Episode 129: Green Day and Yellow Mustard
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Transcript
Time Crisis, back again. Here we are talking about music, culture, culinary delights.
Today we have no guest, just raw, uncut Crisis crew discussing the news of the day.
Everything from James Gandolfini's love of Dookie to the music of Lisa Lowe. This is Time Crisis
with Ezra Koenig.
Let's begin.
♫ You passed me by, all of those great romances ♫
♫ You were a pal to 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 ♫
♫ We were only there ♫
Time Crisis back again. What's up, Jake?
Not much, I feel like we should do full disclosure to the audience.
I just saw you about an hour ago.
That's right. Yeah, we gotta fill everybody in, and I gotta apologize to Seinfeld.
What the hell?
This is like an episode of a prestige drama that starts at the end.
We see the aftermath of an incident, and then it's like, "What the hell?"
And then it's like, "One hour earlier."
Everything's tense and weird.
I guess it all started with, I saw on Instagram,
actor Oliver Hudson post about--
Actually, I think Rashida showed me.
So this guy, Oli Hudson, posted on Instagram
him holding this yellow tote bag and a four-pack of beer.
And he posted, "Thank you so much, French's Mustard, for sharing your mustard beer with me."
And she was like, "Is this real?"
And you know, he's a funny guy. He's kind of a joker.
And I was like, "I guess it could be real."
And then, of course, there's levels of real in our weird, marketed reality.
Especially because I feel like back in the day,
that used to be a very straightforward thing where you'd be like--
If you saw a picture of something that was just two brands mashed up,
you're like, "Is this real?"
Someone would be like, "No, no, that's from Mad Magazine."
Whereas today, there's levels of real where it's like--
For instance, if you heard that Kentucky Fried Chicken and Widespread Panic
were teaming up to do a line of sweatpants.
I mean, just because Grateful Dead's been out there doing a lot of collabs lately.
So just imagine that I hit you guys up on the thread and I was like,
"Hey guys, you hear that KFC and the band Widespread Panic are teaming up for a line of sweatpants?"
The question of, "Is it real or not?"
There's levels to it because one version of it would be,
"No, no, they're really serious about it. KFC has done some merch before."
Obviously, Widespread Panic sells t-shirts, but they've never had success with sweatpants.
So they really put their heads together and they're really trying to turn this into a business.
KFC and Widespread. You'd be surprised that a lot of spreadnecks--
A lot of spreadnecks love KFC.
Is that really the name of the fan base? Spreadnecks?
I think it's part of the fan base.
Because they're like a southern jam band, right?
Yeah, but I don't know if every fan of Widespread Panic is a spreadneck.
I think it's possible--
That's a disgusting term. Spreadneck?
I don't know about that.
You're a redneck who likes Widespread. You're a spreadneck.
Do you think they went that direction because Deadhead and Spreadhead would be too close?
Yes, Spreadhead.
Leaning into the southern heritage.
Okay, well, first of all, I'm not--
We're getting way off base here.
But now that we're here, I want to get into it.
Just like do a linguistical crunch on the Widespread fan base.
Because my guess-- I could be wrong here.
But I think spreadnecks are a subcategory of Widespread fans.
I could totally picture this being a real thing.
Because I grew up with some people in New Jersey who were into Widespread.
You know, classic East Coast jam band heads.
I could picture something where like,
"I live in Connecticut, and I'll always go see Widespread on the New England run."
"I'll go as far down, maybe even as Philly, to catch a Widespread show."
But when you get down south, it's mostly spreadnecks.
And I'm more of like a Yankee Spreadhead.
Maybe there's something like that.
The first result is on forum.fish.net.
"Need help dealing with some spreadnecks."
And it says, "My Widespread panic-obsessed friends, spreadnecks."
Then we have a couple--
We have some more results.
You know, they're obscure blogs, but it's like, "I'm a proud spreadneck."
So maybe I'm wrong.
I have to say, just did some recon in my own house.
You know, Amantha, my wife, is very closely affiliated with Widespread.
Because she put out--
She released and her brother was Widespread Panic's tour manager for years.
But they came out on her--
Wait, what?
Whoa, I didn't never know that.
Because we haven't actually gone as jam as we've gotten.
I bet some emails would suggest this too.
We actually haven't gone very deep on Widespread.
But you know, they're from Athens, Georgia.
They came out on Capricorn Records, which was her and her father's label.
So they're very, very close.
And she says, in her experience, it's Spreadhead.
Oh, really? Spreadhead?
They're Spreadheads.
And wherever you're getting "spreadneck" from does feel like a subcategory of a Spreadhead.
Right.
It's crazy that they're from Athens, Georgia.
What year did they start approximately?
You know, like mid-'80s?
I'm going to have to go in the kitchen and ask.
Hold on one second.
I'm just thinking, I mean, iconically, REM is from Athens, Georgia.
And I think of Widespread as really in their heyday in the '80s.
No.
I wonder.
Well, I think they probably got really big in the '90s.
Yeah, so they signed Widespread for their record, I guess that would be their record label debut in '91.
Oh, OK. My bad.
And they were the first band on Capricorn in its revival.
So I bet they would have had to have been around from, yeah, probably '88.
Yeah.
They would have had to have been kicking.
In my head, they started in the early '80s.
I don't know why I thought that.
And then that would have been a fascinating crossover.
I think some of the dudes are older, so it wouldn't shock me if they were like other pre-Widespread bands,
like gigging around Athens at the same time as early REM.
You know, Jake, I'm not trying to put you on blast, but a few years ago,
I did send you a Widespread song called "Picking Up the Pieces," and I was like, "This is kind of cool."
And I don't think you were feeling it.
I remember, yeah, not totally connecting.
I don't think I hated it.
No, no, you didn't hate on it, but can somebody throw in "Picking Up the Pieces" by Widespread?
Widespread also, they do so many covers.
Like, they...
Right.
Oh, yeah, I think this song's vibe-y.
It's got that '90s Blind Melon hippie vibe, which not a lot of stuff really has.
Loving that mandolin.
Yeah, I mean, this is a vibe.
You've got to admit, this is a vibe.
I'm feeling that.
It's a little Blind Melon, a little Dave.
And honestly, if some of the production choices were a little different and the harmonies were a little different,
like, thousands of chains, dude.
Oh, yeah, totally.
Like, thousands of chains.
♪ Picking up the pieces ♪
Yeah, totally.
It's a thin line.
I mean, I'm sure all these bands, they probably liked a lot of the same classic rock.
But like I was saying, Widespread does so many covers.
They cover a lot of dead songs, a lot of classic rock, Van Morrison and stuff.
There's been multiple times when I thought of a cover idea for Vampire Weekend to do.
And I looked up and I was like, "Has anybody ever covered this before?"
I swear, there were like three or four times where it's like, very few people aside from Widespread and Panic.
Do you remember what songs?
Yeah, there was one kind of deep one.
Okay, well, maybe it's not that deep.
Do you know the song Sharon by David Bromberg?
No.
I guess we got to throw it on.
Sharon by David Bromberg.
This song's somewhat notable because it's basically the entire Grateful Dead is the backing band.
Oh, wow.
I feel like De La Soul sampled this or something.
Doesn't this sound like a De La Soul song?
Beastie Boys.
Oh, Beastie Boys?
It's Paul's Boutique.
And it's just like this funny, weird song.
Oh, yeah.
Is this like '70s?
Yeah.
I was at this carnival just a few years ago.
No big deal, Ferris wheel.
Wow, this is interesting.
Yeah, it's like-
It's even like, almost like a Jonathan Richman vibe or like a-
Yeah, yeah. It's weird.
There's almost something a little like punk about his delivery.
Totally.
What year is this?
Can we get a number crunch?
I mean, as I'm listening to it, it's hard to picture me being like, "I said don't cost no money."
I don't know if I can pull it off.
1972?
When was the first Modern Lovers album?
Right around then, right? '72?
Uh, later.
Oh, okay.
Cool song.
Yeah, it's a cool song.
It would probably- maybe when I'm a little bit older, I can pull it off.
Anyway, KFC, widespread panic, teamed up to do sweatpants.
If I told you that 20 years ago, you might say, "Is this real?"
And I'd say like, "No, it's the local radio station in Athens, Georgia made it up as an April Fool's Day prank."
It'd be like, "It's not real."
Or if it was real, people would be like, "That's crazy."
Whereas today, when you hear something that seems like crazy, it's not even real or not real.
The likelihood is like, "Yes, it's a promotional thing."
The whole point is that you say, "Is it real or not real?"
And the answer is, "Kind of."
Yes, it actually exists.
If it got a lot of buzz, they might make it into a big thing.
And if people mostly just laugh at it,
they might make the funny cross-promotional thing that makes 20 copies and lives on Instagram and that's that.
So I was thinking about this. Is this French's mustard beer real?
And I look at this picture of Olly Hudson holding it, and I'm like,
"You know what? Mustard beer does not sound disgusting to me."
In fact, the more I thought about it, mustard beer sounded kind of good.
And for the first time ever, I saw some funny cross-promotional item,
and I was like, "I actually want to try this."
I hit our producer Matt up and I said,
"Can we reach out to French's and find out what the deal is with this and get some?"
And actually, as I'm saying this, I still don't even know what the deal is.
All I know is that they teamed-- wait, actually, is this in our notes?
Let me look it up.
Okay.
French's mustard teamed up with Colorado's Oscar Blues Brewery
to create French's mustard beer, celebrating National Mustard Day on August 1st.
That's also Jerry's birthday.
[laughs]
Why is National Mustard Day-- Jerry Garcia was born on National Mustard Day?
Interesting.
Or maybe the mustard industry chose Jerry's birthday
because they somehow thought that there'd be some interesting resonance.
Oscar Blues describes the taste of French's mustard beer
as a "semi-tart tropical wheat beer infused with citrus furies
to complement French's classic yellow mustard."
Okay. Makes sense with the heffaweizen.
And I guess it actually-- they actually used real French's yellow mustard to make this.
And, okay, the Oscar Blues-French's collaboration is currently sold out online.
However, the brewery released the recipe online so consumers could make the beer at home.
All right, that's tight. I like that.
Letting the people in on the trade secrets.
But anyway, to bring us up to speed, so Oscar Blues sent it over,
and then I opened the box, and I realized, like, "Oh, wait.
Because we're doing this show remotely, how's this gonna work?
I don't want to be, like, just drinking this by myself."
So I was like, "Wait, who's actually in town?"
And Nick is out of town. Jake and Seinfeld are in town.
So I texted Thread being like, "All right, how do we do this?"
Jake was over at his studio. Seinfeld was at his home office.
[laughs]
And so everybody gave me their addresses, and so Jake's closer to me,
so I rolled over to Jake's, gave him a beer,
but it took a little longer than I expected, like, kind of,
somehow during COVID there's still a rush hour.
So by the time I gave Jake some beer, I realized,
"I'm not gonna be able to make it to Seinfeld and back to my house.
It just wouldn't work." So, unfortunately--
It's no problem. It's totally fine, man.
Well, all right. I'm glad to hear it. You sound totally content with that.
But I did decide, Seinfeld, that I'm gonna give you
the official French's mustard beer glass,
because I do feel bad that you didn't get an actual beer,
but you can have the official beer glass,
and maybe you can drink your Coca-Cola out of it in the future.
Wow. Okay. That's cool.
So everybody's a winner in this scenario, but in the meantime,
Jake, should we go grab our brews?
Yeah, I put mine on ice.
So this kind of beer needs to be ice cold for it to be any good.
Oh, like you put it in the freezer?
Oh, yeah. I put it in the actual ice box.
Oh, damn. I wish I did that. All right. Well, mine's in the fridge.
I'm gonna go get it.
Let's grab 'em.
I want you to move up and down the beach, well
The fellas drew branches out of every chain
These are not a part of the scheme, but
Let them hope and let them dream
So many dreams in the mind of a man, well
Come to life through a good woman
When mama walks in another place, well
It's in her eyes and it's on her face
Some like it cool, some like it hot
Some give it up, some give it up
Some wanna give everything that they've got
Mama wants the mustard, yeah
She needs a little spice
Mama wants the mustard, yeah
She'll spread it out on the line
Mama wants the mustard, yeah
She'll never, never stop
Mama wants the mustard, it will take her to town
Even just looking at the beer can,
when you look at it, it incorporates the classic
French's yellow and logo.
And I'm just saying, like, when you look at this,
like, sometimes there are these collabs
and the whole point is that they're kooky.
You know, KFC widespread sweatpants, things of that nature.
But when I look at this, I swear that if, like,
I guess I feel like I would have heard of it if it was French's,
but I swear if you were just like,
you know, like, in the Midwest, there's this thing called mustard beer?
And I'd be like, what? I'd never heard of that.
And you'd be like, oh yeah, at most neighborhood liquor stores in the Midwest,
you can get mustard beer.
Really?
Yeah, it's just like, the distribution network doesn't go that far,
but it's kind of a classic.
Like, once I heard about something in Nebraska
that's beer and tomato juice.
Is this real?
You guys ever heard of that?
Yeah, I've heard of that, sure.
And you know, it's like a Michelada.
It's very similar to a Michelada.
I think this is just straight up like V8,
like probably not spicy.
But I heard about that and I was like, that's tight.
That's that type of [bleep] you'd want,
like road tripping through Nebraska, pull over to like a small town bar,
and then everybody starts drinking like tomato juice and beer,
and you're like, can I try one?
