Ep. 386: "Pass the Dude"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
John: I have a little bit of audiovisual video settings problem here.
John: Let's see here.
John: You got to do the... No, we don't want that.
John: We don't want... It's not the built-in microphone that we want.
John: We want it to be the...
John: You go to system preferences here.
John: Let's see over here to sound.
Merlin: I like to imagine that your glasses are down at the end of your nose like Chuck Schumer.
Merlin: Yeah, that's it.
Merlin: Head back thing and you're like, okay, I'm clicking.
John: Well, I'll sit here.
John: Hang on, I'm going to hot plug.
John: Ready?
John: You're not supposed to do this hot plug thing.
Merlin: Hot plug.
John: Hot plug.
Merlin: Oh boy.
Merlin: My hot plug.
Merlin: Hey, there's that guy.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: I never see the hot plug coming.
John: Hot plug.
John: Hot plug.
John: I'm going to get my glasses here.
John: Where is it?
There.
John: We did it.
John: We did it.
John: We made it.
John: It's another day.
John: Everything's happening.
John: Yeah.
John: You want to do this over video?
Merlin: You want to do video chat?
Merlin: No, I'm good.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Actually, ironically enough, I am doing more video because I have to.
Merlin: And it's a lot of work.
Merlin: Oof.
Merlin: In this economy.
Merlin: And I really do.
Merlin: I really, I really need a haircut.
Merlin: And my family has forbidden me from using the cat clippers on myself.
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: Well, I mean, I think they're worried that it'll become a grotesquerie, more so.
Merlin: I don't know if it's the cat clipper part or the auto-cutting that is more upsetting to them.
John: Let me interrogate two different angles here.
John: Please.
John: First of all, why do you need a haircut?
Merlin: It's unsightly and unruly.
Merlin: To whom?
Merlin: Well... You don't see anybody, am I right?
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: On video, they see me.
Merlin: You could wear a hat or slick it back.
Merlin: Do you have any product?
Merlin: Do you have product?
Merlin: But over here on the sides, these like...
Merlin: Chester A. Arthur things I got going on the sides over here.
Merlin: And I tried trimming those.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: As long as you're asking, I'm going to tell you an honest truth, which is that I have always been curious and a little envious about your ability to cut your own hair.
Merlin: And I had you top of mind to be candid.
Merlin: And I thought, you know what?
Merlin: I want to be like John Roderick in this one way.
John: Right, I hear that a lot.
Merlin: And yes, yes.
Merlin: And I want to be able to cut my own hair.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: I'm willing to throw myself upon the levers and the gears.
Merlin: Sometimes the system is so sick that you have to learn how to cut your own hair.
Merlin: And I'm willing to make a grotesquerie of myself for several bad haircuts.
Merlin: And I figure I'll eventually learn.
Merlin: And also there's YouTube.
John: I think that's right.
John: I think that's absolutely right.
John: You'll eventually learn.
John: There are a few things that you need to remember.
John: Always cut with the scissors parallel to the side of your head.
John: So never take the scissors.
John: Horizontal.
John: Keep it exactly horizontal.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: So if you're cutting, let's say you're cutting the hair over your ear on the side.
John: Okay, I got it.
John: The tips of the scissors should be pointing straight up into the sky, right?
John: You're cutting along the side of your hair, not across.
John: Whoa, okay.
John: Don't cut across the grain, cut up across the cut.
John: So the hair, you pull the hair out from the side of the head and then you cut up.
John: whoa yeah so so what happens then is that when the hair falls back down it layers over itself and there's not there's not that straight line where you cut a all across a bunch of hairs so you cut and then when you get up around the top of your head same thing you pull the hair up and cut across the top of your head but at the top right you're doing all this with scissors you're not even using clippers
John: No, you got to do scissors because Clippers, you know, lulls you into a... I think that's exactly it.
Merlin: I think I have this fantasy that Judy's been cutting my hair with the two and a half on the side for so long.
Merlin: I look at that and I go, that doesn't look that hard.
Merlin: It's basically like a Flobie.
Merlin: How bad could I wreck this?
John: Yeah, but it lulls you into a false sense of security.
John: Yeah.
John: You think I should just wear a hat though for now?
No.
John: No, no, no.
John: I think you should go for it.
John: So what you do, you get your hair a little wet.
John: You pull it out on the sides.
John: You give yourself that Joker look where you pulled it out.
John: A little bit twisted.
John: And it's sticking out.
John: You look like the guy in Firestarter.
John: Firestarter!
John: I love that guy!
John: I'm fierce!
John: And then you see that it's all sticking out.
John: You look like a prickly porcupine.
John: And the idea that at least I follow is from the...
John: from the top of the sideburn there, you know, from where your hair meets your face, you want it to be the closest there and then kind of go up in a wedge.
John: And I'm not talking about like a, like a, okay, Karen, like mom wedge, you know, you want it to be, you want it to go kind of up and out, up and out.
Hmm.
John: So you're not cutting straight across the side of your head because you're not in the Marine Corps.
John: You want it to go up and out a little bit, you know, like, like close by the ear.
John: And then you kind of go and you're cutting up, you're cutting with the scissors facing up and you're just kind of cutting out a little bit, just like zoop, zoop.
John: And then the trick is, you know, as you go further back where you can't see, you
Merlin: Then you kind of got to fly by wire.
Merlin: I'm going to be playing this.
Merlin: I'm going to be playing this over my boom box later, and I'm going to try this.
Merlin: I'm going to get the scissors.
Merlin: I'm going to get wet.
Merlin: I'm going to become a fire starter.
Merlin: By the way, the fire starter guy, I like to imagine that he's approximately two and a half feet tall.
Merlin: Wouldn't that be adorable?
Merlin: He's so mad and he's so little.
Merlin: He's starting fires.
Merlin: I think he is.
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John: I think he just passed not too long ago.
John: Yeah, I think so too.
John: I don't know why I would know that, but I do feel like the trades.
John: I do.
John: I do.
John: And I, I feel like, I feel like he passed and, um,
John: And it was, you know, it's another example of a situation where, you know, you think somebody's got it all.
John: He started so many fires.
John: You think somebody has got it all.
Merlin: That doesn't mean you're a pyromaniac.
Merlin: Okay, just to be clear.
Merlin: I think pyromania, you know, the serenade is a fire brigade.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's better to burn out.
Merlin: Then fade away.
Merlin: I think it's important to distinguish.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I think pyromania implies an antisocial, psychosocial sex component to it.
Merlin: And if you're a fire starter, maybe you're just very helpful.
Merlin: Maybe you're more like a scout.
Merlin: You just like to help people start fires.
