Episode 141: Killer Hot Sauce and Iced Cold Coffee
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Transcript
Transcript
Time Crisis back once again. It's a very hot episode
We're joined by Ronnie Vannucci and Brandon Flowers of the killers to talk about their new hot sauces
we also talked about the four horsemen of 77 a
little bit of the Super Bowl
outcast and so much more this
is
Crisis with Ezra Koenig
[Intro]
It was a hell of a league, all my rightful chances.
My picture clear, everything seemed so easy,
And so I dealt to the floor. One of us had to go.
Now it's different, I want you to know.
One of us is crying, one of us is lying.
Leave it on me babe.
Time Crisis, back again. What's up Jake?
Not too much, I was just getting caught up on these Super Bowl ads.
I missed the big game.
Yeah, that's crazy. You hit the threads and you were driving during the game?
Yeah, I was driving back from the desert with Hannah and...
Who did your schedule like that? Someone's getting fired.
Jake's assistant is fired.
I should have had my driver make sure that the TV in the back of the SUV was working properly
and I could have watched the game.
I decided to rough it, so I was doing the driving myself and missed the game.
You didn't listen to it on the radio?
No, you know what I listened to was the 2021 album.
Oh yeah, sick.
Then I listened to the new Bayo record, so I was on a real VW Headspace Sunday night.
Oh hell yeah. The new Bayo dropped about a week ago.
Everybody got to go check it out.
Yeah, that sounded great.
Yeah, great album.
That was a complete surprise to me, this 2021 full-length album.
Well, basically. Yeah, it was kind of a funny project.
I was kind of kicking myself because I meant to talk about it on the last TC
and initially it was going to drop the Monday after.
There's like a few reasons why I didn't feel right to drop it that day.
Found out about the death of the incredible artist Sophie, rest in peace.
So we pushed it to Thursday.
But yeah, I meant to kind of like tee it up and then I was like,
"Oh God, I totally forgot about it."
Because we've been working on it for a minute.
Although the funny thing about it is like, I kind of wish I talked about it on that episode
just to contextualize it because I think more or less everybody got it.
But it's like, it's a fairly like specific kind of project because in a sense,
Vampire Weekend didn't do anything. You know what I mean?
Right, which is why I thought it was a really interesting move to have the project be titled Vampire Weekend.
Like if you search Vampire Weekend on Apple Music, that's the first album.
That's like the most recent release.
Yeah, and I'll tell you why.
It's because I wanted it to be like a remix album, but not a remix album
because Vampire Weekend hasn't done, had a remix in 10 years.
So why start now was kind of our feeling.
But something felt like very perfect about getting those artists to do these extended versions.
But it didn't feel right to call them remixes because they're not remixes.
It's kind of like, we basically commissioned covers.
It basically is Vampire Weekend Presents.
Vampire Weekend Presents Goose.
Presents Sam Gandel and Goose.
Shout out to rock writer Stephen Hyden, who first brought Goose to our attention on this very program.
Like the truth is, with this project too, I don't know if we did a great job of this.
To me, it was always way more about like the YouTube videos.
Of course, we wanted it to be available on the streaming services.
Like you want to jam that on Apple Music, sure.
But I really love, well, Sam did this like incredible, like kind of improvisational animation to go with this.
And then Goose just kind of did it in real time.
So you could just watch a video of them in the living room in Connecticut where they rehearse.
Just like playing the whole thing over 20 minutes and 21 seconds.
Anybody who hasn't checked out the 4042 project, start with YouTube and then introduce yourself that way.
If you want to jam it, you throw it on your Apple Music, get it in a playlist kind of thing.
Yeah, because we listened to the Sam Gandel one first.
And it was like we were driving out of Joshua Tree area down into this huge basin underneath San Jacinto Mountain.
And it was like the most amazing kind of late winter light.
Oh, wow. I bet.
It was the beginning of that piece.
It was kind of with like, I don't know, like woodwinds or oboes or something.
He's a saxophonist.
It kind of reminded me of like, maybe like a late period Paul Thomas Anderson soundtrack or something.
Interesting.
And it was super vibey.
He really made a truly like incredible, almost just like standalone work of art.
It's cool that you're driving because when I first heard his, I was like really blown away by it.
And I was like, it almost reminds me of a Kraftwerk Autobahn, just like these kind of movements and just kind of like the getting in this kind of like trance with some of
the repetitive stuff.
And then Goose took it to a very kind place.
Well, then we merged under the Autobahn, Autobahn number 10, heading west.
And yeah, Goose took over.
And a 20 minute jam is tricky and it did really hold my attention.
Sometimes like, you know, like minute 15, you're kind of zoning out.
Oh yeah, totally.
And I got to really commend them for that.
Well, you know, and Sam did his thing.
He really crafted this like kind of sweet, but then Goose doing kind of like a live jam with the band.
Because, you know, this is like a conceptual idea.
It's like, obviously the whole thing starts with like a bit of a joke.
Just like, this song is called 2021, make a 20 minute, 21 second version.
You could hand that to somebody and they might be like, all right, just so you know, around like minute 15, I did some copy and pasting just to get through it and be like,
hey, no harm, no foul, man.
It's kind of a big ask, but they truly all brought their A game to it.
And yeah, in the case of Goose, actually just being four or actually five dudes in a room.
Yeah, I was very impressed that it held my attention too.
2021, will you think about me?
I could wait a year, but I shouldn't wait three.
I don't want to be.
2021, will you think about us?
Copper goes green, steel beams go rust.
It's a matter of.
And I'm not saying that just because like we put it out, because the truth is part of why we haven't done remixes in 10 years and so many of them just like are just so deeply
pointless and boring.
Yeah, I've never been a huge fan of the form.
I think remixes peaked a while ago.
Of course, you still get some very special ones, but there was a bit of a glut of remixes, I think, in the kind of blog house internet era.
I think we've had great success as an organization with the 4042 project and I to any bands out there, if you're thinking about doing some remix album, find a
Connecticut based jam band, not Goose, because we are actually, you could ask Goose, but tell them to just jam it out for 20.
Maybe ask Twiddle.
That actually crossed my mind a little bit.
Shout out to Twiddle. I was actually, me and Mahali were texting recently. I was like, could this be a long running thing where we present these long albums and one half
is like a kind of like somewhat avant garde musician and the other half is a jam band and just be like, basically, we're looking for people who specialize in the long
form.
I don't care if you're coming from jazz, if you're coming from jam, you know.
It's your dark star that goes into, you know, drums in space.
Yeah.
Seastones.
Yeah. We could get Ned, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, Legion.
Yeah.
I was going to say your advice to other bands sounds, I don't know, it's really confident. It sounds like a guy that's maybe read the Dunkin Donuts CEO book.
Oh, great transition. I appreciate that, Ned, keeping us moving. Any TCVW has, let me know if that's a good idea.
Because, well, you know, maybe eventually it's like two 40 minute harmony halls, side A, Philip Glass, side B, Twiddle. People who specialize in the long form, man.
Anyway, but for real, shout out to Sam, Gendel and Goose, because like I said, this project would have been fun, even if these guys handed in a C plus, I would still be very
appreciative that they made a C plus 20 minutes.
I truly believe they both did an A plus. So shout out to Sam, Gendel and Goose.
Anyway, like Nick said, I did read the Dunkin Donuts book.
I think last time we did the show, I said, I think I could get it done within the two weeks before next time.
I think I burned through this in the three days after we recorded, because once you pick up Around the Corner, Around the World by Robert Rosenberg, you don't put it down.
And in fact, I didn't hit the thread with this, but let's see if we can get him on. I think he'd be a great guest and I have a lot of questions for him.
He's very diplomatic. It's kind of a dry book. You know, a lot of it's framed as like advice for entrepreneurs and CEOs.
But I made a list of some of what I wanted to share on TC. The first thing, remember on the last episode when we were talking about Dunkin Donuts now being owned by Inspire
Brands?
How could I forget?
We noticed that Inspire Brands included another donut place called Mr. Donut. Do any of you guys know what Mr. Donut is? Are you familiar?
Heard of it. Not familiar though.
So Dunkin Donuts and Mr. Donut to be under the same umbrella is actually major. And here's why.
So Robert Rosenberg, his father started the company that became Dunkin Donuts. His dad sounds like quite a character.
He had this business that was like providing food at corporate cafeterias. He's kind of all over the place. He had this small chain of like coffee and donut shops.
Basically, his father was partners with his brother-in-law. Sounds messy. And they f*cking hated each other. And it got so messy that the families couldn't talk. The
sisters couldn't talk. Just like true nightmare.
And he's diplomatic. He makes it sound like his father was part of the problem. But anyway, two big personalities in a regional 1950s Boston-based food company just
f*cking hated each other.
So it came down to the wire. These guys couldn't even share an office anymore. And there's this big question about was his father gonna sell out to the brother-in-law or
buy him out?
Because anything else was intolerable. So then the dad at first wants to sell and then his son is like, "No, dad. We got this. This is our company. Buy him out."
So his dad buys out the brother-in-law for a few hundred thousand dollars. So now the brother-in-law is out of the company and now he can start grooming his son to take
over and build their empire built around this donut company.
Well, guess what his brother-in-law does with the $300,000?
Starts a donut company.
He starts a donut company called Mr. Donut. And then like literally that part of the book is called Donut Wars. And just, you know, his dad just like can't f*cking
believe it. And it becomes an obsession of his like, "What's Mr. Donut doing?"
And at first Mr. Donut was significantly outpacing what became Dunkin Donuts. And then this guy, Robert Rosenberg, takes over for his family. And then the
brother-in-law's son-in-law, again, always the in-laws, takes over Mr. Donut.
So it literally, he describes it as being like a Hatfield and McCoy situation. Multi-generational Donut Wars.
So anyway, there's so many twists and turns over the decades about the Dunkin Donuts, Mr. Donut rivalry.
It is kind of funny to imagine that what started in the hatred of two like regional brothers-in-law is now just two names in the portfolio of Inspire brands. All that
passion, all that history, all that hatred is now just two logos on a swag website.
They're both under the same umbrella now.
It's just meaningless. All the personality that went into those brands just kind of barely exists now. It's kind of just like a, in a way, a kind of sad ending to a
passionate human story. It's now just like a faceless corporation owns both.
Oh my god.
Dead Hand Control, you can take my life but you will never take my soul.
Dead Hand Control, you can take my life but you will never take my soul.
I've been thinking about the end times, about the madmen and their bones.
You can't save death on forever, but you didn't sing a simple song.
Dead Hand Control, you can take my life but you will never take my soul.
Dead Hand Control, you can take my life but you will never take, never take my soul, never take my soul.
On the text thread you said that Connecticut played a big role in the Dunkin' story.
Yeah, I'm very excited to share this actually because I know Jake, you're sometimes down on your home state. It's not really pulling its weight in the tri-state area.
But in the Dunkin' Donuts story, and of course Dunkin' Donuts is, its biggest stronghold is New England. So you would think that almost everything is coming out of
Massachusetts.
But I was very happy to see that actually there's some really important moments in Dunkin' history happened in Connecticut.
And the first one, so you know Dunkin' Donuts works on the franchise model.
Sure.
And this is really blew me away. So a couple who owned a Hartford Dunkin' Donuts, Edna and Bob Demery, invented the munchkins.
It did not come from the corporate kitchen. This is just a couple and they just started messing around and they had this idea.
What if we did the holes inside the donuts? They start trying to sell them on their own. They're flying off the shelves.
They bring it to Bob Rosenberg. He's like, this is genius. They take it nationwide.
So it's a real Richard Montanez kind of moment for the company.
Yeah, totally. And this seems like a smaller one, but this is actually pretty major.
Brooks Barrett was a Fairfield franchisee. Brooks had this idea that Dunkin' should have train station kiosks.
And I know this probably sounds like a very simple idea. Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah.
Why wouldn't you have a kiosk at a train station? Well, here's the thing.
Obviously, a big part of Dunkin's brand is that their donuts and their coffee are incredibly fresh.
They've always believed that gives them their edge to obsessively make sure that the coffee never gets old.
Similar to the Tim Hortons model, that the coffee doesn't get old, that the donuts are fresh.
So for them, the idea of opening up a non-producing location was a crazy idea.
It really went against the Dunkin' ethos. Anyway, Brooks Barrett and Fairfield, he made it work.
He logistically figured out how he could supply the kiosks by making sure, because he had a bunch of stores in the area,
making sure that they arrived fresh. And then of course today, as anybody from the tri-state area and imagine other places would agree,
you can't imagine going to Penn Station or something and not be able to grab your Dunkin'.
