Ep. 276: "The Authenticity Wars"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Is it early or are you ill?
John: Oh, neither.
Merlin: Oh, you sound good now.
Merlin: Okay, now you sound better.
John: Yeah, no, I just did something I never do, which is I crammed, not crammed, that's the wrong word.
John: I ate some food.
John: Can I ask what you ate?
John: I ate two warmed up slices of pizza for breakfast.
Merlin: Did you use the microwave or the oven?
John: I use the microwave.
John: Which is, you know, we all know, not the best way to put pizza back into circulation.
John: Normally I would eat cold pizza just fine.
John: For some reason I thought...
John: I just thought, go for it.
John: Just throw the pizzas in the microwave and eat them.
Merlin: I recently acquired some new technology that I'm very excited about, although I have not figured out how fully to utilize it yet.
Merlin: And I acquired a product from the Whirlpool Corporation that purports to be a pan.
Merlin: Touch the pan.
Merlin: It's a pan that can be used.
Merlin: It basically looks like a pizza.
Merlin: It looks like probably like a 12-inch pizza dingus.
Merlin: What do you call that?
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about.
Merlin: Pizza pan.
Merlin: Pizza pan.
Merlin: But it's treated with some kind of aluminum that can be used in the microwave oven.
John: Wait a minute.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: See, this flies in the face of everything we've learned.
Merlin: This is our culture and our heritage.
Merlin: This is one thing we know.
Merlin: Man in the Moon microwave oven, right?
John: Microwave oven cannot heat to the center of a lasagna, and you can't put a pan in a microwave.
Merlin: Don't roller skate in a buffalo herd.
Merlin: But I got this.
Merlin: I've only used it once, but it purports to crisp up the thing that you are heating in the microwave.
Merlin: crisps it up now have you ever gotten for example like gas station french fries that comes in a pack with like like a silvery reflective inside when you heat it you know that i don't eat potatoes oh you're aware of jojo's you just don't consume them
John: Yeah, but I do know about the packaging that you're describing, the foil inner foil.
Merlin: Yeah, so I mean, I'm keen to have this happen because me, I like some hot wings.
Merlin: Sometimes when we order a delivery place, I'll get hot wings just for later, kind of for the table, for my table.
Merlin: And I like those, and I crisp them up.
Merlin: But what's the problem with a hot wing is you've got a chicken piece on the inside.
Merlin: On the outside, you've got a yummy hot sauce, and in between, you've got some crisped up...
Merlin: probably flowery coating thing.
Merlin: And then when you heat that in a microwave and it's just not that fun.
John: No, it sogs up.
Merlin: So I don't know.
Merlin: I think I might be, this might be something you want to look at.
Merlin: I am going to, the problem is it is at odds.
Merlin: I think I've talked, I feel like I definitely talked about this before, but I don't know if you know this about me.
Merlin: I am a master of the microwave, particularly with regard to using the percentages.
Merlin: I'm a percentage man.
Merlin: Are you really?
Merlin: Yeah, this changed everything.
John: You know, my whole feeling about it is like, put it in at 100% and it's all a time game.
John: Just saying it's a percentage game.
Merlin: it can be a percentage game this is not for everybody because a lot of people they have busy work of day lives and they've got to get on moving moving to the next thing they're mining bitcoins they're picking kids up at school there's a lot going on but so one benefit uh we've got a really high wattage microwave that heats stuff super fast so like how many wattage it's over a thousand i want to say like 1200 or more but we always have to go a little bit south
Merlin: on when they tell you, like, oh, do it for this long.
John: You can get those on the street?
John: You can get these 1,200 mics on the street?
Merlin: Well, you know, we did some aftermarket things to it.
Merlin: We blew up the Hemis, and Bruce Springsteen did it up.
Merlin: So, I mean, that's great if you want to make hot water.
Merlin: You want pure energy coursing through your water.
Merlin: Pure energy.
Merlin: Pure energy to generate the heats.
Merlin: Nice pull.
Merlin: That's...
Merlin: You want that.
Merlin: But with a pizza, see, here's the thing.
Merlin: With a pizza, you put a pizza in for a minute, that's going to be a very, very, very hot, possibly burny pizza.
Merlin: Hot, wet pizza.
Merlin: Hot, wet pizza.
Merlin: I love that movie.
Merlin: So here's my challenge to you is to start.
Merlin: So first of all, you may know, for example, that for defrosting, if you don't have an auto defrost, if you do need to defrost, go for like a 10%.
Merlin: Whoa, really?
Merlin: Yeah, because the problem is what a microwave does, according to the technologies and books that I have acquired, is that it cooks from the, I believe it cooks, I want to say from the inside out.
Merlin: I'm not sure how that works.
Merlin: Inside out?
Merlin: But you get that thing where you're like.
Merlin: From the corners.
Merlin: It cooks from the corners.
Merlin: But that's something where like it's very, you know, you've had the experience certainly of like, let's look at the lasagna.
Merlin: Consider the lasagna.
John: Consider the humble lasagna.
Merlin: When you heat the lasagna, you get that thing of like one part is scalding and giving you mouth meat.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And another part is like actually physically cold.
Merlin: Still frozen.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: So here's my challenge to you.
Merlin: Consider the 40% setting.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: So if you got a pretty good feel for like how long to put something in to heat it up.
John: I'm thinking about it now.
John: I'm thinking I'm holding I'm holding the let's say what is the thing that I microwave the most that isn't like a leftover stew kind of thing maybe.
John: Yeah.
John: Something you know something.
John: Well I have I have to I have to two ways I use the microwave actually.
John: The thing that I shouldn't have frozen that I froze.
John: Right.
John: And now I want to bring it back to life.
Merlin: You are kind of a master of the freezing process.
Merlin: Like if you're not sure if meat's gone bad, you put it in the freezer, right?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And you're going to have that later.
John: That's right.
John: The freezing, if it's like, if I don't cook this today, then it's going bad.
John: But you don't want to throw it away.
John: Yeah, we'll put it in the freezer and then I'll cook it a year from now.
John: How do you like me now?
Merlin: I like you plenty now.
Merlin: I think that's a terrific way to go.
Merlin: And, you know, that's a little bit of mystery.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: Everything you pull out of the freezer, which should be, you know, it's brand spanking new.
Merlin: When you were a kid, did you ever put batteries in the refrigerator to refresh them?
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Okay, so I don't know if people do that anymore.
Merlin: It used to be, the conventional wisdom was, now you can store your batteries in the fridge, supposedly make them last longer.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: When I was a kid, we'd take a 9-volt and stick it in there overnight, and you'd get a little more juice out of it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So what I would suggest is, this is very arbitrary, but if you have, let's say arbitrarily, you've got something you need to heat up that you feel like is, let's say, a two-minute heat up.
Merlin: Try having the amount of time and doing it at 40%.
Merlin: Same amount of time, but 40%.
Merlin: Half the amount of time.
Merlin: Wait, what?
Merlin: So, well, hang on.
Merlin: No, sorry.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: I got my math wrong.
Merlin: Okay, cut that out.
Merlin: When you edit this, cut that out.
Merlin: All right, all right.
Merlin: Instead, do this.
Merlin: Almost twice as long for 40%.
Merlin: And what that does is that's going to let those little waves really get in there.
Merlin: They're going to say, hey, buddy, pump your brakes.
Merlin: We just need to get real deep into the lasagna.
Merlin: We're not some teenage boy that needs to bust his nut on this lasagna in 40 seconds.
Merlin: Let's be a gentleman about this.
Merlin: Let's let the food accommodate the waves.
Merlin: You're just going to slide into their DMs.
Merlin: It's okay, buddy.
Merlin: I'm going to take this at your speed.
Merlin: I'm a woke microwave user.
Merlin: You tell me if you want to stop, right?
John: So what happens is it's like vibrating.
John: I always think of a microwave as cooking by like
John: by jiggling, by vibrating like the molecules.
John: Yeah.
John: So it's in there and it's like... It's really a molecule jiggling.
John: But what you're saying is like it's just going to tickle its way through the outside molecules and be like...
Merlin: Well, that's right.
Merlin: You don't train a dog by yelling at it.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Don't yell at the lasagna.
Merlin: Anyway, I'm just tossing this out.
Merlin: Experiment.
Merlin: Try this.
Merlin: Because I have found, and I do this when my daughter frequently, my daughter will have, like, two pieces of pizza.
Merlin: We've got leftover pizza.
Merlin: She wants a snack.
Merlin: Of course, two minutes before dinner, she has to have a snack, which is just driving me out of my mind.
Merlin: But, like, she gets home from school.
Merlin: I'm going to make her some pizza.
Merlin: I'll do...
Merlin: And because we have a super strong microwave, I'll do maybe 40% for a minute 20.
Merlin: See how it is.
Merlin: It can always do more.
Merlin: You can't undo microwave.
Merlin: You can only do more microwave.
Merlin: There's no, currently, with the current technology, there's no way to remove microwave.
Merlin: But you might be amazed.
Merlin: It makes it really quite nice.
Merlin: Because, you know, it's easy to screw up a pizza.
John: It's pretty easy to mess up.
John: Yeah, but also pizza is just such a throwaway food.
John: It's like but I noticed this about myself all the time I screw up food and then I sit and shame eat it You do that now you eat it.
John: I screwed this up so badly and
John: And so now what I deserve is to sit alone at the end of this table with a napkin tucked into my shirt and a knife in one hand and a fork in the other and just just like eating the broken food.
John: Just eat this shit food that I just really like miserate in every bite.
John: Oh, man.
John: I do that.
John: I do that.
Merlin: You learn from it, John.
John: No, no.
John: The tragedy is here's one of the tragedies.
John: I was talking to you, I think, about my inability to cook a steak.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Which I still find very surprising.