John: So we're talking about Keith Flint.
John: Okay.
John: Keith Flint is almost exactly one year younger than me, and he died last year.
John: At the age of 50 or close to the age of 50, 49.
John: And apparently he was a motorcycle racer also.
John: Let's see.
Merlin: You know all this right off the dome, huh?
Merlin: It's amazing.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: He dated television presenter Gail Porter.
Merlin: Gail Porter from England?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're talking about the lady who presents on TV.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: From England.
John: Huh.
John: And apparently he bought a pub.
John: And he kept a jar on the counter where you were – if a customer came in and made a fire starter joke, they had to put a pound in the – A pound of what?
John: A pound.
John: Oh, an English money.
John: Like an English money.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And so anyway, and then I guess – It's funny if somebody put like – in their pocket and just put some bologna in there or something.
John: Just put a pound of ground beef.
Mm-hmm.
John: I'm not sure.
John: I think that, yeah.
John: That sucks.
John: I think his death was not a joyful one.
John: Well, was he ill?
John: No, I believe that he committed suicide.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Oh, you got to cut all this out, John.
John: Well, I know.
John: It's hard.
John: That sucks.
John: It's hard when it happens.
John: Yeah, everything's difficult.
John: Yeah, things are difficult.
John: And who knows?
John: The thing about somebody like Keith Flint, when he was a big star...
John: Uh, let's see when this was, um, the nineties, I believe this was the nineties.
John: You know, I was trying very hard to be a rock musician at the time.
John: And so, uh, everyone that was everyone that made it.
John: You know, that was a big rock star.
John: I was just I was searching what they were doing and and just like very confused about why some things were popular and other things weren't.
John: Although I knew that there was a reason my stuff wasn't because my stuff wasn't.
John: This is back when you were difficult.
John: Right.
John: This was when I was very difficult.
John: Yeah.
John: But, you know, I remember thinking.
John: at the time still, even in my late 20s, that if you could get to that level, you had it made.
John: You had no more problems.
John: You were just riding around in a blimp with all your money.
John: With your gold-plated house and your rocket car.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And I'd heard the MC Hammer saga.
John: I knew that you could screw up.
John: If you hired every friend you had.
John: Well, that was because of his generosity, let's be honest.
John: Yeah, he was a sweet man and he just didn't put his money away.
John: He gave it to the community.
John: But I knew I wasn't going to do that.
John: Nope.
John: And so Keith Flint was one of those guys right up there in the pantheon of people that had made it.
John: Even though, you know, I think that the other guy in Prodigy wrote all the songs.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Well, you know, but you're there and it's like the producer's asking the musical question.
Merlin: What's he got that I ain't got, right?
Merlin: What's he got?
Merlin: That I ain't got.
Merlin: He's got you.
Merlin: He's got you.
Merlin: That's what he's got.
John: So, yeah, it was Liam Paul Paris Howlett.
John: That's not a name.
Merlin: Who wrote all the songs.
Merlin: That's the English version of a random number generator.
Merlin: Say it again.
John: Liam Paul Paris Howlett von Stinkledorfen.
Merlin: Pretender to the throne of Alsace Lorraine.
John: And he's younger.
John: He's born in 1971.
John: And I remember very distinctly after Flint got to be the star of the prodigy, Liam Howlett always had a sour look on his face.
John: Because he was the genius and he was mad.
John: He was mad that Keith was like the front man now all of a sudden because he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
John: He was just – he was like more of the dancer.
John: You know, it's the way that McCartney talks about like, hey, I took LSD.
John: I was the crazy one.
Yeah.
Merlin: I'll talk about whatever you want, but can we attempt an exercise really quick?
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Here's the exercise I would like to try.
Merlin: This is in no way meant to be critical or dismissive of anyone nor their talents, but I'm going to hypothesize that
John: Okay.
Merlin: It's my favorite thing that you do.
Merlin: Well, I'm very – I'm like, you know, our band is Scientist Rock, like I always say.
Merlin: And so what I'm saying is like from my POV as somebody living in Florida who wasn't very bright, it has occurred to me that sometimes a band or artist gets popular because they have a bit.
Merlin: And more to that, even if it is a band that has a more long-lived career than one song or one album, there can, as you're saying here, you've got somebody like Dorfberg von Ribbentraub on Porksack or whoever, who's the actual genius of the band.
Merlin: But then you've got somebody else.
Merlin: That's the one who got the bit.
Merlin: He had the bit.
Merlin: He had the little bit.
Merlin: And now I'm going to say off the dome, and I would like for you to participate.
Merlin: Can we think of examples of this?
Merlin: I'm going to say we talk about use that.
Merlin: I don't love that phrase.
Merlin: One hit wonder.
Merlin: But you look at something like the band Jackal.
Merlin: Do you remember the band Jackal?
John: Yeah, of course.
Merlin: Now, Jackal was well, well, they weren't well anything.
Merlin: Jackal had a song that featured... I can't even say the words.
Merlin: Jackal was a band, and they had a song, a single, I want to say, that involved a chainsaw solo.
John: Oh, really?
John: Oh, I don't remember the chainsaw solo.
John: It says here that their debut sold a million copies.
John: How's that make you feel?
John: Not very good.
John: Not great.
John: Not great, Bob.
John: Chainsaw solo.
Merlin: Well, think about the sound of a chainsaw and revving it.
Merlin: Do you hear it?
Merlin: You're basically, John, you're bending a fifth.
Merlin: oh yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so now here's there are many i'm not going to look at the internet for this there are many things about jackal that i do not know i do not know for example if all their songs have a chainsaw on it but a part of me thinks that if they want to keep showing up first of all it sucks everybody's there to hear the chainsaw song
John: Right, right, right.
Merlin: Like play the chainsaw song.
Merlin: And so what do you want to not do?
Merlin: What you want to not do is spend 38 minutes as the first of three bands playing all your chainsaw material.
Merlin: And then you get to what's it called?
Merlin: Hot on your heels, right out of hell.
Merlin: What's the name of their of their hit?
John: Their best known song is The Lumberjack.
Merlin: That's right, The Lumberjack.
John: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Wow.
John: But then they have other hit songs called Down On Me.
John: And then When Will It Rain.
Merlin: So anyway, I'm not going to look it up.
Merlin: But The Mind does...
Merlin: you know cast around you get into one of those like one of the classics like you know like the in-studio uh arguing with the troggs you know i know it bloody well needs strings that kind of thing uh and so so you ask yourself well did they have chainsaw on all the songs did they use different motor instruments did they use the titular lawnmower sometimes oh the smartest one would be in on their follow-up record to have the solo be a chainsaw that wouldn't start
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: I'm just trying to turn over a car engine on a little Dodge Swinger.
