Ep. 351: "Recursive Homunculus"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: John, John, John, John, John.
Merlin: Pivoted partway.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: You watching Parliament?
John: No, I don't know what that is.
John: You mean am I watching the English Parliament?
Merlin: Shit, dog.
John: It is fucking on.
John: Are they coming apart again?
John: For the first time.
John: Oh, it is lit.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Oh, it's lit.
Merlin: It is on.
Merlin: It is lit.
Merlin: You can see...
Merlin: If you're broken inside, you can stream this on your computer devices at parliamentlive.tv or through YouTube.
John: Oh, do you like the way they yell over the top of each other?
John: I like everything about it.
John: Throw their shoes and stuff?
John: I don't know if they do that.
John: Did you see the whole business about the head of the...
Merlin: head of the house of commons who was like laying out on the bench oh that guy yeah re-smoke yeah yeah that guy's that guy's that guy's a piece of work wow you you got everybody by name now this is my new this is my new dnd um i've got so many fucking tabs open right now i just for the first time since it was released i just opened tweet deck
Merlin: And I am so online right now with the House of Parliament.
Merlin: So what do I have?
Merlin: I'm learning about the Queen's Speech and the State Opening of Parliament.
Merlin: I've learned about the difference between the Honorable and the Right Honorable Appellation.
Merlin: And now I'm reading about the Yellowhammer Report, which is very important.
John: So are you no deal or are you deal?
Merlin: Well, I'm very concerned about the proroguing.
Merlin: Let's just leave it at that.
Merlin: This is usually when we're approaching the Queen's speech, there may be some proroguing that may occur.
Merlin: Now, usually, I don't know why they have to.
Merlin: See, this is just going to be another tab for me.
Merlin: It's another tab to find out why Parliament has to stand down for a period of time before the Queen's speech.
Merlin: But Boris Johnson, you see, he's...
Merlin: He's got a little bit of a plan going where he's going to prologue for five weeks.
John: Yeah, you can't do that.
John: You can't do that.
Merlin: Plus, we want to hear more about what happened on people's mobiles about these discussions about this and what his true intentions are.
John: Well, so I guess another question I have is how do you feel about the Irish backdoor?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: John, the whole thing comes down to Ireland.
Merlin: Yes, it does.
Merlin: And here I'm cribbing a lot of the work of other people, including CGP Grey.
Merlin: I'm cribbing a lot of work here.
John: Yeah.
John: It all comes down.
Merlin: There's no solution where Ireland is okay.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: See, this is the thing.
Merlin: You draw me a fence where that works out.
John: Yeah, no, you can't.
John: But hey, don't draw a fence and tell me how that works out.
Merlin: Well, the people have spoken.
Merlin: That's what they're saying.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: Okay, I'm going to stop talking about this because it's so boring.
Merlin: But it's so fun.
Merlin: It's so fun because these people, they're just a lot of fun.
Merlin: But here's the cool part is, and the reason I got so many goddamn tabs open, you know, I've never read a Tolkien book, but I kind of feel like I opened the middle, maybe the last third of a random Tolkien book and discovered that a cricket game was happening.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm so confused but fascinated.
Merlin: I'm so confused.
Merlin: I'm looking up so many things.
Merlin: It's just so fun to watch.
John: Yeah, it's nice.
John: And the funny thing is that Americans, we often talk about there should be a third party.
John: We've got the one party, and then we have the other party.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, and then, and then there's a suggestion that we should have a third party and there are, you know, there are third parties.
John: They step up all the time.
John: Hello, you know, the third party.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, but the, but if you actually had a third party, uh,
John: It would require that you have a parliament rather than a Congress.
John: Really?
John: Really?
John: Let's, you know, for all, you know.
John: Yeah.
John: And this is what you get.
John: I suppose.
John: You get a bunch of fancy lads and ladies.
Merlin: Now, here's the...
Merlin: God, we've got to stop talking about this.
Merlin: But here's my understanding of this is the reason the system generally works.
Merlin: And please don't email me.
Merlin: But the reason the system usually works is there's like a one to one relationship of you've got control of parliament.
Merlin: You've got the votes.
Merlin: That's when you call a new election.
Merlin: You get the prime minister of that party.
Merlin: It's just that now there's a real, as they say, cock up.
John: It's a cock up.
Merlin: Because a lot of people didn't understand what was going to happen with the Brexit.
Merlin: And they voted for it, you know, because it's a lot like people here.
Merlin: You know, they don't like brown people.
Merlin: But they're not going to get their cheese or their colitis medicine.
Merlin: It's going to be very... Well, I mean...
Merlin: Yeah, what are you following these days?
Merlin: What's going on in your neck of the woods?
Merlin: What are you excited about?
Merlin: We've got a lot of follow-up for you that we can follow up with, but how are you doing?
Merlin: It looks like you're mastering a record.
Merlin: I assume you got rid of your side messes.
Merlin: What's going on?
Merlin: What are you excited about right now, John?
John: What am I excited about?
John: You know, Merlin, one of the things about me that you know from all these years is that my weeks and days are defined by excitement and what I'm excited about.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, every time...
John: You get on the phone with me.
John: Am I not just talking about what I'm excited about?
Merlin: Well, I feel like I don't have this condition as much as some people I know.
Merlin: But sometimes I go on a tear for a little while.
Merlin: I get excited about something like Parliament.
John: Right.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I try to learn, you know, I pick up some action figures.
Merlin: I get excited about the hit points and I get, I get real into that.
Merlin: Sometimes I feel like I feel that sometimes you perhaps go on a tear.
Merlin: It's a more personal kind of tear.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: You're carving, you're carving a path through something.
John: I feel like I'm trying to I'm trying to carve a path.
John: That's right.
John: And I guess I guess I guess I get hung up on the word excitement because I don't I wouldn't say what wouldn't I say?
John: I don't feel like maybe excited is a very good descriptor of of my emotions.
John: Right.
John: I don't.
John: But but then again, maybe maybe I'm wrong.
John: Maybe I do feel love.
John: Maybe I feel love.
John: I just don't know how.
John: I just don't understand.
John: It's like you say green, and it's not that I see blue.
John: It's that I don't see green.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I understand.
Merlin: I understand you're not a fan.
Merlin: And maybe we're living in a giant's fingernail.
Merlin: How even would you know?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: How would you know?
Merlin: How could you know?
Merlin: It's a giant.
Merlin: And you're in the fingernail.
Merlin: And now our fingernails have giants in them, too.
Merlin: See, it's giants all the way down.
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Merlin: But what have I been doing well?
Merlin: Can I tell you something?
Merlin: Just because we had a nice seizure, as they say, right there.
Merlin: I'm going to tell you why I ask you that question.
Merlin: And then you say whatever you want to say with mouth words.
Merlin: I discovered something a long time ago that people who consider themselves very well socialized sometimes are not that well socialized.
Merlin: And a lot of times one gets in conversations with people.
Merlin: I happen to have great taste in friends.
Merlin: So, yeah, I'm super lucky to only deal with people that I like mostly privilege.
Merlin: That's not privilege.
Merlin: But I did notice, like, and, you know, that could be like when we went to that party that one time.
Merlin: You know, you run into people and they want to talk about their deal.
Merlin: They want to talk about what their thing is.
Merlin: And it can be really trying.
Merlin: I discovered a long time ago that there was a very good question.
Merlin: I might have cribbed this from somebody else.
Merlin: This might be a Dale Carnegie thing, but I doubt it.
Merlin: Sometimes I like to, in a variety of situations, I find it useful and fun, sort of like you with the cab drivers.
Merlin: I like to say to somebody, what are you excited about right now?
Merlin: I say, what are you excited about?
Merlin: That could be anything.
Merlin: And don't give me your pitch, but tell me, are you binging Fleabag?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I'm reading this Gia Tolentino book, and I'm happy to talk about that until the dogs come home.
Merlin: I'm excited about Parliament.
Merlin: And I feel like when you talk to someone, especially a stranger in the Alps, it's nice to tease out what they're excited about.
Merlin: Because everyone becomes more interesting when they're engaged in something that they're excited about.
