Ep. 223: "Sequester John!"
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John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Oh, hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: You sound really enthused.
John: Not so enthused?
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: This is a highlight of my week.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, I know.
Merlin: It's just, you know, you know how it is.
Merlin: Yeah, sometimes a week.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Sometimes a 16 months.
John: Right?
John: Doesn't it just unfold like one of those... Like an origami life.
John: Yeah, like an advent calendar where every door is just a fuck you.
Merlin: It's a different kind of animal poop.
Merlin: Happy holidays.
Merlin: Can we open up the seventh?
John: That's Paul Williams with a big middle finger.
John: Boing.
John: Yeah, so.
Merlin: You sound good.
John: How about that election, huh?
Merlin: Ding, ding, ding, ding.
Merlin: God.
John: Things are fine over here.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: It's been raining a lot.
Merlin: I'm also on call this week for jury duty in a superior court case.
John: Oh, no.
John: Why does that happen to you?
Merlin: I haven't been called for jury duty in 24 years.
Merlin: I am jury crack.
Merlin: I never don't get called.
Merlin: I don't understand it.
Merlin: I mean, no, I'm not good at calculating time and stuff.
Merlin: But, like, it feels like as soon as I'm eligible, it comes up.
Merlin: And I usually get called.
Merlin: I'd say about the last one, how I dodged a bullet on the last one.
Merlin: Yeah, I think so.
Merlin: But remind me.
Merlin: Oh, it's quick.
Merlin: I mean, basically, it was really weird because I'd made it through to, like, Thursday.
Merlin: And if you make it past Wednesday, it's usually like, ah, they're good.
Merlin: They're not going to need me.
Merlin: And then I called the robot and said, you're a dirty grope.
Merlin: will appear at Superior Court 1 p.m.
Merlin: Thursday.
Merlin: And it's like, what?
Merlin: Who gets called at 1 p.m.
Merlin: on a Thursday?
John: Why does your robocall sound like James Urbaniak?
Merlin: I like that guy.
Merlin: I met him.
John: Yeah, you did meet him.
Merlin: I think somebody took our photo together.
John: Yeah, you met him in a hotel lobby.
Merlin: I met him in a hotel lobby.
Merlin: The hotel didn't have televisions.
Merlin: There were no televisions.
Merlin: Oh my God, I was so fucking mad about that.
Merlin: I took a photo and sent it to my daughter.
Merlin: I was like, this is where the TV would be if this was a normal hotel room.
Merlin: It was like a Gitmo cell.
Merlin: You had a nice one.
Merlin: They put you up in the Rain Man suite, but I was down with the proles.
John: Yeah, we had a nice one.
John: No TV in my room either.
John: Instead, there was a soap carving kit and five curated vinyl albums.
Merlin: Pictures of birdhouses.
Merlin: Mine had a bed, which is an okay bed, in the middle of this room.
Merlin: It was a small room, but it was really funny.
Merlin: It was like they were worried I was going to harm myself.
Merlin: There were two little tables and two little lamps and a closet.
Merlin: No, no, I'm sorry.
Merlin: There wasn't a closet.
Merlin: There was a shelf.
Uh-huh.
Merlin: it was like it was like some kind of like i don't know it's what i imagine like if you went to like the nice juvenile detention unit you remember that was the hotel i still kicked myself
John: I opened the door and the room had been cleaned and was in perfect order except there was a walkie-talkie lying in the – Oh, that's right.
John: And I was like, it's the beginning of an adventure.
John: It's a call to adventure.
John: There's no question about it.
John: Yeah.
John: But I picked it up and looked at it and turned it on.
John: Nothing on that channel and I took it down to the front desk.
Merlin: I think I told the story, but basically we showed up, and the very short version is that a bailiff, which basically it's like a Parks Department guy.
Merlin: He walks in, a guy in a uniform, and goes, all right, this will now serve as the jury assembly room.
Merlin: It's like, what?
Merlin: It was like 2.30.
Merlin: There was like 150 to 250 people in this room, and I was like, oh my God.
Merlin: There's the room you go and sit in while you wait to get called, and then you go usually to a court.
Merlin: room to be, you know, voirdeered or whatever, all the stuff they do.
Merlin: In this case, the entire room is like, this will now serve as the jury assembly room for group, you know, 207 or whatever.
Merlin: And a judge came in and said, basically, you know, the bad news is we're not going to need any of you today or whatever.
Merlin: The good news is like, this is a multi-month case.
Merlin: And it's like, I am so torn because I really believe in doing my duty for that.
Merlin: It's like, you know, if you want me for a week, I can grossly inconvenience my family.
Merlin: I can basically not make money for a week.
Merlin: you know that's okay that's that's part of what you got to do but that it puts so much pressure on my wife you know i take care of my daughter in the afternoon that's my job and like that's the way the life is structured i know that's fancy but that's the dad i need to be and holidays coming up and everything and it's just like i can't imagine spending election day sitting in a superior court jury room
John: I do not find that that is fancy, though.
John: You don't need to apologize for it being fancy.
John: It's just it's you.
John: It's your alternative lifestyle.
Merlin: Well, have you ever gone to jury duty and tried to make the case that you shouldn't be on?
John: Well, let me let me just say you're saying you just don't get called.
John: Merlin, I am the one probably the one person in the maybe I'm not the one person in the world, but I am in the very small minority of people that waits for.
John: like on bated breath to be called for jury duty.
John: It happened strange one time in my life when I was 23 years old and I was sitting in the jury selection room and everyone else
John: is just looking like somebody just handed them a garbage bag full of water without a twist tie.
John: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: And I am sitting in that chair literally bouncing on my hands.
John: Put me in, Coach.
John: I'm ready to play.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I'm going to be on jury.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I hope it's a murder case.
John: I hope it lasts for six months.
John: Because not only was I thrilled to be part of the democratic process or the jury of your peers.
John: You also get $13 a day.
John: $13 a day.
John: And being on a jury for six months would have solved so many of my life problems.
Merlin: Oh, it would give you so much focus.
Merlin: You'd have to have clothes ready.
Merlin: You'd have to think about where you need to be in the morning.
John: Well, maybe they'd put me up in a hotel because they had to sequester us.
John: Oh, sequester John.
John: Right, because somebody, like some mafia thing or whatever, like a hitman, and that would have solved the problem of not having a place to live at that point.
John: Yes, yes.
John: And any time, you know, any time like a girl was like, why haven't I seen you?
John: I'd be like, sorry, I'm in jury duty.
John: I can't talk about it.
John: Yeah, exactly right.
John: I'd been out of every problem.
John: It would have just solved everything.
John: And so I'm bouncing up and down on the chair and then, and you know, I'm watching the attorneys try and vet people and I'm like, oh man, I've got a great answer for that question.
John: Oh, come on, come on, come on.
John: Ask me, ask me, ask me, ask me.
John: Like I, I wanted to raise my hand.
John: When they were asking other, you know, like, have you ever the Hunger Games?
Merlin: You're ready to serve yourself up as tribute.
Merlin: Let me go.
Merlin: Let all these people go home.
Merlin: I'm happy to do it.
John: I'll go on behalf of that little child.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: And then they were like, OK, we got our jury.
John: It's all good, prim.
John: I'll go.
Merlin: I was so defeated.
Merlin: I was like, that's it.
Merlin: Do you remember why?
Merlin: Was it just that they didn't need your body?
Merlin: They never got.
Merlin: They never got to you.
John: It never got to me.
John: They just made a jury.
John: And I was like, well, you guys got to need another jury, right?
John: Like, we're all here.
John: Why don't you just make a jury out of us for the next thing?
John: Oh, that's a good idea.
John: And they was just like, go home.
John: And so then for a long time, I waited for the envelope to come.
John: Like, got to get it again, right?
John: It's like this amazing lottery.
Merlin: It's not even like the draft.
Merlin: It's one thing to say, gosh, I hope I'm 1A and I hope I get drafted.
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: You can always just go join.
Merlin: In this case, you can't just go show up at the courthouse and say, I'm ready to serve.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I would have done it a hundred times.
John: It's like giving blood.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And what's crazy is I'm a four out of four voter.
John: They know where my address is.
John: I couldn't be more of a citizen.
Yeah.
John: And yet somehow my bell never gets wrong.
John: That's a shame, John.
John: Yeah.
John: And they're calling you every third day.
John: And it just, it feels like.
John: It just feels a little bit like an injustice.
John: Can you imagine me on a jury?
Merlin: I mean, I actually I really I can.
Merlin: It calls to mind so many things.
Merlin: I see you.
Merlin: I see you very quickly by unanimous acclaim being made the form and maybe even before they're done seeing people.
Merlin: They just go clearly this.
Merlin: This is the anchorman.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: I mean, what I don't understand in when I see.
John: like court cases on TV, which you do a lot.
John: It's very popular, uh, thing to have on TV, which in its own way is like weird that a major, uh,
John: a major feature of what we consider entertaining television is just like watching, watching a court case.
John: Um, it is, it is really kind of a strange idea.
John: Like, right.
John: 11% of all television shows are just watching the, the antics of people in a courtroom.
John: And I mean, I guess it makes sense, right?
John: It's like, it's, it's an intellectual.
John: It's kind of a genre.
John: It's totally a genre.
John: But what I don't understand watching a jury on TV is they just sit there impassively.
John: Like,
John: How boring or, or, I mean, are you, are you severely restricted?
John: Every morning do they say, now remember, don't raise your hand.
John: Don't say, but, but, but.
John: Right.
John: And don't, don't audibly roll your eyes.
John: Right.
John: Don't like try and do a better job than the lawyers.
John: Don't say, please.
John: Like, how do you not do those things?
John: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I had a jury buddy last time I was on for a four day trial and I had a buddy and we would just give each other the look because, you know, of course, well, you can't get into this.
Merlin: I don't, I don't, I don't want to cause trouble for myself, but there's all kinds of things you're not supposed to do that everybody does.
Merlin: Because this is, in that case, whatever, 2014.
Merlin: I mean, you got a phone and stuff, you know?
Merlin: Don't do any of your own research.
Merlin: And it's like, right.
Merlin: Give me a break.
Merlin: The first thing you do is Google the guy, right?
Merlin: Google map of where the accident happened.
Merlin: Like the whole nine.
Merlin: Like, I don't know.
Merlin: The visibility there is a little strange.
Merlin: I think that guy was going pretty fast.
Merlin: No, I wouldn't do that.