Merlin: So anyway, what I thought we could do, if you want to do the exercise, I'll talk about whatever you want.
Merlin: I thought maybe we could talk about some of these instances.
Merlin: We could interrogate this a little bit and try to unearth situations where there is a bit in the band and were there occasions where the person who had the bit was maybe not actually...
Merlin: the musical genius behind the greatness.
Merlin: I'll give you another freebie, Jamiroquai.
John: What do you know about Jamiroquai?
Merlin: He had the hat.
Merlin: He's the genius.
Merlin: He's the singer.
Merlin: He's the whole thing.
Merlin: Now, is he the titular Jamiroquai?
Merlin: Is his name Jamiroquai?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Jamiroquai is... Is it somebody else?
Merlin: Is it like a Zumpano thing where you name it after the drummer?
Merlin: Is the drummer named Jamiroquai?
John: No, it's a portmanteau.
John: Oh.
John: It's got jam in it.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Oh, it's like a Stankonia kind of thing.
John: Yeah, Jamiroquai.
Merlin: Oh, it's like the Native American tribe.
John: Yeah, he's a Jamiroquai.
John: Okay, okay.
John: Or an Iroquai.
John: But no, that guy, apparently that guy, the Jamiroquai guy, JK, his name is JK.
John: Just kidding.
John: JK.
John: JK is like some kind of hot rod car aficionado.
John: Interesting.
John: He really, really likes hot rods.
John: That's an example.
John: I mean, not hot rods, but like sports.
John: You know, like UK people.
John: Sport racing.
John: Like a Paul Newman.
Merlin: People say Paul Newman enjoyed acting, but it's really his wife and racing that he loved.
John: He loved his wife and racing in that order.
John: Jem Maricoy is one of those bands, and this is a whole separate topic, bands that are really big in England that Americans don't care about.
Merlin: Like the Kinks or the Move.
John: Uh, yeah, or Oasis.
John: Oh, boy, put them on the list.
John: Whoa.
John: Anyway, so here, let me just tell you this.
John: I got a feeling you're looking at the internet.
John: I just have a feeling.
John: JK was influenced by Native American and First Nation peoples.
John: Now, we wouldn't allow this now.
Merlin: Well, yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, well, yeah, good for him.
Merlin: This would be, no, this would be appropriation.
Merlin: You mean like, well, I'm not even going to make the noise.
Merlin: But he wasn't wearing a headdress or anything like that.
John: He was, in fact.
John: Oh, boy.
Merlin: If you look at the logo of the band.
Merlin: Philippe from the Village, people can pull that off.
Merlin: Everybody else needs to put it down.
John: He's wearing a hat in the band's logo where he has like a buffalo horns.
John: Huh.
John: And he says, Jam Iroquois, I was just kidding when I said this, but it literally says here, it's a portmanteau of the word Jam and the Native American Confederacy.
Merlin: So it really is.
Merlin: You're not just kidding.
Merlin: He's just kidding.
Merlin: He's JK, right?
Merlin: I don't think he was just kidding.
Merlin: I think he was.
Merlin: I'm so confused.
Merlin: So maybe he's in the Order of Water Buffalo.
Merlin: Maybe he's the Grand Poobah.
John: I don't think he is.
John: I think he just is a guy that wore big hats, but he really likes cars, and I don't think anyone in America cares about Jenner.
Merlin: If you go to his apartment, don't put your backpack down.
Merlin: That's all I'm going to say about that.
John: Did you know I have a chainsaw solo story?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I did not, and I don't.
John: I would love to hear that.
John: So when I first came to Seattle, it was fall of 1990, and I was just like,
John: I was crashing on people's couches for a while.
John: This guy, Brian, let me live in his mom's Volkswagen bus in their carport.
John: This was the first time I lived in a carport.
John: Not the second time I lived in that Ford Aerostar, but the first time I lived in a carport.
Merlin: I'm living outside in your carport.
John: I didn't have the money, obviously.
John: At the time, I did not.
John: And this Volkswagen bus also, I think it might have run...
John: Brian's mom wouldn't let me live there.
John: I lived there for about three weeks and then she was like, you can't keep living in my carport.
John: And then for a while I went and lived my great aunt, Marguerite, whom we called Tutu.
John: Tutu, see, Abber Dabber had died.
John: Abber Dabber was her husband.
John: Great Uncle Al.
John: Or Gaga, as he was referred to by everybody else in the family.
John: I should definitely be writing this down.
John: I called him Gaga, but in fact... Okay.
John: In fact, my name for him was Aberdabber, and no one else called him Aberdabber until he became Aberdabber by sheer force of me calling him Aberdabber.
John: He willed it.
John: Aberdabber had died, and he and Tutu had... They lived in an old folks' home called the Exeter,
John: downtown in seattle which is one of those grand old 1890s brick buildings and what you did was you actually bought an apartment in the old folks home and they had like you know usual old folks home stuff but it was that's cool like a tendency in common almost yeah yeah that's cool uh but it was they had like a like a three-bedroom apartment or something in this place really nice um old school right i don't even think a thing like that
John: If it existed today, it would cost you $30,000 a month.
John: But at the time it was like, oh, we sold our house and we bought this apartment in the Exeter and now they give us Jell-O every day.
John: But, you know, it was a nice place.
John: And I actually said to – and she was 90, you know, and I was like, can I stay here with you?
John: And she said, I guess so.
John: But –
John: of the bedrooms in the house, I guess after Aberdabber died, they sold... I'm not laughing at Aberdabber's death.
John: It's just such an adorable name.
John: They sold maybe one or even two of the bedrooms and the building was configured in such a way that you could actually sell off one of the bedrooms to the apartment next door and they would just move the wall kind of thing.
Merlin: Liz Lemon did that on 30 Rock, I think.
John: Yeah, pretty nice thing.
John: Sounds like a very New York kind of thing to do.
John: It was small at that point, and I ended up sleeping in her walk-in closet in the hall, like on top of her shoes.
John: And then she was like, you can't stay here either.
John: So I moved out to the U District.
John: This is kind of how I got my start in the music scene.
John: I was crashing on the floor at my friend Eric's house.
John: And then in the morning, you know, everybody – it was one of those group houses where six people lived.
John: And in the morning, they would all get up and go to work.
John: And then I would just kind of go around and scrape the resin out of all of their bongs and pipes.
Merlin: That's nice of you to help with that.
John: You know, I was just trying to – You just got to pitch in with the housework.
