Episode 121: Classic Rock Talk
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Time Crisis in a time of crisis. United by FaceTime to talk about the crisis.
And this time we're joined by Hank Azaria who threw a lit match on the kerosene-soaked log
of Classic Rock Twitter. We also talked Red Lobster and we finally get to a few of those
Father of the Bride emails. This is Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
They passed me by, all of those great romances.
You were a felt rubbing me, all my rightful chances.
My picture clear, everything seemed so easy.
And so I dealt you the blow, when a bus had to go.
Now it's different, I want you to know.
One of us is crying, one of us is lying.
Keep an only man.
Time Crisis back once again. What's up Jake?
Not much, how are you?
I'm chilling. Business as usual. Just letting the days go by.
Yeah, I hear you man. You know, it is what it is.
Just real quick, I got kind of a lesson in various COVID theories from my auto mechanic today.
Oh really?
That was my big sort of event of the day. I had to get my car worked on a little bit and then
I was writing a check to the mechanic in his office.
Writing a check? That's not the most COVID-friendly way of exchanging money.
That's what he likes and he likes them written out to cash.
So that way he can just cash the check and not have to declare the income.
But I'm sitting there writing a check, wearing a mask and he's like,
"This whole thing's overblown."
He went off for 10 minutes about the virus is from a lab theory.
Oh right, sure.
Developed in a lab in Wuhan and leaked that doctors are forging death certificates to
attribute deaths that were not COVID related to COVID,
to increase the numbers, to increase federal funding.
I mean, he was just going down a rabbit hole.
Did you try to steer the conversation over to JFK conspiracy theories?
I'm going to save that for next time. I would love to get his take.
I mean, he just kind of went off and I was just like...
What's his name?
His name is Max.
Max, you seem like a guy who doesn't always buy the official narrative.
Check out that new 17-minute Bob Dylan song.
It's funny, the conspiracy theory community can never fully become a true voting block
or political force because everybody has their own one.
I feel like with Max, if I had brought up an even more outlandish conspiracy theory,
he would have just been there right with me.
He would have just been like, "Oh, absolutely."
I was sort of like listening and then was just sort of like,
"Well, it is pretty serious though. It is real."
Like people in New York are really getting hit hard.
And he was sort of like, "Oh yeah, no, you're right."
Right.
I'm not saying it's not real.
I'm just saying it's not really as bad as they're saying it is.
I'm just thinking about the dumbest conspiracy theories you could have pivoted to.
Somebody's like, "It was created by the Wuhan lab.
That's it's bioterrorism and the Dr. Forge conspiracy."
And you're like, "I feel you, Max."
By the way, you know, Paul McCartney died in 1968.
That's not him on Abbey Road.
He was dead.
That's a full imposter.
Jake, I've been saying this for my entire 53 years on this planet.
I've been saying that.
Paul is dead.
And that's why on the cover of Abbey Road, he's not wearing shoes because he's the corpse.
George Harrison is the gravedigger.
Are you familiar with that theory?
Yes.
I feel like that one, nobody's ever given a single good reason why.
It's like the Beatles just put their heads together and they were just kind of like,
"You know what?
We need another 18 months of the original lineup."
Right.
And Paul's dead, man.
We got at least two more albums to record.
So, you know, let's figure this out.
Let's find somebody who looks like him.
Here come old Flat Top, he come grooving up slowly.
He got juju eyeball, he one holy roller.
He got hair down to his knee.
Got to be a joker, he just do what he please.
What was the scene like at the garage?
Everybody keeping a respectful distance, lots of masks, gloves.
I was the only one there, Max and his one employee, and they were going no mask, no mask, no glove.
The mask thing, it's like it's the easiest thing for everybody to do, just throw a mask on.
His garage is like a few blocks from my house, so I go by it every day.
And I've seen him out in his parking lot wearing a mask most days.
And I said, I was like, "Max, you sound so skeptical,
but I drive by here every day, I see you wearing a mask."
And he's like, "Well, of course, I want to make my customers feel comfortable.
I want to make you feel comfortable."
That said, this is way overblown.
I appreciate that.
He's basically saying, I may have my eyes open to the truth,
but I still want the sheeple to feel comfortable.
I'm not trying to scare the sheeple.
Yeah.
You know, speaking of COVID and the unraveling of American society
and the differing viewpoints, that type of exchange, you guys had a pretty mellow one,
but clearly we're seeing all over the country, people with differing views on the severity of
COVID and what the government should be doing are really starting to clash.
On our text chain, we were sharing a video down in Florida of a group of protesters who got posted
up outside of a gym that obviously was not open, and they were protesting and agitating for the
gym to reopen.
And they got right down on the sidewalk and started doing pushups, jumping jacks, and sit-ups
as a kind of, I don't know, show of force, I guess.
Why should we have to do these pushups outside the gym?
We should be allowed to do them inside the gym.
But also, one that went viral recently, this is actually very unique.
This is some of the most cutting edge reporting that TC has ever done.
Very recently, this past week, Red Lobster started trending on Twitter
because it was another one of these tense COVID interactions.
And the video is from Mother's Day, but it really went viral this past week.
And essentially, from what I saw in the video, you see two women, one Red Lobster employee,
one a civilian, burst out of the front doors of the Red Lobster in a kind of scuffle.
And you kind of understand that this one woman was really pissed off, and the employee was like,
felt very disrespected.
And they're basically kind of hitting each other.
You actually see the woman hit the employee first.
Then the employee grabs her hair, and they're going at it.
And at some point, one of the bystanders says something like,
"Well, how do you think we're supposed to feel
when we've been waiting three hours for our Red Lobster?"
Obviously, I think this went so viral because people were like, "How entitled can you get?
It's a Mother's Day. Just go home. Make some pancakes.
Come on, just chill out.
Call back. Daddy making pancakes.
If there's any day that Daddy should be making pancakes, it's Mother's Day."
Boom.
But anyway, it got me thinking. We've talked very, very little about Red Lobster on this show.
In fact, Seinfeld, I don't know if you have this accessible.
You might have to check out the TCU Wiki.
Have we ever talked about Red Lobster on Time Crisis?
Off the top of my head, we have not.
But as you guys conversate, I'll look into it a little bit further.
Keep hacking away.
And what episode is this?
It's episode 121.
That's crazy. 242 hours of content and maybe no Red Lobster.
So anyway, rather than dwell over this specific confrontation,
which seems like a pretty, to me, clear-cut case of a person with a very bad attitude
disrespecting service workers, I think that's pretty cut and dry.
And actually, in this case, Red Lobster, the employees really seem like the heroes.
So I thought we'd do an old school TC dive with Jake doing the research.
So Jake, you did a little bit of your own number crunching before the show.
I sure did.
Corporate food history.
Let's talk about it.
So I'm very excited about this, Jake.
What have you turned up?
All right. Well, I'll just start from the beginning.
I mean, Red Lobster founded 1968.
Very tumultuous year.
Yes.
1968 is famously like this, a year where everything changed.
You have global protests.
You got infamously the confrontation between police and protesters
at the Democratic National Convention.
Vietnam popping.
I mean, truly crazy times.
Yet another signpost in history.
And I also feel like, just off the top of my head,
because you've always kind of studied the American retail landscape,
whenever I see a store that says, "Since 1975,"
maybe because I'm coming from New York, where New York was all f***ed up in the '70s.
When I see a store that's like, "Since 1975," like a restaurant, I'm always like, "Random."
Because I just feel like with the recession and stuff,
it must have been a dip in terms of new businesses opening.
It was probably hard to stay in business.
So I feel like I see certain years,
and they always strike me as like, "Huh, that's when that opened?"
And I feel like from all my years knowing you,
and you having a lot of these origin stories at the tips of your fingers,
I feel like a lot of these classic places opened more in the early '60s or '50s.
Is there anything to that? Is '68 kind of a bit of an outlier?
It's true. A lot of the classic fast food restaurants,
McDonald's, Burger King, that sort of thing,
opened in the late '50s, early '60s.
For instance, '62 is a real red-letter date.
That's like, you got Taco Bell, you got Walmart, you got one other.
And Burger King was late '50s, McDonald's was actually late '40s.
So it's true.
But it kind of makes sense that the origins of the casual dining industry
would be a little bit later.
Right. And I feel like TGI Friday is also maybe late '60s, early '70s.
I think that's mid '60s in New York City.
Okay. Mid.
But yeah, it's like once the fast food industry is entrenched,
it makes sense that there'd be another sector of the restaurant industry
that was ready to sort of mature or begin maturing.
And also, I gotta say I'm a little bit surprised that it's Florida.
Obviously, Florida, a lot of beautiful coastline,
beachfront properties, and of course, seafood.
I guess there's something about Red Lobster that always seemed like
they were going more for like a New England thing.
I mean, even if you told me North Carolina, I might've bought it.
But you know what I mean?
Well, right. Lobster is a classic New England dish.
Now, it's funny that you mentioned the Florida coastline
because he opened it in Lakeland, Florida,
because he wanted to see, the founder,
wanted to see how a seafood restaurant would fare in a non-coastal region.
And Lakeland, Florida, is the innermost city in Florida.
Whoa.
Yeah. Now, I should say who started the restaurant,
because this is probably a name that will stir something within you.
Bill Darden.
Does the name Bill Darden mean anything to you?
I mean, the first thing that I'm guessing, was he the Pepsi executive?
Nope.
Has he come up on Time Crisis before?
The company that was eventually named after him certainly has Darden Restaurant Group.
Darden, that's where Hannah invested.
Yep. Parent company to Olive Garden, but we will get to that.
I don't want to jump too far ahead.
Okay.
So, Bill Darden, this is another classic, like,
madman, sort of like 20th century American story.
Born in 1919 in Georgia, starts his first restaurant called the Green Frog,
which was a Depression-era lunch counter in 1938.
Whoa.
And so, by the time 1968 comes around, he's 49, and he starts Red Lobster.
So, it's a huge success off the bat, the first location.
He and his business partner opened four more very quickly.
And then in 1970, the General Mills Corporation acquires the whole company.
And under that agreement, Bill Darden is hired to run all the restaurants
and establish a General Mills restaurant division in Orlando, Florida.
This is interesting because when one company buys another company,
they're not just buying the physical assets, they're also buying the talent.
And I was thinking about this.
I recently read Bob Iger's book where he's talking about his tenure at Disney.
He originally worked at ABC.
Disney bought ABC.
So, now he's actually this other group, Capital Cities, bought ABC, and then Disney bought them.
So, suddenly, he's a Disney employee after decades at ABC.
And then eventually, he takes over Disney, and he buys Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm,
creating the Disney that we know today.
His book is kind of geared towards--
it's a memoir, but it's also kind of just like advice about leadership and stuff.
And he's very clear about that.
When you're buying a company, you're also buying the talent.
And that's why it can't be like a hostile takeover.
It's got to be kind vibe because you've got to nurture that talent.
And I can imagine the same things going through their head where General Mills is saying,
"We want to buy Red Lobster, but you know what?
We don't want to just plunk down this cash and watch this creative guy, Bill Darden,
go f*** off to an island somewhere.
We're also paying to bring in Bill Darden because we just don't need five empty restaurants.
We need the genius of Bill Darden."
Yeah.
I mean, we were talking about those fast food restaurants earlier,
the McDonald's and the Burger King started 10 years prior to all this.
And we've talked about some of those guys, the Glenn Bells, the Carl Karchers,
the guys that were the founders of the fast food restaurant.
I really do feel like Bill Darden is sort of an unsung hero.
He really is the father of casual dining.
Not only did he start Red Lobster, but he took over the--
First of all, I had no idea that General Mills was in the restaurant business.
I mean, I'm thinking General Mills cereal, right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, they have a vision of like starting a restaurant division.
They put Bill Darden in charge.
Red Lobster continues to expand rapidly under General Mills' stewardship.
And they start experimenting with various full service family restaurant chains throughout the
70s.
One that was sort of successful was called the York Steakhouse, which was a chain of
English-themed steak and chop restaurants, which was like steak and potatoes.
I could picture it, like a wood paneled fake English tavern in the 70s,
eating like overcooked steak and like a baked potato.
Absolutely.
That didn't last all that long, but they struck gold in '82 when Darden starts the Olive Garden.
Oh, crazy.
And so yeah, the 80s, like Red Lobster and Olive Garden are like the main flagships of
the General Mills restaurant portfolio.
And then in '94, Bill Darden dies at age 75.
I was reading his obituary in the Orlando Sentinel today from 1994.
It sounded like a gem of a guy.
He's like one of those guys that would just like kind of knew everyone's kids' names,
you know, like people that like he would interact with only rarely, but would sort of like Bill
Clinton style would just remember everything about everyone.
So anyway, '95, General Mills, for reasons I'm assuming are unrelated to Bill Darden's death,
they decide to get out of, or maybe it was related, I don't know.
They decide to get out of the restaurant industry and they decide to spin off all of the restaurants
and start a new company named after Bill Darden called the Darden Restaurant Group.
And like Darden still is like kind of going strong today.
They are the largest full service restaurant company in the world.
And Olive Garden is still by far their biggest sort of flagship restaurant in their portfolio.
Red Lobster a close second.
Weird irony.
Darden no longer owns Red Lobster.
Oh, damn.
So the restaurant that Bill Darden started that ended up leading to the company that
was named after him no longer owns Red Lobster.
It's a trip.