That sounds good to me.
So anyway, I feel like similarly, if you told me like,
oh yeah, mustard beer, Wisconsin, Ohio, a little bit of Illinois,
like, I'd be like, that's cool.
That sounds like some cool regional [bleep]
but it's kind of like upstate New York or something.
They're like, yeah, in the Rochester area, there's this thing called mustard beer.
You know, just like they eat white hot dogs up there.
You guys know about that?
They eat white hot dogs in Rochester.
White?
Yeah, they call them white hots.
Wow, upstate New York between Buffalo wings and the white hots in Rochester
is really punched above its weight in terms of--
Oh yeah.
Kind of bar meat.
No, there's some amazing food up there.
So anyway, as I look at this, there's just this part of me that's like,
this makes sense.
So let's try this.
Let's crack these.
All right.
Woo!
It is complex.
It starts out pretty sweet.
It's pretty light, which I like.
You get a tiny bit of the mustard at the end.
Dude, honestly, this is good.
My only disappointment is that I wish it was a little more mustardy,
but it's not a bad beer.
They're pretty restrained with the mustard.
I couldn't drink more than one of these.
I think that would get weird, just like slamming mustard beers.
You know what?
Honestly, the more I sip this, I really get the mustard.
This is a very interesting experience.
It's like a mustard aftertaste.
This is a fascinating beer.
Beer and cars.
That's what Time Crisis is all about.
Wait, so Oscar Blues is from Colorado.
Where's French is from?
I'm guessing Paris?
Are you kidding?
I bet it's probably American, but that'd be cool if it was actually French.
French's was founded in Fairport, New York,
and then moved to Rochester, New York.
Oh, really?
Named after Robert Timothy French.
Dude.
Whoa.
I swear I didn't know that about Rochester.
I think a future Mountain Brews EP will be called Bar Meat.
[laughs]
Just--
That's the most unappealing album name ever.
[laughs]
Bar Meat.
Speaking of which, Jake, can I tell them we've been working a little bit on
The Worst Margarita in My Life?
Yeah. I'm excited about it.
You sent me that little clip of you singing yesterday.
Yeah.
I'm throwing down some harmonies and things.
It's a great song.
Can't wait for people to hear the finished version.
Dude, I'm doubting this beer.
This is good.
It's interesting.
It's a cool beer.
And again, I can't stress this enough.
I had it on ice for the last 45 minutes.
It is frigid.
It's all about ice cold beers.
Yeah. Hot summer day, it's going down smooth.
Actually, Jake, I got a question for you.
As a bigger beer drinker than me, I've been finding Friday nights,
if I'm at the studio, I like the tradition of Friday night beer.
Just to wind things down.
And similar to you, I have this instinct, nothing beats an ice cold beer.
So sometimes I might buy some beer and then put it in the freezer.
But then I get all stressed out about the timeline.
Because maybe you put it in the freezer, next thing you know, you're messing around.
Jamming out, getting in the zone.
And then it's always in the back of my mind and stresses me out.
If you leave a beer too long in the freezer, does it explode?
This is a great question.
I've had the same concern because I often will put beer in the freezer.
But I'm usually like-- I've never had a situation where I've completely forgotten about it.
I'm always like-- even like two hours later, I'll be like, "Oh no! I gotta get those beers out of the freezer!"
And they're alright.
I've had some close calls, but yeah, I've never had an explosion.
But it seems like they would if they truly froze.
Especially in a glass bottle, that could be real messy.
Yikes. I mean, I would assume that the freezing point is the same.
Because it's 98% water, so...
According to the internet, yes, they will explode.
Given beer is about 90% water, the water expands when frozen.
Beer will make a mess in your freezer left too long.
That would be so harsh.
Imagine that you put in a bunch of glass bottles of Corona.
12-pack.
A 12-pack.
You've got a bunch of friends over just jamming.
Jamming in the studio, jamming in the practice space.
You put the 12-pack of Corona in the freezer.
Kind of forget about it because you're in the zone.
And then you're like, "Oh, s***. Those are probably really cold now."
And everybody's like, "Oh, man. I could really use a nice cold beer.
I've been sweating through all this jamming."
And then you open the fridge.
And not only are there no beers for anybody,
you've got a dangerous mess of sharp glass and ice.
You have shards of glass.
You know what you need, though, dude?
Nightmare.
Is a studio cooler.
Right.
So when you make the beer run, then you get the bag of ice.
That's like pro level.
I was listening to--maybe because I was throwing down some harmonies
on "Worst Margarita in My Life,"
I was listening back to all the classic Mountain Breeze.
What's the verse on "Sweet Chili Heat" about practice,
going to band practice?
♪ Got practice on Monday ♪
♪ A rehearsal we could use ♪
That line really jumped out to me this time.
I just love, like, "Got practice on Monday.
Rehearsal we could use."
Yeah, we're rusty.
Yeah, and then it goes, ♪ Learning cream puff ♪
♪ Warhead Mexicali blues ♪
Oh, yeah, then it's like, ♪ I almost always bring a case ♪
♪ To load up the fridge down in the practice space ♪
I can't forget the sweet chili or a ball of sleep.
Oh, right.
For Richard Pictures practice, I usually roll in with a 12-pack of brew
because, like, we got seven people in the band.
That's gone like that.
Usually I'm bringing a 12-er and someone else is bringing a 12-er
because that's gone.
And so I load up the beer in the practice space,
but I also keep a bottle of tequila in the practice space fridge
because after a few brews, it starts to slow you down a little bit.
So then you have a few nips of tequila to kind of, like, bring you back.
No, and I also--I love this image of, like,
you've been working all day, but you got practice.
And I like the way you set the stage
because by saying, "It's rehearsal we could use,"
it's clear.
This is not just like, "Oh, yeah, you know, we're just having fun here."
It's like, "No, we got a gig coming up."
Rehearsal is somewhat important.
And then maybe you're tired from the day and nighttime rehearsal
and you drink a few beers, but if you start getting sluggish,
that's going to have negative consequences for the gig coming up.
So in this sense, Sweet Chili Heat really is, like, kind of a lifesaver.
It's a medicine.
Yep.
Well, thanks, Oscar Blues, for sending this beer.
This is actually a good beer.
And I'll give this corporate collab two thumbs up.
It just makes sense.
All I want to do is drink beer for breakfast
All I want to eat is them barbecue chips
All I want is someone just to try to protect us
You can try, but you never want to try to defect us
Twenty-eight, yeah, I'm a slum
I'm a living for the bum
You're listening to Time Crisis.
So this is some big news in the rock community.
Made some waves last week.
An Instagram user named Andrew James Butters
left a comment on Michael Imperioli's page.
And for anybody who doesn't know, Michael Imperioli is a great actor
who very famously played Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos.
Iconic role on an iconic show.
So this guy, Andrew James Butters, said,
"What kind of music was Jim into?"
Meaning James Gandolfini, the star of The Sopranos, Tony Soprano,
incredible actor who, you know, tragically died.
When was that, like, five or six years ago?
2013.
2013. Real sad.
Yeah, totally sad.
Way too young.
He always was so good in his roles outside The Sopranos, too.
Just such a great actor from everything you read about him.
Just, like, a very kind dude.
So anyway, Andrew James Butters asked, "What kind of music was Jim into?"
And Michael Imperioli responded, "Green Day."
And then somebody else wrote, "Yeah, f---ing right.
Jim listening to Dookie would be an honor to watch."
I'm not sure what kind of tone that dude was going for.
Honor?
But also, once you say, "Yeah, f---ing right,"
it kind of sounds like you're saying, "I don't believe you."
Yeah, you're calling BS.
He meant, like, "Yeah, f---ing right."
Oh, that's probably what he meant, because then he's like--
I love this idea.
It'd be an honor to watch him.
Like, couldn't you see this being, like, a weird YouTube video thing
of, like, people watching people--
I guess that's a thing, actually.
There was the Phil Collins thing this past week.
But I love the idea of watching people listen to an entire album.
The whole idea, too, of, like, the Phil Collins thing
is that there's those two dudes, and they have a lot of good videos.
I watched some more of them.
For anybody who doesn't know, these two dudes went viral.
They listened to music they've never heard before,
which is a big phenomenon on YouTube.
We've actually talked about it on the show before.
These guys, they listen to all sorts of stuff for the first time.
I watched one where they were listening to "Do It Again" by Steely Dan.
They were really feeling it.
And they went viral because they were listening to Phil Collins
in the air tonight, and you can imagine they were pretty excited
when the famous drum fill came in.
Yeah.
But the thing that all these videos have in common
is there's always people listening to something they have no context for,
which is interesting, especially if people are enthusiastic and funny.
They can make these really interesting observations,
or it can just be joyous to watch somebody enjoying music.
I thought those kids breathed new life into that song.
I loved it.
There's also something cool about when you watch people hear something
for the first time, you hear something different, too.
Yeah.
I really like Steely Dan, and I like "Do It Again,"
but, you know, there's something about the--
because I know so much about Steely Dan.
I've read Donald Fagan's book.
You know?
I just know about that.
I feel like I--
and maybe just because Donald Fagan is a cranky Jewish dude from New Jersey,
I feel like I know his whole milieu and style.
So when I hear that song, I'm just picturing these intellectual dudes.
I don't know.
I just have this take on who they are and their life.
But then when you kind of just hear people hearing it with no context,
you realize that that song is just an amazing, dark, trippy, weird,
kind of, like, Latin psychedelic.
The way those dudes react to, like, the guitar solo on "Do It Again,"
you lose all the context for Steely Dan being, like,
these smart-ass guys who went to Bard,
and you really just hear the music, and you're just like,
"Whoa, this is deep, dark, weird music."
You know what I mean?
Wouldn't that be, like, such a trippy thing in the future,
like some sort of weird drug or something,
where you could, like, take a pill or do some scan of your brain,
and you could erase your memory of certain music
and then listen to it for the first time,
but nothing else in your brain has changed, you know?
So, like, imagine if I'm hearing Steely Dan for the first time
as a 43-year-old guy that likes all this other music.
It would be mind-blowing, because I've heard Steely Dan for, like--
I've heard Steely Dan nonstop for 35 years
just by virtue of being, like,
a guy that listens to classic rock radio in his car,
you know, and makes Home Depot runs.
So it's like-- it would be amazing to hear that [bleep]
for the first time. - I know what you mean.
For some reason, it cracked me up to picture, like,
these, like, scientists who are, like, working really hard
on, you know, like, neurologists, neuroscientists,
and then they're like, "We cracked a code,
but here's the thing. This is so specific, it's useless."
And I'm like, "Well, what is it?"
"We did figure out how to temporarily erase part of a memory
and then put it back." - What?
- "Well, that has all sorts of consequences for science,
for psychology, all this [bleep]."
And it's like, "No, but here's the thing.
For some reason, it only applies to the music of Steely Dan."
[laughter]
You know what it is? This could be a--
Jake, you should pitch Hannah on this.
This could be a movie that's a combination
of the weird Beatles movie, where the--
- Yeah, "Yesterday." - The guy wakes up
and nobody knows the Beatles. It's a combination
of "Yesterday" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
- Yeah, this would be a very good Spike Jonze film.
- Yeah. Charlie Kaufman's on the script right now.
- Exactly.
- "Every middle-aged man has the same fantasy.
What if I could hear Steely Dan again for the first time?"
"From the minds of Charlie Kaufman,
Spike Jonze, and Jake Longstreet."
[laughter]
But anyway, this is all people who are hearing stuff
for the first time. I wonder if--
it might be just super boring, but you start a channel
where you just listen to [bleep] you've heard a million times,
I want a video-- a YouTube channel where
Jake listens to "Alien Lens" guided by voices.
[laughter]
- Oh, right here, right here, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, you don't stop it. Like, part of these videos,
they always stop it. They're like, "Wow, man.
That's deep." This is just like, you don't stop at all.
You're just like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, mm-hmm."
Oh, yeah, that was a good part.
"Oh, yeah, mm-hmm."
- "Excuse me, Napoleon." Yeah, just like...
- Just singing along.
- Just doing all the drums.
- Terrible. Awful.
It's just like being at a bar with guys.
[laughter]
- No one wants that.
- Just loudly singing all the guitar parts.
- "Howdy, kiddies." - "Check this out."
[imitates guitar]
Anyway, so this guy writes back,
"Yeah, [bleep] right. Jim, listening to 'Dookie'
would be an honor to watch. Very strange."
Very strange formulation.
"It would be an honor, sir, to watch you listen to 'Dookie.'"
That sounds like some weird thing
that, like, a MAGA dude would say about Trump.
[laughter]
You know what I mean?
Like, there's some comment section war where, like,
a lib is like, "Oh, Trump says that he loves 'Dookie'?
Man, you got no taste, dude. Green Day's not even real punk."
And then some MAGA dude's like, "[bleep] you.
Sir, it would be an honor to watch you listen to 'Dookie.'"
He's like, "Wait, what?
Why do you want to watch President Trump?"
- "To watch." - "Listen to 'Dookie.'"
Even-- It'd be, like, more normal, too.
I guess this is also just, like, the Internet.
And maybe COVID, too.
It's like, we just watch each other do things.
We live in a weird surveillance state.
Jesus Christ.
It's also, like, you know, in the '70s,
if you heard that, like, a cool actor
was really into Pink Floyd,
I could imagine, like, a bunch of kids,
like, "Dazed and Confused" type kids,
just hanging out, just being like,
"Man, wouldn't it be sick?