Merlin: But yeah, my buddy and me, we would give each other looks through the whole thing.
Merlin: But no, you get general admonitions about these kinds of things.
Merlin: And the thing is, there's a part of it that is really – there's several parts of it that are absolutely amazing.
Merlin: I mean the folks who are involved in this, the bailiffs and all of the court, there's like a guy who's like – or a gal who's like the manager of the courtroom.
Merlin: You've got the judge who's frequently a dingus.
Merlin: And then you've got the person who like manages the jury stuff and who is, I forget, what do you call it?
Merlin: The court, not the court reporter, but it's the person who like basically manages everything that's happening in a courtroom.
Merlin: And that person is amazing to watch as, as a, as a retired project manager.
Merlin: I can just say watching somebody like that operate is amazing.
Merlin: Cause are they in a uniform or are they an admin?
Merlin: No, no, it's, it's usually somebody in like, you know, kind of like a business casual kind of thing.
Merlin: And they're coordinating with all the lawyers.
Merlin: They're talking to the judge.
Merlin: They're dealing with the jury.
Merlin: They are your conduit for dealing.
Merlin: If anything comes up, like if, you know,
Merlin: That's who you talk to.
Merlin: You have to go to the bathroom.
John: What if you have to go to the bathroom?
Merlin: You got to wait.
Merlin: What?
John: Yeah.
John: If they're in the middle of something and you're like, ooh, ooh, ooh, you just have to sit there?
Merlin: No, you have no anything.
Merlin: They tell you.
Merlin: And the thing is they are very, at least the ones I've been on, they are very considerate about saying like, you know, we're going to try and make this as easy and comfortable as possible.
Merlin: But, you know, the process is the process.
Merlin: Sometimes there's delays.
Merlin: Some things get changed.
Merlin: You know, sometimes some days you're going to go home a little early.
Merlin: Some days you're going to stay a little bit late.
Merlin: And, you know, that's just this is just the nature of how this works.
Merlin: But it is, you know how it is.
Merlin: It's always amazing to watch anybody who's good at their job and somebody who does the same thing over and over every day and clearly has been through the ringer of all different kinds of experiences.
Merlin: It's amazing to watch somebody like that.
John: Well, that's why I love watching the live feed of your podcast.
John: Oh, thank you.
John: The video podcast.
Merlin: And they've the thing is they've heard it all is the other thing.
Merlin: So, you know, you go and you might have your protestations about this or that, but like, you know, the judge and the courtroom manager person are very good at going, like cutting straight to the issue of like, you know, so basically anything you come up with, like as an, it's one thing to say like, okay, like I have, I have chemo and here's my notarized statement from a doctor.
Merlin: It's nothing to go like, well, I have mixed feelings about the Civil War.
Merlin: And they're like, OK, so you're telling me you cannot make it on, you know, and they make you look like such an idiot.
Merlin: It's like, well, my daughter is at school.
Merlin: And it's like, really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Can you eat chips in the jury box?
Merlin: I'm not supposed to eat chips.
Merlin: You're not supposed to even pretend that you have a phone.
Merlin: I had a really good spot near a charger, so I could I could stay charged the whole time.
John: Wait a minute.
John: You can keep your phone in the jury.
Merlin: Yeah, but you're not supposed to use it at all.
Merlin: uh even to just sit and play solitaire you know it's it's helpful for me to when i'm listening to somebody talk to be also playing minesweeper oh for me yeah like walking like i would much prefer to be pacing while the whole thing is going they should have like a like a like a big panther cage you could walk around and i would process the information a lot better
Merlin: That probably wouldn't be distracting, 12 people just pacing while the court case is going on.
John: One of those things that they use at the Hague when they're keeping Milosevic in a bold proof pen.
John: Sure, you get like a Nuremberg pen.
Merlin: That's a good idea.
Merlin: I should bring that up when I go in tomorrow on election day for a superior court jury duty.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Well, you know, I emailed you.
Merlin: I included you in a BCC blast email last week to say to all of my podcast buddies.
Merlin: It's that time again.
Merlin: It's basically like my municipal period has come.
Merlin: It's time for me to go and see Aunt Flo at the courthouse like I always have to do.
Merlin: It's the jolliest time of the year.
Merlin: And so but then I, you know, I texted you and said, hey, you know, I called in on Friday and I was OK for today.
Merlin: But yeah, yeah, it'll be fine.
Merlin: It'll be fine.
Merlin: I mean, it's not that I don't want to do it.
Merlin: And I don't mean to be precious.
Merlin: I want to do it.
Merlin: I just don't want to do it for like months.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's very I mean, I don't want to be a dick about it, but like that is it's incredibly disruptive.
Merlin: So that is I live in the western part of town.
Merlin: It takes me like almost an hour to get in and almost an hour to get home.
Merlin: And then my wife, who has a big lady job, is going to have to like do all this extra heavy lifting during that time.
Merlin: And it's like I but I feel the selfishness in what I'm saying.
Merlin: But at the same time, it's like, ah, here's what I don't understand.
John: Right.
John: The only people that end up on jury duties are.
John: are old people and people that don't have anything else going on because everybody else tries to opt out.
Merlin: That's the stereotype.
Merlin: But in practice, that is not true at all.
John: Oh, very cool.
Merlin: Very cool.
Merlin: Well, and like I have a theory about this.
Merlin: John Syracuse thinks it's because people can tell that I'm impressionable, which is probably true also.
Merlin: But I mean, the thing is, I've gone in there and like the first time that I was on a case that went through to a jury verdict.
Merlin: It was like the longest day of my life.
Merlin: Because he got in, I got called for two different jury things, got pulled away.
Merlin: And then finally, by like lunchtime, we were seated for a trial that was that one day.
Merlin: But we were there until like almost 10 o'clock to the end of this.
Merlin: And it was one of the most Kafka-esque, frustrating days of my life.
Merlin: Did I ever tell you this story?
Merlin: Where basically, it was a pretty clear-cut, long story short, a guy who was a real dick, who was a high school student,
Merlin: went and picked a fight with a fellow student before school.
John: He picked a fight.
John: But they're in high school.
John: Are they over 18?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: They're both.
Merlin: They were high school students at a school in Tallahassee.
Merlin: And this one kid who was kind of a dick went and picked a fight with this other kid who'd been, I think, was basically just being bullied.
Merlin: And the kid bit off part of his ear.
Merlin: The bad kid?
Merlin: The kid the kid who had been attacked and So one kid started the fight the kid fought back Yeah, okay.
Merlin: So I mean it was that was facts and evidence.
Merlin: It was stipulated This is what's going on with the cannibalism in Florida, by the way There's so much to talk about with Florida, but here's what it came down to you're gonna hear a lot of stuff in here But here's what this comes down to this case comes down to this did this school
Merlin: correctly follow its established policy for teachers supervising students before school started.
Merlin: There's a lot of specificity in that.
Merlin: You're not here to decide whether ears are good or bad.
Merlin: You're not here to decide whether these teachers work hard.
Merlin: You have a single fact to determine.
Merlin: The single fact is this.
Merlin: Did the school and its teachers follow the policy of monitoring students
Merlin: And they hadn't.
Merlin: Because it happened on school grounds.
Merlin: On school grounds before school.
Merlin: And basically a teacher had not been standing in this one spot at the time they were supposed to be standing in this one spot.
Merlin: Okay, so boom, game over.
Merlin: Now you have to decide how much these people should get.
Merlin: And then you get to the judge.
Merlin: How much the parents of the bad kid should get for the missing ear?
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: How much the school system will have to pay the kid who got his ear bitten off because he had been improperly supervised.
Merlin: So then you get to the really fun part.
Merlin: The judge says, okay, now I realize you haven't gotten to have your little Caesar's pizza that arrived right before we called you back in.
Merlin: I know you haven't eaten in hours, but here's the thing.
Merlin: It's going to take 45 minutes.
Merlin: I'm going to read you the jury instructions, and I want you to listen very carefully.
Merlin: And the judge reads the jury instructions, which, of course, now have, you know, were negotiated by the counsel and by the judge.
John: It takes 45 minutes to read these?
Merlin: I want to say it took at least 20, but I think it was over half an hour.
Merlin: And they read you the jury instructions, and they say, now go back there and decide.
John: You get your little Caesar's pizza at that point?
Merlin: At that point, the bailiff had already taken the pizza away because they thought it was all done.
Merlin: So we didn't get to eat, which sounds like a trifling matter.
Merlin: But, you know, I'm either hypoglycemic or impatient, depending on who you ask.
Merlin: So everybody's a little loopy.
Merlin: It's getting to be past eight o'clock.
Merlin: And so, you know, we did we did the thing we'd seen on TV, which is we said, OK, OK, we're going to we're going to you know, we're going to do we're going to do.
Merlin: We're going to find, okay, yeah, that happened.
Merlin: But you know what you got to pay?
One dollar.
Merlin: One dollar.
Merlin: One dollar.
Merlin: One dollar.
Merlin: So we came back in.
Merlin: We came back in and we handed him this thing.
Merlin: Have you reached the right answer?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: We at the jury find in the case of pay one dollar.
Merlin: Counsel for the plaintiff, who looked like Bill Clinton, shoots up into the air, raises his hand, and said some kind of Harry Potter mumbo-jumbo about how he objected because, if memory serves, and I was very, very hungry at the time, I think he said something like he objected because the penalty did not accord with the facts and evidence per the jury instructions.
Merlin: And the judge goes, I think he took off his little round glasses off the end of his nose and goes...
Merlin: sustained jury jury i'm going to read you the jury instructions again and i want you to listen very carefully were we allowed were we allowed to ask questions about what we did wrong we were not
Merlin: We were allowed to basically see where the red marks on our paper were?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Did you remember to put the date on it?
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: We probably forgot that, or we didn't sign our legal name.
Merlin: That'll bounce you right back.
Merlin: It's not a long story.
Merlin: We had to go back, and no pizza.
John: What was it in the jury instructions that prohibited you from awarding $1?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I still don't know.
Merlin: I was hungry.
Merlin: I don't remember.
Merlin: We went back, we came up with some phony baloney number, and then we finally got to go to the parking garage and go home.
Merlin: $1,000?
Merlin: Honestly, you'd have to go look it up.
Merlin: $94?