It's got a funky beat and I can bug out to it.
How did they lose the jewel in the crown, man?
Okay, so in December of 2013, Darden Restaurant Group announces the plans to sell off Red Lobster,
citing pressure from stock investors.
Apparently, this was in direct response to Red Lobster spending $100 million on a new
digital platform, which was a year behind schedule and way over budget.
Now, there was no source cited on that on the Wikipedia page.
And I googled my little heart out trying to find an article about this aborted Red Lobster
digital platform and I couldn't find anything.
So it could be weird like Wikipedia hearsay.
Right.
$100 million.
What could the Red Lobster digital platform have been?
Like, I would imagine that there's some pretty basic ass tech that a big company,
you know, even if it's expensive, the same way that like a big company might,
you know, pay Adobe a fat check every year because the whole company needs
the Adobe suite or whatever.
You would think there'd be something like that to handle orders for Red Lobster.
But I don't know, maybe it goes a little deeper.
Or maybe they're trying to build something even bigger, like a social network.
Maybe it was super ambitious.
A gaming platform.
So I found a little bit about it.
Really?
I mean, really, it's not as funny or as exciting.
Yeah, I think that it's them trying to create sort of their own proprietary
rewards and reservations app.
It cost $100 million.
It's just sort of misguided more than, you know, like when you have DoorDash and
Resy and all these things, it just feels like it's something that all of these,
every company, it's so hubristic, but you are going,
"Oh, yeah, if I'm going to get into this, I'm going to have a team sort of dedicated
to making our own version."
Well, and also it's the type of thing where it seems a little crazy, but also,
I don't know, maybe they had like a baller CEO.
Because, you know, there's these other stories where people always say,
"Why was Blockbuster so sh*tty to Netflix?"
There's like a famous story.
I don't think we ever talked about it on the show.
There's like a great article somewhere that's kind of about when Reed Hastings,
the CEO of Netflix and like the kind of Netflix crew, early, early days,
rolled out to basically try to sell themselves to Blockbuster.
And they're like all nervous and they flew out.
I think in the article, it's even saying like, you know, obviously,
the big Netflix executives don't think twice now about, you know, flying private.
But at the time, the only way they could get there in time was to fly a private plane.
And like, they were so nervous.
They're like, "Oh my God, I don't know if we can afford this."
They kind of felt like everything we've been working for the past few years, this is it.
If we can get Blockbuster to buy us, we made it.
And Blockbuster essentially kind of like laughed in their face.
And now people look back at that as this moment like,
"Blockbuster, you morons.
However much it costs, you should have bought Netflix.
What they were building then would have essentially saved your business,
but they didn't take the big swing."
So you could imagine somebody at Red Lobster being like,
"We're not going down like Blockbuster.
We're going to invest big."
And in fact, I think we've mentioned it on the show before.
I know Chris Baio from Vampire Weekend follows the story closely.
Shout out to Baio.
That Domino's has really been surging in the pizza business the past few years
because Domino's did invest very heavily in proprietary technology
for getting their deliveries quicker and kind of covering everything.
And for all we know, Domino's is probably selling some of that tech to the NSA and s*** like that.
But essentially, the CEO of Domino's has given speeches where he says,
"You know what? We're not in the pizza business. We're in the tech business."
So you could cut...
I guess we could cut Red Lobster a little slack for being like,
"We're betting big on this.
We need to build this software ourselves.
We need to make this happen."
And then you got these conservative members of the board or investors who are just like...
To go back to Bob Iger, this is very classic that sometimes a CEO comes in
and they want to swing big because they know the ins and outs of the company
and they see that they're going the wrong way on the highway.
And there's a truck coming and they can see it.
And they know we got to bet big and shift course.
And then sometimes you get the kind of members of the board or the investors who say, "Not so fast."
For all we know, maybe Red Lobster just needed one more year to get that platform right
and they'd be back on top.
Investors were not having it and they sold it off.
They weren't having it.
Tragic.
Huge layoffs.
Sold off by darn...
Purchased by Golden Gate Capital, which was one of these hedge funds
started by people from Bain Capital, purchased for $2.1 billion,
which seems low considering they spent $100 million on the digital platform.
Incidentally, Golden Gate also owns California Pizza Kitchen.
So that's a little bit of the end of the Red Lobster story.
But if you're down, I'd love to keep going into the Darden story
because it kind of keeps going from there.
Sure.
So Darden the man is dead in your timeline.
We're talking about Darden the company.
Bill Darden died in '94.
And I know your family unit is heavily invested in Darden.
Although, was the end of the story, we found out that Hannah was divested from Darden?
Yes.
Hannah divested from Darden a good 10, 15 years ago.
Okay.
So for people who don't remember, Jake's wife, Hannah,
she did some investments in companies she believed in as a young adult.
And one of them was Darden because she was a fan of Olive Garden.
But unfortunately, she sold off most of her stock.
I think we looked it up, but it would have accrued a lot of value in the last 10 or 15 years.
Well, I'm sure the stock's in the toilet right now.
So anybody...
I feel like we're heading towards the one very problematic and untapped place for TC to go.
We've done Sports Talk, Tree Talk, obviously music, obviously corporate food history.
Finance, just straight up CNBC, investment.
No idea what we're talking about.
Just like, just full Jim Cramer.
Folks, Darden stock's in the toilet.
But here's the thing.
I believe, or I guess whoever owns it now, Golden Gate, these guys are hurting.
But I'll tell you one thing, man.
I believe that once COVID is over, the Olive Gardens of the world,
the Red Lobsters, the California Pizza Kitchens,
they're coming back with a vengeance, folks.
These are durable.
These are good, all-American companies.
The fundamentals are strong.
Everybody's scared right now.
But I'm telling you, now is the time to buy.
Have you heard of the term activist investor?
Right.
Yeah.
Well, those are who we're talking about, right?
Activist investors are the type who are like, get really pissed off
and sometimes try to oust the CEO or something.
Yes.
When they don't like the way a company is being run.
So a year after the Red Lobster digital platform debacle, Darden is hurting.
Sales are down, the stock's in the toilet.
And this guy, Jeff Smith, who runs a company called Starbird Value,
which is a big hedge fund, they owned less than 10% of the Darden restaurant group.
He comes in to the Darden board meeting in September of 2014
and launches into this devastating 300-page PowerPoint
and just goes beast mode on the board,
convincing the board of Darden to oust all current management and replace the board,
or sorry, replace all the management with people from his company, Starbird.
And I Googled this today, and there was like a ton of articles from September of 2014
in all of the financial websites about this coup that happened.
And it was at the time seen as sort of like
the largest takeover of a company by an activist investor.
Like it was the largest company to get sort of taken over by an activist investor.
Wow.
And I did pull one page from his 300-page PowerPoint,
which I just love to read some of this.
I love it.
Jake has a primary source document.
Yes.
So the focus of Jeff Smith's ire in this September 2014 presentation to the Darden board
was Olive Garden, which was the flagship.
And so there's one page was called Breadsticks, just one example.
(laughing)
It's called Breadsticks, just one example of food waste.
As just one example, we believe lapsed discipline around Darden's renowned
unlimited salad and breadsticks offerings has led to both high food waste and a worse experience.
And then he has like a chart.
10 years ago, the practice was servers placed one breadstick per guest,
plus one breadstick for the table.
For example, if you had four guests, five breadsticks were served.
Impact, if guests wanted more breadsticks, fresh ones were served hot,
enhancing the guest experience with many server touch points.
This method minimized food waste and focused on the guest experience.
With fewer breadsticks on the table,
guests inherently consumed less and ordered more appetizers and desserts,
improving margins, profitability, and improving the guest experience.
Now his analysis on the other side of the chart was Olive Garden today, 2014.
The same rule exists as 10 years ago, but restaurants lack training and discipline to deliver.
Now servers will routinely bring an excess of breadsticks,
significantly outnumbering the number of guests.
Most customers will not eat all the breadsticks, creating an enormous amount of waste.
Breadsticks get cold as they sit on the table.
Darden management readily admits that after sitting for just seven minutes,
the breadsticks deteriorate in quality.
Servers will not return to the table as often, detracting from a customer experience.
So it was 300 pages of like granular analysis of how the performance of Olive Garden restaurants
had gone down the tubes and that why he needed to step in with his people.
Wait, so he was talking specifically about Olive Garden?
Because Olive Garden famously has the unlimited breadsticks?
Yes, I mean, there were other restaurants he did talk about in the presentation,
but the bulk of it was focused on Olive Garden.
And so he took over.
Wow.
He ran that for two years.
So then there was a lot of articles from like two years later,
2016, talking about how Darden stock had gone up 60%.
Holy s***.
Since Jeff Smith had taken it over.
And after that, so a little postscript to that final chapter of the saga is,
remember when Papa John Schnatter was fired from the Papa John's board?
Oh yeah, very recently.
And actually to tie it back, some people think that he either predicted or maybe in the case
of your friend Max, conspiracy theorists actually created COVID because he gave a famously,
seemingly unhinged interview at post being ousted.
And he promised the world that a reckoning was coming.
And at the time, this was like maybe six months ago or something,
you know, he's got that kind of devilish grin.
He's got this really dark eyes.
He made a reference that he ate like 40 pizzas in a week or something.
And how a reckoning was coming.
So you got the impression from Papa John that this was a man, he was consuming a lot,
but it didn't seem like he was giving that as an example of how he was
just kind of losing the plot and kind of not eating well.
It almost seemed like this is a man who's storing energy for something big.
This is a man in training.
This is a man with a plan.
This is a man who sees what's happening and he sees the puzzle coming together.
Some kind of, it's almost like a Da Vinci code type thing.
He's this kind of like villain and he's promised a reckoning is coming.
And when COVID first hit, a lot of kind of eagle-eyed internet sleuths said,
"Wait a second.
Is this the reckoning that Papa John promised?"
So anyway, very controversial guy.
But so yeah, he was ousted from the board, I believe, because he said the N-word, right?
Wasn't that the give stated reason?
Correct.
That was in 2018.
And then so Papa John's was a little bit rudderless there for a while.
They took a look at Jeff Smith's success with Olive Garden and the Darden Restaurant Group.
And they reached out, instead of it being like a takeover,
they reached out to Jeff Smith and was like, "Can you please come be our chairman?"
Whoa.
Which he did for six months.
And then he handed the reins over to a former Arby's top dog to become Papa's CEO.
I bet the first thing Jeff Smith said before he accepted the Papa John's gig was,
"Send over the breadsticks data.
I'll take a look at it and then I'll decide."
Jeff Smith was like, "I need to spend about a week researching the garlic sauce
giveaway with Papa John's.
I know you guys also give away the marinara sauce cups, as well as the nacho cheese cups.
But I really want to nail down this garlic sauce situation."
It's out of control.
You know, one question that I had, speaking of breadsticks,
now the equivalent of a breadstick at Red Lobster, I believe, is a Cheddar Bay Biscuit.
Is that correct, Jake?
In your research, did you find anything about the Cheddar Bay Biscuit?
Is that a giveaway at Red Lobster?
I've actually never been to a Red Lobster.
I think I went to one many years ago.
I mean, they advertise so heavily.
You know how some people joke it's like always Toyotathon?
I thought it was always Lobster Fest.
Yeah.
Endless Lobster Fest promotions.
But...
I don't know if those are free.
No, well, maybe they're not free, but it's their, you know, it's their carbohydrate side.
And it's Cheddar Bay Biscuits.
People love the Cheddar Bay Biscuits.
And I'm sure there's an obvious answer, but I was always kind of wondering,
is a Bay Biscuit a thing?
Or are they implying there's a place called Cheddar Bay?
You know, like you could imagine some like, somewhere in like Rhode Island,
a little New England nook called Cheddar Bay.
But anyway, people are obsessed with Cheddar Bay Biscuits.
I think you can even buy the mix and make it at home.
It looks like Cheddar Bay is a fictitious location
to reflect the seaside atmosphere of Red Lobster restaurants.
Perfect.
Oh, wow.
They were initially introduced as fresh-baked hot cheese garlic bread
and then rebranded as Cheddar Bay Biscuits.
All these places, you know, from Einstein Brothers to Olive Garden,
they create these like phony histories.
It's like Lake Wobbegon or something.
Yeah.
Things are a little simpler out in Cheddar Bay.
It's very Las Vegas, right?
I mean, that's what people say.
It's like the classic American city.
Yeah.
I mean, or Los Angeles too, where so much of the Spanish architecture
and even the Spanish street names was actually created and named by the Anglos.
Right.
Because they wanted to create a sense of like this old Spanish-Mexican history,
but they kind of had to build some of it from scratch.
Cheddar Bay is not a real place.
The Einstein Brothers don't exist.
That's another good one to bring up with your mechanic
when he's going off on conspiracy theories and be like,
"You know, man, I've been doing some original research myself.
You know Cheddar Bay Biscuits?
Oh, yeah. Red Lobster?
Get this, man. Cheddar Bay literally doesn't exist.
Fully pulled out of thin air."
All right.
Well, there's been a lot going on in the world today,
in the world this past week.
From Red Lobster to what we got coming up next,
this might be the most...
Topical?
...up-to-date TC.
The most topical TC ever.
Also this past week on Twitter,
you had a lot of people talking about classic rock,
which, you know, always warms my heart to see.
Oh, yeah.
And you saw various names of bands trending.
Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, things like that.