John: A man contacted me here in Seattle, and he said, I'm teaching a steak cooking class, a cook steaking class.
John: And he said, I'd like you to come attend the cook steaking class.
John: And I said, I would be so into that.
John: And now I just...
John: was offered a gig at the same time as the cook, steak, and glass.
John: Oh, bummer.
John: And, you know, I partly make my living doing gigs.
John: Yeah, gigs are important.
John: It's a gig economy.
John: It's an out-of-town gig.
John: All the things about it.
John: And, you know, and I'm just like, I can't do it.
John: Clear your calendar for that stuff.
John: It's no good.
John: It's no good.
John: And I just feel, I just feel like I'm just, and the thing is, he doesn't offer this class all the time.
John: This is a class that just comes up every once in a while.
John: I don't know why.
John: It seems like he should be able to do it every day.
John: Every morning he should wake up and teach us cook steaking class.
Merlin: I wonder if he could just hop on the blower and have him give it to you in Pigs and Bunnies.
Merlin: You think there's something where he could just give you the high level, give you three bullets on a cook steaking?
Merlin: I mean, is that insulting to his method?
John: Probably.
John: I mean, one time I took a...
John: I took an engineering class, like a studio production class, because I've sat in recording studios a hundred times, looking over people's shoulders, asking them questions.
John: What are you doing there?
John: Oh, I'm just, you know, I'm changing the shelf on the...
John: On the bus.
John: It's like, oh, you're changing the shelf on the bus.
John: I don't know.
John: And I even know what those terms mean.
Merlin: You're thinking to yourself, should I be changing the shelf on my bus?
John: Well, shit is exactly right.
John: I mean, you know, like I run my vocals through an 1176.
John: I love the way the machine sounds.
John: I know them intimately from staring at them.
John: But still, every single thing that a person does on them, I have no idea what they're doing.
Merlin: I'm just looking at this.
Merlin: This is the 1176LN, the classic limiting amplifier.
John: Oh, it's got a lot of knobs, John.
John: But it's a wonderful, wonderful machine.
John: And the thing is, it has tricks.
John: There are tricks you can do on it.
John: You can push all the buttons in at once, which everybody agrees is really great.
John: And so if I owned one, they're not cheap.
John: If I owned one, I would put all the buttons in at once and I'd leave it there and I would find a setting and I would just leave it there.
John: I would never touch it again.
John: The problem is, and I don't know if you encountered this because you're somebody that, uh, that spends some time understanding the architecture and I like to understand the architecture, uh,
John: You've got to know the rules before you break them.
John: That's right.
John: And when a compressor or a limiter is doing its job, I understand in my mind's eye kind of what's happening kind of to sound, which I kind of understand.
John: But I cannot quite put together, you know, am I like a mental picture?
John: You know, I look at the course of a year and I scope it out as a geography.
John: Yeah.
John: But I can't quite.
Merlin: You know, like a mental map.
John: Just give me an idea how the terrain works.
John: Sure.
John: Yeah, but the maps sometimes require that you understand the physical property of the thing that you're doing, right?
John: This is why it's so hard to make a map of space-time.
Merlin: If it doesn't have the topography on it, it might not be so useful.
Merlin: Maybe that's not such a shortcut.
John: Yeah, right.
John: So if you don't understand what sound is, how can you make a map of it?
John: And how much can you understand what sound is unless you really study sound?
John: You can't just like, oh, sound is some waves, right?
John: Like, yeah, all right, waves, but like sound going through a box?
John: That's electricity.
Merlin: So one of those things where, like, if you try to ask for the short version, you're going to find yourself moving up and up and up in the stack to, like, something you thought you knew but didn't really understand.
Merlin: You need to understand before, as a predicate, like, before you get to this other thing.
Merlin: Correct.
Merlin: It's the predicate.
Merlin: What even is sound?
John: What even is it?
John: And so, you know, so I sit and I'm talking to engineers, and they're like, yeah, well, you just, you know, it's just, this is just...
John: You just put a shelf on the bus and I go, I don't even, yeah, okay.
John: But what is, what am I trying for?
John: And then the problem is it's all, they'll look at you and they're just like, we'll just do it until it sounds good.
John: It's like, ah, yeah, okay.
John: But it sort of sounds differently good every direction.
John: Anyway, so I took a class from a noted class.
John: engineer producer and it was me and like four other people.
John: And he walked us through, it was like three days.
John: We, I went down and stayed in a hotel in Portland and went to three days worth of being in the studio.
John: Wow.
John: Learning all the stuff.
John: And I came out of there exactly as ignorant as I was when I went in and through no fault of, uh, of the class, uh,
John: But just that there's a fundamental comprehension that I am lacking that the class didn't address because that wasn't within the purview of the class.
John: Oh, it's like you went straight into algebra too.
John: Yeah.
John: It's just like, oh, well, here you go.
John: Just run it into here and bust it over here and put a shelf on it over here.
John: And I was still sitting there with a dunce cap on going, but what is sound?
John: Or what are we doing?
John: What are we manipulating?
John: Like, how does...
John: How does me going like, ooh, child, things are going to get easier, turn into electricity that goes into these things and is manipulated by your knobs and out the other side?
John: I get it.
John: I mean, I get it.
John: I've heard it a thousand times, but I just don't.
John: I get it.
Merlin: There's another... I feel like there's another problem, maybe just because I know so very little and all I ever do is twiddle it until it sounds good to me with my dumb, bad ears.
Merlin: But, like... Okay, here's a phenomenon that I used to be on one end of and I'm now on the other end of.
Merlin: I used to always be on the end of some dingus...
John: You came through a phenomenon, and you're on the other end of it.
Merlin: Well, yeah, and I'm not loving it.
Merlin: But you've been on the end of the phenomenon where some dingus is using the computer, and they're not doing it fast enough or smart enough for you.
Merlin: And you're like, no, no, just click file, file.
Merlin: No, up there, up there.
Merlin: Click menu.
Merlin: Click that.
Merlin: Click that.
Merlin: For some reason, when you're driving, you're blind.
Merlin: You don't see stuff.
Merlin: Have you ever noticed?
Merlin: And so the other end of that now is when I'm using the computer, my daughter's constantly frustrated that I'm not doing the thing that she thinks she would do faster.
Merlin: I think there should be, there's probably a name for this, but there is a phenomenon when somebody else is doing the physical, I don't know if it's a modal thing, but when one person is doing the physical manipulation, the other person sees things more clearly.
Merlin: Mm-hmm, right and I bet that goes five times more with audio or one nice reason to have somebody in the room with you engineering is that they are They know how that machine works and what sound makes and then they you're able to have like two sets of ears working on it Yeah, do you know what I'm saying though?
John: Absolutely.
John: Well, and that's what's wonderful about recording for me is
John: That when some when some tiny tiny adjustment is made to the sound by a knob I perceive it and also have an opinion about it and Want it to be this or that and I know enough about the words
John: That I can say, I want you to put a little bit more shelf on that bus.
John: And the engineer is like, yep, right.
John: And he does it.
John: And it's exact.
John: And I was right.
John: I have no idea, though, what because I'm just talking in.
John: I'm just making I'm casting spells.
John: You know, I'm like just I learned some spells from wizards.
Merlin: And the thing is also your quality control gets weird because like everybody knows, I don't know if they still call it this, but there used to be something called an aural enhancer where if you put an aural enhancer on something, it suddenly sounds a lot fresher, but you also don't want it to sound too fresh.
Merlin: You don't want it to sound too aural enhanced.
Merlin: Oh, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: That goes for compression, that goes for equalization, that goes for limiting, that goes for so many things.
Merlin: There's another example of this that's gone around a lot over the years where people who insist they can tell tiny differences between quality of audio formats, they found that you can trick almost anybody into thinking something sounds better by making it slightly louder than the other examples.
Merlin: And they go, oh, that one sounds a lot better.
John: Oh, that does sound better.
John: Well, like the guy, I forget exactly.
John: There was one famous guy, maybe Nuno Betancourt or Yngwie Malmsteen, somebody who said that they, I forget it.
John: It wasn't Todd Ruttengren, but somebody liked to put three quarter used up nine volts.
John: in their effects boxes because the three quarters used up battery gave the it's a warmer sound gave a warmer sound i didn't know it was gonna be that word oh it's so much warmer you don't want a fresh battery in there oh the fresh battery just sounds so fresh battery in a rat that's just that's too much but we do this all the time in mixing records where the record just sounds amazing when you you're sitting in the studio you're mixing it
John: through your NS10s, which are terrible sounding, but everybody uses them.
John: And we're all like, that's great.
John: And then the engineer says, well, listen to them on headphones.
John: And you put the headphones on, and you're like, oh, no, this sounds terrible.
John: And you cannot just mix something hearing it through one source.
John: And that is the real destabilizing thing, because you have to, because mixing is such a delicate thing
Merlin: art and the room and other people's sweat and and uh and if you're only listening to like one like you meet all the other tracks you're listening to one isolated track like you're not going to hear that the same way once you bring up the bass and the drums stuff like that
Merlin: bring up that base you know i mean that sounds like an obvious thing but that's the other thing is like is there's no shortcut really to saying like well we want to fill the entire musical spectrum i mean people i imagine that is very intuitive and that you do that once once you've got all the levels and sounds kind of how you want then the really artful thing it seems to me is being able to make it all sound good together which is almost impossibly hard and you fuck yourself up and if you change one thing wrong and then you go and listen to your car and you're like what this doesn't sound anything like it should sound and it's quiet
John: You listen, you know, that new Portugal the Man song, which I'm going to keep referring to because everybody in the country's got it stuck in their head.
John: It's very catchy.
Merlin: According to my daughter, they're the third most popular band at her school.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Who are the other two?