Merlin: wow yeah so anyway that was that and um that's frustrating you really want to award somebody one dollar it's a shame that you can't go and volunteer because i think you'd be great at it you know and i mean i would go down every couple of months i wasn't addressing your your original question which is that oh isn't it just like retirees who are looking for somebody to to you know a place to you know somewhere where they could get up before in the morning put on a necktie and a nice dress and show up
John: Use their skills like that Robert De Niro movie where he went – it's a movie that you see on an airplane.
John: um where he went and got a job after he was retired i think his wife died oh right with with the girl from les mis and with the girl he was the intern he was the intern right he was the titular intern he would had been a vice president at a company that made uh grokets yeah in the very building that she had now started her uh fashion oh my gosh what are the chances and then every morning he got up and he put on his tie he was so elegant and then it turned out
John: He knew everything because he was a wise sage.
John: Yeah.
John: He was like basically driving Miss Daisy.
Merlin: But I think the attorneys for each side have something very particular in mind and who they're looking for.
Merlin: And honestly, they don't want somebody who's there to take up a chair.
Merlin: They might want somebody who's kind of frustrated with the system.
Merlin: Think about that.
Merlin: Or you want somebody who is going to see through to not have a preconception about a certain side.
Merlin: And maybe you want somebody who's a little cynical about the system.
Merlin: What about a middle-aged guy who's bouncing up and down in his chair going, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh?
Merlin: See, on the face of it, it feels like that should really work.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It feels like that would be just the thing that would say, look at this little fella.
Merlin: He really wants to be here.
John: I want to do a good job.
John: I will listen to the jury instructions.
John: I will really listen to them.
John: Yeah.
John: I will get every last comment in the jury instructions because that's the type of thing I like, too.
John: They give you a pad of paper.
John: That's nice.
John: You can write things down.
John: You can make notes.
John: But no chance.
John: There's no chance.
John: I can't just go down and, like, sit out front.
John: I should.
John: I should go down to the courthouse, sit out front with a sign, and say, like, I'm on strike against the court system.
John: Why have I never been charged?
John: Well, how does Taylor Swift get called but not you?
Merlin: Taylor Swift got called to a jury?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: She took selfies with everybody.
John: Well, this is the thing.
John: I mean, I don't...
Merlin: I mean, you're both you're both prominent rock musicians.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you can take selfies with other jurors, I would be good at that, too.
John: You love selfies.
John: You wish I would take more selfies.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: And you would have you'd have probably have a great outfit every day.
Merlin: You would look fantastic.
Merlin: People, they would be proud to have to be judged by you or to be juried by you.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: Thank you.
John: There'd be, you know, there'd be 11 people up there.
John: Good and true.
John: And and and, you know, I would look like amazing.
Merlin: It's too bad you can't just go and like – I wish it was a little bit more like a cafeteria where you could go and say like, you know, here's my budget for this.
Merlin: Like I would like something that's not too dramatic where I could be out in two to four days.
Merlin: Right.
John: They should impanel juries at the start of the week.
John: They should know all their cases.
John: And they should say, who wants to be on a one-day trial?
John: Right.
John: And everybody put their hands up, you know, and then it's like, who wants to be on a trial that potentially could go for months?
John: Yes.
John: And there would be plenty of people that were like, you know what, me, me, me, I want that.
John: So anyway, you are right here on the cusp of an historic day.
John: Yeah.
John: Tomorrow.
John: Yeah.
John: Which is going to be historic.
John: Oh, God.
John: And everything's happening.
John: It's all happening at once.
John: All the built-up stress of all these months.
John: Yeah.
John: And you're going to be sitting somewhere listening to opening remarks.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: We'll see.
Merlin: I'll find out today.
Merlin: I'll find out this afternoon.
Merlin: I've been reloading the website because sometimes they put up the notice a little bit early.
John: Oiga vault is what we say in a situation like this.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Mazel tov cocktail.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, and I want to wish you good speed.
Merlin: Thank you, man.
Merlin: You sound really good today.
Merlin: What's going on?
Merlin: Did you ever make it to the pharmacy?
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: I did.
John: I'm re-upped on my pharmaceuticals.
Merlin: Oh, this is great news.
John: Yeah, but I spent the weekend down at a cabin on the water.
John: In the general vicinity of Olympia, Washington.
John: And I was with some friends.
John: I brought my daughter.
John: My lady friend was there.
John: Some other pals.
John: And we watched the bald eagles fly around.
John: Oh, that sounds really nice.
John: It was one of those things where you spend eight hours making dinner.
Merlin: Oh, that's a nice day.
Merlin: We had the big carnival at school this weekend, which was a lot of work.
Merlin: But it's nice to have something that distracts the mind a little bit with a family.
Merlin: That's a nice thing.
John: Yeah, it was good.
John: And now I'm back here in the town.
John: And this is a busy week for me, of course, because
John: several months ago or something someone wrote me an email which often happens and they said hey i've got a great idea why don't you curate a show for election night and i was like that sounds right up your alley yeah curate a show for election night that's a wonderful idea yeah it'll be great curate a show for election night okay great uh but then as time wore on
John: The show is a kind of – it's like a regular show that they do and they just have guest curators come in.
John: But the regular show has a real format.
John: Okay.
John: And so the format is not being altered at all for the election night.
John: And the format itself is like, oh, OK, I see what you're going for.
Merlin: Can I ask what the format is?
John: Well, the format is get three songwriters who then sit on stage with one another and interact with each other and like play on one another's tunes.
John: Which right away is a ton of work.
John: It's a lot more than it sounds like.
John: Yeah, you don't just get up and like, oh, I'll jam with you on your tune.
John: Like you have to learn one another's songs.
John: You have to rehearse them.
John: You have to care.
John: You have to be into it.
John: Like you can't just pick –
John: three random musicians, they all have to have respect for one another and be into playing on one another's songs.
Merlin: Yeah, play the right part, be supportive.
Merlin: It's not always going to be George Harrison and Eric Clapton.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And I've seen shows where everyone on stage totally respected one another as songwriters, but didn't actually want to jam or want to play on one another.
John: I did a tour one time with
John: like some very notable people who were trying to do this thing on tour.
John: And at a certain point, one of the songwriters was like, you know what?
John: This doesn't really, I feel like I'm not really into these other people's songs that much creatively.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: And it was like, Hmm, what about, you know, like, uh, well, I guess right.
John: That, that has, uh,
John: an internal integrity to it, you know, like in a way that the, because at first you're like, Hmm, that's not being a very good sport.
John: But then when you think about it, what the comment was effectively was, you know, music is sacred calling to me.
John: And so I feel like I'm doing everyone a disservice by playing half acidly on this stuff that I can't get my whole soul behind.
John: And so at the end of the day, you're like, Hmm,
John: That's taking it more seriously than I was taking it.
John: I wonder if I should opt out.
John: I mean, you know, and so and I wasn't like one of the players.
John: I was just I was just a I was actually the driver on that tour.
John: But anyway, so it's a bigger deal than just, yeah, throw three people up there and they're going to jam with each other.
John: And then here's the rest of the format.
John: There will also be a poet.
John: Who's on stage with the three musicians.
John: Are you with me?
John: Yes.
John: So far.
John: See where we're going.
John: And then two painters.
John: who are painting during the show.
John: Oh, no, really?
John: And so this all kind of like came out gradually, like, yeah, I'll do a show, and then kind of a month of silence went by, and it was like, all right, we should start talking about that show.
John: Okay, great, it's election night.
John: What I was thinking is I'd get up there with some friends, we'd play a song, then we'd talk about the election, we'd talk about the thing, we'd rappity-rap-rap about the night, and then maybe play another song.
John: And, uh, and the person who runs the thing came back and was like, yeah, um, except for that's not how we do the show.
John: Here's how we do the show.
John: And I was like, and with every iteration of like, here's how we do the show.
John: I was like, Oh, Hmm.
John: Yeah, all right.
John: Yeah, I get it.
John: You know, poet and some painters.
John: Yeah, I've been on stage with painters before.
Merlin: I don't know, man.
Merlin: This feels gimmicky.
Merlin: Well, sure, that's the thing.
Merlin: It's a gimmick.
Merlin: But, I mean, it's like on Project Run when they ask people to be inspired by a bridge or a theme park ride.
Merlin: And you're like, well, I'm not really sure that's how inspiration works.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Can you be inspired by this flashcard?
John: Go.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And so – and also like it's not – at that point, it's not me doing a show.
John: It's me filling a role or me.
John: So you're shoehorning me now.
John: This is your MC role.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And so as time went on, like I kind of got less and less interested in it.
John: I procured a couple of great musicians for it.
John: But, you know, but and they're going to be amazing.
John: But like my heart wasn't in it.
John: Like I could I can picture it going down and and I can emcee a thing like that because I am not someone who's like.
John: the spirit and soul of my emceeing duties precludes me from being a part of this like dog and pony show yeah like no i will emcee you're a gamer you'll get out there and emcee yeah sure the release of the new chevy camaro i would if that's a that's a show i'll get up on the microphone like you could hand me a microphone at at a at a like legal execution and i would be like thanks everybody for coming
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John: So today we're going to kill this person with lethal injection.
John: Uh, so is everybody comfortable?
John: All right, let's get started.
John: So, but then as time went on, it was like, now, wait a minute.
John: This is not just a thing.
John: This is not in the category of things that I kind of agreed to do and then just sort of don't want to do as, as it gets closer to the show, which is, which is a big category.
John: This is actually a night that I would rather be somewhere else because I've been getting a lot of invitations, like come to our election night party.
John: It's going to be insane.
John: And I'm like, I would like to do that rather.
John: I would rather be somewhere other than on stage with two painters and a poet.
John: And while three musicians like good-naturedly labor their way through a show.
John: Take a load off, Annie.
John: Or just like – so this is a song that I wrote a few years back and then everybody else is kind of chin on hand going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
John: And, you know, and the main person of the thing is standing in the back of the room and the room is half full because none of us have bothered to promote it.
John: Or maybe the room is one eighth full, which is going to be even better.
John: Because it's a night where other people also want to be doing something else.
Merlin: You're saying this is tomorrow night?
Merlin: Yeah, tomorrow night.
Merlin: The night of the 2016 presidential election.
Merlin: That's correct.
John: We're both in an awkward position here.
John: This is woof.
John: Yeah, we are.
John: And in fact, I sent an email this past weekend where I was like, look, we haven't really promoted this.
John: There aren't that many people coming.
John: Clearly, we haven't prepared at all.
John: So why don't we just postpone this?
John: And the person running it wrote me back very cheerfully.
