Ep. 462: "Cheese Cave"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: Wow, everything sounds so cushy today.
John: You mean like well insulated?
Merlin: Yeah, are you more insulated?
Merlin: You sound, yeah, it sounds like you might be inside of like a nice couch.
John: I am in a nice couch.
John: Really?
Yeah.
John: I'm just chilling in my green couch.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Uh-huh.
John: I think you can hear the green.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: It's made it more damp.
Merlin: Not in a wet way.
Merlin: Well, I don't... No, it's more, you know, dampening.
Merlin: Dampening.
Merlin: It's one of those words like oversight that can mean...
Merlin: Well, like oversight can mean itself and its opposite, which is also itself, but it's still oversight.
Merlin: It was an oversight that we didn't put more, better people on the oversight committee.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Um, and, but damp and dampening.
Merlin: But the thing is you dampen a room to make the sound more dry.
Merlin: You ever know what you have?
John: You see a knob like that dry and wet, right?
John: Yeah.
John: Dry and wet.
John: I use it all the time.
John: You know, sometimes I like it a little dry.
John: Sometimes I like it a little wet.
John: You're grown, man.
John: I definitely fell for the thing where I covered a multitude of sins with reverb.
Merlin: Oh, everybody did.
Merlin: Well, and before that, maybe, or I guess, depending on when you came up, but chorus, man.
Merlin: A lot of chorus.
Merlin: You need so much less chorus than you think.
John: I had a drummer in the early days of the Bunn family players who was very punk rock.
John: And this was, I'm sure you remember, during the years when, if you were punk rock, you hated...
Merlin: gated reverb here we go you hated it god he didn't like thanksgiving dinner with you you can't just leave a wound closed he didn't want any reverb none oh well the thing is i think the the one thing a lot a lot of people would say is like you get what you can out of the room but like there should be reverb that you don't notice is reverb if you notice it's reverb it might be too much reverb
Merlin: I cannot get right now.
Merlin: Too dry is too dry.
Merlin: And then you can even go so far.
Merlin: The irony is, you'll tell you what's ironical.
Merlin: Can't you also go crazy with a gate on trying to keep it dry?
Merlin: Oh, you sure can.
Merlin: See, on Albini, your song, you don't have Vano down in the stairwell.
Merlin: You get the naturalness out of it, and that makes it sound... I mean, am I saying the same thing two different ways?
Merlin: I think you can use a gate.
Merlin: The whole point of a gate is that there not be...
Merlin: Like, I mean, there's the off-label use of, say, a Brian Eno or a Chris, what's his head, Chris Death Cab, where you want to get different mics different places, you know, sort of like Tony Visconti, Brian Eno kind of effect, right?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: You need more oversight.
Merlin: You got, well, uh, yeah, there's more like that.
Merlin: I'll think of that.
Merlin: You want to dampen, but like, no, I mean, gate is a neat idea in certain environments, but okay.
Merlin: So you're telling me this guy comes in and so was it okay.
Merlin: Oh, you, you know what you mentioned?
Merlin: Punk rock.
Merlin: So his deal was probably, let me, let me see if I can get this right.
Merlin: I'm seeing, I'm getting one.
John: I don't want anything on this.
John: Well, you know, he was cooler than that, but you know what I mean?
John: He, he wasn't a recording engineer.
John: He wasn't a connoisseur of anything.
John: He wasn't even, especially not, not only not a good drummer, but maybe not a drummer.
John: But in the style of the time, he had very strong opinions about everything.
Merlin: Jay Maskis is a guitarist who's still mostly a drummer.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like in that case.
Merlin: Well, no, there are people like Jay Maskis.
Merlin: He wants to replicate, it is said, he wants to replicate the thunderous feeling of playing drums, and that's why he plays the guitar so goddamn loud.
John: In the same way that I am less a pianist,
John: than a tabletop finger drummer.
Merlin: I'm no Stanley Clark, Stanley Jordan, Stanley Jordan.
John: I'm no Stanley Jordan.
Merlin: You could be either one.
Merlin: But like when I play piano, I play it like I'm just sitting down in front of a guitar.
Merlin: Like it's bleep, bloop, bleep.
John: Well, you know, one of the things about playing guitar is you don't typically sit down in front of it.
John: Wait a minute.
Merlin: What about Jerry Garcia on Teach Your Children Well?
John: You might be playing it wrong if you sit down in front of the guitar.
John: Here I go.
John: Bing, bong, bing.
John: Hang on a minute.
John: That's not an oboe.
John: I can't stop humming today.
John: The song stuck in my head is Shock the Monkey.
Merlin: that song's got that song's got grooves for days and riffs you would not think of that song as a pop song and yet it is chalk a block with riffs think about how many different parts of that song get in your head a lot the one that came to mind for me like really first thought best thought yep but like there's a lot more 32 years old
Merlin: Shut up.
Merlin: So how long was he for Salisbury Hill?
Merlin: Like 30, 28, 29, 30?
Merlin: That's deep.
John: Yeah, it's deep.
John: He was only 36 when Sledgehammer...
Merlin: was the one more mtv music awards than any other and it was funny if you remember serves the video for no it's either is it games without frontiers or shock the monkey it's just stills remember the video games without frontiers is it where he's just making faces no because games without frontiers wait oh shock the monkey has the the face makeup yeah oh wow i started too high didn't i
Merlin: You know, they traded the two of them.
Merlin: They were pals.
Merlin: Kate Bush sang on Games Without Frontiers.
Merlin: And then Peter Gabriel sang on that one song of hers.
Merlin: Don't give up.
Merlin: Yep, yep.
John: We still have friends.
John: But anyway, she's amazing.
Merlin: That was on So.
Merlin: Now, what am I thinking of?
Merlin: Something else.
Merlin: Maybe he sat in front of a guitar on Wuthering Heights.
Merlin: I don't really remember.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: She was a very interesting person.
John: He put gated reverb all over everything.
John: Well, Hugh Padham did.
John: Talk about Chris Death Cab.
John: Chris Death Cab.
Merlin: I just saw today in my release radar, I saw there's a new Death Cab Ben song in there.
John: Brand new record coming out.
John: Death Cab record coming out.
John: It might be out today.
John: It might have been out yesterday.
Merlin: Chris Death Cab.
John: Oh, he loved Kate Bush.
Merlin: Who is an ardent, if memory serves, an ardent fan of the Berlin era records.
John: Yes, for sure.
John: And Kate Bush, she came up all the time.
John: No kidding.
John: Yeah.
John: Prehounds of Love, like old school.
John: But you know, he was only 20...
John: Chris Death Cab was only 22 when he was already telling me all about Kate Bush.
John: What 22-year-old knows about Kate Bush now?
Merlin: Well, maybe somebody who was, yeah, somebody who was 22 in 1978.
Merlin: But also, I'll never forget, so Noise Pop, I saw, I came to San Francisco for Noise Pop in 1997, and that's where I first saw Death Cab.
Merlin: And they had a little feature, you know, they got this little, did you ever come to Noise Pop?
Merlin: I don't remember if you've ever been here.
Merlin: So here's the thing about Noise Pop.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, let me get through this quickly.
Merlin: All it said was, it said, this band, Death Cab for Cutie, they're from near Washington, and they're barely old enough to rent a car.
Merlin: And that always stuck in my head in 1997.
Merlin: So they were young-ass youngsters.
Merlin: And this is back, you know, saw the scene unfold, you know, president of what?
Merlin: Champagne from a paper gallery exhibition.
John: Yeah, Champagne from a paper gallery.
Merlin: Yeah, he's definitely shaking.
Merlin: Definitely.
Merlin: Oh boy.
Merlin: That would be funny if they did a Dustin Hoffman video.
Merlin: Oh boy.
Merlin: Definitely shaking.
John: We, we played, uh, we played that song.
John: We covered that song in the Western state hurricanes reunion show.
John: That one.
John: um on the down slide down turn i love that it's very hard to it's very hard for the record uh maybe we didn't cover that one anyway we oh have i ever told you the story um when you play with them on outside show things that was that was um hurricanes right did you play with them with the hurricanes
John: Well, and Long Winners.
John: Oh, of course.
John: But the Hurricanes.
John: At Fillmore, you sang on Transatlanticism.
John: Yeah.
John: But the Hurricanes show in 2020, the two that we played for the re-release, we covered a Death Cab song.
John: And then Ben got up with us and played Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Merlin: Oh, that was around the time of Bleach you put that out.
John: I think you're not supposed to cover Smells Like Teen Spirit at all.
John: And we just went ahead and did it anyway.
John: And, you know, of course, I almost could sing it.
John: I sang it almost.
Merlin: It would be interesting.
Merlin: I kind of don't want to know, but it would be interesting to see how you did that.
Merlin: I mean, it's a little bit like playing Freebird, you know.
Merlin: It's for sure like playing Freebird, which we have also done.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's the exception that proves the rule, whatever that means, which is like, if you can pull it off, you're a goddamn genius.
Merlin: It's just, you know, you got to learn to, you know, draw like Picasso learned to draw, and then you can draw like Picasso didn't draw.