John: Yeah, it's just like, hey, your stuff was really dirty, so I cleaned it for you.
John: And the phone rang, and it was this guy that was like, hey, is Eric there?
John: And I was like, no, Eric's not there.
John: And he said, who's this?
John: And I was like, oh, I'm Eric's friend from Alaska, John.
John: And he was like –
John: Oh, well, look, you know, we need security at the show tonight, and I'm calling around.
John: Can you, like, have you ever, like, work security or whatever?
John: And I was like, sure, all the time.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: It's my number one thing.
John: Security's your middle name.
John: And he said, all right, you know, be at the OK Hotel at 8 o'clock or something.
John: And I was like, okay, I don't know what that is, but I'll see you then.
John: And I took like three buses downtown and asking every, asking every punker that I saw, where's the okay hotel.
John: And they were like, keep going down in Potter square.
John: And I made it down there and it was a big show and it was agent orange.
John: Whoa.
John: Was playing at the, at the okay hotel.
John: First time I'd been there.
John: This is, you know, November, I guess of 1990.
John: Wow.
John: Wow.
John: And and got in there and, you know, I was big and I was young and big.
John: And so they were like, OK, you're.
John: And this was a job that they used to have at rock shows, which was.
John: Guys that actually crouched on stage with their hands on the monitors.
John: And anybody that tried to get up on the stage, you pushed them back down.
John: You're like a ball boy at Wimbledon, but for people.
John: But for people, right.
John: And there were other security in the venue all over the place.
John: But your job was just to be right on stage with the band.
John: Because people were always doing stage diving and past the dude.
John: They were doing stage diving.
John: They were doing past the dude.
John: And, you know, the stage at the OK Hotel was...
John: was low enough that it would, the barrier to entry was not that hard.
John: And I had not, you know, I'd been to punk rock shows, uh, in Alaska and in Spokane, but I had never been in the music business, you know, like on the stage, like it felt, it felt really amazing.
John: Like a big deal, you know?
John: Sure, sure, sure.
John: And I knew Agent Orange.
John: Like, I was familiar.
Merlin: Yeah, that was not the height of their powers, but, like, that's still a pretty big deal.
Merlin: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Merlin: And it was a super— I think of them as, like, a SoCal early 80s punk band.
Merlin: That's exactly what— They did, like, a surfy, a fast surfy band, right?
John: Yeah, but they were also melodic, you know?
Merlin: They did that cover of Pipeline.
John: Yeah, right.
John: But their records are listenable.
John: A lot of that SoCal stuff, take it or leave it.
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: I think the germs are pretty overrated between you and me.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: Oh, God, I'm canceled.
Merlin: I get in so much trouble for that shit.
Merlin: I love the Go-Go's.
Merlin: I like Pat Smear's work with the fellow from the other band.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: He was good in that band.
John: Oh, great.
John: Now, what about Chris?
John: No, no.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Chris Novoselic.
John: I got in big trouble for that the other day.
John: I came to his rescue.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no, no.
John: Put on this headdress.
John: Quick.
John: No time to argue.
John: People piled on.
John: And I was like, I don't.
John: Hey, man, look.
John: Hey, I just I'm sorry.
John: I'm sorry.
John: I didn't know he was a libertarian.
John: Please leave me alone.
John: Please, please.
John: I just anyway.
John: I just want to live.
John: I just want to live.
John: But so they get up on stage and they're doing the rock show and people are flying through the air and me being on stage is absolutely not keeping them from playing past the dude.
John: It's not keeping them from, I mean, I'm just basically like, as I'm holding the one guy off the stage, two other guys are using me to climb stage.
John: And we're just like, you know, and it's, but it's, but it's punk rock.
John: So it's fun.
John: You know, like I'm getting the shit kicked out of me and I'm having fun and guy get up on the stage and I'd grab him and throw him into the crowd.
John: And it was like, yeah, that's the whole, this is the game.
John: And really early on in the set, the singer.
John: Bobby Orange.
John: Bobby Orange.
John: pulled out from behind the stage a chainsaw.
Merlin: Oh, I'm going to say what we always used to say to my daughter.
Merlin: That's not very safe.
John: It was not.
Merlin: And he started it up, you know, on a fairly low stage, crowded punk rock show.
Merlin: Let's have an internal combustion chainsaw.
John: Yeah.
John: In the bar.
John: And it was a big chainsaw.
John: And the thing about a chainsaw is it's a two-cycle motor, and it's just burning oil.
Merlin: It puts off a lot of – what's the word I'm looking for?
Merlin: Not smoke probably, but fumes?
John: Exhaust, I guess, correctly?
John: Exhaust.
John: Just pure pollution.
John: So as soon as he gets this thing started, you immediately realize that this is not a thing to do inside.
John: Right.
John: I know.
John: No.
John: No.
John: The room just like fills up with – Bobby, can you put down the chainsaw?
John: And the thing is the chainsaw exhaust is – there's no muffler on it, right?
John: It just shoots right out the back.
John: So as he's holding it up, it's just shooting oily exhaust right on the crowd, right in their faces.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And he's – and it was very impressive.
John: Yeah.
John: And then – Certainly surprising, I have to imagine.
John: Whatever happened, I don't know.
John: I wasn't – my eyes weren't on him at that very moment.
John: But he got his finger caught in it or something.
John: And it totally like really fucked up his hand.
John: You're kidding me.
John: Just the cutting part.
John: Well, see, I don't even, I'm not 100% sure whether he even had a chain on it.
John: Oh, I see.
John: You know, it was there for this big effect.
John: I think if you're going to get up on stage at a Pacific Northwest venue at that point in time and not have a chain on your chainsaw, people would boo you off the stage.
John: So it has to have had some.
Merlin: You instantly lose all credibility, especially amongst the lumberjack community.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: What do you have to imagine?
John: That's the thing.
John: Tad was basically billed as a lumberjack, even though he was a sensitive poet.
Hmm.
John: Uh, but, uh, but so, so this is pretty early on in the set and this whole chainsaw gag hadn't even really played out yet.
John: It wasn't clear what, what was going to happen with it.
John: He just started it up, revved it a bunch of times and then he like dropped it, grabbed his hand and ran off the stage.
John: Really?
John: Yeah.
John: The music stopped.
Merlin: Does it have a dead man switch where if you let it go, it turns off?
John: Interesting.
John: It might have sat there and idled.
Merlin: Spinning in a circle like curly.
John: I don't remember because I was like, you know, still really engaged in keeping.
Merlin: I was going to say, is there a Roderick shaped hole in the wall?
John: There's like, you know, there's like.
John: 600 capacity, uh, venue with 800 people in it.
