus no sure you don't confuse him with simon peter it's totally different peter it was it was in it's acts oh sure you got the axi and you got the romans sure romans yeah acts and romans i think are uh two of the strongest books of the uh of the new testament i feel like letter to corinthians
John: is where I really get engaged.
Merlin: Oh, look at me.
Merlin: I'm John.
Merlin: I know the B-sides.
John: Because it just feels like... Look, until the New Testament...
John: What was it?
John: It was just a bunch of cross talk.
John: You know what I mean?
John: It was just a bunch of like guys in the desert trying to micromanage what each other is.
Merlin: It goes straight back to your Star Trek.
Merlin: Because really you've got what we call the Old Testament is like the original Star Trek.
Merlin: TOS we call it.
Merlin: And then really you've got the New Testament is kind of like Star Trek The New Generation.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But the thing is, it's new generation, but it casts backwards, and it reveals all that we didn't understand about Kirk's voyage, personal voyage, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Or, you know, I think a lot of that, you get into the Joshua Judge's Ruth, you get a lot of Captain Pike.
Merlin: Oh, Ruth.
John: What I'm...
John: So what I like to think about is first interracial kiss on television.
John: What is the equivalent in the Old Testament?
Merlin: George Takei and Adam West.
Merlin: No?
Merlin: What's the first interracial kiss?
Merlin: Was it Bill Cosby?
John: No, it was Kirk and Uhura.
Merlin: Oh, hot.
Merlin: See, that's big news.
Merlin: She was a handsome woman.
Merlin: Well.
Merlin: My goodness.
Merlin: You know what Yvonne Craig passed this week?
Merlin: Yvonne Craig?
John: I think I used to use his shampoo.
Merlin: I think you're thinking of, gee, your hair smells terrific.
Merlin: No.
John: It was a beer shampoo.
John: That was what I used.
Merlin: Oh, beer shampoo.
Merlin: No, this was Batgirl.
Merlin: Batgirl passed.
Merlin: Oh, Batgirl.
Merlin: Batgirl, one of my primary original hard crushes has passed.
Merlin: Easy.
Merlin: Yep.
John: Well, you know what happens is people get old.
John: Oh, dear.
John: They get older first, and then they get old.
John: I covered this in Micah.
Merlin: Then they're old for a while.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: If they're lucky.
Merlin: That's what I love about old people, young people, the millennials, the snake people.
Merlin: Oh, you're so old.
Merlin: And I'm like, have you thought about the alternative?
Merlin: Well, it's going to be looking pretty good to you soon, buddy.
John: Also, there's old and then there's old.
John: Oh, you get old and stay old for a while.
John: You know, there's something – you just keep – you're still old.
John: But what happens is just the moisture goes out of you.
Merlin: Oh, dear me.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, this is the year in November I begin my final year inside the demographic, the only demographic that matters.
Merlin: I turn 49.
John: You're in the clash?
No.
John: That's the only demographic that matters.
Merlin: Spanish bombs.
Merlin: I have so many BEMs.
John: You're going to get the slash treatment, and they're going to put you on the cover of AARP, whether you like it or not.
John: He was?
John: They put Slash on the cover of AARP.
Merlin: Oh, Slash.
John: Like, hey, Slash, welcome.
Merlin: How old do you have to be, 50?
Merlin: 50.
Merlin: Oh, dear.
Merlin: Now, what about Duff?
Merlin: I like to see Duff on there.
Merlin: He's a handsome man.
Merlin: Duff's 48.
Merlin: Wait, really?
John: Duff McGagan's 48?
John: No, he's not 48.
John: Oh, my God.
John: No, he's not.
John: He's like a good-looking 72.
John: Duff's got to be 51.
John: All right, here we go.
John: Let's see.
John: How old is Duff?
John: 15.
Merlin: 50, 50-ish?
Merlin: Duff McKagan.
John: 50, 50, 50.
John: What is he?
Merlin: Duff McKagan.
John: Duff McKagan, 51.
Merlin: Yeah, is that right?
John: No, well, he was born in 64.
Merlin: So 51.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: God, look at that guy.
Merlin: I saw a video for a live sweet child of mine the other day.
Merlin: He looks so much better now.
Merlin: February, not to say too much here.
Merlin: He's 6'3".
Merlin: He's been married three times.
Merlin: He is 51, born in February of 64.
John: Yeah, so definitely Generation X, Gen X as we call it.
John: Yeah, he didn't look good when he was doing a lot of drugs.
John: It was not a good look on him.
John: He had that souffle hair.
John: But he looks amazing now.
John: Yeah, look at him.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: He looks like something that was carved out of mahogany and then painted.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And then left in a park for a couple years and repainted.
Merlin: I feel like that is a look I wish I had.
Merlin: Can you believe you can pull off that hair?
Merlin: That's amazing hair.
John: I look like something that was, first of all, delivered in scoops.
John: And then some scoops were piled onto one another.
John: Designed in California, assembled in China.
John: And then shellacked.
John: So first you throw some scoops down.
Merlin: A little filmy sweat.
Merlin: And you shellack it.
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: And then you missed it.
Merlin: You look Shakespearean.
Merlin: You look Shakespearean.
Merlin: What does that mean?
Merlin: You look like, who's the guy that gets the poison in his ear?
Merlin: Falstaff?
Merlin: No, yeah, you look like Falstaff a little bit.
John: When I was young, everybody called me Prince Hal because that's an obvious comparison.
John: What?
John: But now, I feel like I'm Rosencrantz.
Merlin: Yeah, right?
Merlin: Sure, sure.
Merlin: Searching for your Guildenstern.
Merlin: Oh, boy, you're still saving that for prison, right?
Merlin: Who, Shakespeare?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Didn't you say one time you weren't going to read Shakespeare until you go to prison?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You cheated a little?
Merlin: You peaked?
John: No, I read the liner notes of Shakespeare's sister.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: What about Johnny Hates Jazz?
Merlin: You saving that for prison?
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: I gobbled it up.
John: No, you can't avoid Shakespeare just like you can't avoid the Bible, even though I literally ran from room to room trying to avoid the Bible, but I couldn't.
Merlin: My grandfather read it all the way through every year.
Oh.
Merlin: If you set yourself – it's like Infinite Jest where like if you really set yourself to it and read it in little short bits, you can get through the whole thing.
Merlin: Seriously, there's some of – there's a lot of repetition is the thing.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
John: Oh, yes.
John: I have read the highlights of the Bible, good portions of it.
John: Like in a doctor's office, one of those like illustrated children's books?
John: I went to Jesuit school and so there was the whole Bible as literature tact that they took.
John: And I've read good – I've read the Shakespeare that I couldn't avoid.
Merlin: But, you know, I mean – I have it all.
Merlin: The older I get – and I mean this kind of I guess goes back to last week in my cop-out about is TV the new books.
Merlin: But I think it's so much more – it's so much more interesting to see it staged or let's be honest, to see a movie.
Merlin: Like, you know, if you can't get into Henry V, I can't help you.
Merlin: Like, that movie is so goddamn good.
Merlin: That is the gateway drug for Shakespeare movies.
Merlin: It's really awfully good.
John: There are some good Shakespeare movies.
Merlin: There are some very good Shakespeare movies.
Merlin: But, like, reading it, it does feel like you're eating your vegetables, whereas that language becomes so much more lively and understandable when it's being acted out.
Merlin: It's like saying, well, you know, Godfather II is the greatest movie of all time, so you should read this script and write a paper about it.
Merlin: That's where I stand on that.
John: I don't want to read the Godfather 2 script, although now that you mention it, I do want to read the Godfather 2 script.
Merlin: I bet it's really good.
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Merlin: Anyway, I heard, um, what did I hear?
Merlin: No reply at all.
Merlin: No reply at all.
Merlin: There's so many that those couple of three.
Merlin: Oh, you take, you take your Duke, you take your Abacab.
Merlin: There's just so many.
Merlin: Turn it on again is I'm sorry.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: People will say we've talked about this on another show.
Merlin: I don't care.
Merlin: Turn it on again is an unimpeachably great pop song.
Hmm.
Merlin: don't you think there's there's something that's very hard for people of a certain age to accept which is that phil collins is amazing yeah you know i i uh yeah i i yeah see now i'm always gonna have to sort of say you're you you are the one of the people this is the
Merlin: Good point.
Merlin: So here's the thing.
Merlin: My friend Anthony has this show called Unjustly Maligned, and you should be on it sometime because it's a really great show.
Merlin: Basically, somebody goes on to his program and talks about something that almost everybody but them hates and explains why they like it and why they think it is, you know, as the title says, unjustly maligned.
Merlin: And so anyway, he's on his own show.
Merlin: It's kind of a long story, but he's talking about Genesis.
Merlin: And like I get all of that.
Merlin: Like it's just there was this three-year period that soured me on Phil Collins.
Merlin: And I love almost everything else.
Merlin: First of all, every indication I've got, Phil Collins, stand-up dude.
Merlin: I've heard he's a very nice man.
John: He seems like a nice man on television.
Merlin: I'm just getting that out of the way.
John: But I mean I –
Merlin: I will sit there and have some red wine, and I will watch all of the old Genesis Live videos.