Imagine having to get on a train and you couldn't grab a donut and a fresh coffee. Sounds hellish.
But again, that was a Connecticut franchisee. A Fairfield County franchisee, innovated.
So anyway, those are two major pieces of the Dunkin' story. And both coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally,
came from Connecticut-based franchisees. Obviously we could talk about this book all day,
but maybe we'll get Bob on the show and we could actually talk to him.
But the last thing I'll say, I sent this to the chain. There's a very strange line.
I didn't know what to make of it. Where he's talking about the fact that Dunkin' went through some big changes in the late 90s.
When they introduced bagels, which they hadn't had, they'd always been focused on coffee and donuts.
So bagels was a big thing. And another big thing was iced coffee.
And then that got me thinking, like, when did people start drinking iced coffee? And this is a strange line.
So Rosenberg says, "It might be hard to believe, but before 1996, the only place where people were drinking lots of iced coffee was Rhode Island.
You might not believe it, but the Ocean State was the only place where there was huge demand for iced coffee."
So he doesn't get into the details. I don't know if he meant that some Rhode Island-based Dunkins were selling iced coffee and they did well.
But it kind of seems like he's implying that culturally, iced coffee was a niche item throughout the US, except for Rhode Island.
Which, already, Rhode Island is literally the smallest state. The idea that Rhode Island has a unique relationship with iced coffee that Massachusetts, like
literally surrounding it, doesn't, or Connecticut doesn't.
Did you Google it at all?
No, of course not.
Okay, cool.
Wait, Seinfeld, did you Google it?
I just would be curious if there's anything on the internet about the history of iced coffee in Rhode Island.
Okay, let's do a real quick one. We gotta do this on air. Iced coffee, Rhode Island.
Wait, wait, Ezra, type in "coffee milk, Rhode Island" and open the coffee milk Wikipedia page.
Okay, I'm seeing this. There is something here. "Coffee milk is a drink made by mixing coffee syrup or coffee extract and milk together in a manner similar to chocolate
milk. It is the official state drink in Rhode Island."
What a origin. Seems like there's a story there.
"While the precise origin of coffee milk is unclear, several sources trace it back to the 19th century Italian immigrant population in Providence, Rhode Island. One
of their culinary traditions was drinking sweetened coffee with milk."
"According to the Rhode Island government website, the official drink is coffee milk, but as it's described by them, it's similar to chocolate milk, but made with
coffee syrup. Coffee milk became so popular in Rhode Island that in '93, the Rhode Island state legislature voted coffee milk as the official state drink."
Are we talking about two different things here?
But that's not iced coffee.
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering.
But I bet that's what he's referring to. Most likely.
I guess you could imagine if iced coffee was a fairly niche item, I'm not saying that nobody drank iced coffee, but if it was maybe something you might get at a
restaurant, not something that you would get at your local coffee shop, maybe it's possible that the only place where significant amounts of cold coffee drinks were
being consumed was Rhode Island because of coffee milk.
But this also just makes me very fascinated by like, because it's so hard to picture not being able to walk into any coffee shop or kind of any place and get an iced coffee
to go. The idea that that didn't really go nationwide until the late 90s is a little shocking to me.
Well, actually, here's a good question. Seinfeld, you love 90s TV, right? You're named after an NBC sitcom from the 90s.
Yeah, my birth name is after the show Seinfeld.
I can't remember because we haven't talked about this in a while, but you like Friends, right?
The TV show?
Right, because you love all that NBC 90s sh*t.
No, Friends is like the show I don't like it because it's like a ripoff of Seinfeld. Like, I dislike. Like, if you follow me on Twitter, you'll see.
I think Friends came out first, so I don't know if the... You might want to do a number crunch yourself about that. Well, anyway, my question...
I confuse them a lot, actually.
Frank and Seinfeld, I can't keep them straight.
They both take place in New York and they both spend a lot of time in coffee shops, which is also confusing.
So, I guess my question is, I guess in Seinfeld, they're in a coffee shop, but a diner coffee shop, you know?
And in Friends, they're in a straight-up 90s cafe.
So, in Friends, they're always all hanging out in the coffee shop.
I can obviously picture them cradling like a big-ass cappuccino latte kind of thing.
Is anybody drinking iced coffee in Friends?
Because today, if you made a show about... How many friends are there in Seinfeld? Let me get a number crunch.
How many friends are there? Six. Six friends.
My man knows the show. I love that. He didn't even have to look. He didn't even have to look.
Well, that's just pop culture.
It's not the Brady Bunch.
Imagine today that you did a show with six 20-something good-looking people, downtown New York or any major city,
and they're always hanging out in a coffee shop talking about s***.
It would be mostly iced coffee. Nothing but iced coffee.
The single-serve plastic cup with the straw. Maybe the paper straw.
Oh, yeah. The soggy paper straw.
In fact, I could even imagine a whole episode that would be about the Joey character.
It's early June, and the Joey character comes in, and he gets a hot coffee.
And everybody's like, "What's up with Joey? He got a hot coffee."
And he's like, "What? It's not that warm out."
You could imagine it's a whole thing. Joey, what's wrong?
Joey's going to go, "It's the first cup of the day. It's got to be hot."
Chandler's like, "Joey, not after April, man."
"What? What do you mean? First cup of the day."
So I can't find anything about anyone on the actual series ordering an iced coffee. However...
You Googled the show "Friends" and iced coffee?
Yes.
That's tight.
But what I did find...
That's a cool Google search.
This is interesting, and I think that we don't have enough time to dig into this,
and maybe we should give a friend of the show, Winter, a call.
But Starbucks has a secret menu of "Friends"-inspired drinks.
The Monica is a nitro cold brew.
And the Joey is a frap with a white chocolate mocha.
It's the iced version of the Cinderella latte.
What the f*ck is a Cinderella latte? Is that on the menu at Starbucks?
It must be a white chocolate mocha.
Alright, so Seinfeld, you could be our man on the ground for this.
I need you by the next episode to go to, let's say, 30 Starbucks,
and just roll in incognito, don't let them know who you are,
and say, "Yeah, can I get a Chandler or a Rachel?"
You know, over the course of hitting all the Starbucks, you should try all the names.
I'm so curious. To get a secret menu going at all Starbucks,
that's like hundreds of thousands of people would need to learn this hyper-specific thing.
I'm not buying it.
It seems like a great thing for Seinfeld to do.
Just like during the pandemic, just go to multiple Starbucks over the course of a short period of time.
Oh yeah, and by the way, Seinfeld, if I hear that you weren't wearing a mask,
I'm going to be very disappointed.
Can I do a drive-thru? Can I just hit up...
Oh yeah, you can do a drive-thru. That's probably the safest way to do it.
We should just ask Winter to do it, right?
Winter is very into rules. That might sully his Starbucks-ing, but Winter, if you're listening,
would you do a little bit of research for us?
Save Seinfeld the humiliation of asking about friends.
It's also worth noting that of all the food products and the cultural products,
you've got to admit, Starbucks and friends have serious synergy.
Oh, and by the way, the last bit of Dunkin' Donuts news, which I hit the thread with,
is that I think they might have officially announced it by now,
but I found a leak of their 2021 spring menu, which they're about to drop.
Oh, right.
One of the big highlights is that Dunkin's about to have avocado toast,
as well as a green matcha donut, and then a bunch of new kind of drinks
that maybe isn't that surprising anymore, pomegranate, matcha, whatever.
But the avocado toast is the big one.
Yeah, how do you think that's going to do for them, Jake?
Very poorly. You know, guys like Ben Affleck aren't going to Dunkin'
to get a matcha donut and an avocado toast.
They're going there to get their iced coffee and their half dozen of chocolate glazed.
It's just like, stay in your lane, Dunkin'.
But counterpoint, maybe Dunkin' is worried that the Ben Afflecks of the world,
kind of like a Boston knucklehead movie star guy, he wants to order Dunkin'.
He wants to do a Dunkin' run, and maybe his girlfriend, his kids,
are a little bit like, "Oh my God, Dad, enough with the Dunkin'.
Dad, we're not from Boston. We're from L.A.
We don't like that weird Boston sh*t."
And he's just like, "Oh my God."
Maybe Ben Affleck called him. He had this crisis moment.
He was just like, "I need the Dunkin' menu to bridge the gap
between the generations of my family."
That's a fair point.
Ben Affleck, whose daughter's been hating on Dunkin' all these years,
and she wants to go to cool third way, or maybe she just wants to go to Starbucks,
and he takes her there, and she's like, "Oh, Dunkin' again."
And then she sees that there's avocado toast and pomegranate matcha iced tea,
and she's like, "Oh, well, this is my way in to Dunkin'.
You know, it's like a band with a long career.
Dad is a big Blood Sugar Sex Magic fan,
and then his son doesn't get into the Chili Peppers until Stadium Arcadium.
I can't exactly understand why--
Speaking of bands with long careers, Matt is telling me I got to interrupt
so we can set up Brandon Flowers of the Killers and his hot sauce.
I had a great anecdote about my college friend and his taking his kids to KFC.
I guess I'll have to just holster that one.
Okay, well, I guess we had a scheduled call with Brandon and Ronnie from the Killers,
which I think is some of our biggest guests in a long time,
so I'm really on the fence about if we should bump them
to keep talking about Ben Affleck trying the avocado toast at Dunkin' Donuts.
I think we should have them on. I'm a huge fan.
Yeah, we should have them on. All right, let's do it.
Let's get the Killers on.
Now, let's go to the Time Crisis Hotline.
I did find a reference to iced coffee and friends, by the way.
Is it a joke?
We can come back to it.
What's up?
Hey, y'all.
Hey, guys.
Lot of people.
Yeah, welcome to Time Crisis. We got the whole crew here.
Got Jake, Nick, Seinfeld.
Seinfeld.
Hey, what's up?
Hi.
You look different.
Oh, this is Seinfeld 2000.
Oh, yes.
Well, great to have you guys on.
We should have had you on earlier, but you only recently unveiled your own line of hot sauce.
I don't really know what we would have talked about before.
Well, first of all, I do just want to say that you guys released a great album last year.
Thank you.
By the way, we can talk about your illustrious career in music some other time.
So, okay, I guess my first question is, so you guys unveiled a new line of hot sauce.
Is this kind of like an exit strategy from the rock business?
We use the rock business as a stepping stone to get into the sauce business.
I like that.
Ron's always been into hot sauce.
You're not into hot sauce.
You like the hot sauce, but I've always wanted to have, there's such a crazy echo, I got to take this out.
I've always wanted to have a hot fuss, hot sauce for the merch booth, you know, for the stand next to the t-shirts and the wristbands and the foam fingers and like that.
And, you know, last year when everybody in our business was sitting on their hands, because we had to be, we decided to go full bore into this research, into this
endeavor.
Right. So you have four, hot fuss, fire and bone, caution, blowback.
Yeah. And they're different ranges of heat.
Yes. And so this is very limited. You're doing 2,500.
Yeah. The first batch is going to be like a special release sort of thing.
So we are probably going to keep going with this and figure out some more packaging and doing some bigger bottles, things like this.
These aren't out yet, but these are the big ones.
Have you tasted them?
No, I didn't taste them yet.
I have.
Yeah. So Jake tasted it. So Jake, my first question is, I looked at it. It comes in a beautiful box, by the way. It looks like a speaker.
I might have to do an unboxing video for Instagram. My first thought, and I'm curious what you did, Jake, was, I mean, I like, I put, you know, some Cholula on stuff here
and there.
But when I first looked at it and I was looking at the beautiful packaging, my first thought was like, oh, how should I taste this? So what'd you do, Jake?
Yeah, I had the same dilemma because I'm a big hot sauce and eggs kind of guy.
Yeah.
I got home at 5 p.m. I wasn't about to scramble up some eggs. So I got up some pita chips and some hummus and then just did a little dab of the hot sauce on top of the hummus with
the pita chip.
Excellent, guys. I did fire and bone.
Yeah.
Excellent.
I could try it right now. Should I do like a swig?
No, if you have chips.
So you just straight up put it on tortilla chips?
Yeah, you can put on anything, really.
Well, they each are different.
The first one, this one, hot fuss. So this is a cayenne sauce. So we get these peppers from Kentucky and we mash them up in Kentucky and the mash is sent to us and we blend
vinegar, sea salt and a little bit of a black pepper.
So you're really deep in this.