Merlin: You know, first there was a mountain, and then, you know Donovan's, you know, you were tied up by Donovan's daughter, if memory serves.
John: That's right.
John: Tied up by Donovan's daughter.
Merlin: That's a great Dylan song from Self-Portrait, I believe.
Merlin: Tangled up in my own sky.
Merlin: The story I was going to tell is that... It's going to be one of those.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm drinking iced tea.
John: I'll dial it down.
John: Years, years, years ago, I was at a Deathcap show and they were just playing in front of 25 people in a little... No, it wasn't that.
John: They never played for 25 people.
John: Hardly anyone to apologize to.
John: They were huge before they were even a twinkle in anybody's eye.
John: They were already the biggest band in Seattle.
John: Did they have a lot of buzz in their early days?
John: They had a lot of buzz.
John: Everybody wanted a piece of Death Cab for Cutie.
John: And they were playing a show, and I was there in the audience, and we were super tight bros already.
John: And they launched into...
John: What was that song we were just singing?
John: Pictures in an Exhibition.
John: Pictures in an Exhibition.
John: Yeah.
John: They started playing it, and at the time, this was before their first record came out.
John: It was kind of the hit.
John: It was kind of their hit.
Merlin: Right.
John: The song that they knew was really connecting with people, and everybody was like, I love that song.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: and uh and they start to play it rock it rocks more straightforwardly than a lot of their stuff from the time yeah i love it all but i mean it was less ponderous arpeggiated stuff but he pointed at me and said get up here and sing it oh shit and i wasn't sure that i knew the words because you know when i listen to music like you don't
John: even though I love the lyrics, it's not like I commit them to memory.
John: You listen to the first couple seconds, then skip to the next.
John: Yeah, and then skip to the next, and then that's how I listen to records.
John: And, you know, and Ben is a younger guy, and he's, you know, everybody consumes music a different way, right?
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Everybody's listening for different stuff, and, like, one problem with the live performance is, like,
Merlin: You may not realize that if you're somebody like me who's listened to Crazy Train that many times, you have certain parts where if they don't do it this one way, you'll be bummed.
Merlin: You have such a personal relationship with the performance of a song.
Merlin: And then you go and see it live and this galoot's going to come up there and sing the pretty Ben Gibbard part.
John: Oh.
John: I think that Ben is somebody who, when he loves a song, he learns the lyrics.
John: Like if he, if he loves a record, like he learns all the lyrics.
John: And so he was like, get up here, man.
John: And I, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no.
John: And he goes, come on.
John: But you can tell he meant it.
John: Oh, he fully was like, you know, come on, sing it.
John: And I was,
John: And I knew the lyrics, but I wasn't sure.
John: I didn't want to get up there and brain fart and be like, the royal castle holds the, you know, like I knew them all, but maybe not in the right order.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I listened to a cover.
Merlin: I listened to a Bella Sebastian doing a cover today.
Merlin: And like, they kind of ate it on Waiting for the Man about Lexington 125.
Merlin: And you could tell they were probably bummed.
Merlin: Because they obviously adore the Velvet Underground.
Merlin: 2-5.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I feel sick and dirty more dead than alive.
Merlin: You absolutely put it the perfect way.
Merlin: I know all the words.
Merlin: I just don't know if I know them in order.
John: Yeah.
John: It's the thing.
John: And I didn't want to be up there going to him like, what's the next line?
John: Because it's so fun.
John: But also, I had that little bit of, I don't know, the imposter syndrome or something.
John: And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
John: And he did it a third time.
John: Like, get your ass up here and say, and the band's in full flight.
John: You know, they're playing the song and he's like, that's pretty intimidating.
John: I'm not going to sing it.
John: You get up here, but he's 23, you know, and I'm like, it's rock music.
John: What's the worst thing that can happen?
John: And everybody's looking at me like, what are you, what are you going to do?
John: And a third time I was like, no, I'm not.
John: And he, and he shrugged and kind of was like, all right then.
John: Oh, I've never seen them do that.
John: That's not a death cap thing, right?
John: They've never had anybody get up with them and sing a song.
John: And so for years I was like, oh, I wish I'd done it, you know, just for the fun, just for being the one time.
Merlin: And just to state the obvious, as I like to say, there was no Beatles before the Beatles.
Merlin: In this case, okay, they weren't Dad's Cab.
Merlin: Then, I mean, you know what I mean?
Merlin: It wasn't, it wasn't the band from the OC and all those other things yet.
Merlin: This was early days.
John: Yeah, they were, this was a pizza parlor or whatever they were playing in.
John: And that's why when the, when the Western state record came out and we were playing those two shows, we covered the tune because I felt
John: as a part of that whole process, like this record, it's 20 years it took for it to come out and everybody's flying in from out of state.
John: Oh, that's so cool.
John: 20 years ago, friends.
John: And I was like, I'm going to cover that song.
John: I'm going to play it.
John: I'm finally going to play it.
John: And then of course, you know, he was there and, and, and it was like, ah, all these small things, these little details of like why that was such a cool thing.
John: It comes up because I was thinking about it this weekend.
John: Because a lot of people this weekend, for whatever reason, were asking me, do you still play music?
John: You know, like, yes, I do.
John: That's your book.
John: Do you still play music?
Merlin: Here's a tip for your co-hosts of the Roderick on the Line program.
Merlin: Never ask either of them how the book's going.
Merlin: Just don't do it.
John: How's the book going?
John: But, but I, but I, so I had to say like, I played a bunch of music right before the pandemic.
John: I haven't since, but it's kind of a dumb ass question for over the last two years.
John: But yeah, in March of 2020, you know, I was playing, I was playing music right up to the, right up to the last day.
John: So anyway, it was in my mind and I was like, oh, right.
John: There was, you know, there's a reason for everything.
John: Sometimes you only know what your lyrics are about.
John: uh, uh, you know, two years after you write the song, you're like, Oh, it was always about my relationship.
John: Oh yeah.
Merlin: You're what you, your understanding of it will change every three years if you're still thinking about it.
John: Yeah.
John: And that's, and that's my realization of, about, uh, spoiler alert.
Merlin: It usually says way more about you than the subject.
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Merlin: My catalog is just, it's basically this.
Merlin: You like me wrong.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
John: Yep, there's the first day.
John: There's two.
Merlin: I don't like to address the audience, but I do sometimes.
Merlin: You know, there's a time in this program when I would get really nervous at, like, minute 70.
Merlin: I was like, oh, we're so close to landing this space shuttle.
John: Oh, sorry, bad timing.
John: Too soon.
John: But we're so close to making it.
John: And then I would start talking about religion or race or sex.
John: And you'd be like, I could hear you wincing like, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: Politics in Georgia.
Merlin: Like, I know these things.
Merlin: But so the thing that I do occasionally when we have sponsors here on our program is I'll say to John, here's how many we need these dings.
Merlin: And if it seems like I'm congratulating myself for a bit, a little too much, it's because I got to work the dings title.
John: Yeah, well, and the thing is, what our listeners, long-time listeners, probably maybe do not know.
Merlin: If we ever start this Patreon, we should just do shows that are just behind the scenes, where we literally do the opposite, instead of, like, whatever's in the show's in the show, but what if the show is about talking about the show?
John: Yes, if we just talked about the show for the entire show.
John: Roderick off the line?
John: We had a phase there where we lost a few shows...
John: where the show went off the rails in terms of conversation topic.
Merlin: They silently went off because people could very well ask, did they not record?
Merlin: And I would just think, oh, man, maybe we didn't record.
Merlin: Well, maybe there were just some where daddy couldn't save it.
John: It got too sad.
John: Maybe there were 90 minutes of a show, 75 of which were hilarious, some of the best.
John: And then 15 got real dark.
John: Yeah.
John: Real dark.
John: Yeah.
John: I talked about the internet of the Lord.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, and then somehow I stopped doing that.
John: You know, I think, I think maybe you yelled at me one time.
John: You were like, God damn it.
John: God damn it.
Merlin: Oh, that doesn't sound like me, but that is the kind of thing I would say, which is like, Hey, look, I supplement my entire personality to have a career.
Merlin: To you, the listener, you will think all I am is pure id.
Merlin: Well, the pure id is my opportunity to do something somebody might find entertaining.
Merlin: But behind the scenes, I am cuckolded left and right by every person I work with.
Merlin: I'm basically, I'm a coat rack.
Merlin: You know, in a lot of ways.
Merlin: No, it's what I do.
Merlin: It's my role because it's about the work.
Merlin: Is the work stupid?
Merlin: It's incredibly stupid, but it's still the work.
Merlin: What did I say?
Merlin: Dings?
Merlin: Hunting for dings?
Merlin: What did I say?
Merlin: Yeah, hunt for dings.
Merlin: I had a good title.
Merlin: Hunting for dings.
Merlin: That sounds racist.
John: Yeah, hunting for dings.
John: You know what?
John: That's the ultimate sport, right?
Merlin: Oh, the most dangerous game?
John: Yeah, the noblest of all endeavors.
Merlin: I was thinking about covers this morning, because like I say, I don't know, I just woke up and I had a yen to hear something about Sebastian, and I was a really big fan of theirs.