Merlin: I will just watch them.
Merlin: I will watch them and watch them, and I will watch Peter Gabriel come out with bat ears on his head.
John: Yeah, with the flower, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, all right.
Merlin: Bum, bum, bum, bum.
Merlin: When Winston Churchill dressed in drag, he used to be a British flag.
John: That's my Peter Gabriel.
John: You like that?
John: Yes, I do.
John: But the listeners should know that you also side with the French in agreeing that Jerry Lewis is a national treasure.
Merlin: I think Jerry Lewis is an international curiosity and we should treasure him because he is a complex character.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And I think he's very interesting.
Merlin: Yes.
John: But when was the last time you sat down and put no jacket required on the turntable and just listen to both sides of that?
Merlin: Talk about a trick question.
John: Incredible, incredible document of a time.
Merlin: Well, first of all, I would need to get a turntable and then I would need to get a copy of no jacket required.
Merlin: Somebody left that cassette in my car once and I made them take it back.
Merlin: wow no see that's the problem see you're i am with you i am with them up to the release and i i think is i like face value i love abacab i love duke i'm right there up to the release of how do you feel about it's no fun being an illegal alien oh it's no fun that that's on the the self-titled genesis album i think
Merlin: see that's where they lost me a little bit and then he was on maybe vice and he was everywhere and then he was on the fucking concord between two different live aid shows and it was just we'd reached peak phil collins i don't know that seemed i mean if you inhabit the character of phil collins for that
John: feels pretty good.
John: Yeah.
John: Right?
John: That somebody rushes you to the airport, puts you on a Concord and takes you to the second live event.
John: You've got to be feeling pretty good about yourself.
John: He could have been a lot worse.
Merlin: I will also say, I will say that he is a triple threat.
Merlin: Like, he is an amazing drummer.
Merlin: Killer drummer.
Merlin: And tasteful.
Merlin: I mean, for the crap that he plays in the Nutty Balls time signatures, he's incredibly tasteful and fantastic.
Merlin: So as a musician, I think he's, you know, not without peer, but I think he's awfully good.
Merlin: And I think he kind of gets credit for that.
Merlin: He is a great singer, especially when he really lets it rip.
Merlin: And I think he's a good songwriter.
Merlin: I think he's a good songwriter.
John: And also great comic book artist.
John: Is that right?
John: No.
John: Okay.
John: But take Phil Collins.
John: Yes.
John: Put him next to Don Henley.
John: Don Henley.
John: Super complicated.
John: Also good drummer.
John: Great comic artist.
John: Also good singer.
John: Also great comic book artist.
John: Also, you know, like front man, songwriter, right?
John: Right, right.
John: I mean, this is tough.
But...
John: Also reviled by many snobs.
Merlin: Including Mojo Nixon.
Merlin: Mojo Nixon does not like Don Henley.
Merlin: Mojo Nixon had very strong opinions in the mid to late 80s.
Merlin: But, you know, we wouldn't have had that great reboot of Swamp thing without Don Henley.
Merlin: Have we talked about the Eagles documentaries?
Merlin: Did you watch those?
Merlin: Have we?
Merlin: I did watch the Eagles documentaries.
Merlin: I watch them about every six months.
Merlin: I get completely lost in them.
John: It was like wading through hot pudding for me.
John: Really?
John: I say that with the full knowledge that wading through hot pudding isn't 100% bad.
John: Right?
John: Picture yourself waist deep in hot pudding.
John: It's not... You probably wouldn't choose it.
John: I think I would have a lot of confusing feelings about that.
John: Yeah, right.
John: You wouldn't choose it.
John: But if you were on one side...
John: Of a chasm full of hot pudding and you had to get to the other.
John: And you knew there wasn't going to be like a wave of it.
John: You just had to wade through it.
Merlin: If you knew to a relative certainty that there wasn't like a pudding monster in there.
Merlin: It was just going to be warm pudding that you're wading through.
Merlin: Well, I didn't say warm.
John: I said hot.
Merlin: I'm sorry, hot.
John: Like let's say you had to spend 15 minutes waist deep in hot pudding to get from one side to the other.
Merlin: That's doable.
Merlin: Is this a dream that you had?
Merlin: You can do that.
Merlin: I love the parts in the documentary.
Merlin: First of all, every second Joe Walsh is on screen is pure gold.
John: Totally great.
Merlin: First of all, he is not only extremely talented and extremely funny, but he's deeply, deeply, unironically damaged.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: But his amazingness and the fact that there is something like electrically wrong with him.
Yeah.
John: He's got the wrong wattage fuse or something.
John: It's absolutely offset by the fact that every moment that Glenn Frey is on the screen is like having dental work with no anesthesia.
Merlin: But the scenes, even in like, I guess, up to Hotel California, but while they were still on the rise, like all the backstage scenes where you start off and you see all the photos of Glenn Frey wearing sunglasses.
Merlin: And Glenn Frey was like a, you know, he's a guitar guy who sang and did these country songs that were really nice.
Merlin: But you look at them backstage and you can, they're kind of...
Merlin: not putting on airs, but they clearly want to be California rock stars.
Merlin: And so it's, but it's beautiful to watch them like, Oh, having their marijuana and their acid trips.
Merlin: And isn't this fun.
Merlin: And then like, it isn't more than two years later that they are clearly waist deep and incredibly hot pudding that there is no turning back from this, this world that they had sought.
John: Well, yeah, and I think two years later, their best friends were all lawyers.
John: They have a Rolodex.
John: It's David Geffen and three lawyers.
John: The Glenn Frey of all the rock musicians in history, right?
John: If you look at, I mean, we've all obviously studied...
John: photographs of john lennon taken every 30 seconds throughout his entire 20s right so we can we can sit and argue about which was the best lennon and there are a lot of people and i don't i'm i feel like you are a lennon in 65 guy i'm not sure i'm very definitely a lennon in 67 guy
John: After he'd kind of given up on the band.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Just he was still he was still phoning it in.
Merlin: Oh, he was.
Merlin: But he was, as we've said so many times, I mean, he was very unhappy and probably deeply depressed.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But it was like this.
Merlin: But from the time, like, that's what makes the revolver sessions such a delight is that, like, it's the last gasp.
Merlin: Of these people performing as a band in any kind of a functional way.
Merlin: And when you see the outtakes and them obviously high and Paul with his cool glasses and like that's the last gasp of the Beatles as they were.
Merlin: It's pretty wonderful.
John: But Lennon in 69 is inexcusable.
John: Like there's no I cannot get on.
John: I cannot get with Lennon in 69.
John: Right.
John: I can't get to him.
John: I cannot get with him.
John: I would not enjoy riding on a train with him.
John: Right.
Merlin: Now, he's pretty damaged at that point.
Merlin: If you can wade through the hot pudding of let it be, you can just tell that the guy was not right.
Merlin: And he was on the heroin at that point, right?
John: He was on the heroin, and I just wouldn't have enjoyed anything about him.
John: I wouldn't have enjoyed hearing about his politics.
John: I wouldn't have enjoyed hearing his theories about, like, sexual politics.
John: I wouldn't have enjoyed anything about him.
John: Not to really ruin this program by making any kind of comparison between John Lennon and Glenn Frey, but Glenn Frey has this weird period right there in that time you were describing, early 70s.
John: Where he just, he looks great.
John: He just, he's pulling it off.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: He just, he's amazing.
Merlin: He looked, I mean, given how much of up through the mid 70s, it was really more like the late 60s.
Merlin: He was, some of those people in the California scene were like strangely modern.
Merlin: Like there's something about him that was very contemporary.
John: Yeah, right.
John: That's right.
John: He, he is, he would, he would absolutely fit in as a member of father John Misty's band.
John: Um, and yet he, like he blows it right away.
John: And I feel, I feel like Glenn Fry with a mustache was like really worked for me.
John: Um, um,
John: Like the denim, the denim dudes.
John: Denim dudes.
Merlin: Well, like a sheepskin collar.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Also, I think it takes being in a band like the Eagles.
Merlin: I think it takes a certain amount of guts to get on stage and play an acoustic guitar.
Merlin: I mean, he was really good at what he did.
Merlin: Anyway, I should be kinder to Phil Collins.
Merlin: I should probably do some restitution because I really do enjoy him.
Merlin: And I've been sitting here listening to Genesis.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: Right now I'm looking at a picture of Glenn Frey wrapped in a Mexican blanket in Joshua Tree.
John: And I take everything back that I just said.
John: I take it all back.
John: He was inexcusable from the very beginning.
John: There was never a single moment of Glenn Frey that he wasn't absolutely appalling.
Merlin: But I mean, a lot of what we're talking about.
Merlin: Also, by the way, also on Miami Vice.
John: He featured pretty prominently in Miami Vice.
Merlin: So it's the politics of contraband.
John: That's right.
Merlin: It's the politics of contraband.
John: I think I'm talking about Glenn Frey in 74.
John: He was already a star, but he thought to grow a mustache, which I – like pre-Don Fielder.
John: Yeah.
John: That guy was a hell of a guitar player.
John: He was.
John: I can't believe we've talked about the Eagles this much.