During COVID, it's hard to tell why anything's trending.
You see all sorts of random actors.
You never know why anymore.
Time has no meaning.
Trends have no meaning.
But in this case, it all started because of a simple question
posed by legendary actor Hank Azaria.
And Hank asked a simple question,
which was, "Fairly safe to say that the greatest rock band of all time discussion
is usually between the Stones, the Beatles, and Led Zepp.
So what is the greatest American rock band of all time?
I know what I think."
And now you got everybody talking,
"Who is the greatest American rock band of all time?"
And then after all the responses, Hank said,
"Thank you for the many responses.
I only saw what I consider the greatest mentioned once or twice.
So I'm guessing I will not get agreement here."
The Doors!
Closely followed by Aerosmith.
Interesting that he said The Doors,
and very interesting that people ride so hard for Aerosmith.
Personally, we talked about this on our Text It.
I think that producer Colin kind of made the best call,
even though it doesn't feel quite right.
But he said, "It's Metallica."
Metallica is kind of America's only long-running,
truly influential global rock band.
Whether or not you like them, it's kind of...
It is what it is.
But there is something funny when you really break it down.
America doesn't produce the same types of rock bands.
It's really strange, considering that rock is an American form.
And obviously there's iconic American rock musicians.
But when you get Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty,
these people had their bands,
but obviously they weren't built as a band.
And then America just doesn't have a Stones or a Led Zepp.
There's just no equivalent.
We don't even have an AC/DC.
Maybe Metallica's are AC/DC.
But anyway, it was a real spicy question.
And I think, ultimately, it raised more questions than it answered.
But we're very lucky that Hank Azaria was down to get on the phone
and talk about what maybe was one of the biggest discussions
in the classic rock community all year.
Now, let's go to the Time Crisis Hotline.
Hank, are you there?
I am here.
Well, first of all, welcome to Time Crisis.
How are you doing, man?
I'm all right.
We really appreciate you coming through.
I mean, you really created a firestorm on Twitter this past week.
That was crazy.
It was just yesterday morning.
I was like, "Well, I'm not used to my Twitter feed blowing up like that."
That was really weird.
And it kept happening in waves and stuff.
A simple question, but clearly people have some very strong feelings about it.
What made this pop into your head?
Anything specific?
It's a question that I've asked a lot over the years.
And I play a lot of poker, you know.
And it's definitely a poker table favorite and sparks a good debate.
Because everybody, you know, unless you think about it,
you don't realize that usually in terms of a classic rock band,
it's always a British band conversation.
So the American band, you know, and it leads to what it led to on Twitter,
which is a lot of debate.
There's something about the question too that it makes you realize
it's even though people can have their opinions,
clearly this country simply has not produced a consensus band
like the ones you mentioned in your tweet.
You know, whoever you might think is the best,
we don't have a band that people mention in quite the same way as The Stones,
The Beatles, or Led Zepp.
Obviously The Stones are in a very unique position
because they've been a band since the 60s.
I don't think there is an equivalent.
But so when you pose the question,
we're basing this off your final tweet,
you already in the back of your head were thinking The Doors.
That's your poker table go-to when this comes up is The Doors?
Yeah, having thought about this for many years,
that's where I land.
And of course, it's completely subjective and personal.
But, you know, the only criteria I would say I really threw on there
is they got to have like a mega body of hits.
Like you got to at least be able to say
there's at least like 10 or 12 songs that are classics,
which aren't too many bands.
If you look at it in terms of that,
that I guess too is subjective.
But they did change music, The Doors, you know.
Absolutely.
I happen to love The Doors.
So, but yeah.
You're an unabashed fan of The Doors.
I am, yeah.
One thing we've talked about on the show a lot is that
at some point in the late 90s, early 2000s,
a kind of ill wind started blowing around The Doors
and they became less fashionable.
They were considered a very cool-
Explain that to me, like why was this Doors back?
What was The Doors backlash all about?
What's it based on?
It's hard to say.
We've been curious about it.
We never quite got into the bottom of it.
I think on the one hand, Jim Morrison,
of all the 60s rock guys,
he started to be seen as the symbol of like pretension.
I'm not saying I agree with it.
I think it's unfair.
But for whatever reason, he caught a lot of flack.
Obviously he wasn't around to defend himself.
You got David Crosby running his mouth about how,
you know, Jim Morrison was a loser for decades.
You know, Crosby had his own run-ins with them.
So we'll allow it.
I mean, but even then there was like,
I feel like there's an early Radiohead song
that kind of like takes a dig at Jim Morrison.
He just became the go-to guy to kind of make fun of.
But when you first became a Doors fan,
was there anything provocative
or weird about being a Doors fan?
Or they were kind of understood to just be cool?
No, I mean, I'm 56 years old.
So my Doors fandom flowered in college.
So we're talking about 1980.
And no, back then it was unequivocal.
You know, he was just a rock god.
And like nobody claims that Jim Morrison
was like a great individual.
I mean, he was just a really talented songwriter.
And he was a compelling rock god figure.
He was really Dionysiac.
And, but he was kind of a douche in many ways.
There's no question about it.
And that seems to be what some of his peers had to say.
Although that could also be coming out of jealousy
or something like that.
And maybe even the fact that he got the second wind
with the Val Kilmer's portrayal of him
in the early '90s movie.
Maybe that gave him one last breath of relevance.
And then it also put some other people off
'cause they were suddenly their opinion of Jim Morrison.
The Doors is also based on their opinion of the film.
♪ And blood in the streets, it's up to my ankles ♪
♪ Blood in the streets, it's up to my knees ♪
♪ Blood in the streets, the town of Chicago ♪
♪ Blood on the rise, it followed me ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Blood in the streets, on the river of sadness ♪
♪ Blood in the streets, it's up to my thighs ♪
♪ Yeah, the river runs right down the lake of the city ♪
♪ No women, the crannied river's a weeping ♪
- So early '80s, you're getting into The Doors,
who obviously weren't playing at the time,
but there was one '60s American rock band from California
that was selling out huge venues in the early '80s,
and that's The Grateful Dead.
- Yeah.
- Did they cross your mind, or were you just not a Deadhead?
- Well, I mean, I think a lot of people said The Dead
in response, and I certainly acknowledge it
as a valid entry.
I just never got into The Dead.
You know, my wife just recently admitted to me,
my wife is a Deadhead.
She's seen like, I don't know, a lot of shows, okay?
She went around a lot.
She admitted to me that she really was just fitting in
with her crowd.
She never really loved them.
She just kind of loved the experience
of going with people she loved to the shows,
but actually admitted that she never really loved The Dead.
But that's not to say The Dead's not great, they are.
- Right, and I'm sure it must have been
such a unique experience to be in their prime,
traveling with your friends to go to the shows.
But so you found she's not playing a lot of Dead
around the house?
- No, no.
And the truth, look, my musical taste got arrested
approximately 1992, maybe?
You know, I'm not a cutting edge music guy.
I'm a definite classic rock guy.
You know what weirds me out about classic rock?
You know, what you would, as defined by what you would,
like what you'd hear on a playlist
of like a classic rock station.
It's done.
It's like a defined, it's like the great American songbook
ended, like, you know, those, all those great old songs,
those old standards that Sinatra and them used to sing.
Those are done.
Like that just, that's it.
And sort of the same with classic rock.
It's like, that's it.
It's finite now.
- Yeah, it's not like there's new entries to the canon.
And that's actually something else I wanted to ask you
because, so I'm picturing you, yeah,
you're a teenager, college age, early eighties.
And there's one, another band that I saw pop up a few times
in people's responses, and that was Talking Heads,
who I love.
- No, I love the Heads.
- Great band.
- Yeah, I love the Heads.
- They were putting out albums right in that moment
you're talking about.
So you were a fan at the time.
You were listening to those albums as they came out.
- Huge fan of the Heads.
I mean, you know, back then, as much as I'm an old man now,
who, you know, in my day, son, we had classic rock.
I mean, like every other kid, I knew every single band song.
- Right, you were keeping up with everything.
- Yeah, I was up on everything and it didn't occur to me
that anybody would.
- But there is something where, when I saw people throw
out Talking Heads, a band that I love, now we know
you love them too, I just knew that, as much as you might try
to make the case that they're truly a great American band,
and they are, really an amazing catalog and, you know,
amazing live band.
Anybody's seen Stop Making Sense knows that.
For some reason, Talking Heads just don't easily slot
into this concept of classic rock.
So you just like knew.
I'm sure sitting around the poker table, people are like,
"Does America have a Led Zeppelin?"
So I would just be like, "Yeah, Talking Heads."
It's just so different.
It's a different tradition.
- Yeah, by then, rock was not, it was getting pretty niche.
And he's so, I mean, David Byrne, doing The Simpsons,
I've met a lot of these guys, 'cause they've come in
and recorded, you know?
- Yeah.
- And you never know who you're gonna freak out
when you meet.
I lost my mind meeting David Byrne almost more
than anybody else.
I kind of freaked out when I met Mick Jagger too.
But I thought, I knew I would.
- Wait, 'cause did David Byrne do a voice on The Simpsons?
- He did.
These guys all played themselves over the years.
We had David Byrne and Tom Petty and Sting.
And we've had almost every great rock and roller in.
- I remember the Smashing Pumpkins episode.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause in the '90s, that's classic.
- Yes.
So we met all these guys and, you know, athletes
and musicians, I really kind of turned into a little kid
when I meet them.
What's great about the Talking Heads, I mean,
is unbelievable, but I just don't know that they put out
enough to say they'd be like, they'd enter the pantheon
of all time, you know, I mean, they're definitely one
of the all time greatest bands, but like.
- Well, they also just don't fit quite as comfortably
into like rock, 'cause they're like funk and new wave.
It's just like a different tradition, kind of.
- What would they call them, progressive?
I don't even know what we refer to them as.
- I think the early albums, people referred to them
as punk or new wave.
And then, yeah, doesn't fit as comfortably
into classic rock, even though they're truly a great band.
♪ Home is where I want to be ♪
♪ Pick me up and turn me 'round ♪
♪ I feel numb, home with the weak heart ♪
♪ Guess I must be having fun ♪
♪ Less we say bye to the dead earth ♪
♪ Make it up as we go along ♪
♪ Lead on the ground, head in the sky ♪
♪ It's okay, I know nothing's wrong with nothing ♪
♪ Oh, I got plenty of time ♪
♪ Oh, you got light in your eyes ♪
♪ And you're standing here beside me ♪
♪ I don't think I see the time ♪
♪ Never for money, always for love ♪
♪ Come on, stay the night ♪
- One thing that I just thought of talking with you
about classic rock is that you were
in the 1998 American Godzilla.
And that soundtrack looms very large for me
and probably a lot of us.
- Is that right?
- It was just all over MTV in the late '90s.
Do you remember the soundtrack much?
- I only remember the cover of "Cashmere."
- Yeah, we brought that.
- I remember that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Dun-na-na.
- Yeah.
- So I'm wondering--
- But other than that, I do not remember.
Yeah.
- You remember hearing that?
Were you like, "That's pretty cool."
Or were you just like, "Sacrilege."
- No, I liked that.
I liked that.
- You thought that was tight that they were bringing it back?
- Yes.
But other than that, I don't recall that soundtrack too much.
- It just pulled it up.
It's like a really strong group of bands.
It veered alternative, which is interesting to think.
Because especially today, just imagine that there's this huge, big budget action monster movie,
and somebody's like, "We're going to spend a [expletive] load of money on the soundtrack."
And it's mostly rock bands.
It just doesn't even make sense.
But back then, it was--
They had The Wallflowers, Rage Against the Machine, Ben Folds Five, Fuel, Foo Fighters,
Green Day featuring Godzilla.
I wonder what that sounds like.
- I guess it's Godzilla just yelling a bunch.
Well, that is a pretty impressive lineup.
- Well, those were different times.
That movie almost--
I almost wonder if that movie was the last one to do something like that musically.
Because it became the symbol for Hollywood excess and style over substance.
And there was a tremendous backlash to that movie.
- Really?
- Oh, yeah.
It was not received well.
- I was 14, so I just remember being like, "Hell, yeah.
New Godzilla."
- That's how I felt too.
But that was not how it was received.
It almost ended my career, in fact.
It was a pretty rough go.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah, it was a tough--
The movie was a rough ride.
- But it's this huge production.
People associated you in particular with the movie compared to the director of a lot of--
- The movie had a little stink on it.
It really did become the poster child for--
Because the ad campaign, they spent a ton of money promoting it.
And the movie just didn't live up to the hype.
And that was really rampant back then.
This kind of like, "Let's ram down your throat."
The marketing on this movie.
And it's a foregone conclusion that you're going to buy the Happy Meal for it.
And it just missed.
And it really--
It was just--
People just loved to hate it.
It was just one of those things.
So anybody associated with it took a hit for at least a year.
Probably except the bands involved.
- I guess there's also just something about that era where--
Yeah, the late '90s was the pinnacle of just media excess, period.
- 1999, people always talk about, was the biggest year for the music industry ever.
They were selling 1899 CDs.
It was kind of before the internet was changing things.
So there might have just also been something in the air.
People ready to hate.
And just a general feeling about big budget films and albums or something.
So I'm sure a bit of it was unfair.
Just something in the air.
- It was, but it wasn't a great movie either.
I mean, it didn't deliver.
I'm sure--
You're a 14-year-old self, I hope you enjoyed it.