Just get blazed with Robert Redford,
throw on 'Dark Side.'"
The fantasy would be listening to a record
you mutually love with somebody you look up to.
- Right. - Anyway, it's not about this guy.
It's not about the guy who wants to--
who wants to watch James Gandolfini
listen to 'Dookie.'
Anyway, Michael Imperiali responds and says,
"He would play the vinyl of 'Dookie'
in his trailer at work, totally serious.
- No joke." - Vinyl?
"He loved 'Green Day.'"
I'm not buying the vinyl.
Well, I mean, Sopranos started in,
like, '99.
- Yeah. - I mean, early 2000s.
That's, like, the low point of vinyl.
I'm sure there were copies of 'Dookie'
available on vinyl in 1999, '98,
but, like, I don't know.
That's pushing it.
Maybe he was just such a music connoisseur
- that he was, like-- - Yeah?
No, he had a really nice turntable
and speakers.
I love the fact that he's such, like,
a record collector head
that he's gone to the trouble of putting
speakers and a receiver and a record player
in his trailer on set,
but the music he's blasting is 'Dookie.'
No, Grant, I'm on the record.
I love 'Dookie.'
It's a "beautiful record."
[laughing]
But it's not a record you associate
with, like, record collector guys.
Right. If you told me about an actor
who had a really nice audiophile
vinyl set up in his trailer,
I'm picturing, like, Johnny Depp
with, like, some special copy of, like,
- "Exile on Main Street." - Right.
You know what I mean?
- Yeah. - But whatever.
James Gandolfini, idiosyncratic guy.
So Stereogum interviewed Imperioli
to find out more,
which is very cool.
Here's some quotes.
"Gandolfini would also sing 'Basket Case'
and make up his own lyrics about HBO
and the writers and producers of 'The Sopranos,'
usually when he was feeling overworked
and overexposed,
and his lyrics would reflect that.
Some of the more musical crew members
would add a verse or two. Great fun."
Interesting. Like...
♪ Do you have that time? ♪
[laughing]
Yeah, I can't...
I'm really curious about, like,
who's the creator of 'The Sopranos,'
David Chase?
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
"I Went to a Shrink."
That's something that that song
has in common with 'The Sopranos.'
♪ I went to a shrink, Dr. Melfi ♪
Wait, what's the actual line?
♪ I went to a shrink ♪
- ♪ She said... ♪ - Wait, is it "shrink"
or is it something else?
♪ No, I went to a whore ♪
♪ He said, "My life's a bore" ♪
I remember that.
"To analyze my dreams."
Oh, yeah.
That is actually a great line.
Like you said, Jake,
there's the whore line,
which is, like, a perfect rhyme.
"I went to a whore, he said,
'My life's a bore.'"
But I do like, "I went to a shrink
to analyze my dreams."
Like, it doesn't really rhyme,
and yet there's something
very elegant about it.
It works.
I don't know if, like,
Hannah had seen this Gandalf Beanie story
on the internet this weekend,
but Saturday morning, we woke up,
first thing on the Sono system,
- Dookie. - Really?
Yeah, I hadn't heard it in a while,
a long time.
Hearing the singles, I was like,
"Okay, I've heard this a million times,"
but there's so many songs on that record
that are not singles that are awesome.
That song "She" is really good.
♪ She's teaching silence ♪
Yeah, great song.
There's this kind of, like, '50s one
that's really good,
very solid pop songwriting.
Wait, what year did Dookie come out?
'94, I want to say.
Yeah, it was released '94.
They recorded it in '93.
I remember going with my mom up to Maine
to look at a college up there.
It must have been the, I don't know,
sometime in 1994 when we were staying
in this hotel.
Yeah, what school? Bowdoin?
I think we looked at Bates College.
Bates?
I did not apply to,
although there's a great, Alex,
they have a connection with Alex Katz,
who's one of my favorite painters,
and they have a big Alex Katz,
I think a permanent exhibition
of some of his, like, a lot of his work
up there in Lewiston, Maine.
But we were staying in a hotel
in Lewiston, Maine,
and I remember turning on MTV
and the video for "Longview" was on,
and my mom was like, "Do you like this?"
And I was like, "Yeah, it's awesome."
That's a great song.
Yeah, and by the way, Jake,
I don't know if we're just really
in tune with the universe,
but there's a classic episode
of "The Sopranos" where Tony takes Meadow
to look at colleges in Maine.
That's right. Wait,
is that when he kills that guy?
Yeah, that's a classic episode.
I think it's called "College."
Yeah.
Did I get a number crunch on that, Seinfeld?
Is there a "Sopranos" episode called "College"?
Now, now, now, now, now, now,
let's get a number crunch.
Brought to you by Seinfeld 2000.
That's correct.
The episode is called "College."
It's season one, episode five.
Where do they go to look at colleges?
Maine.
Oh!
Damn, dude.
First thought, best thought.
And then Meadow Soprano did end up
going to college at Columbia,
where "Vampire Weekend" started,
so it comes full circle.
I sit around and watch the tube,
but nothing's on.
I change the channels for an hour or two.
Tweet all my drums just for a bit.
I'm sick of all the same old snitch.
In a house with unlocked doors
and I'm looking like this.
Break my lips and close my eyes.
Take me away to paradise.
I'm gonna murder you with a blunt
and a felt-tip chip.
It's interesting also looking at the lyrics to "Basket Case."
I mean, I guess this is pretty obvious.
People would say there's this kind of wave
of self-deprecating songs in the '90s.
There's this tone of kind of slacker,
like Gen X, nihilism or whatever.
But it is interesting to me to look at "Basket Case."
Obviously, we were both listening to rock radio
a lot in the '90s, so this might be a bigger deal to us
than people who may be listening to all sorts of different music.
But I'm really looking at the lyrics to "Basket Case."
I know these words so well, but to see them all together,
I'm really struck by the poetry of it
and the fact that it's a song about psychology.
There's the line about the shrink, but the whole thing is,
"I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone,
no doubt about it. Sometimes I give myself the creeps, blah, blah, blah.
I think I'm cracking up. Am I just paranoid or am I just stoned?"
And then he's talking about the shrink,
lack of sex is bringing me down.
So basically, a dude being really hard on himself, feeling neurotic,
giving himself the creeps, having a weird psychological breakdown.
And when I think of songs that define '90s rock radio,
I think of this, a year earlier, "Creep" by Radiohead.
Of course, there were songs about alienation,
but to have this many songs that are just about being a loser,
like back then, pretty soon after this, just like--
- I mean, all of the Nirvana songs. - Yeah.
"Self-Esteem" by Offspring, just straight up.
I'm just a sucker who's got no self-esteem.
I'm sure you could go back to the '50s and earlier
popular music about not having self-esteem or feeling like a creep
or feeling like a loser or not liking yourself.
I can't get no satisfaction.
Although even that, though, it's tough.
It's almost like you're disappointed with the world
that they can't give you satisfaction.
I bet somebody could write an essay about this,
that maybe by the '90s, psychological terms
had become just so part of how people talked about themselves.
'Cause obviously, everybody has feelings.
Psychologists didn't invent feelings.
All they do is analyze them.
But there's something about the language of these songs--
"neurotic," "I'm a loser," "I've got no self-esteem," "I'm a creep."
It's a very specific '90s thing,
and I wonder if it has to do with this particular generation
and their kind of understanding of their own selves
and their own minds in a way that didn't quite exist.
It's a Generation X realism.
It's a clear-eyed, borderline nihilistic kind of sense of realism.
Right.
The irony is, it was the '90s,
which was arguably the most prosperous and peaceful time in human history.
So there's a funny irony there
that during this incredibly cushy time,
people were sort of like, "God, I suck."
Yeah, but it is funny, too.
I mean, this is almost too deep.
We gotta do more research.
One thing all these songs have in common, to me,
is that if you look at "Satisfaction," for instance, in the '60s,
Mick Jagger's almost just like,
"Man, I got all this energy and frustration and sexuality,
and the world is so f---ing lame."
People talk about that song as being this new generation
who's so angry at the uptight world that they were entering.
They're like, "We gotta change s---. This sucks."
And when I think about my generation
beyond the kind of millennial, sad boy universe,
it also expresses a type of disappointment in the world.
But when I think of all these '90s songs,
they're not disappointed in the world.
They're really just disappointed in themselves.
It's a very interesting moment.
There's very little anger towards the world in these songs.
It really is just like, "I guess I just f---ing suck."
I can't think of another moment where there was that vibe
of just not like, "The world's messed up,"
or, "I feel alienated by this f---ing place I was born into."
The vibe really is just like, "I suck."
"I gotta pull my act together here."
"I'm a f---ing loser. I'm a weirdo.
I'm f---ing neurotic to the bone, man.
I suck."
Anyway, back to Gandolfini.
Imperioli also added--
He named his dog Dookie and used it in his email address.
And then Imperioli, by the way, he's a musician.
He's got a band called Zopa,
and he's shouted out artists including Lou Reed, David Bowie,
Hooster Dew, Big Thief, PJ Harvey, and Fugazi.
I wonder if Imperioli, he's got a little more high-end, elite taste.
You can imagine two dudes talking in the late '90s
and one dude being like, "What are you into?"
And the guy's like, "Huge Bob Mould fan.
I love that kind of slightly more intellectual strain
of '80s punk and hardcore."
And then be like, "Oh, really? I like punk, too."
"Oh, yeah? What are you into, man?"
"Well, my favorite record of all time is 'Dookie' by Green Day."
You can picture the Dookies into Hooster Dew and Fugazi
just being kind of like, "Uh, yeah."
That's pop.
Yeah, that's pop.
I wonder what kind of conversations they had about it.
Imperioli is a huge GBV head.
Oh, wow.
I mean, you tell me, Jake.
You're a fan of both the record Dookie and GBV,
but I feel like in the '90s,
somebody who was really into GBV in, say, like, 1995
would probably not be singing the praises of Dookie, right?
Probably not like a guy Imperioli's age at the time,
like a guy in his 20s, you know?
I could see a teenager being like, "Oh, yeah, it's all good."
Yeah, and if he's like a cool downtown New York actor.
Right.
Like an off-Broadway s--t.
I was sort of like, "Oh, yeah, I love Weezer.
I love Green Day. I love GBV. I love Pavement."
You know, I love it all.
You always thought Dookie was a beautiful record.
Always thought it was a beautiful record.
I had a CD, only Green Day record I owned,
but played the s--t out of that record.
Were you into Blink-182?
No, see, this is these micro-generations.
I mean, I do like some of their songs,
but I'd never bought--
'cause that was, like, later '90s,
but so at that point, I had lost my youthful,
open-armed idealism.
In '94, '95, I would have been down with all of it,
but by '98 or whatever, when Blink dropped,
I was already too jaded and cool, so I couldn't play.
Talking about the micro-generations of music,
and then, naturally, because we're talking about TV,
makes me think of TV, too.
It just made me picture, like, a scenario
where in another few years,
it comes out that Jon Hamm
would listen to "Enema of the State"
by Blink-182 on vinyl.
And he's like, "What?"
And he's like, "Well, you know, the thing is, like,
I was so inspired by, you know,
James Gandolfini and his performance
as Tony Soprano,
and I know he took a lot of inspiration
from Green Day's album "Dookie,"
but, you know, for me and Mad Men,
our peak was, you know, a solid five to seven years later.
I was more of a Blink-182 guy.
You know, this was my generation.
That's what I listened to on vinyl.
- January Jones was like--you know, I was more
in the kind of, like, you know, broken social scene
and stuff like that, but Jon was really
into Blink-182, and, um...
What are the other people on that show?
- Vincent Kartheiser.
Jon Hamm. Kartheiser, come here.
You gotta listen to "Enem of the State" on vinyl.
Jon, I'm not into that kind of stuff.
No, sit down, kid. You gotta listen to it on vinyl.
It's gonna blow your mind. Have a seat, son.
- You know, it's interesting, so I just looked it up.
Gandolfini was born in 1961,
so he would have been 33
when "Dookie" dropped,
which is... [laughs]
very cool that, like,
a 33-year-old man was just like,
"I'm open to this new
pop punk that's out and
playing on MTV all the time."
And it made me think--I wonder if he, like--
if James has a real history with, like,
power pop or punk or, like--
- Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great point.
And in some ways, finding out that James Gandolfini
was a huge fan of "Dookie,"
I mean, obviously, it's amazing
to get this look behind the curtain,
but it does kind of raise more questions
than it answers. If you just want to know
what kind of music was James Gandolfini into,
which is what the original question was,
somebody tells you, specifically
the album "Dookie" by Green Day.
I have even more questions.
I'm even more tantalized, and that's a great point.
Was it because
he--yeah, let's picture--so he's 17--
he's 16 in 1977.
He grew up in Jersey, right?
- Let me pull up that Wikipedia again.
Oh, yeah, he was born in Jersey.
Early life and education.
Yeah, it seems like he grew up
in Park Ridge, New Jersey.
Graduated Park Ridge High School in '79.
- Whoa, Park Ridge.
- And he went to Rutgers.
- That's crazy. We grew up in adjacent counties.
I grew up in Glen Ridge, he grew up in Park Ridge.
That North Jersey vibe.
Okay, so Bergen County,
that's, like, just across the river.
You could picture him being 17, 18.