Merlin: Eagles are a complicated topic for a lot of people.
John: Did I ever tell you about the first time that I became aware of the fact that people hated the Eagles?
John: Because growing up in the 70s in Alaska without a big brother, let's just stipulate, I did not have a big brother.
John: I was getting the Eagles the same way everybody else got the Eagles.
John: They were kind of everywhere.
John: They were everywhere.
John: And my older... Well, I just said that I didn't have a big brother.
John: But in fact, I do have two older brothers.
John: But they're much older and they did not function as big brothers for me.
Merlin: They're non-canonical.
John: That's right.
John: They were big brothers in a different orbit.
John: But one of my brothers gave my dad the cassette tape... I'm sorry.
John: The 8-track tape of...
John: hotel California because he wanted my dad to hear the song life in the fast lane.
John: And my dad really embraced the concept of life in the fast lane and used to say it all the time, used to quote it.
John: And he didn't really play the eight track, but it was lying around the house.
John: And dad would say like, well, that's life in the fast lane.
John: We're living life in the fast lane.
John: And so from a young age, I was like, life in the fast lane is where we are, first of all, me and my dad.
John: And second of all, it's where you want to be.
John: And the idea that life in the fast lane was not a place that you wanted to be, which is, I think, the message of the song.
John: Dad didn't really dive down on the lyrics long enough to, you know, it's a classic like born in the USA problem.
Merlin: Right.
John: People didn't get what the song was actually about.
John: But sometime, and it was post high school for me, after I was in Seattle, early 90s, somebody said to me casually offhand,
John: You know, like, oh, that band is terrible.
John: They're almost as bad as the Eagles.
John: And I was like, what do you mean?
John: The Eagles are bad?
John: How do you mean the Eagles are bad?
John: The Eagles are one of the great bands.
John: They're right up there with Lynyrd Skynyrd and...
John: And traffic.
Merlin: I think they're up there.
Merlin: I mean, in the 70s, they were kind of up there with maybe like the Stones where they were like, you know, like a Mona Lisa band where it's like they were just they were they were so there.
Merlin: It would be unusual to have that strong of a negative feeling about them.
Merlin: Everybody nobody disliked them and everybody kind of liked them.
Merlin: I think that they were bigger than the Stones in the US.
John: Well, I mean, I can't go over there and see what it's like to be over in Europe in the 70s.
John: I can't even get there in my mind.
John: But I'm always surprised that when you look at record sales, how relatively few records The Stones sold relative to other bands that you don't think of as being bigger than The Stones.
John: Like you think of The Stones as being...
John: pretty much top tier by any reckoning, but the stones didn't really sell that many records.
John: And I mean, obviously they sold lots and lots and lots of records, but I think that there might've even been stones albums that, that didn't go platinum or,
Merlin: Yeah, especially in, like, the post-exile period where they had their own kind of little genre hell for a while.
Merlin: They had hits.
Merlin: But, I mean, like, did some girls sell that many copies?
Merlin: I don't know.
John: Goat's Head Soup?
Merlin: No, that's like 69, 68 or 69.
John: Right.
John: But I mean, do you own goat said soup?
John: Did you ever?
Merlin: No, I don't.
Merlin: I have some greatest hit stuff and I have beggars, beggars banquet.
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
Merlin: I've got the cake one.
Merlin: I've got excellent main street is one of my favorites.
Merlin: I've got those.
Merlin: I've got those.
Merlin: I had a cassette of some girls and I had, I had some singles at the time, but yeah,
Merlin: You know, I mean, they've been around for 50 years.
Merlin: People have been feeling like the Stones are phoning it in longer, most of the majority of their career.
John: Right.
John: But, you know, the Eagles have the best-selling record of all time or something?
Merlin: Is that still true?
Merlin: Their greatest hits, their first greatest hits record was at one point at least, oh, and then they got Hell Freezes Over.
Merlin: Hell Freezes Over, I think, was one of the highest-selling as well.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Good point.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Well, so anyway, I just.
Merlin: So you've become at this point.
Merlin: Young John has become aware.
Merlin: Aware that people hate the Eagles.
John: Yes.
John: And then it was one of those things.
John: I remember the first time somebody said.
John: I was I was working at a pizza parlor.
John: in about 1992, and somebody said, you know, can I get extra pepperoni on a slice or something?
John: And I put extra pepperoni on it for him.
John: And the guy said, right on.
John: And I had never heard that.
John: No one had ever said right on to me with that kind of musicality.
John: Right on.
John: And right on felt like a 60s phrase.
John: Right on.
John: And in 1992, saying right on with that kind of casual like flippant right on felt very much like someone is knocking on my door.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Are you expecting anyone?
John: No.
John: Let me go over here and see what happens.
Merlin: Well, you know, proceed with caution, John.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I am.
Merlin: This is unusual.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: You stay there.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: John's stepping away from the microphone.
John: Hi, Jared.
John: You're going to do fire alarms?
John: Yes.
John: Starting when?
John: In a couple minutes.
John: Thank you.
John: It would be shocking if you hadn't come along and said hello.
John: I'll try to let everybody know that I can.
Thanks, Jared.
Absolutely.
Merlin: We'll be right back.
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Merlin: This is going to get interesting.
Merlin: Did you catch that?
Merlin: I surely did.
Merlin: Was his name Jared?
Merlin: What was his name?
Merlin: Jared from Fire Protection.
Merlin: Jared from Fire Protection.
Merlin: Thank you, Jared, for the heads up.
Merlin: They're going to be ringing the bells.
Merlin: Well, let's get what we can done.
Merlin: You get some pepperoni.
John: You put pepperoni on the pizza.
John: Put pepperoni on this guy's pizza.
John: And he said, right on.
John: And I was like, huh.
John: I absolutely remember it standing out to me because it was that great way that culture does that.
John: where at first it seemed like this one particularly cool guy had taken a phrase from the 60s and had just thrown it out there super cash and it worked somehow like right on.
John: But then working in this pizza parlor, in the next four weeks, I heard...
John: Then a second guy say, right on.
John: And I was like, wait a minute.
John: I noted it the second time I heard it.
John: And by four weeks in, it had become a ubiquitous sort of catchphrase.
John: Approximately what year is this?
John: 92.
John: Who?
John: 93?
John: Summer of 93, let's say.
John: Okay.
John: And then all over Seattle, everyone said, right on.
John: It went viral.
John: It went viral.
John: And I said, right on.
John: And I continue to say, right on now, 20 plus years later.
John: And it was just a...
John: it was like the first time I heard dude, you know, it just became, I didn't realize in that moment that this was not a passing thing, that this was going to become an important part, a key part of the way that I was a cool dude.
John: Because if somebody skateboards up to you, Ollie's over the curb, flips their board up, grabs it in their hand and says, Hey John, what's up?
John: It is 85% certain that I'm going to say right on.
John: I mean, it's such a great response to so many things.
John: If anybody ollies within a half a mile of me, I'm probably going to say right on.
John: Anyway, same with Eagles hatred.
John: Oh, I see.
John: I heard this guy say the Eagles are bullshit at a party and I was shocked by it.
John: And within three weeks, every single person I knew... Uh-oh.
John: Here we go.
John: Do you hear the bells?
John: I do.
John: Thank God Jared stopped by.
John: Well, you know, they're not... It's not really that loud, John.
John: It's not that loud.
John: I think it would wake me up from a nap, but... Yeah.
John: It's a very... I like it.
John: I was expecting more like ring-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, I got to be honest with you.
Merlin: I would, just for your own safety, I would hope for something a little more muscular.
Merlin: That sounds like a Prius backing up.
John: But there's a kind of grinding that's happening underneath the beeping.
John: Do you hear that?
John: It's almost like it's struggling.
John: Well, either struggling or it feels...
John: like it's more of an apocalypse alarm, right?
John: It's more like a...
John: Oh, it wants to be a klaxon.
John: A klaxon, right.
John: Like an air raid.
John: Yeah, December 7th, the morning of.
John: That's right.
John: Somebody's standing on a wooden tower with a lever running the klaxon.
John: So I don't know how long that's going to last.
John: I hope it's not disturbing.
John: Do you think it's disturbing?
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: I think it'll be fine.
Merlin: Okay.
John: I mean, do you remember a moment where the Eagles – because there was so much revisionism in Seattle in the early 90s where everybody agreed that they had always been against the Eagles.
John: Oh, yeah, the retcon.
John: Absolutely.
John: Everybody agreed that they had always been – I mean, the primary one being that every person in their 20s in Seattle had always been punk rock.
Merlin: Well, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Merlin: It's so easy to revise yourself back into, like, what was it, you know, the Sex Pistols show in Manchester, you know?
Merlin: There were supposedly like 10 people there, but that was their Woodstock.
Merlin: Everybody sees themselves as having been there at the Genesis.
Merlin: My God, how long will that go on, do you think?
John: It's over now.
Merlin: Huh.
John: You're talking about the alarm and not the revisionism.
Merlin: No, the revisionism will go on and on and on.
John: It will go on and on.
Merlin: I don't – I'm trying to place – I mean the one in my head is like it's a joke in The Big Lebowski that – Oh, I hate the eagles.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: But like I don't remember that being a meme.