John: It was like, ha, ha, ha.
John: I totally know where you're coming from, but we've never postponed a show.
John: Oh, no.
John: He said, we don't postpone these.
John: I was like, we don't postpone these.
John: Like, we don't put our elbows on the table.
John: We don't.
John: We don't take a crap on the table.
John: We do it.
John: We do it no matter what.
John: Right.
John: And I felt like, well, if that's the case, then you must have a contingency plan for when I don't do it.
John: Failure is not an option.
John: But I didn't do that, of course, because I try to be a good sport.
John: You're the emcee.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And so I was like, all right.
Merlin: Have you attended one of these?
Merlin: No.
John: Okay.
John: No, because over and they have been doing these for a long time, but this is not the kind of show I typically would go to unless someone specifically invited me and it met the following criteria.
John: I cared about the performers.
John: I didn't have anything else to do.
John: I happened to be in the neighborhood.
John: Right.
John: And someone took me by the hand.
John: And said, I'd never seen the likes of McNamara's band.
John: Why not come with them now?
John: Um, and none of those things had ever happened.
John: And so, and, and the thing is it takes place in an old church, I think.
John: And also it has always vaguely had a sort of churchy vibe in the sense that, you know, the Seattle music scene 10 years ago,
John: 10 to 12 years ago, there was a new sort of very evangelical element that came into the music scene.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: That was a thing where a lot of kids that had grown up with evangelical parents were in churches where rock and roll was not only permitted but encouraged.
John: Okay.
John: Like the worship band was a rock band rather than a non-rock band.
John: And so it was an element of, you know, it's like when the ministers started to have tattoos and started.
John: Do you remember, did you ever see the Long Winters on tour where Sean Nelson bought an extreme teen Bible?
John: And every, you know, between songs, he would just read excerpts from— I don't remember that, but I have heard about this is a kind of famous Bible.
John: Yeah, the Extreme Teen Bible, where all the Bible verses had been written, had been rewritten in terms, you know, in what they imagined were the language of extreme teens.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And we had one of these a long time ago, and it was one of our gimmicks.
John: Read it for one tour.
Merlin: I bet the Old Testament would be pretty interesting.
John: Really good.
Merlin: It's already pretty extreme in parts.
John: And, you know, Sean Nelson is a great read-alouder, and he did a little bit dramatic interp.
John: But anyway, so the extreme teen rock and roll thing started to come into the Seattle music scene kind of heavy.
John: It was just sort of there all of a sudden.
John: And those of us who had been in the music scene for a long time were like, what the who?
John: And Dave Bazan being one of the earliest and sort of most prominent people in this thing.
John: But it turned out that that segment of the scene, which was a large 20% probably of the music scene at a certain point, produced a lot of
John: Big rock bands like The Head and the Heart came out of that and Father John Misty and, you know, like a lot – and a lot of them lost their – as they became more, you know, basically let's just say drugs and sex or whatever.
John: They kind of – they transitioned.
John: But a lot of people didn't.
John: And so this venue and this experience over there with the painters and the poet, it always had a little bit of a vibe of being part of that scene.
John: And that scene's always been a little difficult to navigate because it's never overt.
John: Nobody says, nobody ever has said that I've seen from the stage anything remotely proselytizing.
John: It's just they're like, hey, everybody, thanks for coming to the show.
John: And then they play the show.
John: And there's all the kind of encoded language in the songs about lifting oneself up.
John: You get the dog whistles of faith.
John: You get all the dog whistles within the tunes, but all kind of in extreme teen language.
John: And so the people that are looking for it or the people that are there because the band is also in their church, they're all like nodding and going like, yes.
John: Yes.
John: Like this past year at the Puyallup Fair, which is the Washington State Fair, there was a there's a tent where they do the sort of community cultural events like the Thai dancers.
John: People that are practicing their own sort of culture of a particular community.
John: At one point during the day, it'll be Ethiopian drummers, and then it'll be so forth and so on.
John: And I went by the tent at one point, and there were these wonderful women doing this ballet, but modern.
John: They're doing modern ballet across the stage, and there's no one in the audience.
John: And so I think this is wonderful.
John: And obviously I'm with my daughter and she is intrigued.
John: And all the women are in kind of like different shades of pastel sort of flowing angelic costumes.
John: And they're doing this wonderful dancing.
John: And so we go over and we sit down in the chair and they're obviously like both really talented dancers and also really sincere about what they're doing.
John: And I was really drawn in and so was the little one.
John: And then at one point, one of the – because there would be a group dancing and then on either side of the stage, there would be the dancers in waiting.
John: And there was something about the way that they constructed their act so that these dancers would move kind of like a wave over in this direction.
John: And then they would pick up one of the dancers that was on the side.
John: she would join their little motion and they'd spin around and they'd wave around and then two of them would drop off the other side of the stage and then they'd spin around and then one of them would come on from, you know, it was like really a fluid motion.
John: It sounds like a lot of work.
John: It was great, you know, a lot of work.
John: And then at one point, one of the dancers on the other side, I noticed had one hand up in the air, palm out and was eyes closed, kind of,
John: Like head lifted onto the heavens.
John: Huh.
John: They're exalting a little bit.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and at first I didn't recognize what it was.
John: I thought maybe it was part of the dance.
John: And I was even more intrigued because I thought, oh, wait, are the dancers in waiting on the side of the stage also in the dance?
John: And I'm just not paying attention to them.
John: But in standing there watching the dance, they're also actually – They should be regarded as being on the proscenium.
John: Yeah, they are – the offstage is part of the stage because, you know, it's all exposed.
John: And I was like, what is going on?
John: And then I saw – and she was kind of like singing along with the music.
John: And then I was like, oh.
John: is that some exaltation?
John: Is that like some, um, and maybe at one point she put her hand over her heart.
John: And then I started to see a couple other of the dancers also behaving, uh, in, in this fashion.
John: And so I tuned into the music a little bit more and it was, because it was rock music.
John: It wasn't, they were dancing not to classical music, but to like a pretty rock and electric pop.
John: I tuned into the music and started to hear that dog whistling and
John: lyrics about I mean I can't duplicate the lyrics but definitely like stuff that was about probably like freedom eternity being together forever grace people guiding you not you know like the loaves into fishes which is a great lyric and then I realized oh my goodness this is a rocking
John: Modern ballet evangelical troupe who rather than do a kind of Mennonite costume got into super good.
John: I mean, they're, cause they're all women between the ages of 20 and 25 and they're all great dancers and all, you know, live in this.
John: And so I was like, what community is,
John: of evangelical Christians can produce this.
John: Like what was, what started, was it like in the church and then someone said, Hey,
John: Who wants to audition for the dance troupe?
John: Or was it, did it start as a dance troupe and then they all converted?
Merlin: Right, but there's that idea of using one's talents to serve the Lord.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Just which way did that, where did that come from?
John: Yeah, and how do you gather unto you, unto your flock, 25 great dancers?
John: It wasn't like there was one really good dancer and then a bunch of people kind of just winging it.
John: Yeah, it's not just regular people in the church that are like, hey, let's use dance.
John: It was, no, we all studied dance.
John: That's a very interesting project.
John: Because how do you get 25 really good dancers to do anything regardless of where they're coming from, let alone – I mean it's just like saying we're going to put together a dance troupe.
John: of people that you know like of the greatest chess players in the region who also are amazing dancers and I guess there are probably there are probably more Christian dancers than there are chess playing dancers or like top shelf chess playing dancers
Merlin: But it's hard to know because it's like it's a pie chart of a pie chart.
Merlin: It's like a subset of the pie.
Merlin: I mean, there's not that many of any of those things.
Merlin: But then when you get that down to number of people who have an evangelical bent and then the smaller number that are willing to combine those, you're getting a pretty thin slice of pie.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
John: And it's like it's not just dancers, right?
John: There were no there were no people up on stage who had majored in hip hop dance.
John: I mean, it's like classically trained dancers.
John: They could all go up on point.
John: They were all, they were all leapers, you know?
John: So, uh, so within the, within the Seattle music scene, there's a similar kind of thing.
John: Like the, the, the rock, the Christian rock overlap here is all very beardy.
John: It's all very banjo-y.
John: And it's all like, you know, tight pants and, uh, and what we formerly would have said were chain wallets, but they don't, you know, nobody wears a chain wallet anymore.
John: And, uh, and so it's a, it's this, you know, it's a scene within a scene, which is all to say, this is one more very small.
John: I mean, I'm, I'm not, I'm not kept out of that scene at all.
John: Some of the people in that scene are very good friends and musical, even musical collaborators.
John: But it's just another small thing that would have kept me from going to see this painter poet thing.
John: Because it's sort of like, I hear your dog whistle, but I'm not a dog.
John: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: The reason I keep turning it over in this particular way is you put it well with the first basic layer, which is there's going to be these three musicians that are interacting and playing each other's songs, which, as you described, is pretty complicated stuff.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But it doesn't stop there.
Merlin: Because then you've got this other, like, you know, what is it?
Merlin: The Musicians of Bremen or whatever.
Merlin: What's that called?
Merlin: Remember that?
Merlin: Where the animals stand on each other's shoulders?
John: Yeah, the Musicians of Bremen.
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
John: Oh, let's call it that.
Merlin: Something like that.
John: I think it's the Lippin's Honor Playhouse.
Merlin: Yeah, the Das Donkey music.
John: Yeah.
John: I was going to say Das Dachau donkey music, but that's a bad idea.
John: Das Dresden.
John: Dresden Dahlen.
John: Das Donkey Dahlen.
Merlin: But then you add in the poet.
Merlin: Are the painters supposed to be painting based on how they feel about what they're watching?
Merlin: Or are they illustrators of the scene?
Merlin: Because that's...
Merlin: Here's what I'm trying to get at, is that I'm sometimes intrigued and often very befuddled by the abstract idea of what other people will find entertaining.
Merlin: And it almost feels like a stoner chef.
Merlin: You're going to come up with these really crazy ideas that sound really good in your head.
Merlin: It might actually be kind of fun if you're super high.
Merlin: But for somebody who's not, you're not going to get a sitter to go to the stoner restaurant.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And sometimes I feel like there's this fairly abstract idea of what kind of...
Merlin: constitutes entertainment because reasons because like you have a certain way of thinking about things but like that sounds like a first draft of an event to me that does not sound like something i would return to a lot and maybe that's just because i'm not eclectic enough to appreciate uh the the beau arts all going together like that but that it feels very abstract so this so in my music career this has happened now several times like there's a there's that show in portland that i often do live wire um
John: which is sort of an old-timey radio show, but new-timey.