Merlin: especially in the early 2000s yeah yeah i just i think they're really neat i think they're really interesting i love that guy's lyrics but you know they were also i don't know how to describe it i i wouldn't pretend to like be able to describe them in a way they would but they were very interesting not christian per se scottish um but but they would do stuff like they didn't want to be photographed and it wasn't because they were like divas it was because they had they they
Merlin: I mean, there's been bands like that in history where you don't necessarily know what they look like, but there was stuff I remember hearing, like, they don't like being photographed on their albums, and, like, they'll only perform if every current member of the band is on stage and performing.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Where there's this thing where, like, yeah, if, what her name is, not Elizabeth, but, like, if the cellist isn't available, like, it ain't gonna happen.
Merlin: But it's so, you know, time passes, you get older.
Merlin: There's so much fun.
Merlin: I mean, in one of the live shows, live songs I heard today, he made a fucking Ferris Bueller joke.
Merlin: I'm like, oh, you're such a dad.
Merlin: That's fun.
Merlin: But I was just thinking about covers.
Merlin: They had a thing they did.
Merlin: If memory serves, they would, whenever they go somewhere, for a period, it was said that Belle and Sebastian, whenever they toured, would play a cover by a well-known band, ideally from that city.
Right.
Merlin: So when they're in Belfast, they play this totally rocking fucking three guitar version of the boys are back in town.
Merlin: And it's not ironic.
Merlin: Like Stewart is fucking rocking.
Merlin: And guess who's back in town today?
Merlin: Like he's really, he's leaning into it.
Merlin: I was just, I was thinking about covers and I don't want to go down a rabbit hole about this, but I do think it's kind of interesting that, you know, there's that, you see like that guy, that guy who wears his own shirt to play on stage at a concert or like that guy.
Merlin: There's a, you know, that's a pretty original that guy.
Merlin: Well, the different kind of, there's the that guy who's somebody like Richard Kind.
Merlin: Or you're like, oh, it's that guy from the movie.
Merlin: But then there's that guy.
Merlin: Or as I like to say sometimes, that particular guy.
Merlin: That particular guy.
Merlin: That guy that wants to speak to a manager or whatever.
Merlin: But one of the original, in my circles, that guy was you don't,
Merlin: You don't wear your own band's shirt, especially at a venue.
Merlin: You do not wear your own shirt on stage.
Merlin: But did we need to even talk about that?
Merlin: Not really.
John: I was thinking about this very thing this very morning.
John: No.
John: Because my daughter's mother is out of town for a week.
John: And on the way, and I drove to the airport at the crack of dawn this morning, and she was talking about how she barely fit all the stuff into the suitcase because she was... Because it's springtime in the Northwest.
John: So you need...
John: All the clothes for if it's 75 degrees and all the clothes for if it's 45 degrees.
John: I'm going to call it contingency packing.
John: You have to pack for everything.
John: Yeah.
John: And she said, and what I said to her was, you know, the thing about you can buy one when you get there.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Do not get stressed about toothpaste.
John: They have it everywhere.
John: There's that, but it's also like, you know what?
John: If you need a swimsuit, you can get one when you get there.
John: And that's probably more true for toothpaste.
John: boys than for girls because swimsuits you know for me it's just like whatever but paper bag um but like like throwing a burlap sack at an ape yeah exactly oh these are fine i found them in the airport but like that thing where you're always putting like three extra t-shirts in just in case
John: Yeah.
John: It's like, you know what?
John: You can always get a t-shirt somewhere.
John: Right, right.
John: And you don't need the extra three t-shirts.
Merlin: And the thing is... The thing I eventually learned is, and this is not always true, pays to do your research ahead of time as I always do, but especially if you're going, I don't know if you're going to a conference or a business meeting, stuff like that.
Merlin: Well, those kinds of things tend to happen.
Merlin: It's not going to be in the Ozarks.
Merlin: Like, they're often actually near shopping facilities that are able to accommodate the basic needs of people for stuff like that.
John: A t-shirt, we can work that out.
John: But the thing about it is that when you say to yourself, oh, I can get one.
John: If I need that, I can get one there.
John: You never do.
John: It's just a mantra you can say to yourself where if you are at the very last minute cramming three extra t-shirts into the cracks of your suitcase, just say, oh, I'll get that when I get there.
Merlin: Importantly, I just want to underscore, there's the real part, but then there's the other part, which is the stress I feel as a result of that.
Merlin: That's the part that fucks me up.
Merlin: I'm not even near TSA yet.
Merlin: I haven't left the house yet, and I'm already stressed out about things that could go wrong because I lack a t-shirt.
John: Yeah.
John: And you can always get one.
John: You can always solve any problem wherever you are.
John: Even if you are not near a store, even if you're at Machu Picchu, there's probably, you know, like you'll make a t-shirt out of leaves.
John: The thing is, you're not going to need a t-shirt at Machu Picchu because the dirty t-shirt you're wearing is fine.
John: Get your head in the game.
John: But I, as I was telling her this story, I was thinking about the one time in my life that
John: We were in Austria or Switzerland.
John: It was at the very end of a tour and I had.
John: Oh no, I see where this is going and I hate it.
John: I'd worn everything a thousand times.
John: All of my stuff was disgusting.
John: We had like two days left and I was like, oh man, it's so gross.
John: I'm so gross.
John: And, and I opened up the van and I pulled a long winter's t-shirt out of the, out of the box and I put it on and I said, fuck it.
John: You know what?
John: Fuck it.
John: I'm that guy.
John: I'm the guy in his own band's shirt.
Merlin: But you're the head, that guy.
Merlin: I mean, it's one thing if... I'm trying to think of people who have famously done this.
John: I want to say Metallica.
John: Ira from Not A Surf, I am 100% sure, has performed in a Not A Surf t-shirt.
John: God, he's so handsome.
John: Well, he can get away with it.
Merlin: He can get away.
Merlin: But look, I want to say Metallica.
Merlin: I mean, there are some bands, I don't want to say Anthrax, they beat my ass, but, like, it's not, I think it's not quite the admonition that it was, A, 25 years ago, and B, in, you know, college rock, or whatever they called it back then, you know, alt rock.
Merlin: College rock, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I called it college rock.
Merlin: College rock.
Merlin: But, like, you know what I mean?
Merlin: That was, the real admonition was, like, you would never see, I know you're such a fan of Minutemen, you'd never see Dee Boone probably wearing a Minutemen shirt.
Merlin: Well, you might, actually.
Merlin: I could see all three of them doing that, because they were very into their brand.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: They're into their brand.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Think about this.
Merlin: Henry Rollins and the stripes.
Merlin: He was the original that guy.
John: Henry Rollins.
John: He had a tattoo of his band before he was in the band.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: They sold out the Metro, but, you know, he still had to sleep in the box truck.
John: He had to sleep in the box truck, Marilyn.
Merlin: I don't know if you know this, but, you know, he has a lot of thoughts about touring in a van.
Merlin: He does.
Merlin: He does.
Merlin: Do you remember the shirt?
Merlin: I'm going to tell you, well, you know, I have some awesome memorabilia that I treasure from you, including that wonderful Pretend to Fall poster, a bunch you signed.
Merlin: But I don't know if I've ever owned a Long Winters T-shirt, which is weird.
Merlin: They're amazing.
Merlin: Well, I love the White Castle one.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Don't yell at me.
Merlin: I loved the one.
Merlin: Oh, who was that one really nice guy from the Pacific Northwest?
Merlin: That guy, he made his own shirts, right?
John: You're talking about Brian Leroy Taylor?
Merlin: Maybe, but the guy with the leather wristband, didn't he make his own shirts?
Merlin: But you've had good shirts, but they were never at the merch table or whatever.
Merlin: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: Well, because we never brought a merch person.
Merlin: If you got any extra anything that Sean Wolf has made, I would PayPal you for that.
John: I do.
John: I do have those.
John: Are you still a medium?
John: You still a men's medium?
John: Or are you a large now?
Merlin: Which do you prefer?
Merlin: Oh, I prefer a large.
Merlin: That way my kid can wear it too.
Merlin: But we share clothes.
Merlin: I'm wearing a pair of Dickies right now.
Merlin: I thought it was going to be fun.
Merlin: Oh, John, the rise is back.
Merlin: 3630.
Merlin: 30 is the shortest length that they make.
Merlin: And I still have four inches of cuff to accommodate.
Merlin: They got a long rise.
Merlin: You know, but seriously.
Merlin: So do you remember what shirt it was?
Merlin: Which design or whatever?
Merlin: Was it like a white t-shirt with a... Oh, at the time?
John: No, it was one, I think that was designed by Anna Banana.
John: It had a bird and a tree.
John: It was kind of a flowery tree and a bird, and it had some flowery... It's like a silhouette of a bird?
John: No, it had colors.
John: It was...
John: It wasn't the silhouette bird.
John: It was a later bird.
John: Did it say Long Winters on it?
John: It did, yeah.
John: Oh, shit.
John: We could never settle on a look or a brand.
John: Sometimes we were cute.