Merlin: Instead of having to walk through the usual low-key significations about how much money you make, which I find exhausting.
Merlin: Stop trying to quiz me.
Merlin: Look, let's just say you make more money than me.
Merlin: Can we talk about something else?
Merlin: What are you excited about?
Merlin: So that's why, given that cajura, that's why I ask you, John.
Merlin: I like to know what people are excited about.
Merlin: You could be excited about the path that you're carving or not.
Merlin: You tell me, man.
John: Yeah.
John: Not excited about things.
John: Generally, that's me in a nutshell.
John: But really?
John: Well, yeah.
John: Well, let me put it this way.
John: I like to interview people very much.
John: It's one of the ways that I learn.
John: It's one of the ways that I make it through social situations.
John: It's one of the ways that I pass the time.
John: You know, I love to interview people.
Yeah.
John: Because I like to learn what they're excited about.
John: I like to know more about the world.
John: Other people interest me.
John: But I don't especially like to be interviewed in that same way.
John: Oh, I hate it.
John: Unless I'm being interviewed by either a truly gifted person
John: Or I'm being interviewed by someone with a genuine interest in me personally.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Oh, totally.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: Everybody likes to throw on Zola Imposter Syndrome.
Merlin: But the truth is that, like, I don't...
Merlin: think i am that interesting except insofar as there are things that i am excited about i don't necessarily want to reminisce about some shared nostalgic past unless that becomes the fun thing and that's okay now here's my problem i get into the lift because i got to pick my kid up sometimes i don't like to drive a car i get in the lift i got i got the airport i thought i thought i thought you meant
Merlin: elevator for a second there because you're very into parliament right now say trousers not pants don't get that wrong no pants or underwear i go in here's the thing within a couple blocks i will know very quickly if i'm going to need to talk to this person now unlike you yeah i would rather have 15 minutes to myself to listen to this podcast that just went up that i'm excited about
Merlin: I would love to do that, and I feel like I'm telegraphic.
Merlin: I'm throwing more than shapes.
Merlin: I'm saying, when you see these, and sometimes I'll even take one out, and I'll say, I have to listen to this for my work.
Merlin: Let me know if you need me.
Merlin: But then sometimes I'll just hear this like...
Merlin: And I realized within two blocks, okay, I'm going to need to talk to this person.
Merlin: Now, at that point, I pivot hard.
Merlin: I put them away.
Merlin: I put them into their carrying case.
Merlin: And I throw myself completely into the conversation.
Merlin: Because I think that's the only practical thing.
Merlin: And now, the guy says to me, I see here I'm dropping you off at Jay Random Middle School.
Merlin: Is that a good school?
Merlin: And I say, I don't know.
Merlin: My wife does all that stuff.
Merlin: And he goes, oh, yeah, because my daughter is coming here from the Philippines.
Merlin: And she speaks Tagalog.
Merlin: Tagalog.
John: Tagalog.
Merlin: Well, he corrected my pronunciation, so I don't want to be insensitive.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, she's learning English.
Merlin: Do you think that's good?
Merlin: I would like for her to go either here or there.
Merlin: I wouldn't mind if she went to Presidio where I went.
Merlin: I would go, hey, wait a minute.
Merlin: You're from the hood?
Merlin: And he's like, yeah, I'm two blocks up and over.
Merlin: I've lived here my whole life.
Merlin: And now I'm learning about his wife and daughter in the Philippines.
Merlin: They're moving here, and we're talking about the challenges and transitions of having a sixth grader, and it was fantastic.
John: Yeah, isn't that fun?
Merlin: I did what I could to say what I do and don't know about the San Francisco Unified School District and their rules for lottery and getting into schools, but mostly I was fascinated.
Merlin: I love hearing about the food.
Merlin: Tell me about the food.
Merlin: Is there a place anywhere near here that has the food in a way that you like?
Merlin: Yeah, the food.
Merlin: Don't you think?
Merlin: I mean, I don't know if it's an interview exactly, but if you throw yourself into that.
John: That's a conversation.
John: Now you guys are having a conversation.
John: You're not at a loss for what to talk about.
John: You got lots to talk about.
Merlin: Well, you're not and you're not quizzing me.
Merlin: We're talking about public schools.
Merlin: Yeah, you guys are talking.
Merlin: And you're not quizzing me about backdoor income and status questions, which I despise.
John: Yeah, you said so.
Merlin: I shut that off.
Merlin: That's when I become a ceramicist.
John: The backdoor status questions.
Merlin: Oh, backdoor status questions are just chock-a-block here.
John: We're back to the Irish question.
Merlin: Which one?
Merlin: Oh, the Irish question of like the final Irish, what?
Merlin: The final solution.
Merlin: Okay, all right.
Merlin: Irish need not apply, that kind of thing?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: No, no, no.
John: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: You're talking about making the big fence.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I thought you were talking about the commitments or something.
Merlin: I got real confused.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, you're right there.
Merlin: We're back to the Irish question.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Good point.
Merlin: Good point.
Merlin: But no, that's a conversation.
John: It's still very early.
John: Isn't that nice?
John: I know.
John: It's so early.
John: I've been awake three minutes.
John: Um, the, uh, the conversation now that's an even rarer thing where both parties have, uh, have things to contribute and there's not any kind of like, oh, uh, there's no sense of one person not knowing how to contribute.
John: Um,
John: Yeah, I like that every once in a while.
John: And no agenda.
John: No agenda.
John: Nobody's trying to get anywhere.
John: Right.
Merlin: One out of eight conversations, I enjoy an agenda conversation.
Merlin: So I took a lift, as I do, from a monthly visit with my shrink.
Merlin: I knew pretty early on that this was going to be a conversation.
Merlin: It's an 11-minute ride, maybe.
Merlin: And I knew pretty early on that I was going to need to go all in on this.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And the guy, long story short, he – so it started out real simple, and we were talking about global warming, and he sounded really smart about it.
Merlin: I said, you know, I don't know a lot about this, but it occurs to me that based on what I know that it's misleading to just think about –
Merlin: the idea that, you know, did it get warmer this year?
Merlin: Because it's really, it's more about physics.
Merlin: And I feel like sometimes that's why people don't understand.
Merlin: Well, that really set him off.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Because now he's going to go into a whole thing about physics and Coriolis.
Merlin: And I'm like, wow, are you like an engineer?
Merlin: You seem to know a lot about this.
Merlin: He says, no.
Merlin: I'm a natural healer, so I understand a lot about energy.
Merlin: You understand?
Merlin: Yeah, and I don't quite understand it.
Merlin: I don't want to misstate the guy, but by the time we got to Parnassus, he's telling me about how the water in your body has electrons that can line up in a certain way, and that love can universally be brought together as a form of physics.
John: Hang on just a second.
John: I'm just writing this down.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Got it?
Merlin: Water?
John: Yeah, okay.
John: Water?
John: They can line up in a certain way.
John: Electrons.
John: You got electrons?
John: In a circle.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But you got physics.
Merlin: And you know, I said to the man, I said, right here is fine.
Merlin: I said, listen, can I tell you, friend?
Merlin: I said, seven stars.
Merlin: If I could give you seven stars, I'd give you seven stars.
Merlin: The guy's swinging at the fences.
Merlin: But sometimes an agenda can be a very interesting conversation.
John: Yes.
Yes.
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: That's a personal agenda.
Merlin: Now, I never said to him, what are you excited about?
Merlin: All I said was, isn't it wild that, talking here about the weather, not the climate, isn't it wild that we don't get the same summer we used to get here?
Merlin: It's becoming less extreme.
Merlin: And that led to the discussion of the physics, the electrons, the water...
Merlin: And the healing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, yeah, he was really excited.
John: Yeah, the thing about that, of course, is that you've tread in somebody's religion, basically, worldview.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And it's no longer—
John: Well, what happens there is it's no longer really a conversation because he's not going to be – you're not going to challenge him on his beliefs.
John: You wouldn't, first of all.
John: Right.
John: And you couldn't, second of all.