Oh, yeah. Why do something for vanity's sake? This is not I'm not Dan Aykroyd in my my vodka here.
This is shots fired. Wow.
I love I love hot sauce. So it was important to us that we put something out that wasn't just for vanity's sake.
I think Dan Aykroyd loves vodka.
Yeah.
I'm going to come to his defense here.
Everybody loves vodka.
Well, I got a question for you, because I can imagine being your position.
You guys say to the team, hey, listen, it's a covid year. We're not touring.
Let's do something fun. We've always had this idea to make hot sauce. I love hot sauce.
Let's do it. I could imagine because I've been in situations like this.
Somebody comes back and says, well, hey, Ronnie, we found a cool local small hot sauce company.
They already make a bunch of hot sauces. We can go ahead and slap a killer sticker on it and call it killer's hot sauce.
Like that would be an easy way. And that actually is how a lot of stuff goes down.
But you actually were interested in being deep into the weeds on knowing where the the ingredients come from, knowing the proportions, all that.
Yeah, it's important to me to not fake it in anything we do.
So, yeah, it was it was still fun.
There was a guy that actually went to my high school that was making beef jerky and was sort of like moonlighting as a sauceman.
That's what we call it in the industry. And our manager, Bobby Ray, says, hey, there's this guy that could finally make the hot sauce you've been talking about.
I'm like, well, get him on the phone. His name is Hans.
And it was so funny. Things were coming down the line as we were sort of mixing and our manager sort of put the hot sauce mixing and putting in Mirage.
It was funny because the manager was putting this hot sauce in the same sort of priority category as like our record, which has producers.
Yeah, yeah. The producers that weren't really confused as to what was going on.
So, you know, we had to make sure that we were still just having fun with this and not taking it too seriously, but serious enough to where like if our name is going to be on
it, it should be some good stuff.
And I imagine also because I'm like Jake, I like hot sauce on some eggs.
I definitely appreciate a good one when it comes my way, but I've never quite been part of the hot sauce community.
But I know that there is one because sometimes you roll up to a store and you're just like see thousands of different brands of hot sauce.
You're like, wow, there's really like a community of people to support this variety and this diversity.
Like I imagine there's probably like a crazy Reddit where, you know, people with some strong opinions like the Wall Street bets of hot sauce.
Just so like if you're really coming from the hot sauce community, you have to kind of bring your egg in because like there's going to be a lot of connoisseurs out there.
Yeah. And I feel really confident in this sauce and I've tasted so many hot sauces.
And what was really great about this is we were getting these ideas together, crazy ideas like combining different peppers, Thai chili peppers with Serrano peppers,
a ghost chili with hickory smoked sea salt and black peppers.
And like kind of getting all these like ideas together in sort of a throwing darts at a map type of way.
And this guy Hans was like, you want to sort of pair it with this or you want to have this dilution of vinegar or this much garlic or this much carrot or mango with this.
So it'll set this thing up. So I became sort of educated through this guy who had spent years and sort of researching this.
And meanwhile, sort of taking care of his beef jerky business.
Let me introduce you to the featherweight queen.
She got Hollywood eyes, but she can't shoot what she sees.
Mama was a dancer and that's all that she knew.
Because when you live in the desert, it's what pretty girls do.
I'm throwing caution, what's it gonna be?
Tonight the winds are changing, blowing wild and free.
If I don't get out, out of this town, I just might be the one who finally burns in down.
I'm throwing caution.
It says in our notes that this is like a 10 out of 10. I don't know what the scale is, but blow back.
That's the most hardcore one. It's got ghost pepper in abundance.
Yeah, I could take you through all four of them real quickly if you want.
So, okay, sure. So how much you said that's like your.
So starting at the bottom. Yeah. So that's like, and I have like sort of a rough estimation with the Scoville units, which is a sort of a scale for heat that they use for
heat and peppers.
And the next one up from Hot Fuss and Hot Fuss again is sort of like a Louisiana style cayenne based, cayenne and vinegar based hot sauce.
And then Fire and Bone is a green sauce. It's got jalapeno and serrano and hatch chilies as well.
Hatch green chilies and hatch is a place in New Mexico and hatch doesn't refer to just one chili.
It's where a lot of chilies are grown. So it could be, but there is a hatch chili, but it doesn't just, you could have a hatch chili, ancho chili from hatch in Mexico.
And that would be considered a hatch chili. But this one is awesome on eggs.
I really, I like the heat. So I go straight to the blowback, which is our hottest one.
But this one is, this is sort of a, you know, a six out of 10, maybe five out of 10.
And that's my speed. It's green. It's green and it's tasty as hell.
The next one up is Caution. So now we jump into the habanero sauce category.
And so this has, again, hickory smoked sea salt and the onions and garlic, a little bit of brown sugar, hatch red chili, and then black pepper and habanero.
I think this is Brandon's favorite. This is my fave. Is this your fave? You put this on everything.
I put that on just about anything. The bottles have gone fast in my house. I didn't expect to like all four as much as I do, but you know, Ronnie's kind of taking it, took the
bull by the horns.
And I would, I would, you know, test it out and maybe give a couple of comments, but it's pretty incredible how that all turned out.
The Caution is sort of the go-to around here too.
And then, but the next one up, it is, it gets hot.
It gets really hot. Yeah.
Blow back gets hot.
So this is a similar vibe to Caution, except that we've introduced not only habanero, but the ghost chili pepper.
So all of a sudden this goes up about 10 times the heat of Caution.
So just because you made it from firing the bone up to Caution does not mean that you're ready for, to move up one more step to blow back. That's like 10 more steps.
The good thing about it though, it's not just heat. Like the heat is, is a secondary thing to the actual flavor of it.
So it's, it's actually, it tastes amazing.
I've always been scared to go try these really crazy ghost pepper type hot sauces.
I guess I kind of figured at a certain point, once you get, you're getting like that high up on the Scoville crazy hot, like how do you even taste the complexity?
I mean, I think it's just got, it comes down to, you know, people's sort of threshold for flavor versus pain.
Is it kind of like a journey?
It's a journey. It is a journey.
Like before it gets crazy hot, you're like enjoying some of the flavors and then like the heat kind of fades up, takes over.
Yeah. And the good thing about it is they all share this sort of a thread where they all have a similar profile.
I think hot fuss is probably the most on its own as far as a flavor profile goes, but you can kind of feel like there are notes.
Maybe it's the hickory sea salt in these that sort of time together, but you can take a journey.
You can take a magical ride and start with hot fuss and just go all the way up to blowback.
Hot fuss and fire in boat. They're very approachable.
Very approachable.
All right. I'm going to try them all in my unboxing video. I think that's the best way that I can present my reaction to it.
Well, now that we know about the hot sauce, I'm curious about like, kind of like what you guys grew up eating.
Now, Brandon, I know you grew up in Nevada. Ronnie, did you grow up in Nevada too?
Yeah. Las Vegas. Yeah. I was born there.
So you guys are both born and raised Vegas area dudes.
Now, of course, and you guys have talked at length about this and even you have songs.
A lot of the lore of the killers is about, in my interpretation, you know, what it means to come from a place like Vegas,
which has this whole side of it that caters to the tourist, to the outsider.
A lot of people have a shallow impression of Vegas because most of us have only been there to go hang out at a casino,
do that side of it. And obviously it's a whole community. It's a whole world.
Like, yeah, growing up in Vegas, like what's like the food world?
Like, is it a lot of like Mexican food and it doesn't feel like some have something in common with like the kind of California vibe?
I think so. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think we're, we have a pretty big Mexican component contingency there.
Is there anything that's particularly Las Vegas that you think of?
The only thing I can think of that comes to mind is kind of things that happen at the casinos.
Like you can get a shrimp cocktail for 99 cents.
That was the kind of stuff that my family would gravitate towards.
There's a healthy Asian food thing going on there.
And it's always been there, especially in the casinos and hotels,
because there's a lot of people coming over from that part of the world and they want to eat their kind of food.
So, you know, that like sambal, which is like a garlic chili paste stuff that you'll find at like Chinese restaurants and Korean joints and stuff.
So I grew up on that and Tabasco sauce.
You guys grew up both technically in Las Vegas in the city?
Yes. Yeah, I was on that suburb, Henderson, a little town outside.
So growing up in Vegas, you're talking about going to get the shrimp cocktail, going to the casino where there's like specialty Asian food.
So it's not like growing up in different parts of Vegas, because, you know, there's some cities where like, you know, New York, for instance,
somebody would be like, man, I've been to like Times Square like, you know, once in my life.
That's like a tourist spot. I don't go there. But it seems like in Vegas, that's not quite the case.
Like there's a lot of reason to kind of roll up to the same places that the tourists would go to like a casino.
It's a small town to us and it's very accessible. And the strip is very accessible.
It wasn't, you know, it wasn't out of the way. And a lot of our family members work there.
My second job in Vegas was at a restaurant in Caesars Palace.
And Ronnie's mom was a cocktail waitress there for 40 years.
Caesars Palace. And so you just were there. It's kind of the heartbeat of the town.
I could remember my mom saying, yeah, hey, come down to the hotel. It's 120 degrees outside.
Why don't you go and watch a movie in this in the Omni Max, which was this like crazy, almost 360 degree or 170 degree movie theater that was like in a dome.
I don't know if you remember that. There was one. Yeah, I've been to something like that before.
Yeah, it fully wraps around. Yeah. And then my mom would come out like in her garb with like the crazy big pony.
Yeah, Cleopatra. And bring us, bring my brothers and I like Orange Julius's, you know, and we just sit and watch movies and like chill out and beat the heat.
Yeah, that was like a classic, like waiting for mom to finish work experience.
We don't have a Vegas centric. I don't know if there is a Vegas particular fair that is only in Las Vegas or that there's an there's not like an area of Las Vegas where you
get this or that necessarily.
Yeah, it's kind of everything. Right. What about the famous Vegas buffets?
Is that something that like having family members who worked at a casino, you get like employee discount family rate kind of thing?
All day long free, free, 50 free. Free? Wow. Oh, yeah. Free. All you can eat.
Well, it all depended on who you're family. If you had a, you know, like I had an uncle that had a, you know, a problem.
And so he played a lot at, say, the Palace Station or something like that.
Yeah. If you're somebody that, you know, that spends all your money there, they'll give you, you know, you know, little hookups to things like the buffet.
And so you find yourselves, you know, sometimes having access like Ronnie's talking about to those things.
Yeah. What are the Vegas buffet specific things? Because in my mind, there's something about Alaskan crab legs is like a kind of a classic Vegas buffet thing. Is that
true?
Yes. Yeah. Prime rib. Shrimp cocktail. That's back to the cocktail.
I forget how many tons of shrimp they go through on the strip a day. You know, when it was like firing. Yeah. It's insanity.
There is kind of like an old fashioned kind of like joke where people just be like, oh, yeah, seafood in Vegas.
I feel like that's pretty outdated now because there used to be a thing where people like, are you really telling me you're about to eat sushi in Dallas?
It's inland. Here's like, yeah, we live in the 21st century, like global supply chain.
You think the sushi you eat in New York is fresh out of the Hudson River?
So anyway, it's like a pretty outdated idea. But there is something about like Vegas seafood.
And I guess, yeah. So with the shrimp cocktail, is that just because like when Vegas was like exploding in the 50s and 60s,
shrimp cocktail was like a symbol of like elegance or something?
I don't know, because it wasn't sold that way. It was sold, you know, that it was cheap.
I remember being young and it being 49 cents for a cup of shrimp cocktail.
49 cent shrimp cocktail because, you know, the same way you get a free vodka soda while you're gambling.
It gets you into the casino.
OK, but so I'm picturing like, you know, 12 year old Brandon.
Yeah. You want your 49 cent shrimp cocktail.
You like riding your bike to the casino and just like walking into the casino floor and just like, ma'am, like pulling out two quarters out of your pocket.
Yes.
Shrimp cocktail?
They're local casinos. So I wouldn't have gone to the Mirage for that.
I would have gone to a place in Henderson called Skyline.
You could be under 18 and just kind of roll into a place like Skyline?
Yeah, you could totally go into the Skyline and get there's just mirrors everywhere.
And it just smelled, you know, smelled like my grandma's house.
And you got the shrimp cocktail.
Oh, wait, have you heard there's a place called Costa de Mare in the wind.
It's a seafood restaurant. All the fish is from the Mediterranean.
Whoa.
That's their thing. And I don't know how, you know, it's like you're talking about how far we've come, but it's wild.