Merlin: You guys were so hard to pin down in a million ways, and I think that's part of the appeal.
Merlin: You did that in a way that was, from what you've described, kind of off-putting in some of your earlier bands.
Merlin: But in the Long Winters, I think that was part of the appeal.
Merlin: You might come out and...
Merlin: one could not guess what cover you would do and how you would do it if you did a cover, which is, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like that was the, you listen to pretend to fall.
Merlin: There's a reason jokes have left the room.
Merlin: It's absolutely one of my favorite albums of all time.
Merlin: And it's absolutely one of the best sequenced albums of all time.
Merlin: It's because it's like a little Whitman sampler of, of your, of the things that you love.
Merlin: Western culture.
Merlin: you love western culture history of ideas but no i'm seriously i'm not i'm not jerking your gherkin like that's part of what makes you guys made you guys so interesting is like you could go from like blue diamonds to like the side one of uh of pretend follows quite a journey so what's the shirt for that gonna be boom right i know i know right a giant death eagle was it just to drive or did you need to go on stage wearing it
John: I don't think, I think what it was, this maybe is even worse.
John: I never went on stage in a Long Winners t-shirt, but I think I was like doing interviews with Swiss journalists.
John: Oh no.
John: And you know, the Swiss, who knows what they think.
Merlin: If you brought your cape, I'm just saying.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: I, you know, I feel like if I had it all to do over again, I would have just, uh, I would have just used an eyebrow pencil more often, uh, more often than never.
John: No, but like if, if you look at those Peter Gabriel pictures from, uh, you know, from lamb pop.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, he's really got some, he's put a bunch of eyebrow makeup on.
John: And he looks so dramatic.
Merlin: It's white privilege.
Merlin: It's Peter Gabriel privilege.
Merlin: You can give yourself that dumb fucking haircut that he had during the best years of Genesis.
John: I had every dumb haircut.
Merlin: That's for sure.
Merlin: But he did that thing where, like, it wasn't even a tonsure.
Merlin: He just did this weird thing that he kept somebody, or he caused to happen, kept happening on purpose, which is he had normal kind of like prog rock hippie long hair.
Merlin: But then he would just shave this big divot out of the front.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
John: And it was so odd looking.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't, I don't, I don't support that, but the, I, if I had just been a little weirder, that's the thing.
John: If I had just been a little queerer.
John: Rather than an uncle, uncle whose name nobody can remember.
John: Yeah, no, it's, I, so I've always been, as you know, queer adjacent, right?
John: Right up against queer, leaning on it sometimes.
John: You know, like fall asleep.
Merlin: That's a neighborhood you're not afraid to drive to.
John: No, I lay my head down on Queer's shoulder and I fall asleep on a long bus drive.
Merlin: Roll up the windows.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But what I don't ever do is let that out.
John: I don't let it out.
John: I always sort of dress like somebody needs help with their chainsaw.
John: You know, like, oh, let's call this guy.
John: Oh, but that's not true.
John: I mean, sometimes I dress very flamboyantly, but I don't go all the way to like, I never morph.
Merlin: I'm thinking of like a band I love of Montreal, where like this band that's so rocking, but they just scream queer energy.
Merlin: You couldn't go, you couldn't say gay.
Merlin: You couldn't say, you know, non-binary.
Merlin: You couldn't say whatever.
Merlin: They're having a fucking like Scrooge McDuck treasure bath explosion of queerness that they are celebrating like every little switch back up.
Merlin: And there's so much of that... You don't present like that.
John: No, there's so much of that in me, right?
John: But I never... Like, I remember when I was 19, I said, I should get my ears pierced.
John: I want to wear some, you know, some like gold...
John: And I don't have, like, I try to wear rings and I can't do it.
John: They bother me.
John: You know, they get in my way.
John: And I try to wear, like, bracelets, but I don't like them.
John: You know, those are my hands.
John: I'm doing stuff with those.
Merlin: Wait, you want that clacking against your tailpiece while you're jamming?
Merlin: No, you don't.
Merlin: Want a floppy charm bracelet while you're up there, you know, suffering for fashion?
Merlin: I think not.
Merlin: How are you going to fix somebody's chainsaw if you got all this shit on your house?
Merlin: Well, your whole brand is basically a guy who walks up to somebody working on a car and says, what you got going on there?
Merlin: What you doing?
John: Clang, clang, clang.
John: You got bangles going off.
Merlin: You got a fucking six-stopper in your ear.
Merlin: Fuck that.
John: And, you know, when I tried to wear some neck things, like I had that puka shell necklace, and everybody mocked me and laughed at me.
John: Because you were wearing, because you looked like a lacrosse sexual assaulter.
John: Like you had on puka shells over like a lacoste.
John: I said the puka shells that my sister gave them to me back in the 70s.
John: Yeah.
John: Unfortunately, you don't get like a little museum card that explains your look to strangers.
John: Multimedia.
John: And I wasn't going to get any piercings.
John: Like I went around for a while and I was like, everybody I knew was getting piercings.
John: You must have been so much pressure to do that back then.
John: Well, and I, you know, and I was like, well, if I'm going to get a piercing, then I'm going to get one on my ding dong because that's the.
John: What do they call it?
John: Prince Albert in a can?
John: What's it called?
John: Yeah, there's so many of them.
John: You can put one on the top.
Merlin: Isn't there one where you put it through your dongus and through the tip and they chain it to your leg like that Canadian singer in the 80s?
Merlin: Yeah, but I'm not going to do that.
Merlin: You're not going to do that.
John: I was at a. That's a big surprise for somebody you're dating.
John: I was at a party this weekend and the guy out at Kurt Timbermeister's house, he comes up in the show sometime.
John: And Kurt has built a bunker on his farm.
John: that he had, it's a concrete bunker under the ground that he has made the entrance look like it's a, like he made the entrance out of stone and it's kind of embedded in the hillside.
John: So it looks like a grotto, like maybe somewhere that there would be an icon or a piece of the church.
Merlin: Hang on, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I am so sorry.
Merlin: I found a picture of Peter Gabriel shaving the divot into his head while laughing.
Merlin: I missed what you said.
Merlin: Tim, Tim Hercanflerkin.
John: Yeah, Tim Hercanflerkin.
John: He's got a bunker that's also a grotto?
John: Is it a monk hole?
John: It's bigger than that.
John: It's a full-on bomb shelter, but it's underground.
John: Oh, shit, dog.
John: And it's on this farm where he makes his own cheese.
John: Oh.
John: And he's evolved now and is a photographer.
John: Oh, neat.
John: And he's taking photographs, and he had an art opening, but his photographs were all in his...
John: crazy, uh, piece of the true cross farm bunker.
John: Okay.
John: And, uh, and so, so, you know, at, in the course of this party, we all kind of circulated around the, uh, the farm, you know, everybody's drinking, uh, Rose, people are getting drunk and spilling wine on each other.
John: And, uh, and I go, I'm there with Chris Ballou and, um, and he's, he's a lot of, he's such a nice man.
Merlin: He's very, he writes me notes sometimes and I can't even, I don't, I'm not trying to, I don't mean that as like a flex, but it's like, he's just so generous.
John: So I spent the night at his house because everybody of my generation of a certain kind of rock person has moved to Vashon Island.
John: And I didn't realize this until I went to this party at Kirk Timmermeister's house.
John: Oh, I see.
John: And it's like, hey, I haven't seen you in a long time.
John: Oh, I live on Vashon now.
John: Vashon, yeah.
John: Whoa, where have you been?
John: Oh, I live on Vashon now.
Merlin: And so we're all feel like in part, that might've been something where it either happened or it started to catch up with you because of COVID times.
Merlin: Like over those two years, you hadn't seen people often enough that when it did happen, it's impossible not to notice that pattern.
John: I think, you know, cause I looked at houses on Vashon and I had like three years ago and I said, Oh my, you know, I don't want my daughter's living in Normandy park.
John: I don't want to live on Vashon.
John: It's right there.
Merlin: I can see Vashon.
Merlin: I've never heard of it.
John: So Vashon Island is an enormous island in Puget Sound.
John: It's one very short ferry ride away from West Seattle.
John: Okay.
John: It is close enough.
John: There are two places that, well, so, you know, Washington State Ferry System is the largest ferry system in the United States and one of the largest ferry systems in the world.
John: And there are all these islands in Puget Sound, and people can commute to work in Seattle via ferry boat.
John: I see.
John: Okay.
John: So when I was born, we lived in Kingston, Washington, and my dad worked downtown in the Dexter Horton building, and he commuted-
John: Via ferry and he could take one of two ferries.
John: He could take the Kingston ferry to Edmonds and then drive to Seattle.
John: Okay.
John: Or he could drive down to Bainbridge Island to take the Winslow ferry, which took him right to downtown Seattle.
John: And so my mom and dad had four different cars.
John: They had a car in Winslow.
John: They had a car in, in Kingston.
John: They had a car in Edmonds and a car in Seattle.
John: That is some complicated commuting and living.
John: This is 1969 or whatever, or 66 before I was born.
John: And they did this thing.
John: I've told you this, where my, where every time the ferry boat would come into Kingston, it, you know, it honks the horn.