But when you look at it in terms of now, what gets done is kind of a fail.
But anyway.
- Well, the film and the soundtrack live on today.
I encourage everybody to go check out that Green Day featuring Godzilla tune.
So I guess the final question, obviously, we've talked a lot about classic rock.
You say your taste was somewhat frozen in the early '90s.
Is there anything new that you're keeping up with?
- Not really, no.
I mean, I really pathetically know.
You know what's funny?
It's like as Y2K approached, right?
And they were doing all these retrospectives on the decade and the whole century.
I remember watching MTV Dance Party towards the new year.
They literally scrolled through every single band that ever performed on MTV Dance Party.
Going back to the '80s.
And in chronological order.
So I'm watching this thing like, well, of course I know.
I wasn't even thinking in terms of I know these bands.
Of course I knew them.
And then as it approached 2000, I'm like, I don't know who they are.
I don't know who they are.
And it was such a weird thing to not know who a band was.
And then the other benchmark of that was the first time I had no idea who the musical guest
on SNL was.
I'm like, man, I'm just getting old now.
And now, guys, I don't even know who the host is half the time.
I'm like, is this actor?
I do not know.
- Right.
- And you know what's so weird?
It's to get to a certain age and I just feel like my dad.
You know, I just like, wow, I get what the old man meant when he was like, who's this guy?
I'm like, how could you not know who this artist is?
Are you kidding?
They were the biggest selling performer like of the last five years.
But now I totally get it.
So no, I'm completely out of touch.
- But you still listen to a lot of music?
You're doing back and forth.
- Classic rock is a huge part of my day every day.
And my son's 10.
I take personal pride in the fact that I'm completely ramming classic rock down his throat.
I'm sure he'll develop his own musical taste.
- You know what you got to leave us with?
Top three best Doors songs for the lovers and the haters.
What truly is the pinnacle of the Doors artistry off the top of your head?
- I'd say "Riders on the Storm."
Amazing song.
- That's a vibe as hell.
I love that song.
- I love "Roadhouse Blues."
I just love their take on, and I love the movie "Roadhouse" as well.
But that has nothing to do with it.
But I'd say "Roadhouse Blues."
And I'd say, I'm not going to say "Light My Fire."
It's too played out.
- Too entry level.
- Yeah.
Oh, "LA Woman."
- I love that song.
I would say those three songs.
- Yeah, I feel like those three songs actually have something in common.
That's like a kind of cool side of the Doors.
And just so you know, David Crosby, because he was on the show recently,
his biggest complaint about the Doors is that he claimed they didn't cook.
He said a good band cooks.
The Doors didn't cook.
He said it had to do with the lack of a bassist.
But I think they're, I like the grooves of "Riders on the Storm."
It's vibey.
I think it cooks.
- Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, Ray Mancharek, if nobody else, just Ray on the keyboards cooked.
I mean, for sure.
I think that's indisputable.
But looking at the thread, it was interesting people's comments.
Like there were a lot of complaints about, is it Robbie Krieger?
Is that his name?
The guitarist?
- Yeah.
- That he wasn't proficient enough.
But you know, the other thing is, personally, I loved Springsteen and Tom Petty more.
I was more of a fan of Springsteen and Tom Petty growing up.
But I consider them more singer-songwriters.
You take Tom Petty or Springsteen and--
- Right.
- No offense to the East Street Band or the Heartbreakers, but you throw those guys with
anybody, they're going to be what those guys were.
- Right.
- To me, you know--
- On the most basic level, yeah, they weren't billed as a band in the same way that the
Rolling Stones were.
- No.
And truly, I think the Stones and the Beatles and Led Zepp, some was greater than their
parts.
They were all contributing.
And so Doors, same thing.
I mean, they wrote together.
- Yeah, you can really hear the way that they all came together to create a unique sound.
- Yes, they truly collaborated.
And I find that whole concept amazing, you know, the idea that guys can get together
and collaborate like that, as opposed to just somebody being a genius.
I mean, it's amazing enough that anybody can write so well for themselves.
But the idea that people come together to do that, just, I find endlessly fascinating.
Like, in any documentaries that really show how torturous that process is, it's always
so painful for these guys to actually work together.
It's like bands break up.
And working in scripted, like this last show I did, Brockmire, I felt like I hooked up
with a writer that--I would think about it in terms of music a lot.
I always felt like the way I connected with this writer on that show was, must be how
bands felt when, just for some reason, the way somebody writes connects with the way
somebody plays and vice versa.
And they just kind of spur each other on, you know?
- Absolutely.
Yeah, or the relationship between bands and producers, instrumentalists, songwriters,
singers who sometimes sing other people's stuff and interpret it.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's real commonality there.
- Yeah.
- Well, hopefully you don't get in hot water with David Crosby.
- I can handle it.
I think he did--I'm sure he did The Simpsons too.
I'm pretty sure he did.
- Yeah, I can actually--it's very easy to picture him as in The Simpsons style, just
like with his mustache and stuff.
But he's beefing pretty hard with Neil Young right now.
They've got a very--
- Oh, is he really?
- Yeah, he made a comment, a derogatory comment about Neil Young's girlfriend or maybe wife,
Daryl Hannah, a few years back.
And he apologized.
He said, "I was just shooting my mouth off, but now Neil won't get back to him."
And he kind of wants to, you know, link up with the whole CSNY crew to help get Joe Biden
elected, but Neil's icing him.
- I love those guys too.
I mean, yeah, talk about an amazing band.
- Right.
But Neil is Canadian, kind of.
- Yes, I know.
- That discredits the whole CSNY enterprise as far as the--
- And one of them's English, aren't they?
- Oh, yeah, right.
Nash.
- Graham Nash.
Yeah, he's English, yeah.
- A truly international crew.
- Here's--I'll leave you with this last question, please.
- Well, no, you guys are too young for this.
Never mind.
It's the other Poconite favorite.
- What's the other Poconite favorite?
I want to hear it.
- It's first concert and where.
It's a great question to ask somebody over the age of 40 because the answers are ridiculous.
- I bet.
I always wished I had a better answer.
- For that.
Mine was the Ska Against Racism concert, which had a lot of good '90s ska bands,
but then you got to explain the whole concept to everybody.
It's not the same one.
Did you have a good answer to that?
- Mine was Jethro Tull at Madison Square Garden in 1976.
That's a pretty good one.
- Oh, wow.
- Yeah.
I saw Tull last year at the Beacon in New York, and they were great musically,
but poor Ian Anderson, his voice is just sadly totally shot.
- But still shredding on the flute?
- Oh, amazing.
I mean, has lost no step musically.
- Oh, well, he's still got that.
- Yeah.
But anyway, guys, thanks for chatting.
- Thanks so much, Hank Azaria.
Thank you for calling in, and also thank you for keeping the debates about classic rock alive
in 2020.
We appreciate that.
- I was so pleased people really got into that.
It was fun.
- All right.
Well, have a good one.
Thanks so much.
- Take care, guys.
Have a good night.
- Night.
- Riders on the storm.
Riders on the storm.
Into this house we're born.
Into this world we're thrown.
Like a dog without a bone and actor out of love.
Riders on the storm.
There's a killer on the road.
His brain is squirming like a toad.
Take a long holiday.
Let your children play.
If you give this man a ride, sweet lamb, he will die.
Killer on the road.
Yeah.
- Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
- Keep your eyes on the road.
Your hands up on the wheel.
Keep your eyes on the road.
Your hands up on the wheel.
Yeah, we're going to the roadhouse.
It's gonna have a real good time.
- Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
- This show rolls.
- Well, I dig a little down about an hour ago.
Took a look around there with a windblow.
With a little girl in a Hollywood bungalow.
Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light?
Or did you not a lost angel in the city of night?
City of night.
City of night.
City of night.
- Woo!
- Oh!
- Well, it's safe that we have officially two celebrity
opinions on the doors and their ability
to cook registered on Time Crisis.
We got a no from Crosby, and we got a yes from Azaria.
I think the doors cook in their own way, man,
the more I think about it.
- We should add, what do you think of the doors
to the TC bundle of questions that we ask every guest?
- That's true, because there is something about--
there is a way in which Jerry and Jim are kind of like--
similar to Jamflow Man and Joker Man,
Jerry and Jim are kind of like yin-yang opposing deities,
where nobody could ever call Jerry a poser.
I mean, Jerry is the original of a certain type of person.
You know?
He's the original.
- Yeah.
- And Jerry's vibe is like the sweet, nice smile, exploratory,
very talented musician, whereas Morrison, just singing,
can't shred.
Like, even though they both, I guess,
use pretentious language, so to speak,
Jerry always feels fun and playful,
Morrison's so serious and stuff.
And I could totally see the ways in which,
despite being so similar--
you know, Northern California, the dead,
Southern California, the doors--
there's a lot of ways that they're kind of like a yin-yang.
So it is interesting to see people who like the doors,
but not the dead, and vice versa.
- Right.
- I think a really chill person is probably like,
"You know, man, I like both.
There's some cool stuff in there."
- Yeah, I feel like people are too hard on the doors.
They had an incredibly original sound.
You have to give them that.
- Jesus.
- Did the last time we talked about this,
I can't remember, have we sort of tied
the sort of backlash into the film?
- Well, yeah, I was saying that in the interview.
Yeah, I think people probably sometimes are reacting
to the Val Kilmer version of Jim Morrison
more than Jim himself, but I just think it became--
- But also just a Stone--
an Oliver Stone backlash.
- Yeah, people associating Jim Morrison and Oliver Stone
with some sort of just like played out,
like, bloviating white dude.
I think is probably part of it.
There probably is something where people got sick
of being like, "Oh, Jim Morrison, he's so important."
And they probably like reacted a little bit.
But yeah, their music, as we've talked about,
five to one, there's a reason that got sampled
by Jay-Z 30 years later.
It just sounds-- it's hard.
It sounds crazy.
It's cool.
I think people are definitely too hard on the doors.
I think at this point, that's the time crisis party line.
We're not saying the doors are the best American band,
but we are saying people are just a little too hard on them.
You know, chill out.
They got some tunes.
I also feel like people always had that poster
of Jim Morrison that said, "An American poet."
People don't like when you call yourself a poet,
which is why probably when we finally make
"Painter vs. Poet," the film,
I think the poet has to lose.
- Absolutely.
(laughing)
- I guess 'cause we're talking about rock movies,
we might as well talk a little bit about "I'm Not There" now.
We'll get to those FOTB emails.
- Oh yeah.
So Jake, we were talking about "I'm Not There."
You threw it on.
We talked about making that a TC watch.
I started watching it.
I'm curious what your take is
'cause first things first, I told Rashida,
"I gotta watch 'I'm Not There' for TC homework."
I said, "Have you ever seen that movie?"
And she said, "No, I never saw it,
but I love Todd Haynes, the director.
I'm curious to see it."
And I was like, "Oh, you wanna watch it?"
And I remember seeing it.
I thought it came out when I was in college.
It came out one year after I was in college, 2007.
So that was probably like early "Vampire Weekend" days
or first album hadn't even come out.
I feel like that era is a very random time
for independent film.
But because I was in college and living in New York
from 2002 until "Vampire Weekend" popped up,
I saw so many movies at movie theaters from that era.
And it was not the strongest era for independent cinema,
but I saw all of them.
There were some good movies,
but I feel like I just feel like going to the movie theater
and seeing like late period Jim Jarmusch movies
and "I'm Not There" like "Secretary,"
"24-Hour Party People."
It was like, wasn't the '90s anymore
and wasn't the internet era.
It was this very specific era of film.
So I can remember going to see that movie
in a movie theater.
And I couldn't remember what I thought.
I remember there were some sections
that made a big impression on me.
But so we threw on the movie
and then right off the bat,
you have the young kid on the train saying that he's like,
"My name is Woody Guthrie, folks."
And I was just like, "Oh God, what is this?"
And I was kind of like seeing it through her eyes too.
Or I was just like,
and I never said like I was writing for the movie.
I was just like, "Yeah, we're going to watch it
because Bob Dylan, like time crisis."
And the first 20 minutes of the movie,
I found like excruciating.
And then once it got to the Cate Blanchett
and the black and white
and the '70s stuff with Heath Ledger and Christian Bale,
then I remembered that that movie
has like some truly like transcendent moments
and like well-directed, beautiful stuff.
But the beginning was tough for me.
What's your take, Jake?
- It's time for Jake's Takes on Time Crisis.
- It's a double-edged sword.
You have to be a huge Dylan head
to have any sort of like connection with this movie.
And if the problem with like most biopics
is that they're too broad
and they like just kind of play the greatest hits
from this like icons history
and it ends up being kind of like bland.
This movie goes the opposite direction.
It goes obscure and it goes,
yeah, I mean, even if you're a Dylan fan,
you're like trying to put it together
like it's some sort of puzzle.
I loved it.
I hated it when I saw it in '07 in the theater.
- Yeah. - Loved it.
This time I watched it twice.
- You watched it twice? - I did.
- Okay, but you hated the first 20 minutes
or excruciating. - Yes.
I agree the scenes with the 12-year-old kid
playing Woody Guthrie are the weakest link in the film.
- It's too far of a reach. - Can I pause at a theory?
Yes.
I think that that's sort of on purpose
and that what they're saying is that period of Dylan's life
where he is co-opting Americana
in a much more performative way
is a little corny and excruciating.