You go there and they go around from table to table and show you the fish.
DHL, man.
Right.
UPS.
There's a plane coming from Athens straight to Vegas.
Chopping off.
Just floor to ceiling with seafood.
I wonder what the like the waste ratio is to that, like from fishing boat to casino.
Like what the ratio of waste is.
That could be a sick killers video.
It's like that one of those kind of like documentary style videos that you guys aren't in that much.
But it's like it cuts you guys playing, but it starts with like local Greek fishermen on like a small island.
Yeah.
And then you just watch the whole supply chain.
And then in the end, it's you guys at the wind.
Yeah. With 25 pounds of fish.
You could also be like a classic, like, like Soul Asylum, like call to arms video.
Where you're like every day.
Yeah. Like where you break it down.
The text on screen.
Yeah.
And then it just ends with like, do better when.
I think we're almost there.
We're at that age where we, you know, we're starting to be a little more outspoken about issues like that.
Yeah. I don't know if you get like run out of town.
Yeah, we might.
Might be.
He's gone.
He's gone.
He's not.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
He's canceled.
Right.
He's canceled.
Yeah.
Somebody canceled him.
He called me once.
I've had a few phone calls with people that are that he's just so busy.
And or at least the presence was all business.
And before I said hello, he just said, I work out to read my mind every day.
And.
Opening line.
That was the opening.
And I barely got a word in.
And then he just the phone was hung up.
He was just off to the next thing.
What the hell?
Was that set up because you wanted to like pitch him something?
No, I used to.
Or because he wanted to talk to you.
He let me use Cirque de Soleil show in the wind, which has been closed permanently since
covid for a music video.
Oh, cool.
But he was, you know, he knew of us.
And anyway, big fan of read my mind.
That's all he had to say.
He said his piece and moved on.
On the corner of Main Street, just trying to keep it in line.
Say you want to move on.
And you say I'm falling behind.
Can you read my mind?
You read my mind.
Never really gave up on breaking out of this two star town.
I got the green light.
I got a little fire.
I'm going to turn this thing around.
Can you read my mind?
Can you read my mind?
Man, I can't stop thinking about this 49 cent shrimp cocktail.
That is, you know, I judge all cocktail sauces by those early experiences with cocktail sauce.
Oh, that's a nice next step for you guys.
If I go to any steakhouse or whatever it is and I get a cocktail sauce, I expect it to be, you know, to have some heat to it.
And I expect it to be this classic sauce.
I hate it when they mess with the sauce.
Maybe we should get into that because I've been thinking about, you know, diversifying this.
We could go way beyond four sauces.
We can get into like a fresh salsa scenario, maybe a Bloody Mary mix.
The cocktail sauce makes a lot of sense.
49 cents though. I don't think we could do, I mean, the margin, we're not doing too well with this sauce so far.
How about this? You could sell the shrimp for 49 cents, which is going to, you know, you're going to take a hit on that.
But then you sell the cocktail sauce, it costs like 80 bucks or something.
Yeah.
49 cent shrimp included.
Well, while you guys are here, I mean, I think we barely scratched the surface.
We should have you back one day to talk about your whole long career.
Rather than walking through the whole history of the killers, which I'm sure you guys do all the time in interviews.
I'm just kind of curious, just as a musician, like I said, you guys put out a great album last year.
What was it like in the craziest year ever dropping a record?
We were promoting, just starting promotion in February.
So a year ago, and we were just starting to hear whispers of COVID and people were just kind of feeling a little bit of anxiety and not sure what was happening.
And then Universal, you know, we're at Island Records.
Universal put this email out saying, basically, at your own risk, if you want to go promote.
And me and Ronnie just went home.
You could tell something was happening. And so we flew home and that was February 29th.
When did the first single come out? Was it before that or after?
Man, "Caution" must have been out, right?
I think so. I think it might have come out like mid-February.
Right. Because I just want to understand that, because more or less the wheels were in motion at that point.
It wasn't something where you're like, oh, we're going to drop the record in August.
And then it's like, oh, well.
Yeah, we had a book. We had a tour.
Right. Oh, yeah. You had like a big tour lined up.
I mean, it was in motion. It was such a kick in the pants because I think this is probably our best record to date.
Or at least, you know, it feels like it or it felt like it or whatever.
We were so excited and so stoked to get on this ride.
And then we got this, you know, we went to Mexico City and did some promotion in New York City and then got this email and found out about this email saying, hey, you don't
have to go to Berlin or you don't have to.
And even then it felt sort of a temporary like, let's see where this COVID thing gets.
We did. Nobody knew it was going to take a year to even sort of scratch the surface of repair.
And so I just remember feeling you asked, you know, how was it releasing a record in the time?
Just this gut punch.
Then you stop thinking about yourself and then you start thinking about other people who are dying and being affected by this.
Yeah. Much more closely than we were.
And then the whole thing just sort of like, oh, let's just make hot sauce.
A lot of people started postponing records. Right.
My knee jerk reaction was to get it out.
And it sounds a little cheesy, but I started thinking about my formative years were in this really small town in rural Utah.
And I started thinking almost like likening this isolation to the way that I felt at that time.
And the best thing about the thing that saved me, I think, was music.
Everybody kept postponing and canceling their album.
And I just kept having arguments with our manager like we need to get it out.
People want music more than ever before.
So we did our best to get it out as soon as we could.
And that's a great impulse because, yeah, I definitely enjoyed listening to that album.
And I'm sure like a lot of your fans probably even got to spend more quality time with it in the unusual times.
But and also like you guys are fairly prolific.
I mean, that the imploding mirage is the sixth album. Right.
Six album. There's been some solo albums in the mix.
So is it possible the next record will just you'll kind of like push all the touring onto that one and it'll be kind of one big thing?
We're sort of trying to work through that right now. It's almost done.
We're going to mix the record next week. Oh, damn.
And so we don't have a definitive drop date, but the album is pretty much done.
And it's sort of fell onto our laps. Yeah, that's a great position to be in.
You know, you hear about a song or you've experienced it. You know, some of some songs are just like laborious sons of.
And then some just appear. This album just sort of appeared.
And we've never had anything like that happen.
We've had songs appear, but never an entire record like this.
And so you're almost confused by it, but we're just kind of going with it.
And we're we're really excited about it.
What the interesting thing is, I think, is, you know, most of the time when you sort of dedicate time to get into the zone,
maybe it's a year or two, perhaps shorter or longer for different people where you're just in the zone of writing songs and recording songs.
And then you sort of have to put another hat on to where you have to go and play these is live and sell it that way.
The cool part about this is we have never had to be in the same lane for so long.
And so we still have those sort of recording writing muscles and not so much the playing muscles.
I started playing down some some energetic songs in practice the other day, and I definitely don't have those playing muscles right now.
But it's nice to be in that zone for so long.
It's just an interesting to think that, you know, maybe we should take longer to maybe do two records at a time or something like that, because it's a lot of fun.
It's very, you know, sort of weirdly introspective.
She's reaching for a backpack, puts out a cigarette and gets on the bus.
She's sitting on a secret. She didn't ask for no girl ever did.
But there's a whisper in her heartbeat.
She can hear it just enough to keep her alive when she's breathing in the blowback.
There's nothing you can offer. She ain't already tried.
But she's breathing in the blowback.
Born in the worldwide trash and always typecast.
She's gonna break out. Boy, you better know that. It's just a matter of time. She fights back.
Breathing in the blowback.
Just because this is time crisis, you might not know this, but there's one thing that's kind of unified a lot of our interviews over the years and in our conversations.
And that's the music of the Grateful Dead. Jake is in a Grateful Dead cover band. We talked about them a lot.
We had Bob Weir on the show not too long ago. And I imagine that the killer is often being described as rock, indie rock, whatever.
Like, you probably don't get asked about that too much. So just got to ask. It's almost like our duty.
Do you guys like the Grateful Dead? Do you have any relationship with them? Jam bands in general? Lay it on me.
I met Mickey Hart once. He signed a book. He had a book come out. I think it's called Planet Drum or something like that.
But there was a moment sort of early college where I actually went to a Phish concert.
There's a part of me that really, I have a muso side, which sort of shares a band diagram with obviously Grateful Dead and the bands like Esky Martin Wood and Joshua Redd.
You know, Joshua Redd and Sex. But yeah, I can get into a little Grateful Dead. They wrote great songs.
I got to ask, where was the Phish show? Was it in Vegas? Oh, yeah. At the old Aladdin Theater.
That was pre-Killers. That was like 90s? Yeah, it was like 98, maybe 97. And he's a great drummer.
John Fishman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's great. It's really good.
What about you, Brandon? You get any books signed by members of the Dead? No.
I'm probably, I don't want to let anybody down. I'm probably what you would imagine. I know Touch of Grey. And I love that song.
Hell yeah. First time I saw armpit hair on a woman was at a subway in about '87 when I was a little kid in Vegas.
And it was a bunch of kids on their way to see Grateful Dead at the Thomas and Max Center.
So that's something that's kind of emblazoned into my memory. Oh, that's interesting.
A female deadhead drawn in hair. It was exotic. Horizon. Yeah. F*** it is exotic. Nothing wrong with that.
So you like Touch of Grey. You remember seeing it on MTV. It's just such a classic song.
I didn't like it enough to dig in any further, I guess. Yeah, because Brandon, I always get the impression that you,
I mean, I know like when I think of the killers, I think of like, you're definitely like in this lineage of cool, sad English pop of the 80s, like Pet Shop Boys.
Like that, that you cite that often. Like maybe concise, a little bit more regimented.
I guess I've never been into the jam, the longer jams. We all are on our own journey. Yeah, absolutely.
Hey, we are, we are one time in Amsterdam, we all took some, I think we had like a hash muffin or something like that.
And we got jamming and Mark was the only one. Mark was the only one that did. Mark was like, no, I'm not taking that.
And I remember we all took it and we're like, nothing's happening. Like maybe we'll take some more.
Like we're very, you know, we weren't drug users. We're still not drug users. We're still very green in the drug world.
And so we took more and then write about like three songs into this, to our set. This is at the Paradiso in Amsterdam.
Oh yeah. Do you remember that Brandon? Yeah, I remember. It was like a seven, it was like a 27 minute version of, of Smile Like You Mean It.
We got real jamming. This is legendary. Is there a tape somewhere? I don't think it's ever been talked about.
The jammed out Smile Like You Mean It? I just remember Mark like really holding it together and everybody was just like head down.
Like, you know, you know, Brandon was rolling around on the floor and then, and that's the only time I've ever seen Brandon get jamming or any sort of length on like a
solos and stuff.
He was tickling the ivories. He was like, just getting wild on that keyboard. He was doing a lot of, yeah. But never since.
Wait, this is major. If anybody has a recording, I think it's before phones had video capabilities.
There might've been an old school taper in the audience. For all we know, there's like a cassette tape.
Our tour manager used to manage jam. What's the jam band that Jeremy used to manage?
Oh, uh, the Canadian band. Oh my gosh. Right on blow. I thought you'd know.
No, it's right on tip of my tongue, but it's, they're Canadian, right?
I don't know any major Canadian jam, but like a big jam band, like a widespread panic. No, not a McGee disco biscuits.
The New Deal. The New Deal. Oh, I don't know. Check them out.
What's the longest Mr. Brightside you ever dropped?
Well, we do an extended Jacques Ricard version. Oh, right. Yeah. So when we do that, I think I saw you do that at Glastonbury.
Oh yeah. So it's like, it extends it to about seven minutes when we do the whole thing.
That's pretty sick. Seven minute Brightside. And also like we were talking earlier in the show about like,
obviously jam bands are not the only, it's not the only genre of music where people kind of like extend stuff and like let it marinate.
It's not hard to picture like, uh, with some of like the dance of your killer stuff, just like a really long human.
We've done that too. We've done stuff like that. Yeah. Like the kind of like 12 inch dance remix vibe.
We've done some extensions. Yeah.
I think we've always wanted to do like a portion of the show where like things got really disco-y,
like maybe like a smaller stage or something, or somehow things got really like tight and like very electric sounding just for like four songs or something like that.
That could be sick. I also feel like back in the day, people don't do it quite as much,
but they used to be like a very common part of a show, like a Bruce Springsteen show.
They would just always do medleys, you know, like that was just like part of like show biz.
It's like there's a moment where you pick a genre of music, like 50 songs or like disco or something.
You just like bang out like a medley, five or six songs.
Prince used to do that. Prince used to do that with his own songs.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Right.