Merlin: But the thing is, I don't remember it being a meme, but I definitely remember it being something where everybody just rolls their eyes at the Eagles.
Merlin: Can I give you some numbers just real quick here?
Merlin: Let's hear some numbers.
Merlin: This is from Wikipedia, which is never wrong.
Merlin: Some of the big ones.
Merlin: Long run.
Merlin: I'm just going to give you U.S.
Merlin: numbers.
Merlin: Long run.
Merlin: 7X.
Merlin: Whoa, 7X Platinum.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's not small.
Merlin: I'm just picking out a few here.
Merlin: Eagles Live from 1980, 7X Platinum.
Merlin: Hotel California, 16X Platinum.
Merlin: Eagles' greatest hits, 71 to 75.
Merlin: Put out in February of 1976, 29x platinum in America alone.
John: Oh, my fucking God.
John: How many records are there that have done 30 million?
John: I mean, there's obviously...
John: There's obviously Michael Jackson's seminal record.
Merlin: Thriller had like seven singles on it.
Merlin: I think seven or eight.
Merlin: 30 million records.
John: That's got to be a handful of records that have ever done that kind of trade.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: 30 million records.
John: Eagles' greatest hits.
Merlin: I don't know, though.
Merlin: I kind of like the Eagles.
John: Well, Steve, this is the thing about the Eagles, right?
John: First of all, if you can erase the picture of Don Frye wearing a Mexican blanket in Joshua Tree from your mind.
John: Glenn Frye.
John: I'm talking about Don Fry.
John: You're talking about the guy from Steely Dan.
John: Don Fry.
John: Joe Fagan.
John: Was Glenn Fry's older brother who was a lawyer.
John: I'm just going to leave my card here.
John: I can't get the picture of him in a Mexican blanket in Joshua Tree tripping on peyote.
John: Lawyer in a blanket.
John: I cannot.
John: So if you can get those, but the problem is you can't get.
John: No.
Merlin: No, that's all part of it.
John: Part of it is those images.
John: You can't get smuggler's blues out of your head.
Merlin: The thing about... Smuggler's Blues sounds like something on Urban Dictionary.
Merlin: Man, I bought that chick a fucking lobster, and now I got the Smuggler's Blues.
John: I was sitting under a glass coffee table, and she crouched over the top and gave me a Smuggler's Blues.
John: No, but the thing is, like the Don Henley singles, The Boys of Summer,
John: And the other one about Marxist revolution in Nicaragua or whatever his two singles in the 80s were?
Merlin: Oh, right.
John: Yes.
John: Oh, Dance, Dance, Dance.
John: All She Wants to Do is Dance.
Merlin: All She Wants to Do is Dance.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You got Johnny Can't Read from his less well-known first solo album.
Merlin: I thought Boys of Summer, partly because I'm a big Mike Campbell fan, I think Boys of Summer is exquisite.
John: Are you telling me that Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers plays on Boys of Summer?
Merlin: You're kidding!
Merlin: Totally Mike Campbell.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: One of the most tasteful guitar parts ever written.
John: Well, you know, he's very good at tasteful guitar.
John: That changes everything and only in a good way.
John: I already really liked that song.
John: I couldn't escape it.
John: There was one particular...
John: moment in the eighties when I was still riding the school bus, I was 15.
John: I couldn't drive yet, obviously.
John: And the school bus driver listened to the radio.
John: And, you know, in Alaska in the winter, it's obviously very dark and cold on your way to school.
John: And we're all kind of huddled in the school bus and the windows are icing over.
John: And there's nothing to look at outside but just dark, frozen nothing.
John: And every morning, because that was the style of radio at the time, they would play Don Henley's Boys of Summer kind of at the same moment every morning.
John: Like halfway through the school bus ride, the tune would come on.
John: They also played Dancing Days by Zeppelin every morning at about the same time.
John: So these songs are kind of like drilled into my head and conjure that.
John: that ride to school really powerfully in me.
John: But, you know, how do you not like Boys of Summer?
John: It's very wistful song.
Merlin: I want to say obviously, but it seems calculated to create a certain feeling, and it really does that for me.
Merlin: Even listening to it, I had a certain feeling about it in 1985, and now, whatever, 30 years later, I still have a certain feeling about it.
Merlin: It's very evocative and very affecting.
John: That Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac line, and the Wayfarer's tip of the hat, even at the time, I felt like those were cynical and contrived, and yet powerfully effective.
John: I think Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac's a pretty good line.
John: It's a great line, but it felt very pandering of a certain moment in 1980-whatever, 80-whatever that was.
John: Four?
John: Four?
Merlin: I think 85.
John: 85, where that was exactly the kind of wry knowingness that we all craved having.
John: Like, whoa, man, deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, right?
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: Am I right?
John: Am I right?
John: And then the Wayfarers was just like some product placement that really acquitted with the fact that everybody was wearing Wayfarers except me.
John: I was wearing Varnese.
John: Actually, everybody was wearing Varnese too.
John: Let's be honest.
John: There were only two kinds of sunglasses.
John: This is just getting worse.
John: Yeah.
John: It's getting worse and worse.
John: There were Wayfarers people in there, Varnaise people.
John: And if I'm true, if I'm honest with myself now, I realize that I should have been a Wayfarers person.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.
John: You know what I mean?
John: But I self-identified as a Varnaise person because it was more like what I thought I was.
Merlin: It's a little more outsider.
Merlin: It's a little more Adidas than Nike.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm like, no, I'm a Varnaise guy.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: But now, you know, and I think for a long time, if I was honest with myself, it was like, no, you were a Wayfarers guy the whole time.
Merlin: Michael Jackson's Thriller, 42.4 million.
John: That's bonkers.
John: But wait a minute.
John: The Eagles was 40, right?
John: 39.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: This is RIAA, I think.
Merlin: I'm not sure.
Merlin: I'm looking on the bestselling.
Merlin: There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight albums that have sold over 40 million copies.
Merlin: If you want... Oh, wait.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: This is claimed sales.
Merlin: Claimed sales.
Merlin: If you want the real sound scan.
Merlin: 51 to 65 million claimed sales.
Merlin: 42 certified.
Merlin: In America.
Merlin: Well, I'm not sure.
Merlin: ACDC, you got 25.
Merlin: I'm just grading on a curve here.
Merlin: ACDC, Back in Black, 25 million copies.
Merlin: There's some interesting ones in here.
Merlin: Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf, 20 million.
John: So that is the one, when I've looked at this list before, which I have done a thousand times,
John: The thing about SoundScan, have you ever known somebody that had access to SoundScan?
Merlin: Not directly.
Merlin: I do remember when it came into being, because it's when I was playing in bands with my friend.
Merlin: It was like 92 or so, right?
Merlin: Something around then.
Merlin: Because I remember the other guitar player in my band was the manager of the awesome record store in town.
Merlin: And SoundScan changed everything.
Merlin: Because all of a sudden, everyone went, wow, people are not listening to nearly as much of this pop rock as we thought, and way more country than anything we ever read.
Merlin: Way more country, right.
Merlin: So much more country.
Merlin: Tell the nice people how does – what happened in the pre-SoundScan in the cocaine days versus the post-SoundScan?
Merlin: What was the big difference?
Merlin: SoundScan, they're doing the sales at the terminal.
Merlin: It's not shipped copies.
Merlin: It's how many things people paid money for in a store.
John: Right, right.
John: And I think that the – I think that prior to SoundScan, the –
John: Like the country music people didn't really even, that culture wasn't driven by, or rather the country music charts were a thing that the pop culture people just ignored.
John: Who cared?
John: If you bought country records, you bought them somewhere.
Merlin: It was like – it almost like had a big asterisk on it.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Like it wasn't like – I'm just guessing here.
Merlin: But it's almost like that's not really who we're going for, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And so –
John: And the charts were reported by radio, right?
John: It was Casey Kasem.
Merlin: I think it was some combination of you had the billboard-style charts, which were totally crooked, and you've got at one time the reporting was based on number of copies that were shipped.
Merlin: Ship.
Merlin: Which is why you could buy a copy of the Kiss Solo albums until like last month.
Merlin: Like they were in cutout for like 20 years because the number that shipped had to be the number.
Merlin: I'm not sure exactly how it worked, but the record stores got the money back for the cutouts, but they were still counted as being sold, I think.
John: Wait a minute.
John: I'm getting it now.
John: Billboard.com.
John: Because there was no system, Billboard would just call record stores.
John: Really?
John: Yeah.
John: Billboard had people that called record stores and asked them about their sales.
John: That's crazy.
John: And so people at the record store would be like, oh, yeah, Kiss Solo records selling and –
John: The Eagles record's been selling a lot, but there was also record companies like David Geffen, I'm sure did this, would just send those guys a $100 bill in the envelope and say, hey, make sure you tell them that Don Henley is selling a little well.
John: That's never gone away.
John: Yeah.
John: So then all of a sudden they could track it.
John: But then the airplay thing was a thing that, like you remember a lot of those bands that were really, really big on MTV in the early days, it turns out they didn't sell any records at all.
John: But their records were, their videos were in high rotation and so it felt like
John: They were huge.