Yeah.
John: And my mom would go to the kitchen window and look out and there's the ferry.
John: And if my dad was on the ferry, as he walked off the ferry, he would raise his arm and
John: Oh, my God.
John: That's so cool.
John: I love stuff like that.
Merlin: My dad would always put, wherever my dad was sitting on a plane, he put his Time magazine in the window so he could always see where he's sitting.
John: Oh, that's a great idea.
John: Don't you love stuff like that?
John: So she would just wait.
John: Every time the fairy honked, she would go look out the window, and if he had his arm up, she'd get in the car and go get him.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But there's no cell phones.
Merlin: There's probably no phony phones.
Merlin: He has to, like, assume slash hope that she caught the high sign, wasn't trying to get a pie out of the oven.
John: Yeah, and the thing is, if she didn't come, he could just walk around, you know, as a mile and a half or whatever.
John: Well, that's so sweet.
John: But Vashon Island, the ferry doesn't go to downtown Seattle.
John: It goes to west Seattle.
John: And then it's a weird...
John: like a, like kind of a pretty awkward drive from the Fauntleroy ferry terminal to downtown Seattle.
John: So, but, but there are people that commute.
John: The thing is Vachon is huge and,
Merlin: And it— So it's got—what I'm getting from you, though, is, like, it's—I mean, this is—I really do not mean this disrespectfully, but, like— Not at all.
Merlin: One of the houses that I—an apartment that I looked at when I first got here, I mean, it's so much easier to choose where I am now.
Merlin: It was on Treasure Island, which is, for folks who don't know, is basically partway on the Bay Bridge between—
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, I think it's an artificial island that was built for like the World Expo or something like that.
Merlin: Anyhow, it's fine.
Merlin: And you can go there and, you know, it's mostly a military base now, but it really feels like something, I don't know, like not Wicker Man precisely, but definitely a British full core location where like this hospital used to be an operation and now we use it to turn people into scarecrows or something.
Merlin: Very fucking weird.
Merlin: But it was so isolated.
Merlin: And just think from now on, like whatever you can't get on the island, yeah, they have a bus that goes there.
Merlin: You're going to have to get in your fucking car and get on the Bay Bridge to like get groceries, nicer groceries.
Merlin: But like the corollary being Vashon Island is you get, not isolation, you get like privacy and doing your own thing and being away for hustle bustle, but you're not isolated.
Merlin: Is that the idea?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, so that's kind of the idea.
John: The wonderful thing about Vachon is that it's very rural, even still.
John: Horses, goats, chickens, farms.
John: That's cool.
John: People doing farming for a living.
John: And until 10 or 15 years ago, it was mostly that.
John: And the parts that aren't farmed are deep in the trees.
Yeah.
John: But it's an island, so there's waterfront houses all the way around the outside.
Merlin: What has it historically attracted in terms of the folks?
Merlin: You know, for example, we talk about like Eureka Valley, which became the Castro.
Merlin: Before that was the big gay neighborhood in the 60s, 70s, mostly 70s.
Merlin: Before that, it was mostly that was where like nurses and firefighters and cops lived.
Merlin: Who was on?
Merlin: Just farmers.
Merlin: Is that what they had just had farmers?
John: No, like, for instance, before the war, there were Japanese families there growing strawberries.
John: Oh.
John: And then kind of, you know, even as far back as the 20s and 30s, people had little beachfront vacation shacks and, you know, fishing shacks and then big, big farms, horse farms and orchards.
John: Thank you very much.
John: That helps me.
John: And then in the 50s, it became more like, oh, now we're going to build little beach houses because the population's growing and it's a close commute to the city.
John: The thing is, it's a close commute to the city, except it's not.
John: Oh.
John: Because.
John: Turns out.
John: If you live on the island, like, so I was at Chris Ballou's house.
John: We're having a dinner party.
John: It's a wonderful party.
John: Some old friends.
John: And the party goes late.
John: We're talking.
John: We're laughing.
John: And then I said, as anyone who has to take a fairy knows, I said, oh.
John: What time's the last boat?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And they said, well, it's 20 minutes to the ferry terminal from here.
John: And the last boat is at 1157.
John: And it's now, you know, 1115.
John: And I was like, I can make it.
John: I can make the last boat.
John: But it's like such a drag to leave this party right now when it's getting good.
John: And Chris said, you can spend the night.
John: And so I stayed over.
John: It's this, they have a wonderful place.
John: And then in the morning I did the 20 minute drive.
John: You kind of, you have to go through the little town.
John: I mean, you don't have to.
Merlin: Did somebody like drop you off or is it a car ferry?
John: It must be a car ferry.
John: Oh, it's a car ferry.
John: All the Seattle ferries except for one is they're all car ferries.
John: Okay.
John: But I had an appointment in the city and it's,
John: And the appointment in the city, let me tell you, Merlin, it's not by the West Seattle Ferry Terminal.
John: So I'm like 20 minutes.
John: That's inconvenient to you.
John: They should have had the appointment be there.
John: See?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: 20 minutes to the ferry, and then you got to wait for the ferry.
John: Because even if you get there right at the time that the ferry is supposed to leave, it's never, it never works out.
Merlin: And the thing is, as much as people rely on ferries, I have a friend whose family lives kind of, well, in a similar kind of situation.
Merlin: And from what I can gather, ferries are dependable, like Muni.
Merlin: They're dependable until they're not.
Merlin: They can be a little bit capricious.
Merlin: There's like rules that only the locals know about days of the week and stuff like that, weather things.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Yes.
John: And this, oh, and the Vashon Terminal has another ferry that goes to Southworth
John: which is like a ferry that is going to nowhere.
John: Like Southworth is four hay bales that are covered with moss, and there's a place for the ferry to land.
Merlin: Put your ferry here.
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John: There's a little store that sells ice cream in the summer, you know?
John: And, but I'm not, I don't want to go to Southworth.
Merlin: So you got to get to that appointment.
Merlin: That's not near where you are.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Yeah.
John: You get to the ferry terminal and you're like, Oh, there's a boat.
John: You know, there's a boat here.
John: I got here just in time.
John: And then now that's gone to Southworth.
John: My friend Southworth, the place no one wants to go.
John: Oh no.
John: But then you take the half hour long ferry ride across the sound.
John: Then you got to get off the ferry with everybody else who's also getting off the ferry.
John: It's like it sounds like it's a whole thing.
John: And then you got to get to where you're going.
John: Jiminy.
John: And so that amount and that's not much to get over, considering there are probably people listening.
Merlin: But there's a lot of points of failure.
Merlin: As I've said, my kid now knows this better than me.
Merlin: If you can take Muni somewhere, you'll be mostly fine, mostly.
Merlin: Anytime you add a transfer, it's like adding an order of magnitude or two to what can go wrong.
Merlin: And what you're describing there, there's a lot of places that chain of transportation could break.
John: There are people listening to this show that commute every day to work for an hour, right?
John: And live way out on Long Island or in New Jersey.
John: Yeah, you get on the highway, you get off the highway, you're at work.
John: Or you get on a train, you know, your spouse takes you to the train station, you wait for the train, you take the train into the city, then you, all this.
John: There are people that are going, what are you talking about?
John: That doesn't sound that bad.
John: It sounds idyllic, but it's just enough.
John: Uh-huh.
John: That what it does is when somebody says, hey, I'm playing tonight.
Merlin: You should come to the show.
Merlin: Oh, the famous sort of, do you want to come to our Christmas party in Rock Ridge?
Merlin: It's like, I do, but... I do, but wow.
Merlin: It's like 20... Did I tell you?
Merlin: It was all I could do to see John Mulaney at Berkeley at 7 p.m.
Merlin: a couple weeks ago.
Merlin: My favorite comedian.
Merlin: 7 p.m.
Merlin: It's just right over there, too.
John: It's just right over there.
John: It's just enough that it's like, oh, man.
John: But the thing about...
John: this trip over there and seeing all these friends is, oh, they all live on Vashon now.
John: Okay.
John: So there's a whole little town here and they're all, you know, they all have their favorite little weird restaurants and, you know, and all these restaurants are places where you go and you order the
John: The fish and they burned it on one side, but they serve it with the burn side down.
Merlin: So you're like, Oh, this is your first time dining with us.
John: A little bit different.
John: That's a little weird.
John: You know, could you just cook it normal?
John: Yeah.
John: Why don't you, that's one where you throw it in the garbage.
John: But, you know, but and the thing is, all the people are living out there are people that I love and people.
John: And in a way, like people, I wish over the years I'd had the ability to have more casual friendships with them.
John: The kind of casual friendship that you would have if you all lived on an island together.
Merlin: I always think of college and just that like I know I was unprepared.
Merlin: to go from the explosion of mostly friends, but just acquaintances and familiar faces, the explosion of 519 other faces that I recognize, to suddenly being like, here's the people you work with, and the person you get your bagel from, and that's the new people in your life.
Merlin: It's weird that with you, you don't, I was unprepared for the abruptness of not having regular opportunities to meet a variety of different people.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's weird when it happens, right?