I got a lot of hits people, but I only got a little time.
And then like, you know, play 10 in a row, like a verse and a chorus of everything. Incredible.
I can't remember what the tone was, but I remember one time when we were in the long years between our third and fourth albums where we weren't doing anything or touring.
I do kind of remember talking with Bae and CT and getting kind of into this idea that was like a bit of a joke that was us doing a tribute to indie in our set.
And that it would be like basically just try to pick like the most, I don't know if we could have pulled it off in any way that just didn't feel like a huge cringy
embarrassment.
But like there's something really funny to me about just like kind of doing like just doing the most obvious like quote unquote indie hits of like the 20th century.
Like coming out of like, I don't even know what an example would be.
Just like we're doing like Heads Will Roll, Yeah Yeahs, and then it's like da da da da da da da da ba ba ba ba ba ba.
You know, just like all like the big, we'd have to throw some killers in there.
Maybe we could pull it off in a way that would like actually be really fun.
But people like that, you know, a little bit of everything.
Heads Will Rolls, Slaps.
That's a classic remix, the A-track remix. That's kind of one of the last like major remixes I could think of.
Well guys, we've covered a lot of ground.
We've said a lot.
It's been great having you on the show. I will be having the hot sauce shortly.
I think I'll probably do that on Instagram to really rather than on the radio show to give people like the experience and show it off.
And thanks so much for sending me and Jake that hot sauce.
I hope you guys get into the other flavors.
And by the way, like just to go full circle, I'm sorry that we started talking about music and stuff like that.
Is it for sale right now?
It is for sale right now.
I think we're getting low, but it is.
You can get this special edition right now.
We're working on, like I said before, larger bottles and different packaging.
And I feel like just because we've been dancing around it and because, you know, the Time Crisis audience is really all over the place.
Maybe you would just end with Ronnie.
If there's anybody listening, they're not a fan of rock music.
They don't know anything about the killers music.
They've been living under a rock for 20 years, but they do like hot sauce.
What do you have to say to that consumer?
Well, I mean, if you are someone who consumes, who enjoys the spicier things in life, give us a shot.
This is real sh*t.
This is not a vanity project.
That's all I'm trying to highlight.
You're out here talking about the different types of peppers.
Blood, sweat and tears went into this.
This is not just, "Hey, if you like the killers, buy this sh*t."
Can I tell my Vampire Weekend story though?
Because I just want to share it with everyone.
Okay, yeah, please.
So I don't know if you'd be mad at Ariel or not, but you know, before FOTB came out,
Ariel, I had dinner with him and he played me.
He was going to play me a few cuts, and he ended up playing me a bunch, right?
And we were in the middle of, we were just kind of wandering and we weren't settled on a direction.
We didn't have any direction.
And that record just lit a fire under me.
And there was just like an awakening that I had listening to it that you were raising the bar.
And it made me feel the way I did when I heard, "Is this it?" from The Strokes.
You're jealous, but you're happy for them.
And there's no word for it.
But it really helped us somehow find our center and find a direction and really elevate, I think, our game.
And we couldn't have done it without you.
It means the world to me to hear that.
And yeah, we've talked a little bit in the past.
Like, yeah, I knew that you were riding for the record.
I knew Ariel played it for you.
I don't think he told me ahead of time, but I'm always okay with that.
He plays some sh*t for you.
But yeah, really, the thing I admire about you guys, and again, with the last album,
I can tell you guys are just always going for it.
There's a real consistency to the approach and the songwriting and the playing.
I like you guys too. That's all I'm saying.
[Laughter]
And because of my respect for you, I have decided that I'm going to keep Vampire Weekend out of the hot sauce business
for at least the next five years.
Thanks.
I respect you guys too much.
You know, isn't like collaboration, isn't that hot right now?
We could do like a Killers X Vampire Weekend limited edition vampire sauce.
If you invite us in to do something under your umbrella, now that's totally different.
If we made a song together, that'd be almost too obvious.
Yeah, we are working on a sweet chili heat tequila.
Oh yeah, you know what, we've had this idea to do a spicy tequila,
so maybe we can bring some kind of complimentary products.
The last thing that I'll say about it is I've always been, in a very immature way,
delighted when I walk into a hot sauce store and you see how many of the titles
have to do with things like ass destruction.
Almost to the point of being absurd.
I don't know if in the hot sauce community, the ass destruction ones are considered to be
kind of like lowbrow gimmicky or if sometimes they actually are paired with really high quality hot sauce.
But they always have these psycho names like Rectal Rampage.
And there's always a picture of just like a nuclear bomb shooting out of some dude's ass.
We're keeping it classy.
Yeah, keeping it real classy.
I like that you guys are keeping it classy, but it could be kind of fun.
And also, I like that you guys work to make sure that there were killer song titles tied to the names of the hot sauces.
But maybe just to throw a curveball at people, it's like if under the killer's hot sauce umbrella,
you introduce the vampire weekend one, people are like, "Oh, what are the names going to be?"
And then ours is just all ass destruction, ass blaster, rectal rampage, just like atomic toilet.
There's a market for it, you know? There is no bar low enough.
Zero reference to our music.
Oh, sh*t.
Anyway, that's my pitch. Well, great to see you guys.
Ass destruction weekend.
Yeah, it's just like the pun.
Okay, ass destruction weekend presented by the killers coming Q4?
Q4, baby.
21?
Yeah, maybe.
I'm sorry, but isn't it supposed to be ass killer weekend?
Ass killer weekend.
That would be perfect. I think we're on to something.
Ass killer weekend, and then what I'm doing, I'm sitting down with Bon Appetit,
and they'll say, "So tell us about the name."
We'll say, "Well, our big brother, Angel Investors, are the guys from the band The Killers.
We're called Vampire Weekend, and our number one priority with this hot sauce
is to, in some way, destroy the customer's ass.
So we're picturing somebody's ass--
Keep them on the toilet for one whole weekend.
For the whole weekend.
So we're picturing somebody's--
Yeah, okay, I got to cut myself off.
There's something about ass destruction hot sauce that really just brings out the 12-year-old in me.
Anyway, thanks so much, fellas. Please come back on TC.
Likewise. Thanks.
Love talking to you guys.
Thanks, y'all.
Have a good one. Can't wait for the next one.
Peace. See you guys.
Save some face
You know you've only got one
Change your ways
While you're young
Boy, one day you'll be a man
Oh girl, he'll help you understand
Smile like you mean it
Alright, thank you to Bren Flowers, Ronnie Vannucci.
Great guys. Great band, The Killers.
Great sauce.
Now, we didn't, on this episode so far, talk about any of the Super Bowl ads.
But I think we could do that maybe in two weeks.
I feel like Super Bowl is a major event.
When does the football season start up again?
Probably not for like five, six months.
September?
I would say we basically have a runway of eight months to talk about the Super Bowl ads
because it's kind of evergreen until the next season starts.
I'll give you that.
But people kind of be into talking about the Super Bowl and what happened.
And, you know, that'll be feel pretty fresh in two weeks, I think.
Because we got to talk about the Jason Alexander tie-dye ad.
Perhaps the Bruce Springsteen cheap ad.
But Ezra, also, I've been, we'll just pocket this for next episode.
I've been reading Fred DeLuca's book, Start Small, Finish Big.
Well, and if any of our fans have been living under a f***ing rock
and don't know who Fred DeLuca is, Jake, would you care to enlighten them?
Yeah, he was the co-founder of Subway.
And, you know, it's nice to continue this Connecticut theme.
I mean, we opened the episode talking about Goose.
Then we talked about Connecticut's role in Duncan's trajectory.
So I'm happy to pick this up next week with a little,
maybe I'll read a few select passages from Start Small, Finish Big
because he really goes into depth about the origin story of Subway.
Oh, I'd love that.
And so far, are you enjoying the book?
Yeah, I am.
Like I said, he goes into intense depth about opening the first restaurant,
where he got the idea, and then like the painstaking detail
of like opening the second and the third and the fourth.
And then you get to the end of that chapter and it's sort of like,
"We opened our 30,000th restaurant!"
Like it just like balloons at a certain point.
But I love the early hardscrabble days.
Yeah, me too.
I think that's what's very appealing.
And I'm curious about the Subway book because one takeaway I had
from the Duncan book, and I hope we can ask Robert Rosenberg about this.
Obviously, on this show, we both are sometimes critical
of like the emptiness of like the generic chain-driven culture.
You know, I would say like those are questions that come up in your work, Jake.
Absolutely.
Something that I care about too.
And yet, in this crazy changing world,
there even are times when going back to like the origin stories,
as much as they're the beginning of like the buff trajectory
of like a chain taking over the globe,
there's even sometimes something charming about going back
to that 20th century model because there is something almost relatable
in this era of like gigantic international finance
and corporations owning a portfolio of a billion companies.
There's something kind of charming at almost human level
about even a place with a few hundred locations,
trying to just figure out what people want and learning from their mistakes.
That's a lot closer to like the human level than some of like
what we're dealing with in the landscape today where like
you don't even know like who's behind anything.
And I had that feeling reading the Duncan book,
and I'm curious if there's a turning point for Subway too
because I was really struck by this moment that this guy,
you know, he had a chaotic first 20, 30 years.
He's dealing with the Mr. Donut threat.
He's dealing with over-expanding and trying to go to other countries
and the downturn of the American economy in the 70s, all this sh*t.
But still, it's like the story of like trying to like bring
a high-quality product to people and like advertise it in a way
that like, you know, showed your, put your best foot forward,
Fred the Baker and all that sh*t.
And then in the late 80s, they get hit with a hostile takeover.
And it's like this whole other era where this dude
who's like just trying to focus on sourcing beans.
And so he has this beginning where he's like,
he has to contextualize it for the reader.
He's like the 80s was a new era of finance,
and there became these things called hostile takeovers
where people would start buying up your stock.
And so he basically like late 80s, he notices the Duncan stock price
is kind of like going up.
And at first he's like, oh, I think people probably heard
of our plans for like Q3.
We got some cool things rolled out and then just keeps going higher.
And then somebody calls him and is like,
this Canadian company is like basically trying to f*ck you.
And he had to scramble.
And yeah, it's a whole other story.
And we should talk about some other time,
but it just made me think about like,
that's a pretty defining line in the sand.
- Right.
- It was very succession actually.
Then he's frantically going around the world
trying to find another buyer,
because there's no way he can hold on to the company.
So he had to find an English company to buy it.
But anyway, it makes you think about these moments
where even these things that are kind of buff,
like, you know, chain restaurants,
there's still these line in the sand moments where you're like,
damn, that's when it got crazy.
You're talking about hostile takeovers from international finance,
trying to like eat up a donut chain.
- Right.
At that point, you're a long way away from hitting the kitchen
at 530 in the morning to fire up the deep fryer
to make the donuts.
Although I will say this before we shift gears to top five,
Subway was sort of from the get-go designed to be that.
Like the first sandwich he made was for the first customer.
He was so like obsessed with like getting the restaurant up
and running and figuring out like just the ins and outs
that he was like,
and I realized I hadn't even made a sandwich yet.
- Oh, you mean because he was interested in like the business
and the potential to grow and all that.
- Yeah, he opened Subway with the intention of it being a chain,
but it took a long time.
- No joke, but that actually makes me think like,
I wonder if he'll say some like this,
but it makes me think like,
you think Subway is a store that sells sandwiches.
You think we're about sandwiches.
No, no, no.
Subway is a technology.
The sandwiches are incidental.
I designed a highly sophisticated technology in my head.
I happened to apply that to sandwiches.
I could give a about sandwiches.
- It's a spiritual technology.
Working on the ethereal plane.
- All right, let's get into the top five.
- It's time for the top five on iTunes.
- So this week for the top five,
we're just going to do a traditional top five,
only five songs,
and we're taking it way back to 2004.
Why this week in 2004, Jake?
- That was the first Killers record?
- I guess so. Yeah, that's right.
- And incidentally, I looked this up earlier.
That was the year that Friends ended.
- Whoa.
Friends really went deep into the 2000s.
- The reference to iced coffee was in the episode 22
of the third season, 1997.
If you're curious.
- Yeah, what was it?
- Rachel is dating a guy named Tommy,
and Tommy seems like a normal guy at the start,
but then it turns out that he's a screamer.
He's a loud, aggressive guy.
- A loud talker.
- He's a, well, like, yeah, but not as good as Seinfeld.
But like, he butts heads with Ross,
and at one point, Ross almost spills coffee on him,
and Tommy goes, "Was that iced coffee?