John: Anyway, so yeah, when SoundScan came out, it was suddenly revealed that the biggest country records were selling more than the big rock records.
John: And that was the dawn of country music as a major economic and cultural force.
Merlin: Number four, The Bodyguard, 27.4 million.
Merlin: And that's why Nick Lowe never has to work again.
John: Well, and also, like, what's interesting to me, and I learned this through being friends with the Posies.
Merlin: Oh, right, because they were on Austin Powers?
John: No, they were on Reality Bites.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Yeah, you told me this, yeah.
John: If you get one song on a soundtrack like that... So look at all the other songs on the Bodyguard soundtrack.
John: Right.
John: If you look at Bodyguard soundtrack, there are some people on there that just...
John: That just basically punched their ticket.
John: They got some song on there that nobody gives a shit about, but that thing sold 27 million copies and they get some small percentage of every one of those, which ends up being not small.
John: This is really interesting.
John: But to have access to real SoundScan, which is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do... If you and I had access to SoundScan, it would basically just be a podcast.
John: We would never... It would take a bunch of time.
John: You mean like the raw fire hose?
John: Yeah, because you can say to me...
John: Tell me, how many records did The James Gang sell?
Merlin: I could probably say how many copies of The Worst You Can Do Is Harm sold the week before Christmas in 2007.
Merlin: And you could go look that up.
John: You could say, how many copies did The Worst You Can Do Is Harm sell the week before Christmas in St.
John: Louis?
John: Oh, man.
John: And I could go look it up.
John: And so it's endlessly entertaining and it's beautiful.
John: And I have friends that have access to it because it costs $50,000 or something to have all that data.
Yeah.
John: Uh, the only, you know, only record labels and certain, you know, journalists, I mean, you have to pay for it.
John: Like, sure.
John: Like, like buying pro tools or whatever.
John: It's a, it's a, it's a thing that, um, is that something in Barsuk had?
John: Barsuk never had SoundScan, but like Merge does or Baker's Banquet has.
John: Sure.
John: So it's one of the great – it's one of the great gags.
Merlin: Oh, Baker's Banquet.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: And so – So you got your friend with the glasses.
Merlin: Let's move aside and you get to sit in his chair for a minute.
Merlin: That's right.
John: And my favorite thing to do is I'll be out in the world and I will – I'll be somewhere and I'll meet some musician –
John: And we'll shake hands and hang out and have a coffee and a drink.
John: Or somebody will be like, oh, yeah.
John: Can I borrow your computer from you?
John: Do you know David Garza?
John: And I'm like, yeah, I've met David.
John: How are you?
John: And we talk and we sit and have some coffee.
John: And then I excuse myself and go to the bathroom and I send a text to my man in Havana saying,
John: And I say, how many records did David Garza sell in 1997?
John: And then I get the data back, and then I can contextualize my relationship with that person.
John: And sometimes it's wonderful.
John: Oh, my God.
John: That's thrilling.
John: Because I'll be sitting with somebody, and they'll be throwing attitude at me.
John: because of how rock and roll they are.
John: And then I'll find out what their sound scan numbers are through my backdoor man.
John: And then I'm like, oh, you know, what's up, 18,000?
John: I don't say it to them.
John: But they can see it in your eyes.
John: Well, I don't take any shade off of them after I figure out, like, oh, your best-selling record ain't shit.
John: Fool.
John: Just because you've got skinny jeans on and you're wearing a Clash badge on your Levi's jacket doesn't mean you can pitch attitude at me because you sold 21,000 records.
Merlin: Just check your numbers.
John: And that doesn't, yeah, that doesn't, I don't give a shit about it.
Merlin: Good for you.
Merlin: Good for you, man.
Merlin: Not afraid to really get in there and mix it up.
John: Yeah, but the problem is you check somebody's numbers and they're like, oh, fuck, he sold 60,000 records and I got to shut up now.
Merlin: Spice Girls album, Spice, from 1996, 28 million.
John: That's impossible.
Merlin: See, I refuse to accept that.
Merlin: Adele, her album 21, ironically enough, 21.3 million copies.
Merlin: More than Abbey Road.
John: Right.
John: And Adele, I mean, she is a contemporary star of the moment and of the times.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And there are a lot more people now.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: There are more people.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: People born, people die.
Merlin: Jagged Little Pill, 24.8 million.
John: See, I believe that because I still hear that shit all the time.
Merlin: You didn't like that record?
John: It's not that I didn't like it.
John: It's that it's charm.
John: Yeah, it is that there was something about the way she chewed on her vowels that was like she was actually chewing on my bones.
John: Oh, Alanis.
John: Why you chew my bones?
John: Why you chewing my bones?
John: And it might have been that I was, you know, that was the era where Alanis and I are not that different in age, probably.
John: And she was precisely the age of the girl that was working behind the counter at the coffee shop that I was trying to chat up with.
John: And that girl was actually listening to that record.
John: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
John: You can pass on that one.
John: Then she was glaring at me because it was really ironic.
John: And I was just like, oh, this is, these are, these are the worst of times.
John: Little did I know.
Merlin: how much worse it was going to be nirvana nevermind 16.7 million see now that's impressive that's pretty good i wouldn't have known that what about pearl jams 10 not even up there right 16 million i don't see it on this page i do see the guns and roses 21.3
John: Appetite did 21-3.
John: See, that's impressive knowledge, and that explains why some of my friends who were formerly in Guns N' Roses don't have to work now.
Merlin: Yes, but...
Merlin: But just think about – see, here's what nobody understands.
Merlin: This is what – I never could get with the whole – well, I could kind of get with it.
Merlin: But the whole like Michael Jackson beat up thing about how he was in bad shape for money, like it's ramifications.
Merlin: Because if you go in and you like build up this lifestyle and you have a fucking giraffe and like you do all this stuff, like that's quite a nut.
Merlin: It's ramifications.
Merlin: It's ramifications.
Merlin: You get all that stuff.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's good, bad, or indifferent.
Merlin: All I'm saying is that just because you've never had as much money as Michael Jackson doesn't mean you can't have a little sympathy for what happens today.
Merlin: So if you had been planning out the last 20 or 30 years of your life based on how the last 15 years went, or better put, what if you were Nick Lowe and you were spending money as though it were 1999?
Hmm.
Merlin: Just assuming that, hey, this CD thing is going to just keep going up and up and up.
Merlin: I'm just saying it must be a pretty different world, not just for the guy from Galaxy 500, but for everybody.
Merlin: It must be so crazy today.
Merlin: I just can't even imagine what the graphs look like for some of this stuff.
John: I think Michael Jackson's problem was that he took out payday loans.
Merlin: Oh, he did like high-end payday loans.
John: Yeah, he was just – he knew that the money was going to come in.
John: And so he took out big loans from shady operators based on his future earnings.
Merlin: And then all of a sudden – There's a lot that he could borrow against.
Merlin: I mean he owned the Beatles.
Merlin: He owned the – well, sorry, the Macklin catalog, right?
John: Right, right.
John: Northern Songs or whatever.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But he got, you know, the problem with that is then you're on some ups and downs and you're paying 18% interest and, you know, I do not think that he was very wise.
John: Well, I think about this all the time in the sense that I'm lucky that I never made any money at all until I was 40.
John: Right, right, right.
John: Because by then all my patterns were established and
John: I always live basically like the cook on a wagon train.
John: I've got my one pan and a bag of dried beans and a hand coffee grinder.
Merlin: It's closer to the truth than I realized.
Merlin: You do.
Merlin: You drink moldy coffee.
Merlin: You eat large buckets of food.
John: I cook all my food in one pan.
John: I throw some pork fat in there and then I throw some beans in there.
Merlin: Go out there and ring the dinner bell.
John: Come on, get it, boys!
John: And, you know, and so now I now that's the thing.
John: I'm really ready for a big, huge pile of money to fall on me because I know I would never take out a payday loan.
John: I would never assume that I would ever make any more money after that.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: It would be really nice right now for, you know, somebody to ring my doorbell.
Merlin: Well, something other than a warning about a fire alarm.
John: Yeah.
John: Somebody rang my doorbell and I opened the door and there are two guys, two kind of big guys in those black suits where you feel like, yeah, somebody paid good money for these suits, but these guys are just so big that it's hard to get a suit to fit right.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And they're both wearing sunglasses and one of them has one of those clear...
John: earphone, curly Q earphones.
Merlin: Oh yeah, absolutely.
John: Yeah.
John: And they say, John Roderick.
John: And I go, yes.
Merlin: And they go like, can we scan your retina or get a thumbprint?
Merlin: They're going to need some proof.
John: We're going to need some proof.
Merlin: Does one of them have a briefcase that's handcuffed?
John: No briefcase because, because we're talking about it.
John: We're talking about a larger sum of money than can be contained in a briefcase.
John: No bearer bonds.
John: No bearer bonds.
John: And I go, yeah, I'm John Roderick.
John: And they go,
John: Uh, great.
John: There's somebody who would like to talk to you.
John: And then, and I look out in the front and there's like kind of, you know, a monculus of a man being pushed up in a wheelchair.
Merlin: No, there are three black suburbans, right?