John: But they have Foley artists.
John: They have people doing skits.
Merlin: There's another show that sounds kind of like.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Like, radio, radio.
John: Here we come.
John: Here comes the horse.
John: What are you doing here?
Merlin: A lot of Garrison Keillor fans coming up to defend Prairie Home Companion to you.
Merlin: A show that you have never heard.
John: I got a lot of like, how dare you?
John: And I was like, listen, I said very clearly I've never heard Prairie Home Companion.
John: I'm just shitting on it from afar.
John: You know, there's a lot in this culture, and I'm guilty of this, where you're just shitting on things with a t-shirt cannon.
John: I see that.
John: Hey, you up there in the stands.
John: Pop.
Pop.
John: But so there was a person named Scott Poole who was the poet laureate of a lot of the Livewire shows I did who watched the show throughout the show and then at the end of the show got up and performed a poem, sort of an epic poem that he'd written about the show he just watched.
John: Oh, my goodness.
John: He was a talented poet and a funny person and he would read these poems and you'd be like –
John: You know, I was wincing as you walked up on the stage at the prospect of thinking – hearing a poem about this show.
John: But that was pretty good.
John: You know, like I liked it.
John: That was good.
John: I don't know if I would buy a book of them but, you know.
John: So I've done shows where there was an element of this.
John: And then a few times I've been on stage –
John: with a painter or at least seen a painter on stage with a really one time.
Merlin: I feel like this is the first I've ever heard of that.
John: No, this is, this is the, this, I don't know if it's a thing, but it's been enough of a thing.
Merlin: I could see somebody doodling at a conference.
Merlin: I have a friend who's one of those people who's, he's a doodler and he's a conference goer and he brings it together to much wonderful effect where he'll doodle his version of like, he'll have this one big one panel, a page of a person's talk and
Merlin: that can be really illuminating and one of the better summaries of what you've just seen.
Merlin: I could see that, like somebody sitting there with a black pen and a piece of paper.
John: So that person that you're describing has actually doodled one of my talks.
John: Oh, is that right?
Merlin: My icon was done by this guy I'm talking about, Dave Gray.
Merlin: He's a good doodler.
Merlin: That icon of me that I use everywhere is from... He did the stuff for The Merlin Show, if you remember that show that you were on.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That's all him, yeah.
John: Uh, he did me at, at the XOXO conference and you're right.
John: There's a central drawing and then around it, a lot of thought bubbles.
John: I enjoy those.
John: I enjoy those.
John: But actually at that same talk, another person was doing the same thing.
John: Like multiple people.
Merlin: I think that that's a genre.
Merlin: I think that's kind of a genre, but this is not that right.
Merlin: This is, this is a painting or about the, is it oil painting?
John: Well, I,
John: There are two painters.
John: Two painters.
John: It's just like finding a bunch of evangelical dancers.
John: How do you find two painters who will, A, paint –
John: In front of people in the space of an hour and a half.
John: The two painters is super interesting to me for a variety of reasons.
Merlin: First of all, because it's sort of like you think about like, oh, you know, Lin-Manuel Miranda is obviously the guy who plays Hamilton, but Javier Munoz is his understudy.
Merlin: He understands he's the understudy.
Merlin: In this case, now, is one of them the primary painter and the other one's the backup?
Merlin: And if not, how is it not a competition?
Merlin: And what is a backup painting?
Merlin: Well, it must be that they're both on they're both lieutenant colonels of painting.
Merlin: It's just that you can't kind of can't help but go.
Merlin: That one's way better.
John: Well, yeah.
John: And so are the painters on opposite sides of the stage facing the audience or are they situated next to one another and like looking at each other's painting as they're painting like, hmm, that's right.
John: I'm going to use brown, too.
John: I don't like.
John: I don't know.
John: I have no idea having never been to the show, right?
John: It's just like if somebody came to me and said, all right, you have to put on an episode of Prairie Home Companion.
John: Go.
John: I would say, all right.
John: And I'd step to the microphone and say, Lake Wobegon is a little old town where everybody has a good day and people are nice to one another.
John: But stunning.
John: You really nailed it.
John: And here is a false advertisement for some old-timey flower.
John: And now we're going to hear some banjo picking from this guy.
John: We're going to hear some banjo picking from this painter while this painter paints him.
John: You know, and I might be able to, you know, T-shirt cannon full of shit my way through an hour and a half of that.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: Are those shows four and a half hours?
Merlin: Two hours long as presented on the public radio.
Merlin: And it's probably an edit, right?
Merlin: It's probably a careful edit of a four hour long show.
Merlin: I imagine it's longer than that.
Merlin: And they edit it down.
Merlin: Yeah, I would imagine.
Merlin: 16 hours.
Merlin: He writes that show every week.
Merlin: Well, I mean, now it's the other guy.
Merlin: But I mean, I've always admired that about him, that he wrote that show every week.
John: Now he's retired and he's probably driving around in a Volvo station wagon that has a Ford V8 motor in it that was given to him by Paul Newman.
Merlin: Oh, that's nice.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: That's really nice.
Merlin: Yeah, that is nice.
John: So the two times I've seen this done, one time I was on stage with John Hodgman in Tucson, Arizona, and there's a local painter who painted an epically sized mural, a mural that went across the entire back of the stage.
John: So we're talking about
John: 25 to 30 feet long and 10 feet tall.
John: And he painted it throughout the show.
John: And it was a picture of Cthulhu,
John: And Cthulhu was with its many tentacles grabbing both Hodgman and me.
John: Wow.
John: Fairly well represented and pulling us into its Cthulhu nightscape.
Merlin: They did this while the show was going on?
John: While the show was going on and completed it by the end of the show so that it was like a complete work and like kind of amazing.
John: So amazing that it felt like a shame –
John: Because it's not a thing that anybody would even have space for.
John: And if you did have space for it, probably you don't want an epically multi-panel oil painting of me and Hodgman being dragged by Cthulhu.
John: But it also felt like too great of a thing to just throw in a dumpster.
John: And that was like a really impressive work.
John: And in the space of the show, it didn't really intrude on the show.
John: He just worked back there doing his thing.
John: And it just gradually produced an effect of, wow, this has been a great show.
John: That's pretty awesome.
John: It was inspiring.
Merlin: It would have to depend a lot on the person who was doing that work and how it turned out.
John: Right, right.
John: And I think a lot of it was the sort of tight wire act of when he first started painting on this giant canvas, like, what?
John: This is going to be awful.
John: You know, this show's only two hours long.
John: How can this possibly turn out?
John: And, uh, it did.
John: But the other time I've seen, uh, I was playing in a, I was playing at a big show at, um, uh, in the, uh, the Oregon state Capitol at a university there.
John: And we were the, uh, the headliners of the, the university's like spring fling.
John: And it was one of the great sort of shows of that era for us because all day long you felt like it was a stage set up on a big grassy field like the quad.
John: And the audience was kind of milling around as they so often do at those events, like sort of sparse on the ground.
John: And we've played these shows as not the headliner before.
John: Like we played a show at Central Washington University one time where the headliner was somebody like Sir Mix-a-Lot.
John: And we played on a stage where you could have said hello to each audience member by name and spoken to them at length about their day and it wouldn't have intruded on the show.
John: Um, and those are terrible.
John: I mean, even when you're being paid a lot of money to do them, to just stand there and play to an empty grass field is a bad feeling.
John: All right.
John: So we were here at this university, we're playing this, we're watching the other bands and it's also like 15 bands on stage.
John: And, uh, we're watching the other bands and the audience is not very big.
John: And it's a big field.
John: And we're like, oh, this is another one of these bogus, bogus things.
John: We played a ski resort one time.
John: Actually, wait a minute.
John: We played two ski resorts, both times opening for the presidents of the United States of America.
John: And one time in front of the day lodge.
John: And it was another thing where there were a bunch of people like literally on skis watching us play.
John: And it felt like this is kind of a bummer.
John: And then the presidents of the USA took the stage and all of a sudden there were 900 people in ski boots, all standing in snow, totally rocking out.
John: Uh, the second time it was a better deal.
John: It was at the Sundance film festival.
John: I digress.
John: And this was the thing where when we took the stage at this show in Oregon, all of a sudden there were 900 people there and they were going crazy.
John: And it was like, this is the greatest night of our lives.
John: Like how did this happen?
John: Where did they all come from?
John: But anyway, the band that played immediately before us was a band that, you know, their name now is fairly known in indie rock circles.
John: And let's call them like the Rainbow Happiness Band.
John: Oh.
John: Because their name is somewhat similar to that.
John: Okay.
John: You know, Rainbow Good Time Charlie Happiness Band.
John: And one of their elements, in addition to several other elements, their psychedelic music, was that one of the members of the band
John: was sort of like Bez from the Happy Mondays.
John: Or there was another band that had that.
John: Hazel also had a dancer.
John: Who was just a member of the band.
John: Yeah.
John: But this band had a painter that was a member of the band.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And she painted throughout the show.
John: And we're talking about a 45-minute show.
John: But made multiple works of art during that time.
John: So it was just sort of up there throwing, painting a canvas.
John: Not literally Jackson Pollock-ing it.
John: She had brushes.
John: But she was like making art during the show.
John: It was very kinetic.
Yeah.
John: Kinetic art related to – it wasn't like I'm making art about the music.
John: It is I am a member of this art troupe which is making music and also visual art.
John: And it was interesting to watch and at the time like a little bit –
John: A little bit of a, of a, of a line somewhere between like, is this a gimmick or is this the expression of these people who really maybe all grew up together living in a tree house?
John: And maybe they're all brother and sister.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And also it kind of feels like something from the mid late 60s, late 60s, early 70s.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It seems like something where you would you would on your commune, you would all get together and one person would make soup and the other one would play the tambourine about it.
Merlin: And then somebody would have like an interpretive dance.
John: And this guy over here.
Merlin: And who has no soup.
John: And somebody the other day on the Internet said that we were a show with a bunch of callbacks in it.
John: Huh.
John: And I was like, you know, there was a time when I didn't – I was very contemptuous of shows that had callbacks.
John: Yeah.
John: Because it seemed lazy.
John: But then I realized we do have callbacks.
John: And, you know, go stuff yourself.
John: Yeah.
John: Sit on it.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Go sit on it, Potsy.