John: And so you're in a conversation then at that point where he is establishing the terms –
John: around his worldview.
Merlin: He's got a well, at that point, he's almost like a tenured professor where he's got an outline that he's been using for probably years that doesn't change that much year to year.
Merlin: And he'll take your questions, but you're going to hew to the outline for his agenda.
John: Now, there are those people, and I've always admired them, people that are always themselves in situations like that.
John: I'm not one of them.
John: If a person starts telling me that global warming has a connection to love via the electrons in one's body, I go into, as I've said, questioning mode, interview mode.
John: I want to know all about this.
John: I want to know where they're coming from, what their story is.
Merlin: But we're not talking about like an Isaac Chotner style interview.
Merlin: You're more of like a chat show interviewer at that point.
Merlin: You just want to keep it moving and entertaining for the listener.
John: Chat show, chat show.
John: And also, you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to I'm trying to solve the puzzle all the time.
John: So here's a person and I want to know.
John: And what they've done is they've taken a lot of different things and they've combined them into a worldview.
John: And I want to find out what the things were in their original form.
John: Where did this person get their education?
John: Where did they get these ideas?
John: And what was the process by which they combined them into this role?
Merlin: You can tease out, when somebody has a story like that, and I don't mean to turn this into some kind of cliche, but there would frequently be an animating event.
Merlin: There will be something that led them to this breakthrough or caused a really hard pivot in their POV based on some kind of... Kind of, yeah.
Merlin: Like, where there's some kind of new information, like in 1988, you know, this thing happened.
Merlin: And, you know, that really changed the way that I think about how the electrons work.
John: But the people that I admire... Let's not... Wait a minute.
John: I won't say... Well, I do admire them, but I don't... I also don't... Envy?
John: I don't know what... I don't know exactly what.
John: But there are people out there that I've met that never...
John: our, um,
John: They're never not themselves.
John: They never go into chat show interviewer mode.
John: Yeah.
John: I know exactly what you mean.
John: But they would challenge this person.
John: You know, they would say, well, how does... Wait a minute.
John: Now, you know, this is science and that's not.
John: Or, you know, like, how do you... Like, they would go into challenge mode.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like, what is this weird, like, international homunculus, recursive homunculus model you have for understanding these things?
Merlin: This sounds really at odds with everything I know about science.
John: Well, but yeah, but they wouldn't do it in a way that was somehow... The thing that I admire about them is that they don't... It's not confrontational.
John: Yeah.
John: It's not alienating.
John: The other person then... They don't like... They're not on their back foot.
John: They're not defending themselves or it's not a fight.
Merlin: Well, it's also they're driving a car.
Merlin: I want to stay on their good side.
John: They're driving a car.
John: But...
John: But that thing, you know, I put that in the same category as that guy so many years ago who, when I said like, oh, when I'm down in the South, I always kind of pick up the local accent in order to make everybody feel more comfortable.
Merlin: Right, the Brooklyn, or you adopt, yeah, the Brooklyn accent.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And the guy was like, well, I always talk the same way.
John: And everywhere I go, I'm fine.
John: And people like me just fine.
John: And they're comfortable just fine, even though I just talked to them in my regional dialect.
John: And I was like, whoa, right.
John: Of course, that's like a kind of you have a kind of.
John: you're always yourself everywhere you go.
John: You have enough confidence in yourself and who you are that you don't need to gin that up for other people.
John: You know, he's not trying to disappear.
John: He's not trying to turn into the talk show interviewer who's not there with his own opinions.
John: That's the thing about the talk show interviewer, right?
John: He doesn't have his own opinions.
John: He's just there.
John: He knows what makes good radio or good TV.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Somebody like a Dick Cavett, for example, in that sense that – what's the recent one I watched?
Merlin: Was it Groucho or John Lennon?
Merlin: I watched a recent Dick Cavett and he's so good at it because he's fun and he's funny.
Merlin: He's not confrontational plus –
Merlin: his production staff is smart enough to know to get like certain kinds of reaction shots, capture these things that don't say too much, but they kind of say, wow, check, check out this guy.
Merlin: And it's, and it's fun and it keeps it moving.
Merlin: It's, it's, or in the case of like, you get somebody like a Donahue where like, he might be sort of, obviously the person that comes on his show is going to have an agenda.
Merlin: He's got an agenda.
Merlin: And then that becomes like, how do we move, turn this into this certain kind of event where it has somebody like Dick Cavett has always Dick Cavett.
Merlin: And that's kind of why we love Dick Cavett.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But like, you know, okay, so did I tell you this?
Merlin: I think, I know I said it on a show and I think it was here a couple, three weeks ago.
Merlin: Did I tell you about the guy who came to Roto-Rooter the poop out of our garage?
John: Yes, yes, yes.
Merlin: Okay, so that's another example of a guy where, as I said, it was a little frustrating to me.
Merlin: Ordinarily, in the right circumstances, I'm totally in for that.
Merlin: This is a Sunday night.
Merlin: It's a school night.
Merlin: My soup has arrived.
Merlin: And I appreciate the Atman and Brahma conversation to a point, but can you do that while you keep getting the poop out?
Merlin: I don't want to stand astride.
Merlin: I don't want to stand adjacent to the house turds, some of which are definitely not mine, because I'd know them.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: No, I'm standing with strangers' poop and getting a conversation about after he stopped doing drugs, he did these kinds of things, and now he's a yogic.
Merlin: a roto-rooter.
Merlin: So, I mean, I want to be amused by that, but on the other hand, it wasn't that fun because he had such a strong agenda.
Merlin: As I mentioned, it was difficult to have anything to add.
Merlin: I can't even add my bar talk about mindfulness to it or whatever, because he keeps redirecting it back to his thing, which made it not fun.
Merlin: It's kind of like being stuck with somebody
Merlin: I don't know who's really into like a 70s British comic book series that you've never read.
Merlin: And that's like what the conversation is going to be for 42 minutes.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And sometimes I can disappear into that.
Merlin: But imagine picking up Neil deGrasse Tyson in a lift.
Merlin: Wouldn't that suck?
John: Oh, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
John: That wouldn't be fun.
John: I saw him one time.
John: Yeah.
John: Standing on the side of the – I was in Manhattan.
John: I was driving.
John: I think I might have been in a Lyft or some kind of car.
John: Yeah.
John: And I looked out the window, and he was standing there on the sidewalk, like, waiting for – obviously waiting for somebody to come pick him up.
John: Yeah.
John: And it was – you know, it all happened too fast, right?
John: I couldn't roll the window down.
John: We were in motion.
John: Sure.
John: I couldn't be like, Neil!
John: Yeah.
John: Hey!
John: Yeah.
John: What's up?
John: What's up?
John: I couldn't do any of that.
Merlin: I want to contrast him to somebody like I maybe even want to say like a Bill Nye.
Merlin: I mean, I don't know.
Merlin: Or like an Adam Savage.
Merlin: Adam Savage is a genuinely curious man.
Merlin: Seems curious.
Merlin: It's a little hard to talk sometimes because of the hearing stuff.
Merlin: But also, well, no, he solved that.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: He had a surgery.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: And now he can hear quite well.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Because, you know, you've been kind enough.
Merlin: We've tagged along to go to his place.
Merlin: And he's a very nice man.
Merlin: One time – and he's vaguely aware of me.
Merlin: We ran into him at a store in town.
Merlin: And I was like – I introduced my kid.
Merlin: And he was really, really nice.
Merlin: I was like, this is the guy who makes the R2-D2s and the lightsabers and does that TV show we like.
Merlin: And he could not have been any nicer.
Merlin: He strikes me as the kind of guy –
Merlin: That's the guy I want in a cab.
Merlin: I want somebody who's like, and we're talking all dudes here, but like he really just seems, he's one of those guys, like the guy I'm always mentioning is this guy I'm acquainted with named Kevin Kelly.
Merlin: One of those people who's just like endlessly curious.
Merlin: Like we'll take in so much information.
Merlin: They know so much more about the topic.
Merlin: Then you're just excited and you're spewing.
Merlin: One is spewing.
Merlin: But they're so interested.