Merlin: Well, you know what I'm saying though?
Merlin: It's like, it's, it's cool and interesting.
Merlin: And you know, like item 75, where you shouldn't have to go to college to have that.
Merlin: But when it goes away, I just, I'm dumb.
Merlin: Like I went to an okay, good school, but I never got a session on going, transitioning to the real world where your life is now wings and softball with the same 40 people.
John: And what's great about it is that everybody's in their 50s and they all have... It sounds idyllic.
John: Yeah, they all have these weird houses on 10 acres and they are just having dinner parties because everybody's in their career enough that they don't have to leave this island very often.
John: And I was like, wow, wow.
John: When I was thinking about it before the pandemic, it seemed like it was going to be a big pain in the neck to come over and, and be, you know, a daily part of my daughter's life.
John: But now, well, I mean, as soon as the pandemic hit, I was like, why didn't I move to Vashon?
John: I could be living in a lighthouse right now as far, you know, nobody, it doesn't.
Merlin: People would love it if you were the lighthouse keeper.
John: And one day, one day.
John: You get so much done.
John: One day.
John: I know.
John: But yeah, you get so much done because the light comes around and then you write real fast when the light is on the paper and then it goes away.
Merlin: It's like you're a professional meditation topic.
Merlin: But your whole job is to just not have people hit the lighthouse.
Merlin: Can people know not to hit the lighthouse?
Merlin: Did I change the light?
Merlin: Is it good?
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: I'll be up here not looking at Twitter.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: So I'm down in this cave, this cheese cave, because what he built the cave for, I think he built— That's where he stores and ages his cheeses?
John: Yeah, I think he built it in order to age his cheeses, because he makes cheese on his farm.
Merlin: I'm not laughing at him, it's just a funny word, and to have, like, basically a dungeon du fromage is funny to me.
John: Yes, dungeon du fromage.
John: But he's a photographer right now, Kurt Timmermeister.
John: And so he's using the Cheese Cave as a gallery for his black and white portraits of people.
John: And I walked in and I'm walking around.
John: And there are several portraits on the property of people who have penis piercings.
John: And their penises are connected to their leg by a chain.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's the royal one I was trying to remember.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The royal Enfield.
Merlin: The Royal Enfield, you're saying it could be like a Prince Philip in a can.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a King Jacob.
Merlin: It's the one where the... Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: It's the Wisdom of Solomon, they call it.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: It's the Jingle, Jingle Morning.
Merlin: That's the name of the Canadian singer.
Merlin: Remember, Don't Want to Fall in Love?
Merlin: And she very famously, her whole bit, not her whole bit, I'm sure in her homeland, she was revered.
Merlin: But in the United States, circa 1988, she was famous because Jane Child, she had, first of all, she had a funny haircut.
Merlin: And then she had a ring on her nose that attached, or maybe her cheek.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: She had something that, she had two parts that attached via a Canadian chain.
John: Yeah, a Canadian chain, right.
John: Yes.
John: And I want to fall in love.
John: One of the original things that I looked at and said, if you get that snagged as you go over the top of a chain link fence running from the cops, you are going to hang from that nose ring and that's going to suck.
Merlin: I would not want to.
Merlin: If I had Prince Albert in a can, I don't know.
Merlin: I already know I'm thinking about my dick.
Merlin: And if I'm climbing a fence with an Israeli girl,
Merlin: You know, and she didn't have time to change out of her heels.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Man, we are an attractive nuisance for somebody.
Merlin: That's a PLO type situation.
John: You know, I'm still trying real hard not to be on the regular internet.
John: I went on Facebook today and left some hilarious comments on some things, and then I got out as fast as I could.
John: But it wasn't fast enough because people already started messaging me.
John: They were like, oh, Facebook tells me that you're here.
John: And I was like, I'm not here.
John: But I read some post where somebody on some thread, you know, a woman said, I never wear shoes that I can't climb a chain link fence in.
John: Oh, shit dog.
John: Ever since.
John: And what did she say?
John: It was something about... She watched some... Oh, it was... She'd seen...
John: All the footage after 9-11, all the women coming up from downtown, walking in their bare feet because their heels were on fire.
John: And I was like, there it is.
John: She's never going to go to work again without proper boots.
Merlin: She's also teaching us a very important lesson, if I may say, which is that when something like that happens, you don't need to be scared about that happening.
Merlin: You need to take note of that and learn from that.
Merlin: And now you don't have to be scared.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You cannot control what goes on in the world.
Merlin: You cannot control the stuff that you can't control a priori, but you can choose shoes better on a go-forward basis.
Merlin: Choose better shoes, right?
John: Choose better shoes.
John: Choose shoes.
John: I remember at 19, I was like, I'm going to get my ears pierced, and it's going to be so cool.
John: I'm going to look like adamant.
John: And the thing is, you get them pierced, right?
John: And then you don't take them out.
Merlin: He had great earrings, especially the pirate motif.
Merlin: He would have kind of dangly.
Merlin: Yeah, he was such a handsome man.
Merlin: Definitely goody-two-shoes, but even in Stand and Deliver.
Merlin: You know, Stand and Deliver was my favorite song for two years when I was a kid.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: I could see that.
Merlin: I could see that.
Merlin: Because, you know, I used to make, you wouldn't ever believe this, I used to make lists every month of my favorite 40 songs.
Merlin: Come on.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: That and that and the song that I called Teenage Wasteland.
Merlin: That and Bob O'Reilly were always vying for top position.
John: Yeah.
John: The first kid I ever knew who had a computer, Gavin Ralston.
John: Gavin Ralston is a very Jerry Lewis name.
John: Gavin Ralston had the first computer I ever knew a kid to have.
John: And Gavin and I were on the school bus one time, and he said...
John: uh, and I, and he was talking about his computer and I was like, and we had, you know, there was computer.
Merlin: Computers would be around, but like, there's not that many computers that were fun.
Merlin: The first computer I ever saw in a house was, was the, the most, like the most singularly in cell rich boy that I knew as a, as a, and,
Merlin: He had, he had like, whatever, Syracuse would be able to say, but a very, very old, like probably pre-Sinclair, like a very old computer.
Merlin: And he'd written a program that would make fun of you and that pretended to be a dating app.
Merlin: And then everybody who came to the house would have to do the program.
Merlin: Oh, how fun.
Merlin: Oh, Mrs. Myers, your son, your son is so smart.
Merlin: He's so precocious.
Merlin: Does he live on an aircraft carrier now?
Merlin: He's 27.
John: So Gavin, and Gavin had a- What was his name again?
John: Gavin Ralston.
John: He had a Mr. Spock haircut.
John: Oh, ladies.
John: He had black hair and he cut it right across the eyebrows and then combed it forward.
John: That's a smart look.
John: And he had a computer and he reaches into his back.
John: We're talking about his computer.
John: Yes.
John: He reaches into his backpack and he pulls out an enormous-
John: You remember dot matrix connected paper.
Merlin: You tear off the frilly underwear on the sides?
John: Yeah.
John: What was that paper called?
John: Line feed.
John: Line feed paper.
John: Line feed paper.
John: He pulls out a stack of line feed paper that looks like you just, it looks like a stack that you just pulled out of the package.
John: Like it's an entire stack.
John: It's still like attached.
John: We're like in a fan interleaved.
John: Well, and it's like an inch thick, this pad.
John: Okay.
John: I'm intrigued.
John: He hands it to me.
John: And it's every album he owns in an alphabetical list.
John: Oh my gosh.
John: Printed out dot matrix printer.
John: Oh my goodness.
Merlin: Why did he have it with him?
John: He had it with him because it was at the time the singular accomplishment of his seventh grade life.
John: It represented what could only be
John: A thousand hours of inputting, you know, Elvis Costello, you know, like, and then the additional thousand hours that would have taken his original printer to print all that shit out.
John: He handed it to me and he said, if you want it, you can keep it.
John: I have, I have, I have more.
John: Whoa.
John: And I said, Gavin, why would I want a printout of your record collection?
John: That's a good question.
John: And he was like, he didn't have an answer.
John: He was like, I mean, it's, I mean, it's pretty amazing.
John: I mean, it's an amazing thing that I've done and I'd like to share it with everybody.
John: And I was like, wow.
John: And he had a lot more records than I would have thought.
John: Sure.
Merlin: But I would like to give you the lightest possible homework, because the light of this is you will get to go and hear one of the best singles of the 80s, which is Stand a Liver.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Adam and the Ants.
Merlin: Adam and the Ants, please.
Merlin: It was Adam and the Ants.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Stuart, not Stuart Goddard, whatever his name is.
Merlin: It's him, plus, plus, I believe, didn't, didn't, so first, Malcolm McLaren poached
Merlin: adam and the ants to make i want to make um bow wow wow i want candy but i can tell you because there's a mnemonic for this from the album prince charming marco merrick gary lee marco merrick gary lee gary tibbs and yours truly in the naughty north and the sexy south we're all singing i have the mouth go watch the video
Merlin: I think it's for, you know, and it's back when he had the white stripe, you know, the original pirate look, the like ant music look.
Merlin: And it's really closer to ant music in spirit than it is to Prince Charming.