John: Up your nose with a rubber hose.
John: Yeah.
John: Boston Mass 02134.
John: Stifle.
John: Well, how do you like about them apples?
John: That's right.
John: That's probably the 10,000th time I've said them apples.
Merlin: In any case.
John: In any case.
John: The thing is, here's the thing.
John: Here's the thing about things.
John: And so, yeah, right.
John: It felt like I mean, the Grateful Dead in the early days, the people that were doing and I think it's a it's a person whose name is well known within the within the scenes.
John: who sort of started doing those oil-based light shows.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, sure.
Merlin: Like for the electric Kool-Aid acid test stuff.
John: Yeah, where they had overhead projectors.
John: Yeah, they would do that.
Merlin: I think they did that at the Timothy Leary shows here in San Francisco.
Merlin: I'm sure they did.
John: Yeah.
John: Where you're dropping little colored oil on the screen and it's making little blobular stuff going around.
John: And I think that it was at the time –
John: Well, like considered a crucial part of the performance, because I don't know if you've ever seen a picture of the Grateful Dead, but looking at them isn't really.
John: I mean, like they're not the comeliest band.
John: Well, you know, one of the drummers is kind of good looking.
John: Which one?
Merlin: Yeah, the regular guy.
Merlin: Oh, Joe Normal.
Merlin: Well, yeah, sure.
Merlin: Bob Weir, he's not an unhandsome person.
John: Right.
John: Bob Weir is the handsomest member of the Grateful Dead, but there's always been something a little fishy.
Merlin: I think I know the names of up to three people in the Grateful Dead.
Merlin: Kreutzmann.
Merlin: You got Papa Garcia.
Merlin: You got Jerry Garcia.
Merlin: What do they call him, Daddy?
Merlin: What do they call him?
John: Yeah, daddy.
John: Brent Midland was the keyboard player for a long time.
Merlin: We got Pigpen from back in the early days.
John: But he died also.
Merlin: You got Bob Weir, Rod Steiger.
John: You got Phil Lesh, the world's greatest bass player.
John: Phil Lesh, I don't know if you've ever listened to a Phil Lesh bass line.
John: No, I don't.
John: But they are.
John: Okay, all right.
John: That's an example of the rare occasions when a Phil Lesch bass line is not a trip through the forest.
John: Oh, they're both on the second fret, super well located.
John: Phil Lesch is just – he's just rolling through the tundra.
John: I like a bass line.
John: Yeah, and those bass lines are very imaginative.
John: He's quite an exceptional musician.
John: Uh, whereas a lot of the time, I don't know, you know, like as I was saying from the early days to the very most recent days, Bob Weir, obviously odd man out in that band, strangely youthful looking, strangely younger than everyone else.
John: Yeah.
John: What's Bob doing to watching the dead?
John: You're like, what's Bob doing?
John: Yeah.
John: He's playing parts.
John: He's playing parts the whole time, but what's he doing really?
John: And he, and then the songs he sings, uh,
John: are uh are all very distinctive he's had his share of uh of grateful dead standards but you also sort of crave jerry's voice you know what i mean like listening to the tunes you're like that was good let's get back to jerry let's uh let's let jerry do do you think that some people are bob people and some people are grant people well i don't maybe most people are bob people
John: Yeah, that's what it is.
John: I mean, most people are Bob people.
John: There are some, Grant has his band.
Merlin: There's certain Grant songs everybody likes, and I know you're, I don't mean to mix about Husker Du, but like, there's lots of bands that are like that.
Merlin: I mean, you take somebody like the titular band.
Merlin: Like, I wouldn't want Rick Danko to sing every song, but the ones he does sing, like, I find really, really wonderfully moving.
Merlin: Also, Robbie Robertson sometimes pretends to be singing when he's not, I think.
John: Robbie Robertson I don't think can sing, because, uh,
John: Well, no, wait a minute.
John: He didn't do Last Great American Whale.
John: That was Lou Reed's late period.
Merlin: It was frequently Levon Helm.
Merlin: Yeah, but I'm talking about Robbie's 80s hit.
Merlin: Do you remember Robbie's 80s hit?
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: He had a Don Henley era, like a 1985-ish hit.
Merlin: He'd mostly been writing for soundtracks, I think.
John: Yeah, and then he got one of those.
John: Remember in the 80s?
John: This was the amazing thing about the 80s.
John: There was a market...
Merlin: for um middle-aged musicians having not just like a nostalgia career but here they all come back right like peter gabriel so so many well yeah but a lot of them like or you could even look at uh john wait john wait who'd been in the babies wasn't it the babies oh oh john what was john wait in
John: I don't know if I go back that far with John Waite.
John: John Waite.
Merlin: I think he was in the babies.
Merlin: W-A-I-T-E.
Merlin: Yeah, and then he got on New Wave at a certain point.
Merlin: Missing you.
John: Missing you.
John: I ain't missing you at all.
John: Missing you.
John: You know, I tried to write in here, Robbie Roberts, an 80s hit to, you know, to do a little bit of that Merlin Mann thing where I'm like, I'm going tickety, tickety, tickety during a thing where I'm also talking.
John: Yes.
John: Which is kind of amazing that you do.
John: Sorry.
John: But I accidentally miswrote it because I don't have my glasses on and I wrote Robbie Roberts, an 80s hot.
Yeah.
John: robbie robertson 80s feet robbie robertson 80s net worth i got this very strange yeah robbie robertson wife height i got this amazing thing that's right wife is another one yeah if you if you type john roderick and it's like john roderick wife it was like third down the line who's googling that
John: It turns out nobody.
John: It turns out that's just that thing.
John: Eric Carman, that's another one.
John: But Robbie Robertson Hot, I suggest you do because there are a lot of websites of people who are saying at some point, like, Robbie Robertson in the 80s was hot.
John: Yeah.
John: But the hit was, somewhere down that crazy river.
Merlin: Somewhere down that crazy river.
John: I don't think I know that at all.
John: And, well, you know, I suggest you take a look at the music video because it is mid-80s.
John: And it is characterized, I think...
John: Well, let's just say if our thesis is that Robbie Robertson can't sing, his 80s get somewhere down the street.
Merlin: He doesn't sing.
Merlin: I feel like I have a gift where I can sometimes tell when someone is pretending to sing.
Merlin: There's a friend of mine in a band in Tallahassee, and I'm pretty sure he was fake backup singing.
Merlin: And I feel like I have a gift for knowing when somebody's just mouthing it and when they're doing a top of the pops.
John: Well, there's a thing that I learned from Sean Nelson.
John: Like I've learned a lot of things from Sean Nelson, as you know.
John: And this is one of the things I learned from him, which is if you are lip syncing your song while making a music video, you have to sing.
John: You have to actually sing, even if you're not being, even if you're- This is fascinating to me.
Merlin: This already makes sense to me.
Merlin: This feels like an Oliver Sacks thing, where you're using a different part of your brain to lip sync versus as against a different part of your brain to actually sing.
Merlin: And even if they're not recording the audio, I bet it looks different.
John: Looks completely different.
John: So if you look at the music video for the Decembrists' 16 Military Wives, which I recommend you look at because I have a cameo role
John: in the music video of 16 Military Wives.
John: But that's not the one where you're the teacher.
John: That's not the Wes Anderson one.
John: That is the one that I'm the teacher.
John: Oh, that's a terrific one.
John: Yeah, the Wes Anderson-themed music video.
John: You have a hell of a beard in that one.
John: Yeah, right?
John: That was during the, like, I don't give a fuck era.
John: The first one.
John: No, not the first one.
John: No, it was one of the earlier ones, maybe.
John: Well, let's just say it was one of the mid-2000s ones where I had lost my way.
John: I had made the Ultimatum EP but never released it.
John: And I was just laying around all day writing screeds.
John: And then the Decembers were like, will you be in our music video?
John: And I was like, all right.
John: But you'll notice in that music video, Colin Malloy is lip syncing rather than singing.
John: And you feel like you can really tell.
John: You can tell.
John: You can tell that it just doesn't quite – it's not that it doesn't line up.
John: It totally lines up.
John: It just doesn't look real.
John: It's this thing that you're saying.
John: It looks fake.
John: But if you are singing, if you're actually singing your tune, it looks right.
John: You have to do it.
John: And then once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.
John: Mind blown.
John: I'm going to think about this all day now.
John: And Sean came to this discovery, I think, by making music videos.
John: And, you know, one of his music videos maybe was – I think one of them was actually directed by John Flansberg.
John: like before any of us knew him and was his friend, he was going through a phase where he was like, I'm directing music videos now.
Merlin: You just receive a call from John Flansberg.
Merlin: Hey, just so you know, I'm going to be directing your music video.
John: Well, I think he said to his manager, like, you know what?
John: Get my name out there.
John: I'm doing music videos.
John: And I think he did some prominent ones.
John: And I think one of them might have been directed by Rico Kasich or something.
John: You know, like Harvey Danger had the money, the major label money to get these big name people to direct their music video.
John: Uh, but so Sean had this insight or either someone told him this or he realized it himself by watching himself lip sync.
John: And yeah, it's transformative.
John: And so when you see somebody who's not making sound, it's, you can tell.
John: And now you go back and look at the top of the pops videos from the sixties and some of them like Daltrey always singing at the top of his lungs, right?
John: Daltrey is not ever lip syncing.
John: But a lot of those people, like Mark Bolin or whatever, they're just moving their lips.
John: Right.
John: It's hilarious.
Merlin: I enjoy watching Top of the Pops because it's still fun to just see whoever, like early performances by bands you like, it's still fun.
Merlin: But you ever go down the old Grey Whistle Test rabbit hole?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: There's so much amazing.
Merlin: Like bands that you just don't think about today are...
Merlin: I mean, some of the performances by Dire Straits are so good on there.
John: Well, the Bee Gees, I just tweeted, if you can believe it.
John: You?
John: Yeah.
John: A link to an early Bee Gees.
John: Not early Bee Gees, right?
John: Because the early Bee Gees is from the late 60s.
John: It's very British Invasion-y.
John: Yeah, they had a hit.
John: I started a joke.
John: That and also... The Mining Disaster?
Merlin: They had the Mining Disaster one?
John: It wasn't Waterloo Station, but they had a big hit that was... Massachusetts.
Merlin: Massachusetts.
Merlin: Massachusetts.
Merlin: That's the one.
John: That's a really good song.
John: Big hit in the late 60s.