That better be iced coffee."
And they get into a whole thing over it.
That's the earliest appearance
of an iced coffee reference on the show.
- That sounds like a slightly awkward reference.
Like, maybe because iced coffee was a fairly new technology
in the mainstream consciousness in 1997.
People were still wrapping their heads around it.
Even the fact that this guy's asking a question,
"Was that iced coffee?"
implies some lack of familiarity with iced coffee technology.
I may actually watch this episode.
- You know what I just thought of, apropos of nothing?
Remember that email that that kid sent us
with his Herm Jarl song?
- Oh, yeah!
- Oh, yeah, yeah. That was great.
- That was f***ing deep.
So just circling back to the episode before last,
we got an email from Adrian.
"What's up, Crisis Crew?
Like many in the TC community,
I've recently found myself constantly thinking
about Herm Jarl and the musical epoch he heralded.
There is, of course, much to be memed
about this Paul Bunyan-type mythical figure,
but it has also been a heavily nostalgic topic for me.
It brought me back to when I was 13 years old,
exploring outside of metal into grunge.
Back then, my friends and I would do covers of Jeremy
and take turns doing our best veteran impressions."
That's awesome.
"This reminiscing got me relearning some of those songs.
Then one chord led to another,
and before I knew it, I'd started writing a song about Herm.
I pulled a Hunter Garcia and enlisted my friend Lenny,
who got me into TC, to help me finish the lyrics
and sing backup vocals.
Between Sunday night and Friday night,
the song was fully written and recorded.
I don't know if it was the spirit of the Jarl speaking through us,
but if I had never in 10 plus years of making music
even imperfectly finish a song that quickly.
So here is our version of a Herm Jarl song.
A delicate balance between caricature and tribute.
Barring from the musical stylings of Hootie and the Blowfish,
Four Non Blondes, Pearl Jam, The Pixies,
and even Waylon Jennings maybe?
The Ballad of Herm Jarl.
Alright. Love that.
Herm Jarl
Wonders through a broken lair
A fool of distant dreams
Waiting for the butterflies
Oh, Herm's the world turned red
But he turns it all away
He goes to an independent coffeehouse
Full of kindred hearts
Waiting for their hallelujahs
And every day he feels alone
And every time he's shrunk to dawn
His daughters get another chance
Very 90's lyrics.
Oh, Herm Jarl
Now you've got the censor
Sold the man a dream for ransom
Yeah, you got a desk and a 401, okay
A 401, okay?
But you kept the scratch
Yeah, you're an old jar
And you're living in a world of norm
And every day he feels alone
You know, this came in very early in the morning
and I was listening to it off my phone
and Amanda really was like,
"Why are you listening to Pearl Jam
at Saturday at 7.15 a.m.?"
Great band.
Okay. Ooh, where's it going?
Great band. In the mood.
This is like some, like,
Toadies vibe.
I respect the commitment to the character
in this piece.
It's like the other side of a Jam Flow man.
Yeah.
I mean, to me, this is like,
the commitment to the Jarl makes it a little bit hard
to understand when you're listening.
Yeah.
But the lyrics, there are some really good lyrics.
"Yeah, you got a desk and a 401k,
but you kept the strat.
Yeah, you are an old Jarl
and you're living in a world of gnarl."
[Laughter]
That kind of sums it up.
Just an old Jarl.
And every day he feels the world
and every day he shrugs it off.
Grunge is dead.
Because Gen X doesn't really have an equivalent
of, like, boomer.
Like, you could say Gen Xer,
but it doesn't sound that good.
But, like, you could imagine
when Gen X starts hitting, like, retirement age,
rather than being just, like, whatever Xer.
Maybe it could be cool just,
especially because Gen X is, like,
a pretty chill generation.
I mean, we'll see.
We'll see how people feel
with all this generational warfare going forward.
But I kind of like the idea of just, like,
the old grunge head
rather than this, like, confrontational
"okay, boomer" type thing.
It's more just like,
"Oh, don't mind him. He's just an old Jarl."
Just like a kid growing up in, like,
hyper-futuristic, like, corporate Amazon Seattle
in the 2050s
and just being like,
"Yeah, there were a bunch of old Jarls hanging out,
but they're actually really sweet.
Like, they just wanted somebody to talk to.
Just a few old Jarls hanging out."
They were just sitting outside the coffee shop
wearing, like, a camo jacket.
You know, they had a chain wallet.
It's, you know, but they're, like, 80.
Somebody tuning into Apple Music
and hearing that song, it's very funny.
But also, I just picture, like,
[laughs]
We gotta, like,
like, Seinfeld,
we should, like, put it up to download somehow,
like, on the Twitter account
because I know we got some
baristas in the TC community
Anybody who works at a coffee shop
who listens to TC
and if you have any control over the playlist
at your coffee shop, just--
Oh, hell yeah.
Just slipping in the ballad of Herm Jarl.
Wait, just throw it on, like, in the middle
somewhere randomly.
I'm just, like, picturing somebody just, like,
entering a coffee shop.
Just, like, a kind of, like,
semi-crunchy indie coffee shop
and just, like,
a Gen X-er dude just, like,
standing in line, you know,
nodding his head a bit, just, like,
um...
[laughs]
Just, like, kind of looking up at the speaker
and just be like,
"Do you guys have oat milk?"
"Can I get a...
Oh, uh, yeah, you got the music
really loud in here.
What do you want, sir?
Can I, uh..."
[laughs]
All right, you can pause it.
That's the Herm Jarl challenge,
is if you work at a coffee shop,
blast the ballad of Herm Jarl
and see what happens.
All right, let's bang out this top five.
This has been a jam-packed show.
Let's do it. The number five song
this week in 2004,
an absolute classic from Alicia Keys,
"You Don't Know My Name."
You remember this, Jake?
Oh, interesting. Kanye
produced it with her. It makes sense.
It sounds like that era
of Kanye, the production at least.
Yeah, yeah. Chopped up
soul samples. Actually,
Kanye performed
at Columbia probably the
year after at, like,
the Spring Fling or whatever.
And I remember they played this
song and he kind of, like, made a joke about it.
Oh, yeah. That piano. Incredible.
Did you see the show? Yeah, I was there.
Cool. Because I remember,
like, he produced the song. It was a big hit.
So, like, he kind of
referenced it. And they made, they did
kind of, like, a satirical
version of it that was about,
like, hooking up with a girl, but you still
don't even know her name.
That was my big memory. I also remember he was wearing
his backpack. That was
literally the Louis backpack era Kanye.
Right, the early Kanye of, like,
wearing, like, a rugby shirt.
Yeah.
Preppy Kanye. Follow on the backpack.
Yeah, exactly. Was preppy Kanye an
influence on early preppy
vampire weekend? It's funny. It's
like... I never thought about that until right now.
Yeah, I never really thought about that either, but now I'm
picturing myself literally being an undergrad
at Columbia watching Kanye.
Maybe. I was very
into his first album.
I love that record, too.
Did I ever tell you that, speaking of seeing
famous rappers at college campuses,
maybe I've said this on the show, I saw Notorious B.I.G.
at UConn.
What? Yeah. It must have
been, like... Hold on, pause the music.
This would have been May of '96
because I went to school
in Oregon, but then I went back that summer
to Connecticut to do a landscaping
job. My friend, John
Joyce, was still... He was going to school
at UConn.
So I'm guessing it was, like, in May. Or maybe that
school went into June. I don't know what the situation was, but
it was, like, May in Connecticut.
And it was violent fans at Notorious B.I.G.
Which is hilarious.
Classic college bill.
I told you that. Very random.
After we graduated, Vampire Weekend
was invited to come back and play the same, like,
event that I saw Kanye
at, and the bill when we did it was
Vampire Weekend opening for The Clips.
Oh, yeah.
Pusha T. That's incredible that
you saw him. Like,
what are your memories of his, like, performance?
I wasn't, like, a huge B.I.G.
head, admittedly.
I found a message
board on the Fish.net
site about that show.
About the B.I.G. show?
Yeah, the thread is
"Most random shh concert you've
ever been to."
Did you write
this?
I don't know if it goes that in-depth.
Oh,
the only thing it says is, "Biggie Smalls opened up
for Violent Femmes, UConn,
Spring Weekend, 1995."
Oh, okay. It was '95?
Okay, um, I would think '96,
but okay.
Maybe this person's wrong.
Yeah, they might be wrong.
Wait, "Most f***ed up scene they've ever seen?"
"Most f***ed up scene I've ever seen,
especially pie-eyed."
What does that mean? Pie-eyed, stoned?
Just, like, baked? I don't know.
That's it. Well, there you go.
This is not quite
as random, but I actually thought
I might share this on the show, because I was
going deep on various things,
as one does, and I came across an interesting
fact that I didn't know before.
Bob Marley's first show ever
in New York City,
which actually I think was his first show in the U.S.,
matter of fact,
with the Wailers.
1973, at a small
club. Late, wow. Famous club.
Max's-- yeah, because, you know,
like, they-- I don't know if you remember,
if you saw the Bob Marley
documentary any time recently, but, like,
you know, they were, like, churning
out, like, ska records
in the '60s, and then there was a certain
point where he was like,
"I'm gonna go move in with my
mom in Delaware. She's been up there for a few
years," and he, like, worked at an auto
plant. I forgot that.
That's wild. And then he was like, "Alright.
Not that into Delaware."
And then went back and, like, started making music
again, but, you know. So, like,
circa 1970,
he was working at an auto plant in Delaware?
Yes. Wow.
Like, full rasta, like, with
dreads and stuff? He was growing
his hair out at that point. He was a rasta.
That must have been. I don't think his hair-- his hair
could have possibly been as long as it was
in his iconic-- Can you imagine him in the break room
at the auto plant in Delaware?
[laughter] A bunch of, like,
Frank Sabatka-style guys, just like--
[laughter]
And Bob
walks in.
Man, what is wealth, anyway?
Wait, what was that classic quote we had?
"Are you rich, man? What you mean
rich? I mean, do you have a lot of money?
Money make you rich?"
Yeah.
No pun intended.
Oh, yeah, pal. I would say money makes me rich.
So, anyway,
his first show-- Bob Marley, The
Delaware Years, limited
series coming to HBO Max Q4.
Oh, hell yeah. Look out for that one.
TC Productions.
The Delaware Year.
Anyway,
the first Bob Marley show in the
US, first show in New York City,
1973, at the upstairs
part of Max's Kansas City, which
I can't imagine would fit more than a few
hundred people, small crowd.
Opening-- so their
first show ever was opening for somebody who was
doing a run there, Bruce Springsteen.
What?
Bruce Springsteen was still pretty small
in '73 and had the big breakthrough.
So, kind of like local legend,
regional act, doing, you know,
like, back in the day people used to do sh*t like
that, like a week of shows in Max's
Kansas City, you know, probably a couple hundred
people a night. And, anyway,
they're like, "And straight from Jamaica,
new artist, The Wailers."
So, like, wow.
God, you know, you just see that bill
and you're just like, "What the f*ck?" So, there was
somebody randomly there to see Bruce Springsteen that
night, and who was kind of like--
they're just like, "Oh, who's opening tonight?"
It's like, these Jamaican dudes, and you're like,
"Alright, cool." Or vice versa, there's somebody
who's really into Jamaican music and they
went to see Bob Marley. They're just opening
for some singer/songwriter dude named
Bruce Springsteen. I'll stay for a couple songs.
You're just like, "What was
happening? Were they-- Peter Tosh probably
was still playing with Bob Marley that time?"
- That's amazing. That is--
- Yeah, that's a true legendary bill.
Alright, the number four song
2004.
This is an all-time classic. We're off to a great start here.
Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris.
Yeah.
- I mean,
Usher was just so huge
in this era. That album, Confessions?
- Oh, yeah.
- Inescapable.
- The Ludacris verse on this is
incredible.
- I also love the
Lil Jon, Usher,
Ludacris ballad from this same
era. Lovers and Friends?
- Oh, yeah.
- Great song. - Great song. - Beautiful song.
- Usher's obviously huge.
But does he have the
sort of respect I think he probably
deserves? It is legendary.
I mean, from Finding Bieber
to doing things like
this. I mean, it's a really
storied career that I don't know
if enough people talk about. - Well, I
was going to say, I feel like Usher would be a good candidate
for Super Bowl halftime.
- I was saying the same thing, Jake. But there
is something funny. It's like,
Usher, in my mind,
had just as many hits as The Weeknd
and yet, I'm not
seeing Usher doing
the Super Bowl halftime show anytime soon.