It's very possible, depending on what he was into,
that somebody might have been like,
"Yo, I got my dad's car. You want to drive him to the city?"
"Well, what are we gonna do?" And, like, they could have gone
to, like, CBGB's or something. - Totally.
- It's definitely not impossible.
- I wonder if he was into punk,
and maybe in the '80s he got into some, like,
the kind of New Jersey post-punk bands.
Like the Bongos.
The Hoboken scene.
He was at a very early Yola Tango show.
- Oh, yeah, dude. Maxwell's?
- He saw The Replacements at Maxwell's
in 1986.
- In '86.
Classic YouTube deep dive.
Replacements at Maxwell's in '86.
I've watched it.
- Yeah, there's a CD of it.
- I can totally see James Gandolfini
being a type of Jersey guy
who would go see The Replacements
at Maxwell's in 1986.
And, yeah, I guess I could
picture that dude. Then he's 33.
He's not gonna be super
tuned into all the biases of being,
like, a 20-year-old punk.
Being like, "Green Day's not real punk. He doesn't
give a f***. Can you hear us?" It's like, "Man, these guys could write good
tunes. This is cool." - Yeah.
- Or was he not a punk? Maybe he wasn't a punk rocker.
And that album came out, and he was like,
"I like this. This is good music. I never liked
that punk stuff, but this is pretty good."
I can see that as well.
- That's totally possible. '80s, he's rolling to, like,
Rick Springfield and
Bruce, the bard of Jersey.
- Yeah. - Remember, I think we did a riff
on this show once about, like,
Tony Soprano and Pauly.
- Oh, yeah. - Like, a Sopranos prequel
where Tony and Pauly go
to a Springsteen show in '84.
- And it was specifically-- this is when I got really
into the Bruce Springsteen and
the E Street Band live box set.
- Yeah. - Which came out, I think,
in the mid-'80s, and
one of the great songs on it
is him playing the Tom Waits song
"Jersey Girl." - That's right.
- I guess at Giant Stadium. And
I love that recording because you hear
all these Jersey people. They don't know this Tom Waits song.
And then as soon as
Bruce just starts singing the lyrics, the whole stadium
of people go wild and goes, "Tonight I'm
gonna take that ride.
Cross the river to the Jersey side."
It's like, "Woo-hoo!"
Just, like, true regional
excitement about getting a shout-out.
- "Tony, what's this song?"
- "Yeah, Tony, this--"
We've done this exact riff before.
"Yeah, Tony, what is this song?
It's not on none of the Bruce albums."
"Hey, shut the f--- up. This is a Tom Waits
cover." "Hey, Tony, who
the f--- is Tom Waits?"
[laughs]
- Well, Jake, do you like any
post-Dookie Green Day? Like, how
cognizant of it are you?
- I mean, I know the hits.
I remember, like, the record after that, they had a song called
"Walking Contradiction." Good
song. I don't like the
acoustic ballad. "I hope you
had the time of your
life." I don't-- you know.
- Seinfeld-- we must have covered this before, but
before the final episode of Seinfeld,
they aired a clip package,
a clip show. - Yes, yeah.
- And that song was really big at the time, so they
used "Time of Your Life,"
which seemed weirdly sentimental for
the Seinfeld universe,
to have just, like, clips of, like, Jerry and
Elaine and Kramer doing goofy s---, and they're just like,
"I hope you had the time
of your-- another turning
point, a fork stuck
in the road." - Yeah, that seems
like a network call, like NBC
really trying to sentimentalize the moment.
I don't think Jerry would have been down.
- I-- it's scary. - That probably isn't Jerry's idea.
- I mean, I got a-- I remember hearing that
song when I was, like, 14, and
it is a well-written song. It's moving.
And it was brave of Green Day
to release an acoustic ballad
as a single. - Incredibly brave.
- So I give it up for that song.
I mean, I wasn't paying attention that much by the
time of "American Idiot,"
but that record is huge. - What are the
singles off that? I don't know. I-- - "Don't wanna be
an American idiot, da-na-na-na-na-na-na."
- Oh. - And then "Wake Me Up."
- There was also, uh, yeah, the 9/11--
- "Wake Me Up" when-- oh, is that what
it's about? - Yeah, I think
"Wake Me Up When September Ends" is a 9/11
tribute song, right? - Throw
on "Wake Me Up When September Ends."
- I wonder what James thought of the post-Dookie
output. - Right. - '99,
2000, he's filming the show. It's like
they've released two or three other records
by that point. - ♪ Summer
has come and
passed ♪ ♪ The
innocent can never
last ♪ - Oh, yeah.
- ♪ Wake me up
when September
ends ♪ - Very
Beatles-y chords.
- ♪ Like
my father's counted past ♪ - Is he auto-tuning here?
- Yeah, there's a lot of
auto-tuning. - Probably, I don't--
that's a turn-off. - Guys,
I have to apologize. My number crunch was
off. Apparently, this is about
Billy Joe Armstrong's father dying
of esophageal cancer.
- Oh, damn. - In September,
when he was 10 years old. I don't know why
I thought this was a 9/11 song. - Oh, man, he was 10?
- Yeah. - Oh, my God. That's tough.
- ♪ Falling into stars ♪
♪ Drenched in
my pain again ♪
♪ Becoming
who we are ♪
- Why are they auto-tuning?
He can sing.
- It was the new vibe at the time.
- It separates me from
the emotion of the song.
- ♪ Wake me
up when
September ends ♪
♪
- Okay, it seems like
retroactively-- - We gotta find a live version for you,
Jake. - Yeah.
- But doesn't this kick in with drums? Here we go.
This is
kind of sick.
- Yeah, I think a lot of people ascribe the
meaning of this song to 9/11,
but that's not really what it was about.
It sort of became associated with that tragedy.
- Well, and I guess
the video
focuses on a couple in love, played by
Jamie Bell and Evan Rachel Wood,
and the boyfriend promises never to leave his
girlfriend, but they later argue when the boyfriend
enlists in the Marine Corps.
The video then shows the boyfriend in battle
in Iraq, being ambushed by insurgents.
- Jesus.
- Heavy. - Wait, did you say it was
Jamie Bell as the actor?
- Yeah. - Very cool.
- And now there's an Internet meme every year
between the dates of September 30th
and October 1st, where people make jokes
about, "Did anybody remember to wake up
the Green Day guy?"
Which, I guess now that we know it's a song
about his father dying when he was a child,
it seems in bad taste.
If there's any TC heads who are real Green Day
meme makers and jokers,
don't tweet at Billy Joe any of your
goofy memes on October 1st.
Alright? - Yeah, maybe
pump the brakes on that.
- I'm sure there's other ways to enjoy
Green Day-based humor.
Just pick a different song.
I mean, Green Day is like, they really are a fascinating
band. Of bands that started in the
90s, and I guess Green Day might have
put out some, like, an EP in '89.
What year is Green Day's first album?
- I think that '89-'90 call
is a good call.
"1000 Slap Happy Hours" or whatever?
- I have it as 1990s.
The album "39/Smooth."
- Alright, their first album
was in 1990, so then, okay.
Then I can go with my theory that
of bands whose first album came out
in the 90s. So we cannot
count Metallica, we cannot count
Red Hot Chili Peppers. The biggest
bands who, like, are
still around today, whose first album came out
in the early 90s, I'm thinking
Radiohead, Pearl Jam,
Green Day. I guess if you
told somebody in, like,
1994 that Green Day
would go on to eventually be,
like, have, like, almost, like,
a longer career of mainstream relevance
than, like, Pearl Jam or something,
it probably would have seemed kind of trippy. But Green Day
weirdly just got, like, bigger and bigger.
- Yeah, and when they came out, it did
seem like, "Oh, these guys are this,
like, high-energy, like, fun, like,
kind of punk throwback.
This probably won't, like,
last forever." I mean, Weezer
too, I mean, they came out around the same
time, and, like, they've just been around forever.
- Anyway, shout-out to Green Day.
Shout-out to James Gandolfini.
- We have an interview request out to Michael
Imperioli to talk exclusively about
James Gandolfini's musical tastes.
- We're following up
the Stereogum interview. - Not interested
in Michael's own acting career
or life or his own music.
Just give us the dirt on
Gandolfini's listening habits about
20 years ago. - So, Michael,
we're proud to have you. It's the one-month anniversary
of your iconic Stereogum
interview where you talked
about James Gandolfini's love of Green
Day. We want to talk to you
about that as well.
I am legitimately curious,
like, I mean, he's probably a diplomatic
guy, but it's like, "Well, Imperioli,
how do you feel about Green Day? How do you
feel about Dookie?" Maybe that could
be our angle. - I mean, that honestly
would be-- I would love that conversation.
- We're not asking you to talk about your
friend here, and, you know,
Stereogum already got the juicier story
about Gandolfini, but
we just want to ask you-- this is just about
you. We do it like James Lipton
inside the Actor's Studio vibe.
What is your
earliest memory
of Green Day?
If you could be a Green Day
album, which would you be?
What is the most
beautiful
song on Dookie? - If you could have
your memory erased and you could hear
Dookie for the first
time, or you could
hear Zen Arcade by
Harsker Du for the first time,
which album would you choose?
[laughs]
Zen Arcade
versus Dookie.
It's a tough one.
Listen to me whine
about nothing and
everything all at once
I am one of those
melodramatic
fools, neurotic
to the bone, no doubt
about it
Sometimes I give myself
the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on
me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm
cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
Am I just a
Time Crisis with Ezra
Koenig. - Anyway,
enough about music.
We've really been talking way too much
about music today. I feel like we haven't
even talked about Reese's at all,
which is primarily what this show is about.
Gotta keep that flame alive.
- Yeah. - Gotta say that
French just went down smooth.
- Oh yeah? Are you gonna have the other one?
- Not right now. I just poured myself a
tequila, sweet chili
heat, a little margarita. - Oh really?
- Oh yeah. - Wait, you made yourself margarita?
- Yeah, I buy this
kinda yuppie margarita mix at
this fancy liquor store near my house,
and then I add a little mezcal.
'Cause usually margarita mix is
just nasty. - I'm
already envisioning, maybe this is
10 years down the line, like old hippie style
where you just keep revisiting one of your classic
songs. But I love the
idea that later on you drop
the best margarita of my life.
And some of the lyrics are about like, wait, what did you
say? I buy this yuppie margarita
mix at the - Fancy liquor store
near my house. There you go, it's writing itself.
- [laughs]
I buy the
yuppie margarita mix
at the fancy liquor
store.
- It basically is like the margarita
extended universe.
You start out with the worst margarita of your life, and then
maybe it's like 10 years later,
you're like settled down,
got a family,
and it's some sort of like sweet - similar to how
things eventually got okay for the old hippie.
It's some kind of sweet song about
like - this really does sound like a real
modern country song, where it's something about like,
"And when she asked,
'Why is it the best margarita
of your life?'
I said, 'Cause it's
with you.'"
- Just like -
- "Look it into your eyes.
We've
been together 10 years now.
It's our anniversary day.
I surprise you with a little
trip down Mexico way."
[laughs]
- Yeah, right.
- It's your 10 year anniversary.
You surprise your lady with a
trip down Mexico way, and then -
- Oh, dude. - Oh, no, actually,
I like this. You take her down Mexico
way, and you go to some kind of like
boring resort, and
you're not getting that authentic Mexican margarita.
And it comes,
and it costs
20 bucks at the resort,
and as soon as you see it,
you can tell it's got that stale
Mountain Dew energy.
It looks disgusting, and your wife
is kind of like, "Oh, no.
Jake's about to lose it. This guy
can't stand a bad margarita."
But then you look at the sunset, you look at her,
you look at those wedding rings on your fingers,
and you just suck it down.
And she's like, "I can't believe you're sucking down
that nasty margarita like that.
It looks terrible." And you're like,
"Honey, this is the best margarita of my life."
- ♪ He was the best
margarita ♪
- ♪ The
best margarita ♪
- How'd it go with trying to crack
that second verse? - That was pretty
tough. - You gotta spend some time with it?
- You'll see. We'll send it to you, but the
vibe right now,
I sent you those harmonies of me and Danielle
singing on the chorus. - Yeah.
- I sent that to you. I was like, "I want Jake to hear this.
I feel like this is really coming together."
- It sounded amazing. - Especially when we'll get
your final vocal in there. The three of us
together, these big Eagles harmonies.
- Were you singing my part, or were you singing
another part? - No, it's all above
your part. - Oh, cool. - Yeah, it's like a three-part
harmony. I think Danielle's kind of doubling
it an octave up. - Cool. - But
that part sounds real big and kind of
Eagles-y. - Yeah, totally. - I was
encouraging you to have a full acapella
part, just like, ♪ It was the best
margarita ♪
But when I was trying
the second verse,
basically, not to be too inside baseball,
but you were talking about doing
Everly Brothers harmonies, and I think to do that
because of where the melody is and the key,
I would have to sing below you.
It's a little bit low for me.
And then to go above you, it kind of
felt like then we needed to build a whole
chord. So whatever, we'll send it to
you, but it might not-- - It's all good, man. It was just an
idea. Aaron had it, and I was like, "Oh, that's
kind of a cool idea. I could see that."
But if it's just the choruses,
that's gonna be awesome, too. - Yeah,
I think the choruses are really-- - And it's so fleshed out
at this point, too, with Aaron's harmonies
that he did, like those block harmonies
on the-- - Oh, yeah, no, and I noticed
that they all work together. - Yeah. - The harmonies that
we added. - Oh, cool. - Yeah, it all
kind of makes a lot of sense. I feel like "Worst Margarita
in My Life" could actually, perhaps, top
"Mountain Bruise" as your biggest song.
- Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves
here. - Yeah, I'm
just saying, like,
I love "Mountain Bruise," that's the classic song,
but I just feel like, you know,
you get some of the older folks who are just
like, drinking while hiking?
Man, that's weird. - Right.
- But everybody can relate to having a
bad margarita. - I've never played "Mountain
Bruise" for my parents. - Really?
- Yeah. - Have they heard it?
- They've never heard it.
I don't know why, it just seems, I don't know, it just hasn't
come up or whatever, but, like, and I picture
playing exactly what you said, like, playing
"Mountain Bruise" for my parents and them being like,
"You have a beer in your backpack for the
hike?" It doesn't make sense to me,
but I could picture my dad laughing
so hard, in, like, this
Jimmy Buffett way. - Yeah.
- At "Worst Margarita in My Life."
Like, it is such, like,
dad humor. - Yeah.
- I think "Worst Margarita in My Life" will go
over really well with the Boomers. - Yeah.
- Whereas, like, "Mountain
Bruise" is, like, more of a Gen X
millennial anthem. - Yeah.
For real. For real.
[laughter]
- ♪ It was the worst
margarita ♪
- So, uh, back to the ongoing
saga of, uh, Reese's,
you know, we've been getting so many great
emails, and as always,
it's so funny with the show, you know, because
it's every two weeks, we get so many sick
emails. We're always talking about them on the thread, too.
- Yeah. - So, please, just never take it personally.
If you send a really good email, odds
are we may have read it, discussed it amongst
ourselves, and just been like, "That was a great
email." And then the next thing you know, it's like a week and a half
go by, and it's the show time, and we're like...
- Yeah. - You know, we're dealing with a hot-button topic,
like, uh, James Gandolfini's
"Love, Mook Dookie." - We have to spend
40 minutes talking about
"Wiseguy Panics," collaboration
with KFC, and even if
we plan-- sometimes we plan on getting to an email,
and we don't. - Emails are always
the hardest thing to get to, 'cause it requires, like,
really focusing, and be like, "Let's actually read
this," so they always go by the wayside. Wait,
that just meant-- - We don't focus on
this show. - Speaking of TC Tangents,
we're talking about James Gandolfini, "Love,
and Green Day," and then you said "Wiseguy Panic."
Who is the most famous spreadneck,
or spreadhead? 'Cause, like,
obviously, there's so many famous deadheads,
whether you're talking about the Bill Waltons
and the Phil Jacksons, to
the weird conservative and
culture fans, to, like,
the, you know, Christina Applegate,
or she at least used to wear
a dead T-shirt. We could talk at length
about famous deadheads. - Sure.
- Who are the most famous spreadheads?
- It's funny when I-- when I look up
"famous Wiseguy Panic fan,"
the first thing that comes up is, "Venture
capitalist Nick Britsker
is not only the heir to the Hyatt Hotel
fortune, he's also a
spread-- spread panic superfan."
- He's the richest spreadhead.
- I was thinking, like,
if there was, like, an actor from, like,
Georgia, or, like, Florida.
- Right, like, who's the Matthew
McConaughey of Georgia? Like,
Matthew McConaughey is to Texas.
Well, I'm sure there's a lot of spreadheads in Texas.
Maybe, like, Woody Harrelson
is maybe, like, a huge spreadhead,
for instance. - I bet he's not.
I bet Woody's in the more, like,
kind of minimalist, like, hard,
like, blues. - He's boys
with Willie Nelson. - Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I don't think-- I don't picture Woody
going hard jam. - I
know what you mean. - I mean, this can't be-- this is
sort of lore. This is sort of spreadhead
lore, but on the message boards,
"Last year in
Charlotte, I could have sworn I
saw Larry David."
That's the-- - No way.
- Get out of here. - No way. Guys.
- Absolutely zero chance.
- "Widespread Panic co-wrote a song
with Woody Harrelson." - Whoa!
- Wow. "For the movie,
'The Earth Will Swallow You.'"
- Does he sing on it? - Uh, let me
find out. - I just got
owned hard. - Yeah.
Sorry to say. - That's
embarrassing. - No, I mean, who knows?
Maybe he's, like-- maybe he's really tight with them.
- It's not actually embarrassing.
[laughter]
- You don't be too hard on yourself, Jake.
Now, what if the next thing "Seinfeld" pulled up
was an interview with Woody Harrelson
about, like, "How did this come together?" And he's like,
"Well, I'm good friends with those guys."
And the opportunity came up to write a song together
and I said, "Yes." "So are you a big fan?"
"No, I'm more into kind of hard
minimalist blues, but they're dear
friends of mine."
Like, oh, s--t, Jake was right after all.
- Actually, do you guys know
an artist named Jerry Joseph?
- Who? - Jerry Joseph.
- Uh...
- Not ringing a bell.
- He was in a band called Little Women,
a reggae rock band.
Apparently,
"Widespread Panic" has covered a lot
of his songs, and then he
collaborated with Woody Allen--
Woody Allen-- Woody Harrelson.
So there is one-- that famous
Woody Allen "Widespread Panic" song.
So no, there isn't one degree of separation
there, but the song is called
"North." - Okay, so we still don't know
who are the
famous-- who's the
most famous NBA basketball
coach, Spreadhead.
Clearly, this is gonna require a little more research.
- By the way, I tore through-- or
Hannah and I tore through "The Last Dance" in the last
week. - Oh, yeah, finally.
- Incredible.
I love Phil-- yeah, I mean, I love all-- I love
all those-- I mean, whatever.
This has been covered
ad nauseum four months ago.
- Yeah.
No, we're glad you liked it.
I mean, yeah, Phil Jackson just really
seems like a fascinating figure.
- I feel like-- I don't want to, like, misrepresent
this, but I remember my friend Steve Schrader,
good college friend,
big TC head,
he grew up partly
in Marina Del Rey, and I remember him telling me
that Phil Jackson was his neighbor.
- When he was coaching the Lakers? - Yeah,
like, late '90s, and I remember him
telling me, like, he'd go out on his, like,
patio and, like, look across
the little alley to the other house, or the
other little condo. Like, it was, like, beachfront
condo style. - Uh-huh.
- Sometimes Phil would come out, like,
and just, like, kind of nod at Steve, like,
"Hey." - Blasting the dead?
- Blasting the dead, shirtless, smoking a cigar.
I loved Jordan's commitment
to the cigar. - Yeah.
I wonder if he truly loved them,
or he was just, like, liked the look of it.
It connotes him as being, like, the
f***ing man, you know, like-- - Not a cool
look. I mean, I bet he liked it.
- No, but in the '90s, it was, like, you know,
that's when, like, Cigar Aficionado magazine
started, like, popping, and, like,
oh, it was a status symbol. I guess it
still is, but less so.
I feel like the '90s was the peak, you know, like, Arnold
Schwarzenegger being, like, "I smoke cigar
in my house." - Right. - The idea of,
like, being the man smoking a cigar
seems so funny to me. It just seems so, like,
nasty. - I remember, like,
as a kid-- - How many cigars have you smoked in your life,
Jake? - Zero. - Zero?
- Zero. I remember, as a kid,
like, being at, like, some, like, family
reunion or something in the summertime, and,
like, it'd be, like, kind of late in the night,
like, right before bedtime, but, like,
my dad and, like, his brother and, like,
some of his cousins would be, like, out on the patio,
like, smoking cigars,
and I'd be like, "What the hell?"
But I've never--I've never--
I don't think I've ever even been offered a cigar
in my adult life. - Really?
- Have you? - I can
only remember one time in particular
smoking a cigar. I was over
at Cousin Asher's house
in Jersey. I'll have to check
in with him. For some reason, he had
a box of cigars, and I feel like maybe
they were Cubans. There's something
special about them. Like, maybe
someone was like, "Oh, these are Cubans." - So funny.
- Just like... - "Cuban cigars!"
- In the--in a
suburban Jersey backyard.
And so I think that would
became, like, that's what was happening. I feel like
I might have been, like, college age
or something. - That is so, like,
'90s or '80s. Can you imagine
just, like, if I rolled over to your house in
2020, I was like, "Yo, dog,
I got a box of Cubans!
Let's let the ladies hang
out inside and drink their white wine.
Let's go out on the porch and smoke some Cubans."
- Oh, God.
- Can you imagine?
- Oh, God. That's so dark.
Especially the "leaving the ladies"
part. That would be just, like,
such a f---ing, like, painful
prank, is, like, have a bunch of people
over your house, and just, like, everybody's standing in a circle
having a good time, and then just go over and just be like,
"Uh, gentlemen."
Everybody looks at you and be like,
"If the men want to join me outside,
I have acquired a
very rare box of Cuban cigars,
so come on out here, fellas."
And just, like, everybody's like, "Who do you think
you're--this is, like,
1970--what do you think you're doing?
Who are--" - This is
the Cold War. - Truly
humiliating. "Uh, gentlemen."
Wait, that kind of reminds--do we ever
talk about this on the show, Jake? This is, like,
classic, just, like, dumb joke for no
reason. There was a time when
you and your
significant other at the time were coming over
to my place on
New Year's, just to have, like, a little
kind of, like, dinner, and then go to a party
or something. - Dude, I was thinking about this
like, yesterday.
- Really? - Yeah.
- It was, you know, it was a chill little thing. I think we had
some fun, uh,
raclette or something, or--
- Okay, I wasn't familiar with the term.
- Raclette? - Yeah, I lived in New York
for two years, and this would have been, like,
probably New Year's Eve, like, 2011.
- That sounds right. - That's my guess.
- I'm sure we got some champagne and just, like,
some fun New Year's things, but it was--ultimately,
it was a very mellow little, like,
just something to do.
But I just remember, just, like, classic,
like, my, like, needing to make
a joke that I texted you ahead
of time, like, "Would you guys want to come over and, like,
have a little dinner New Year's Eve?
Maybe we go to a party after?" And you were just like,
"Oh, yeah, tight." And then I wrote back,
"Awesome, great. Girls are doing
party dresses, and guys are doing,
like, nothing too fancy, but, like,
blazer and tie." And I just remember
you wrote back, like, "Uh, okay,
I'll see what I can scare up." And then
I was, like, whatever, 10 minutes later, like, "Oh, dude,
I'll just f--- around," like, no dress code.
But I love the idea of just, like,
out of nowhere, just, like, deadass hitting
somebody with this, like, painfully
out-of-date formality.
Like, inviting people for dinner
and just being like, "Oh, we're doing, uh,
blazers tonight," and it's like, um,
"Seinfeld, I have something you could wear. It might be
a little small on you, but I have an extra blazer.
Uh, yeah, come and get it."
This is the new year
I don't feel any different
The cranking of crystal
Explosions are hematism
Yes
Anyway, my story was with, uh,
Cousin Asher.
Somebody at Cuban's—
This is—my memory is just, like, sitting in his backyard
in Jersey and, like, being like, "All right,
I'll try this." And, like, you know,
I've smoked, like, seven cigarettes in my life,
never regularly.
Even then, just weird at parties, being
drunk, and somebody would be like, "Bro, smoke, smoke!"
Like, disgusting. And then,
you know, smoked weed sometimes.
But I figured, you know, I've, like, smoked
stuff. It'll be okay.
And then, I was just, like, you know, puffing on it
a little bit. You know, I'm kind of like, "Wait, so
what do you do here?" And they're like, "You don't—you don't inhale.
You just kind of hold it in your mouth or whatever."
And I was like, "All right, it's kind of pointless."
And then about, like, ten minutes in,
just being like, "I'm gonna puke."
It just, like, hit me weird. And just, like,
going to the bathroom and pukings.
I guess it's possible that I drank
too much. Maybe I just f***ed up.
Maybe I did it wrong, but, like, yeah,
the cigar made me puke.
Damn. Nasty. Can I tell you—
Okay, wait, sorry. This is so—
this show's all over the place. Can I tell you
when I was watching the Jordan
doc, the part that I thought was so TC
was when he got—
Jordan
was at the '98 finals
in Salt Lake and he ordered a pizza
at 10.30 at night.
It got the food
poisoned. The flu game.
That was the best, because I was like,
"How is, like, the
best basketball player of all
time the night before game
six or seven, whatever the
hell it was?" He's hungry.
He's just like, "Oh, man, I'm
hungry." It's like,
10 at night, there's no room
service. They made that clear in the doc.
Room service was closed. There's no,
like, team, like, concierge
or, like, chef or
someone, the handler that can, like,
deal with the situation.
So they're calling, like, a
random pizza place
in, like, Provo, Utah.
[laughter]
And there's, like, five guys that show
up to the door.
They got wise that, like, Jordan or, like,
the Bulls had ordered a pizza.
It was so— - How did they put it together that it was—
- And also, like, I feel like
athletes now—and maybe I'm wrong, but, like,
are so tuned in with their diets and
stuff. - Well, yeah. You think about Tom Brady
who, in some ways, is, like,
almost as iconic as Jordan.
- Well, not quite. - Not even
close. - No, no. Not even close. But I just think
in terms of, like, athletes who
just, like, win a lot, right?
- Sure, sure. Put up big numbers.