John: And then they had a, then they kind of, you know, went dark for a little bit.
John: Yeah.
John: And then came back in the mid 70s.
Merlin: Well, they started, you get stuff like Jive.
Merlin: I think Jive talking was a breakthrough because that's when they, first of all, I mean, they got into the funkier stuff, but also it's when Barry started singing falsetto, which everybody thought was super weird at the time.
Merlin: Because they were thought of as being like the Hollies.
Merlin: They were thought of as a vocal super group.
Merlin: Like, why is the lead singer, I don't know if he's the lead singer, but why is the one guy singing falsetto now?
Merlin: That's so strange.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: Falsetto.
John: Right.
John: Which was, he didn't do that though.
Merlin: But I mean, what I'm saying is what they were well known for to us where, you know, somebody of our age, you think of the Bee Gees and you think of Saturday Night Fever.
Merlin: It was the biggest album of all time.
Merlin: Big hit, big hit.
Merlin: But, but like, you know, that was, that was really strange to people who thought of them as being this, like, how would you describe them of not folk, but like a pop, a British pop act?
John: Yep.
John: Yep.
John: And, uh, oh, and you know, the thing that I, the thing that I tweeted was not old grid whistle test.
John: It was the midnight special.
John: Yeah.
John: that was the tv show and those some of that midnight special stuff like if you go watch heart do barracuda live on the midnight special yeah it's right some are pretty wonderfully rough like there's a very live feeling to to that like a cheap trick kind of thing like uh those shows but you really see how good those bands were you know how accomplished they like put together they were there's no backing tracks they're not rolling tape there's not a metronome they're just going for it like these are this is how bands were they were good
John: But, but yeah, like, like, I think a lot of us post Saturday Night Fever, we got that BG's greatest hits record.
John: And, and think of all of that music as being sort of disco.
John: But what's cool about the Bee Gees is they have that greatest hits and the music did all sound like a continuous sort of Bee Gees experience.
John: And none of it felt like, well, this is their weird country phase or this was their weird like art metal phase.
John: Right.
John: They didn't do like trans.
Merlin: They didn't have like a vocal stage.
John: But a lot of those tunes like How Can You Mend a Broken Heart or famously Nights on Broadway.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: That's not from Saturday Night Fever.
John: That's way before it.
John: And if you go on Midnight Special and watch their version of Nights on Broadway.
John: Yeah, that's like two years before Saturday Night Fever.
John: Is that possible?
John: Yeah.
John: You realize a couple of things.
John: One, Robin Gibb is actually –
John: Because during the disco years, Robin and Maurice just seemed like... They were like the other guys.
John: Yeah, the other guys.
Merlin: But like Robin, well, not so much Morris, but Robin was the star for some of the early ones.
Merlin: He's the funny looking one, but man, could that guy sing.
John: So you watch Nights on Broadway on... Oh, no, I just want to watch Bee Gees videos all day.
John: So first of all, Robin is beautiful at the time, not the weird looking one, but somehow like the charmed in the light one.
John: So super beautiful.
John: He's singing the really high parts.
John: He's actually standing there with no instrument, one finger in his ear.
Merlin: I think Barry naturally had, as the three of them go, the lower voice.
Merlin: He was like the, not baritone maybe, but he had the lower voice.
Merlin: The lower of the three incredibly high parts.
Merlin: I think so, yeah.
John: And then Barry's actually playing the guitar, the rhythm guitar.
John: He's actually setting the whole tone.
John: And Maurice is playing a very funky bass line.
Merlin: Wow.
John: And also singing like the third part.
John: And so you walk away from it going, OK, that's really good songwriting.
John: First of all, Nights on Broadway is a good song.
Merlin: I'm just seeing here a purple link.
Merlin: So I have watched them do this.
Merlin: The Midnight Special Nights on Broadway 1975.
Merlin: So I have watched this before.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And well, I suggest you watch it again.
John: And and also they're just a great band.
John: Like there's no there's nobody on stage with them that doesn't need to be there.
John: And there and it's a funky gym.
John: So, yeah, there's a lot.
John: I mean, I spend a lot of time down those rabbit holes because I'm always intrigued because you go to a show now and everybody's running tracks and everybody's hiding behind a lot of a lot of different sort of scrims of production.
John: And the only people that aren't really are playing, you know, like very consciously playing stripped down rock and roll.
John: Right.
John: Like it's not like the White Stripes ever ran tracks, I don't think.
John: But that was their thing.
John: It was just like, here's our parts.
Merlin: Also to keep in mind, I'm thinking now of that.
Merlin: Ron Howard did that Beatles eight days a week thing was on Hulu recently.
Merlin: It was actually very depressing to watch.
Merlin: So depressing because it was just basically about the sad period of the Beatles where they suddenly became unexpectedly popular.
Merlin: They all became very unhappy and their live shows.
Merlin: I had no idea what... I mean, you always hear about, oh, they're drowned out at Shea Stadium.
Merlin: What a shit show.
Merlin: What a dangerous, dangerous... Every one of these events, people were getting hurt.
Merlin: It was really, really bad.
Merlin: But they had to go and be gamers.
Merlin: They could not hear themselves.
Merlin: And I mean, the conventional wisdom about Cream in particular was, well, Cream was the first band that figured out how to really get the PA thing right.
Merlin: But even going into the 70s, 80s, you could not count on hearing yourself on a monitor.
John: I think Marshall...
John: Whatever his name was, Bill Marshall, Bob Marshall.
John: I remember his name, but I'm not remembering.
John: Marshall Amplifier Marshall?
John: Yeah, Tony Marshall.
John: Oh, Tony Marshall.
John: Of course, the English Marshalls.
John: Yeah, from the Marshall Marshall.
John: Marshall Brodine.
John: But yeah, that's right.
John: Marshall Petois.
Merlin: Marshall, yeah.
John: So Marshall Patane.
John: Marshall Johnson says.
John: I think the who went to him and said, listen, we need bigger amplifiers.
John: And he said.
John: Built the first hundred watt amplifier for the who just because they said that we you know support wasn't Pete a high watt man.
John: Yeah, well Hi, what I think he started using high watts Maybe later maybe earlier, but Marshall
John: Marshall, definitely.
John: I may be getting this wrong, but I hear what you're saying.
Merlin: I'm thinking, though, in particular, like you could play loud, but it was very difficult for it to be clear.
Merlin: I mean, into the late 60s.
John: This is what I don't understand, because if you watch those Beatles, those early Beatles things, there are no monitors.
John: Now, the whole thought technology of just turning an amp.
Merlin: Playing in like an underground stone room.
Merlin: Like you look at the Cavern Club and it's basically a cave.
Merlin: They're playing in – can you imagine the acoustics of that room?
John: Well, but I mean that's just a thing where you set your shit up so that you can hear yourself.
John: But Shea Stadium?
John: Where you're playing and the only feedback you're getting is from the sound of the main PA or the sound of like – I think the music that was heard by the people in Upper Shea Stadium was coming through the announcers.
Merlin: Well, and it's sort of like your situation opening the mall where like a monitor that you're hearing in a delayed way is way worse than no monitor at all.
John: A thousand times worse.
John: I told you, didn't I, about Jonathan Colton's first time he played at PAX here in Seattle.
John: Where for whatever reason, apparently people giving keynote speeches or video game speeches.
John: I don't want to dive into that morass.
John: But don't look that up on your YouTube.
John: But it's it's for I don't know why, but I've seen this subsequently.
John: But there are video monitors at the foot of the stage projecting back to back unto you, your own.
John: Performance?
John: Oh, I don't know if I'd like that at all.
John: I've seen this now multiple times.
John: Well, so Colton playing this show had these giant video monitors at the foot of the stage playing back his own performance with a one second delay.
John: So, so he, not, not sound, but just visual.
John: And he's up there like, Hey, here's my zombie song.
John: And, and he's, he, you can't not watch it.
John: Right.
John: It's right at your feet.
John: And it's like any television that's on, you're going to watch because it's, you know, you know what it is.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, if it's visible.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: It's the, uh, it's the drug of the, of the youth.
John: Right.
John: I mean, television is the, uh, the electronic.
Merlin: Sure.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Um, drug of the nation.
Merlin: So he, uh, television, uh,
John: television television television i'm not going to arizona joke of the nation so i ain't gonna play sun city and that was that i think that was before colton felt like he had enough uh on stage time to demand what he wanted yeah sure so he was like that's kind of not how he rolls it's not how he rolls but he could have said hey can you turn these off
John: And it would have been super gentle and they would have turned them off, right?
John: Or he could have gotten down as I would have done and just unplugged them without asking anybody.
John: But you have to think of that.
John: And I think they had to – they had to think of monitors.
John: It wasn't obvious.
John: But when we were first starting out, when I was first starting out as a band and we would show up at a thing and our amps were too big.
John: Because we were coming from that school.
John: Like, well, you need a full stack.
John: I mean, we're playing for 125 people here.
John: We definitely need eight speakers per musician powered by 120-watt amplifiers.
John: Or your bass amp is 300 watts or something.
John: Can I get more fret noise in my monitor?
John: Yeah.
John: Is there a way that we could increase the, like, excruciating high end, like the razor-sharp high end in my guitar tune?
John: Maybe if I got two Mesa Bookie triple rectifiers –
John: And took all of the, you know, just posted the mids and the highs and took all the bass and all just, you know, just made my made the graphic EQ just a straight 45 degree angle up.
Merlin: Oh, that's that's a good look.
Merlin: Oh, that's nice.
Merlin: That's going to be nice and sharp.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's like throwing an icicle at you.
John: Yeah, it would be like that scene in the Tom Cruise movie, Risky Business, where he slams all the EQs straight up, right?
John: The parametric EQs.
Merlin: I bet that drives a lot of people crazy to watch a scene like that.
John: Yeah, that seems really cool.
John: But instead of doing that, just post the highs and just lower the lows.
John: My mom, when she took over listening to metal in our house.
John: The baton was passed to your mom.
John: Yeah, she took over listening to metal in such a way that it was no longer possible for me to listen to metal because I'm not going to be down in my room listening to metal while my mom is listening technically to better metal on a better stereo in her own room.
John: No, that's not fair.
John: That just feels like, what?
John: You are robbing me of my childhood.
John: But she didn't care.
John: And she had an EQ on her own stereo, which I did not have on mine.
John: And she just boosted the bass and took everything...
John: I mean, every frequency that she could above 4K.