Merlin: They're not going to just drop info bombs on you.
Merlin: They're listening and they're asking questions.
Merlin: I want to be that.
Merlin: I want to be that.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I want to be smart.
Merlin: It's more useful.
Merlin: I feel like I'm like a border collie.
Merlin: Give me something to herd.
Merlin: Useful.
Merlin: That's important.
Merlin: It's nice to feel useful.
Merlin: But it's also useful to feel nice.
John: It's also nice to feel useful.
John: It's also nice to be useful.
Merlin: You can make yourself useful if you have an open heart.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: You're going to a party?
Merlin: Bring ice.
Merlin: That's not complicated.
Merlin: That's sweet.
Merlin: If you're going to a party, bring ice.
Merlin: Bring ice, he says.
Merlin: Don't ask people if you should take the trash out.
Merlin: Say, where should I take this trash?
John: Or figure it out.
John: Where should I take the trash?
Merlin: Yeah, it's probably the garage or the side.
Merlin: That's where everybody takes their trash.
Merlin: But take out the trash.
Merlin: Could be the side.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But that's the way you can become useful because – but like they say in Free to Be You and Me, some kinds of help are the kind of help that help is all about, but some kind of help is the kind of help we all can do without.
Merlin: So you want to make sure you're being useful in being useful.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right?
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You think Neil deGrasse Tyson ever takes out trash at a party?
John: Oh, well, she's, I don't know the man.
John: He seemed nice.
John: He seemed nice when he saw him.
John: Beats me.
John: No, I only, it was only a glimpse.
John: I only caught a glimpse of him, but you know, in this, in this present day world where, uh, where you, you feel like you can be forgiven for feeling like, um, uh, even if I don't, even if I don't have at ready hand, um,
John: the name of someone that Neil deGrasse Tyson and I know in common.
John: Like a Joe McHale, something like that, where it's just like, Hey, I'm friends with blank.
John: Um, even though you might not have that, you do kind of have a feeling in this, in this modern world that if you were, if you were stuck together on an elevator and the elevator got stuck, um,
John: And you're sitting there, and he's like, oh, well, I guess we're in this elevator.
John: And you go, yeah.
John: And he says, I'm Neil.
John: And I go, yeah, I'm John Roderick.
John: I'm a friend of Joel McHale.
John: And then he goes, oh, Joel, yeah, I did a thing with him.
John: And I go, yeah, yeah.
John: Oh, and I also know – and pretty soon you're in a conversation because you share –
John: uh, the, you share a relationship with somebody that neither of you knows very well.
John: Um, but, uh, but I didn't have time on the side of the road there to yell all that out.
John: And also I didn't know whether he knew Joel McHale.
Merlin: You just, it costs me that woman that knows all the stuff about LA.
John: Yeah.
John: Boy, isn't she cute?
John: Was he on that show?
John: Is that why you're mentioning both those people?
John: No, I was trying to do a callback.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's one of the services I offer.
John: You know what?
John: You're very useful.
Merlin: That was the second time this week someone onto a podcast said that.
Merlin: John Syracuse has said, no, I'm still a very valuable member of the team.
Merlin: Isn't that nice?
John: Yeah, you're very valuable.
John: In fact, I think you're taking the lead on this episode, and I'm enjoying it.
John: No, I'm sorry.
John: I'm sorry.
John: Do we need to lay back more?
John: I can lay back more.
John: No, absolutely not.
John: It's been very enjoyable so far.
John: I mean, like I said, I've only been awake three minutes.
John: Am I dying?
John: No.
John: Do you smell toast?
John: Always.
John: And so it's been fun, you know?
John: Thanks.
Merlin: It's been fun for me too, John.
Merlin: I'm glad we could do this.
Merlin: Just to have a laugh or sing a song.
Merlin: Get started before you know it.
Merlin: I feel I know a lot more about Parliament too, which is something... It's killing me not to look in right now.
John: So do you think – here's the question.
John: Do you think there's really going to be a no-deal Brexit or do you think they're going to come up with a deal?
Merlin: They've got to come up with a deal, right?
Merlin: It seems like they must because the consequences are very, very serious.
Merlin: Here's something I run up against.
John: The consequences will never be the same, Merlin.
Merlin: It's going to be hard to go back.
Merlin: And so the last thing I want to do is be quoting a Batman movie.
Merlin: But I do sometimes think about the thing Alfred says when he said, some men just want to watch the world burn.
Merlin: Because I run up against this problem of understanding motivation.
Merlin: And so I try to look at somebody, like in the United States, I look at somebody like Jeff Sessions or Mitch McConnell.
Merlin: And with Jeff Sessions, it's sometimes useful to just assume he just wants to do racist things all the time.
Merlin: He just wants to do racist.
Merlin: It's hard to understand Mitch McConnell to me just because I try to think the way he thinks and be sympathetic to what it's like when he is in his moments of repose.
Merlin: And I'm up against it.
Merlin: We're trying to figure that out.
Merlin: Now you look at Britain and you're like, why do you guys want to do this –
Merlin: so much and you clearly don't care about getting a deal.
Merlin: And when we say deal, for those who aren't following this, what we're saying is that it's so complicated.
John: There's got to be a deal.
Merlin: But if October 31st comes and they don't have some understanding with the EU about stuff like trade, I mean, in simple terms, it's going to mean it's bad for everybody, especially people in Britain.
Merlin: And like, you get the Irish problem.
Merlin: Yeah, you get an Irish problem.
Merlin: So anyway, I'm prattling on.
Merlin: I don't understand the motivation of that apart from wanting to watch the world burn.
Merlin: And I'm old enough to assume that that's not purely it.
Merlin: So then what do you do?
Merlin: You figure out, are they corrupt?
Merlin: Are they corrupted by some kind of outside influence that makes them that way?
Merlin: Is it purely ideological?
Merlin: I don't know the answer.
Merlin: That's part of what I find so fascinating about it is I don't understand the motivation for this apart from just purely trying to win.
Merlin: Isn't that complicated?
Merlin: I think it is.
Merlin: I think it's really hard.
Merlin: And the more I try to be open-hearted, the more that I try to understand that, as they say in that movie, everybody has their reasons.
Merlin: Everybody's got their reasons.
John: I think what's interesting about that to me, and I know you don't like talking about politics.
John: That's fine.
John: But because it's happening in Britain, in the United Kingdom,
John: Um, it's easier for us to not knowing the players really, or the stakes and realizing that it's, that there's something else in, in some ways it's more, um, because it's boiled down to a single sort of, uh, event, the, the Brexit itself, uh,
John: It's kind of a – it's like a focal point and although it has tendrils in every aspect of UK society and European economics and so forth, it all focuses down on this one event.
John: But we can look at it over there and have this experience you're having, which is like I don't understand what the side that I tend not to agree with is doing.
John: I don't understand why they would be doing it.
John: And and that is that like is inspiring me to what not to learn more or to not rush to judgment.
Merlin: There's some things we all tend to understand if we dig a little bit, which is a lot of stuff comes down to some combination.
Merlin: There's a materialist argument and there's like a tribal argument.
Merlin: There's like a, there's a money reason and there's a tribalism reason for so much that happens in the world.
Merlin: And you can, there's a lot of stuff I feel like, even though that is very reductive.
Merlin: I think there's, there's often a money reason to something that people aren't even like aware of is a money reason.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But there's also the tribal reason.
Merlin: And then once you get into the tribal reason, now you're just a Yankees fan and all you care about is that your team wins.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: So that, could that be the explanation?
Merlin: I just want my team to win.
John: Yeah, but that seems kind of like you were saying before.
John: That's kind of a watch the world burn argument, too.
John: Just like, really?
John: You burn down the world just to see your team win?
John: Yeah.
John: But what's interesting to me is that we have a much harder time.
John: within our own world to take that kind of like, I don't understand what my opponents are, what they're motivated by, and I'd like to know more.
Merlin: Yeah, the way I always think of it is like, if this goes great for you, what will the outcome be?
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: How will you know this has gone great?
John: What's your preferred... When you point to the outcome and go, see, see, what is that that you want me to see?