John: And then the door, the door opens on one of them and a guy gets out.
John: He's a young guy.
John: He's wearing a teacher.
John: Maybe he's got a, uh, maybe he's got a hoodie.
Merlin: Oh, he could be in the app class.
John: App class.
John: Exactly.
John: He's wearing a hoodie, but he's also got a suit jacket on, but it's kind of, you know, like plaid or whatever.
John: And he's like, Oh my God, John Roderick.
John: Am I right?
John: He's like, right on.
John: And he ollies up to my front porch and I'm like, Hey man.
John: And he's like, Hey, what's up?
John: Shaka bra gives me some kind of complicated handshake.
Merlin: Yep.
John: And then he's like, listen, big fan of Roderick on the line.
John: Just wanted you to know tomorrow my company is going public and
John: And I flew up here just to say that for all the help you've given us, I just want to have you in on this initial public offering.
John: And I'm just going to give you 20 million shares.
Merlin: He already paid for them.
John: Oh, yeah, yeah.
John: He just had a mirror marked because he recognized the importance of Roderick on the line to his whole – I mean the thought technology is built up in him and enabled him to be – It's like a MacArthur Genius Grant but money.
John: Exactly.
John: And then I go, what, who, me?
John: And he's like, all I need you to do is sign a couple of pieces of paper.
John: And then a guy gets out with thick glasses who kind of looks like the guy –
John: in uh blade runner who is uh who designs eyeballs oh yeah sure and he comes out and he's got a bunch of like complicated i'm not signing any pieces of paper it's all digital right but like you put your fingerprints yeah but he's got like a digital ponsnez so yeah exactly and then he gives you one and it's a virtual reality contract you have to walk into a virtual office precisely maybe this is the product maybe the product is this is a company that makes virtual contract experiences
John: And the kid is standing there kind of proud and kind of smug and like rocking back and forth.
John: Am I right?
John: Am I right?
John: Look at this.
John: Hey, turn your head to the side.
John: Okay, now turn it sideways.
John: All right.
John: What do you see?
John: And I'm like, amazing.
John: This is incredible.
John: I don't deserve this.
John: And he's like, listen, this is the least I can do.
John: This is the least I can do to repay you.
John: And then the whole thing gets back – they all pile back into the Suburbans, which it turns out are hydrogen-powered.
John: And then off they go.
John: Yep.
John: And then the next day it's on the front page of all the newspapers.
John: Oh, I wouldn't want that part.
John: I'm like, fuck.
John: Well, no, not my thing.
Merlin: Oh, but it blew up.
Merlin: Digital contract store offices have changed the way that we do everything.
Merlin: It's literally disruptive.
John: Yeah.
John: That's right.
John: It's an incredibly disruptive product and shares.
John: It's a fire sale on these things.
John: They're worth $300 a piece.
John: The stock split on its first day, and I'm just sitting there like, what do I do now?
John: And I take my dinner bell down and my one pan.
Merlin: No, I don't think so.
Merlin: I don't think so.
John: I put them in my small bag.
John: And your bindle?
John: And I lock the door of the house, and then I'm just like, kung fu.
Merlin: Set it on fire and walk away.
John: I just start walking America's roads.
Merlin: Oh, I love that.
Merlin: I love that as the last act, though, is that you finally get the possum.
Merlin: You pack a bag, you walk away, you make sure your family's out.
Merlin: You literally set it on fire and walk away.
Merlin: See you, Gary.
Merlin: Take it easy, buddy.
John: Right on.
John: It's like a Norwegian funeral ship.
John: I just set the whole thing on fire.
Merlin: Fuck you, Gary.
Merlin: Would you say goodbye to Gary?
Merlin: You got one last chance to chat?
John: So I heard a very interesting conversation between Gary and his landlord dress, his landlord dricks yesterday.
John: This is the lady who's been there for a while, the lady you talked to?
John: Yeah, she was yelling at him.
John: She came out and she was like, Gary, Gary, wake up.
John: and he then i hear the van door slide open and she's like is my cat in there he's like i don't even know what do you and she's like i told you never to take my cat into your van and he's like i don't even know i don't think so and then you can hear this is not a big van it's a it's like a shorty van
John: And you can hear the two of them trying to figure out whether her cat is in his van.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: I do not want to search Gary's minivan.
John: And they cannot tell.
Merlin: Neither of them.
Merlin: Gary, it's not just that Gary's not copping to it.
Merlin: He's actually legitimately not sure if there's a cat in his van.
John: I think Gary knew, but he's playing dumb.
John: And then it turns out the cat is in the van.
John: And she yells at him for 10 minutes about the cat.
John: And then he starts to, after he wakes up a little bit, he starts to yell back at her.
John: And he says, at one point he says, well, I know one thing, and that is that I don't know.
John: And I was like, that seems like something I should write down.
Merlin: That was Socrates, I think.
John: Now I was awake, right?
John: This is what woke me up in the morning.
John: And then they started yelling at each other, and she was like, you don't yell at me, Gary.
John: You do not yell at me.
John: And he was like, I just feel like I do all the work around here.
John: Nobody ever gives me any credit.
John: And I'm trying to think of a single thing that Gary has ever done that I've ever seen.
John: But I didn't want to get involved.
John: I didn't want to open my window and stick my head out with my hair curlers and start waving my pan at them.
John: Gary, you never do anything around here.
John: You shut up over there.
John: And the latest news, of course, is the people next door to where Gary and Skeeter live, they have a rooster now.
John: And it's a young rooster.
John: He's just coming into his own.
John: And so his cock-a-doodle-doo is pretty fucked up.
John: It's an immature cock-a-doodle-doo.
John: It kind of sounds like a... It's kind of pubescent as roosters go.
John: Yeah, and it's just like, are you kidding me?
John: When does it end?
John: But on the plus side, the possums are out.
Merlin: Possums are out.
Merlin: Totally just not there.
Merlin: No noise, no traces, no nothing.
Merlin: So we trapped three possums.
John: And they went to live on a farm.
John: And then my mom, in her inimitable style, this is like the last days of my political campaign.
John: So I'm working all the time on the campaign.
John: I got no time to think about anything.
John: And my mom's like, listen, I can't abide this.
John: I cannot abide...
John: that possums are getting into your house.
John: And I think everybody thought that I was crazy or something until I trapped three possums.
John: And then it was like, Oh shit, he has possums living in his house.
John: And so my mom came out at five o'clock in the morning as she does.
John: And she strung a wire mesh around the, uh,
John: the base of my entire house.
Merlin: You talked about this on another program.
Merlin: Is this really true?
Merlin: She dug a trench and put down chicken wire?
John: Put down tight mesh.
Merlin: John, for people who might be new listeners to our program, can I ask roughly how old your mom is?
John: She's 81 years old.
John: She's out there, but she starts at five in the morning because it's cooler and she's up already, so why not get to work?
John: And so by noon every day, she'd be like, well, I'm done for the day.
John: And she did it on her own time.
John: But in the meantime, the house next door got torn down on the other side and all the rats that were living in that house went everywhere.
John: And so then just as we were getting the possums out, I now had rats.
John: in the ceiling.
John: And so then I had to trap the rats.
John: But I've now trapped the rats.
John: I've trapped the possums.
John: Everything is trapped.
John: And in the meantime, my mom hermetically sealed the foundation of the house.
John: And...
John: And then I lost the election, so now I have all the free time in the world.
John: Excuse me.
John: And now my house is, I think, impermeable.
John: That's a real roller coaster for you right now.
John: I just, you know, a lot of ups and downs.
John: And now I can feel autumn is coming.
John: But also a lot of smoke in the air right now from all the forest fires.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Oregon and Washington got all kinds of smoke going on.
John: Yep.
John: And my entire family is going to Paris without me next week.
Merlin: Did you find out by accident or did they tell you?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, it was the thing where actually all those suburbans pulled up out front and the guy jumped out and he was like, I'm taking your family to Paris.
John: Oh, shit.
John: I'm really busy right now.
John: Go.
John: Paris.
John: So they're all going to Paris.
John: And then my mom and sister are going to Russia.
John: And I am going to be all alone.
John: All alone.
John: Not just all alone, but like all alone in America.
Merlin: You need a project.
John: I feel like I do need a project.
Merlin: You do.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to be ego-assertive, but this, I mean, the obvious ones are there.
Merlin: You could work on your Shoegaze album.
Merlin: You could finish that fucking book.
Merlin: There's all kinds of stuff you could do.
Merlin: It doesn't have to be a house project.
Merlin: This could be a project of the mind.
Merlin: It could be a project of the soul and heart.
John: I could.
Merlin: But you need something that's going to keep you occupied where you might have something, you know, you can hold your hand when you're done.
John: Okay, well, now maybe we should put this to our listeners.
John: Okay.
John: Here are the choices.
John: Right.
John: Should I finish?
John: The Long Winter's record, which is a fully fledged rock record, which only needs lyrics.
John: Should I?
Merlin: Your Long Winter's record is done except for lyrics.
John: That's right.
John: Should I?
Merlin: That's the sound of my palm hitting my face.
Merlin: Okay, that's one.
John: That's one.
John: Should I make a record of super sad solo acoustic piano jams?