It was corny.
I think there's an element of that.
I think that's a fair analysis because
and for any TCAs who didn't watch the film,
even though it was assigned for viewing,
basically what's really confusing about the movie
is it's not quite as straightforward as being like
an experimental film where six different people
play Bob Dylan at different moments in his life.
People of different races and genders.
It's not that straightforward.
Actually, nobody in the movie plays Bob Dylan.
People all have different names
and some people play Woody Guthrie
or some people play somebody pretending to be Wood Guthrie
and somebody plays some folk singer named Jack Rollins
and somebody plays an actor who played that folk singer
in a movie.
So it's very confusing and it's,
yeah, you need to be a real Dylan fan to make a case for it
because even as we were watching it
and I felt like some duty to explain some of it
when she was like, "Wait, was there a famous movie
where somebody played Bob Dylan
that this Heath Ledger character is based on this actor?"
And I was like, "I don't think so."
"What do you think the point of that is?"
And I really had to try to interpret
and I was like, "Okay, I think for hardcore Dylan fans,
this idea that Dylan entered a period
where he became almost like an actor playing himself,
where there was something changed
about his relationship to his own persona
represents kind of his transition into the late 60s
and there's something about them creating a character
who's an actor who played a folk singer
that somehow maybe is reminiscent of one facet
of Bob Dylan's personality or career."
You know, so you got to kind of interpret everything
in like a weird way like that in this film.
I saw it as the Christian Bale personification
of Dylan, aka Jack Rawlins,
was like he was the hero of like a small local scene
and then that scene blew up
and became super prominent on a national scale
and they made a movie about the Christian Bale character
and at that point, he transforms
into the Cate Blanchett version
where he becomes like a media figure.
He's no longer like a local hero, you know?
And Cate Blanchett is excellent.
Oh my God.
And she was actually nominated for an Oscar for that role,
which is totally fair.
And those parts are beautifully shot.
I also didn't realize the first time
that a lot of that,
the black and white Cate Blanchett '66 Dylan stuff,
but the way he shot it is also this homage
to like "Fellini" eight and a half.
Also a movie that's about kind of deconstructing
the artistic process and what it means to be an artist
who has to engage with the public.
So there's also like this interesting meta,
dare I say, Borgesian element to the filmmaking
that's very referential.
♪ Ain't all right ♪
♪ And she's all too tight in my neighborhood ♪
♪ She cries both day and night ♪
♪ I know it because it was there ♪
♪ It's a milestone ♪
♪ But she's down on her luck ♪
♪ And she ain't left so alone in the bottom end ♪
♪ Too hard to buck I've been ♪
♪ I believe where she's stopping ♪
♪ Where she wants time to care ♪
♪ I believe that she'd look upon the siding to care ♪
♪ And I go by the Lord and wait ♪
♪ She's on my way but I don't belong there ♪
The reason that we started talking about this
in the first place is because, Jake, you've been,
we should do a show on it soon,
but you've been digging into kind of early Christian rock
going back to the 60s and 70s.
And there's something to me that really stayed with me
about the scene where the late period Christian bell,
Dylan has become Christian
and is performing at a church in Stockton, California.
That's so vibey.
And I love that.
And also why Stockton?
Yeah, I love that stuff when bell comes back.
Can I also just say shout out to From the Freezer,
who's from Stockton?
Yeah, what's it about Stockton?
Pavements from Stockton,
From the Freezers from Stockton.
There's some kind of interesting energy
in the Central Valley.
Yeah, well, I was just gonna say,
like, I think part of the strength of the Blanchette scenes,
it's so clearly based on the Pennebaker footage
that he shot for that documentary,
where it's like, it is the most iconic footage of Dylan
that was filmed.
Don't look back.
And so like, we're watching like a facsimile
of that iconic footage.
And I just feel like as the audience,
we're relating to our relationship
with that footage already,
where everything else was just made up whole cloth.
Right.
And one of my favorite parts of that was the press conference.
And it got me thinking about like,
the tradition of the rock star press conference.
Yeah, the ones that always come to mind for me,
of course, you have the Beatles.
Yes.
Literally just the four of them just riffing.
Then you have Bob Dylan riffing in the 60s.
And then I always think of the Eagles reunion
in the early 90s,
and then like sitting at a press conference
to announce that their comeback tour.
Maybe it's because I've watched the Eagles doc so many times.
But yeah, the concept of like a rock star doing,
or any kind of music star doing a press conference is so funny,
because now you have artists who literally just don't do press
because they don't need to,
or they do it in a very, very controlled way.
So to imagine somebody literally just having
40 people in front of them just throwing questions.
Wild.
Like they're the president,
and just having to like riff and get into it
and have to be witty and stuff.
It's wild.
And one thought that I had,
and this is not an original thought,
but it maybe is worth saying just for the sake of argument.
As I watch this movie,
and I think about Bob Dylan,
who is this interesting mix of like these very distinct eras,
all these different facets of his personality,
somebody who meant so much to people,
but also bitterly disappointed them.
Somebody who was supposed to represent
a new kind of political consciousness,
and then veered in these other directions
that really bothered people.
Somebody who was just,
was such an artist and in such a way with words,
but also was just so fascinating as a person.
The person that I always think of,
especially when I watch the movie,
is Kanye.
And I know obviously all major artists have something in common.
And people could say,
"Well, is Kanye our prince or something?"
You could compare a million different superstar artists,
and you could always have fun with that.
Say like, "Well, is, you know, if Beyonce,
who's the Beyonce of classic rock?
Led Zeppelin?"
You know, of course,
all major artists have something in common.
There's something about Kanye and Dylan
in terms of what they mean to people,
and their kind of,
the ups and downs of their career,
and their anger,
and their, the way they've shifted,
and the different types of personalities they've had,
or they've at least presented to the world.
I don't know why I associate those two.
Of all the icons of, you know,
post-war American popular music,
I think of them the most similarly.
And there's something about the Bob Dylan press conference
makes me think about the, that era.
I guess it's still kind of a big deal
when Kanye does an interview.
But starting with the Zane Lowe,
shout out to Apple Music Beats 1,
starting with the Zane Lowe interview,
where he interviewed Kanye,
it became this thing where Kanye interviews
became an event in a way that
no other musicians' interviews were like an event.
- Yeah.
- People just want to get to the bottom of like,
"Where do you stand?
What do you mean?
What do you actually care about, Kanye?"
In a way that,
I'm not saying there aren't great interviews
with other artists,
but there's,
there was something picturing Bob Dylan,
like these older journalists,
just like asking like these questions,
"Explain the world to me.
What do you mean, Bob Dylan?"
- Incredibly earnest questions.
- It makes me think of Kanye more than anybody.
- You know who kind of did that a little bit?
Father John Misty.
- Mm.
- He relished in like,
semi-confrontational interviews,
I feel like, a few years ago at least.
- No, absolutely.
And he's also got a way with words.
- Yeah.
- He's smart and he's interesting to follow.
And I like Father John Misty.
It's just not the same as like the Kanyes and the Dylans
in terms of like,
people are interested in what Father John Misty has to say
and he's always going to have an interesting take.
But it's like,
he's the observer in a way that these guys,
people felt like to understand Kanye and Dylan
is to understand what's happening in the world.
It's a very strange, unique phenomenon.
- I mean, when we were talking about the greatest bands,
I know he's not a band,
but I was like,
or in terms of the greatest American bands,
I was like,
I know we can't include solo artists,
but I'm doing it and it's Bob Dylan.
- I know.
Well, that's the funny thing.
- That's me.
- There's something about America that it's produced,
our solo artists, iconic singer-songwriter types,
I think are as good as any other anglophone country.
But there's something--
- Isn't that also particularly American, right?
Like that it's the focus on the individual,
that we've made these like strong individual--
- I've wondered that because actually,
yeah, I want to go back to that for a second.
Like maybe because of like reading Stephen Hyden's book
and think a lot about Radiohead and stuff.
'Cause actually, Jake,
I feel like you and I have talked about this.
There's a certain type of band that just can't be American.
And I've wondered,
is it because America is like the rugged individualist,
so we've produced more Bob Dylan's and Bruce Springsteen's,
but we've also had great bands like the Dead,
but then there are these kind of like fun,
more amorphous things.
We just don't have that many bands in that sweet spot.
And I'm not sure why.
This is very specific,
but one type of band that there's always been one,
there's always that kind of like
slightly like spacey, gigantic band.
Arguably it was like Pink Floyd,
and then it became Radiohead.
And then it splintered into like Muse and bands like that.
Where it's this kind of like epic arena rock,
progressive band that has music that connotes like space
and paranoia and you know what I mean?
- Yeah.
- These bands are so different.
I'm not trying to like be basic and be like,
Radiohead is the Pink Floyd of our day.
I'm just saying that they occupy a space
for a type of listener.
And I'm not saying everybody would,
people might like one and not the other.
And maybe even today a little bit,
Tame Impala has some of that vibe
with the psychedelics dark,
'cause there's some bad,
Tame Impala is way more Pink Floyd than Grateful Dead,
even though those are arguably both
psychedelic types of bands.
And I like all these bands,
but I'm very convinced that America
cannot produce a Pink Floyd, Radiohead or Tame Impala.
I don't know why,
but I think you have to be English or Australian.
I think we talked about this before Jake,
maybe not on air,
that remember in the early 2000s,
two of the most critically acclaimed bands
were Radiohead and Wilco.
And sometimes Wilco would get referred to
as the American Radiohead.
It was kind of like after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
I think people would be like,
well, Kid A and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
those are two albums about like the state of the world.
- Preposterous. - And I like Wilco
and I like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
but I was just always like,
no, it's not the same.
- Yeah, Wilco's rootsy.
- Wilco's rootsy. - Radiohead is space rock.
I mean, basically it's like,
there are like American space rock bands
who are like indie.
God knows there's a ton of them,
but like-- - Like who?
- I don't know, explosions in the sky,
that's instrumental.
I've played enough shows and enough all ages clubs
and bars over the last 20 years,
and I've seen enough boring,
like kind of shoegazy space rock bands,
God loves some of them.
My friend Adam had a band called Umebitsu for years,
classic '90s space rock.
But your question is a space rock band that is massive.
- That's massive, that speaks to the cultural moment
or something.
I don't think we as Americans-- - Yeah.
- Want to hear that kind of (beep)
from our countrymen, you know what I mean?
- What about Tom DeLonge's "Angels and Airwaves"?
- What about what?
- Okay, you got me there.
- "Angels and Airwaves," Tom DeLonge.
- "Angels and Airwaves" though is like,
even though obviously Tom DeLonge is very ahead of the curve
in terms of his interest in aliens and exposing,
I don't know if he would use that language,
but exposing their existence.
"Angels and Airwaves" is still more of this,
has the pop punk emo roots,
even though it's getting kind of spacey.
- I was gonna say one band that's sort of from the '90s
that sort of starts to veer into this territory
was the Smashing Pumpkins.
They were-- - Yes, that's an interesting point.
- Heavy and psychedelic. - Yeah.
- Also the Flaming Lips, that's a good point, Seinfeld.
Seinfeld just texted me the Flaming Lips.
- But the Flaming Lips are still,
they've got that court jester, American kind of--
- It's scrappy.
- I mean, they don't sound like the dead,
but they have in common that kind of scrappy American,
like P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan.
You know, they have that American huckster,
we're in on the joke, we're just having a good time.
Wayne Coyne is like a funny dude
in the same way that the dead had a sense of humor.
Yeah, no, that's interesting.
Billy Corgan and Tom York,
I'm sure Tom York would shudder to hear it,
but they have something in common.
But even then, I just feel like the idea,
Americans don't wanna hear a dude from Chicago
be their Tom York or their Roger Waters.
♪ Time is never time at all ♪
♪ You can never ever leave ♪
♪ Without me, little piece of you ♪
♪ And our lives are forever changed ♪
♪ We will never be the same ♪
♪ The more you change, the less you feel ♪
♪ Believe ♪
♪ Believe in me ♪
♪ Believe ♪
♪ Life can change, but you're not stuck in vain ♪
♪ And I'm just here to be my man ♪
♪ Tonight ♪
♪ Tonight ♪
♪ Tonight, I'm so free ♪
♪ Tonight ♪
♪ Tonight ♪
- One other band I thought of that is super serious,
and I actually thought of them in terms of the,
if you're talking about greatest American bands,
you have to think about '60s and '70s,
like Hank was saying, is like the classic rock era.
And then there's sort of the post-punk era,
that'll have the last 40 years or whatever.
One band I thought of, super serious, Fugazi.
- Great band, iconic band.
Obviously no hits, but there is that sort of strain
of American music that is like, coming out of hardcore,
that is like pretty humorless and very intense.
Not spacey at all.
I'm just saying, it's not all like--
- There's absolutely something to it.
And I think a lot of these bands,
like a Fugazi or something,
help tee up ideas and sounds that probably influence,
maybe even some of the bands we're talking about,
but this is not quite the same.
- No, I know.
- We talk about the dead so much,
we don't have to go into detail,
but obviously the TC pick
for the greatest American rock band is the dead.
And there's something that I like about that,
as an American, where I'm just kind of like,
you know what, being an American is random.
It's cool.
It's a fraught, borderline (beep) up thing.
It's bizarre.
It's strange.
You got to almost just laugh about it.