John: And in the UK, as we say, they obviously have a thing over there that's got other...
John: components, right?
John: Like they got haggis they have to think about, have to deal with.
Merlin: A lot of people who are, as they say, Remain enjoy haggis.
Merlin: The Remains.
John: The Remainers love haggis.
Merlin: Well, and the thing about... I think Wales, it's basically everybody but not London and the other countries.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's the big middle parts where they have the funny Python accents.
John: And you can see France.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But can you see Belgium's trousers?
Merlin: Underpants, right.
John: Or trousers, in this case.
John: So are they going to lose Scotland, right?
John: Because Scotland said we'd like to stay, sort of.
John: And then they were made to go.
John: And now they're, maybe they're going to go.
John: Maybe the next time around, they're going to say we're out ski.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Like the whole thing is going to come undone.
Merlin: Oh, it's, it's, it's, it's so exciting.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: It's very exciting.
John: You know, because I am someone who wants to watch the world burn.
John: Are you?
John: Yeah.
John: And the idea of it all just coming unraveled over there.
John: Yeah.
John: Um, I don't, you know, because they're really, honestly, there's something like, let the French and the Germans bang it out.
Um,
John: Because they're not really friendly with each other.
Merlin: They've got a little bit of history.
John: Yeah, and we've had a nice little run here.
John: As a planet.
John: We did all right.
John: We had some high points.
John: Yeah, yeah, and there have been a last, you know, a couple of decades, let's say, a little interregnum here where all the murders and the deaths and the catastrophes, the cataclysms, they all were more or less at bay.
John: There were some localized cataclysms, some small ones here and there, hither and thither, a thousand people here, 10,000 people there, 100,000 people there, but, you know, no big, like, epical...
John: like battle scenes, battle royales, except in movies, you know, except where it's like World War Z. Boy, there were a lot of people died in that movie.
John: Does the Z stand for zombies, John?
John: I think it does.
John: Well, that was my guess.
Okay.
John: zeta it maybe it was maybe it's in canada they say zed zed right yeah uh but uh but you know maybe maybe that's all coming to maybe that's coming to an end time for that chapter to uh to end yeah they'll look back at the 90s and the 2000s and they'll go wow you know people were really really worried about bands they made the 60s look like the 20s
John: There's that.
Merlin: That's the best call, man.
Merlin: You know, I came upon you this weekend.
Merlin: Huh?
Merlin: Let me rephrase that.
Merlin: You came up.
Merlin: You came up this weekend.
Merlin: Because Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday is often a day when I listen to music.
Merlin: I usually wake up.
Merlin: I try not to look at my phone too much.
Merlin: I get up, and I usually begin Sunday by listening to the Genesis album, Duke.
Merlin: That's usually how I begin my Sundays.
John: That's okay.
John: Sunday starter.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And I don't love every song, but boy, there's a lot of good ones.
Merlin: He's got a lot of heartbreak.
Merlin: He also uses the word tonight a lot.
John: Yeah, tonight.
Merlin: Tonight comes up a lot in the oeuvre of Phil Collins.
Merlin: It does.
Merlin: But I know I came upon you because I was looking, oh yeah.
Merlin: So it's hard, I'm looking at my history here in Spotify and it's kind of confusing.
Merlin: But I was listening to Nevada Bachelors on your recommendation.
Merlin: You like them.
Merlin: Yeah, they're pretty good.
Merlin: Pretty darn good.
Merlin: But it's leading me.
Merlin: So as you know, I think I'm a huge fan of the fans also like section for each band.
Merlin: So when you're in the Spotify for a band, you can click one of the tabs as fans also like.
Merlin: And then that brings you music that is, I guess, you know, taste wise, algorithmically similar.
Merlin: And you're right up there.
Merlin: You're right up there with Nevada Bachelors.
Merlin: So you got the Sunset Valley, you, Creeper Lagoon, Beulah, Harvey Danger.
Merlin: I come upon you frequently.
Merlin: Yeah, to be honest.
Merlin: Yeah, you come up, obviously you come up from the posies direction.
Merlin: I'm seeing your face with that photo of you with the big glasses and like the orange curtain in back.
Merlin: Yeah, it's not my favorite.
Merlin: You have more hair than this makes it look like.
John: Oh, because I had an indie rock comb over.
John: You look like you're doing a hipster comb forward.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But I know you're better than that.
John: It was a very regrettable photo shoot for me, and I have a handful of regrets.
John: I have a handful of regrets.
John: I regret that in the chorus of Sky is Open that I resolved to the G when I should have resolved to the E. I regret that photo shoot and the fact that because that photo shoot cost a lot of money,
John: We all felt obligated to use those photos to promote the entire record cycle when honestly of like a thousand photos that were taken that day, not one of them is a good representation of what we looked like as a band or what I look like as a person.
Merlin: If I saw this photo in the wild, I would assume you're English.
John: If I saw that photo in the wild, I would not like that band without even having listened to them for a second.
Merlin: You look like your name is Jarvis or Travis, maybe.
Merlin: Or, oh, you might be like an Ian.
Yeah.
John: Oh, and Ian.
Merlin: You might be called Ian.
John: I maybe was thinking that when I was doing those photo shoots.
John: I was like, yeah, you know, I have that weird Michael Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters look.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yes, you do.
Merlin: You've got rocking some Caine.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, well, so, but that's the problem, right?
John: I mean, I, when I looked at Michael Caine in, uh, Hannah and her sisters, what I forgot was I didn't think he looked very handsome and I didn't understand why he was, because at the time I didn't have a ton of Michael Caine, uh, backstory.
John: The first time I saw Hannah and her sisters and I thought, huh, why is that dork?
John: Um,
John: like uh being considered as a leading man here and it was only later that i realized oh because he is handsome and he has some residual handsome everybody that's watching hannah and her sisters has also also saw him in um the man who would be king or whatever and they go he's very handsome yeah they imprinted on alfie right and so you can put uh glasses on him and a weird haircut and
John: And people still see that he's handsome.
John: Whereas if you saw him for the first time that way, you would go, that's a weird.
John: And so I was in this situation where I was like, I'm so handsome that I can wear a bowl haircut and big glasses.
Merlin: That's, as you say, a category error.
Merlin: I've screwed that up so many times.
Merlin: That was me in trying to be Fonzie in 1978.
Merlin: I don't look anything like Fonzie.
Merlin: And then I put Vaseline in my hair and my mom was very upset.
John: Well, people didn't know what I looked like enough that I could start playing with what I looked like in band photos.
John: Oh, I see what you're saying.
John: I should have just tried to look as good as I could.
John: But band photos are difficult, John.
John: It's really hard.
John: Sort of not really, though.
John: Not if you just don't wake up that morning and say, I'm going to style myself in a way that I never do.
John: just for these photos rather than say... I also realize you're wearing two shirts.
John: You're wearing two shirts in this.
John: A lot of times I'm wearing two shirts.
John: Is that a prep?
John: You're doing a prep thing there?
John: No, it wasn't.
John: I think what it was was a... It might have been...
John: Uh, chubby thing?
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Oh, I've done that.
Merlin: I figured maybe you had a cold thorax, but no, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: No, I've done that with some blousing.
Merlin: You get a nice dark shirt, you can blouse over another shirt, and it basically becomes like a rock spanks.
John: I used to shave my face right before a photo shoot, even though I wore a beard...
John: 11 and a half months out of the year, I would, because it was like a big show or a photo shoot or something, I would shave because of some reason.
John: I don't even remember why.
John: I started wearing a beard all the time in about 1994, but whenever it was time to like go to a special event or do a thing where I was on TV.
Merlin: I feel like that's true.
Merlin: It's sometimes perplexing when you don't have a beard.
Merlin: And now I'm asking myself, is it just that John wants to watch the world burn?
Merlin: Why no beard?
Merlin: Yeah, that's weird.
John: Yeah, it was... I don't know.
Merlin: I honestly don't know why... Is it from another generation where you're thinking I should clean up nice for this?
John: Maybe, maybe.