- I mean, I think he could.
- Like a decade ago. Like 10 years ago,
peak Usher, I think he could have done it.
- You know, Usher maybe kind of missed a window
where it's like, the Usher of today
could headline
play the Super Bowl, but
Usher, peak 2004.
Well, I guess that was the Janet
Jackson infamous year.
- I wonder if he was in the running
ever. Would love to know the
back channels on that.
- He'd be a great Super Bowl guest.
Like a bigger artist. - Yeah, I think he could
headline it, man. I think he's got
the catalog. - He absolutely has the catalog.
I mean, and also, he was a
child star. - Wait a second.
The Usher did perform at the
Super Bowl. - Did he headline?
- No, he was a guest
for when the Black Eyed Peas were
the lead performance. - See,
he's got a much deeper catalog
than... Yeah, he's got a much deeper catalog
than the Black Eyed Peas. Come on.
- It was the Black Eyed Peas, Usher
and Slash. - Oh.
Well, that's a real grab bag.
The number three song
in 2004.
Wow, this is just...
These are all big songs.
I don't know if this is just because it's more conscious
than when we listen to really old stuff, but
number three, Outkast
"Hey Ya". - Oh, wow.
- ♪ My baby don't mess
around because she loves me so
and this I know for sure. ♪
♪
♪ But does she really want to... ♪
- Have we talked a lot about this song on the show?
I just can't remember.
- I can't remember. - I don't think we've gone
deep. - I just have
a very vivid memory of this song
specifically, which is I was living
in Florida and
I was at a... I didn't know anybody. - You were?
- Yeah, I was living in an assisted living
home in Florida for another show.
- Cool. - And
I was working as an
investigative reporter and
some woman from the place I was
working was like, "Come to
this house party." And I didn't really
know anyone and everyone's probably like, you know,
early 20s. And
no one's dancing, everyone's
sitting down, I don't know anybody.
And someone put on this record
and I think it must've... it was the first time I'd
ever heard it, but it must've been one of the first times
really it was ever kind of played,
like early, early on. And I just
remember seeing this girl get up
and go nuts to this song.
And just then everybody,
like every wallflower moved in,
you know, and it was... I'd never experienced
like a song that would do that
to somebody and that changed the
whole vibe of a party. - Wow.
- That's like a story...
- It's like a story about a movie. - Like early rock and roll,
like, "Oh my God, it's rock and roll music!"
- I... it's exactly... - I can't help it.
- It's like saying that it would've been like an Elvis
biopic. - I just gotta move.
- And I just had never seen
anything and I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be the biggest song
ever."
And I just had never experienced something in
a... like that kind of setting.
It's incredible. - We've definitely
had this conversation, I don't know if it was on air or
off air, but it's hard to overstate
how exciting this song was
when it came out. I even
find it somewhat hard listening
to it now to like find that
feeling again. Not any diss
to the song, just because it
became so ubiquitous. It just got
so played out. - Yeah. - In the literal
sense of being played out. Played too much,
you know?
- The whole generation is like every line of this
little breakdown.
- The whole album concept too of
Outkast having like essentially
broken up, but like releasing
an album together at the same time.
- Is this the last Outkast record?
- They had the soundtrack to
Idlewild after this.
Which not everybody counts.
I remember hearing this
song vividly for the first time on the
radio and being like
"Holy sh*t, that's incredible."
And also, I mean obviously
everybody loves Outkast, but it's
like, it's so rare
that you're actually
following somebody in real time who's
like releasing album
after album that changes
like crazy, but still
hooks you in and you're like super excited
about it. And there's something about
the run of
albums that led into this.
That's like a once in a generation
thing. Obviously you could be
like a hardcore Outkast fan following them
I think their first album was '94.
But like, I just kind of remember
like, you know when you hear like
Rosa Parks for the first time and the singles
around then, and then Stankonia
had Bombs Over Baghdad and
So Fresh and So Clean.
It's like, just picture that you
were Outkast and you had already like
ascended from kind of like
regional rap act to like
So Fresh and So Clean and
Ms. Jackson, like true crossover pop hits.
At that point in your career
people could be forgiven for saying
like, "They did it!"
They really made it up the top of the mountain
they created like
strange idiosyncratic music that
also found a larger audience, like
they did it! But then to
go one step further
and drop Hey Ya!
where they literally like blanketed
the whole world, that's
crazy. No wonder Andre 3000
doesn't make that much music anymore.
They did it!
The only other time that I had
that experience was
when I was at Columbia and I was in a
Barnard dorm
and I remember a girl running in and being
like, "Someone has
to put on this CD."
And it was The Strokes.
Is there any song like that you guys
remember?
Well, it's amazing when that happens.
I mean, no diss to The Strokes, but that was
their first album. Which is like
it is exciting when
you hear something for the first time and you're just like,
"Whoa, that's fresh as f*ck." I mean that's how I felt
when I heard The Strokes.
There's something about whatever these guys
are on their fifth or sixth album where it's just
like... I've never had an experience
quite like that where I just couldn't believe it.
I was like, "Damn!"
That's some sh*t like The Beatles
busting out, like, "Let It Be."
I was going to say
Hey Yah is like their Hey Jude or something.
Yeah, right. Imagine you've been
rocking with The Beatles for five years
and you're just like, "Damn, from
Hard Day's Night to Strawberry Fields Forever,
these guys really had a hell of a run."
And then they drop the White Album
or some sh*t and you're just like, "Alright,
having some fun getting..."
These guys had a cool career.
They end it with a sprawling
weird double album. Cool.
And then they just drop Hey Jude on you.
I could think of a lot of gifs to go
with that. That's just some like, "Oh,
man!"
Yeah, I think this is really like their Hey Jude.
You know one that I kind of remember, actually?
Whether or not
you place them in the same category,
Drake is one of those
artists where he had like
this crazy run. Again, like him or
don't like him, he had this crazy run from being
kind of like this dude people
weren't sure about to like a proven hitmaker.
And there was like a period
after... maybe after
like started from the bottom
where I kind of felt like, "Alright, there..." It's very
hard to picture now, but there was something
about like started from the bottom that kind of felt like,
"Alright, this dude... that was the dude's trajectory."
Like, well done. Who would
have guessed? And there was something about
like when he put
out that... the one... if you're reading this, it's
too late. And I do remember
being in a car and listening to that
and being like, "Alright, what's Drake going for now?"
And then hearing the...
"I was running through the 6 with my woes."
And I was just like
being struck by that song and just being like,
"Whoa. The trajectory
is still crazy." Was that before
"Hotline Bling" came out?
Because that's also a crazy trajectory. No, "Hotline Bling" is like
another like leap where you're just like,
again, even if you want to say,
"I don't think that song is that good" or some sh*t,
there's still just something about the fact that he
created it and it worked and it was
weird and it was crossover.
SNL even had Donald Trump dancing
to that song. Remember that? This just shows
me or tells me that I'm old
because I like some of those
Drake songs, but I don't have the context
to really understand
the leaps that you guys are talking about.
I know the songs you're referencing
and I'm fine with all of them,
but I don't... they're like,
"That's a leap? Okay, if you're telling me
it's a leap, at a certain point..."
No, I know what you mean. And I probably feel that way
about some stuff now. I'm sure there's
like... yeah, there's music that I like,
but I probably couldn't
contextualize
why one song represented
this moment where people are just like,
"Whoa."
It reminds me of...
my mom was telling me
her dad was a musician and
he hated the Beatles initially.
And then he slowly was
like, "Okay, I see
what they're doing." And then Sinatra did
a bunch of covers of something.
I remember him when I was a little
kid. I don't think if I was like,
"Grandpa, what do you think of
'Hard Day's Night' versus 'Sgt. Pepper'?"
I think he would just have been like,
"It's the Beatles. It's fine. I see
that these are different songs, but I don't understand
why people are freaking
out about this trajectory."
Right. And basically,
I'm in a grandpa stage right now
in my life with Drake.
Just full disclosure, this is an honest show.
We've been doing this show for years.
It's about growth. You're an old yarl.
I'm an old yarl.
I'm fine with Drake, but I just don't understand
his trajectory. And it's just intense
as a person that has
followed music closely
for most of my life to be
just internalizing
that and just being like, "Damn.
I don't know what's going on."
The only thing I'd say, and yeah, no, I know.
That's a weird feeling. The only thing I'd say is
it's not exclusively about age
because it also just has to do
with how checked in you are because
following music is
so emotional.
It's so...
Even compared to other art forms, there's something
about it. It's so personal and so emotional that
there's even stuff
that's like at...
Even when I was younger, I felt like
there's s*** I cared about and
meant a lot to me, and I could see the leaps.
And then there's even stuff happening at the same
time where I just couldn't
focus in to see it
the way that the fans saw it.
It didn't mean I didn't respect it, but
that emotional feeling
of just being like, "Wow.
We're going somewhere new together."
You have to be checked in, not just
age-wise, but also just
emotionally, I guess.
Is there anything
Bob Pollard could do now that would
make you feel that way?
No. I check in with the new
Pollard releases, and they're not
that good. And they're a retread
of old stuff in a way
that is not interesting
to me. I would say I
still have an emotional relationship with
music, but it's like... And this is just classic.
This is very typical. It's older
stuff. It's sort of like,
"Wow. I've never heard this Waylon Jennings song. I've never heard
this George Jones song. Wow. This is amazing."
And I still have...
It's new to me, but for some reason,
the context of new
stuff, whether it's new stuff from old
artists that you've loved for a long time, or
artists in mid-career, new artists,
it's sort of just like... It doesn't
hit the same, man.
Well, and maybe that's the way of the world.
It's natural. Because
I've definitely felt at times
just like you, I've always been
interested in culture,
what things mean to other people,
trying to understand what they mean to other people,
trying to contextualize sh*t. And there are
times where, when you
see new generations coming up,
and you see the way in which stuff that you
think of as contemporary
is old-school to them, and stuff
that you feel like just happened is actually
like, or is uncool,
is kind of like a funny,
meaningful, satirical
reference to them. The same way that
like, you know, it's like
a little bit absurd to think, but like,
tastes change so much that even like Vampire Weekend
in the early days, there are people who like
not only didn't
like us being
on some Paul Simon sh*t, they also just
couldn't even understand that as being like a
decent reference. And of course,
he's like a beloved songwriter. You'd think like
it's not hard to understand why people
would like riff on Paul Simon, but
there's just like this feeling of like, no, Paul Simon is
not cool. And it's not hard
to extrapolate from that. It's like,
yeah, no sh*t, there's gonna be kids who think that
like,
will start to be nostalgic for like
the early Instagram.
And they're gonna be like, you know,
somebody will probably like make a video or like
a t-shirt line that's like an old
version of Instagram. And you're like, whoa, that looks
so old. And they're gonna be like,
yo, we should do some sh*t that sounds like
some f*cking 2007, whatever.
Like, it's not hard to extrapolate
that how nostalgia works.
And that can help you to kind of see
into people's trajectories
and why something's cool. But then you
do hit a point where you're like, who cares?
Like, you do get
a little bit like, you gotta like
let the art school
kids get into their
nostalgic appropriation for
whatever vague memories they
have of being seven years old in their
version of Eileen's car. And you gotta
dig into this, you know, like
but anyway.
This is Twista featuring
Kanye West and friend of the show Jamie Foxx
with Slow Jams.
Kanye, very present in this
top five. - Yeah.
- Also, it's interesting that we - This is a huge, huge
- top five. - And also
- Oh, I love this. - We've got
Kanye and
Andre 3000 in the same top five.
Fascinating. - But this is
on Kanye's record, right?
- It was on Twista and
Kanye's albums. Yeah. - Oh.
- That used to happen more. - If I
remember correctly,
this is at a time where Kanye
is trying
to, you know, really break out
of just being thought of as a producer.
And that I think he had
exchanged, like he had done Gold Digger
for Jamie Foxx and sort of
- No, not yet. - Had he not done that?
- Gold Digger's on, no, 'cause this is from
his first album. Gold Digger's on the second album.
- But I do know the story is like somehow
this song was like a very calculated
and smart move
to get, that Kanye thought
this is how I'm gonna leave being seen
as a producer to be seen as a rapper.
Which is like a thing he couldn't break through.
- Maybe he did it for Twista and then he was like
- For Twista. - "Hey, I put this on my album too."
- Also knowing if it's funny,
it will help through the transition.
It's just like a very smart move.