We can't have a national band, an iconic national band,
like the Stones or like the Led Zepp,
that just summarizes an entire generation of our country.
It's like, it's cool to think that,
well, I don't know, man, maybe the Grateful Dead,
maybe this band that barely had any hits
that just kind of traveled the country like vagabonds,
just jamming and playing deep dark music
and also goofy cowboy songs.
There's something about that,
that I like in terms of our national identity.
- Yeah.
- Even though I love all these bands,
I like that the American band is the funny, weird one
that's hard to put your finger on.
It's not like the slick, perfect rock band,
like the Rolling Stones,
who I don't mean their music's slick, but they're branded.
- Can I just take a full circle
and read you part of the quote?
So when Jerry Garcia died in '95,
Bob Dylan issued a statement,
and there's this one sentence that I always loved.
He says, "There are a lot of spaces and advances
"between the Carter family, Buddy Holly,
"and say Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes,
"but Jerry filled them all
"without being a member of any school."
So it's kind of what you're saying.
I mean, he's just sort of like,
they're like this vagabond group that bridge the divides
between all these different strains in American history.
So beautiful statement from Bob.
- Yeah, actually it's funny.
Somebody else showed me that recently.
Just like, I love that Bob Dylan.
Also recently, rest in peace, Little Richard.
Bob Dylan also came out of the woodwork
to issue an actual statement on Twitter,
which is kind of rare for him,
where he talked about how everything comes
from Little Richard.
He invented rock and roll and why he was so special.
I love that for a handful of special people,
he'll come out and eulogize them.
- Yep.
- Speaking of American rock bands,
we promised we'd get into some of these
father of the bride emails.
Let's crack a few open.
- Let's go to the time crisis mailbag.
- One thing that I didn't say last week,
which was the actual anniversary week,
because we were kind of caught up talking with Steven
and was kind of thinking a lot about what fourth albums mean
and thinking about what's coming next,
'cause obviously spending a lot of time at home,
I can't help but think about what the next album
might be like and what the world's gonna look like.
Will there be touring anytime soon?
I hope so.
But anyway, the first thing I wanna say is,
obviously to the fans,
thank you for supporting father of the bride,
'cause whatever we could say about it,
and this is something I talked about with CT and Bayo too,
and we look back on all the touring and stuff
we did last year, even though it's a bummer,
we had to cancel a bunch this year,
it really exceeded our wildest expectations.
I was kind of saying it last week,
fourth albums are very difficult
'cause they're pivot points for everybody,
any good band, I think it's some type of pivot point.
And then for us, it just turned into this even bigger thing
with the years passing,
it's even more weight on this pivot point
and to make an album that's kind of different and stuff.
I gotta say to everybody who came to the shows,
bought the album and stuff,
it does blow my mind a little bit,
the extent to which everything kind of worked.
There's a hundred percent a version of this album
and album campaign that could have been
like the first 20 minutes of "I'm Not There",
just excruciating, just brutal.
And in some ways last year was like our best year ever
in terms of like the shows
and certain things that we accomplished.
So anyway, as much as I'm kind of settling back
into the bad vibes of like thinking about the future
and worrying about what comes next,
I do have to take a moment just to be positive
and say like last year really was in almost every category,
like the best year for "Vampire" that we've had.
So I gotta thank everybody for that,
everybody who supported it, the whole.
And now you gotta thank "Time Crisis" too.
As I said, Jake, Richard Pictures is influential,
but certain concepts that we discussed on the program,
I think also helped set a tone.
- I'm honored just to be tangentially related.
I think TCU helped expand the "Vampire" universe.
They're two different universes,
but they intersect in a positive way
that I think made everything a little more interesting.
Well, one thing that kind of makes me think
of "Time Crisis" and "8 Minute Cape Cod",
this is one email about the bootleg community.
And that's another thing I gotta say is like,
picturing this album coming back after six years,
what I thought were the two most likely scenarios
when a band comes back,
one is obviously the negative one that I talked about.
People are just like, it's not the same, the moments passed.
And of course, the longer that time passes,
some listeners are gonna compare an album
as soon as they hear it to, in our case,
literally 10 years of memories
that they have with these other albums.
And suddenly, I know people,
everybody's like a free thinker and whatever,
but I just know how it works with audiences.
And I know how I am as a listener.
Sometimes you like one record
and then another one comes out way later
and you expect the same feeling
and it doesn't give you the same feeling.
And it might be because the music's different.
It also might be because the last record came out
when you were having a good year, you were in high school.
You know, just so much changes.
And obviously, you don't just hear music with your ears.
It's teed up in a way based on your relationship
to music in general and to the band and to your own life.
So the worst version was the album just kind of comes out
and just kind of like fizzles out immediately.
Nobody cares that much.
Maybe after the first song comes out, excitement dims.
And it's kind of like a commercial disappointment.
But then there's like another type of album.
And I don't think we made this album,
but there's another type of album that could come out
where people are like very respectful.
Nobody fights about it.
All the fans are like, "Hell yeah, the boys are back.
"Sounds like the band we remember."
And yet that fizzles out very quickly too.
And I'm not naming names, but I, you know,
I feel like every year you look at all the albums
that get like the top 20 albums that get critical claim
or, you know, nominated for this and that.
And there's always a few that like
are on some different (beep)
And then there's a few that are kind of just like
respectfully spinning their wheels, you know,
and those fizzle out quickly.
So anyway, because it gets harder to read the tea leaves,
you know, when you've been gone for a while,
I was always like very interested about like,
can this album not just like feel like a special moment
to me and to the band and to the fans
and not just be like a good album.
Can it actually represent a new era in any way
that makes this whole project feel like exciting?
And I got to say that like the growth
of the bootleg community and the kind of live thing,
it really paid off in ways that I kind of
could have only hoped for.
And that's all due to, you know,
people like from the freezer and suck a dog (beep)
I don't know if they identify suck a dog (beep)
I think their Instagram is suckadog(beep)2000,
but this person maintains a online bootleg community
where I don't even know how they have half of these shows.
'Cause obviously Vampire Weekend's
never had like a taping scene,
but they have shows going all the way back
to the early days.
And they even sometimes put together like
their own kind of dick specs of like their favorite things.
So anyway, we got this email from Samuel Colson
saying hi, Ezra Crisis Crew.
As part of the FOTB year in review,
I wondered if you'd touch on suckadog(beep)
in the VW bootleg community.
As band is jamming much more live these days,
I believe it becomes more important
to capture each performance.
That's true.
I still don't think we're a true jam band,
but absolutely every show is different now.
And the set lists are different.
And often there's different performances of songs
that take on different characters.
I went to Glastonbury last year
and was waiting out in the morning sun
for your secret set on the park stage,
full TC long sleeve tee on in 32 degrees Celsius
is quite something.
32 degrees Celsius, that's like 90 something Fahrenheit,
right?
That's actually a number crunch.
- Yeah.
- What's 32 degrees Celsius?
- It's 89.6 Fahrenheit.
- Dude, you nailed that.
- So I got there at about 8 a.m.
and hung out with some other VW heads
right at the barrier for the set.
That was pretty tight to like come out for our secret show.
Early morning, Glastonbury, I'm like the small stage.
I feel like I remember seeing somebody in a TC long sleeve,
the Ezra and Jake one,
and just being like, oh, tight.
It was the highlight of the festival for sure,
especially given the requests,
Giant Hannah Hunt and other deep cuts being played.
In the almost year since that gig,
I've kept coming back to something
I heard your sound crew say,
that each gig was being recorded for the band to listen to
and make adjustments where needed.
That's true.
While I understand they won't be fully mixed shows,
just the PA mix,
will you ever release any of these tapes?
We're actually kind of like tracking down
all the hard drives now,
'cause they're all like all over the world.
For those of us at the gigs that weren't recorded,
very little footage exists.
Getting our hands on them would be akin
to getting some chunky donkeys for a hardcore Ben and Jerry set.
Like LeBron James, by the way,
he posted that he has the chunky donkeys.
In these times of crisis,
we could all do with some new VW live audio
or we can get it.
What about the bootleggers, man?
All the best and looking forward
to whatever comes next, Sam.
Because the live album,
in some ways feels like such a big deal
when you consider like all the iconic live albums
through history,
Stop Making Sense, Europe 72,
things of that nature.
Maybe I'm like putting too much emphasis on it.
We just got to start just like making (beep) available.
It doesn't have to be some grand statement
of like digging through the best to create something.
But yeah, no, of course we got to go through that
and we'll start putting stuff out here and there.
One of these guys is going to turn into your Dick Latvala.
- Well, that's basically the guy who runs Suck A Dog (beep)
- Okay, he's the Dick Latvala.
- I think he made like a podcast or something
where he's like essentially putting his Dick's pics out
in a podcast form.
- Is that why he calls it Suck A Dog (beep)
which by the way is an insane name.
And every time we say it on this show,
it'll be bleeped out.
- Well, Suck A Dog (beep) was like an inside joke
in Vampire Weekend in the early days.
- Oh, this is news to me.
- Me and Baya would like text it to each other.
And it definitely comes from like,
I'm sure it comes from some like early 2000s
like internet comedy.
That's what it sounds like.
Like I can picture that being like a joke
in like a Stella short or something like that.
It's like saying go (beep) yourself.
It doesn't make any sense, you know.
- But like, it's a funny coincidence
that Suck A Dog (beep) has a residence with Dick's pics.
- It is a funny coincidence.
I mean, if we want to make it more family friendly,
maybe they could just start calling themselves
Dog Latvala.
But like why?
It's a long story, man.
Just the dog.
If eventually it becomes too harsh for people,
I would encourage the bootleg to maybe just become the dog.
I also like that.
Just like, who is the absolute king
of the Vampire Weekend bootleg community?
It's the dog, man.
You gotta go to the dog.
The dog has what you need.
So anyway, I recommend that as a family friendly version.
♪ No time to discuss it ♪
♪ Can't speak when the waves reach our house upon the dunes ♪
♪ Time cannot be trusted ♪
♪ When the police come they always come ♪
♪ To us, don't like them like heaven and day ♪
♪ Like fire and heaven, we are American made ♪
♪ I thought I would probably stay ♪
♪ But before I know, I know ♪
♪ My Christian heart cannot withstand ♪
♪ The thundering arena ♪
♪ I see you when the violence ends ♪
♪ And I cha-cha bambina ♪
- So we got the dog is kind of the king
of Vampire Weekend bootleg audio.
And then obviously the king of Vampire Weekend
bootleg merch is from The Freezer,
who everybody should follow on Instagram.
And we got a question from Shana Chabrau about bootleg merch.
Hi Ezra, I love how you've been encouraging fans
to make their own bootleg merch for the FOTB album cycle.
It seems like that's normally something an artist
wouldn't encourage since that's where much
of their income can come from.
Okay, but keep in mind Shana,
that was also back when we did live concerts.
So we used to make income from other things.
So I'm interested to know why that's something
you've been in favor of the past year.
Here's the truth is that we come from like
the Napster generation where even our records,
we've been always being kind of like,
well, maybe we'll have an interesting career.
We probably won't sell any albums.
And then it's been amazing that we have,
but it's like, of course,
not like if we were banned from the 90s.
So we've always had that vibe of kind of like,
you know what, anybody who's a fan of your band,
whether they listen to your music for free.
And now I think the analog is make a shirt
and they make a little money selling stuff.
They're flying the flag, man.
You know, it's like so obvious at this point.
- Totally.
- Even though merch is like a bigger piece of the pie
and more of an important tent pole than ever.
I really believe that first of all,
anybody who's really invested in the fan community.
And I think a few people,
there's like a few bootleg shirt hits from the past year.
Even like that time crisis shirt that we talk about.
I see these a bunch like all over the place.
I'm sure nobody's like quitting their day job.
There's that,
and there's the person who made that
Sonic says no to racism,
which by the way,
it's a shirt we couldn't have even made if we wanted to.
If somebody who's really invested
in like helping build a sense of community
within our fan base,
makes a little bit of money
because they created like a cool shirt
that a lot of a bunch of people want to buy.
That's fair play.
Like that's how it should be.
You know what I mean?
- Yeah.
- Because not only are they contributing to the fan base
and making people happy,
sometimes they're gonna make cooler than we do.
And it's like,
that's great.
So yeah,
it's to me,
it's like a no brainer.
And in fact,
if anything,
I'm just happy that it's happened
because you can totally imagine too,
like obviously this album,
there's elements of it that veer towards the jammy direction
to live show.
We stretch things out a little bit.
It's all kind of like fun stuff that we enjoy
and that I think is cool.
But just cause you do that stuff,
doesn't mean that your fan base
or your bootleg scene
is gonna become any more interesting.
So I gotta say,
I'm like very happy with that.
And we also had an interesting email.
I don't have them all on deck,
but somebody was asking about the relationship
with graphic design.
And that's worth talking about
because I wanna shout out some of the people
that I worked with on that.
So, you know,
like with Vampire Weekend,
most of the big ideas come from within the core group.
And with this album,
like I always had a vague sense of kind of like
the mood board and the types of images,
but I was working with this guy, Nick Hardwood,
who's became kind of like creative director.
Nick's just like cool as hell.
And they just love to like talk about ideas and images
and what they represent.
And one thing we'd always come back to is that like,
there was something about this album that felt like,
yeah, the cover had to be a very simple central image
like the earth,
but there was something about it being this double album
that had to have kind of like its own universe of symbols.