Merlin: That's just what they put her.
John: The video.
John: He's very sexy.
Merlin: He's so sexy.
Merlin: Do you remember there are two actors in that video that I'm pretty sure you're going to recognize from their later work?
Merlin: Well, there's the people in the coach.
Merlin: I'm the Danny High woman that you're too scared to mention.
Merlin: The people in the coach that's getting robbed.
John: It's the drummer, right?
John: Isn't the drummer in there?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: These are going to both seem a little obscure until you just go look them up.
Merlin: One is, I believe his name is Simon Cowell.
Merlin: The actor who was in the Merchant Ivory movies.
Merlin: Oh, he's very funny.
Merlin: He's the gay guy in Four Weddings and a Funeral with the deaf boyfriend.
Merlin: Simon Cowell, very young in that.
Merlin: The other one, one Amanda Donahoe, the lady from Lair of the White Worm and other things.
Merlin: She's the sexy lady.
Merlin: And I think they dated at one point Mr. Ant.
Merlin: and amanda all i'm going to say is this won't make a ton of sense until y'all go back and watch this which might be one of the great songs of the 80s one of the great singles one of the great oh oh and they're doing the bowie thing where it's like what's what i'm looking for not polarized but uh uh you know like that that ashes to ashes look that everybody copped from bowie anyway i just love that song now i don't have that paper but i i should probably update my list
John: Oh, you're talking about your list of records.
Merlin: You were talking about his computer, and then he handed you a bunch of paper with Philly underwear sides.
John: Did you ever have your ears pierced?
John: Did you ever have an ear pierced?
John: Oh, I must have told this story.
John: It seems like you did.
Merlin: I must have told this story 1,000 times.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know the short version?
John: Can I give you the short version?
Merlin: Yeah, give me the short version of your ear pierced ears.
Merlin: Well, I'm having that bad year.
Merlin: That year between...
Merlin: graduating high school in 1985 and starting college in 1986.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And to call it, well, yeah, it was a tough year.
Merlin: It was tough for a lot of reasons, health reasons, emotional reasons.
Merlin: Like I was really sick.
Merlin: I think I told you I got sun poisoning on a boat for six hours.
Merlin: And like, I had like a one month cold sore and the equivalent of mono.
Merlin: I was just very depressed and I was, you know, but I had nice, nice depressed friends and we were all really into like the same, like very good music.
Merlin: But anyhow,
Merlin: So I was working at McDonald's at the time and I was my pal Phil and I, I was like, you know what?
Merlin: Fuck it.
Merlin: It was a Sunday.
Merlin: I remember specifically it was a Sunday and I had to work in the afternoon, which is never fun.
Merlin: It's just slow enough that it's gross.
Merlin: I would have to be at McDonald's like first.
Merlin: It's like, Phil, let's do it.
Merlin: And we drove to the mall, the Gulfview, Gulfview square mall.
Merlin: Drive to the mall, go to the earring hunt.
Merlin: I got my ear pierced.
Merlin: I got a gold stud in my left ear.
Merlin: This is going to be probably fall of 85, right?
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: McDonald's has a rule.
Merlin: You can't have an earring.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: !
Merlin: Do they still have that rule?
Merlin: I doubt it.
John: Well, they just didn't want you to get caught in the deep frat.
Merlin: And all I can do is give you my memory of this.
Merlin: If any of the facts of this are wrong or misplaced, that's fine.
Merlin: But like, so basically they put this, I believe it's called a stud.
Merlin: They put like, it's a gold...
Merlin: nubbin with a needle on it they punch it through your ear and put this especially like difficult clasp on it because why because you're not gonna all you're gonna do is disinfect that for a month don't touch it don't do anything with it do not do brown shoe um and so but then like it kind of really did occur to me oh i need to go to work
Merlin: Uh-oh.
Merlin: And I did something really ill-advised.
John: You took it out.
John: You took it out right away.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: My friend Phil, who had been a defensive lineman on the football team, was currently in a pretty good metal band, but a tough guy.
Merlin: Very tough guy.
Merlin: But, you know, he had a soft spot, which is nice.
Merlin: We go into the bathroom at my house, my mom's house, and I spent so long, I think I eventually got needle nose pliers, and I pulled the back off of this earring, and Phil was about to vomit.
Merlin: It was so gross.
Merlin: It was very Philip Seymour Hoffman at the beginning of Synecdoche, New York.
Merlin: There's a lot of blood.
Merlin: It was really bad.
Merlin: Eventually, I put a Band-Aid.
Merlin: A bandaid over it.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: The taking it out sucked, but the getting it back in was worse.
Merlin: The getting it back in, and I do still have the hole there.
Merlin: Pardon my saying.
Merlin: But it was some very David Cronenberg shit, the entire operation.
Merlin: And reflected the kind of brilliant judgment that I was exercising at that very low point in my life.
John: And were you able to get it back in?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And did you continue to wear an earring for some period of time?
Merlin: I did, but, like, I said this very shortly, quickly, quietly, probably 25 minutes ago, which is, like, I'm not an earring guy.
Merlin: Like, you know, there's, like, hat people.
Merlin: There's beard people.
Merlin: Yeah, Dan would tell us that he was a hat person.
Merlin: He says a lot of things.
Merlin: But, like, there are people where you're, like, shit.
Merlin: You know, or, like, a leather jacket guy.
Merlin: especially leather vest guy it's you it's really difficult to pull off a leather vest i've never wanted to but i'd like to know that i could it's like kung fu sure now i i i did this of course in the left ear because i'm a guy you know and i like girls and it was the 80s yeah it was the 80s but you remember was it john wait um john wait i think the guy from the babies that did that that really weird video change like i think he had a right i think he had a right ear ring
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: But I was going to get both ears.
Merlin: See, you're talking about a different time.
Merlin: Yeah, because I was a pirate.
John: Late 90s, people started doing two hoops.
John: But this was 80... I was going to do this in 80... 89.
John: What?
John: No, not even 87.
John: Come on.
John: I was 19.
John: This is the thing, Merlin.
John: I lean my head against queer on a long bus route.
John: Oh, that's right.
John: I forgot you drive through there.
John: Right?
John: And so I'm like, I'm just doing it.
John: I'm going for it.
John: I'm going to get two earrings.
John: And I was like, you know, and how sexy is that going to be?
John: About as sexy as there is.
Merlin: John, I mean, there are a lot of things.
Merlin: I would say you're a hot guy.
Merlin: You have a head like a mastiff.
Merlin: Like two fine hams in a cheesecloth bag, I know.
John: I was going to get this...
Merlin: We're still going?
Merlin: Keep going.
John: Oh, yeah, just a little bit more.
Merlin: So you're, okay, hello.
Merlin: And so, John, but was that, you were thinking at the time, mid-80s, you were thinking, did you go to yourself, hmm, and thought, like, it's okay if people think maybe I got a thing going on.
Merlin: Maybe I want to have a thing going on.
Merlin: I got two hoops.
Merlin: I was all this way.
Merlin: I was way, way out.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: But.
Merlin: Is it, would you say that's as sort of committed to that approach as you've been?
Yeah.
Merlin: Uh, well, no.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Save it for the show.
John: Save it for the show.
John: Yes.
John: Because I was, I was, I, I, I look back at that and I feel like that was a crossroads.
John: And if I had gotten the, if I'd gotten those two earrings, I would have drawn in my eyebrows later.
John: I would have had a pair of leather pants.
John: I would have, anything could have happened.
John: I would have had a little John Waters mustache.
John: You could be earring guy.
John: You could be hat guy.
John: You could be vest guy.
John: You could be chaps guy.
John: I could have had a leather vest.
John: I could have done anything, right?
John: I could have walked around with a shoulder holster on.
John: Can't be afraid of that neighborhood.
John: And here's what I said.
John: What'd you say?
John: I'm 19.
John: Aren't I a little old?
Merlin: I was exactly 19 when I did that.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: So you didn't do it?
Merlin: You didn't get pierced?
John: No, I said, you know, because you remember the story about me trying to get a tattoo.
John: Where I went into the tattoo parlor in Colorado and I said, you know, I want a Mr. Yuck on my arm.
John: That's the poison face.
John: Because I'm poison.
John: Oh, man.
John: And the guy said, are you 18?
John: And I was like, no, I'm 17, but I'll be 18 in 10 days.
John: And he was like, well, come back in 10 days.
John: One adult for Blade Runner.
John: And I said, all right, I'll come back in 10 days and you're going to give me a big Mr. Yuck on my arm because I'm poison.
John: And he was like, yeah, you come back in 10 days when you're 18.
John: And I was like, all right.
John: Okay.
John: And 10 days.
John: Okay.
John: Sounds good.
John: 10 days later.
John: I was like, that's, that was the dumbest idea I ever had.
John: Thank fucking God.
John: I don't have a huge Mr. Yuck on my arm.
John: And then, and that was when I realized, oh, I'm too stupid to make long-term decisions.
John: I don't have friends that talk me out of bad ideas.
John: Yeah, no.
John: Everybody was like, yeah, sure, do it.