John: We played at the Sasquatch Music Festival one year when I had braces, and I also shaved...
John: Like the, like the day before.
John: So not only was I, uh, and you know, I think I was chubby at that point.
John: So not only was I, did I have braces, but I had like chubby and freshly shaved, which for me is kind of rashy.
John: Why not just have your beard, which is how you look all the time.
John: Um, anyway, I feel like it's only been in the last five years or so that, um,
John: Or maybe six years.
John: Maybe it was the Sasquatch thing was the final straw when I saw the pictures and was like, I don't like what I look like without a beard.
John: I'm never going to do it again.
John: I mean, I'm definitely going to shave sometimes just to show my daughter that I have a face under there.
John: Yes.
John: I sometimes like to wear a mustache for a little while.
John: But eventually I'll grow the beard back and it's...
John: But it's very unfortunate because if you look at the music video for Fire Island, I also shaved right before that.
John: Now, that's not what I look like.
John: I don't look like that guy, the guy in Fire Island.
Merlin: I remember in Blue Diamonds, which is a very strange video, in Blue Diamonds, you've got that sort of Lennon 67 look.
John: Right, which is a great look.
Merlin: Yeah, you got the funny hat and you've got the glasses, the round glasses, like tinted glasses and the porno mustache.
Merlin: Yeah, a little mustache, right.
Merlin: A pretty big mustache, yeah.
John: Yeah, a pretty big mustache.
John: So that was a mistake.
John: I don't like that photo shoot.
John: I don't like the fact that it became the photos that most people saw of us.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: It's a thing I regret.
Merlin: Keeping you in that cape, smoking a cigar at the playground.
John: See, those were great.
John: And the thing was, I didn't have a beard there, but somehow you captured me without a beard.
John: I captured something essential about you, I think.
John: You really did.
John: You really did.
John: That was a magical night.
John: That was so fun.
John: That was so fun.
John: That was nice.
John: Love Battery comes up a lot.
Merlin: I keep getting pointed to Love Battery and then from Love Battery to other things.
Merlin: Love Battery feels like some kind of an important node.
Merlin: Well, it's Jason Finn's.
John: Because they've all been in all the bands, right?
John: Jason Finn's first band.
John: It's who's of them?
John: Jason Finn's first band.
Merlin: Right, right, right.
Merlin: But also, it seems like they come up so often where, like, you've got, like, well, like, you know, the Fastbacks and the way they're here also.
Merlin: Fastbacks and the way they go through drummers, like, just by, you know, you're eventually going to play drums in the Fastbacks, probably, right?
Merlin: One is.
Merlin: Jason Finn did.
Merlin: Oh, my God!
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Jesus.
John: The problem with that little algorithm there and the bands that you're mentioning is that a lot of them were like, um, local bands, like, uh, also ran.
John: And so for the long winters to be, um, to be conjured with those bands, um,
John: Doesn't feel like a compliment, really.
John: But I can't really tell how algorithms work in terms of being insulting.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, on a Sunday, I start my day with Duke and then I just say, well, what is the uniform of the day?
Merlin: Let's just follow in a certain direction.
Merlin: Maybe I'll make a playlist and I'll share that with people.
Merlin: But, you know, lately I've been on this mid-tempo power pop thing where I've been sort of exploring that as a thing.
John: But if the algorithm was like, oh, you like Spoon?
John: Check out the Long Winters.
John: Then that would be like, cool.
John: But if it's like, oh, you like this, you know, like how many people have listened to the Nevada Bachelors on Spotify this month?
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, let's see.
Merlin: Seven.
Merlin: Wow, monthly listeners, 50K.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No, by the standards of the stuff that I seek out, that's very high.
Merlin: That seems, no, no offense, Jason.
Merlin: But there's stuff I follow that gets like 30 a month.
John: There is no way that the Nevada Bachelors had 50,000 listens last week.
John: Hang on, hang on.
Merlin: Sorry, sorry.
Merlin: Love Battery.
Merlin: That's Love Battery.
Merlin: Oh, Love Battery.
Merlin: Let me explore Nevada Bachelors.
Merlin: I'm clicking.
Merlin: What?
John: Nevada Bachelors.
John: No, hang on, hang on.
John: Nevada.
Merlin: Okay, Nevada Bachelors Monthly Listeners 282.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: I can't believe that Love Battery has 50,000 listens.
John: There's got to be something wrong.
John: You think that's some kind of jam up?
John: I think that's a jam up.
John: Love Battery, God bless them.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But nobody's listening to them now.
Merlin: So yeah, this guy that I've been listening to, you would not like this guy, I don't think, but I super do.
Merlin: This guy, Tony Molina, Power Poppy guy, that's 31.5.
Merlin: I can't believe we're talking about numbers.
Merlin: What about the fucking champs?
Merlin: What are they getting?
Merlin: It's fun, though.
Merlin: It's fun.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Fifteen hundred.
John: What does it say about the long winters?
John: I know I don't want to know.
John: You don't want to know.
John: Are you saying I don't want to know because it's bad?
Merlin: Two hundred and seventy five million monthly listeners.
Merlin: That's amazing.
Merlin: OK, what's going on in Parliament?
Merlin: No, actually, you're doing great.
Merlin: Seventy eight K. That's pretty good.
Merlin: It's been a while since you released a product.
Merlin: 78,633 is pretty, pretty good.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Without mentioning anything here, I'm going to mention this.
Merlin: This is super interesting to me because I do give these numbers.
Merlin: Cinnamon is your top song.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, like totals wise under popular, it's a departure is number three.
Merlin: Number two is, well, they're currently number five, but 1.2 million streams.
Merlin: The commander thinks aloud.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
John: Yeah, well, it's a departure, of course, because of those nice stories.
John: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: I'm not saying.
Merlin: I'm not saying that.
Merlin: Teaspoon, 190.
Merlin: Teaspoon means different things.
John: Yeah.
John: Teaspoon.
John: Teaspoon.
John: Teaspoon means different things at different times.
Merlin: Shapes, 161.
Merlin: God, that's a good song.
Merlin: Anyway, I came upon you is all I wanted to say.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, out in the wild.
Merlin: That's all I'm excited about.
Merlin: I'm excited about all kinds of stuff.
Merlin: I'm excited about music.
Merlin: I like music.
John: I know you do.
John: It saves me sometimes, John.
Merlin: I know you don't like it when people say that so much.
Merlin: But sometimes when I say it saves me, not in the way I felt like Ari Evan Husker do save me in circa 1985.
Merlin: I mean save me in the sense that I need to get off Twitter, I need to put down the podcast for a little while, and I need to go follow my nose into some music that will please me.
Merlin: I listened to so much Roxy music yesterday.
Merlin: I think people forget how weird, weird, weird Roxy music could be.
John: I went to see Brian Ferry last week.
Merlin: Shut up.
Merlin: This week.
Merlin: Here's my quick take on Roxy music.
Merlin: And I didn't even say this anywhere because it sounds mean and I don't mean it to.
Merlin: I think partly owing to the fact that they were so often, so weird, so ahead of their time, there is a weird phenomenon where they sound like they're covering someone else's song, even when they're doing epochal, important songs.
Merlin: More Than This is one of the great songs.
Merlin: It is a nice song.
Merlin: It's, well, I think the melody of More Than This...
Merlin: You know, I can feel at the time.
Merlin: I think that is one of the, there's something about that little phrase that is in my DNA.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But it's a little bit thin as a recording.
John: My experience of Roxy Music and Brian Ferry is that the melodic, Brian Ferry's melodic sensibility.
John: Yeah.
John: feels like he's making it up as he goes.
John: It's sort of meandering.
John: He doesn't feel like in a big hurry to give you a hook.
John: It's music to have sex on.
Merlin: When Bowie adopts a tone like that, it's much more assured.
Merlin: With Brian Ferry, it's a little more, it feels more like a tentative first draft.
Merlin: Even like classic songs.
Merlin: Something like, you take like a Virginia Plane or an Over You or something like that.
Merlin: There's something that's just a little wonder-y about the performance.
John: Wandering.