John: Oh God.
John: And I'm so new, you know, I'm, I'm 20, 21.
John: I don't, this is all new to me.
John: He runs off stage.
John: He's back there for a little bit.
John: And then, you know, and the band kind of put their instruments down and go back and, and, uh, then somebody comes out and they're like, sorry, everybody shows canceled.
John: And thankfully, the place didn't devolve into a riot.
John: It was kind of obvious what had happened.
John: It's not like anybody had a tantrum.
John: The guy cut his hand with a chainsaw.
John: And so the lights came up and everybody left.
John: Do you remember how much you got paid?
John: 20 bucks.
John: And I was out on the street with all the whole town.
John: But you got to see Agent Orange for free.
John: Got to see a little bit of Agent Orange.
John: I got my foot in the door in the music community.
John: And then afterwards, like milling around outside, I was like, hey, where's everybody going?
John: Followed some group of people to a party.
John: And thus began my life.
John: Wow.
John: That's crazy.
John: 1990, you think.
John: 1990.
John: Fall of 1990 is my recollection of that.
John: I'm going to say, you know, when –
John: The Long Winters, when we put out our second record, When I Pretend to Fall.
Merlin: That is the name of the record.
Merlin: It's a very good album.
John: That's sequencing out there.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Thank you.
John: That's nice for you to say.
John: During that period, Sean Nelson...
John: started to wear a top hat.
John: I don't know if you ever saw us.
Merlin: I've seen the early photos for the, I think the pretend to fall photos he's wearing.
Merlin: You all have funny hats.
Merlin: I feel like Eric's wearing like an aviator helmet.
Merlin: You have like some kind of like, uh,
Merlin: Panama child molester hat.
Merlin: I think.
Merlin: I don't remember exactly.
Merlin: It was very colorful.
Merlin: You're wearing like a blue shirt, very orangey.
Merlin: I might be concatenating.
Merlin: Yeah, but very much Sean.
Merlin: But Sean had like a jokey, not like a Lincoln top hat, but more like a Captain Beefheart top hat.
John: Yeah, that's what it was.
John: It was somewhere between.
John: It wasn't a Tom Petty top hat.
John: It was a Captain Beefheart.
John: That's precisely right.
John: And there was a little bit there where...
John: Like the rest of us abandoned those hats immediately after the photo shoot.
John: The hat I was wearing actually belonged to Sean's grandfather.
John: That's cool.
John: What would you have a name for him?
John: Sean's grandfather?
John: Was it like Abba Dabba or Ziba?
John: Yeah, I didn't have a name for him.
John: No, Sean probably did.
John: It was probably Admiral or something.
John: Admiral Peepaw.
John: Admiral Peepaw.
John: But like the other hats belong to me.
John: But but we all abandoned that that thing pretty fast.
John: But Sean kept wearing the top hat.
John: I can totally see that.
John: And it really felt like it was going to maybe turn into a thing.
John: I've thought about this a lot.
John: If I had written if I'd given Sean one song to sing.
John: Like if, if every record I lead, Oh, like a lead vocal.
John: Yeah.
John: Like if every record I, I, I wrote a song just for him, like, you know, for like him to take the lead on, I could have absolutely seen.
John: And probably one of the reasons I didn't do it is that that song would, he would make it a hit and then we would, the long winners would have been a band.
John: where Sean is the star.
John: Oh, my God.
John: So he's the fire starter.
John: He's the fire starter.
John: And then everybody's like, it's the guy from Harvey Danger.
John: He's got a new band, and it's amazing.
John: And I would have been like, hey, no, no, no.
John: I'm the star of this band.
John: Bring the camera back over here.
John: And people come to the shows and then I'm up there singing for an hour and they're like, boo, bring on the guy with the hat.
John: Nobody cares about your blue diamonds.
John: So I've actually thought, I've thought back at it and thought, why didn't I just have Sean be the singer?
John: I just write all the songs and play lead guitar.
John: It's too late now.
John: I should have.
John: You know, I mean, the night is young.
Yeah.
John: I should have had a girl be the singer, actually.
John: I should have written all my songs in a female voice and had like a... You lost your Stephanie window, you know?
Merlin: And now I'm going to give you... I'd love to hear more if you have more, but I also want to give you the exception that proves the rule.
Merlin: Very long story short, I made reference to the Canadian singer Jane Childe.
Merlin: on a podcast a while back that caused me to need to do a little bit of research on her.
Merlin: What do you remember about Jane Child?
Merlin: She had the nose ring that attached to her earring and a very wild haircut.
Merlin: Do you remember Jane Child?
John: Sure, sure.
John: Of course I do.
John: Okay.
John: That was startling at the time.
Merlin: Now, a careless person like me would, oh my God, please go look her up.
Merlin: She had really, really quite a look.
Merlin: Careless person like me, who's, let's be honest, probably being a little bit of an asshole would have gone, ha!
Merlin: the Canadian singer Jane Child, I bet she's the product of some kind of mill where they make interesting people.
John: Oh, I see.
John: I remember this haircut.
John: I want to fall in love.
John: She had the cornrow braids with the spiky top hat hair.
Merlin: But boy, could I ever, I could not have been more wrong.
John: Oh, she's a true auteur?
Merlin: Well, she did it all.
Merlin: I think she wrote, sang, played all but one instrument, and produced it.
Merlin: She basically did a Rundgren.
John: Interestingly, like Amy Mann, who when she arrived on the scene... Who also looks a little like a beautiful seabird.
John: Yeah, and when Amy arrived on the scene, there was a lot of haircut about her.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I totally forgot this.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: She had the tail, right?
John: She had the rat tail and also very spiky.
John: Her boyfriend made her hide the tail.
John: Remember?
John: He did because he wanted her to go straight.
Merlin: And then she said, shut up.
Merlin: God, can't you keep it down?
Merlin: And then out comes all the hair.
Merlin: I remember that.
Merlin: That was 1985.
Merlin: Shut up.
Merlin: She said, shut up.
Merlin: Oh, God, can't you.
Merlin: She must love now.
Merlin: Now you talk about putting a pound of meat in a jar.
Merlin: Woof.
Merlin: I bet she gets pretty fucking sick of that.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Oh, that song?
Merlin: The Voices Carry references.
Merlin: Oh, probably.
Merlin: I mean, I was in high school when that song came out.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: It was a big song.
Merlin: It was a huge song.
Merlin: Put her on the map.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Was it lowercase till Tuesday?
Merlin: I feel like it was lowercase.
Merlin: Lowercase.
Merlin: That's a very Spotify kind of thing to do.