Merlin: She didn't say.
Merlin: No kidding.
Merlin: No, but she was listening to it in the shower.
Merlin: I tutored about this a couple weeks ago.
Merlin: I was like, what is that song?
Merlin: She's like, it's Portugal the Man.
Merlin: I was like, Portugal, period?
Merlin: The man?
Merlin: I think Uncle John knows them.
Merlin: That's really weird.
Merlin: It's not at all what I expected.
Merlin: I thought it was going to be Mopey Portland beard music.
John: They have made quite a bit of psychedelic music.
John: It doesn't sound like them.
John: Their hit song.
John: Their music is... I think you would like it.
John: They're Portland by way of Alaska.
John: Wasilla, Alaska.
John: Uh-huh.
John: So they're from BF motherfucking E, as we say.
John: Yes.
John: In the north.
John: Like Wasilla now is not the Wasilla of their childhoods and certainly not the Wasilla of my childhood.
John: They got a hell of a flag in Wasilla.
John: In my life...
John: Wasilla, I mean, you could carry a gun into the 7-Eleven in Wasilla.
John: I bet you could do that now.
John: You might be able to.
John: It's pretty small.
John: It depends on who's working, probably.
John: It's a wide spot on the road.
John: And the road isn't very wide.
John: But those guys, they're fun.
John: They're taking the piss.
John: But if you listen to the bass sound on that track, it's already a very cool sound.
John: Coming out of the gate, the bass has its own tone that's pretty unusual for a contemporary pop song.
John: And when it comes in, the first time I really listened to the tune and I heard it start with this bass line,
John: my feeling was there's no way they're going to be able to sustain that bass sound through the track because it's a very individual bass sound, but it's like that's not going to punch through.
John: It's not going to be sufficient because it's such a nuanced tone.
John: But then in the production of the song, which I think was produced by
John: like mike d and danger mouse i mean it's like oh that makes a lot of sense somehow that is a very unusual i'm saying right now it's a very unusual bass sound yeah somehow this is plunky and it's got a little bit like a slapback and some some reverb it's pretty 60s sounding it it sounds almost like flat wound strings and
John: And you just wouldn't think that it would it would manage on on contemporary radio.
John: But the production is so good that that that they're able to keep this like kind of bass sound.
John: Going and it's and it really propels it really propels the song But but it's one thing to get a tone like that in the studio and be like, ah, that's a cool bass sound But to commit to it stick to it and make it work.
John: I mean that's that's real artistry and
John: And it's what distinguishes that song from everything else that's on the radio right now, which is just like... Oh, excuse me.
John: That's terrible.
John: No, that's fine.
John: You're going to cut that out, right?
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Merlin: They're encouraging people to go out and make it.
Merlin: You make it yourself.
Merlin: You create a website by yourself with Squarespace.
Merlin: Well, I mean, technically it's with you and Squarespace.
Merlin: But, you know, they're there to help you out with that.
Merlin: You know, and this is that time of year, you know, when I want to be sure to mention that I can't promise you Squarespace is perfect for everybody.
Merlin: Maybe you've got some kind of ding-a-ling website you're really happy with, but I can pretty much guarantee you there is someone in your life somewhere.
Merlin: You have friends, you have family, you have people at the different groups you're involved with.
Merlin: Maybe you're a Wiccan.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But somebody out there needs a website.
Merlin: And you do not want to be the person who is making the Wiccan website.
Merlin: You want to send them to Squarespace.
Merlin: Anybody can do it.
Merlin: It doesn't have to be Wiccan.
Merlin: You know, they seem like nice people.
Merlin: You know, you think it, you dream it, you make it.
Merlin: What's Squarespace?
Merlin: Squarespace.com.
Merlin: So go right now, please.
Merlin: Go to Squarespace.com for a free trial.
Merlin: And when you're ready to launch, use the very special offer code SuperTrain to take 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Merlin: Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick Online and all the great shows.
Merlin: I did a... Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick Online and all the great shows.
John: I have a podcast called Friendly Fire now.
John: You might have heard about it.
John: It's a war movie podcast.
John: And in the first episode...
John: Apparently, I took a bite of something.
John: A sandwich or something.
John: Oh, no.
John: Now, I don't remember doing this.
John: It's very unusual for me to have a sandwich during the recording of a podcast.
John: You don't have any recollection of it.
John: I have none.
John: No recollection.
John: But this podcast is on the MaximumFun.network.
John: And their fans are very particular, as you may recall.
John: You've had some association with that.
John: Yeah, I've had some run-ins with Maximum Fun.
Merlin: I've dealt with that.
Merlin: Over the years?
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: I was listening to a Maximum Fun podcast this morning with your tuned departure in it.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
John: The Mabim Bams.
John: Mabim Bams.
John: And those guys also say their fans are very particular.
Merlin: I think that's why they don't use Twitter so much anymore.
Merlin: Oh, because they get yelled at?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is the downside of having a fan.
Merlin: Fans listen.
Merlin: Does Travis need to speak in that particularly peak tone quite that loudly?
Yeah.
John: I got a Dear Sir tweet the other day, and I really yelled at the guy.
John: I was like, what did you intend this tweet to do?
John: What is this in service of?
John: Yeah.
John: Are you trying to make me feel good or bad?
Merlin: No, five times a day, John.
Merlin: I don't do that.
John: It's so hard not to.
John: I don't usually do it, but this one with just this particular... Sometimes I just tend to say, hey, that seemed kind of hurtful.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm not asking for an apology, but I think you didn't realize that what you said was a little bit hurtful.
Merlin: We had a truth the other day.
Merlin: Somebody loved our recent episode of Dubai Friday so much, they said that from now on, Max's father should be on instead of Max every episode.
Merlin: Lol.
Merlin: And I was really tempted to say, you know, that's a little bit hurtful.
Merlin: I know you're being fun and having fun with that, but that's a little bit hurtful.
John: Yeah, I yelled at this guy for the length of three tweets.
John: Dear sir.
John: And he wrote back and he was like, I thought you would think that was funny and not get offended.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And I was like, ah.
John: I understand hostility is love on Twitter.
John: But anyway, the fact that I apparently took a bite of a sandwich and now I've checked with some other people.
John: that I podcast with, and I need to check in with you, but I think Dan Benjamin, your good friend, Dan, said that on the first podcast I did with him, I took a bite of a sandwich.
John: And I'm not sure I believe this.
John: It would require that I bring a sandwich.
Merlin: I'm not here to eat your shorts, but I'll just tell you that's a reference.
Merlin: For one, no, no, I don't think you eat.
Merlin: Sometimes we both drink something.
Merlin: I've been told that you can hear this a lot.
Merlin: In my podcast, or better put, like you hear like a seltzer can being put down.
Merlin: Oh, I have heard that.
Merlin: You hear the train in the background.
Merlin: I mean, you might have a squeaky chair.
Merlin: You can hear that?
Merlin: A little bit.
Merlin: A very squeaky chair.
Merlin: But I just want to tell you, you know, you're...
Merlin: That snort you just did, that is an old school OG, BFED, Wasilla, John Roderick snort that you don't do so much anymore.
Merlin: You used to be a huge snorter.
Merlin: I would snort?
Merlin: You used to snort a lot, and now you don't snort as much.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I would do a snort.
Merlin: I try so hard not to snort, and then sometimes I'll listen back to something, especially if it's in the kind of informal before or after show part that ends up somewhere.
Merlin: Like, what are you doing?
Merlin: Why are you doing that into a microphone?
John: Yeah.
John: I make a lot of mouth sounds.
Merlin: Squeak.
John: Squeak.
John: But also, I have a voice that comes...
John: from a husky place oh yeah yeah it comes like a human sarcophagus there's like you're like a like a plate reverb man that's coming from deep inside inside your vessel yeah yeah it's a kind of it's a sound it's why i don't like the sound of my own voice uh when i hear it because it just sounds very um
John: There's a lot of other tones in it.
John: I kind of, I hate to use the phrase.
John: This is one that's going to haunt me, but it's.
John: But it's a little bit phlegmatic.
John: Oh, you think you got a little bit of rattle?
John: There's a little, yeah, there's just some sound.
John: Is that kind of vocal fry, John?
John: No, no.
John: I have pure tone.
John: I'm not saying vocal fry.
John: No, it's like a natural kind of, you know, amount of something.
John: I bring my whole body into the sound.
Merlin: If we recorded it at a different time of day, I'll speak for this program, you and I would probably have fewer noises that we're making.
Merlin: A lot of what we're making are morning noises.
Merlin: Morning sounds.
Merlin: We're grown men.
Merlin: We're grown-ass men, and we make morning noises.
John: I've thought about trying to record a song earlier.
John: in the in like in the early morning because the because my voice has a very distinctive tone that i would love to capture in a song it's world weary yeah kind of just like i can get much lower in the morning i just get all like a steven merritt kind of like improbably low voice probably
John: But I hear people, you and I both, when we start sentences sometimes, you know we start up a little higher and then we come down low.
John: You're famous for starting really high.
John: And going higher.
John: And working your way down.
John: Yeah, I do like a Mariah.
John: And then I'll add an octave.
John: Way up there.
John: And then it's just like a pachinko game.
John: It just sort of...
John: But, you know, that's all for effect.
Merlin: This is what we do.
John: It's for effect.
John: And you hear all the just in my cough there.
John: Everything that's in the voice is in the voice.
John: I hear a lot of voiceover work being done now.
John: I'm conscious of voiceover work.
John: And although I do feel that there's something deeply wrong with the sound of my voice, when I hear other people doing...