John: where I sing in a low register, sort of gravelly, not Tom Waits-y, but like sad, breathy, slow piano jams.
Merlin: You're going to make a Fiona Apple album?
John: Yeah, basically.
John: Should I make a bleeps and bloops record of loops and up-tempo electronica pop rock?
Merlin: EDM, John?
Merlin: Not EDM, but like... Like Electropop, Electroclash, something.
John: Something with bleeps and bloops.
John: Yeah, something like that.
John: So those are the three musical options.
John: Okay.
John: I could finish my book about my walk across Europe.
John: I could graduate from the University of Washington.
John: I could write a different book about my recent experiences.
John: Or I could set to work on developing a television show for the internet.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So that's like six.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Something like that.
Merlin: You've got long winners.
Merlin: You've got long winners.
Merlin: You've got bleeps and bloops.
Merlin: You've got low register piano.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You've got finish the book about the walk.
Merlin: You've got –
Merlin: graduate from college oh sorry graduate from uh university of washington yeah that's easy to do it wouldn't take much but it's you know there's gonna be some paper paperwork there's paperwork not as creative you could write a new book about your recent experiences yeah and what was the last one oh right right and write a tv show for the internet develop a television show for the internet are these all roughly the kind of things that maybe if you not necessarily finish could you make a pretty good cut in most of those over two or three weeks
John: I think if I devoted myself entirely to any one of those things for two weeks where it was just like, this is all you're doing for two weeks, I'm far enough along on all of those.
John: If I spent nothing but two weeks deciding to graduate from college, I would graduate.
John: If I spent nothing but two weeks writing lyrics to the Long Winters record, I feel like...
John: I would need something additional to that, like not just this is all you're doing for two weeks, but there are real consequences.
John: I don't think that there are any consequences to not finishing because I've already endured all of those.
John: But if there were some real – if finishing in two weeks, finishing that record produced some kind of immediate result like –
John: That day you will be ushered into a new room in your own house that you didn't know was there.
John: Something where... It's not just two weeks from now I'm going to have these songs two weeks more worked on.
John: It's that two weeks from now, if this record is done, then X...
John: Like, yeah, at two weeks, I don't think that would be enough to finish the book about the walk across Europe, but it wouldn't hurt it.
Merlin: Which, off the top of your head, don't overthink it, which one do you feel the most energy or enthusiasm about?
John: the tv must be interesting because that's totally new yeah but the tv is the tv tv program to really do it would it's incredibly collaborative it would require a team of you'd have to really work with other people yeah five to ten people and yeah and that is less of a challenge for me than it would have been a long time ago it's just the challenge is finding those five to ten people and having them want to do it also would you be doing the music at your home
Merlin: Or would you have to go to a studio?
John: I think that the songwriting part I could do in my home.
John: The recording it.
John: But that's the thing.
John: I don't think I could finish the album in two weeks, but I could finish the songs.
John: And finishing the songs...
John: It would require a little bit of Brian Eno-izing myself.
John: You know, I would have to adopt some oblique strategies.
John: Get a little stack of cards.
John: I would have to say good enough multiple times.
John: I would have to do a thing a week style thing or a thing a day style thing, which is very hard for me to say good enough enough.
Merlin: Yeah, some of these could be a little bit ambitious for that amount of time.
John: Yep.
John: Well, I mean, the thing is, I'm not limited to two weeks.
John: I could extend that deadline to a month.
John: But at a month...
John: It seems far enough away that.
Merlin: What if you shot to record whatever material you needed to produce the equivalent of an EP of low register piano songs?
John: Okay.
Merlin: So I'm just saying, like you could record enough for an album, then choose the whatever, three to five best.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: EP.
Merlin: Well, I don't know what you call it, but the idea would be, what if your goal was to have, however much you write and record, have three to five finished things that you really like a lot?
Merlin: That seems pretty doable, and you could do it right there with the piano.
John: That seems doable.
John: That seems eminently doable.
Merlin: I don't want to scotch the democratic process.
Merlin: I think the listener should be able to say what they think.
Merlin: But the ambition, you could use a win right now.
Merlin: You could use a win.
Merlin: That's a good way of putting it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Give yourself a win.
John: Put some points on the sports board.
John: Put points up on the sports board by scoring some goals.
John: People like it when you play piano, John.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: I mean, I'm a terrible piano player.
Merlin: You're not that good of a guitar player.
John: Well, that's true, too.
Merlin: But, you know, new songs, kind of exciting.
Merlin: It's a new thing.
Merlin: See, now that feels doable.
Merlin: You know how to do all those things.
Merlin: I'm just tossing it out.
John: I did a show the other day with the Watkins family.
Merlin: Yeah, I saw a photo of you at them.
Merlin: Was that Photoshop?
Merlin: Was that really you with Fiona Apple in a photograph?
John: Yeah, it was me and Fiona Apple.
John: And the Watkins kids, Sarah and Sean Watkins, who were two-thirds of Nickel Creek.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: Were they the bluegrassy country-ish?
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Oh, I enjoy them, John.
John: Yes, they're very, very good.
Merlin: They're awfully good.
John: I've heard them on NPR, and they're good.
John: They're extremely good, and they're also extremely nice.
John: But they are extremely good in a way that is... It's one of those things where you're sitting in a room and you're like, these guys are my friends and they are musicians and I am a musician.
John: They have put out records and I have put out records and we are of the same class.
John: And then Sarah pulls out her violin and Sean picks up his guitar, an instrument that I also play.
John: And they say, well, we should learn a tune for tonight's show.
John: Why don't we do that song by the Carter family?
John: Somebody left my chicken up in the holla or whatever.
John: Two, three, four.
John: That's right.
John: Two, three, four.
John: And then he goes.
John: And and I'm like, holy shit.
John: They're really good musicians.
John: And then they'll get to the chorus and they'll do a thing and they'll stop.
John: And Sean will say, I think instead of C sharp there, you want to go all the way to the E. And she's like, really?
John: And then they don't even really count it off.
John: They just launch back into it.
John: And she goes to the E.
John: And then they both get a really satisfied look on their face.
John: And then he says, yeah, because then that makes it a seven.
John: And then she says, let's do it again.
John: And they do it again, and she puts a little frill in there.
John: And then they do it again, and then he catches the frill the next time.
John: They don't say anything.
John: I could watch that all day.
John: And I'm sitting in a chair like...
John: I can play a C chord in three different places.
John: So then a gal walks in and she's in a really nice dress.
John: She's a beautiful woman.
John: Incidentally, they're all very handsome.
John: They're all very lovely looking people also.
John: She walks in and she's
John: She looks like somebody out of their friend.
John: Looks like a woman out of a TV reenactment of the early days of the Ryman Auditorium.
John: Like a contemporary TV show of like the 50s in Nashville.
John: So she's...
John: She's perfectly put together, but also she looks modern, just modern enough that you know that you're watching a reenactment.
John: And I think to myself, oh, here is a friend or she's going to emcee the show or maybe she's a vocalist.
John: But she pulls out a violin and they start, the three of them playing, and you realize that this woman is an incredibly good violinist also.
John: And they are now playing harmony with one another on the violin, two fiddles.
John: And doing the same business of like they'll stop and one of them will say, well, why don't we just do the, why don't we do the, oh, goddamn, oh, goddamn, got caught with your pants down.
John: And I'm like, what the fuck is that that they're talking about now?
John: And then they all go, which apparently is, oh, goddamn, got caught with your pants down.
John: And I realized that I am not a musician at all.
John: Right.
John: That they are musicians at a level where they, they have, they are speaking a common language that they understand and are able to, um, they're able to speak fluently.
John: And by comparison, um,
John: like my knowledge of my instrument and my knowledge of music as a language is, is very much like Spanish one-on-one.
John: And I'm so pleased that whatever course my life has taken has delivered me into this backstage room to be a part, to be just someone sitting in a chair while this goes on around me.
John: And knowing that this is their life, they do this every night and they have this, this, uh, this facility, uh,
John: And so, yeah, right.
John: If I think too much about my piano, my slow, sad piano EP and realize that there is an aspect of it which will just be a primer of
John: on how badly John understands the piano, right?
John: Yeah, that could be the title of it.
John: But I cannot be inhibited by that.
John: No.
John: I have to just say this is a document of my particular orbit around the sun.
John: Which is not comparable to anyone else's.
John: And in my multiple orbits around the sun, this is what I've come up with.
John: Here's how I figured out how to, you know, I found this box that has these white and black levers.
John: And even though there were people and books around that could explain how it works to me, I ignored them.
John: And now I've, this is what I came up with.
John: Um, so that's the, that, that has to be my approach, but like the experience of watching other musicians.
John: Oh, and so then I get on stage with them that night and play some songs and their band is those two and then Fiona Apple and then the drummer from Lone Justice.
John: What?
John: And the bass player from Collective Soul or, uh, Collective Soul.
John: Is that what it was?
John: I used to love Lone Justice.
John: Me too.
John: And David Garza, who I referred to earlier in this conversation, playing the piano and the guitar.
John: And it's like their entire band is just awesome musicians who are like...
John: Or maybe it was Soul Coughing.