Merlin: do what oh put your oh i don't know if you get spotify but spotify i can tell when i get my um now see now this is going to sound terrible too but when i get my release radar or i get my discover weekly if it's a band where the name is just a bunch of letters with unconventional capitalization spacing and punctuation
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We'll just say like blurb zap waxer.
Merlin: And it's like one word or whatever.
Merlin: I'm like, I got a pretty good idea.
Merlin: This is going to be like, I don't know, white, white, white guy trap music or something.
Merlin: Oh, white guy trap.
Merlin: Well, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like shirtless DJ music, that kind of thing.
Merlin: Yeah, I always think of it as Euro trash, but yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, no, that works too.
Merlin: That works too.
Merlin: But anyway, I would like to take this opportunity.
Merlin: I'm going to throw it back to you.
Merlin: I want to take this opportunity to apologize to Jane Child and really all of Canada.
Merlin: I was listening to Canadian music just this morning, right before we started recording, and I would like to apologize to Jane Child and to Canada.
Merlin: You like a lot of Canadian music.
Merlin: I love Canadian music.
Merlin: I really feel like it has a distinctive...
Merlin: canadian feel first of all uh if you're in canada and you're a woman you're allowed to be in a band and make music which is cool that's only a recent thing here interesting you take a band like um like the band that did the titular did wrote the song scott pilgrim the the the became the name of the comic in the movie they're called plum tree plum tree
Merlin: And they're absolutely delightful.
Merlin: They would fit right in.
Merlin: Well, I guess they were a 90s band, now that I think of it.
Merlin: But there's bands like that.
Merlin: I was just listening to this wonderful band, Stars, that I really like a lot.
Merlin: I was listening to what else?
Merlin: Yeah, I like a Canadian band.
Merlin: Oh, you know what I was listening to?
Merlin: A song that's featured in my favorite episode of Letterkenny.
Merlin: One of my favorite episodes of Letterkenny.
Merlin: Anyway, another Canadian band.
Merlin: Canadian bands are weird.
Merlin: I really like them a lot.
Merlin: I know I get a rap as being the guy who likes Sloan, which is fair, because I do.
Merlin: But me and Eric Corson and nobody else.
Merlin: But, I'm just saying.
Merlin: Jane Shott, I'm really sorry.
Merlin: I blew it.
Merlin: I blew it.
Merlin: Category error.
Merlin: Screwed the pooch.
John: Got any others?
John: No, I don't think you blew it.
John: I feel like the earring to nose ring thing is a, I think that is a style that comes from India.
John: And the Indian subcontinent, like maybe the sort of Thai Indian zone.
John: Yeah, I get you.
John: I get you.
John: And it's like a white girl wearing a bindi.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And I think these days we wouldn't be too thrilled about that either.
John: That seems like cultural co-optation.
John: So I'm afraid that...
John: that your initial criticism of Jane Child is going to stand.
John: Jane Child's cancelled.
Merlin: Retroactively.
John: That's the ruling.
John: Courts adjourned.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Thank you for your adjudication.
Merlin: Zombies had guys with glasses.
Merlin: They all dressed the same, but they had eyeglasses.
Merlin: I always thought that was kind of interesting.
John: Uh, I, I feel like that was, that could have been, that could have been my look too.
Merlin: And like at least two or three of the guys in the band clearly had very receding hairlines and, and did that, uh, that hipster come forward thing to cover it up.
John: This is the zombies.
John: The zombies.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, that's the, uh, that's the whole thing about the, about the, the George Clooney haircut, you know, the, the, um, or the Affleck.
Merlin: Well, the Affleck's not even a haircut, right?
Yeah.
John: No, that's just a bunch of hair.
John: That's somebody else's hair.
Merlin: He seems to just keep dropping in estimation, don't you think, a little bit?
John: Who, Ben Affleck?
John: I haven't thought of him in years.
John: Really?
John: It's only when I bring it up.
John: George Clooney, though, I think about a lot.
John: And you know who, because I watch movies now for a living, I'm forced to confront things like, you know, somebody had to do it.
Merlin: You're like the Flintstones bird.
Merlin: We put the beak down on the record to play.
Merlin: It's a living.
John: I, uh, I, uh, I'm, I'm forced to think about things like, uh, Kevin Costner and, um, who's the Australian one?
John: Mel Gibson.
John: No, the other one.
Merlin: Oh, um, uh, Australian actor.
John: He was married to the girl.
John: Nope.
John: The other one.
John: Married to whom?
John: He was married to the lady.
John: Okay.
Merlin: The Australian guy that's married to a lady?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: From The Thing?
Merlin: From The Thing, that movie?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Different one.
John: Different one.
John: It's the other one.
John: It's not Paul Verhoeven because he's from Dutch.
John: Right.
John: Nope.
John: Not him.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's not George Miller because he's a director, not an actor.
Merlin: right it's not toe cutter because that's a character not a movie exactly okay uh danny glover he was in a movie with mil gibson who's from australia he is not from australia though he's getting too old for this if memory serves he was even then he was even remember he's sitting on the toilet and the thing all falls down i was on an airplane with him one time huh i bet he's cool i don't know i mean i said hey i said hey
John: Hey, nice to meet you.
Merlin: The episode where we damn Danny Glover with faint praise.
Merlin: Don't know.
Merlin: You know, could have been nicer.
Merlin: Could have been nicer.
John: He was fine.
John: Whatever.
John: He didn't like high-fiving or anything.
Merlin: You ever been on a plane with Billy Crystal?
Merlin: What's he like?
John: No.
John: I bet he's cool.
John: Never been.
John: I imagine he's amazing.
Merlin: I bet he's... You know who's funny is Martin Short.
Merlin: He's from Canada.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: He's very, very funny.
Merlin: But you know what wasn't funny?
Merlin: What's that?
Merlin: Okay, did you ever figure out who the Australian is?
Merlin: The guy, the one.
John: Okay.
Merlin: He's like the big one.
Merlin: Talk about the one who's married to Arnold Schwarzenegger from Austria.
John: I don't think he's married anymore, although I might be wrong.
Merlin: He was married to a blood Kennedy.
Merlin: Not a blood Kennedy, but an in-law Kennedy, I think.
John: He used to throw telephones.
John: Throw telephones.
John: That's the one I'm thinking about.
John: The one I'm thinking about was a telephone thrower.
Merlin: Oh, wait, I got Russell Crowe.
Merlin: Yay, that's it.
Merlin: I bet he's nicer than he seems.
Merlin: Like Christian Bale, I bet he got a bad rap.
John: Christian Bale did get a bad rap.
Merlin: He got a terrible rap.
Merlin: That was so unfair what happened to him.