Merlin: voiceover work i think now wait a minute i could certainly do that better than them i mean i'd need my tooth back oh is there a certain like genre i think you do great without the tooth is there a certain like genre of voiceover work where you feel that that's prevalent is this in like your first person shooter games you like to play could it be an ad for nachos public service announcement overhead at the airport like what are the kinds of ones that really get your goat
John: I already do the overhead at the airport here at SeaTac.
John: I thought I recognized that.
John: Yeah.
John: Hi, welcome to SeaTac Airport.
John: Don't leave your luggage.
John: Hi, I'm John Roderick from Seattle's Long Winters.
John: Please don't leave your luggage unattended by the baggage carousel.
John: Right.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Please move to the right.
John: Allow faster people to go by on the moving sidewalk.
John: Hi, this is John Roderick from the Long Winters.
John: There's no parking or waiting in the red zone.
Merlin: Hi.
Merlin: Hi.
Merlin: This is John Roddick from the Longwinders.
Merlin: The white area is for loading and unloading.
John: I feel like, who is the guy from Northern Exposure that does all that voiceover work?
Merlin: Holling Van Coor?
Merlin: No, the other guy.
Merlin: The radio guy.
Merlin: John Corbett.
Merlin: John Corbett.
Merlin: He's the radio boy.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: He's on the radio show.
John: I think he had the radio show.
John: John Corbett.
John: I don't know.
John: It's been a long time since I saw that TV show.
John: I think I just like saying Holling Van Coore.
John: Which one was he?
John: Oh, he's the older fellow with the money.
John: The one that's like in all the movies?
John: Holling... He's the movie star?
John: He plays the millionaire, the astronaut.
Merlin: Am I getting the name right?
Merlin: Wasn't he an astronaut?
Merlin: Holling Van Coore.
Merlin: naturalized citizen, owns and manages The Brick, a bar and restaurant which is the center of social life in Sicily.
John: Oh, no, that's a different one.
John: He's the blondie guy.
Merlin: He's not the... Who's the old guy that played the general in War Games?
Merlin: Who am I thinking of?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: That's the guy that I'm thinking of.
Merlin: War Games.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, that guy.
Merlin: What's his name?
John: War Games.
John: Anyway, continue.
John: So, John Corbett does a lot of...
John: I don't know.
John: I hear his voice doing beer ads.
John: But he's got that kind of wry, like Tom Baudet, sort of like, we'll leave the light on for you, like folksy sort of.
John: I feel like if you needed a folksy voice, I feel like, do I have a folksy voice?
John: Oh, I think you're good in folksy if you choose to.
John: Well, yeah, I mean, you know, hi, this is John Roderick.
John: That's chilling.
John: I don't like that at all.
Merlin: I'll leave the...
Merlin: You sound like a clown with a van.
Merlin: Hey, can you help me find my puppy?
Merlin: I lost my puppy.
John: I broke my arm.
Merlin: I got some candy on a necklace I can give you if you get in the van and help me come find my puppy.
Merlin: I'm a happy clown.
Merlin: Hi.
Merlin: You ever listen to that one song, Exploder, Everybody Pass the Man?
Merlin: That was my song.
Merlin: That was my song about the astronauts and whatnot.
Merlin: They break down the tracks, get in my van.
Merlin: They like Bailey's.
Merlin: But you like some Bailey's.
Merlin: Remember I sang that part about the crew compartments breaking up?
Merlin: That was me.
Merlin: I'm John Roderick.
Merlin: Yeah, you could do better.
Merlin: Whoa, John Corbett is six foot five inches tall.
Merlin: He's tall.
Merlin: He's married to Bo Derek?
Merlin: No, he's not.
Merlin: Shit, dog!
Merlin: He's been married to Bo Derek since 2002?
John: That can't be true.
Merlin: It's on the Internet Science page, it says it.
Merlin: Look at that.
John: I'll be hornswoggled.
John: In the 90s, when they were making that show...
John: Um, they were, you know, they were filming that right here in, uh, in good old Seattle town, right, right outside of town, right outside of town, up in the mountains.
John: And, uh, so he was around and I think he bought a bar here in Seattle.
John: I think he bought the, um, the merchant's cafe or something.
John: One of those old, one of the bars from like, it was cool, but there was, you know, there, there was a lot of scuttlebutt around town about him.
John: And sort of the fact that he was you know, he was sown his wild oats, but it was the 90s.
John: He was a TV star He's born in 1961 meaning he was 30 in 1991 He was at the peak of his fame
John: I bet he was causing real trouble around here.
John: Getting more tail than Sinatra.
John: But, you know, I wasn't traveling in those circles.
John: So Bo Derek's five years older than he is.
John: He's 56.
John: She's 61.
John: I would have guessed that she's 82.
John: Well, you know, I'm sure during the peak of her fame, 1979, she would have been, what would she have been?
John: She would have been 31.
Merlin: Alexa, how old was Bo Derek in 1979?
John: Thanks.
John: How old?
John: 32 years?
John: 22.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Okay, 22.
Merlin: 22 or 23, according to the lady in a tube.
John: Right.
John: So, you know, if you're going to be in a movie and run on a beach in slow motion in a bikini, 22 is kind of like... That's an excellent beach running age.
John: Yeah, that's a good window for that.
John: And somehow...
John: John Corbett and Bo Derek met one another.
John: That's what I'm curious about.
John: Like, how... Yeah, I would have guessed that they were 40 years apart.
Merlin: 30 years apart.
Merlin: Yeah, not much.
Merlin: John and Bo moved to Germany, returned after... Wait a minute.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Oh, that's John Derek.
Merlin: Okay, hang on.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: John Corbett.
Merlin: Oh, she only marries John so far.
John: Hey, heads up.
John: She marries Johns.
John: Wait a minute.
John: I'm still, you know, I still feel like Winona Ryder and I have a future together because in 1992, all the Johns were marrying Winona Ryder.
Merlin: Oh, actor, singer, guitarist.
Merlin: Okay, I'm a little bit lost.
Merlin: So voiceover work.
John: Your sarcophagal rattle.
John: But the thing about voiceover work is it's like all work.
John: I don't know if you know this about work.
John: Tell me about work.
John: There are a lot of people that want it.
John: Oh, I see.
John: There's always somebody hungrier.
John: Yeah, people want to work.
John: And I had quite a few friends from Seattle who reached the age of, let's say, 28.
John: And they felt like Seattle was too small for them.
John: And they moved.
John: They moved to other places.
John: For instance, Reggie Watts, Reginald Watts, was a Seattle... One of your former nemeses.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: He was a Seattle...
John: star he had a band called mock tube um that's that's uh german for more tube more tube more tub uh and he he lorded it around seattle pretty good but then he decided that this town was too small and he moved to new york and it turns out he was correct and i remember saying to him even uh when he was my nemesis
John: I heard that he was moving to New York and
John: We bumped into each other at a party in one of those situations where I went around a corner and he was coming around the other corner and we literally went like clonk.
John: And then we're standing there.
John: Now you got to talk.
John: And there's still that whole business between us.
John: Yes.
John: And so we're standing there looking at each other.
John: And I said in a way that I thought at the time was very generous.
John: Now I realize it's a kind of generosity thing.
John: That, you know, everybody's got a different kind of generosity.
John: Oh, huh.
John: And one of the generosities that I have is that I like to give shout outs to people.
John: I know people that don't give shout outs.
John: And I always wonder why.
John: It doesn't cost you anything to say, hey, this person helped me.
John: Or, hey, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for this or that.
John: The other kind of shout out I give is the small one, the personal one between two people where I go, you know what?
John: Even though I don't like you, I admire your thing.
John: And so Reggie and I were standing there at this party and looking at each other.
John: And I said, you know, Reggie, I hear you're moving to New York.
John: And frankly, I think Seattle's too small for you.
John: I think you're bigger than this town.
John: And I think moving to New York's the right move.
John: And he was surprised because I also could have said,
John: reginald and gone around him uh and i think that that uh that let us part on good terms oh you feel like he was uh he was accepting of that as a kind of compliment i think he i think he appreciated it yes because he was you know he was on the cusp of making that move and was probably anxious about it because now when we see each other
John: it's it's uh you know that's a long time ago but i had not i we had he and i even had uh mutual friends who moved to la during that same time to because seattle they felt seattle was too small for them and they were going to go down there to la and
John: become actors you gotta go if you're gonna play you're gonna play in the big show you gotta go to LA that's right you hear that you hear that train no I just talked to some people the other day in San Francisco who said they're rock musicians did you and I talk about this who said that you can't be a rock musician in San Francisco East Bay right
John: Well, no, you've got to move to L.A.
John: Oh, I see.
John: However, L.A.
John: has no clubs and San Francisco still inexplicably, although no rock scene anymore, still has rock clubs.
Merlin: I could not name a San Francisco band right now.
Merlin: Yeah, isn't that a tragedy?
Merlin: Well, part of it's me and my age, and I don't go to Bottom of the Hill anymore.
Merlin: But there was a time when there was like a dozen bands that I followed very actively, for sure.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: You were like Mr. San Francisco.
Merlin: I was mobbed up.
Merlin: You got Vanderslice.
Merlin: You got Oranger.
Merlin: You got Beulah.
Merlin: There were just so many good bands in the early 2000s.
Merlin: Action Slacks.
Merlin: Action Slacks.
Merlin: Oh, you know, I went to school with their drummer.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: We went to the new college together.
Yeah, Marty!
Yeah.
John: But San Francisco still has all these rock clubs.
John: So the San Francisco music scene right now, I think, is just the L.A.
John: music scene.
John: Interesting.
John: Easy for them to go up there and play shows like, you know, the kind of shows that you play when you're in a band, which is not always a full venue.
John: You want a place that has 200 capacity where if there's only 100 people there, it still feels like a good room.
John: And so there are a lot of those kind of bands in L.A.
John: that go up and play shows.