John: I think maybe the bass player was from Soul Coughing.
John: Wow.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It was the bass player of Soul Coughing, not Collective Soul.
John: Tight group.
John: Really tight group of really, really, really dynamite players who all were dynamite and playing music that just effortlessly tumbles down like a waterfall.
Yeah.
John: It made me really glad, actually, because for whatever reason, I was invited in.
John: And it feels much more like where I belong, even recognizing my limitations.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, just to state what seems obvious to me, and I don't necessarily mean this as consolation, but I mean, you come at it from a different point of view.
Merlin: In my mind, you know, I don't know, you're not being too hard on yourself, but you're being a little hard on yourself.
Merlin: It strikes me you come at it more as a singer-songwriter.
Merlin: Like you come at it as somebody who you have learned guitar and piano in order to write and perform songs, which is different.
Merlin: It's different than coming up and, you know, spending years in music theory or a conservatory or something like that.
Merlin: It's a different approach.
Merlin: And I mean, and to state the super obvious, like one of your most beloved songs is...
Merlin: One of the simplest songs, like next to Roadrunner or Louie Louie, your most acclaimed song in some ways is the most basic three chord song ever written.
Merlin: But you imbued it with so much heart that people can hear a three chord song in the 2000s and cry.
Merlin: Which I think is going faster miles an hour.
Merlin: Yeah, that's what you should do.
Merlin: You should do a bunch of Jonathan Richman covers.
Merlin: With the radio on.
Merlin: Quite a little chewing gum wrapper.
Merlin: No, but I mean, right?
Merlin: I mean, like a little kid could play Commander Thinks Aloud and make people cry.
Merlin: And I think there's nothing.
Merlin: I mean, it's not Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, but it's not supposed to be.
Merlin: But anyway, you meant that that anecdote was mostly a positive.
Merlin: I thought you were going a different direction.
Merlin: That was a positive thing.
Merlin: You like being around those people, even though you maybe didn't feel quite up to muster in terms of like the chemistry they've got.
Merlin: But I'm looking here at Dave David Garza's page on the Wikipedia, and he works with Nickel Creek, Grant Lee Phillips, Fiona Apple.
Merlin: He's in the Largo crowd, it sounds like.
Merlin: It's all very Largo, for sure.
Merlin: Boy, that John Bryan, man.
Merlin: He just plays on whatever.
Merlin: He can just start playing anything.
John: And that's the thing about this entire group.
John: They're all that style of musician.
John: And I've spent plenty of years around people that put any instrument in their hand and they go, huh, how does this work?
John: And the first thing they start doing is tuning it.
John: Which right away, if you hand somebody an instrument that they've never seen before and the first thing they start doing is tuning it, you know that you're in trouble.
Merlin: This is called a Chapman stick.
John: I think it's a little flat.
John: And then they just start figuring it out and the music just pours out of it and you're like, oh, right.
John: It's not that you don't know how to play it.
John: It is just that...
John: but like a kind of skill you think of as coming from um jazz musicians improvisational jazz musicians but applied to you know a rock vernacular well or that the the nashville door into rock and roll is such a different door you come through the nashville door
John: And you have all this knowledge that applies or that you learned initially in the really, really tightly fenced off world of Nashville songs.
Yeah.
John: Where there are no surprises or mountain songs, you know, hillbilly music.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, it's almost like blues where there's a pretty prescribed form.
Merlin: And even when there's like a fruity chord, you can pretty much guess what the fruity chord is going to be.
John: You know what it's going to be.
John: And all you have to do is hear it once and you're going to catch it the second time around.
John: You know, every song, a lot of the hill songs, they do have one surprise in them.
Mm-hmm.
John: But all you have to do is learn the surprise, and the rest of it is just a matrix.
John: But then you come out of that room, or you come from that world and you walk through the door into rock and roll, you still bring all that knowledge with you, and rock and roll isn't that different.
John: Maybe the songs have two surprises.
John: But...
John: you know, building it the, the other way from, from the direction I came, which is like, learn all the surprises or don't learn, learn nothing.
John: First of all, that was my first rule, but write your own surprises and see if you can make surprises that fool everybody.
John: And, you know, and I have, I've, I've had a lot of success making surprises that fooled really good musicians.
John: Um, but what I don't have is all that connective tissue knowledge that,
John: You know, I mean, if somebody played something for me, it's all it all feels like a surprise to me.
John: It's just like, wow.
John: I mean, like, you know, all that stuff that Jonathan Colton knows about how chords fit together.
John: It all seems like magic to me.
John: Just like.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, and how he can combine in a way that is not showy, but the way he combines what's happening with the music, what seems like fairly simple music, and then combining that with what seems like fairly simple harmonies, but being able to bridge these little sections together.
Merlin: Paul and Storm are really good at that, too.
Merlin: I mean, they have so much vocabulary that they can pull out when they're performing with the combination of musicality and the singing.
Merlin: Watching that happen in front of you is just stirring.
John: And it comes from learning 10,000 covers, I think, in Paul and Storm's case.
John: Jonathan, the thing that people forget about Jonathan Colton is that he majored in music at Yale.
John: So he learned it's like majoring in French at Yale.
John: You had better be able to speak French.
Merlin: you find all those little wormholes between between keys and styles and things like that without having to do the math in your head you just kind of say oh there's this here and there's this there and you know like you said there's one twist or one surprise in in most rock songs but he finds a way to like and and with the lyrics too with with the the lyrics and uh i don't know he's saying the guy's a total package yeah that's the thing you can't that's the thing you can't uh you can't teach can't teach that lyrics thing yeah would it kill you to be civil
Merlin: I sing his songs to myself all the time.
Merlin: I'm just always singing a Jonathan Colton song.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: The thing is, his songs, Like They May Be Giants... Oh, why did I even say this?
Merlin: Here you go.
Merlin: Well, because I'm just going to say three syllables.
Merlin: Dr. Worm.
Merlin: Is Dr. Worm...
Merlin: the greatest song of all time.
Merlin: It's not even the greatest They Might Be Giants song of all time, but once I hear Dr. Worm, I will be singing it all the time for three grown-up days.
Merlin: He's not a real doctor, but he is a real worm.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: He thinks he's getting better on the drums, but he can handle criticism.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's very annoying.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I wish those guys would share a little bit of what they have with me.
John: I don't know how they would go about doing that.
Merlin: Well, Ian, what you just described, though, of, you know, I mean, we're both fans of things like the rock documentaries and behind the music, and, like, I could just watch that stuff all day long.
Merlin: But in that case, that's a retrospective, super interesting retrospective.
Merlin: But in the case of what you're describing, like, watching that happening in real time in a room is,
Merlin: is it really it's an overused word but it's a little bit magical it feels like there's something alchemical happening that nobody in the room can really exactly identify but when you watch it you're like what did you just do how did how did all of that just come together and then you did two more things that came together and you didn't have to talk about it it's just it's it's so amazing it's you know anybody who's great at their job working with other people who are great at their job like i could watch that stuff all day long
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, that's what it boils down to.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But this sounds like inspiring to you in the sense that this is me.
Merlin: You maybe want to do more of this music stuff.
Merlin: Well, it is my.
John: It is the world that I have struggled.
John: Within.
John: For a long time and running for office.
John: absolutely reminded me that whatever my struggles were in the
John: in figuring out how to solve my music problems.
John: Um, those struggles from within, from within a political campaign, those struggles suddenly seemed like the funnest, most awesome problems to have.
John: Like, uh, what, what was your problem?
John: It was hard to write lyrics.
Um,
John: Oh, well, why don't you think about that on your way to this meeting in a union hall where people are going to be visibly not interested in your ideas?
John: And then let's talk about how hard it is to...
John: to finish lyrics that at least your fans are waiting for with bated breath.
Merlin: There's something thrilling and life-affirming about having challenges, problems, or...
Merlin: however you want to phrase it, to have problems that you can understand and results that can matter.
Merlin: I think what drives us crazy is to feel like we don't have power over the kind of work that we're doing and to feel like even if it went flawlessly, it still wouldn't matter.
Merlin: And like as much as it seems, maybe it seems silly to be like a guy who writes lyrics for rock songs, but it's a problem you really can understand.
Merlin: And it's a result that really can matter.
Merlin: And it really is just up to you to do it, which is a very, very different kettle of fish than what you've had since April or whatever.
John: And in particular, not taking for granted the fact that there are people who genuinely want...
John: genuinely want what I what I'm trying to make and they're not yeah I don't have to convince them they are they're waiting already for this thing and it is hard to do but that difficulty the payoff is not
John: It's no small thing to finish a record and know that Matt Howie wants to hear it.
John: And he's not just, he's not pretending that he wants to hear it.
John: He, you know, he's been waiting for a long time.
John: And a lot of people have.
John: But, you know, that record still has to be good.
John: I'm not just going to make some shitty record just to make those dorks happy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're above that.
John: Right?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: No, that's a smart way to look at it.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Fuck you guys.
John: Listen.
John: Yeah?
John: Wait a little longer.
John: How's that feel?
John: How's that feel?
John: It takes a long time.
John: I got to think about it.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: You got two weeks.
John: Go.
Go.
John: I want to see.