John: I for sure just recently watched a movie where Russell Crowe was famously difficult.
John: And then when I learned more about the movie –
John: I realized that he was the only sane person on the set.
John: LA Confidential?
John: And this really, really, really gave me a... What movie?
John: What movie?
John: Well, it's just a movie.
John: I mean, you know, I watch movies for a living, so I can't just give this stuff away free.
John: Oh, I see, I see.
Merlin: But it's a forthcoming movie, so it's a movie of war.
Merlin: And he is the... Hey, you know what's weird?
Merlin: Isn't Guy Pearce Australian?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: What's Guy Pearce?
Merlin: He's in Priscilla Desert.
Merlin: He's in Priscilla Desert.
Merlin: I think he's Australian.
Merlin: Guy?
Merlin: Guy Pearce.
Merlin: It's like give peace a chance with an R. R like transmission.
Merlin: Oh, Pearce.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, it says he's British-Australian, so we were both right.
John: Well, we were both right.
John: You get compared to him a lot, don't you?
John: Brad, Brad, your guy, Brad Bird.
Merlin: Yeah, I wish I was compared to Michael Palin a lot when I was younger and less.
John: You look more.
Merlin: You look a lot more like Guy Pearce than you do.
Merlin: Michael.
Merlin: I appreciate that.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: But here's what I'm here to tell you about.
Merlin: OK, OK, OK.
Merlin: Let's get this out of the way.
Merlin: James Cromwell, American.
Merlin: Kim Basinger, American.
Merlin: But Guy Pearce and and Russell Crowe.
Merlin: Totes Australian.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Two of the leads in LA Confidential with American accents.
John: Oh, here's another one.
John: You ready for this?
John: Yeah.
John: Is that what you got an Australian?
John: No, I'm going to say that Guy Pearce is married to Carice Van Houten, the Dutch actress most famous for playing the Red Witch on Game Thrones.
John: What?
John: Who follows me on Twitter.
John: What?
Merlin: The one who worked for Stannis?
John: Yeah.
John: Not worked for her.
Merlin: Stannis was working for her.
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: They collaborated, though.
Merlin: And you got the little girl with the face.
Merlin: That was sad.
Merlin: God, that was sad.
Merlin: Yeah, it was pretty sad.
Merlin: It was sad.
Merlin: And they made that one guy mad.
Merlin: What was that one guy's name?
Merlin: Is he the Onion Knight?
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: Who's the guy?
Merlin: Yeah, the Onion Knight.
Merlin: The Onion Man.
John: Yeah, Onion Man.
Merlin: Onion Man.
Merlin: Thought he was a man, but he was an onion.
John: Carice Van Houten.
Merlin: Van Houten I always think of.
Merlin: It's either going to be the Manson family.
Merlin: Well, I bet you the Simpsons got the name from the Manson family.
Merlin: I always thought Leslie Van Houten was a baller name.
Merlin: It's a great name.
Merlin: The Red Witch follows you on the internet?
John: She did a long time ago, and the reason I knew it was that Sean Nelson sometime in, I don't know, 2010, sent me a text, and he was like,
John: That's real great that Carice Van Houten follows you on the internet.
John: I hope you're happy.
John: And I said... Thank you for your message.
John: I said, what's a Carice Van Houten?
John: And he was like, she's an actor.
John: She's an actor.
Merlin: Did he do a Yosemite Sam?
Merlin: Jumping up and down with his tiny feet?
John: Ooh!
John: It was apparently during a phase when we were all, and by we I mean Sean, watching who was following whom as a sport.
John: Yeah, because in the early days of the Twitter, it wasn't clear any day.
John: You might turn around and all of a sudden you've got a million followers.
John: It wasn't clear like...
John: Yeah.
John: Who's, why are you going to get followers?
John: Are you going to get followers because you're good?
John: Are you going to get followers cause you're all, cause you're famous?
John: Are you going to get followers cause you're weird?
John: And so I think at that point in time, Sean was still like waiting for the moment where he was suddenly going to have 200,000 followers for no reason.
John: And, uh, and so he was clearly like seeing who was following me.
John: Oh boy.
Yeah.
John: In order to send me that text and be mad.
John: But then when I realized who it was, because she's in some very good war movies.
John: Okay, fine.
John: Going on the internet.
John: What's the actress's name?
John: Carice Van Houten.
John: Okay.
John: She's from Leiderdorp.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
John: Oh, and she's friends with Paul Verhoeven.
John: He's from Dutch.
John: Who put her in some TV or some movies.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: He's from Dutch.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: He did RoboCop.
John: Yeah, oh, yeah.
John: He came over to America because he wanted to get the money, you know.
Merlin: He's got to make a paper.
Merlin: I can't find her.
John: I have no idea how to spell her name.
John: They had a kid together recently.
John: That's lovely.
John: That's wonderful.
John: That's cool.
John: Anyway, so I started following her because, you know, if you're going to follow me, I'll follow you if you're a great fan.
John: It's like a Genesis song.
John: And I really like her.
John: She's nice.
John: That's nice.
John: But we covered, we watched her film Black Book for Friendly.
Merlin: Two words?
Merlin: Black Book.
Merlin: You're obviously not going to spell this for me, so I'm going to have to reverse engineer this.
Merlin: Black Book Film Dutch Through.
Merlin: Oh, it's from Dutch.
Merlin: It's from Paul Verhoeven.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: She's also in Valkyrie.
Merlin: No, her name is Van Houten.
Merlin: Now, is she from Dutch?
Merlin: She must be.
Merlin: Yeah, of course she is.
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: Like I said, she's from Leiderdorp.
John: Oh, Leiderdorp.
John: Like Lisbeth.
John: What?
John: Like Lisbeth, but Lisbeth.
John: She's from Dutch.
Merlin: Isn't Lisbeth from Dutch?
Merlin: She's from Utrecht.
Merlin: Carice van Houten.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, look at her.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: She's pretty.
John: Yeah.
John: She's nice.
John: She's funny.
John: She's funny.
John: She's got a funny sense of humor.
John: Like I imagine Guy Pearce probably does.
John: I'll bet they're funny.
John: I bet they have fun.
John: But you know, they just, they, they, they've only been married five years.
John: Like, I don't know where, what would have happened?
John: She's not with Sebastian Koch anymore.
John: I don't know who that is.
John: Who is that?
John: Oh, wait, no, he's the, he's a German.
John: He was a bridge of spies.
Merlin: And the Lives of Others.
Merlin: Is that the East German movie?
Merlin: I love that movie.
John: Bridge of Spies was only fine.
John: You know what I mean?