- Right. 'Cause even LeBron
hasn't won as many championships
as Jordan, but Tom Brady has that in common
with him. But, yeah, when you think about Tom
Brady in our era, and he's,
like, famously—he's, like, vegan and—
- Is he really?
- I thought so. He's on some crazy diet
to, like, try to, like, slow down the aging
process. - The vegan
quarterback!
- Vegan
quarterback! But, no, I know
what you mean, Jake. It was funny to also picture,
like, that moment
in food delivery.
- Totally. - 'Cause, I mean, it's real.
I mean, they were—obviously, they got screwed,
but that even the most
famous, richest athlete on the
planet has to still—
what's he gonna do? He's gotta stay at a hotel.
He's playing in the championships.
He's not gonna fly in that morning.
And he's just
hungry. And if the hotel doesn't have food,
and even if there was a team chef
maybe asleep, it's just, like,
his friends just start—they call the front desk.
"What's open?" "I'm not sure."
Like, look through the directory in your room.
It's like calling different places. "Are you open?"
"Uh, no, no, man. We're just
about to close. Deliveries are done now."
You know, just, like, probably taking, like,
35 minutes of just, like, waiting
on the phone. And then just be like,
"Hey, MJ, pizza okay?"
"Whatever, man. I'm
starving."
Yeah, you—when I picture, like, a modern
athlete with, like, a super
strict diet, I just picture, like,
obviously, Jordan was incredibly
disciplined in terms of his
practice and his game. I would just kind
of picture, like, a guy with that kind of, like, mental
fortitude being like, "I'm very hungry,
but the game's tomorrow.
Everybody leave my room. I'm gonna
shut my eyes and force myself to go to sleep."
Yeah. "I'm not gonna eat an
entire pepperoni pizza at
10.30 at night."
Being starving late at night
and ordering a pizza, that
feels like some s*** that I would do and feel bad
about. It's not like a disciplined
athlete move. "Elite athlete."
Although, I guess, to be fair,
when you're as elite as Jordan,
maybe he knows that
he's like, "Listen, the outcome of tomorrow's
game was set
years ago." "It hinges
on this pepperoni pizza."
Yeah, or
maybe he's just like, "Listen, I'm so good.
I put the work in. I don't want to get a
s***ty night's sleep because I'm starving."
It makes sense, too. When you're so good,
you maybe don't need to pay attention to every little thing.
Maybe Tom Brady is just on
some weirdo s***.
I also feel like today,
when I picture, like, an elite
athlete, they're, like, staying in, like, a
suite, and they probably have their nutritionist
and their trainer, and everybody's there.
And I feel like if you're Michael Jordan, you're walking out, like,
"I'm starving!" There'd be somebody who's like,
"Go check the food suitcase."
Be like, "We've got, uh,
you know, some Soylent.
We've got a bunch of, like,
gluten-free snack bars."
But wait, did you guys see when the NBA bubble
started, and players were
tweeting images of what they were given
to eat, and it looked like airplane food?
And they were given terrible food, yeah. Yeah, it looked like airplane
food. It looked like what you might get on an Amtrak,
where it was, like, a tiny-- or, like, people were calling
it, like, Hudson News-style,
like, airport food.
Just like a pre-made sandwich
that's been in, like, the deli case
for, like, 48 hours.
Oh my god. A hard roll.
A tuna sandwich made
57 hours ago.
With just, like,
ice-cold lettuce on top of it.
Right. A plastic container
of unseasoned leaves.
Just, like, generic
leaves. Ezra, have you ever done, like,
a gas station sandwich
that was made, like, 80 hours ago?
Like, on tour? Just
absolute desperation. Yes.
I mean, I've always been kind of,
like, into pre-made sandwiches, so, like,
the truth is, like,
I've got a somewhat refined palate.
I know the difference between, like, going to, like, a great
Italian deli versus eating
something in a
plastic container that has
been sitting there God knows how long.
But weirdly, if I got a little triangle
tuna sandwich, and I pulled
it out, and, like, the bread was,
like, kind of hard on the edges,
like, clearly it had been there a little. Yeah.
I have, like, a hot cup of coffee.
I'm pretty happy. Nampa, Idaho.
Hot cup of coffee and stale tuna sandwich.
Let's go, boys.
I find something romantic about that.
A hot cup of s*** coffee with a s***
sandwich. Together, they're kind of
greater than the sum of their parts, you know?
That's tight. Yeah, I'm totally down with a pre-made
sandwich. Jake, would you
hit, like, an egg salad sandwich at a gas station?
Yeah, I mean, if I had to.
I've never... I mean, you know,
I'm not, like, a touring musician.
I've never been in a situation where, like,
I had to. Right.
I think I would, like, at a gas station,
if I'm on, like, a long drive,
I think I would hit, like, a Snickers bar.
As you know, I'm a fan.
And then I would buy, like, honestly,
a bag of, like, peanuts or something.
Like, protein up style. I wouldn't...
I don't think I would gravitate towards the
egg salad sandwich. Yeah, it depends
what you're trying to do. Do you know what I mean? It is. Yeah, no.
I've been in that funny position, too, to, like, stop
at a truck stop and be like, "I'm trying
not to eat too many carbs," and just
be like, "Well, uh, I guess I'll
get this, uh, bag
of spicy jerky,
these, um, weird
pistachios, and,
uh, this one hard-boiled
egg." Like, this is a
really... Like a Flying J. And, like...
Yeah. A Flying J
is, like, such classic, like, weird
deep West Coast, like, rural
highway vibes.
You know, we've talked about how when we
get emails from listeners, it's... people
got all sorts of different jobs. You know?
We got everything from
chocolate makers to
Tampa PD detectives
to college students
to, you know, all
over the place. But
I don't think we've ever gotten confirmation
that any truckers listen
to the program. And I'm just genuinely
curious if there's any
truckers who listen to TC. I only
think of it not because I think we're a natural...
Well, I think we are... we cover some
topics that the truckers
of America might find interesting.
Perhaps. But I...
also, just, it's a job where you probably...
you know, similar to painter, Jake,
you could take down a lot of, uh,
talk radio and podcasts.
And in that video...
Painters and truck drivers
account for
90% of all internet radio
and podcast listeners. Because
those are the two jobs where
you could just, like, look ahead, focus
on what you're doing, but also enjoy something
with your ears. A lot of other
jobs, you work at an office, you gotta be
typing up stuff. It's too confusing.
Yeah. But anyway, if we have any
truckers listen to TC, please let us know.
And especially, I'm interested in
if we have any, um,
truckers who love protein, who
try to keep down their carbs. I guess the
truth is, if you're a trucker, you could also just, you pack
all your food from home. But, like, when
you pull into that Flying J,
what are you getting there? You know, we did have a
trucker call in one time, or a former
trucker. Oh, right.
Jerry Saltz,
former trucker. Former trucker.
Current art critic.
If we have any art critics turned truckers,
we especially want
to hear from you. Okay, well, we were
gonna... we had a great email from
a scientist, speaking of
the fascinating
jobs of TC listeners. We had, like, a
legitimate scientist who
sent us a great email about
Reese's, but we'll save that for next
time, because actually, we
finally have somebody from the Hershey's organization
who's down to call in.
For next episode, right? For the next episode.
So we can finally get to the bottom of this
question of, "Do they change the formula?"
However, Matt, our producer,
he says that when he talked to
the people at Hershey's, they were very
down to send somebody from
their team to come beyond time crisis,
but without even
waiting for the show, they said, "But first things
first, we do not change our formula
between seasons."
And, um,
you know, it's a tough one. Like,
that's what they would say.
You know what I mean? I hate living in a
post-truth society, because I want to believe
in people. Alright, so
somebody from Hershey's says they don't change the formula.
Well, some super
tasters taste buds beg to differ.
Uh, look, we're gonna hear 'em out,
and hopefully we'll find some other stuff to talk about.
I don't want this to be, like, a tense call.
Maybe they're gonna pull out after they heard
me talking, but I don't want this to be a
tense call. I don't want this to be
some, like, weird
"meet the press" intense vibe.
I want it to be fun, but I'm just saying,
like, an organization's gonna say
what they want the people to think. Anyway,
we're excited to actually talk to somebody from Hershey's,
but we did also get a great email,
which we'll get into next time, from an actual scientist
who's, like, studying the water content
of chocolate
and... Look, this stuff is just
very complicated. This is very complex,
folks. This is science.
Music is an art form.
Dookie is art. Reese's peanut
butter cups, that's science, folks.
I'm picturing everything
you're saying as Trump.
Folks, this is... Yeah, I can't even remember
his voice. Thankfully, I heard his voice in there.
- You're Obama? - Now, folks...
[laughs]
I can do a better Obama than Trump.
Now, folks, it's all well and good
to talk about Dookie.
I love Dookie. The late
great James Gandolfini loved Dookie.
But it's an
art form. Pop punk albums
are an art form, but we
believe in science, and we're gonna
use that science to
prove that
Reese's changes their formula from
summer to winter. It's a believable
premise. [laughs]
Speaking of impressions,
I really only do impressions
on this show, or I guess, you know,
sometimes in conversation or something.
It's not like I'm ever trying to work on an impression.
It's like natural.
We all do it. We're talking. We do
try to do a voice. But weirdly,
I did start trying to do a voice
the other day. I'm sure it was
very annoying to the people around me, but I just
really wanted to... For some
reason, it popped in my head to do the
old SNL announcer's voice.
I just kept trying to see how... If I could
get his classic
word, which to me is... Let me
see if I can do it. "Featuring!"
How was that? It's pretty good.
"Musical guest!"
Don Pardo. Oh, that's pretty good.
That's pretty good. Oh, yeah, Don Pardo.
But there's something about this weird
kind of rhythm that comes out.
"Featuring!" Yeah. Jake Longstreet.
No, I... Yeah.
"Musical guest, Mountain
Brews!"
"Featuring! With musical
guest, Mountain Brews
and your host, Jake
Longstreet!"
It's a really bad impression, because I'm
bad at everything except for
"Featuring!"
Well, anyway. So, next week, we're going to
delve back into the
Hershey's Reese's world. In the meantime,
though, we've got to get into the Top 5.
It's time for
the Top 5
on iTunes.
So,
we're comparing the greatest
hits of
today with this week
in 1994.
And why 1994? I legitimately don't
remember. "Do you have the time?"
Oh, it's the year Dookie
came out. Alright, tight.
So, everybody, I want you to picture a young
James Gandolfini, a struggling
actor, hearing this great
new record, Dookie. I imagine
he was probably living in New York, probably getting
some parts in
films and TV, probably also doing some
off-Broadway. This is what was happening in the larger
music world in 1994.
The number 5 song,
"All For One, I Swear."
This is a great song.
"I swear,
by the moon and the stars..."
Whoa, this was originally
recorded by a country artist in
1993, John Michael
Montgomery. Produced by
David Foster. Jake, you watch the David
Foster doc? I haven't yet.
Catch me up on David Foster. Is
he known for, like, kind of
soft rock and R&B?
He's known for soft rock
and power ballads
and kind of like adult
contemporary. Did he produce, like,
80's Chicago?
Exactly. That was one of his big breakthroughs.
He and Peter Sotero
are very close. Okay.
You know what? I've heard this a million
times growing up. I'm kind of curious to hear the
original country version.
Which is also interesting because David Foster also
took a country song, "I Will Always Love
You," gave it to somebody
known more as a pop R&B
singer and turned it into one of the biggest songs
ever.
Very pretty song.
It really works in both for us. Yeah. Fascinating.
And though I'll make mistakes, I'll never break your heart.
I swear by the moon and the stars in the sky, I'll be there.
I swear, like the shadow that's by your side, I'll be there.
For better or worse, 'til death do us part, I'll love you with every beat of my heart.
I swear.
I always felt like there's something a little bit pagan about swearing by the moon and the stars in the sun.
This song always kind of stuck out to me of all the schmaltzy ballads from this time. It's like medieval.
Yeah, connected to the earth's cycles.
Not God and heaven and love, not Jesus Christ.
By the gravitational pull of the moon.
Yeah. And also, I feel like when people swear on stuff in real life, I mean, to me, growing up, when somebody would swear on stuff, the classic thing they would swear on
would be their mother.
Is that your guys feeling like, "Dude, I swear on my mother."
I feel like that's the classic thing to swear on.
Or your life. "I swear on my life."
Yeah, "I swear on my life." And then obviously in the courtroom, you swear on a Bible.
I swear to God. I swear to God.
Oh, I swear to God. Yeah, that's obviously, yeah. Although that's usually exasperation.
I swear to God, you are so f***ing annoying. I swear on my mother. I did not do that.
Isn't it so trite that people in courts have to take an oath?
On the Bible?
No one takes that seriously. On the Bible or just whatever.
Just like, "I swear that what I'm saying is the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Whatever.
Yeah, right. We could really dispense with that.
It's just sort of like, whatever. People lie in court.
No one respects the institution of the court if their self-interest is in jeopardy.
Everybody's a liar. You can't trust anybody in this world.
Do you think there's ever been a court case where the jury was deliberating and one of the jurors said,
"That guy is full of s***." And then somebody said, "Well, hold on a second. He swore on the Bible."
I could imagine also somebody being like, "I don't know if you noticed, but that guy was wearing a cross."
Oh, I'm sure that's happened.
Just somebody rolled up with a giant cross and they put their hand on the Bible and closed their eyes. It'd get really dramatic.
"I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth." And then proceed to lie there.