John: Anyway, so I have a pretty good handful of friends that went down to Los Angeles to become actors.
Merlin: Can you give a redacted version of how that went mostly?
John: Well, it was a time, I think, where there was a feeling that sketch comedy...
John: was going to be a thing that came out of L.A.
John: instead of out of New York.
John: And so there were some edgy sketch people that went down.
John: And the edgy sketch people very quickly transitioned to, I hope I can get a role in this commercial for Kodak.
Right.
John: And then pretty soon they were just auditioning for anything.
John: And even though they were only 32, they were, like, trying to get the role of the dad in the Palmolive ad.
John: Oh, man.
John: And then pretty soon they were waiters.
John: Yeah.
John: And or or, you know, or not just eat you alive, even on a good day on a good day.
John: Jeez.
John: And what they would say is for every role that I would go audition for, there were dozens, not only dozens of people looking for that job, but dozens of more handsome, better educated, younger, hungrier people looking for the job.
John: And it was and it just felt like, wow, up in Seattle, I was kind of a big deal.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I had a theater company.
Merlin: We had our own space.
Merlin: We were called David Sedaris has a hilarious bit about this from a million years ago.
Merlin: We talked about when he was in high school and I think North Carolina, you know, he was like the mopey goth kid.
Merlin: like the smart mopey like ooh that guy's dark and dangerous and then he's like he's like I went to college and I'm paraphrasing here but something like he went to college and like there were so many more of him who were better at it than him it sucks because that's your deal you got your deal like in high school you get to have a deal yeah you get a deal I mean especially like you could paint a skull on your jean jacket with liquid paper you're probably the only guy that did that I was the only guy in Anchorage that did that yep
John: You come down to Seattle, everybody's got a liquid paper skull.
John: I always felt like it was a big advantage to me to go to Gonzaga for a couple of years.
John: Because that was during a period of my life when my only goal was to be the one the furthest on the fringe.
John: And in Spokane, and particularly at Gonzaga, a Jesuit school with an undergraduate population of 2,500 kids, it was not much effort to be the one that was the furthest out.
John: And there, you know, there are always going to be people that are further out in in one direction or another.
John: They're always there were always people that took more drugs than me.
John: Right.
John: Or that were more.
John: Like strictly edgy.
John: But in terms of being one person that was the furthest out from the.
John: From the center whilst still being in the orbit.
John: Right.
John: Like, that was easy to be for me at Gonzaga.
John: If I'd been at the University of Washington, which had 40,000 students at that time, to be that person, I would have had to have been a lot more at risk of injury, first of all.
John: Because...
John: I would walk into a party at Gonzaga and do just that stupid shit.
John: You'd just break a wine bottle over your head.
John: It's much harder to do than it seems.
John: It hurts a lot more because in the movies, of course, they use wine bottles that are made to break.
John: They make them out of sugar.
John: They don't make real wine bottles out of sugar.
John: You can really knock yourself out.
John: It might be an unexploited opportunity, let's be honest.
John: On University Avenue...
John: Would have it would have I would have been even worse off than I am.
John: I would have been missing more teeth than I am You know and so to be in that to be honest to be the weird fish in a small pond Helped me I think a lot protected me and It is like being the edgy goth kid at your high school where you're just like it keeps you keeps you safe.
John: I think I
John: If I'd gone to L.A.
John: or even San Francisco, certainly New York, it would have been a very different thing for me, I think.
John: Because the first time the Long Winters arrived in New York City, we had a big article in the Village Voice.
John: We played a show, our first ever show in New York, and it was full and the audience all knew our songs.
John: And I think it was because we were from Seattle.
John: We're exotic.
John: If we'd been a New York band, we would have just been just another New York band to them.
John: But now, you know, we live out on the West Coast, and now it's like I walk around and go, oh, hey, everybody, it's me.
Merlin: This also gets into this broader problem.
Merlin: With expertise, experience, and how we evaluate how we're doing, whatever it is that we do, which is like, you know, when I was a weird, like, eighth grader making up my own games that I could play by myself and reading books, and like, I had this on my own kind of selfishness.
Merlin: self-assessed idea of like how smart i was alongside other people like i tested well and i was a reader and there's all this stuff but like if you had exposed if i've been exposed to a lot of like genuinely smart people maybe even people who are younger than me i would have utterly withered and i think when you get to something like the business that is show and it's not show friend it's show business i think one of the things with that is like i i feel i don't know i just feel like this is such a thing with people who want to go into the arts especially is that um being
Merlin: Let's even say you're talented, like you're empirically talented.
Merlin: Well, there's a lot of people who are empirically talented.
Merlin: There has to be some kind of... And I feel like you really see this in New York, whether you're talking about being in plays or delivering pizzas.
Merlin: There's a certain kind of bare-knuckle, real-world reality to having done something a lot in a certain place.
Merlin: Certainly, you could look at something like stand-up comedy and somebody who assumes that they're really great at stand-up versus somebody who's done it even like 20 times.
Merlin: There's a huge difference.
Merlin: And I guess I feel like a lot of it comes down to not just whether you're good, whether you assess that you're good, but how much you love and, like, thrive on the grind of whatever that industry or job is, right?
Merlin: And I think this goes for, like, a million things.
Merlin: Like, you think you want to become, like...
Merlin: You know, you don't realize like working a lot of working in an office is not the practitioner of your skill that you learned.
Merlin: It's learning how to deal with people and being on time for meetings and being in your chair and all this kind of stuff where it's like, well, you know, it's without having on the job experience and exposure to the reality of a job.
Merlin: I guess what I'm saying is somebody who's great at the hustle in L.A., I'm going to conjecture and who has the right agent might get way better roles than somebody who's empirically talented, but is not great at the hustle.
Merlin: That's absolutely the case.
Merlin: Is this too obvious a point?
Merlin: I feel like you can really lose this in the lights.
Merlin: The reality of every job is, and it doesn't just come down to hustle, but it's something where you're, I don't know, maybe invigorated by all the losses somehow.
Merlin: But there's something where if you look at everybody else in that audition and you go, oh, these people are younger, they're less experienced, they're da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Merlin: They may have some kind of a fire or grit that you just don't have that is utterly critical for even getting your first role.
John: When you're young and starting out, I think it's easy to make the mistake of thinking that what happens is people with hustle get past you even though you have more talent.
John: But when you get old, I think, at least in show friends, I mean show business.
John: Sorry, Sean.
John: We got that wrong.
John: I always get that mixed up.
John: You realize that the people that get past you are the ones that have hustle and passion.
John: more talent.
John: Like it's very rare.
John: Somebody said this to me the other day.
John: Did it bother you?
John: Does it still bother you that all those, uh, it was a person that was trying to compliment me about the sound of my band and they were like, well, you know, I love your band so much.
John: Does it bother you that all those other people got famous and there was something about the long winters that didn't catch fire?
John: Does that like bother you?
John: And I said, do you mean that it bothers me that the new pornographers and Spoon and Band of Horses and the Decembrists all got famous and not me?
John: Because those bands are all great.
John: Like they're not.
John: I don't think that Band of Horses got famous and the Long Winters didn't.
John: And it was because they hustled.
John: It's because they're successful.
John: They had an incredible sound.
Merlin: But it wasn't because a witch put a lucky spell on them.
Merlin: It's because they worked really hard.
Merlin: They were killer, too.
Merlin: New pornographers just keep spooned the same thing.
Merlin: To me, a great example is always mountain goats.
Merlin: They just keep putting out records and touring.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, one way to get lucky is to work really fucking hard.
John: Well, and mountain goats are an interesting example because...
John: And people love them.
John: I know you love them.
John: I haven't kept up as much lately, but I have great admiration for them.
John: Yeah, and I never liked them.
John: I just don't like it.
John: It's not my thing.
John: I don't like the sound.
John: And so that is an example of one where I go, in a weak moment, I will say, well, yeah, if you put out 40 records or whatever, people will stick with you.
John: But when I hear people talk about them so worshipfully, I also have to realize, oh, that's just not I'm not hearing it.
John: It's not that it's not there.
Merlin: It's just that it's for somebody.
Merlin: I mean, the one might be Ted Leo.
John: That guy works really hard.
John: He works really hard.
John: And Ted also, during the authenticity wars, Ted maintained authenticity in a way that... I fought with your father in the authenticity wars.
John: It's very hard.
John: I mean, Ted worked hard also to maintain unimpeachability in the Fugazi model, where you go, look, those guys never...
John: They never charged $40.
John: Wasn't Chisel a DC band?
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And, oh, were they DC?
Merlin: He was from, I listened to an interview with him recently.
Merlin: It was really good, but he talked about leaving.
Merlin: He's from Connecticut, right?
Merlin: Somewhere in New England, in New England, and then he had moved.
Merlin: Oh, no, he's from Jersey, I think.
Merlin: Oh, I think you're right.
Merlin: I think he's in Providence now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't be creepy.
Merlin: He's from outside prop.
Mm-hmm.
John: He owns a little church.
John: He owns his own church.
John: Not really a church.
John: It's more of a Grange Hall in a little old town.
Merlin: I took you off your point.
Merlin: When people ask you how you feel about the fact that the Long Winters aren't famous alongside bands that you kind of came up with, how do you feel about that?
John: But what ends up happening is in the young middle of my career, there were all kinds of bands that had the same amount or slightly more
John: uh, juice and energy in the local scene and in the sort of CMJ dominated, uh, indie rock music scene nationally that I did feel that way about.
John: Like, why the hell are those guys getting a one page in magnet?
John: But the fact is I had a one page in magnet.
John: I had a three page in magnet.
John: Yeah.
John: What do you think about that?
Yeah.
John: But the bands that won out, because those bands are gone now.
John: You just don't hear as much from Not A Surf these days, do you?