- I think I remember the same interview you were talking about
where he says, "I knew
when I wrote the light-skinned friend and the dark-skinned
friend looked like Michael Jackson." He was like,
"I knew I leveled up." It's like,
that line changed my life.
- Do you guys remember?
'Cause I think that transition you guys are talking
about is covered in that song, "Last Call."
- Which is the last
song on this record, I think.
It's the one where he tells the story about
moving from Chicago to New Jersey
and going to Ikea with his mom.
- Very TC. - Yeah.
- It's like a 14-minute song, long song with
like, spelled word. - Right. His early albums had a lot...
Did they all end with a
State of the Union and history kind of song?
- I don't think so.
- 'Cause there's also "Big Brother" where he tells
the whole long story of his and Jersey's relationship.
- Oh, yeah. - Love that song.
- Obviously, there's a lot of Kanye fans
and music journalists who are waiting
for his "Return to Form" album,
which now that Trump isn't president
anymore, it's easier to imagine.
I could imagine
one element of that would be
a 15-minute, "Let me
catch you up to speed" type song.
Telling some story about fighting with
Kim at Ikea.
- Yeah, it's like, "Last Call," "Big Brother,"
and then what's the song about Kim called?
"Ex-Wife."
- Kanye dropped a 25-minute
"Ex-Wife."
- He goes just deep on all of the
reality TV stuff.
- Did they actually get divorced?
- I don't know. - I don't want to spread disinformation.
- Not yet. - Not yet.
- Let's assume that goes through, you know?
- Jake, did you
see Northwest's
art this week? - No.
Is that their kid? - Yeah.
She's like... - She's on some Bob Ross
sh*t. - She painted a pizza hut.
- No way! - No.
- Uh-oh. - No, she didn't paint a pizza hut.
- She painted the Calabasas location
of Pizza Hut. - When asked by Artform
if there was a Jake Longstreth influence,
she said, "Who?"
Never heard of him.
- The art was so good that
people were doubting
whether or not she had actually painted it. I just
texted it to the... - Oh, let me... I gotta take a look.
- Take a look, Jake. - How old
is she? - Seven, I think?
- Oh, yeah, that is pretty tight.
- When people were, like,
debating if she did it and Kim Kardashian
got mad, she said, like, "No, she's really good
and she's in, like, an advanced art
class." Okay, my daughter and her
best friend have been taking a serious oil painting class
where their talents and creativity are being... - Oil!
Wow. - Encouraged and nurtured.
Although, I will say,
I've been throwing on some Bob Ross at
home, you know, like, here and there. - That's
cool. - It's, like, fun thing to watch as a family.
You know, you watch that sh*t and you
kinda realize, like, okay,
none of his moves actually are
that crazy on their own.
He's such a genius, the way he puts them together.
But you're like, were there people who would just
watch him every week and maybe after, like, four
or five weeks, they started to do decent approximations?
Like, doing his techniques?
I'm willing to believe that a seven-year-old with a great
teacher who maybe is helping
out a little bit here and there,
correcting some things.
- I would say the tough thing would be the color.
Like, I'm wondering if the
teacher helped, like, mix the colors
or something because that's... - That's, like,
the hardest element of oil painting, specifically?
- Well, oil painting is more the, like,
materiality of it.
It's just, like, it's a resist... it's very resistant.
It's thick. You have to, like,
work with a solvent
to sort of, like... but it's much easier to work
with, like, acrylic for a kid.
Oil is just, like, it's a mess.
- Well, forget about whether or not
she did it. Jake,
do you think it's safe for a seven-year-old to use solvent?
- Yeah, I'm sure it's odorless.
Although she shouldn't, you know, it's definitely
flammable. - Jake writes an article
for BuzzFeed. Um, can we talk
about solvent?
What's getting lost in the
Northwest controversy?
- Yeah, anyway,
my guess is that the teacher might be helping with the
color because that would be... it's hard to picture
a seven-year-old having, like, a super
patient and distinguishing
eye for, like,
these different hues.
So, I don't know. - Clearly, she must
be talented to do a painting like that
and good for her and the idea
of whether
she needs to be having her work shared with
hundreds of millions of people,
you know, for a developing artist
at age seven, that's a different...
Whatever, that's between her and her mom.
But I do think, like, the funny thing is
if... I just kind of feel like
of course, seven-year-olds are
capable of all sorts of amazing sh*t
with the right tools
and if one of the tools is an excellent teacher,
all right, mystery solved.
- Yup. - Okay.
The number one song...
Wow, this is a very compact
top five. The number one song, Outkast Again,
The Way You Move.
So, this is Big Boi's single,
which I think they released at the same time.
This week, we had
basically two Kanye-associated songs,
two Outkast-associated songs,
and Usher.
So, it's like, everybody
who appears, and then of course, Alicia Keys,
Lil Jon, Ludacris, all very influential people.
[outkast - outkast]
If I can make a controversial
statement, for me,
this might be a better song than
Hey Ya.
Interesting. I think it has
more longevity. It's like a cooler
song. - I just love the bridge on this song.
[outkast - outkast]
I don't know if I ever told you this,
Ezra. I was doing this interview
with Big Boi
post,
you know, him and Andre sort of
splitting up. He said, "How do you like
the sort of experience of making music
without Andre?"
And he was like, "I hate it."
And I was like, "Why?" And he goes, "I have to work twice as hard."
And he goes,
"I have to write, like, when you have a partner,
especially when you're writing,
like, most of it is like lyric-based
rap music." He's like, "I gotta
write twice as many verses."
It just sucks.
And he wasn't being funny.
He was just like, "It's
hard. I have to be twice
as interesting." - That's something very
specific about a rap duo
that's just like very cut and dry.
But, I mean,
I've never made music that wasn't
in some sense collaborative.
So, like, it wouldn't be for
me. Even if I write a song,
the idea of, like,
producing it totally by myself
or not bouncing it off somebody else's
ideas, that's just such a
part of the process. I can also imagine
like, yeah, if like Andre
wrote one verse and Big Boi was like
wanted to point in the same direction
as him, that would give him some guidance or
move away. Like, yeah, you could...
That's a very unique thing. The rap
duo barely exists
these days. Seinfeld, why
do you think that's a better song?
- Because I'll tell you why. The oversaturation
of "Hey Ya!" to me,
it was like, it was obviously an
undeniable hit. It became a huge novelty
song. A year later, you're still
hearing it in CVS and everywhere.
You can't escape it. I feel like if you want
to have like a normal one,
which of those two songs are you
going to? Like, if you're just like chilling out
or driving or something, do you want to
blast "My Baby" or do you want to hear
just like a song that's just like...
- So you're saying
you're opening a bottle of red wine with the
wife,
candles are lit, you're having a nice dinner
you prepared.
You're going to throw on the way
you move.
- Yeah, we're not going to shake it like a Polaroid picture.
I mean, I think it was cool to revisit
and be like, "Oh yeah, this was such a moment."
But I think just in terms of
long-term... Okay, it's the
Desert Island thing. Are you taking
"Hey Ya" to a desert island?
If you have one song, you're taking "The Way You Move,"
which has a higher density
of lyrics and maybe
a little bit more consistent
replay value. - It's also just a good
example of how you need different vibes
or different moments at different times
in your life. Like, yeah, when these two songs came out,
I was
19, 20.
So, of course,
I was more interested
in "Hey Ya" just because
I was like, "The synth bass
line and the fact that he's using an acoustic
guitar..." I just was
like, "This is a fascinating ballad."
And yeah, in a way,
listening to them back-to-back now,
I would rather throw
on "The Way You Move."
Now I can at least... I may not agree with you
totally, Seinfeld, but
I can at least entertain the thought.
Probably for the first 10 years
of my interaction with this album,
I could never even
entertain the thought that this song was better than
"Hey Ya."
Not that it was bad, but just that
the way I judged music,
I was like, "Hey Ya's pushing the
envelope forward in more ways.
Andre is a more interesting character."
[laughter]
I'm basically impersonating one of those
crying memes.
I was like, "But you can't
say that 'The Way You Move'
is better than 'Hey Ya.'"
And you're just like, "Ha ha,
big boy goes brrr."
I think you hit on it
earlier, which is just like, it was overplayed.
I think it's like, technically,
and maybe it's a more interesting song, but it's like,
what did culture do to these two songs?
Yeah, I have to...
Like I said before, I have to...
And again, first of all, I don't even know
if I would say "Hey Ya" is the best song on that album.
By the way, the whole Andre album has
so many interesting ideas, and I'll
definitely can stand and
say that he's
such an influential dude in a million
ways. Even of Outkast singles,
I might not rank it in my
top five, but I know
that hearing that struck me. I mean,
actually, I would say that I always,
of Outkast singles, the one that
truly blew my mind, and I can
actually recall the feeling in a more
visceral, emotional way, was
"Bombs Over Baghdad." When I heard that song,
I felt like, "This is what I've been waiting
for my whole life." I'm like this
high school kid, and I'm like,
"I love punk rock,
and f***ing intense
industrial music, and I love
hip-hop, and I love Outkast."
And they dropped this
"Bam!" And the words,
I was like, "Bombs Over Baghdad? What the f*** does that
mean? What are they talking about? Are they talking about rock?"
That song truly
was
actually a crazier moment for me,
now that I think about it.
- Alright, everybody. So that's our
question of the week. Weigh in.
Which do you feel like is a better song?
"The Way You Move" or "Hey Ya?"
You also gotta say how old you are.
'Cause I'm curious about that too, if other
people had a kind of slow
come-around to "The
Way You Move."
Alright, another TC in the
can. Thank you to Ronnie, Vinucci, and Brandon
Flowers of the Killers.
Up and coming act out of Las Vegas,
Nevada.
Check out their hot sauce.
Support them. We'll be
talking Super Bowl commercials in the next
episode. Oh, and the one
thing I do wanna say, my biggest takeaway from the
Super Bowl, that I'm
happy to say now,
even though our Super Bowl show's not coming
for another couple weeks, is
I've talked in the past about, I've always been
struck by the fact that Jake and Kanye
were born the same year.
It was interesting for me, watching the
game, you know, half watching
the game, and looking at my phone
most of the time, and like, you know,
searching players on the team.
And then I realized, Tom Brady is another
'77 dude. So those
are the three... Maybe
we need one more to
make the Four Horsemen
of '77. Okay, last thing we're
doing in this episode, Seinfeld. Find me one
more dude, one more '77 dude to
round up. That's ahead of year. Tom Brady,
Kanye West, Jake Longstreth,
one more dude, those are the Four Horsemen
of '77, who changed everything.
I want like a Bradley Cooper.
I want an actor.
Oh yeah, that'd be good. While Seinfeld looks
for that, I have an update here.
Ezra, do you know this
guy, Alex Skordelis?
That sounds so familiar. Musician?
Maybe he knows your sister.
He's like a comedy guy, like a
writer. He lives near me,
and we're buddies. He just texted me.
He goes, "I'm good friends
with a writer named Emily Altman.
We were on a sketch team at UCB
for years. She writes for
Big Mouth. Anyway, her stepdad is
John Carroll Lynch. I just
listened to Time Crisis and sent her the app.
She said, 'I'm sitting here with him now.'"
Oh my God.
They're going to listen to the entire
episode to get to the
very ending, like the
final two minutes of the last
week's episode when I'm talking about seeing John Carroll
Lynch and
Chipotle in Eagle Rock.
I'm just like, "Oh my
God."
I got a 70.
You got a good...
I got a real bummer of a
77 for you. Oh no.
Last day.
December 31st. Just made
the cutoff. Wait, wait. Let me guess.
Donald Trump Jr.
That's right.
Oh God. Well, you know what?
You do need one kind of
villain in the mix.
I mean, between him and...
Actually... I mean, all three of them are kind of
villains. They're all MAGA.
Yeah, they're all a little bit... I don't know what
I'm doing in that company. I gotta be honest.
What a bummer hang. Of the top
four 77 dudes,
only one
is not a MAGA dude, and that's
Jake Longstreet. What about
Ludacris?
Oh, really?
That's tight.
Michael Fassbender.
Now this is a crew. Luda, Fassbender,
me. John Mayer.
Oh, Mayer's 77? Oh wait, is Mayer
77? Yes, he is.
CT's 77 too.
There you go. Mayer, Kanye,
Brady,
Jake.
Donald Trump Jr. Don Jr.
The five y'alls.
All eating at a Chipotle.
Alright, see you guys next time for
Super Bowl ep.
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