Yeah, if you were going to go into court and plan on lying, that would be the way to do it, right?
Wear a cross and make a whole production about swearing to Jesus Christ and God that you're telling the truth.
It would honestly be more effective to make people swear on their mother.
It's true.
This sounds like a satirical joke. If every time a witness was taken to the stand, if she was alive,
they brought their mother to the courtroom and she had to introduce themselves and talk about why she gave birth to this person 47 years ago.
He was a good boy, got in a little bit of trouble, whatever. And sit there and then be like, "Put your hand on your mother.
Do you swear on your mother that you will tell the whole truth?" That would actually be way more dramatic and emotional
than putting your hand on this random book. What does it even mean to... I could understand if you made somebody read a Bible verse
or brought in some clergy. Just putting your hand on the book, it's like, "Come on, folks. Let's get rid of it."
Ezra, it's not a random book. It's the Bible. I'm doing my best Ben Shapiro there.
It's not a random book, Ezra. Okay?
That's pretty good.
That was a good Ben Shapiro.
I only know Ben Shapiro because of other... I've never actually listened or watched whatever his show is.
I'm aware of him because of clips on other shows.
That's how I've seen him, is when he goes to debate somebody on a TV show.
The number five song in 2020, "Juice World" and "The Weekend's Smile."
If you recall, this is from Juice WRLD's posthumous album, "Legends Never Die."
Crazy title. Was it titled before he died?
That's a good question. I just assumed no, but stranger things have happened.
♪ I want you to prosper and come proper ♪
♪ Even if that means I ain't by your side ♪
♪ I'd do anything in my power to see you just smile ♪
♪ I want you to prosper and come proper ♪
♪ Even if that means I ain't by your side ♪
♪ Devil on my shoulder telling me I'll die soon ♪
♪ I don't really want that to impact you ♪
What? Devil on my shoulder telling me I'll die soon?
Wait, I'm sorry if this is dumb. Is Juice WRLD the dude that got home invaded in LA?
No, that's Pop Smoke.
Sorry, my bad.
No, there have been...
There's been so many deaths.
There have been a lot of deaths in the music world, and particularly rappers.
Even a few years ago, there was XXXTentacion.
Of like 21-year-old rappers.
Yeah, big names. Juice WRLD, I think, died of supposedly some type of drug thing.
He got a drug overdose when he landed on the tarmac in Chicago.
For some reason, I found myself reading this LA Times article about the Pop Smoke murder.
It was so intense, man.
He accidentally disclosed his location through an Instagram post, I think.
They're not totally sure.
That was the theory. Yeah, he posted a package he got and it said the address on it, right?
Yeah, and he was just oblivious to...
He had accidentally disclosed his location and people figured it out.
Went there and robbed him and killed him.
It was so intense, man.
Yeah, it's so brutal.
He was young and really...
He was already really big, but he was just exploding.
He was on his way to becoming this gigantic rapper.
Sorry to bring it down, but...
No, it's all good.
That article really affected me.
Anyway, sorry, '94.
Well, Pop Smoke is all over this top five, too.
So we'll be getting into some Pop Smoke.
But that was in February that he died.
He was murdered.
He had a posthumous album as well.
Maybe that's why I was reading this article.
Okay.
Well, back in '94, the number four song...
This is a good one.
John Mellencamp featuring Michelle and Deji Ocello.
Okay.
This came up last episode.
Yeah, we did talk about this.
This is originally a Van Morrison song from 1971.
The Haim family band covered this at Canter's.
Rocking Haim.
God, this sucks.
Whoa, really?
I love the original, but this sounds awful.
The bass tone is so corny.
The drum tone, terrible.
Harsh.
And you know, not a Mellencamp fan.
What about Michelle?
I don't know who Michelle is.
I only know her through this song.
She made her own music, you know.
A bassist, singer.
She has some cool stuff.
I remember this being on MTV a lot when I used to watch MTV.
I was like full butthead mode.
I was like, "Ugh, this sucks."
And I'm basically still there.
You've been hating on this for over 25 years.
Yes.
I haven't heard it in at least 20 years.
It honestly sounds way worse than I would have thought.
This sounds like it's from the soundtrack of a box office bomb from the '90s.
It's like the second song that plays in the credits.
Absolutely.
Yeah, the second song.
I'm not mad at it.
Like the part of the credits where it's just all of the publishing rights to the songs that were used.
That's right.
Yes.
That's a bummer.
Why was that a hit and why did they cover that?
That makes no sense.
Well, John Mellencamp just said it's a song he always loved and he thought it would be kind of fun.
Cool, bro.
I still don't hate it.
I mean, maybe it's just nostalgia.
That's cool.
Thank you.
[Laughter]
That's super cool you like that Mellencamp cover of the Van Morrison song from '94.
Thank you.
Oh, man.
This sucks.
Oh, really, man?
I like it.
That's cool.
Thank you.
[Laughter]
That's serious.
This show rules.
[Laughter]
That could be the Time Crisis TV show.
It's like an animated show and it's just like Beavis and Butthead.
Oh, yeah.
Instead of them being all violent and being like, "Shut up, Beavis."
It's way more like kind vibe.
It's like, "Oh, dude. You're making a good point there."
Yeah, just like two Beavis and Butthead animated versions of us watching the Wild Knight video
and you're just like, "Not feeling this, man.
This sounds terrible."
This is weak.
Really, man?
I kind of like it.
Well, that's cool.
All right.
[Laughter]
The next song is DaBaby Rockstar.
We've listened to this a million times.
This song is massive.
I like DaBaby.
Let's go back to '94.
The '94 song at number three.
Coolio with "Fantastic Voyage."
Sick.
Great track.
Already sounds great.
Do you remember the music video for this song?
Is he riding a bike in it?
I think that might be "1234" from the Gangstas Paradise album.
This one, I just remember he pulls up to the beach with some classic California convertibles
and all these people are getting out of the trunk in a clown car.
Oh, kind of. Yeah.
And so this song is heavily indebted to and samples an original song called "Fantastic Voyage"
by Lakeside, a funk group from the early '80s.
I like that he was sampling something that was only like 12 years old.
Right.
I'm looking at the notes.
It says, "In 2010, Chrysler released a music video featuring Coolio called 'Fantastic Voyage'
to promote the Chrysler Pacifica minivan."
Oh, hell yeah.
Wait, we got to throw that on.
I think Coolio, it's crazy how hard he fell off.
Was it just because that "Dangerous Mind" song got too big and people just wouldn't give him a chance?
He was a multiple hit dude.
It's crazy how much he kind of, I don't know, became a punchline.
He just got too big.
[Phone vibrating]
What are you doing, dude? Let's get the guys and go to the beach.
How are we supposed to get there?
My wife took the car, fool.
Oh, no.
Rough.
My wife took the car, fool.
It sounds rough, huh?
Yeah.
Okay, I've heard enough.
Damn, this is raw.
Oh, it's so bad.
That was truly buff.
It was rough stuff.
The number three song in 2020, now here's the Pop Smoke song featuring Lil Baby and DaBaby.
So, wait, this is featuring multiple babies?
Lil Baby and DaBaby, two of the biggest rappers right now.
What's very eerie about this album and the Juice WRLD album is that literally the entire album from Pop Smoke is about basically the thing that he's going to be killed
for and the exact same thing with Juice.
They're both almost solely about, you know, whether it's the violence in the home invasion or his drug addiction, like, in like a very kind of like profound and myopic
way.
Jeez.
The number two song in 1994, another classic, Boyz II Men, "I'll Make Love to You."
I don't always know every song in the 90s top five, but this time so far I really do.
It's funny the only rock song so far is that crap Mellon can't remember.
Jay, were you a Boyz II Men fan back then?
No, I wasn't in.
Just kind of like too soft, you know?
Yeah.
Too schmaltzy.
Literally listening to Dookie at this moment in time.
The Motown Philly side of Boyz II Men, a little more high energy, but I think they just had these monster ballads that kind of took over.
I mean, I did like like fun songs from the era that were like in the rap R&B genre, whether it was like En Vogue or like, you know, Jitter Juice or whatever.
But like this kind of stuff, it was just like, I mean, beautiful singing, but it's kind of easy listening.
What's the BPM on this, you think? Like 60?
Yeah, it's very slow.
I'm going to go to a BPM tab website and see what it says.
I mean, I'm getting something in the 50s. Maybe I got to go double time and then divide.
Well, it's in 6/8. I'm confused now. It's slow.
All right. I don't understand what 6/8 is. How do you know what's in 6/8? Does it say that on the Internet?
Well, I might be wrong, but it's just because it's got that feel of one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two.
Wait, is 6/8 the same thing as 3/4? Is it like, Algebra or whatever? Proportional?
Well, it's not necessarily because something could be in 3/4 and be like one, two, three, two, two, three.
And then a 6/8 feel because it's eighth notes is that da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
So it specifically implies like a unit of two.
So yeah, I guess like at different tempos, you could call things, you know, double it or divide it.
Huh. Because I think of 3/4 as like your classic, like that's like a waltz. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, you know.
Yeah.
Where 6/8 I thought of is like a more subtle description of a variation on 4/4 than like I have the bandwidth for.
Well, also something could be, you can count it in four, but it could still be subdivided by three.
Getting real inside baseball here.
There's some like actual real music heads listening to this are just like, oh my God, these guys are morons.
Ezra knows literally nothing about music.
No, I mean, I just think of it's like, you know, there's times when you count something and if you subdivide, be like one, two, one, one and two and three and four, da, da,
da, da, eighth notes versus one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six.
The number two song in 2020, another Pop Smoke song called Mood Swings.
I mean, it's just kind of heavy listening to this posthumous music, you know, rest in peace, Pop Smoke.
I read about this album, I think, in the New Yorker.
I felt like the most like middle aged guy ever.
Like just because like you knew none of the people involved.
Yeah, I don't. I remember hearing about Pop Smoke being murdered, but like I wasn't familiar with him when he was killed.
And then, yeah, I just it's not my world.
So like I remember it just felt like, wow, I'm a middle aged guy like reading about this rapper in the New Yorker.
Like something about like the New York, like in that New Yorker, like canonizing and like.
Well, it's also fun. Yeah, it's just funny to be like, oh, yeah, I read about that in the New Yorker.
It's just like maybe everybody eventually hits an age where you can read about a person and find their story interesting.
And obviously, in the case of Pop Smoke, the story is very sad and dramatic.
But you probably eventually hit a point where it's like, you know, you're still a human being. You're interested in culture and people and the lives of others.
But you could also hit a point where you're like, wow, this really interesting article about this dude I'd never heard of who was like about to blow up.
He was tragically killed and blah, blah, blah. And be like, what do you think of the music?
I don't listen to music. Like, are you going to? No, I don't need to.
It's an interesting story. And I'm sorry what happened to them.
But like, you know, you reach a point where it's like you maybe just pass the window where you can like wrap your head around some new music.
Gandolfini would listen to the music. Well, he was only 33.
Wait, how old are you? Yeah. No, wait, you're 43.
I mean, I've heard the music on Time Crisis. Yeah.
It didn't occur to me to be like, let me check this Pop Smoke record out.
When he was your age, it would have been 2004. Did he go get the first Kanye album?
Hell no. Or at that point, was he just like too much of an older dude focused on his work, happy to go listen to his dookie vinyl, probably had a family, less time to keep up
on new stuff.
The number one song in 94. Oh, this is a big one. I don't know if we've ever talked about this.
Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories. Stay. Wow. In parentheses, I missed you.
Loeb was discovered by Ethan Hawke, who lived in an apartment across the street from New York. Weird.
I still can't remember if I've ever seen the movie Reality Bites. Have you, Derek?
I mean, not in 25 years. Yeah, it's a good movie.
It'd be cool to watch Reality Bites and singles. Do like a 90s movies. Yeah.
I think I've seen both those movies. I just never remember. I'm down for that.
All right. Let's watch Reality Bites and singles for next episode.
Hey, Jake, do you remember Matt Dillon's band's, the fictional band's name from singles?
I haven't seen that since the 90s. Neither have I, but it stuck with me. Citizen Dick.
OK. Oh, really? That sounds familiar. If you told me Citizen Dick was a real band, I'd be like, oh yeah, I've heard of them.
Exactly. So what's up with Ethan Hawke? Like, oh, there's this cute girl in my apartment building.
She's playing shows down at the coffee shop. It's a good song.
He gave a tape to director Ben Stiller and Stiller subsequently agreed to use the song in the film.
Wow. Ethan Hawke created the number one hit.
You know, it's kind of weird. We're talking about the story of how it was Kevin Costner's idea to like open.
I will always love you from the Bodyguard soundtrack. Whitney Houston version. Yeah.
And that's part of the story is that David Foster, the producer, was like, that's insane.
Radio's never going to play that. That's like a full minute of acapella.
And Kevin Costner was like, I don't know, man, I think it'd be cool. And then Dave Foster's like, and you know what?
It worked. Crazy bastard. It worked. It worked. One of the biggest songs of all time.
It is funny to think about just like these random dude, like actor directors like Kevin Costner and Ben Stiller.
Ethan Hawke just like creating smash hits. They've got taste.
It just goes to show how like random everything is.
Like if Ethan Hawke was not in the same building as Lisa Loeb, like we literally would never have heard Stay.
I know that I was wrong 'cause I missed you. Yeah, I missed you.
You said you caught me 'cause you want me and one day you let me go.