John: And the thing about the band, Roxy Music 2... They're so weird.
John: They're playing saxophones and stuff.
John: What's happening?
John: They often choose a chord to go to that is not the chord...
John: That most people would have chosen.
John: So song is cooking along.
John: And then it's just like a pretty jazzy chord is the jump off point to another series of chords.
John: And Brian Ferry is sort of wandering the fen.
John: Um, you know, it's just sort of picking the, uh, the petals off of a, of a giant flower as he sort of, there's his, his trench coat blowing in the wind or his, uh, his great coat rather blowing in the wind.
John: He's, he's kind of in a different band and he's wandering and he's pedal picking the petals off the flowers and he's singing what comes to mind.
John: And there are some chords, uh, there's some like, there are awful lot of chords that are, that are rotating around, uh,
John: And the crop circles there and there's some other stuff.
John: And then there's the guy from Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Merlin: Are you saying he's a kind of musical wicker man?
John: Well, as a... Like wandering the countryside.
John: I feel like there's a... There's a... You know, my tendency sometimes is to sit.
John: If I'm at the sink, let's say, I'm washing some dishes, you know, I'll do the...
John: Is that an original, John?
John: just sort of jazzing it up you know just like jazzing it up and so ad-libbing as they say ad-libbing a little bit of uh of like at the sync with some chords happening in my in my imaginarium and i do definitely feel i mean the thing is that when he pulls out the hits boy they're big they're strong hits but there's an awful lot of
John: At this Brian Ferry show, there was a very enthusiastic, a very, very, very engaged audience.
John: And so the reason I was there is I got a DM from a fellow who said he listened to all the great shows.
Mm-hmm.
John: And he said, I am the, uh, I'm, I'm, uh, the like, uh, backline guy, the onstage, uh, but like the guy that's taking care of the backline, the, the gear as we, as we call it, uh, for this tour.
John: And, um, you know, if you want to come and I was like, of course.
John: So wonderful.
John: He got me a couple of wonderful, wonderful tickets.
John: I took a musician friend and, um, but, but we met before we met before the show.
John: We, we, uh, we hung out on the, on the sidewalk and,
John: He's a British fellow about our age, sort of more or less.
John: And he told me a very amusing anecdote where he was on tour with Brian Ferry.
John: They were in, let's call it Central Park in New York City.
John: They had a malfunction.
John: There was a problem.
John: The keyboard, there's a lot of keyboards on stage.
John: There are 10 people on stage making this music.
John: It's very complicated music.
John: Oh, my.
John: And there was a keyboard problem where they had everything set up.
John: It was all working great.
John: And then at a certain point, this keyboard was just like... And then it was like off.
John: It wouldn't do anything.
John: And they changed everything.
John: They changed all the cables.
John: They actually had another keyboard.
John: They put it up there.
John: The keyboard was... Oh, no.
John: And our man, the hero of our story...
John: is running around.
John: He's trying to fix it.
John: Turned out later, spoiler alert, that it was something to do, it was an outdoor show, it was something to do with the rays of the sun.
John: The rays of the sun connected with some kind of, it created a infinite, created a one infinite loop at the terminal.
John: Oh, man.
John: And it short-circuited something in the... Just that one keyboard?
Yeah.
John: No, well, but it was a crucial keyboard.
John: It was causing some kind of a sun anomaly.
John: Oh, but here's the thing.
John: I screwed up the story.
John: It wasn't Roxy Music.
John: It was Coldplay.
John: Oh, okay.
John: That's all right.
John: It still works.
John: Well, but the keyboard was very crucial.
John: See, in Roxy Music, there are several keyboards on stage.
John: They could get away with, like, toss one away.
John: But, you know, the one keyboard, it's very important for Coldplay because that's what the lead person in Coldplay plays, the keyboard.
John: Oh, okay.
John: Right?
John: Like sits down at it.
Merlin: And if it's going honk, honk, honk, you're not going to be able to, this guy for you, yellow, that's not going to work.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, that's a terrible sound.
Merlin: Chris Martin is having to deal with that.
John: That's who it was, Chris Martin.
John: It's only Chris Martin from Coldplay.
John: And he, oh, and there's another part of the story.
John: It was being simulcast live around the world.
John: Oh, my.
John: And there were like 60 million people in Korea that were all standing in a giant square watching it on a huge TV.
John: Wow.
John: And there was, yeah, and Jodie Foster and all this other stuff.
John: Oh.
John: Anyway, couldn't get it to work.
John: So Jodie Foster.
John: Yeah, Jodie Foster.
Merlin: Jodie Foster, she wasn't there, but she was listening in on the stream?
John: She was watching it on a giant screen somewhere.
John: Was she in Korea, John?
John: I don't think so.
John: Okay.
John: I think it was worldwide.
John: Simultaneously worldwide, simulcast, honk, honk, honk.
John: Honk, honk, honk.
John: But they're about to go on.
John: It hasn't honk, honked on simulcast yet, but it's about to.
Okay.
John: And so the hero of our story, he's running around and it's Central Park and there's like 50 million people there because, you know, that's what happens there sometimes.
John: Yeah.
John: People like to go to things, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And he's back at the soundboard and he's got to get up to the stage.
John: Because it's just about to go haywire.
John: And oh, and so second spoiler alert, he never does get the keyboard to work.
John: And Chris Martin of Coldplay gets up with a guitar last minute and he was telling the story and he was, you know, has, of course, a very charming British accent.
John: He's telling the story as a way, you know, there's the thing that musicians do sometimes where they tell a story to one another, people in music.
John: Yeah.
John: Tell a story to one another about a person in the music business that you expect to be a pain in the ass.
John: And the point of the story is that they're not.
John: Right.
John: Right?
John: You know this type of thing, right?
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: It turns out they're really down to earth.
Merlin: You hear these about a Tom Hanks sometimes, even though he's not strictly a musician.
Merlin: Super down to earth.
Merlin: You hear a story about somebody who's not only gracious, but real.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And people say the famous one is the Christina Aguilera story.
Merlin: First one to arrive, last one to leave.
Merlin: That's what I heard.
John: That's right.
Merlin: I know she works her ass off is what I heard.
Merlin: Works her ass off.
Merlin: That's right.
John: And everybody goes, you hear that story and you're like, oh, right on, Christina Aguilera.
Merlin: And also because it plays against type a little bit.
Merlin: She's a fancy lady in high heels.
Merlin: And it would not be hard to sell somebody on the idea that she is, as they say, a diva.
Merlin: It's hard to work with and isn't even doing her part.
John: Yeah, it just throws her stuff down on the ground and then somebody auto tunes her vocals.
Merlin: It's a little bit of a turns out.
John: Yeah.
John: And so.
John: Yeah.
John: So as the as our as our hero is telling the story, he's saying at this point, even Chris Martin, who is a great guy, I would not have blamed him.
John: for freaking out on everybody because uh we're going full christian bail yeah we're like a multi-million dollar enterprise here we're about to go on uh on live simulcast where are people paying for the simulcast is it a ppv well i you know i don't know somebody's making money from it all those people in korea are just standing out in the street right i mean there's like people all over okay and uh probably benefits something okay
John: But Chris Martin, so at the end of the story, which isn't the point of the story, the end of the story is that he got up there with an acoustic guitar.
John: At the very last minute, he goes on simulcast.
John: He says to, you know, hello, people of the world.
John: Hello.
John: Oh, oh, I'm just going to play guitar on this.
John: We didn't rehearse this anyway.
John: So hope you enjoy.
John: Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I hope you enjoy it.
John: And this is how it's going to go.
John: And then he did a bang up job.
Merlin: What a gamer, man.
John: Yeah.
John: And he just got up with a different instrument and just made it happen.
John: And played all the hits.
John: I bet you could find it on the interwebs.
John: That's impressive.
John: A really nice story about a guy that you hope to like, right?
John: You don't want to find out that Chris Martin is a bad guy.
John: You don't want to find out that he's scuttling on the bottom of the sea like a crab.
Merlin: Ragged claws, yeah.
Merlin: Nobody likes that.
John: No, you don't want that.