And so then Nick went out and found this guy,
Brendan Ratzlaff,
based up in the Vancouver area,
and basically saw some of his work and said,
I feel like he'd come up with cool stuff.
So we kind of gave him our mood board and we were like,
we want like frogs and snakes.
Like the first single has this line about snakes
and we want some kind of crunchy stuff.
And we want some kind of nature stuff
and some technology stuff,
like all this stuff that kind of felt like the mood board
of the album.
And then he created this whole like world of glyphs
that were like exactly what I was looking for
and better than I could have hoped.
And I especially got to shout him out
for just creating the snake logo.
'Cause you know, it's like,
you can go to anybody and be like,
yeah, we're making this album.
It's a little crunchy.
There's a song about snakes.
Can you make a snake logo?
And of course, spirals were already kind of on the mood board
but the way he combined it,
it just like,
that actually surprised me the degree to which
that became like a symbol of the album
and it still kind of pops up on stuff.
Yeah, so really hats off to Nick and Brendan for that
because that's the type of thing that just like,
it's just durable, you know?
And like, that's another one of the things
I got to shout out some of the best bootleg merches.
There's that person, Petrified Goods.
They make all sorts of stuff
and they often do like band logos on Patagonia baggies,
like the shorts and fleeces.
And they've done a lot with the snake.
And there is something about like, you know,
if you just told me when I was like first kind of
mood boarding the album and working on Harmony Hall
that one day within our little fan community,
there'd be an iconic piece of bootleg merch
that was a snake logo,
a spiral snake logo on a pair of Patagonia shorts,
I would have been like amazed.
I would have been like,
I couldn't have dreamed a more perfect thing.
But the cool thing about it is that we didn't do that.
We set some wheels in motion,
but having great graphic designers
and cool people who do their own thing,
that's what creates something like that.
You know, just imagine if like,
if I actually wanted to be like,
we should sell Patagonia shorts with a snake logo
on our merch stand, it would just be like a headache.
You know, it's like, it's way cooler
that it happened organically like this.
- I have a feeling that like the snake logo
will like kind of like have legs beyond just
the friend of the bride, father of the bride album cycle.
- That's kind of how it feels.
- Yeah.
- And it's funny too, because like,
part of the Vampire Weekend vibe is like,
you know, obviously we've always wanted to have very like
striking album covers, starting with the first one,
just like, it felt kind of bold, but it's like,
when I first saw that picture of the chandelier,
this polaroid from a party we played, it's like, that's it.
Although in a weird way,
I know that the father of the bride album cover
was divisive with some people,
but you also got to understand that like,
the boldness of like being the quote unquote preppy band
in the early days and just putting straight up a chandelier
on the cover, I love the extent to which that was kind of
like bold and simple and divisive.
And that's kind of a cool vibe, the Polaroid,
and this album being like the austere white digital earth
is a very different vibe, but in a weird way,
I saw a connection.
- Interesting.
- And I actually feel like there needs to be a connection
between a first and a fourth album,
because the fourth album is beginning a new era
one way or another.
I just knew that there was like something,
a lot of the preppy imagery,
as much as some people loved it,
there was something like uncomfortable about it to people
because they were like, what's this about?
Is this a joke?
What does this represent?
And there was something about the simplicity of the earth
that almost had the same energy in a very different way.
But that's why, even though like I had the strong feeling
that it might like annoy some people,
I was like, there's something iconic about it.
And I also got to shout out Nick too,
that to me, the saving grace of the album cover,
even if you hate the simple earth
and you don't like the kind of 90s graphic design text
going around, to me, what really saves that album
and makes it special is that simple orange stripe
on the side.
And that was like, it just didn't feel finished.
And we were kind of messing around
and Nick pulled out the orange stripe.
That truly is the album cover.
It's not just the earth,
it's this orange stripe plus the earth.
That's like the image.
- Yeah.
- This album compared to our first three,
which are analog old pictures
that have warmth and depth and noise and stuff,
this has none of that.
And I really wrestled with it.
There's like alternate versions
where I found like vibey old pictures.
It didn't feel like fourth album material.
It didn't feel like rising to the challenge
of like opening up some new (beep)
We also got a bunch of emails,
which I appreciated about Lord Ullen's daughter,
which was one of the Japanese bonus tracks.
Bowen Lee asked,
"Could you please walk us through the genesis
of Lord Ullen's daughter?
What drew you to the poem?
Did the Jude Law audio exist prior to the song?
Would you consider it a song?"
The poem, Lord Ullen's daughter,
I thought about it a lot
when I was working on Father of the Bride and writing it,
because I had some vague memory from college
or high school or something,
that there was like a classic old poem
that had a line about my Bonnie bride.
Then I looked it up and found,
"Oh, it's this kind of famous Scottish poem."
And so I kind of, for a long time,
I was like, "I want to quote this poem on the album,"
because the poem is essentially about a couple eloping.
And the woman is the daughter of some big Highland chief.
And for some reason,
he's mad that she's running off with this guy.
And basically this young couple in love is like,
"We got to get out of here,
because if her father finds us with all his guys,
he's going to murder us."
So it's this kind of tense poem
where they're trying to get away.
And then they roll up to a stormy sea
and there's the boat man.
And the guy's like, "Guys, the chop is out of control.
I cannot take you on this boat in good conscience."
And the guy's like, "Listen, man, we're in big trouble.
If we stay here, in about 10 minutes,
her dad and all his shooters are going to run over here
and kill us.
Here's a whole bunch of money."
And then the boatman says, "You know what, man, I'll do it,
but not for your money.
I'll do it because this is a very special lady."
And they get into the boat,
just in the nick of time, it's like a movie,
and they're pulling out into the water and it's real choppy.
And then the father kind of comes barreling down
to the beach with all his guys.
It's getting more and more (beep) up.
And people are being like, "Yo, turn back,
you can't make it."
And there's some line that's like,
"No, (beep) it, I'd rather face the waves
than face my psycho dad."
And they keep going off and off.
And then the father who came down to the beach so angrily
with all his shooters, trying to grab these people,
grab the couple and probably murder the guy,
he gets down to the beach and sees the boat
going off into the distance.
As the stormy seas take it down
and watches his daughter die.
And there's this line about how he reached the fatal shore.
And that line, the fatal shore,
it's like, there's like a famous book about Australia,
a history book that's called "The Fatal Shore."
'Cause it is this like deep phrase, the fatal shore.
It's like heavy.
Where the land meets the sea, the fatal shore,
it's like this transition point and also like death.
And so then it's almost like a King Midas story.
It's like, you love something so much,
but your love turns into something kind of evil
and you actually kill it.
He came down because he was so pissed,
ready to kill her new boyfriend.
And then his anger and bad vibes send them out
into the ocean where he watches them die.
Basically the poem ends with the father's wrath
turning to wailing.
A guy who stormed down the beach so angry,
this macho controlling dad.
And then his anger turns to tears
as he realizes what happened to his daughter.
I was like, it's so heavy.
I love the imagery of it.
And I was like, this somehow ties into the themes
of this record.
It ties into this like eerie figure,
the father of the bride.
That like weird, heavy, masculine, macho anger of the past
that still exists and casts this long shadow.
And that ultimately made me think of like the dying world.
Modernization, things that are supposed to be good
that are actually killing the thing
that they were supposed to improve.
Like that kind of weird mixed up.
So I was like, this is a heavy poem.
I love the fact that it has this bride imagery in it,
my Bonnie bride.
I feel like it ties in.
I feel like this poem actually kind of unlocked something
for me about the record.
So when I first kind of wrote
the "Big Blue Chord Progression,"
I kind of wanted to almost recite the poem over it.
And that never felt quite right to me.
And I kept toying with the "Big Blue Chord Progression."
Eventually I just wanted to make that a simple short song.
And I wrote, you know, "Big Blue" for once in my life,
I felt close to you.
But I couldn't drop this idea
that there was something about that chord progression
in the poem that went together.
So then when I'm thinking about
what could be a cool bonus track, I'm like,
oh, "Lord Owen's Daughter" over the "Big Blue Chords,"
remix basically.
And then I was like, should I read it?
And I was like, no, we should get somebody cool.
And, you know, I've known Jude for a long time
and he did a voice on "Neo Yokio" and he's a great guy.
I love him.
And he's one of my favorite actors too.
And I love his voice and his delivery.
And so, you know, me and Ariel just like hit him up
and we're like, yo, would you read this poem?
And we sent him kind of a track
so he could kind of like do it in time.
And he sent us the vocals back.
I think he recorded it on his iPad and sent it back.
And then we put it together.
So anyway, it's not just like a kind of
thrown together random thing.
It's like, it's very much connected to the record,
the poem and the chord progression.
So it made a lot of sense to me as a bonus track.
And also I knew that eventually we should release it
outside of Japan for the heads.
♪ Chieftain to the highlands bound ♪
♪ Cries boatman do not tarry ♪
♪ Now give thee a silver pound ♪
♪ To row us o'er the ferry ♪
♪ Now who be ye would cross Loch Gill ♪
♪ This dark and stormy water ♪
♪ Oh I'm the chief of Orvithael ♪
♪ And this Lord Allan's daughter ♪
♪ And fast before her father's men ♪
♪ Three days we fled together ♪
♪ For should he find us in the glen ♪
♪ My blood would stain the heather ♪
♪ His horsemen hard behind his ride ♪
♪ Should they our steps discover ♪
♪ Then who will cheer my bonnie bride ♪
♪ When they have slain her lover ♪
- Can I jump in for one sec?
- Sure.
- I thought this was a really great email
and it totally made me rethink Big Blue.
Hello TC Universe, Ezra said we could ask him
anything about FOTB.
So my question is whether or not Big Blue
is about the Democratic Party.
Did Ezra write this after the 2016 primaries?
Big Blue, for once in my life I felt close to you,
was finally they had a candidate like Bernie
that made him feel that they represented you.
Then you offer protection, so am I learning my lesson
or am I back on my own, feeling that centrist Dems
were the only opposition to Trump in 2016?
I mean, it's kind of funny, but also wanting them
to earn your vote, facing the dilemma of voting Blue
no matter what.
I just thought that was like a really cool reading
'cause I also was like, I also assumed Big Blue was like,
yeah, the ocean or the earth, but I know you
and I don't think of you as like a super outdoorsy guy
that feels like super connected to nature, you know?
There's been several attempts to have a TC camping episode.
It's never happened and it's because of lack of enthusiasm
from the flagship of the brand here, Ezra.
So I was just like, when I saw that email, I was like,
I don't know if that's it, but that resonates perfectly.
Big Blue, for once in my life I felt close to you.
And then also I was so overcome by emotion.
No, I don't know if Bernie made you feel overcome
with emotion, but it actually, he did seem to like stir
something within you that no other candidate ever has.
So anyway.
- First of all, I'm down to camp.
I'm interested in trying it.
If I'm honest, this specific interpretation,
which I think is great about Big Blue
being the Democratic Party, and you finally felt close
to them in a really emotional way for a second,
but is it fleeting?
That never crossed my mind that specifically.
But I think there's some truth to it in the sense
that obviously there's an environmental theme
on this record, but I think my style
and Vampire Weekend's style is that, you know,
a song has to earn its existence.
And a song that basically just says like,
we love the earth, man, take care of your mother.
That's not a Vampire Weekend song, you know?
And that to me is not what Big Blue is.
Because to me, that's not interesting material for a song.
Is to be like, the world's getting polluted,
take care of it.
I think that's important material for like protest
and people to care about.
I just don't think that's material for a song.
So when I think of this song and I think about, you know,
why is it so short?
Even Arielle at times was like,
I think you should expand this into like a proper song.
But you know, I wanted this album to have some vignettes.
So what's the point of a vignette?
If anything, a vignette has to go a little deeper.
It can't just be short and have like a stock statement,
just kind of like, take care of the earth, man.
What I thought the song was about,
and similar to 2021 and the other short songs,
I was kind of like, this is about like this crucial
turning point moment where you feel close to something
bigger than yourself.
And of course, to me, Big Blue connotes the earth.
So, and I knew that that was kind of a theme of the record.
So I thought about it in that way, but I also, you know,
I like things to have deeper meanings, not just one thing.
So I was like, it's a moment of feeling deeply connected
to something in a way where you're literally overcome
by emotion, where you feel so deeply connected to it.
But the song is not just about that feel good moment.
It's about the eerie feeling that follows.
But is that it?
Was it just a moment?
Because to me, that's like a facet of modern life.
You get fired up about (beep) every day.
You see something that moves you, disturbs you, whatever.
And unfortunately, even these moments that feel pivotal,
there's something about modern life and maybe the internet,
I don't know, that just also makes it feel like
there's never stability.
Like this (beep) just keeps coming at you.
And what maybe when you were younger
and another moment of your life might've felt like
this big life-changing moment.
Nowadays, you can't even always trust that feeling.
It's almost like you're looking for that stable moment
to build off of and the deluge just keeps coming.
So when I thought of Big Blue, I was like, all right,
there's the environmental theme of feeling close to nature
for a minute, but then watching it vanish.
But also just like, if I get stuck on a phrase,
I wanna see what else people have done with it.
And so I feel like when I Googled Big Blue,
one thing that came up was like IBM.
And I was like, I love that.
That like Big Blue can make you think of the ocean,
the earth, or just the big computer corporation.
And also Big Blue is like University of Kentucky
or something, it's like sports teams.