John: It could have been so much better.
John: It was only fine.
John: What?
John: Lives of Others?
John: No, Bridge of Spies.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I love Mark Rylance, though.
Merlin: I love his eyes.
John: Yeah, I don't know what that is.
Merlin: Mark Rylance, he's the guy driving the boat in Dunkirk, and he's the spy man under the bridge.
John: He's great.
John: He's amazing.
Merlin: He's so warm and human.
John: You know, we have a phrase for him in Friendly Fire, which is Boat Dad.
John: It's a kind, you know, boat dad.
John: It's like a dad.
John: Is this on your other podcast?
John: You have a name for boat dads?
John: Boat dad.
John: And it came from him.
John: It came from him and his performance in Dumpter.
John: Where it's like, he's a dad.
John: He's got a boat.
John: He sees that some soldiers need to get evacuated.
Merlin: This is dangerously close to a book my kid has called Teen Boat.
Merlin: It's a teenager that turns into a boat.
Merlin: And then the title of the book is Teen Boat.
Merlin: And then the deck, the subhead is, he's a teen.
Merlin: He's a boat.
Merlin: He's a teen boat.
Merlin: He's a teen who turns into a boat.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like Turbo Teen, but for a boat instead of a car.
Merlin: What's Turbo Teen?
Merlin: Turbo Teen is a short-lived cartoon about a boy who becomes a car.
John: Because I was actually talking to somebody about putting Turbo Teen on the floor of my bathroom.
John: Turpetine, is that one of the elements?
John: Turpetine is like a manufactured rock product.
Merlin: The devil you say.
Merlin: You think that was a pun?
John: I doubt it.
John: No.
John: No, because I think it's actually called tourmaline or tourmaline.
Merlin: Tourmaline and tourbatine.
Merlin: Tourbatine.
Merlin: Tourbanine.
Merlin: Here's another one.
Merlin: Tourmaline.
Merlin: Tourmaline.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I think you might be having some kind of a neurological incident right now.
Merlin: Peepaw.
Merlin: I used to have a funny thing that happened with the Beatles when I was a youngster because the Beatles that I thought of as the Beatles were the Beatles that were the old Beatles.
Merlin: Of course, there's the later Beatles, but if I had to pick out a lineup, is it going to be Blue Album, Capitol Records, Beatles, or Red Album, Capitol?
Merlin: It's going to be the Red One, like the ones that were on at Sullivan, right?
John: Oh, you're talking about the Beatles are the Beatles, not the Beatles that have gone...
John: Not the, not the Beatles that have taken drugs, but the, but the Beatles, the original.
Merlin: Not, not, not a scarab, not like a journey beetle.
Merlin: Um, no, but here's the funny thing is in my brain, I could never quite, I mean, I knew they each looked different, but I was, you know how it is when you're a kid.
Merlin: If you were to ask me who was who, three of the four Beatles looked so much like the other Beatles to me.
Merlin: Like if we're being honest, like Ringo and John have a similarity.
Merlin: And to be honest, like young George and young Paul have kind of a similarity and they all had the same outfit and the same haircut.
Merlin: Do you think, do you think Ringo qualifies?
Merlin: As a who?
Merlin: As a Beatle?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, don't make the joke.
Merlin: Don't make the joke.
Merlin: First of all, it's a misquote and it's mean.
Merlin: not even the best drum in the beatles um uh i mean because like he's the one who looked different and he's the one that the young people liked ringo and i'm wondering is he the jamiroquai or the is he the fire starter of the beatles in some ways because he is the distinctive look he did get one sean nelson style song per album usually no no no no i i naturally he's actually a bucko a song by buck owens and the buckaroos did you know that
Merlin: No.
Merlin: They're going to put me in the movies.
Merlin: Have you ever gone through a phase?
Merlin: Have you ever gone through a Buck Owens and the Buckaroos phase?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I can highly recommend it.
John: Yeah, I don't like country and western music.
John: Neither.
John: No.
John: No, it doesn't move me, and I don't know why.
Merlin: Bickersfield Sound was pretty fun, I think.
John: It doesn't move me even when it's done by, like, friends of mine now.
John: What about that lovable alcoholic Hank Williams?
John: Doesn't grab you?
John: Not really.
John: It's a...
John: It's formulaic.
John: It is.
John: By design.
Merlin: So you're saying country music is bullshit.
John: And I just don't feel like... It's never made me go...
John: It's never made me cry, except for, like, Wichita linemen.
Merlin: Oh, God, I love Glenn Campbell.
Merlin: I love Wichita linemen.
Merlin: I love Galveston.
Merlin: I had a phase, probably it was before Rona, I had a phase of getting way into, what do they call it, countrypolitan?
Merlin: Like, sort of big, like, 60s.
Merlin: like, um, a big arrangement.
Merlin: It was almost like the Phil Spector phase of country where you get your, uh, you get your, something like, you know, Stand By Your Man and that kind of stuff.
Merlin: I think, I think, I think Stand By Your Man is a very good song.
John: See, that stuff is, I mean, that, and I don't know how to describe that because, that style, because, you know, like, um,
John: Like the Highwayman song.
John: Is that the Willie Nelson band?
John: The Willie Nelson one.
John: You know, they're like, I could probably out of the whole history of country music.
John: You don't have to defend this.
John: 25 songs that I feel like this is, these are great tunes sung with passion, with great production, and the whole thing just like come together.
John: But in general, I don't...
Merlin: i don't i did not follow rockabilly over to country i followed it even when the beatles do it i'm kind of like yeah no i understand but that was yeah that was so formative for them i'm gonna tell you what my one of my all-time favorite lyrics it's uh the last verse of hey good looking and there's this line of hey good looking where he goes i'm not gonna try to sing it although i could um he says i'm gonna throw my date book over the fence
Merlin: And buy me one for five or ten cents.
Merlin: I'll keep it till it's covered with age.
Merlin: Because I'm writing your name down on every page.
Merlin: I love that lyric.
Merlin: I just think, if you're going to do Rhymes, man, lean into it.
Merlin: The problem is, though, he is horrible.
Merlin: And most of his songs are about how women shouldn't be allowed to get mad at how awful he is.
John: And that's what my songs are about.
Merlin: Now, wait a minute.
Merlin: Are you the Jamiroquai of yourself?
Merlin: That sounds like a Miranda July movie.
John: The problem with me being the Jamiroquai of myself is that nobody ever wanted me.
John: That's virtual insanity.
John: I needed a Jamiroquai.
Merlin: Somebody move my floor.
Merlin: Who moved my cheese and my floor?
John: Okay.
Merlin: All right, out of here.