Merlin: But the point of the story... In this day and age, we don't need another story like this.
Merlin: In this day and age, we don't need another story.
Merlin: We don't need another hero.
Merlin: All we want is life beyond Thunderdome.
Merlin: We don't need another story about somebody who's a dick.
Merlin: We've got plenty of those.
John: There are so many.
Merlin: Please let me hear.
Merlin: Can I please hear a nice Chris Martin story?
Merlin: And here it is.
John: Yeah, there it is.
John: But the best part of the story, the point of the story, the point of it being told was that our hero is racing from the soundboard to the front of the stage.
John: But he can't race because there are tens of thousands of people in his way, and it's New York.
John: So people are like – in New York, people know how to make a path, but they also don't.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: I'm watching a concert here.
John: Yeah.
John: And so as he's going through, and he's like – he says to me, he says, as a roadie, typically roadies just push –
John: just push people out of the way.
John: They're very rude.
John: They're very, uh, they're like, I have somewhere to go.
John: I'm actually working here.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, I'm, I'm working.
John: Call me Sergeant.
John: I work for a lady, but he's not that kind of, of guy.
John: He's a, he's a bit more congenial.
John: And so as he's trying to make his way through the stage and he apologized to me for getting it wrong, he said right up front, I know I got it wrong, but this was a long time ago.
John: He's pushing through the crowd and he's saying, keep moving or get out of the way.
John: He got it wrong.
John: That's okay.
John: It's pretty close.
John: But he admitted it and he's shouting it at people.
John: Keep moving or get out of the way.
John: Keep moving or get out of the way.
Merlin: I want to stipulate.
Merlin: I don't think that is unuseful.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: The and part is kind of the graduate level of that particular.
Merlin: But it's not unuseful to say keep moving or get out of the way.
John: No, it's perfect.
John: And the thing is, I realized as he was telling the story, I don't want to correct people about it.
John: Keep moving and get out of the way.
John: I think in that situation, it would have been confusing to people.
Merlin: Well, I mean, yes, absolutely.
John: A lot of them aren't moving.
John: They don't want to keep moving.
John: They're standing at a concert.
Merlin: You're trying to make people learn long division when all they really know is addition-subtraction.
John: Yeah, so what he was saying was, if you don't want to keep moving, get out of the way.
John: And that's reasonable at a concert, whereas it's not in a supermarket.
John: He could have also said beep, beep, beep.
John: He could have said beep beep.
John: He could have said coming through.
John: But that's what he chose to do because that's where he was.
John: That's his headspace.
John: And he said he came upon a cluster of people that would not move or get out of the way.
John: And they were a large cluster.
John: He couldn't get through.
John: He couldn't go around.
John: And he was shouting, keep moving or get out of the way.
John: But he was doing it in a British accent, right?
John: So it's keep moving or get out of the way.
John: Something like that.
John: Something charming.
John: Keep moving or get out of the way.
John: Something.
John: Something British, which is charming.
Merlin: He's yelling at the unbreakable cluster of people.
John: Cluster's not moving.
John: Cluster's not moving.
John: He comes right up against it.
John: He's trying to push his way through it.
John: He can't.
John: And he looks...
John: And it's Michelle Obama.
Merlin: He yelled keep moving or get out of the way at Michelle Obama and her retinue.
John: Right at her.
John: I think Joe Biden was there too.
John: Maybe Jodie Foster.
John: There was a lot of people there.
John: And he's only feet from them.
John: And he's saying...
John: You know, keep moving.
John: Michelle Obama's like right out in the crowd.
John: Well, and that's the thing.
John: She's got this retinue.
John: She's got to have people.
John: There's security.
John: That's right.
John: That's some of those people.
John: The reason they weren't moving is that they were like, nobody, you keep moving or get out of the way because we are the secret service.
John: We don't do what you say.
John: You do what we say.
John: Anyway, that was a nice story.
John: It came by way of this Roxy Music connection that I now have.
Merlin: Oh, wait, Brian Ferry.
John: Good friend, yeah.
John: I didn't get to meet Brian Ferry at this point because he said he was very nice, our friend, and he apologized.
John: He said Brian was in a mood, and I was like, I didn't expect that Brian Ferry was going to want to meet me.
John: That's an awful lot to ask.
Merlin: What do you think Brian Ferry is excited about right now?
John: I was very excited about his saxophone player.
Merlin: Of course, he's doing some Roxy songs, so he needs saxophone.
Merlin: He's doing a lot.
John: What do you think Brian Ferry's excited about?
Merlin: He's excited about Brexit?
Merlin: I think he's watching a lot of Parliament TV on the internet?
John: Watching Brian Ferry, I definitely had that thing where I felt like he's been doing this a long time.
John: He's gotten everything out of it that there is to get out of it, you have to guess.
John: I imagine he felt that way by 1988.
John: Yeah, I mean, he was born in 1945.
John: So what does that mean?
John: So he's Beatles concurrent.
John: He's like 95 years old or something.
John: 95, mm-hmm.
John: Yeah, right.
John: He's like Paul McCartney age, a little bit older, maybe, a little bit younger.
John: Yeah.
John: Lennon was born during the war, Paul...
John: just after I don't remember I think the three of them are roughly the same age and then George is a little younger I think yeah I mean if you think about that he was 20 years old in 1965 Brian Ferry has seen a lot he was 30 years old
John: In 1975.
John: What?
Merlin: Think about that.
Merlin: Wait, he's 30 years old when Love is the, roughly when Love is the Drug comes out.
John: Yeah, he was 40 years old in 1985.
John: And he did seem like a gentleman.
Merlin: Yeah, he did.
Merlin: He seemed like a gentleman.
Merlin: He was handsome.
Merlin: Love that guy.
John: He wore the suits.
John: But anyway, he's still very handsome.
Merlin: Remember that Avalon video used to be on a lot?
Merlin: More so than this, but Avalon with the Falcon.
Merlin: They had a Falcon video that was on MTV a lot.
John: Yeah, there was a Falcon, right?
John: He's 73 years old.
John: Wow, and he's out there.
Merlin: He's out there scrapping.
John: He's out there scrapping.
John: He moves with a lot of grace.
John: Is he shimmy, John?
John: A little, a little.
John: There's something about him.
John: How about there wasn't a dry knicker in the house?
John: He can't help but shimmy.
Merlin: We were allowed to use that word.
John: There were a lot of people.
John: What, dry knicker?
John: There were a lot of people there.
John: No, I'm talking about trousers.
Merlin: I'm talking about pants.
Merlin: I'm talking about lady pants.
Merlin: Lady Tron.
John: Lady Tron?
Merlin: Lady Tron from their first album.
Merlin: Oh, I loved Lady Tron.
Merlin: No, Lady Tron's a band that got their name from a song on the first album.
Merlin: Of the first album.
Merlin: The first Roxy music album.
Merlin: You could see them doing it on, doing Lady Tron and Old Grey Whistle Test.
Merlin: They've got a little bit... Now, I speak as somebody who is a huge fan of Roy Wood, as you know.
Merlin: I am the only person, apparently, in the world that still loves Roy Wood.
Merlin: I'm not against a woodwind.
Merlin: But I think they need to be used...
Merlin: With care and caution.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Are you, you're putting some, you're drawing some lines.
John: There's a lot of saxophone.
Merlin: You got Phil, what's his name?
Merlin: Phil, Phil Manzarek playing guitar, right?
John: That guy's good.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, he's, he's, he's kind of the guy musically in the band, right?
Merlin: Isn't he like big in the songwriting?
Merlin: Phil Manzarek, correct?
John: Roy Manzarek is big in the doors.
John: Roy Manzarek, yes.
Merlin: His left hand is the greatest bass player in rock.
Merlin: Anyways, nevermind.
Merlin: But then you get the one guy who plays a pretty, pretty squinky sax a bunch of the time.
Merlin: And you got Brian Eno for a little while.
Merlin: You got Brian Eno over here doing arpeggios.
John: Tubular bells, tubular bells, tubular bells.
Merlin: The bells are tubular.
Merlin: The bells are tubular.