Merlin: They're still doing it, right?
John: They're on tour in Europe right now.
Merlin: But Not A Surf is a good example of a band like that.
Merlin: They were, to me, maybe because I just had Barsouk on the brain, but there was that time when Let Go came out where they were just...
John: omnipresent in my circles yeah and they are they always sold more records than we did and i think they're a better band than we were in in all of the measurements of a band their live show was killer worked harder than we did their songs were catchier um you could you know you can go back and forth all day i think your songs are pretty good john i gotta tell you you you could put but i mean you put the best 10
John: A.C.
John: Newman songs up on the big board?
John: Yeah, but you've got a lot of diversity.
Merlin: Your catalog's got a lot of diversity to it.
Merlin: I was singing your praises on a podcast that'll come out Thursday about just the... I'm not here to blow smoke up your skirt, but no, I think what you have released is super interesting and diverse and very high quality, and your songwriting is really, really good.
Merlin: That's one of my biggest attractions to you as a performer is your songs are just so good.
Merlin: This is an issue, though, I think, in the band.
Merlin: I like Not A Surf a lot, but I think their five best-known songs are not as good as your five best-known songs.
Merlin: I like them a lot.
Merlin: Don't get me wrong.
John: But their songs sound like not a surf song.
John: That's true.
John: The Strokes have no diversity.
John: They have a lot of eighth notes.
John: They're into the eighth notes in not a surf.
John: The Strokes, their songs all sound like the Strokes.
Merlin: They sure do.
John: Right?
John: The Interpol, their songs all sound like Joinavage.
Joinavage.
John: But when those songs come on, you're like, hey, that's got to be the new Interpol song.
John: Whereas the Long Winters music all sounds like who the fuck knows, right?
John: I mean, the only thing we don't have is a ska song.
John: It's an everything-everything sound, and that, if you're trying to make a band popular, is a bad strategy.
John: I mean, the Mountain Goats.
John: Every song sounds like the Mountain Goats.
John: Yeah.
John: You're never going to listen to a Mountain Goat song and go, wow, is this some kind of orc pop?
John: Is this the Smashing Pumpkins?
John: Yeah, right, right, right.
John: So it's a, it was a bad, what I never did.
John: And this is the other thing, right?
John: I had a lot of these mixed ideas.
John: Like I looked at somebody like Ted Leo and I admired the fact that he stayed true to his school, but my school was cut your own hair.
John: My school was not be, um, like sound like your influences, right?
John: It was cut your own hair.
John: And so right before every single photo shoot that we took, I cut my own hair, which means that every photo of us, I looked terrible.
John: And as I did it, I thought that people would look at the pictures and they would identify a kind of truth about me.
John: Like, oh, that guy is true.
John: But people don't look at it and say that.
John: They say, why is he, I mean, why does he have that haircut?
John: That's a terrible haircut.
John: And so what I thought I was communicating, like I thought I was communicating in the song Cinnamon, this whole story about the Botter-Meinhof gang, but I didn't give any evidence of it, right?
John: And so I'm cutting my own hair before every photo shoot because I believe in the principle of
Merlin: but the principle does not convey i see what you're saying people couldn't look at you and know that you're a vegan no you know i mean you know similarly like there's something there's something in your cred or know that you're straight edge they couldn't like look at you and be able to glean unless you had a big x on your hand right well and the thing about ted is that he had a big v for vegan on his shirt and he talked about it in every interview
John: And what I had was like, you know, I had a suit like the Riddler covered with question marks.
John: Every single tour, it was like this tour, I'm wearing a striped tie and I look like I'm in the Decembrists.
John: And this tour, I'm wearing a gold leotard.
John: It's top hats for everybody.
John: I started out one tour where I was like, I'm just going to wear this track suit through the whole tour.
John: all three of my bandmates were like, when are you going to change out of your pajamas?
John: And I said, I just, it's very comfortable, but like what the, I, you know, I looked like I was in the happy Monday.
John: So there was no consistency and it was all, it was all in my head that I was doing something that, that people were going to pick up on.
John: But what I was really doing was this like
John: just this eclecticism that all people picked up on was, wait, is that the guy from LCD sound system?
John: Except he is, except he's wearing like loafers and a bowler like that.
John: He's dressed like clockwork orange and it doesn't make any sense.
John: And that, and that's, I think true in the, in the songs too.
John: Like I, I, every song I just, I started completely fresh as like a new experiment with,
John: which I thought was a great premise.
John: But when you listen to the records, you're like, you never know what's coming next.
John: What's coming next?
John: Is the bass line going to be played on tambourine?
John: Like, I don't know.
John: Huh.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: So what from that is to be gleaned?
Merlin: Because there's a lot of angles to that.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, no, I mean, I'm just saying, like, there's a lot of... One angle is you thought you were going for something and it didn't come across.
Merlin: Another could be a lesson for the youths.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: about how to do your thing.
Merlin: Do you feel that part of the success of other bands is owed to the fact that they didn't do stuff like cut their hair before a photo shoot?
John: They went and got it professionally cut at great expense.
Merlin: Professionally cut by a professional.
John: And told the person, will you cut my hair so that I look cool?
John: They probably brought in a picture of somebody and said this.
John: Can you make me look like Ron Wood in 1972?
John: Sure.
John: And, you know, and I was sitting in the mirror going, hmm, that's not even.
John: Maybe I should cut up the other side a little bit.
John: Oh, it's not even again.
John: Maybe I should cut it up the other side a little bit.
John: And then pretty soon, you know, like I look I look like a like a girl in college who's experimenting.
John: i always wondered what would happen i look back sometimes and wonder if in when i was 16 if i had just bought a leather jacket a good one that fit me and had just worn that leather jacket oh that like that'd be your thing i had that leather jacket i was a guy that had that leather jacket uh
John: That the lot, it would have just solved a lot of problems between the age of 16 and 26.
John: Yeah.
John: Because you wouldn't have to think about it.
John: You just wear that jacket.
Merlin: You could be like, I think it's like a college people show up at college and they became, they become known for their one thing.
Merlin: Like it could be skateboard Scott or, or, you know, it could be Scott or snake Amy.
Merlin: I've told you about snake Amy.
Merlin: They're different Amys.
Merlin: And in the canning of things, there was like snake Amy.
Merlin: She's the one that had the snake.
Merlin: She had a pet snake.
Merlin: She would carry around with her.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And so in this case, the leather jacket would be your snake.
John: And if you picked hardcore as your sound,
John: Like hardcore is, well, it's right in the name.
John: It's hardcore.
John: Right.
John: So it's all on there.
John: And so, and the sound of hardcore is very distinctive and you can learn it.
John: And so then you are, if you stick in the way that we're describing, if you stick around long enough,
John: In hardcore, you become part of hardcore.
John: You're no longer just some aspirant.
John: You are part of hardcore.
John: And once you become part of it, then what you did when you were young is now part of the history of hardcore.
John: Oh, you were there.
Merlin: You were in the trenches.
John: That's right.
John: Yeah, but you got stories to tell.
John: You got stories.
John: And at the time, there were bigger bands than you.
John: You were just like, you know, just gutting it out.
John: But now, when those bands go away and you're still around, now you kind of...
John: have written the history of hardcore right right right right you survived you survived and the victors write the history but if you start out and you're just like i'm just you know i'm just like oh our band is is different we're on our own we're doing our own thing and you don't invent a genre
John: which is very hard, very, very hard to do.
John: When people look back, they're like, well, you weren't really part of any scene back then.
John: So it's not like you rewrote the history of that scene.
John: You just floundered the whole time and you kind of clamored up onto whatever like raft you managed to get on.
John: Right.
John: And then the raft went over the falls.
Merlin: This is like why people, I mean, you know, I don't want to cast dispersions, but as you and I both know, there's a handful of characters who keep reappearing in every music documentary.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Right.
Merlin: So you get a Fleer, you get a Chuck Klosterman.
Merlin: It's your Dave Grohl.
Merlin: He's in everyone.
Merlin: You get Dave Grohl.
Merlin: You get Thurston Moore.
Merlin: We're still talking to the Moody Blues an awful lot these days.
Merlin: They have a lot of stories to tell.
Merlin: People feel very strongly about the Moody Blues.
Merlin: I don't understand that.
Merlin: Maybe I'm just not deep enough into their catalog.
Merlin: i don't think they have a deep catalog but i'll see now i'll sit around i'll sit around and uh and i'll uh uh i'll watch me uh a genesis concert from 1972 that's just the thing i'll do i'll just sit there and watch a low resolution like something from like like i don't know something around nursery crime or foxtrot and i'll just watch i'll just watch a fucking genesis concert oh yeah it's magic it's
Merlin: It's so weird and so good.
Merlin: They were such a good band.
Merlin: And most people just look at it and go, why is that guy dressed as a flower?
Merlin: But they really brought it.
Merlin: They brought it and they toured the shit out of it.
Merlin: I don't know what your feelings are about Genesis, but Phil Collins was a really good drummer and a really good singer.
Merlin: And Steve Hackett, he plays that guitar like ringing a bell.
Merlin: But Moody Blues, I don't find myself watching Moody Blues concerts.
Merlin: Is that bad on me?
Merlin: Should I be a gentle giant?
Merlin: Should I be expanding my catalog more?
Merlin: I like Gentle Giant, by the way.
Merlin: I think I'm more familiar with Gentle Giant.
Merlin: I know probably two or three Moody Blues songs, but I think I'm probably more familiar with Gentle Giant as a band.
Merlin: Go figure that out.
John: I feel like Moody Blues, I am somebody who cannot...
John: be mad at the Moody Blues.
John: That's very generous of you.
Merlin: Letters you've written, never meaning to send.
John: Yeah.