So I was like, as much as Big Blue intersects
with this environmental theme,
it also just represents something bigger than you.
And also represents another facet of modern life,
which is like these brief moments of connectedness,
cosmic consciousness, being part of organizations
that are bigger than yourself,
and then watching it get kind of washed away
and you keep getting pushed back
to that kind of brutal American rugged individualism
or the kind of lonely individualism of like,
some people might say the neoliberal order or something.
So in that sense, I did think of the song
as always being about that moment
where you feel connected to something big,
but then having that weird feeling,
is this gonna vanish just as quickly as it came?
I felt connected to something bigger for a moment.
And then I watched as my faith or my enthusiasm
or my optimism just got overwhelmed by other things.
So in that sense, comparing it to the Democratic Party,
there's absolutely something to that.
And this is an interpretation I'll probably think about
for a long time, because obviously,
in the early days of writing "Follow the Bride,"
I was like kind of fired up about the potential
that Bernie had to create a,
I've said this once or twice,
similar to seeing Richard Pictures,
I feel like when we did some of those 2016 Bernie rallies
and you looked out, I was like,
this is a more interesting, diverse crowd
full of people from different backgrounds
and different social milieus.
When I picture playing in Washington Square Park
for the big Bernie rally,
there's all these electrical worker union guys up front,
still wearing their work clothes.
Guys doing a real hard physical labor job.
Of course, it's NYU.
You have your kind of more like college students,
ivory tower types and everybody in between.
And similar to seeing Richard Pictures
and being like, this is the first time I've seen people
just have a good vibe with a bunch of guitars
in a long time.
I felt like looking at those crowds,
you're also like, this is like the first time
I've looked at a big crowd in a long time
and felt kind of almost what you hoped you might feel
at every kind of concert you go to.
And I think most "Vampire Weekend" shows have some of that,
some shows more than others,
but to really look out at like a big crowd
and feel a sense of community, a sense of coalition,
a sense of like shared belief or something,
you don't always get that when you're at like
the Budweiser tent at the festival.
Sometimes you do.
I'm not saying corporate sponsorship
is necessarily the problem,
but I'm just saying sometimes concerts or festivals,
they feel more like Eurovision, a contest
versus like the kind of kind vibe, collective feeling.
So again, that ties into "Big Blue."
Are those moments something to grow and build on
or are they fleeting moments of beauty
with the Great Gatsby ceaselessly born back against,
(laughs)
the boat against the current ceaselessly born back?
Seinfeld, let me get a number crunch.
What's the final line of "Great Gatsby"?
- I wish I had that quote for you, bud.
- Are you a "Great Gatsby" fan, Jake?
Did that mean anything to you?
Did you ever read that in high school or something?
- Yeah, I read it in high school.
I should reread it.
It's "So We Beat On, Boats Against the Current,
Born Back Ceaselessly Into the Past."
- What I, first of all, reading books in high school sucks.
It's so hard to connect with them.
It really feels like a chore,
but I like "The Great Gatsby" 'cause I like the setting.
I like that it mostly took place on Long Island.
- It's tri-state. - Tri-state pride.
But also, that really is a great American book.
When I think of all the high school books
that Americans are forced to read,
that one speaks the most, I think, to modern America
in that it's funny, we're talking about "The Grateful Dead"
and "Flaming Lips" and that American (beep)
always has a little bit of P.T. Barnum hucksterism.
It's hard to just take it quite as seriously.
But the character of "The Great Gatsby,"
he's kind of a huckster too.
This rich, kind of elegant guy whose background actually,
he's this weird self-made man who has connections
to organized crime and bootlegging and stuff.
A lot of bootleg talk on this T.C.
So anyway, no spoilers, but just the idea
that there's something about American life,
which in turn, you could say that whatever 1920s
American life represented back then,
maybe it seemed like this uniquely American phenomenon,
a certain type of flavor feeling
of kind of New World capitalism.
Whatever was happening in 1920s America,
the whole world has a taste of it now,
arguably in late '20s. (laughs)
- I mean, and look who's president.
- Yeah, seriously.
The ultimate huckster.
So America was on the forefront of something in the '20s.
And anyway, this idea, this image of the boat
going against the current,
just always getting pushed back into the past,
there's something about that feeling of like,
I don't know if it's Americanism,
obviously, maybe it's played out,
but there's a reason people say it so much now.
Maybe it's capitalism.
This idea that always reaching for something
that's just out of reach, one step forward, two steps back.
The boat going against the current,
always getting pushed back.
Like, I'm sure many people have written high school essays
about what the current represents in that line.
What is the thing that keeps pushing the boat back
in modern life?
What is that thing that keeps that green light
just out of reach?
But that's some real (beep)
and I think that's why that book
kind of like hauntingly prefigures
elements of the next hundred years of American life.
- Give me tight.
- Yeah.
- TC Book Club.
- Great Gatsby.
We can do that.
- I'm down.
Just all high school books.
- All high school books.
- Catcher in the Rye.
- Yeah, hell yeah.
- Oh, Catcher in the Rye.
Yeah, I feel like Great Gatsby kind of ultimately
is more interesting than Catcher in the Rye.
Maybe that's sacrilegious to say.
- No, I think that's real.
♪ Big blue ♪
♪ Once in my life I felt close to you ♪
♪ I was so overcome with emotion ♪
♪ When I was hurt and in need of affection ♪
♪ When I was tired and I couldn't go home ♪
♪ Then you offered protection ♪
♪ So am I learning my lesson ♪
♪ Or am I back on my own ♪
♪ Big blue ♪
♪ Once in my life I felt close to you ♪
♪ I was so overcome with emotion ♪
♪ When I was hurt and in need of affection ♪
♪ When I was tired and I couldn't go home ♪
♪ Then you offered protection ♪
♪ So am I learning my lesson ♪
♪ Or am I back on my own ♪
- We keep meaning to get back to more top fives.
We've just had so much to cover.
I mean, on this episode alone,
we had Hank Azaria talking about a major moment
in the classic rock discourse.
We had Red Lobster.
We had more FOTB to get to.
So anyway, we promised that the top five is not dead.
It just gets a little bit harder to pull off.
I don't know why.
It's just harder when we do it on FaceTime.
- Yeah, I think there's a different rhythm
to these FaceTime shows.
- Yeah.
- We've had top fives planned the last three
or four episodes, and I've seen a few people on Twitter
being like, "Guys, please do a top five.
"I miss it."
So just to let the listeners know,
we're trying our darndest to get to them.
- We will bring back the top five
in these strange and uncertain times.
We hear you.
But anyway, before we go out,
obviously so many iconic people have been lost lately.
It's hard to actually stay on top of all them.
Seinfeld, we would be remiss not to have you
give a special shout out to a true legend
from the Seinfeld universe, Jerry Stiller,
who passed away this past week.
- Yeah, speaking of top five,
I would say that Frank Costanza
is a top five Seinfeld character.
And Jerry Stiller, as you said,
passed away a few days ago at the age of 92.
I did a bit of a deep dive,
and Frank Costanza,
Jerry Stiller wasn't the first Frank Costanza.
Originally, Frank Costanza was played by an actor
named John Randolph,
and his scene was reshot for syndication.
- Meaning that when Seinfeld aired,
there was one episode where a different actor
played Frank Costanza, and it aired,
but then they cut him out of the history books.
That scene is a real Seinfeld grail.
- That's correct, yeah.
And there's a YouTube video
where they do a split screen of the original Frank Costanza
and Jerry Stiller's Frank Costanza.
And I mean, of course, Jerry Stiller just kills it.
But also, what's remarkable about that scene
is that Jason Alexander is just like,
it just shows you what an incredible performer he is
because he's just like clockwork.
Like he does the exact same scene exactly as he did it,
I guess they'd shot it a couple of years before.
Jerry Stiller told Esquire in 2005,
"I was out of work at the time.
"My manager had retired.
"I was close to 70 years old and I had nowhere to go.
"I get this chance on Seinfeld,
"I'd never even seen the show.
"The idea was for Estelle Harris,
"who was the screamer to be the boss lady
"of the Costanza family,
"and I was supposed to be her Thurber-esque husband."
What does he mean by that, Thurber-esque?
- Is Thurber a writer?
Oh, there's an American cartoonist, James Thurber.
- Oh, okay. - An author,
cartoonist, humorist.
Interestingly, he wrote the short story
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,"
which Jerry's son, Ben-- - Damn.
- Would make a film adaptation of.
- He says, "The part called for me to wear a bald wig
"and to look like George and act very meek.
"But after a couple of days,
"I realized that acting meek was gonna get me fired
"just like the last guy.
"On the fourth day, I said to Larry David,
"'This ain't working, can I do it my way?'"
So that character, Frankenstanza,
was a real late career resurgence for Jerry.
He'd had like decades of a career
as part of the bickering husband and wife comedy duo
Stiller and Mira.
And Jerry, interestingly,
was also like a TV commercial staple before,
but especially after "Seinfeld."
It seemed like after "Seinfeld" came out,
everybody wanted that manic, frank, Kistanza energy.
So there were a ton of commercials with Jerry Stiller.
He did a commercial for Nike
where he played the late Vince Lombardi.
He's in a Jack in the Box commercial.
There's a Windex commercial with him.
And there's a weird AOL commercial with Snoop Dogg in it.
AT&T, Capital One.
Like he was just like killing it.
- Oh, everything.
So "Seinfeld" really changed his whole career.
- Yeah, 'cause in all these commercials post "Seinfeld,"
he's basically Frank Kistanza.
There are a couple that are actually
him and Estelle Harris together.
- And he basically played Frank Kistanza
on "Everybody Loves Raymond," right?
- Yeah, yeah.
He sort of played a bit of like
a watered down Frank Kistanza in my eyes.
Like a little, he played the sort of like
through the lens of Kevin James, Frank Kistanza,
but it was pretty much the same character.
- Oh no, he was on "King of Queens,"
not "Everybody Loves Raymond."
- Yeah, "King of Queens." - Oh, my bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I heard that it's "King of Queens" too, but yeah.
- I wonder what-
- I'm sorry, I just wanna know,
'cause I didn't know this before.
It's one thing to sort of get typecast
as something that you sort of happened into.
He went into a show that was already successful
and he created the character.
- Right.
- So the idea that he could take ownership
for that to be the MX guy or the whatever, that's amazing.
- Right.
He didn't just get lucky getting a great part written for him
and then he dines out on it for the rest of his life
being like, "Oh yeah, I can be whoever."
He made it happen.
- Yeah, that's a good point.
You know, one thing that he was known for before "Seinfeld"
was with Stiller and Mira in the '60s and '70s.
They were sort of like this pitch man duo
for Blue Nun Wine.
Do you guys know Blue Nun Wine?
- Blue Nun? - No.
- Blue Nun, it's a German white wine brand.
It still exists today, I was looking into it.
- And they have a nun as their mascot?
- Yeah, a nun as their mascot.
- Comes in a blue bottle.
- Yeah, a blue bottle, but the wine is white.
The wine was actually referenced on a friend of the show,
Beastie Boys, 1992 album, "Check Your Head."
There's like a sketch. - Oh, really?
- Yeah, there's a sketch where they're like,
they're in the owner of Blue Wine's house or something.
Anyway, according to the Chicago Tribune,
these commercials were so effective
that they boosted sales of Blue Nun Wine by 500%.
So I found one of these Blue Nun Wine ads
and just thought it was like kind of a charming relic
from pre-Seinfeld, Jerry Stiller.
So I thought we could give it a listen.
- Excuse me, miss,
but you seem to be having trouble picking out a wine.
Maybe I can help you.
- Oh, I'm sorry, but I never talk to strangers.
- Oh, how did you know?
- What do you mean, how did I know?
You're a stranger.
- Right, Elliot Stranger.
- Is that really your name?
- No, it's really Elliot Sverdlik,
but I do meet a lot of pretty girls this way.
- I like you, Elliot.
You're weird, but I like you.
Maybe you can help.
See, I'm having some friends over for smorgasbord,
some shrimps, a little cheese, some meatballs.
What kind of wine can you serve with all those things?
- May I suggest you have a little Blue Nun
at your smorgasbord?
- Oh, I don't think she'd have a very good time.
Besides, it's gonna be all couples.
- Oh, no, Blue Nun wine.
It's a delicious white wine that's correct with any dish.
Meat, fish, cheese, meatballs.
- Oh, Blue Nun.
Elliot, you made me a convert.
- I suppose you're gonna drink it religiously.
- Yeah, it's gonna become a real habit.
- Blue Nun, the delicious white wine
that's correct with any dish.
Another Seychelles wine imported by Schefflin
and Company New York.
- Diller and Mira, one of their running gags
was that he was Jewish and she was Catholic,
which I guess like in the Ed Sullivan era
was like an edgy dichotomy for two people.
So it was kind of a callback to that.
So I guess there was a lot of riffing in that Blue Nun ad.
- That's what it is.
I love just that old school New York humor,
just old school showbiz,
but it's actually like witty and funny.
- I love when she says, "You're weird."
- "You're weird, I like you."
Well, RIP to the legend, Jerry Stiller.
Condolences to the family.
Thank you for all the joy you've brought us on Seinfeld
and so much else.
This episode is dedicated to you.
All right, everybody, we'll see you next time.
Peace.
- [Announcer] "Time Crisis" with Ezra Koenig.
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