John: I want five seasons of a Netflix show about your mom.
John: She just put it all down.
John: So you'd hear from her room, Black Sabbath.
John: And then zero Ozzy or just barely like faintest Robert Plant that you could imagine.
John: It's like a homeopathic dose of Robert Plant.
Merlin: It's like a homeopathic dose of Robert Plant.
John: And she's just like, how can I get that annoying sound out of my speaker?
John: So what I learned early on was that we just carried an extra amp, which was like a PV bass amp, an amp that none of us really wanted.
John: One of those amps that's just hanging around your practice studio.
John: They're like, where did that amp come from?
John: And at first, if you ask that question early enough, like somebody –
John: in your organization will say, oh, that's that PV-based amp that I got from my older brother or my brother's friend, and I just needed a place to store it because I don't want it in mine.
John: But it's a forgotten amp.
John: Right, but if you ask that question after it's been there for six months, hey, what's the story with this amp?
John: It's already too late, like the memory of how it got there is going.
Merlin: Tears and rain.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: So we took one of those amps to every show, and if the PA was not capable of giving you monitor back,
John: You'd just take a quarter inch out and stick it into the front of this PV amp.
John: Mostly vocals?
John: Yeah, and you just put all the vocals in it.
John: And then you set it down basically on the floor in front of you with a cinder block propping it up.
John: There's your vocals.
John: I mean, and we never played a room, and we were loud.
John: We were so much louder than you needed to be.
John: We never played a room where you couldn't hear your vocals if you had a PV bass amp pointed at your face.
John: So I don't understand how that wasn't a technology that was available.
John: If you took an early tweed Fender Twin and put it at the feet of John Lennon and ran a quarter inch into it with his vocals in it.
Merlin: That's a really good question.
Merlin: That's a very good question.
Merlin: I'm going to guess, knowing nothing about this, I'm going to guess it had something to do with feedback.
John: Well, yeah, but you can control that too.
John: I mean, even with the technology that they had at the time, they would have been able to at least give him some augmentation.
John: And at Shea Stadium, I mean, they're playing through AC30s.
John: I mean, you couldn't hear that amp in the first row of the people.
John: So it had – the only thing that the people in the stands were hearing was miked instruments.
John: So their amps actually didn't need to be that loud.
John: Their onstage volume could have been very manageable.
John: It would have been.
John: If you had just taken some amps and put them at their feet.
John: And I just think it was a thing that hadn't occurred to them yet.
Merlin: Maybe we had to... If John Vanderslice hadn't come along, we would have had to invent him.
Merlin: That's a man who knows how to set up a room.
Merlin: We did invent John Vanderslice.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: That responsibility is on us.
John: We bear the cost.
Merlin: Heavy hangs the... The thing is, me in a room in his shows, and I used to go to a lot of his shows, I was just always so amazed with how...
Merlin: It sounded, it wasn't, how do I put this?
Merlin: It was just exquisite.
Merlin: It wasn't too loud.
Merlin: You can hear every single note.
Merlin: Like he really knew like this particular club, this is how to set it up for this room.
Merlin: And I wish that everybody had like a John Vanner slice in their life to like make, make it sound right for the room.
Merlin: And I know that's different for every band, but I think given what he did and how much he valued the exquisite, subtle sounds and what he was making, do you know what I mean?
John: Oh, I do.
John: Because, yes, I've been on tour with him and also on tour with a lot of other people.
John: He almost bought your trailer.
John: That's right.
John: Including people who... No, it was his trailer.
John: It was his trailer, right?
Yeah.
John: It was his trailer.
John: He was just trying to weasel out of paying me the money that I was owed for driving it down.
John: Oh, we got to go back to that sometime.
John: I think we talked about this, but oh, poor Sean.
Merlin: I'm not sure.
Merlin: Did we talk about it on this show?
Merlin: Oh, no, I'm...
Merlin: I'm pretty sure we did, because that's got to be up there with the North Face story.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: I know that we've talked about it a thousand times.
Merlin: I just don't know.
Merlin: I just didn't know that we— I was ready to see a side of you that I had not seen.
Merlin: I was not ready to see that side of him that I had not seen.
John: Well, sure.
John: And I mean, I think at the time there was quite a – I mean, from the audience, which was what?
John: There were five of us there in this abandoned parking lot on the edge of town?
Merlin: Michael, Sean, Madeline.
Merlin: That's right.
John: Eric Corson, you.
John: And Madeline was there too, yeah.
John: Oh, Madeline was there too.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And Vanderslice and I going back and forth like, well, I guess I'm going to take this trailer and I'm going to just drive it into the ocean.
Merlin: Eyeball to eyeball.
Merlin: And it was –
John: It was it was barely simple.
John: Well, and what's crazy is he promised me stuff to get out of that negotiation that he then reneged on later.
John: But I'm not here to settle scores.
Merlin: Let's just say time travel is lonely.
Merlin: I think we can all agree on time travel.
John: You know, Vanderslice, that was the first time I ever saw a live show where someone was playing tracks.
John: It was, he made the decision.
John: He had that stuff running through the PA and I had never seen it before.
John: And you know, he was an early adopter.
John: Founderslice was always an early adopter, not just of technology and sound.
John: But also you remember his drummer that did the rising sun symbol changes.
John: You saw those shows, right?
John: I don't remember that.
John: Where he hired a drummer from somewhere who was one of those.
John: You've seen the YouTube video of the drummer that's in the wrong band.
Okay.
John: Have you never seen that?
John: No.
John: Google drummer in the wrong band.
John: Drum in the wrong band.
John: Let's see.
John: Here we go.
John: This drummer is at the wrong gig.
John: All right.
John: Yeah.
John: Drum at the wrong gig.
John: And Vanderslice hired a drummer at the wrong gig style drummer who, first of all, had his drum.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Playing sharp dressed man.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: This is fantastic.
Yeah.
Merlin: Okay, sorry.
John: This is so good.
John: So Vanderslice had a guy like this who was a fantastic drummer.
Merlin: But he wasn't like a jokey John Worcester throw it in for a little bit of fun.
Merlin: This guy was full on like spin the sticks kind of guy.
John: This was his show.
John: His drum kit was set up in the center of the stage and Vanderslice was maybe sitting in a chair on the side of the stage, maybe not even in the light.
John: And he would do this.
John: So he's playing just big, big, big theatrical drum show.
John: And he would change his symbols mid song.
Merlin: He'd be playing... Change his cymbals, because he needed to.
Merlin: It wasn't like breaking a string.
Merlin: This was part of the bit.
John: Yeah.
John: He decided in his interpretation of the music that at a certain point in the song, he needed a different cymbal than he could... I've never heard of that before.
John: Well, because you never will again, because it's crazy.
John: But he would take his cymbal off the cymbal stand.
John: Now, the song is going on, and he's continuing to play the drums...
John: He would take his symbol off the symbol stand, unscrew it, take it off, and then hold it over his head in a gesture of the sun rises in the east, reaches its apex, and sets in the west.
John: Like he would pull the symbol up.
John: Almost as if there was some kind of a movement or dance component.
John: Absolutely a dance component.
John: The sun would rise in the east, set in the west.
John: This is all in time with the music.
John: He's a great musician.
John: And then another symbol would come out of the symbol bag.
John: It would rise in the west.
John: Oh my goodness.
John: And set in the east upon the symbol stand where it would then be screwed down and played.
John: All of this happening in the middle of time travel is lonely.
John: So very impressive work.
John: But also, I mean, the first time I saw John Vanderslice, he had a Chapman stick player in the band.
John: Oh, really?
John: Yes, yes, yes.
John: Early iteration of his band had a Chapman stick player who made –
John: who made Chapman's Tickface.
Merlin: Oh, no, that's worse than guitar.
Merlin: That's 10 times worse than guitar face.
Merlin: Have you ever Googled Chapman's Tickface?
Merlin: You use the internet so differently than me.
Merlin: I'm telling you right now, go Google Chapman's Tickface.
Merlin: Tony Levin is the only person I can think of when I think of a Chapman stick.
John: Okay, Chapman.
John: Tony Levin is a professional enough musician that he doesn't really make Chapman stick face, not like some of these.
John: He could.
John: He could.
John: He could.
John: He has enough bandwidth.
John: He could play two Chapman sticks and make Chapman stick face.
John: Oh, my gosh.
John: But we do use the internet in different ways.
John: People often write little tweets to you and me, even emails sometimes, where they say, John Roderick does not know
John: technology.
John: Well...
John: Or they speculate, they speculate whether or not I do know about technology and I'm pretending not to, or I just don't know about technology and don't know that I don't know.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: One person brought up the Dunning-Kruger effect, which I've never heard of.
John: Right.
John: And what they don't realize is that I use the internet all the time to look up Chapman's stick face.
John: And I doubt that they're using the internet that way.
John: So who knows how to use the internet?
Merlin: You just sent me a music video that over 30 million people have seen that I've never seen.
Right.
Merlin: 30 million people.
Merlin: That's got more hits than David Pumpkins, you know?
Merlin: Drummer who's in the wrong band.
Merlin: Did you watch David Pumpkins?
Merlin: Have you seen that?
Merlin: It's David Pumpkins.
Merlin: I never saw animals riding capybaras.
Merlin: Oh, that's true.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, again, we got some nice feedback from people about the capybaras.
Merlin: I think we helped a lot of people with that.
Merlin: Yeah, I think we do every episode.
Merlin: I think we are definitely a harbinger for the future here.
Merlin: Just bringing up this whole issue, I mean, you've heard a little bit of, as I say, chatter about comfort animals.
Merlin: But I think we have really elevated the level of discussion about this.
John: Well, sure.
John: It's easy to say – it's easy to sit with a T-shirt cannon.
John: Yeah, please.
John: about comfort animals but when you realize comfort animals are the future of civilization now where are you now which internet are you on now which which internet am i on yeah right which that's that's a question we don't ask ourselves enough no which what which internet is my internet there's different internets yeah don't don't think that your internet is the same internet as somebody else's internet even somebody sitting in the same room as you thought about bad lip reading you seen those
Merlin: too much you've seen you've seen uh santana jams oh yeah okay i've seen those i've seen those what about i'm trying to take a think of some other ones oh what about uh uh the the hamsters uh eating tiny food have you seen that
John: I think, you know, hamsters eating tiny food is just like spending a weekend with Amy Mann.
Merlin: Look at that burrito.
Merlin: It's so cute.