John: I still listen to Richard Harris sing about how he left his cake out in the rain.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Yeah.
John: and so the recipe again that's that's a good performance that's a pretty good performance it's great you know i mean i'll listen to uh manheim steamrollers christmas every year not because i want to but because my sister insists that's nice what's the band that does the heavy metal christmas stuff now who's that i don't want i don't want to hear that have you heard the heavy metal christmas songs i have i have is it trans-siberian railroad
Merlin: It might be.
John: Heavy metal Christmas.
John: I wouldn't follow that.
John: I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't.
John: No, thanks.
John: It's excruciating.
John: But, you know, what Moody Blues was, was they were like they were like the guys following Pink Floyd.
John: And they they were taking Pink Floyd and they were making it a little bit more palatable.
John: And I'm not I don't disagree with that.
John: I'm not I won't argue with them.
John: But there are a lot there's a lot of anger at Pink Floyd or at Moody Blues.
John: And and I don't you know, it's sort of like.
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: Don't get me wrong.
Merlin: I don't mean to be slagging off on Moody Blues.
Merlin: I'm not familiar enough to know.
Merlin: But that's... So now what I'm thinking of, God, I can't believe I'm saying this on the show.
Merlin: Do you ever watch the television show Portlandia?
Merlin: It's okay to say no.
Merlin: There's a recent episode of Portlandia.
John: Wait a minute, wait a minute.
John: I love to go watch Portlandia sketches online.
John: And partly it is because I have very, very good feelings about Fred Armiston.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't learn too much.
Merlin: But yeah, he's very talented, and his eyes alone are very, very funny.
Merlin: We are currently binging this program at our house.
John: He sent me a very nice email one time, just apropos of nothing, based on his own just generousness.
John: About the band?
John: Uh, no, uh, just like, uh, just out, not out of the blue, but he was, you know, he, he felt, he felt at that time that I could use or not.
John: No, no, I don't think he even thought that way.
John: He just became aware of me and wanted to send me an email.
John: That's the best kind of message to receive full stop.
John: That is the best message.
John: It was basically like he turned a corner, he bumped into me and he said, yay, you know what?
John: You're too big for this town.
John: Like he gave me a little, he gave me just a little like, Hey, I became aware of you.
John: And I just wanted to say, I really like what I just like your thing.
John: And so I don't want to hear any bad things about him.
John: I'm not sure he's a weirdo.
Merlin: There's two mainstream performers that I can think of that, and neither of these is anything too obscure, but there are two people where I just look at them and I just start laughing.
Merlin: Will Ferrell, I'm going to be honest with you.
Merlin: Will Ferrell, he is just naturally very funny.
Merlin: Will Ferrell and Fred Armisen, they both have very funny eyes.
Merlin: Even before they're doing anything, their eyes are just funny.
Merlin: I have never gotten into Will Ferrell.
Merlin: It's totally understandable.
Merlin: Totally understandable.
Merlin: You have to understand, at the heart of it, Will Ferrell is a weirdo.
Merlin: That's the great part.
Merlin: He gets known for these bits in the cowbell and whatnot, but the only reason I mention this is there was... I don't know why I'm telling you this.
Merlin: I should cut this out.
Merlin: But two or three episodes ago in Portlandia, there's a running character on the show named Spike, who's like the punk rock guy who's in his 50s.
Merlin: And Spike decides it's time.
Merlin: It's time to speak truth to power.
Merlin: It's time to get his old band, Riot Spray, back together.
Oh.
Merlin: And we know he's this crusty punk rocker.
Merlin: And so Riot Spray, it turns out, and this is so great, it's Henry Rollins, Chris Novoselic, and Brendan Canty from Fugazi.
Merlin: And it's actually...
Merlin: And Chris Novoselic, he looks like a guy you would just see at Whole Foods.
Merlin: He's a painted man with glasses down on his nose.
John: Was he wearing a toque?
Merlin: But when you see him around town, does he just kind of look like a guy you'd see at Whole Foods?
John: Well, so Chris moved to...
John: the most rural place in Washington.
John: In Western Washington, I should say.
John: There are rural places in Eastern Washington that are very rural.
John: You can get out there where you come over the rise and there's an abandoned house sitting on a... That's like Second Amendment country, I'm guessing.
John: Yeah.
John: It's the High Plains.
John: But in the West of Washington, there are a lot of places where it just rains all the time.
John: And the main...
John: The main cash crop is cranberries.
John: Cranberries.
John: And there are a lot of fishermen that are the kind of fishermen that just every time they go out, they may not come back.
John: You know, the kind of like deadliest catch.
John: They're the they're the real crazy ones.
John: The ones whose eyes are permanently squinty and the wind blows all the time.
John: And there are there shellfish people.
John: And they're very shellfish.
John: Stupid word.
John: But he moved down there and bought some land.
John: And I know that territory pretty well.
John: And I can only imagine, even if you buy the hillside...
John: The ground is always soggy, right?
John: You're never really standing on hard ground.
John: I bet you really got to want to live there.
John: Well, but it's kind of where he grew up, like out in Aberdeen.
John: This is the same country.
John: Okay.
John: Aberdeen's where Nirvana started, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And there's no economy.
John: I mean, there used to be logging, but that's mostly gone.
John: And he got...
John: So two things that he did that I think are great.
John: One, he got his private pilot's license.
John: That's cool.
John: So every time he goes somewhere.
John: I approve of that.
John: I approve of that.
John: As an aging rock star thing, I approve of the pilot's license.
John: Yeah, it's great.
John: But I mean, it's not like he has like a Learjet.
John: He drives a little, you know, a Cessna 172, like.
John: And he when he comes to Seattle, he flies.
John: He flies himself up there.
John: And it's kind of cool.
John: It's great.
John: But the other thing he did was he got himself elected to the Grange, the local like agriculture board.
John: Is that like a cowboy congress?
John: Yeah, it's effectively like the government for the region.
John: But all it is is they all get together in like a hall and argue about cranberries.
John: But he's, like, active in super local politics, like the local politics of this crazy little, like, way west super Lewis and Clark outpost out there.
John: When I was running for city council, he and I talked every week because he was really interested in Seattle politics and he really wanted –
John: He really wanted to help me and he really wanted to make sure that I had my platform straight.
John: And 90% of the advice he gave me and the stuff he wanted to talk about was like,
John: Dead on.
John: Always bring cupcakes, that kind of thing.
John: Well, and just like, you know, you need to like, you need to interact.
Merlin: I'm kidding, but he knows whereof he speaks here because he's dealt with ordinary characters in a small town.
John: Well, and people tried to get him to... There was a brief moment where he was put up to run for national office, I think.
John: Either senator, maybe governor...
John: I forget what it was, but he was he was proposed as a politician himself.
John: And I think he got into the race and the first press conference he had, somebody was like, so when Kurt Cobain died of heroin, did that affect you?
John: And he was like, get me out of here.
John: And so he said, that's not for me.
John: That world is not where I want to be.
Merlin: Just so you know, right there, that's a pretty good example of what I was talking about before.
Merlin: I think you kind of walked that path a little bit, too, where I have a real clear idea of what I could do once I'm in here to help this stuff out.
Merlin: But boy, I hadn't thought about you.
Merlin: You're the poster boy for that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The whole like, oh, if you don't love this grind.
John: Doesn't matter if you're good at the job.
John: And like I said at the time, I think, you know, like to be a good city council person and to be good at running for city council are two totally different jobs.
John: And you have to be good at both.
John: But to get elected, all you have to be good at is the running part.
John: And then once you get in.
John: is when people decide or discover whether or not you're good at the other part.
John: Then you just concentrate on the graft and greed.
John: And there are a couple of people on the Seattle City Council that were running when I was running, and one in particular, I guess, who ran and won and then is now on there.
John: And I think that, I don't know if it's the consensus yet, but I think it's clear, like, oh, not as good at it as might have been.
John: Yeah, fighting the revolution is not the same as running the Banana Republic.
John: Right.
John: 10% of the advice that Chris gave me was about cranberry farming, which was not useful in running for office in Seattle.
Merlin: Did he sound wise?
John: He just had some stuff that he wanted to make sure was on my agenda.
John: Some old cranberry wisdom.
John: And I was like, well, you know, we don't do as much cranberry stuff out here as you guys do down there.
John: He could be a very, very specific kind of political consultant.
John: It was not a problem because the rest of his advice was so good.
John: But, yeah, he is a very, very, very unusual man and, you know, like wonderful, wonderful.
John: I told you about the event, didn't I, where Duff McKagan asked him to come interview him for the release of Duff's book.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And they showed up at the theater.
John: Duff's been on Portlandia.
John: I bet he has.
John: He was on there with the St.
John: Vincent one time.
John: It's been suggested or it's been asked why I was never on Portlandia.
John: But you know what I didn't do?
John: I didn't network.
John: I didn't write Fred Armisen back and say, hey, what's up?
John: Just checking in.
John: Hey, man.
John: Hi.
John: I wrote him back and I said, thank you so much for your kind letter.
John: And he said, no problem.
John: And then I was like, well, I don't have anything else to say to him.
Merlin: I know, I know.
Merlin: Isn't that the worst?
Merlin: I could write him back and say, like, I love your eyes.
Merlin: I almost wrote the McElroys this morning just to compliment them on their Casper ad read.
Merlin: And then I thought, you know what?
Merlin: They don't need that.
John: No, but you know what?
Merlin: They love hearing from you because they really admire you.
Merlin: I really admire them.
Merlin: But I thought, you know what?
Merlin: I shouldn't do that.
Merlin: Because when you contact somebody, you make it about you.
Merlin: Unless you're somebody like a Fred Armisen who makes it about the other person.
Merlin: That's a nice thing.
Merlin: You should write to Reggie Watts.