You try to keep away, keep her, or keep me 'cause you know you're just so scared to lose.
Wait, so Jake, do you like the song Stay? Do you have fond memories of listening to it in 1994?
No, I mean, it's fun. It's cool. It's cute. I mean, it's like a cute, like catchy little song.
It's a sweet little song, you know, it's like, it's just like very atypical.
Jake's like, it's a cute little song. It's a sweet little song. Yeah.
I mean, it's better than Wild Night by Don Mellencamp for sure.
If you had to choose between Stay and Torn by Natalie Imbruglia, which one would you choose?
Torn. Really? Yeah, Torn is a good track.
Man, that's a tough one. They have a lot in common. Very similar vibe.
I like Stay. It just goes to show. I mean, it's like if she had not lived in the same building as you and Paul, it'd be obscure.
It'd be in her notebooks. It'd be in her head and maybe a few of her friends would know it.
Well, yeah, it is crazy. She wasn't even signed.
It's just like she's an unsigned singer-songwriter.
It's wild. It reminds me of like talking about like GBV or something just like forget about Bob Pollard.
How many Lisa Loebs are there out there that like weren't neighbors with Ethan Hawke?
Right. You got to ask yourself how many Lisa Loebs are out there?
How many Lisa Loebs did not have the fortune living in the same apartment building as Ethan Hawke?
You got to ask yourself, folks, is that fair? There might be a Lisa Loebs in your building.
And that's why we are giving every potential Lisa Loeb a chance to audition for Ethan Hawke.
The government's paying for it.
That's becoming like a weird combination of Obama and Trump.
The government's paying for it, folks. You're gonna love it.
I could picture Trump like randomly being in to Stay by Lisa Loeb.
Was there like a thing on the Internet recently where like Trump was like, oh yeah, like Neil Young, but then he couldn't name one song.
He's like, oh yeah, like the old stuff.
No, wait, we actually got to look that up. This is like classic. We talked about this offline and it was so TC.
Right, right.
I think it was something, I mean, it's classic because I'm not gonna be able to find it, but my memory was that they asked him like,
so you like Neil? Oh yeah, he's tremendous or something. What's one of your favorite songs?
He's like, I don't know if I could pick a favorite, but, and they're like, are you sure? Just name a song you like, you know, just giving any, all he has to do is name one.
And I feel like he said something that was like weirdly like astute.
And he goes, well, I think if I had to pick, I'd probably pick one of the earlier songs.
You know, like a lot of people, the artists earlier work sometimes has a special place for people.
And it's harder for the later work to hit quite the same way. So probably, probably an earlier tune.
He just says something like so weird where he like, it was just such a funny statement for Trump to make like a vague, astute, like understanding with many artists.
People love the early, like he's aware that there's, that it's a cliche to say, oh, I like the early.
I feel like he said something like funny how that is. Many of us prefer the early work.
It's classic Trump, you know, I mean, like, Oh no, Jake, I just remembered.
I finally remembered why you and I were so excited to talk about this.
It wasn't just that Trump said, I prefer the early stuff. Isn't it funny how people do.
He then said, it's kind of like that song garden party. That's it.
Which we talked about on the show, not that long ago, just a great, um, late career hit for Ricky Nelson, which fascinatingly enough is the number one hit that he wrote.
Not in the early phase of his career, but about that feeling of like people only wanting to hear the early and you can't please everyone.
So you got to please yourself. That's what was so strange about it was Trump, not just get typical Trump talking out of his ass, getting caught in a lie, not knowing any
Neil Young song, but then just out of nowhere being like, yeah, you know, I guess I like the early stuff.
Um, you know, it's kind of makes you think about that, uh, that song garden party.
Like, this is so weird. Obviously that's a famous song, but like, it is also funny to be like a dude who literally can't name one Neil Young song and then be like, right.
Ricky Nelson wrote about the, uh, the journey of an artist poignantly in the song garden party and the difficulties of overcoming a successful early career.
It's just like that bizarre Trump, like to just pull that one out of left field. So strange.
It's on brand for Trump. The fact that he can't name one Neil Young song, who's sort of like a cool kind of edgy guy.
And Rick Nelson is the most like milk toast, white bread, like suburban. I mean, I love Rick Nelson, but like, it is the most like down the middle, like white bread,
suburban stuff ever.
I could totally picture to like, hopefully Trump leaving the white house. He loses the election. He gets in his limousine, go into the PJ and just like, well, Melania, I
tried, you know, in his head.
Definitely. He'd be just be like, I tried to make this country great again. You would not believe these nasty people who wouldn't let me do it.
Oh, yeah. And then he just like, I want to throw my earbuds in and just like puts on Ricky Nelson, just like leaving Washington DC. You can't please everyone.
But so you got to please yourself. Just kind of like lately tapping his name. I feel like that's how he went.
It's all right now. Dude. Yeah. The Garden Party is the Donald Trump anthem. It's the internal anthem of Trump.
Can you totally picture it? Like Adam McKay makes a Trump movie in like seven years and it ends with Garden Party by Rick Nelson.
I learned my lesson. Well, you can't please everyone. OK, the number one song this week in 2020.
This is a big song with a big video made a big splash. You heard about this, Jake. You read about this.
It's called WAP by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion. You know about this?
On the TC thread a few days ago, Colin was like, Jake, don't listen to WAP. I want to have you hear it.
You kind of need to watch it. I haven't heard it, but we'll just listen to it. In the last few days, I've kind of figured out what it is.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You tell him what's in the bucket and I'm in.
And give me everything you've got. And beat it up, baby.
Charge extra large and it's hard. Put this cookie right in your face.
So I know it's like a credit card hop on top. I want to ride. I do.
I'm kind of wow. Look at my mouth. Look at my thighs. It's what is what?
Come to God. Tie me up. I'm surprised. That's real. Play. I wear the skies.
I want you to park that big Mac truck right in this little garage.
Make me dream, make it stream. I don't public make the scene. I don't cook. I don't clean.
But let me tell you, I got this ring. Gobble me, swallow me, drip down inside of me.
Jump out for you. Let it get inside of me. I tell him where to put it. Never tell him where I'm about to be.
I run down on him before I have a runny meat. You've got to watch the video.
It's just like a hilariously big budget video. All this like CGI.
They're running around this giant mansion, all this like funny imagery related to wetness.
And I think it's a good song. It is like to get too worked up one way or the other.
It's just like, you know, it's like a fun, dirty sex song.
Like there's a long precedent for it. I think, yeah, seeing conservative people freak out is hilarious.
Seeing people really try to like read something intellectual into this.
It's just like sometimes people just want it.
It's just a horny song. But outside of whatever it means and whatever it means to people,
because obviously if music makes you feel empowered or angry, that's how it's going to make you feel.
The main thing that I thought was like just the video is like such a big production.
It did remind me of just like kind of hair metal vibe of just like it's a little bit like of like a like a spinal tap vibe,
which I would actually make the case is high art.
Like spending millions of dollars to make a big budget thing that's just about like,
just about something as simple that literally happens every day where everybody comes from on this planet.
Just the most simple thing in the world, which is people having sex.
But to like make this like big, epic thing about it, I guess that's just human nature.
But it does kind of make me think a little bit of like spinal tap or like pour some sugar on me.
Just like like a big, epic video for a song that's really just like like a fun, dirty song.
I like that contrast.
It's hilarious.
I just wish people did that for other kind of mundane things besides sex.
I'll make a sandwich.
It'd be like if wean was getting three million dollars to make videos for like, you know, a song about a sandwich or something.
It is just like funny that sex still is this like weird third rail.
And also it is funny to think that 2 Live Crew was like 30 years ago and I like big butts and stuff.
And that somehow it's like every possible taboo has been broken.
Like if 30 years ago it was hard to imagine somebody who made a sex tape having a thriving career or a porn star going on to do other things.
All these things that might have seemed impossible by the kind of restrictive cultural standards.
All those glass ceilings have been busted through.
But if there's something about sex where it's like there's this human need to always have a line.
It's like the line can never vanish.
It can get like rearranged or something but we're still like you would think that if 2 Live Crew was 30 years ago by now nobody would care.
They'd be like, all right, well talk about sex.
I don't care.
It's no big deal.
Like, you know what I mean?
It's like especially with like Pornhub on everyone's phone.
Right.
Like, you know Ben Shapiro is like, for sure.
And it's like, cool, man.
Right on.
Do that.
Right.
Like, what's the culture as right?
It's what you're not understanding.
It's the culture.
This is a coarsening of the culture.
At least 30 years ago when you would see somebody pretend that they like were this kind of like asexual type person.
I guess you could almost take them at their word.
But yeah, like today.
Like what is this bizarre performance?
Like, I love Cardi B.
She's truly like one of the most charming, fun, talented figures in like a long time.
But it's also kind of like at the end of the day, Cardi B and Ben Shapiro and anybody on the street, they're all just human beings who probably have fairly similar sex
drives.
They might have drastically different sex lives and they might look up different s*** on the Internet.
You know what I mean?
It's just like such a hilarious thing that like Cardi B is choosing as an artist to like make a song that's like really plays up her sexuality.
But, you know, at the end of the day, her instinct to talk about like horny s*** is not that different than any other human being.
And Ben Shapiro's, you know, he's got the same hard wiring as most people, but he's got to play this other.
It just feels like this bizarre.
Everybody's playing these roles.
Yeah.
It just never ends.
I can totally picture in like 30 years, there's still like this weird culture war.
Maybe there have been some ripples, but, you know, there's still just like, I guess there's been a big hit about butts in our lifetime.
Maybe this will be kind of breaking new ground for songs about wet a** s***.
But, you know, whatever the next thing is, it'll happen.
And I had this like weird feeling in 30 years, it'll be like the same.
The lines will be drawn in the exact same way.
Yeah. I'll be in my 70s.
Yep.
There'll be some song about someone's like hard a** s*** or whatever.
Somebody's going to complain about it.
Somebody else is going to be like, no, this is exactly what the culture needs.
It's going to be like, oh, I remember 60 years ago being on the playground of middle school hearing about 2 Live Crew.
What was the big 2 Live Crew hit?
I'm trying to remember. I don't remember.
It was the one that had the Miso Horny sample.
Oh, is it called Miso Horny?
Miso Horny was already, that's not 2 Live Crew.
Oh, Miso, like that song?
Yeah, that's 2 Live Crew.
That's 2 Live Crew.
Oh, that is. But is that sample for something? That's from something else.
Yeah, it's from Platoon.
Apocalypse Now.
Oh, it's not from a song. It's from, oh, OK.
I do remember being in a middle school dance and my friend John's dad picked us up and his dad was like a Vietnam vet, dude.
Oh.
Maybe he was very versed in Apocalypse Now. Is that what that sample comes from?
It was actually Full Metal Jacket.
Oh, Full Metal Jacket.
OK, perfect. Like a classic Vietnam movie.
But I remember my dad's friend was a Vietnam vet and was just sort of like...
He seemed to be like, thinking it was like funny. He's like, oh, Miso Horny? That's like hilarious.
I remember just being like tripped out that like he thought it was like kind of funny.
Also, I'm sure somebody's made this point before, probably many times.
But there is something like uniquely just like buff and American about this like a culture war, about a song, about being horny,
which 99.9% of human beings are to some degree.
There's something so buff and American about like this crazy culture war about this song.
Just picture that you are actually, for instance, somebody who is like a Vietnamese sex worker or just anybody who lived in Vietnam during that insane time.
And that like somebody said like, oh, you know, there's a big hit in America.
It's causing a bit of a firestorm. You're like, what song is it?
And you're like, well, it samples an actress saying Miso Horny in a movie about Vietnam during the war.
It's about American soldiers during the war. And they sampled that.
And then the whole song is about how this dude from Florida is really horny.
But some of these old conservatives don't like the whole thing is so insane when you put it that way.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
Pretty buff.
I kind of want to revisit. OK, movie challenge for next episode.
Real metal jacket and full metal jacket.
I want to read up more about the culture wars around WAP.
But I guess to summarize, I basically like everything Cardi B does.
So it's like I think it's a fun video and it's I like the song.
But there's just something about the culture war element of the song.
It really feels like people are just like role playing now.
Yeah, it really does feel like a Xerox of like some.
It's just like nobody's heart is in it.
You know what I mean?
It's like this guy in his 30s who's like a conservative commentator actually upset about it.
Come on. Hell no.
And also is the song actually I got to tread carefully because I don't want to take anything away from the artistry of the people who made it.
There's funny lines. There's smart lines. It's a good song.
But it's like I feel like the song isn't particularly doesn't particularly have a provocative spirit in it.
And the reactions acting provoked, it all just feels like some weird.
Yeah, you're supposed to react this way or that way.
Yeah, like at least in the these other songs are talking about.
It really did seem like some clash of civilization.
Whereas this seems people who are very much a part of the same civilization like play acting.
But obviously, if you got to take sides, you got to go with Cardi B. Come on.
She's way cooler.
I'm going to say something controversial on the show.
Cardi B is cooler than Ben Shapiro.
I don't care if conservatives want to boycott Time Crisis. I won't back down.
I think Cardi B is significantly cooler than Mr. Shapiro.
Anyway, congratulations to everybody who made the top five in 2020 and 1994.
That's going to be a new thing I do. I want to congratulate people for making the top five.
All right, guys. Great.
Congrats to John Mellencamp.
See you in two weeks. Peace.
Mind Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
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