John: You look like an asshole the rest of your life.
John: Get a barcode, man.
John: Get a barcode.
John: What it did was it made me second guess every, like, super cool queer idea I ever had.
John: Oh, shit.
John: Where it was like, oh, you're going to get your ears picked.
Merlin: Maybe it's time for you to have a renaissance.
Merlin: Maybe it's time for your personal Arab Spring.
Merlin: Maybe it's time for you to park in the neighborhood for a while and maybe get a staple in your dingus or whatever kids do now.
John: What's funny is in the late 90s, all the kids were painting their fingernails.
John: All the boys were like, oh, I'm racy.
John: I'm painting my fingernails black or whatever because I'm dirty or whatever.
John: And I was like,
John: I'm too old.
John: I'm 20.
John: I'm 28.
John: I'm not going to paint my fingernails with whiteout.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: I don't wear jams.
Merlin: I think of that as being so much a late 90s thing.
Merlin: Guys in the... So I was in an 80s cover band called Parachute Pants.
Merlin: That, by the way, formed... That's good.
Merlin: Well, so, like, everybody, we were all just in the same little fucking, you know, rat king of bands.
Merlin: And the Cowhouse, which I think you've played at, one of the owners of the Cowhouse was the drummer in this band, and he was the booker.
Merlin: His Tuesdays were spent trying to figure out how many towels Cheap Trick needed or whatever.
Merlin: And anyhow, one time, long story short, Bow Wow Wow was coming through to do their business with Annabella and like hardly anybody else from the band.
Merlin: But they're coming through town and they needed an opening act.
Merlin: And so that's when we formed Parachute Pants.
Merlin: And Parachute Pants became the 80s cover band that could in a pinch come in.
Merlin: And we played dance marathons and shit like that.
Merlin: But mainly we learned like 40...
Merlin: 80s covers pretty well and then would do our bit but like it started because of that but then it became kind of a funny thing like oh somebody bailed at the last minute can we get parachute pants of course yeah of course but the other guys in that band like three of the other guys in that band had the two hoops thing
Merlin: Which every time I say that, I think a Raisin Bran.
Merlin: Two hoops.
Merlin: They get two scoops.
Merlin: And then, but also that was, I think, the ascendance of the whiteout fingernails.
Merlin: Same time.
Merlin: I feel like I remember Derek, the keyboard player, who was very good.
Merlin: Hi, Derek.
Merlin: I seem to remember him having that look.
Merlin: It was a very popular look.
Merlin: It was a good, it was a look and it was slightly leaning toward everybody.
Merlin: I'm probably way off base.
Merlin: I want to say a little bit James addiction.
Merlin: I know it's way past that, but it's got that kind of like, or, you know, think about the guy from the creepy guy from red hot chili peppers.
Merlin: That was with the lady with the long hair.
Merlin: Or no, the guy who was in James addiction too.
John: No, the James addiction guy who was also later in the chili peppers.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But the guy with the eyes.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's very much him.
Merlin: That's his, that's kind of his, you know, Tommy, Tommy Lee sort of aesthetic.
John: Yeah, it says like, oh, I'm bi, and I've had three ways.
John: Right.
John: And also, maybe I'm a junkie, or maybe I'm not a junkie anymore.
Merlin: You'll never know.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Let them wonder.
John: Let them wonder.
John: Let them wonder is right.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Look at these nails.
John: These nails.
John: It's a good look, and one that maybe—
John: If I'd made that turn in 19 years old, maybe I'd be wearing eyeshadow right now.
Merlin: John, I hate to say this to you.
Merlin: It sounds like you should do whatever you want to do.
Merlin: If you want to staple your dongas and put it on TikTok, I'm fine with that.
Merlin: I am just here to say there's a particular kind of that guy that we have talked about at least 10 times on here, which is the scene guy.
Merlin: That guy who's 40 and still goes to the shows.
Merlin: Scene guy.
John: The thing is, Merlin, if I had two earrings and had white-out fingernails and was wearing black eyeliner, maybe the Long Winters would have been asked to play fucking noise pop.
Merlin: Ridiculous.
Merlin: Maybe you should do this.
Merlin: I'm also thinking, can I also just recommend if you're going to do this, and maybe this becomes fan art, I don't know, if you want to toss in a little bit of old Al Jorgensen.
Merlin: Maybe wear one of those straw cowboy hats.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
John: More human than human.
Merlin: You know?
John: Yes.
John: See?
John: And that's going to be it.
Merlin: I think you should have a little bit of... Get back together.
Merlin: Not exactly Nine Inch Nails, but I'm thinking of the Harley David Son of a Bitch era when I was going to dance clubs circa 1991.
Merlin: I'm thinking that kind of...
Merlin: What's the song I'm thinking of by Ministry that's not the Boppy Bop Bop song?
Merlin: What's the one?
Merlin: There's the Boppy Bop Bop song from when I was in college.
Merlin: The Halloween song.
Merlin: But then, oh, Psalm 69 was the album, right?
Merlin: And then they had that song One Word, Easter Sunday, something like that.
Merlin: But I'm thinking that era.
Merlin: I'm thinking there may be some dreadlocks.
Merlin: Oh, can I also say a little bit of Mickey Rourke in Iron Man 2.
Merlin: I would like to see.
Merlin: No, he's all fucked up.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: His face is all made out of plastic.
Merlin: Exactly, but you'd be so handy to go, boy, that guy doesn't look like a scallop anymore.
Merlin: Right.
John: He's really doing good liner.
John: I do feel like I could have been so much more metal.
John: But also, like, oh, think about all the terrible girlfriends I would have had.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: Well, I feel pretty—look, here's the good news.
Merlin: Almost no chance.
Merlin: See, now, if you're going for the more adamant one, you're going to get some spiky heel patent shoes going on.
Merlin: In this case, I think there's a very high likelihood you're going to get a Doc Martin girl.
John: Well, I love a Doc Martin girl.
Merlin: You love a Doc Martin girl, a Jewess, a curly-haired Jewess who can climb a fence and appreciates a man with a gut who's dressed like Al Jorgensen.
John: Yeah, I just... He's got a staple in his dongest.
John: What I don't want to find is, like, a tattoo of a red-headed witch flying on a broom in the underwear area.
John: On her?
John: On her?
John: Who knows?
John: Anywhere.
John: Oh, I know.
John: Anything could be happening.
John: On her?
John: What if I looked down and it was on me?
John: Oh, no.
John: It says deliveries in the rear.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Mmm.
Merlin: Mmm.
Merlin: What's the name of that goddamn song?
John: No idea.
Merlin: This is going to drive me fucking, we're not leaving until I figure this out.
John: Psalm 69.
John: My exposure to the Psalms of Ministry is like super duper limited.
Merlin: I know, it's funny to me, because Boppy Bop Bop to me, or the song is called, I believe it's called Every Day is Halloween.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And it was... Not true.
Merlin: Oh, I think that's true.
Merlin: Every day is not Halloween.
Merlin: Oh, it's not Halloween.
Merlin: That's factual.
Merlin: But there's a... Boy, there's a phrase we used to use that I'm certainly not going to use.
Merlin: But if you can imagine the sort of person who's wearing all black and is smoking a clove cigarette and does the Wayback dance...
Merlin: Well, you're not going to use the... I'm not going to use the term, the AF term.
Merlin: I'm not going to use that, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, you're really into Book of Love or whatever, or Cocktail Twins, but you also... I thought goth was the word you were trying to avoid.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: There was a very specific kind of slender AF.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But but then that song would come on that or like maybe like Cities and Dust by Susie and the Banshees.
Merlin: But especially.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Why can't they see that just like me?
Merlin: It's the same.
Merlin: It's the same.
Merlin: And then so he did that.
Merlin: He's in Chicago.
Merlin: He's doing he's doing clove cigarette music.
Merlin: And the next thing you know, he's doing it.
Merlin: But what's the name of that goddamn song, John?
Merlin: No, I'm not ending this episode until I figure it out.
John: I have zero idea.
Merlin: Ministry song.
Merlin: You just Google it.
Merlin: 1988, I want to say.
Merlin: I have to go back and cut it off because this could be an hour.
Merlin: I'm going to get it.
Merlin: Stigmata.
Merlin: Stigmata.
Merlin: Remember Stigmata?
John: I'm sure I remember it, but I don't remember.
Merlin: What's your next step?
Merlin: What's your next step on this journey?
Merlin: Stigmata.
John: I don't have one.
John: It's too late.
John: It's already passed.
John: You can't go back.
John: I don't see how at this late date I can start wearing eyeliner.
John: If it's subtle.
John: No, that's a choice.
John: What about Botox?
John: Have you thought about Botox?
John: You move one way or the other, and then you live with the consequences.
Merlin: Oh, boy, you should teach a class.
Merlin: You should teach an extension class.
Merlin: That would help so many people to learn that.
Merlin: They should have to go to a class with you before they officially quote-unquote graduate from quote-unquote college.
Merlin: And you tell them stuff like all the shit we should have known.
John: I did teach a class.
John: I taught a class at MaxFun, but it's canceled now.
Merlin: You're canceled now.