John: Oh, well, I mean, I've made all the compliments to Reggie that that our relationship needs.
John: He is sufficiently complimented for the rest of your relationship.
John: Well, maybe not.
John: Maybe we'll do it together and I'll be like, that was great, Reggie.
John: But to write him now would be he would get the email and he'd be like, I wonder what he wants.
John: like for me to write fred armiston now and say hey yeah i mean i think i think the season's already done yeah yeah no they're done they uh i had an interview with carrie yeah it's all over too late for me to be on portlandia just as it's too late for me to be on a lot of things but you've gotten that leather jacket although i should have although you know what remember it wasn't very long ago when i was saying
John: I've never won an award.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of an ongoing lament for you is you've never gotten one.
Merlin: It always struck me that it wasn't that you felt like, maybe I'm getting this wrong, but it wasn't precisely that you felt like you were due an award for a given thing, but it was the bigger subset of like, why the fuck have I never gotten an award?
John: Well, or like, yeah, right.
John: What would the award be?
John: But it seems like everybody's got an award.
John: Everybody gets awards.
John: People get awards right and left.
John: You could get a Webby, you know?
John: I mean, they're just giving that shit away.
John: So I was sitting at home, and the Grammys were on, and I knew it.
John: And so I was avoiding all media because who wants that?
John: Who wants to be watching those?
John: I'm even on the Grammy board.
John: I vote in the Grammys, but I don't want to watch the show.
John: No, thanks.
John: But then I get a tweet or wait a minute.
John: No.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, hmm.
Merlin: Maybe I got a letter from somebody.
John: I got a letter from somebody.
John: And maybe it was Amy herself.
John: Anyway.
John: Amy's been on Portlandia.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: Amy was their housekeeper.
John: She was great.
John: She was great.
John: I've seen that episode.
John: So all of a sudden I'm texting with Amy and she won the Grammy for Best Folk Album.
John: Really?
John: That's amazing.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Well, and I wouldn't have ever thought of her as a folk artist.
John: Yeah, yeah, right, right, right, right.
John: Like, what is a folk artist?
John: Yeah, some of their categories are a little bit long in the tooth, but yeah.
John: But so here she is, Best Folk Album.
John: And I realized as we're texting back and forth, wait a minute, I wrote a song on that album.
John: Oh.
John: And so this isn't an example.
Merlin: Will you be engraved somewhere?
John: Well, this is what I'm wondering.
John: Because it's not an example of Amy's album winning best packaging.
John: which is there for the music for the folks for the folk music it's there for the music and so i did not say to amy where's my parade you might have seemed a little needy i contacted my people uh in at the grammys and said asking for a friend if
John: Hypothetically, the record wins a Grammy for best in category, and your friend has written a song on that record.
John: What's the story with that?
John: I know that you don't get one of the little gramophones.
John: One of the gold gramophones.
John: But is there something?
John: And they came back and said, yes, you get a very nice suitable for framing gold embossed certificate that says I won or I wrote a song on a Grammy winning album.
John: The devil, you say.
John: And so all of a sudden, it's not quite that I won exactly something.
John: Oh, no, it's worse.
Merlin: But I did get a certificate.
Merlin: Mental Illness Amy Mann Best Folk Album.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She beat out Laura Marling, Offa Rex, The Secret Sisters, and Cat Stevens.
Merlin: And Cat Stevens?
Merlin: He's called Yusuf slash Cat Stevens.
Merlin: Kapow!
Merlin: Yeah, The Laughing Apple, his album's called.
John: So, anyway, certificate.
John: And then I was like, well...
John: And the thing is, Jonathan Colton wrote a couple of songs on that record, too, so he's going to get a certificate.
Merlin: Well, that kind of takes a little off it, doesn't it?
John: It does.
John: It kind of tarnishes it a little.
John: And actually, his record was nominated for, wait for it, Best Packaging.
John: Oh, it was Good Packaging.
Merlin: And he lost... Mike came in a comic book for a Matt Fraction comic book.
Merlin: Yep, I think that's right.
Merlin: Nothing wrong with that.
John: So he's actually going to get another certificate because you get a certificate that says I was nominated for a Grammy Award.
John: So, you know, once again, like his wall of diplomas is much, much better than mine.
John: His almost looks like a dentist.
John: See, that makes it all so much worse.
John: He might even get nominated for a Tony because he...
John: Uh, because he wrote some songs on the new SpongeBob musical.
John: Oh, Jiminy.
John: But, but wait, but that's neither here nor there.
John: What I'm saying is that as I'm contemplating receiving this certificate, which I probably will not open.
John: QED.
John: I realized that a few years ago, Kathleen Edwards won a SOCAN prize.
John: which is a Canadian, a major Canadian artist.
John: That's a major Canadian award?
John: It's a major award in Canada.
John: And she won it for a song that I have a co-write on.
John: And it was generous on her part.
John: She was sitting in my living room and she was like, I want you to listen to this song and tell me what you think.
John: And she played it for me on my piano that my cousin yells about.
John: As being a weird sounding piano.
John: And I said, oh, well, that's a great song.
John: Obviously, you're a great songwriter.
John: And all I would do is change this to that.
John: And then you should add this and take that away.
John: And she gave you credit for that.
John: And she gave me songwriting credit on it.
Wow.
John: You know, and it has a part that if you listen to the song, when the part comes, you go, oh, that's very John.
John: Right.
John: But, you know, it's a wonderful song, and it's her song entirely.
John: But she gave me the songwriting credit.
John: And so when the SoCan Awards were announced, and the award was for best song,
John: So it was announced that Kathleen Edwards and John Roderick won this award, SoCAN Award.
Damn.
John: Um, but I was not in Canada and I think I don't, well, so I never wrote them a letter saying, is there a certificate or something?
John: Yeah.
John: I'm doing an article.
John: I need to know.
John: Just that curiosity.
John: Just asking for a friend.
John: Yeah.
John: And so now it occurs to me that I have another certificate of participation and
John: For a thing that I kind of was standing next to when someone won.
John: And now I'm starting to feel like, boy, I've half won a couple of things.
Merlin: You should go back through your catalog and figure out, you know, just any of your relationships and figure out what else are you owed?
John: Well, you know, I did sing...
John: The background harmonies.
John: Transatlanticism.
John: Transatlanticism.
John: Now, Sean will get one of those, too.
John: Is that going to make it worse?
John: So here's what happened.
John: Sean sang on several of the songs.
John: Well, maybe not several.
John: A handful.
John: He sang on three or something songs on that record.
John: Sean does have a gold record on his wall from transatlanticism.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Now, guess who doesn't?
John: Is it you?
John: That's right.
John: I don't have one.
John: And I think it was in the when they're sitting there with the notepad out.
John: Who do we send these to?
John: We've got to send one to old Shawnee.
John: Well, Sean was very helpful.
John: He sang on several songs.
John: He pops right to the top of the list.
John: And let's see.
John: We've got to give one to the producer and the mixer.
John: But Josh and Emily got one.
John: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: That's right on the wall there at Barsouk.
John: But, you know, what I did was I sang, come on, come on.
John: You can really hear it.
John: Once you know you're on it, it really pops.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And I sang another part.
Merlin: And Sean just sang another one of his perfect angelic parts, which he does all the time.
Merlin: That's easy for him.
Merlin: And you hear it.
Merlin: Because he's an angel.
Merlin: He sings like an angel.
Merlin: He does.
Merlin: But you, you brought your gut rattling, chest creaking, sarcophagus.
Merlin: Oh, listen to that.
John: Oh, listen to that.
Merlin: I just want to sing along with it.
John: Yep.
John: Transatlanticism.
John: I do not have the thing for the wall.
John: That then you put, you know, you kind of put it next to the bathroom and you're like, oh, that old thing, like that thing, you know, or I could not open it and it could be like a gold record.
Merlin: I love the idea of your trophy room being unopened boxes, like with a full display case and maybe a bell jar on it and a fucking plaque with a question mark.
Merlin: Like just stuff you've gotten in the mail that might be an award.
Merlin: It would be so Yoko Ono.
Merlin: It would be so strange.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: It's just a room full of beautifully framed and mounted things in envelopes.
Merlin: For all you know, it could be a Big Mouth Billy Bass, but it could also be a Grammy.
Merlin: No one's saying it's not a Grammy.
John: It's Schrodinger's Grammy.
John: Well, and, you know, right in the center, a really big box that's probably a platinum record from Death Cab for Cutie.
John: You have to imagine.
John: They did very well, John.
John: It was a very popular record.
John: It was popular.
John: And, you know, it wouldn't cost a lot to send one to everybody that worked on it.
Merlin: But who's to say how many people ended up learning about them because they came to see the opening act?
John: I think it's pretty safe to say how many people did because, you know, we can look at our own record sales.
John: You never know.
John: You never know.
John: But yeah, so I mean, so my like my metaphysical trophy wall has a lot of these like award adjacent envelopes.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I just like...
John: And of course, now we have phoning awards.
John: That's the thing.
Merlin: See, somebody went to the trouble.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: An award, a non-existent award that we made up and were mad that we weren't nominated for.
Merlin: Somebody made that real.
Merlin: Rory made that real.
Merlin: He made you the headphones.
Merlin: An award was literally invented for you.
Merlin: What could be better?
Merlin: Yeah, although I invented it.
Merlin: Or we invented it.
Merlin: Well, you conceptualized it.
John: That's right.
Merlin: But you didn't paint any fucking headphones.
John: No, I didn't take headphones and build a phony award.
John: He makes swords and stuff.
John: That guy's the real deal.
John: Well, and to be honest, those are noise protection headphones.
Merlin: You gotta just wrap it up and put it away.
Merlin: Why bother?
Merlin: Why fucking bother?